The world and the man

IV

The World and the Man. By Hugh Miller Thompson, Bis Jiop of Mississippi. i2mo, $1.25.

THE

World and the Man

BY

HUGH MILLER THOMPSON.

NEW YORK THOMAS WHITTAKER

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 1890

Copyright, 1890,

BY

THOMAS WHITTAKER

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY

THE publishers' PRINTING COMPANY

30 & 32 WEST 13TH STREET

NEW YORK

D. D. D.

THESE TO THE DEAR AND NOBLE

MEMORY

OF

CHARLES AUGUSTUS WHITNEY

NEW ORLEANS.

PASSED TO THE SPIRITUAL CITY

OCTOBER 29, 1SS2.

EXTRACT FROM THE DEED OF TRUST,

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF WHICH THE BALDWIN LECTURES WERE INSTITUTED.

" This Instrument, made and executed between Samuel Smith Harris, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Michigan, as party of the first part, and Henry P. Baldwin, Alonzo B. Palmer, Henry A. Hayden, Sidney D. Miller and Henry P. Baldwin, 2d, of the State of Michigan, Trustees under the trust created by this instrument, as parties of the second part, witnesseth as follows:

" In the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, the said party of the first part, moved by the importance of bringing all practicable Christian influences to bear upon the great body of students annually assembled at the University of Michigan, undertook to promote and set in operation a plan of Christian work at said University, and collected contributions for that purpose, of which plan the following outline is here given, that is to say:

" I. To erect a building or hall near the University, in which there should be cheerful parlors, a well-equipped reading-room, and a lecture-room where the lectures hereinafter mentioned might be given;

" 2. To endow a lectureship similar to the Bampton Lectureship in England, for the establishment and defence of Christian truth: the lectures on

6 EXTRACT FROM THE DEED OF TRUST.

such foundation to be delivered annually at Ann Arbor by a learned clergyman or other communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to be chosen as hereinafter provided : such lectures to be not Jess than six, nor more than eight in number, and to be published in book form before the income of the fund shall be paid to the lecturer;

" 3. 'i"o endow two other lectureships, one on Biblical Literature and Learning, and the other on Christian Evidences; the object of such lectureships to be to provide for all the students who may be willing to avail themselves of them, a complete course of instruction in sacred learning, and in the philosophy of right thinking and right living, without which no education can justly be considered complete;

" 4. To organize a society, to be composed of the students in all classes and departments of the University who may be members of, or attached to, the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which society the Bishop of the Diocese, the Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Andrew's Parish, and all the Professors of the University who are communicants of the Protestant Episcopal Church should be members ex officio, which society should have the care and management of the reading-room and lecture-room of the hall, and of all exercises or employments carried on therein, and should moreover annually elect each of the lecturers hereinbefore mentioned, upon the nomination of the Bishop of the Diocese.

" In pursuance of the said plan, the said society of students and others has been duly organized under the name of the ' Hobart Guild of the University of Michigan '; the hall above mentioned has been built

EXTRACT FROM THE DEED OF TRUST. 7

and called 'Hobart Hall'; and Mr. Henry P. Baldwin, of Detroit, Mich., aiid Sibyl A. Baldwin, his wife, have given to the said party of the first part the sum of ten thousand dollars for the endowment and support of the lectureship first hereinbefore mentioned.

" Now, therefore, I, the said Samuel Smith Harris, Bishop as aforesaid, do hereby give, grant, and transfer to the said Henry P. Baldwin, Alonzo B. Palmer, Henry A. Hayden, Sidney D. Miller, and Henry P. Baldwin 2d, Trustees as aforesaid, the said sum of ten thousand dollars to be invested in good and safe interest-bearing securities, the net income thereof to be held in trust for the following uses:

** I. The said fund shall be known as the Endowment Fund of the Baldwin lectures.

" 2. There shall be chosen annually by the Hobart Guild of the University of Michigan, upon the nomination of the Bishop of Michigan, a learned clergyman or other communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to deliver at Ann Arbor, and under the auspices of the said Hobart Guild, between the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels and the Feast of St. Thomas, in each year, not less than six nor more than eight lectures, for the Establishment and Defence of Christian Truth ; the said lectures to be published in book form by Easter of the following year, and to be entitled ' The Baldwin Lectures'; and there shall be paid to the said lecturer the income of the said endowment fund, upon the delivery of fifty copies of said lectures to the said Trustees or their successors ; the said printed volumes to contain, as an extract from this instrument, or in condensed form, a statement of the object and conditions of this trust."

Prefatory Note

The undersigned prints these Lectures because it is a necessity of the condition.

That they may not, by some possible readers, be misunderstood, he would say —

He beheves very strongly in Human Nature; especially in the Aryan Race, and his own branch of it; in "Heredity;" in the United States of America; but before all, and beyond all, he believes in Almighty God, the Father of Men, in the Catholic Faith, as declared in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and herein, in Joshua Ben Miriam, Who was born in the little town of Bethlehem, in Syria, 1895 years ago last 25th of December —

' The First true Gentleman that ever breathed " — believes in Him as the only God about whom he, or any man knows, or can know, anything, and as the Man who is his ideal of all Manliness, Kingliness, Courtesy and Valour, at whose feet — God and Man — One Person forever indissoluble, he bows in an adoration, of which Prayers and Sacraments are only a faint expression.

In a great deal which calls itself " The Evangelical Scheme of Salvation " it will be seen he does not believe. Indeed it is, as presented commonly, supremely

I o PREFA TOR V NO TE.

offensive to him, in its mean, sordid, and cowardly desire to get its poor little beggarly soul, what it calls, " saved. "

To him, his Lord's Mission appears to have been to teach and help men to make their souls worth saving. — He does not think the Gospel a contrivance for dodging Hell !

He is very sure that if a man deserves Hell, Hell is the best place for him, and, in any case, he will go there by the merciful ordering of a merciful God ! — And all the world will return thanks!

If there seem to be in this, or anything else, " Unorthodoxy " the writer wishes to say he is strictly " Orthodox," in the' only true sense of that word. He accepts, and holds from the heart, every dogma of the undivided Catholic Church, and he believes these same dogmas to be the sole solutions of the questions of his own day and all days — for Catholic dogmas are living principles, seeds of things.

He desires also to say to another possible kind of readers, that he has tried to keep up with the advance of what is called " scientific" knowledge in his day, and, as far as a busy and anxious life on other lines would allow, humbly believes he has succeeded. He accepts, of course, gladly, every step that knowledge gains, and holds that a Christianity which cannot do the same, needs very much to take stock of itself and see what it amounts to as a Religion or even a bit of Common Sense.

But he ought also to say, knowing how little " science " knows, and how irrational and absurd much of it is, from day to day — (the present theories of light and heat for instance) that he does by no means

PREFATORY NOTE. II

admire a certain " puppyism " noticeable and offensive in some otherwise amiable " scientific " gentlemen, who, having measured the length of the fore legs of a newly discovered species of beetle accurately, insist that they must thereupon be granted a patent right on the making of a Universe!

He, of course, philosophically recognizes " the natural development" of this puppyism from " the environment," but also thankfully reposes on the scientific fact that in the usual nine days the puppy, subject to its conditions, gets its eyes open.

And finally, because he believes in God, he believes also in man (he worships a Man). But, as a result, he believes in his own Race as the highest development of Man yet on Earth, and as bound, therefore, to rule, order, control and direct, most kindly but most firmly, all peoples not so developed with which it comes in contact. — The big brother ought to help and direct the little brother — sometimes, perhaps, box the little fellow's ears ! Who knows?

He does not believe in the Gallic, infidel, unscientific lie which Thomas Jefferson put, like a fly in amber, into the " Declaration of Independence." Men are not " created equal," and no men and no people have any ^^rights" which they have not earned.

Finally he believes in a world redeemed, in the Victory of Good here on this Earth, in a world where murderers shall be hanged or "electrocised," thieves put in jail, "politicians" banished, and "statesmen," of the present American type, be sent to fit idiotic, or other asylums for imbeciles or knaves, for life.

He believes the time is coming when men shall be absolute lords and masters of Nature and all her

12 PREFATORY NOTE.

powers, as was the one Man who is the type revelation and reaUty of what God means, when the Eternal Word says, " Son of Man." For that survival of the fittest he is thankful to believe, all powers, visible and invisible, are inexorably working !

Hugh Miller Thompson.

Battle Hill, Mississippi, March 31st, 1890.