1854-1855.] "WORDS IN THE WARP 139 



suggestive :— (1) "Things by their Right Names ; " (2) "Death 

 in the Alma, and Death in the "Arctic " (a steamer which had 

 recently sunk at sea) j (3) " The Besieged City ; " (4) " The 

 Work of the Soldier compared with the Work of Angels ; " (5) 

 " The Work of the Soldier compared with the Work of Devils ; " 

 (6) "Faith in God compared with Faith in Armaments ; " (7) 

 " Christian Sanction of Unchristian Deeds." They contain 

 extracts from the newspapers of the day, which might well 

 make those shudder who were not infected by the war-fever ; 

 and his remembrance of the Bristol riots in his boyhood 

 enabled him to picture more vividly what was happening in the 

 besieged city. (He says in a note, "The awful stench of 

 Queen's Square, for many weeks afterwards, when half-con- 

 sumed bodies were rotting among the smouldering ruins, I shall 

 never forget") Sometimes his acute sensibility * and intense 

 religious convictions carried him beyond the sympathies of 

 ordinary hearers and readers ; but when, at the end of each 

 lecture, discussion was allowed and objections were made, it 

 was not easy to withstand the eloquence and power with which 

 he replied. 



He judged everything from a high Christian standard, and 

 denounced the sanction claimed for war from the Old Testa- 

 ment ; since sanction can also be found there for slavery and 

 other crimes. In a note he defined his own religious views : 

 " There is a natural goodness and a Christian holiness. . . . 

 What is natural may exist without Christ in the unregenerated 

 man, and does not belong either to heaven or hell, j but simply 

 to human nature ; just as the generous impulses of the dog 



* He makes indignant protest against rejoicings at wholesale butchery, 

 and puts in a note (p. 14) : " Once only have I seen a chicken slain at 

 the hands of man ; and though a quarter of a century has passed away 

 since then, the horror with which I beheld the quivering neck of the head- 

 less animal is still fresh in my remembrance. Such are our natural instincts. 

 Alas ! how soon and how easily perverted ! " A man of great benevolence, 

 on reading this, remarked that, when he was a boy in the country, witnessing 

 the killing of animals was among his most interesting amusements : ' ' The 

 sticking of a pig, accompanied with its squealings and strugglings, was 

 prime fun. Such also, as far as my observation has extended, would be the 

 feeling — or want of feeling — of by far the larger portion of the genus boy." 



t See his lecture on Swedenborg, p. 126. 



