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[Third chapter continued from previous file.]
It must, however, be admitted that the energy displayed in framing natural explanations of miraculous phenomena bears no proportion to that which has been exhibited in a criticism that is purely disintegrating and destructive. Spinoza, whose profound knowledge not only of the Hebrew language but also of Rabbinical traditions and of Jewish modes of thought and expression made him peculiarly competent for the task, set the example in his 'Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,' [1:305] and Germany soon after plunged into the bottomless abyss from which she has not emerged. But the fact which must, I think, especially strike the impartial observer, is that these criticisms, in at least the great majority of cases, are carried on with a scarcely disguised purpose of wresting the Bible into conformity with notions that have been independently formed. The two writers who have done most to supply the principles of the movement are Lessing and Kant. The first emphatically asserts that no doctrine should be accepted as part of Scripture which is not in accordance with 'reason,' an expression which in the writings of modern German critics may be not unfairly regarded as equivalent to the general scope and tendency of modern thought. [2:305] The doctrine of Kant is still more explicit. According to him [3:305] every dogmatic system, or, as he expresses it, every 'ecclesiastical belief,' should be regarded as the vehicle or envelope of 'pure religion,' or in other words of those modes of feeling which constitute natural religion. The ecclesiastical belief is necessary, because most men are unable to accept a purely moral belief unless it is as it were materialised and embodied by grosser conceptions. But the ecclesiastical belief being entirely subordinate to pure religion, it followed that it should be interpreted simply with a view to the latter -- that is to say, all doctrines and all passages of Scripture should be regarded as intended to convey some moral lesson, and no interpretation, however natural, should be accepted as correct which collides with our sense of right.
The statement of this doctrine of Kant may remind the reader that in tracing the laws of the religious development of societies I have hitherto dwelt only on one aspect of the subject. I have examined several important intellectual agencies which have effected intellectual changes, but have as yet altogether omitted the laws of moral development. In endeavouring to supply this omission, we are at first met by a school which admits, indeed, that the true essence of all religion is moral, but at the same time denies that there can be in this respect any principle of progress. Nothing, it is said, is so immutable as morals. The difference between right and wrong was always known, and on this subject our conceptions can never be enlarged. But if by the term moral be included not simply the broad difference between acts which are positively virtuous and those which are positively vicious, but also the prevailing ideal or standard of excellence, it is quite certain that morals exhibit as constant a development as intellect, and it is probable that this development has exercised as important an influence upon society. It is one of the most familiar facts that there are certain virtues that are higher than others, and that many of these belong exclusively to a highly developed civilisation. [1:307] Thus, that the love of truth is a virtue is a proposition which, stated simply, would have been probably accepted with equal alacrity in any age; but if we examine the extent to which it is realised, we find a profound difference. We find that in an early period, while all the virtues of an uncompromising partisan are cordially recognised, the higher virtue, which binds men through a love of conscientious enquiry to endeavour to pursue an eclectic course when party and sectarian passions rage fiercely around them, is not only entirely unappreciated, but is almost impossible; that it is even now only recognised by a very few who occupy the eminences of thought; and that it must therefore be recognised by the multitude in proportion as they approach the condition of those few. Thus, the pursuit of virtue for its own sake is undoubtedly a higher excellence than the pursuit of virtue for the sake of attaining reward or avoiding punishment; yet the notion of disinterested virtue belongs almost exclusively to the higher ranks of the most civilised ages, and exactly in proportion as we descend the intellectual scale is it necessary to elaborate the system of rewards and punishments.
Humanity again, in theory, appears to be an unchangeable virtue; but if we examine its applications, we find it constantly changing. Bull-baiting, and bear-baiting, and cock-fighting, and countless amusements of a similar kind, were once the favourite pastimes of Europe, were pursued by all classes, even the most refined and the most humane, and were universally regarded as perfectly legitimate. [2:307] Men of the most distinguished excellence are known to have delighted in them. Had anyone challenged them as barbarous, his sentiments would have been regarded not simply as absurd but as incomprehensible. There was, no doubt, no controversy upon the subject. [1:308] Gradually, however, by the silent pressure of civilisation, a profound change passed over public opinion. It was effected, not by any increase of knowledge, or by any process of definite reasoning, but simply by the gradual elevation of the moral standard. Amusements that were once universal passed from the women to the men, from the upper to the lower classes, from the virtuous to the vicious, till at last the Legislature interposed to suppress them, and a thrill of indignation is felt whenever it is discovered that any of them have been practised. The history of the abolition of torture, the history of punishments, the history of the treatment of the conquered in war, the history of slavery -- all present us with examples of practices which in one age were accepted as perfectly right and natural, and which in another age were repudiated as palpably and atrociously inhuman. In each case the change was effected much less by any intellectual process than by a certain quickening of the emotions, and consequently of the moral judgments; and if in any country we find practices at all resembling those which existed in England a century ago, we infer with certainty that that country has not received the full amount of civilisation. The code of honour which first represents and afterwards reacts upon the moral standard of each age is profoundly different. The whole type of virtue in a rude warlike people is distinct from that of a refined and peaceful people, and the character which the latter would admire the former would despise. So true is this, that each successive stratum of civilisation brings with it a distinctive variation of the moral type. In the words of one of the very greatest historians of the nineteenth century, 'If the archæologist can determine the date of a monument by the form of its capital, with much greater certainty can the psychological historian assign to a specific period a moral fact, a predominating passion, or a mode of thought, and can pronounce it to have been impossible in the ages that preceded or that followed. In the chronology of art the same forms have sometimes been reproduced, but in the moral life such a recurrence is impossible: its conceptions are fixed in their eternal place in the fatality of time. [1:310]
There is, however, one striking exception to this law in the occasional appearance of a phenomenon which may be termed moral genius. There arise from time to time men who bear to the moral condition of their age much the same relations as men of genius bear to its intellectual condition. They anticipate the moral standard of a later age, cast abroad conceptions of disinterested virtue, of philanthropy, or of self-denial that seem to have no relation to the spirit of their time, inculcate duties and suggest motives of action that appear to most men altogether chimerical. Yet the magnetism of their perfections tells powerfully upon their contemporaries. An enthusiasm is kindled, a group of adherents is formed, and many are emancipated from the moral condition of their age. Yet the full effects of such a movement are but transient. The first enthusiasm dies away, surrounding circumstances resume their ascendency, the pure faith is materialised, encrusted with conceptions that are alien to its nature, dislocated, and distorted, till its first features have almost disappeared. The moral teaching, being unsuited to the time, becomes inoperative until its appropriate civilisation has dawned; or at most it faintly and imperfectly filters through an accumulation of dogmas, and thus accelerates in some measure the arrival of the condition it requires.
From the foregoing considerations it is not difficult to infer the relations of dogmatic systems to moral principles. In a semi-barbarous period, when the moral faculty or the sense of right is far too weak to be a guide of conduct, dogmatic systems interpose and supply men with motives of action that are suited to their condition, and are sufficient to sustain among them a rectitude of conduct that would otherwise be unknown. But the formation of a moral philosophy is usually the first step of the decadence of religions. Theology, then ceasing to be the groundwork of morals, sinks into a secondary position, and the main source of its power is destroyed. In the religions of Greece and Rome this separation between the two parts of religious systems was carried so far, that the inculcation of morality at last devolved avowedly and exclusively upon the philosophers, while the priests were wholly occupied with soothsaying and expiations.
In the next place, any historical faith, as it is interpreted by fallible men, will contain some legends or doctrines that are contrary to our sense of right. For our highest conception of the Deity is moral excellence, and consequently men always embody their standard of perfection in their religious doctrines; and as that standard is at first extremely imperfect and confused, the early doctrines will exhibit a corresponding imperfection. These doctrines being stereotyped in received formularies for a time seriously obstruct the moral development of society, but at last the opposition to them becomes so strong that they must give way: they are then either violently subverted or permitted to become gradually obsolete.
There is but one example of a religion which is not naturally weakened by civilisation, and that example is Christianity. In all other cases the decay of dogmatic conceptions is tantamount to a complete annihilation of religion; for although there may be imperishable elements of moral truth mingled with those conceptions, they have nothing distinctive or peculiar. The moral truths coalesce with new systems, the men who uttered them take their place with many others in the great pantheon of history, and the religion having discharged its functions is spent and withered. But the great characteristic of Christianity, and the great moral proof of its divinity, is that it has been the main source of the moral development of Europe, and that it has discharged this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctively and intensely Christian as long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder. There is, indeed, nothing more wonderful in the history of the human race than the way in which that ideal has traversed the lapse of ages, acquiring a new strength and beauty with each advance of civilisation, and infusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of thought and action. At first men sought to grasp by minute dogmatic definitions the divinity they felt. The controversies of the Homoousians or Monophysites or Nestorians or Patripassians, and many others whose very names now sound strange and remote, then filled the Church. Then came the period of visible representations. The handkerchief of Veronica, the portrait of Edessa, the crucifix of Nicodemus, the paintings of St. Luke, [1:312] the image traced by an angel's hand which its still venerated at the Lateran, the countless visions narrated by the saints, show the eagerness with which men sought to realise as a palpable and living image their ideal. This age was followed by that of historical evidences, the age of Sebonde and his followers. Yet more and more with advancing years the moral idea stood out from all dogmatic conceptions; its divinity was recognised by its perfection; and it is no exaggeration to say, that at no former period was it so powerful or so universally acknowledged as at present. This is a phenomenon altogether unique in history; and to those who recognise in the highest type of excellence the highest revelation of the Deity, its importance is too manifest to be overlooked.
I trust the reader will pardon the tedious length to which this examination, which I would gladly have abridged, has extended. For the history of rationalism is quite as much a history of moral as of intellectual development, and any conception of it that ignores the former must necessarily be mutilated and false. Nothing, too, can, as I conceive, be more erroneous or superficial than the reasonings of those who maintain that the moral element of Christianity has in it nothing distinctive or peculiar. The method of this school, of which Bolingbroke may be regarded as the type, is to collect from the writings of different heathen writers certain isolated passages embodying precepts that are inculcated by Christianity; and when the collection had become very large, the task was supposed to be accomplished. But the true originality of a system of moral teaching depends not so much upon the elements of which it is composed, as upon the manner in which they are fused into a symmetrical whole, upon the proportionate value that is attached to different qualities, or, to state the same thing by a single word, upon the type of character that is formed. Now it is quite certain that the Christian type differs not only in degree, but in kind, from the Pagan one.
In applying the foregoing principles to the history of Christian transformations, we should naturally expect three distinct classes of change. The first is the gradual evanescence of doctrines that collide with our moral sense. The second is the decline of the influence of those ceremonies, or purely speculative doctrines, which, without being opposed to conscience, are at least wholly beyond its sphere. The third is the substitution of the sense of right for the fear of punishment as the main motive to virtue.
I reserve the consideration of the first of these three changes for the ensuing chapter, in which I shall examine the causes of religious persecution, and shall endeavour to trace the history of a long series of moral anomalies in speculation which prepared the way for that great moral anomaly in practice. The second change is so evident, that it is not necessary to dwell upon it. No candid person who is acquainted with history can fail to perceive the difference between the amount of reverence bestowed in the present day, by the great majority of men, upon mere speculative doctrines or ritualistic observances, and that which was once general. If we examine the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, we find it almost exclusively occupied with minute questions concerning the manner of the co-existence of the two natures in Christ. If we examine it in the middle ages, we find it absorbed in ritualism and pilgrimages. If we examine it at the Reformation, we find it just emerging beneath the pressure of civilisation from this condition; yet still the main speculative test was the doctrine concerning the Sacrament, which had no relation to morals; and the mare practical test on the Continent, at least, was the eating of meat on Fridays. [1:315] In the present day, with the great body of laymen at least, such matters appear simply puerile, because they have no relation to morals.
The third change is one which requires more attention, for it involves the history of religious terrorism -- a history of the deepest but most painful interest to all who study the intellectual and moral development of Europe.
It would be difficult, and perhaps not altogether desirable, to attain in the present day to any realised conception of the doctrine of future punishment as it was taught by the early Fathers, and elaborated and developed by the mediæval priests. That doctrine has now been thrown so much into the background, it has been so modified and softened and explained away, that it scarcely retains a shadow of its ancient repulsiveness. It is sufficient to say, that it was generally maintained that eternal damnation was the lot which the Almighty had reserved for an immense proportion of his creatures; and that that damnation consisted not simply of the privation of certain extraordinary blessings, but also of the endurance of the most excruciating agonies. Perhaps the most acute pain the human body can undergo is that of fire; and this, the early Fathers assure us, is the eternal destiny of the mass of mankind. The doctrine was stated with the utmost literalism and precision. In the two first apologies for the Christian faith it was distinctly asserted. Philosophy, it was said, had sometimes enabled men to look with contempt upon torments, as upon a transient evil; but Christianity presented a prospect before which the stoutest heart must quail, for its punishments were as eternal as they were excruciating. [1:316] Origen, it is true, and his disciple Gregory of Nyssa, in a somewhat hesitating manner, diverged from the prevailing opinion, and strongly inclined to a figurative interpretation, and to the belief in the ultimate salvation of all; [2:316] but they were alone in their opinion. With these two exceptions, all the Fathers proclaimed the eternity of torments, and all defined those torments as the action of a literal fire upon a sensitive body. [3:316]
When the pagans argued that a body could not remain for ever unconsumed in a material flame, they were answered by the analogies of the salamander, the asbestus, and the volcano; and by appeals to the Divine Omnipotence, which was supposed to be continually exerted to prolong the tortures of the dead. [1:317]
We may be quite sure that neither in the early Church, nor in any other period, was this doctrine universally realised. There must have been thousands who, believing, or at least professing, that there was no salvation except in the Church, and that to be excluded from salvation meant to be precipitated into an abyss of flames, looked back nevertheless to the memory of a pagan mother, who had passed away, if not with a feeling of vague hopes at least without the poignancy of despair. There must have been thousands who, though they would perhaps have admitted with a Father that the noblest actions of the heathen were but 'splendid vices,' read nevertheless the pages of the great historians of their country with emotions that were very little in conformity with such a theory. Nor, it may be added, were these persons those whose moral perceptions had been least developed by contemplating the gentle and tolerant character of the Christian Founder. Yet still the doctrine was stamped upon the theology of the age, and though it had not yet been introduced into art, it was realised to a degree which we at least can never reproduce; for it was taught in the midst of persecution and conflict, and it flashed upon the mind with all the vividness of novelty. Judaism had had nothing like it. It seems now to be generally admitted that the doctrine of a future life, which is often spoken of as a central conception of religion, was not included in the Levitical revelation, or at least was so faintly intimated that the people were unable to perceive it. [1:318] During the captivity, indeed, the Jews obtained from their masters some notions on the subject, but even these were very vague; and the Sadducees, who rejected the new doctrine as an innovation, were entirely uncondemned. Indeed, it is probable that the chosen people had less clear and correct knowledge of a future world than any other tolerably civilised nation of antiquity. Among the early popular traditions of the pagans, there were, it is true, some faint traces of a doctrine of hell, which are said to have been elaborated by Pythagoras, [2:318] and especially by Plato, who did more then any other ancient philosopher to develop the notion of expiation; [3:318] but these, at the period of the rise of Christianity, had little or no influence upon the minds of men; nor had they ever presented the same characteristics as the doctrine of the Church. For among the pagans future torture was supposed to be reserved exclusively for guilt, and for guilt of the most extreme and exceptional character. It was such culprits as Tantalus, or Sisyphus, or Ixion, that were selected as examples, and, excepting in the mysteries, [1:319] the subject never seems to have been brought very prominently forward. It was the distinctive doctrine of the Christian theologians, that sufferings more excruciating than any the imagination could conceive were reserved for millions, and might be the lot of the most benevolent and heroic of mankind. That religious error was itself the worst of crimes, was before the Reformation the universal teaching of the Christian Church. Can we wonder that there were some who refused to regard it as an Evangel?
If we pursue this painful subject into the middle ages, we find the conception of punishment by literal fire elaborated with more detail. The doctrine, too, of a purgatory even for the saved had grown up. Without examining at length the origin of this last tenet, it may be sufficient to say that it was a natural continuation of the doctrine of penance; that the pagan poets had had a somewhat similar conception, which Virgil introduced into his famous description of the regions of the dead; that the Manichæans looked forward to a strange process of purification after death; [2:319] and that some of the Fathers appear to have held that at the day of judgment all men must pass through a fire, though apparently rather for trial than for purification, as the virtuous and orthodox were to pass unscathed, while bad people and people with erroneous theological opinions were to be burnt. [1:320] Besides this, the doctrine perhaps softened a little the terrorism of eternal punishment, by diminishing the number of those who were to endure it; though, on the other hand, it represented extreme suffering as reserved for almost all men after death. It may be added, that its financial advantages are obvious and undeniable.
There was in the tenth century one striking example of a theologian following in the traces of Origen, and, as far as I know, alone in the middle ages, maintaining the figurative interpretation of the fire of hell. This was John Scotus Erigena, a very remarkable man, who, as his name imports, [2:320] and as his contemporaries inform us, was an Irishman, and who appears to have led, for the most part, that life of a wandering scholar for which his countrymen have always been famous. His keen wit, his great and varied genres, and his knowledge of Greek, soon gained him an immense reputation. This last acquirement was then extremely rare, but it had been kept up in the Irish monasteries some time after it had disappeared from the other seminaries of Europe. Scotus threw himself with such ardour into both of the great systems of Greek philosophy, that some have regarded him principally as the last representative of Neoplatonism, and others as the founder of Scholasticism. [1:321] He displayed on all questions a singular disdain for authority, and a spirit of the boldest free thought, which, like Origen, with whose works he was probably much imbued, he defended by a lavish employment of allegories. Among the doctrines he disbelieved, and therefore treated as allegorical, was that of the fire of hell. [2:321]
Scotus, however, was not of his age. The material conceptions of mediævalism harmonised admirably with the material doctrine; and after the religious terrorism that followed the twelfth century, that doctrine attained its full elaboration. The agonies of hell seemed then the central fact of religion, and the perpetual subject of the thoughts of men. The whole intellect of Europe was employed in illustrating them. All literature, all painting, all eloquence, was concentrated upon the same dreadful theme. By the pen of Dante and by the pencil of Orcagna, by the pictures that crowded every church, and the sermons that rang from every pulpit, the maddening terror was sustained. The saint was often permitted in visions to behold the agonies of the lost, and to recount the spectacle he had witnessed. He loved to tell how by the lurid glare of the eternal flames he had seen millions writhing in every form of ghastly suffering, their eyeballs rolling with unspeakable anguish, their limbs gashed and mutilated and quivering with pain, tortured by pangs that seemed ever keener by the recurrence, and shrieking in vain for mercy to an unpitying heaven. Hideous beings of dreadful aspect and of fantastic forms hovered around, mocking them amid their torments, casting them into cauldrons of boiling brimstone, or inventing new tortures more subtle and more refined. Amid all this a sulphur stream was ever seething, feeding and intensifying the waves of fire. There was no respite, no alleviation, no hope. The tortures were ever varied in their character, and they never palled for a moment upon the sense. Sometimes, it was said, the flames while retaining their intensity withheld their light. A shroud of darkness covered the scene, but a ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the agonies that were below. [1:322]
It is useless to follow the subject into detail. We may reproduce the ghastly imagery that is accumulated in the sermons and in the legends of the age. We may estimate the untiring assiduity with which the Catholic priests sought in the worst acts of human tyranny, and in the dark recesses of their own imaginations, new forms of torture, to ascribe them to the Creator. We can never conceive the intense vividness with which these conceptions were realised, or the madness and the misery they produced. For those were ages of implicit and unfaltering credulity; they were ages when none of the distractions of the present day divided the intellect, and when theology was the single focus upon which the imagination was concentrated. They were ages, too, when the modern tendency to soften or avoid repulsive images was altogether unknown, and when, in the general paralysis of the reason, every influence was exerted to stimulate the imagination. Wherever the worshipper turned, he was met by new forms of torture, elaborated with such minute detail, and enforced with such a vigour and distinctness, that they must have clung for ever to the mind, and chilled every natural impulse towards the Creator. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Men were told that the Almighty, by the fiat of his uncontrolled power, had called into being countless millions whom He knew to be destined to eternal, excruciating, unspeakable agony; that He had placed millions in such a position that such agony was inevitable; that He had prepared their place of torment, and had kindled its undying flame; and that, prolonging their lives for ever, in order that they might be for ever wretched, He would make the contemplation of those sufferings an essential element of the happiness of the redeemed. [1:323] No other religious teachers had ever proclaimed such tenets, and as long as they were realised intensely, the benevolent precepts and the mild and gentle ideal of the New Testament could not possibly be influential. The two things were hopelessly incongruous. The sense of the Divine goodness being destroyed, the whole fabric of natural religion crumbled in the dust. From that time religion was necessarily diverted from the moral to the dogmatic, and became an artificial thing of relics and ceremonies, of credulity and persecution, of asceticism and terrorism. It centred entirely upon the priests, who supported it mainly by intimidation.
I have already, when examining the phenomena of witchcraft, noticed the influence of this doctrine upon the imagination, which it has probably done more to disease than almost all other moral and intellectual agencies combined. I shall hereafter touch upon its effects upon the intellectual history of Europe upon the timidity and disingenuousness of enquiry, the distrust and even hatred of intellectual honesty, it encouraged. There is, however, a still more painful effect to be noticed. That the constant contemplation of suffering, especially when that contemplation is devoid of passion, has a tendency to blunt the affections, and thus destroy the emotional part of humanity, is one of the most familiar facts of common observation. The law holds good even in men, like surgical operators, who contemplate pain solely for the benefit of others. The first repulsion is soon exchanged for indifference, the indifference speedily becomes interest, and the interest is occasionally heightened to positive enjoyment. Hence the anecdotes related of surgeons who have derived the most exquisite pleasure from the operations of their profession, and of persons who, being unable to suppress a morbid delight in the contemplation of suffering, have determined to utilise their defect, and have become the most unflinching operators in the hospitals. Now it is sufficiently manifest that upon this emotional part of humanity depends by far the greater number of kind acts that are done in the world, and especially the prevailing ideal and standard of humanity. There are, no doubt, persons who are exceedingly benevolent through a sense of duty, while their temperament remains entirely callous. There are even cases in which the callousness of temperament increases in proportion to the active benevolence, for it is acquired in contemplating suffering for the purpose of relieving it, and, as Bishop Butler reminds us, 'active habits are strengthened, while passive impressions are weakened, by repetition.' But the overwhelming majority are in these matters governed by their emotions. Their standard and their acts depend upon the liveliness of their feelings. If this be so, it is easy to conceive what must have been the result of the contemplations of mediævalism. There is a fresco in the great monastery of Pavia which might be regarded as the emblem of the age. It represents a monk with clasped hands, and an expression of agonising terror upon his countenance, straining over the valley of vision where the sufferings of the lost were displayed, while the inscription above reveals his one harrowing thought, 'Quis sustinebit ne descendam moriens?'
In such a state of thought, we should naturally expect that the direct and powerful tendency of this doctrine would be to produce a general indifference to human sufferings, or even a bias towards acts of barbarity. Yet this only gives an inadequate conception of its effects. For not only were men constantly expatiating on these ghastly pictures, they were also constantly associating them with gratitude and with joy. They believed that the truth of Christianity implied the eternal torture of a vast proportion of their fellow-creatures, and they believed that it would be a gross impiety to wish that Christianity was untrue. They had collected with such assiduity, and had interpreted with such a revolting literalism, every rhetorical passage in the Bible that could be associated with their doctrine, that they had firmly persuaded themselves that a material and eternal fire formed a central truth of their faith, and that, in the words of an Anglican clergyman, 'the hell described in the Gospel is not with the same particularity to be met with in any other religion that is or hath been in the whole world.' [1:325] Habitually treating the language of parable as if it was the language of history, they came to regard it as very truly their ideal of happiness, to rest for ever on Abraham's bosom, and to contemplate for ever the torments of their brother in hell. They felt with St. Augustine that 'the end of religion is to become like the object of worship,' and they represented the Deity as confining his affection to a small section of his creatures, and inflicting on all others the most horrible and eternal suffering.
Now it is undoubtedly true, that when doctrines of this kind are intensely realised, they will prove most efficacious in dispelling the apathy on religious subjects which is the common condition of mankind. They will produce great earnestness, great self-sacrifice, great singleness of purpose. Loyola, who had studied with profound sagacity the springs of enthusiasm, assigned in his spiritual exercises an entire day to be spent in meditating upon eternal damnation, and in most great religious revivals the doctrine has occupied a prominent place. It is also undoubtedly true, that in a few splendid instances the effect of this realisation has been to raise up missionary teachers of such heroic and disinterested zeal, that their lives are among the grandest pages in the whole range of biography. But although this may be its effect upon some singularly noble natures, there can be little question that in the vast majority of cases its tendency will be to indurate the character, to diffuse abroad a callousness and insensibility to the suffering of others that will profoundly debase humanity. If you make the detailed and exquisite torments of multitudes the habitual object of the thoughts and imaginations of men, you will necessarily produce in most of them a gradual indifference to human suffering, and in some of them a disposition to regard it with positive delight. If you further assure men that these sufferings form an integral part of a revelation which they are bound to regard as a message of good tidings, you will induce them to stifle every feeling of pity, and almost to encourage their insensibility as a virtue. If you end your teaching by telling them that the Being who is the ideal of their lives confines His affection to the members of a single Church, that He will torture for ever all who are not found within its pale, and that His children will for ever contemplate those tortures in a state of unalloyed felicity, you will prepare the way for every form of persecution that can be directed against those who are without. He who most fully realised these doctrines, would be the most unhappy or the most unfeeling of mankind. No possible prospect of individual bliss could reconcile a truly humane man, who followed the impulse of his humanity, to the thought that those who were external to his faith were destined to eternal fire. No truly humane man could avoid wishing, that rather than this should be the case, he and all others should sleep the sleep of annihilation. When the doctrine was intensely realised and implicitly believed, it must, therefore, have had one or other of two effects. It must have produced an intensity of compassion that would involve an extreme unhappiness and would stimulate to extreme heroism, or it must have produced an absolute callousness and a positive inclination to inflict suffering upon the heretic. It does not require much knowledge of human nature to perceive that the spirit of Torquemada must be more common than that of Xavier.
That this was actually the case must be evident to any one who is not wilfully blind to the history of Christendom. I have mentioned that writer who in the second century dilated most emphatically on the doctrine of eternal punishment by fire as a means of intimidation. In another of his works he showed very clearly the influence it exercised upon his own character. He had written a treatise dissuading the Christians of his day from frequenting the public spectacles. He had collected on the subject many arguments, some of them very powerful, and others extremely grotesque; but he perceived that to make his exhortations forcible to the majority of his readers, he must point them to some counter-attraction. He accordingly proceeded -- and his style assumed a richer glow and a more impetuous eloquence as he rose to the congenial theme -- to tell them that a spectacle was reserved for them, so fascinating and so attractive that the most joyous festivals of earth faded into insignificance by the comparison. That spectacle was the agonies of their fellow-countrymen, as they writhe amid the torments of hell. 'What,' he exclaimed, 'shall be the magnitude of that scene! How shall I wonder! How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I behold so many and such illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest darkness of hell! Then shall the soldiers who had persecuted the name of Christ burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints.... Then shall the tragedians pour forth in their own misfortune more piteous cries than those with which they had made the theatre to resound, while the comedian's powers shall be better seen as he becomes more flexible by the heat. Then shall the driver of the circus stand forth to view all blushing in his flaming chariot, and the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by darts of fire.... Compared with such spectacles, with such subjects of triumph as these, what can prætor or consul, quætor or pontiff, afford? And even now faith can bring them near imagination can depict them as present.' [1:329]
I have quoted this very painful passage not so much as an instance of the excesses of a morbid disposition embittered by persecution, as because it furnishes a striking illustration of the influence of a certain class of realisations on the affections. For in tracing what may be called the psychological history of Europe, we are constantly met by a great contradiction, which can only be explained by such considerations. By the confession of all parties, the Christian religion was designed to be a religion of philanthropy, and love was represented as the distinctive test or characteristic of its true members. As a matter of fact, it has probably done more to quicken the affections of mankind, to promote pity, to create a pure and merciful ideal, than any other influence that has ever acted on the world. But while the marvellous influence of Christianity in this respect has been acknowledged by all who have mastered the teachings of history, while the religious minds of every land and of every opinion have recognised in its Founder the highest conceivable ideal and embodiment of compassion as of purity, it is a no less incontestable truth that for many centuries the Christian priesthood pursued a policy, at least towards those who differed from their opinions, implying a callousness and absence of the emotional part of humanity which has seldom been paralleled, and perhaps never surpassed. From Julian, who observed that no wild beasts were so ferocious as angry theologians, to Montesquieu, who discussed as a psychological phenomenon the inhumanity of monks, the fact has been constantly recognised. The monks, the Inquisitors, and in general the mediæval clergy, present a type that is singularly well defined, and is in many respects exceedingly noble, but which is continually marked by a total absence of mere natural affection. In zeal, in courage, in perseverance, in self-sacrifice, they towered far above the average of mankind; but they were always as ready to inflict as to endure suffering. These were the men who chanted their Te Deums over the massacre of the Albigenses or of St. Bartholomew, who fanned and stimulated the Crusades and the religious wars, who exulted over the carnage, and strained every nerve to prolong the struggle, -- and, when the zeal of the warrior had begun to flag, mourned over the languor of faith, and contemplated the sufferings they had caused with a satisfaction that was as pitiless as it was unselfish. These were the men who were at once the instigators and the agents of that horrible detailed persecution that stained almost every province of Europe with the blood of Jews and heretics, and which exhibits an amount of cold, passionless, studied, and deliberate barbarity unrivalled in the history of mankind. [1:331]
Now, when a tendency of this kind is habitually exhibited among men who are unquestionably actuated by the strongest sense of duty, it may be assumed that it is connected with some principle they have adopted, or with the moral atmosphere they breathe. It must have an intellectual or logical antecedent, and it must have what may be termed an emotional antecedent. By the first I understand certain principles or trains of reasoning which induce men to believe that it is their duty to persecute. By the second I understand a tendency or disposition of feeling that harmonises with persecution, removes the natural reluctance on the subject, and predisposes men to accept any reasoning of which persecution is the conclusion. The logical antecedents of persecution I shall examine in the next chapter. The most important emotional antecedent is, I believe, to be found in the teaching concerning the future world. It was the natural result of that teaching, that men whose lives present in many respects examples of the noblest virtue, were nevertheless conspicuous for ages as prodigies of barbarity, and proved absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of all who dissented from their doctrines. Nor was it only towards the heretic that this inhumanity was displayed; it was reflected more or less in the whole penal system of the time. We have a striking example of this in the history of torture. In ancient Greece, torture was never employed except in cases of treason. In the best days of ancient Rome, notwithstanding the notorious inhumanity of the people, it was exclusively confined to the slaves. In mediæval Christendom it was made use of to an extent that was probably unexampled in any earlier period, and in cases that fell under the cognisance of the clergy it was applied to every class of the community. [1:332] And what strikes us most in considering the mediæval tortures, is not so much their diabolical barbarity, which it is indeed impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety, and what may be termed the artistic skill, they displayed. They represent a condition of thought in which men had pondered long and carefully on all the forms of suffering, had compared and combined the different kinds of torture, till they had become the most consummate masters of their art, had expended on the subject all the resources of the utmost ingenuity, and had pursued it with the ardour of a passion. The system was matured under the mediæval habit of thought, it was adopted by the inquisitors, and it received its finishing touches from their ingenuity. [2:332] In every prison the crucifix and the rack stood side by side, and in almost every country the abolition of torture was at last effected by a movement which the Church opposed, and by men whom she had cursed. In England, it is true, torture had always been illegal, though it had often been employed, especially in ecclesiastical cases; [1:333] but almost every other country illustrates the position I have stated. In France, probably the first illustrious opponent of torture was Montaigne, the first of the French sceptics; the cause was soon afterwards taken up by Charron and by Bayle; it was then adopted by Voltaire, Montesquieu, and the Encyclopædists; and it finally triumphed when the Church had been shattered by the Revolution. [2:333] In Spain, torture began to fall into disuse under Charles III., on one of the few occasions when the Government was in direct opposition to the Church. [1:334] In Italy the great opponent of torture was Beccaria, the friend of Helvetius and of Holbach, and the avowed exponent of the principles of Rousseau. [2:334] Translated by Morellet, commented on by Voltaire and Diderot, and supported by the whole weight of the French philosophers, the work of Beccaria flew triumphantly over Europe, and vastly accelerated the movement that produced it. Under the influence of that movement, the Empress of Russia abolished torture in her dominions, and accompanied the abolition by an edict of toleration. Under the same influence Frederick of Prussia, whose adherence to the philosophical principles was notorious, took the same step, and his example was speedily followed by Duke Leopold of Tuscany. Nor is there, upon reflection, anything surprising in this. The movement that destroyed torture was much less an intellectual than an emotional movement. It represented much less a discovery of the reason than an increased intensity of sympathy. If we asked what positive arguments can be adduced on the subjects it would be difficult to cite any that was not perfectly familiar to all classes at every period of the middle ages. [1:335] That brave criminals sometimes escaped, and that timid persons sometimes falsely declared themselves guilty; that the guiltless frequently underwent a horrible punishment, and that the moral influence of legal decisions was seriously weakened; [2:335] -- these arguments, and such as these, were as much truisms in the eleventh and twelfth centuries as they are at present. Nor was it by such means that the change was effected. Torture was abolished because in the progress of civilisation the sympathies of men became more expansive, their perceptions of the sufferings of others more acute, their judgments more indulgent, their actions more gentle. To subject even a guilty man to the horrors of the rack seemed atrocious and barbarous, and therefore the rack was destroyed. It was part of the great movement which abolished barbarous amusements, mitigated the asperities and refined the manners of all classes. Now it is quite certain that those who seriously regarded eternal suffering as the just punishment of the fretfulness of a child, could not possibly look upon torture with the same degree and kind of repulsion as their less orthodox neighbours. It is also certain, that a period in which religion, by dwelling incessantly on the legends of the martyrs, or on the agonies of the lost, made the combination of new and horrible forms of suffering the habitual employment of the imagination, was of all others that in which the system of torture was likely to be most atrocious. It may be added, that the very frame of mind that made men assail the practice of torture, made them also assail the mediæval doctrine of future punishment. The two things grew out of the same condition of society. They flourished together, and they declined together.
The truth is, that in every age the penal code will in a great degree vary with the popular estimate of guilt. Philosophers have written much on the purely preventive character of legal punishments; but it requires but little knowledge of history, or even of human nature, to show that a code constructed altogether on such a principle is impossible. It is indeed true, that all acts morality condemns do not fall within the province of the legislator, and that this fact is more fully appreciated as civilisation advances. [1:336] It is true, too, that in an early stage, the severity of punishment results in a great measure from the prevailing indifference to the infliction of suffering. It is even true that the especial prominence or danger of some crime will cause men to visit it for a time with penalties that seem to bear no proportion to its moral enormity. Yet it is, I think, impossible to examine penal systems without perceiving that they can only be efficient during a long period of time, when they accord substantially with the popular estimate of the enormity of guilt. Every system, by admitting extenuating circumstances and graduated punishments, implies this, and every judgment that is passed by the public is virtually an appeal to an ideal standard. When a punishment is pronounced excessive, it is meant that it is greater than was deserved. When it is pronounced inadequate, it is meant that it is less than was deserved. Even regarding the law simply as a preventive measure, it is necessary that it should thus reflect the prevailing estimate of guilt, for otherwise it would come into collision with that public opinion which is essential to its operation. Thus, towards the close of the last century, both murder and horse-stealing were punished by death. In the first case, juries readily brought in verdicts, the public sanctioned those verdicts, and the law was efficacious. In the second cases the criminals were almost usually acquitted; and when they were executed, public opinion was shocked and scandalised. The reason of this was, that men looked upon death as a punishment not incommensurate with the guilt of murder, but exceedingly disproportionate to that of theft. In the advance of civilisation, there is a constant tendency to mitigate the severity of penal codes, for men learn to realise more intensely the suffering they are inflicting; and they at the same time become more sensible of the palliations of guilt. When, however, such a doctrine concerning the just reward of crime as I have noticed is believed and realised, it must inevitably have the effect of retarding the progress.
Such, then, were the natural effects of the popular teaching on the subject of future punishment which was universal during the middle ages, and during the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth century. How completely that teaching has passed away must be evident to any one who will take the pains of comparing old theological literature with modern teaching. The hideous pictures of material fire and of endless torture which were once so carefully elaborated and so constantly enforced, have been replaced by a few vague sentences on the subject of 'perdition,' or by the general assertion of a future adjustment of the inequalities of life; and a doctrine which grows out of the moral faculty, and is an element in every truly moral religion, has been thus silently substituted for a doctrine which was the greatest of all moral difficulties. The eternity of punishment is, indeed, still strenuously defended by many; but the nature of that punishment, which had been one of the most prominent points in every previous discussion on the subject, has now completely disappeared from controversy. The ablest theologians once regarded their doctrine as one that might be defended, but could not possibly be so stated as not at first sight to shock the feelings. Liebnitz argued that offences against an infinite Being acquired an infinite guilt, and therefore deserved an infinite punishment. Butler argued that the analogy of nature gave much reason to suspect that the punishment of crimes may be out of all proportion with our conceptions of their guilt. Both, by their very defences, implied that the doctrine was a grievous difficulty. As, however, it is commonly stated at present, the doctrine is so far from being a difficulty, that any system that was without it would be manifestly imperfect, and it has accordingly long since taken its place as one of the moral evidences of Christianity.
This gradual and silent transformation of the popular conceptions is doubtless chiefly due to the habit of educing moral and intellectual truths from our own sense of right, rather than from traditional teaching, which has accompanied the decline of dogmatic theology, and which first became conspicuous in the seventeenth century. Descartes, who was the chief reviver of moral philosophy, may be regarded as its leading originator; for the method which he applied to metaphysical enquiries was soon applied (consciously or unconsciously) to moral subjects. Men, when seeking for just ideas of right and wrong, began to interrogate their moral sense much more than the books of theologians, and they soon proceeded to make that sense or faculty a supreme arbiter, and to mould all theology into conformity with its dictates. At the same time the great increase of similar influences, and the rapid succession of renovations, made theologians yield with comparative facility to the pressure of their age.
But besides this general rationalistic movement, there was another tendency which exercised, I think, a real though minor influence on the movement, and which is also associated with the name of Descartes. I mean the development of a purely spiritual conception of the soul. The different effects which a spiritual or a material philosophy has exercised on all departments of speculation, form one of the most interesting pages in history. The ancients -- at least the most spiritual schools -- seem to have generally regarded the essence of the soul as an extremely subtle fluid, or substance quite distinct from the body; and, according to their view, and according to the views that were long afterwards prevalent, this excessive subtlety of essence constituted immateriality. For the soul was supposed to be of a nature totally different from surrounding objects, simple, incapable of disintegration, and emancipated from the conditions of matter. Some of the Platonists verged very closely upon, and perhaps attained, the modern idea of a soul whose essence is purely intellectual; but the general opinion was, I think, that which I have described. The distinct and, as it was called, immaterial nature of the soul was insisted on by the ancients with great emphasis as the chief proof of its immortality. If mind be but a function of matter, if thought be but 'a material product of the brains,' it seems natural that the dissolution of the body should be the annihilation of the individual. There is, indeed, an instinct in man pointing to a future spheres where the injustices of life shall be rectified, and where the chain of love that death has severed shall be linked anew, which is so closely connected with our moral nature that it would perhaps survive the rudest shocks of a material philosophy; but to minds in which the logical element is most prominent, the psychological argument will always appear the most satisfactory. That there exists in man an indivisible being connected with, but essentially distinct from the body, was the position which Socrates dwelt upon as one of the chief foundations of his hopes in the last hours of his life, and Cicero in the shadow of age, and the whole moral system of the school of Plato was based upon the distinction. Man, in their noble imagery, is the horizon line where the world of spirit and the world of matter touch. It is in his power to rise by the wings of the soul to communion with the gods, or to sink by the gravitation of the body to the level of the brute. It is the destiny of the soul to pass from state to state; all its knowledge is but remembrance, and its future condition must be determined by its present tendency. The soul of that man who aspires only to virtue, and who despises the luxury and the passions of earth, will be emancipated at last from the thraldom of matter, and, invisible and unshackled, will drink in perfect bliss in the full fruition of wisdom. The soul of that man who seeks his chief gratification in the body, will after death be imprisoned in a new body, will be punished by physical suffering, or, visible to the human eye, will appear upon earth in the form of a ghost to scare the survivors amid their pleasure. [1:341]
Such were the opinions that were held by the school of Plato, the most spiritual of all the philosophers of antiquity. When Christianity appeared in the world, its first tendency was very favourable to these conceptions, for it is the effect of every great moral enthusiasm to raise men above the appetites of the body, to present to the mind a supersensual ideal, and to accentuate strongly the antagonism by which human nature is convulsed. We accordingly find that in its earlier and better days the Church assimilated especially with the philosophy of Plato, while in the middle ages Aristotle was supreme; and we also find that the revival of Platonism accompanied the spiritualising movement that preceded the Reformation. Yet there were two doctrines that produced an opposite tendency. The pagans asserted the immateriality of the soul, because they believed that the body must perish for ever; and some of the Christians, in denying this latter position, were inclined to reject the distinction that was based upon it. But above all, the firm belief in punishment by fire, and the great prominence the doctrine soon obtained, became the foundation of the material view. The Fathers were early divided upon the subject. [2:341] One section, comprising the ablest and the best, maintained that there existed in man an immaterial soul, but that that soul was invariably associated with a thin, flexible, but sensitive body, visible to the eye. Origen added that the Deity alone could exist as a pure spirit unallied with matter. [1:342] The other school, of which Tertullian may be regarded as the chief, utterly denied the existence in man of any incorporeal element, maintained that the soul was simply a second body, and based this doctrine chiefly on the conception of future punishment. [2:342] Apparitions were at that time regarded as frequent. Tertullian mentions a woman who had seen a soul, which she described as 'a transparent and lucid figure in the perfect form of a man.' [3:342] St. Antony saw the soul of Ammon carried up to heaven. The soul of a Libyan hermit named Marc was borne to heaven in a napkin. Angels also were not unfrequently seen, and were universally believed to have cohabited with the daughters of the antediluvians.
Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual conception was materialised; and what at an earlier and a later period was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded as the language of fact. The realisations of the people were all derived from painting, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. [1:343] The angel in the Last Judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavoured to disturb the equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising out of the mouth of the corpse. [2:343] But above all, the doctrine of purgatory arrested and enchained the imagination. Every church was crowded with pictures representing the souls of those who had just died as literal bodies writhing with horrible contortions in a literal fire. The two doctrines were strictly congruous, and each supported the other. Men who believed in a 'physical soul,' readily believed in a physical punishment. Men who materialised their view of the punishment, materialised their view of the sufferers.
We find, however, some time before the Reformation, evident signs of a desire on the part of a few writers to rise to a purer conception of the soul. The pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averroes, reviving the old Stoical notion of a soul of nature, directed attention to the great problem of the connection between the worlds of matter and of mind. The conception of an all-pervading spirit, which 'sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal, and wakes in the man;' [1:344] the belief that the hidden vital principle which produces the varied forms of organisation, is but the thrill of the Divine essence that is present in them all -- this belief, which had occupied so noble a place among the speculations of antiquity, reappeared, and was, perhaps, strengthened by the rapid progress of mysticisms which may be regarded as the Christian form of pantheism. Coalescing at first with some lingering traditions of Gnosticism, mysticism appeared in the thirteenth century in the sect of the Bégards, and especially in the teachings of David de Dianant, Ortlieb, and Amaury de Bène; and in the following century, under the guidance of Eckart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek, it acquired in Germany an extraordinary popularity, to which the strong religious feeling elicited by the black death, and the reaction that had begun against the excessive aridity oF scholasticism, both contributed, [2:344] The writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which have always been the Bible of mysticism, and which had been in part translated by Scotus Erigena, and also some of the works of Scotus himself, rose to sudden favour, and a new tone was given to almost all classes of theological reasoners. As the philosophical aspect of this tone of thought, an order of investigation was produced, which was shown in curious enquiries about how life is first generated in matter. The theory of spontaneous generation, which Lucretius had made the basis of a great portion of his system, and on which the philosophers of the eighteenth century laid so great stress, was strongly asserted, [3:344] and all the mysteries of generation treated with a confidence that elicits a smile, [1:345] not unmixed with melancholy when we think how completely these great questions of the nature and origin of life, which may be almost said to form the basis of all real knowledge, have eluded our investigations, and how absolutely the fair promise of the last century has in this respect been unfulfilled. From enquiries about the genesis of the soul, it was natural to proceed to examine its nature. Such enquiries were accordingly earnestly pursued, with the assistance of the pagan writers; and the conclusions arrived at on this point by different schools exercised, as is always the case, a very wide influence upon their theological conceptions. I cannot doubt, that when at last Descartes maintained that thought is the essence of the soul, and that the thinking substance is therefore so wholly and generically different from the body, that none of the forms or properties of matter can afford the faintest image of its nature, he contributed much to that frame of mind which made men naturally turn with contempt from ghosts, visible demons, and purgatorial fires. [1:346] It is true that the Cartesian doctrine was soon in a measure eclipsed, but it at least destroyed for ever the old notion of an inner body. [2:346]
From the time of Descartes, the doctrine of a material fire may indeed be said to have steadily declined. [3:346] The sceptics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries treated it with great contempt, and in England, at least, the last great controversy on the subject in the Church seems to have taken place during the first half of the eighteenth century. Swinden, Whiston, Horberry, Dodwell, and in America Jonathan Edwards, discussed it from different points of view, [4:346] and attested the rapid progress of the scepticism. Towards the close of the century the doctrine had passed away, for though there was no formal recantation or change of dogmas, it was virtually excluded from the popular teaching, though it even now lingers among the least educated Dissenters, and in the Roman Catholic manuals for the poor.
I have dwelt at length upon this very revolting doctrine, because it exercised, I believe, an extremely important influence on the modes of thought and types of character of the past. I have endeavoured to show how its necessary effect was to chill and deaden the sympathies, to predispose men to inflict suffering, and seriously to retard the march of civilisation. It has now virtually passed away, and with it the type of character that it did so much to form. Instead of the old stern Inquisitor, so unflinching in his asceticism, so heroic in his enterprises, so remorseless in his persecution -- instead of the men who multiplied and elaborated the most hideous tortures, who wrote long cold treatises on their application, who stimulated and embittered the most ferocious wars, and who watered every land with the blood of the innocent -- instead of this ecclesiastical type of character, we meet with an almost feminine sensibility, and an almost morbid indisposition to inflict punishment. The preëminent characteristic of modern Christianity is the boundless philanthropy it displays. Philanthropy is to our age what asceticism was to the middle ages, and what polemical discussion was to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The emotional part of humanity, the humanity of impulse, was never so developed, and its development, in Protestantism at least, where the movement has been most strikingly evinced, has always been guided and represented by the clergy. Indeed, this fact is recognised quite as much by their opponents as by their admirers. A certain weak and effeminate sentimentality, both intellectual and moral, is the quality which every satirist of the clergy dwells upon as the most prominent feature of their character. Whether this quality, when duly analysed, is as despicable as is sometimes supposed, may be questioned; at all events, no one would think of ascribing it to the ecclesiastics of the school of Torquemada, of Calvin, or of Knox.
The changes that take place from age to age in the types of character in different professions, though they are often very evident, and though they form one of the most suggestive branches of history, are of course not susceptible of direct logical proof. A writer can only lay the general impressions he has derived from the study of the two periods before the judgments of those whose studies have resembled his own. It is more, therefore, as an illustration than as a proof, that I may notice in conclusion the striking contrast which the history of punishments exhibits in the two periods of theological development. We have seen that the popular estimate of the adequacy of the penalties that are affixed to different crimes must in a great measure vary with the popular realisations of guilt. We have seen, too, that the abolition of torture was a movement almost entirely due to the opponents of the Church, and that it was effected much less by any process of reasoning than by the influence of certain modes of feeling which civilisation produced. Soon, however, we find that the impulse which was communicated by Voltaire, Beccaria, and the Revolution, passed on to the orthodox, and it was only then it acquired its full intensity. The doctrine of a literal fire having almost ceased to be a realised conception, a growing sense of the undue severity of punishments was everywhere manifested; and in most countries, but more especially in England, there was no single subject on which more earnestness was shown. The first step was taken by Howard. Nowhere perhaps in the annals of philanthropy do we meet a picture of more unsullied and fruitful beneficence than is presented by the life of that great dissenter, who, having travelled over more than 40,000 miles in works of mercy, at last died on a foreign soil a martyr to his cause. Not only in England, but over the whole of Europe, his exertions directed public opinion to the condition of prisons, and effected a revolution the results of which can never be estimated. Soon after followed the mitigation of the penal code. In England the severity of that code had long been unexampled; and as crimes of violence were especially numerous, the number of executions was probably quite unparalleled in Europe. Indeed, Fortescue, who was chief justice under Henry VI., notices the fact with curious complacency, as a plain proof of the superiority of his countrymen. 'More men,' he tells us, 'are hanged in Englonde in one year than in Fraunce in seven, because the English have better hartes. The Scotchmenne, likewise, never dare rob, but only commit larcenies.' [1:349] In the reign of Henry VIII. when an attempt was made to convert the greater part of England into pasture land, [2:349] and when the suppression of the monasteries had destroyed the main source of charity and had cast multitudes helplessly upon the world, Holinshed estimates the executions at the amazing number of 72,000, or 2,000 a year. [1:350] The poor law of Elizabeth to a certain extent mitigated the evil, yet at the end of her reign the annual executions were still about 400. [2:350] In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, though the population had greatly increased, they had fallen to less than one hundred. [3:350] A little before this time Bishop Berkeley, following in the steps that had been traced by More in his 'Utopia,' and by Cromwell in one of his speeches, raised his voice in favour of substituting other punishments for death. [4:350] But all through the reign of George III. the code was aggravated, and its severity was carried to such a point, that when Romilly began his career, the number of capital offences was no less than 230. [5:350] It was only at the close of the last and in the beginning of the present century, that this state of things was changed. The reform in England, as over the rest of Europe, may be ultimately traced to that Voltairian school of which Beccaria was the representative, for the impulse created by the treatise 'On Crimes and Punishments' was universal and it was the first great effort to infuse a spirit of philanthropy into the penal code, making it a main object of legislation to inflict the smallest possible amount of suffering. Beccaria is especially identified with that great cause of the abolition of capital punishment, which is slowly but steadily advancing towards its inevitable triumph. In England the philosophical element of the movement was nobly represented by Bentham, who in genius was certainly superior to Beccaria, and whose influence, though perhaps not so great, was also European. But while conceding the fullest merit to these great thinkers, there can be little doubt that the enthusiasm and the support that enabled Romilly, Mackintosh, Wilberforce, and Brougham to carry their long series of reforms through Parliament, was in a very great degree owing to the untiring exertions of the Evangelicals, who, with a benevolence that no disappointment could damp, and with an indulgence towards crime that sometimes amounted even to a fault, cast their whole weight into the cause of philanthropy. The contrast between the position of these religionists in the destruction of the worst features of the ancient codes, and the precisely opposite position of the mediæval clergy, is very remarkable. Sectarians will only see in it the difference between rival churches, but the candid historian will, I think, be able to detect the changed types of character that civilisation has produced; while in the difference that does undoubtedly in this respect exist between Protestantism and Catholicism, he will find one of the results of the very different degrees of intensity with which those religions direct the mind to the debasing and indurating conceptions I have reviewed.
It has been said that the tendency of religious thought in the present day 'is all in one direction -- towards the identification of the Bible and conscience.' It is a movement that may be deplored, but can scarcely be overlooked or denied. Generation after generation the power of the moral faculty becomes more absolute, the doctrines that oppose it wane and vanish, and the various elements of theology are absorbed and recast by its influence. The indifference of most men to dogmatic theology is now so marked, and the fear of tampering with formularies that are no longer based on general conviction is with some men so intense, that general revisions of creeds have become extremely rare; but the change of belief is not the less profound. The old words are indeed retained, but they no longer present the old images to the mind, or exercise the old influence upon the life. The modes of thought, and the types of character which those modes produce, are essentially and universally transformed. The whole intellectual atmosphere, the whole tenor of life, the prevailing enthusiasms, the conceptions of the imagination, are all changed. The intellect of man moves onward under the influence of regular laws in a given direction; and the opinions that in any age are realised and operative, are those which harmonise with its intellectual condition. I have endeavoured in the present chapter to exhibit the nature of some of these laws, the direction in which some of these successive modifications are tending. If the prospect of constant change such an enquiry exhibits should appear to some minds to remove all the landmarks of the past, there is one consideration that may serve in a measure to reassure them. That Christianity was designed to produce benevolence, affection, and sympathy, being a fact of universal admission, is indefinitely more certain than that any particular dogma is essential to it; and in the increase of these moral qualities we have therefore the strongest evidence of the triumph of the conceptions of its Founder.
[End of Third Chapter]


text:
Hi Gurus,
I have coded in user exit: M61X0001 which do some checking for MD01 - MRP for Collective items and I want this checking also can be applied to MD03 - MRP for Single item. I would like to ask if it is possible to use "User exit key" in transaction: MD03 - MRP for single item?
Another question:
I would like to control the stock level by certain criteria. Let say, total planned stock from MRP for a material cannot exceed certain limit set by a company.
Material XYZ - Overall qty can be order for 3 plants below set by company = 5 pcs
If MRP run by plant individually, I will obtain the following result:
Plant A - MRP planned for 2 pcs
Plant B - MRP planned for 2 pcs
Plant C - MRP planned for 2 pcs
How to prevent only 5 pcs being order instead of 6 pcs?
Pls advise asap.
Thanks & regards,
goto SMOD enter M61X0001 set the radio button to documentation and click display.
SAP will explain the pupose of this user exit is to include or exclude materials from a MRP run.
If you do MD03, which is MRP run for an individual material, then you do not need this exit, as you the user decide yourself for what material you want run MRP.
MRP data like max stock level are at plant level, you cannot have a max stock level at a level above plant level
Thanks for your prompt reply.
If I would like to apply same checking as in MD01 (restrict user to select material for MRP run) for Single Material entered through MD03, how? Any idea?
Thanks & regards,
Hi Gururs,
May I know what is the usage of "Scope of planning" in MD01?
Thanks & regards,
Scope of planning is a Key with which you can combine a group of plants or MRP areas.
The plants or MRP areas that are combine in a scope of planning are planned together in a total planning run.
This has the advantage that you no longer need to create a background job for each work individually.
Dear Lio,
Scope of Planning
1) Via Scope of planning we can Group together several MRP areas or Plants
2) we can define scope of planning in the customizing for MRP activity " define scope of
Planning for total planning ".
3) if scope of planning is defined, the planning run must always be started with parallel processing
Madhu Kumar
Hi Gurus,
I had defined "Scope of planning" in the Customizing for MRP activity "Define Scope of Planning for total planning".
But when I tried to run the scope of planning through MD01, the system prompt me with error message - "Please check the destinations for parallel MRP", pls advise for the solution.
If group together several plants (let say, plant 1010, 1011, 1020, 1030) under one MRP run (scope of planning = Z01), is that means I will only get one planning output that group under Z01? Pls advise.
Thanks & regards,
Dear Loi,
Plz refer this link
[mrp considering other plant stock also;
Madhu Kumar
1. Please check whether the following configuration in your respective server.
spro-production-materials reqmt planning-define parallel processing in mrp where the server is defined.
2. Even though the scope of planning covers all plants, you can view the output, plant wise.
Hi Gurus,
I manage to solve the error encountered. But I have another question, I want my output NOT to be in PLANT wise, can? How?
I have a requirement of generating MRP run for all the plants to try to cut down the stock requirement level. Define a limit to order for all the plants and ensure the order from all these plants cannot exceed the limit defined. How can it be done through MRP run?
Pls advise.
Thanks & regards,

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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text:
Catholic Charities Executive Director Msgr. Kevin Sullivan stressed in a Catholic New York front page story that the Church's stance on helping unaccompanied minors seeking asylum is "entirely in keeping with the law, specifically a law passed by Congress in 2008 and signed by President George W. Bush to curb child trafficking."
That law requires that the government allow minors from Central America time to seek protection in the United States, and not be subject to immediate deportation as is the case with illegal immigrants from Mexico.
'The current situation of the surge of children arriving at the southern border is one in which in the tradition of this country, those who are fleeing violence, fear of persecution or abuse in their own countries are given refuge in this country for a humanitarian purpose," he explained . "What we are doing now as a country and what Catholic Charities is doing is providing that safe haven for those seeking to flee from abuse and violence in their native countries.'
'Where this relates to the overall immigration question is, and this needs to be said very clearly, the Catholic Church is not in favor of illegal immigration. It is for that reason that we believe the laws of this country need to be reformed and a comprehensive approach needs to be taken, which provides for a fair and humane legal immigration system that doesn't precipitate illegal immigration.'
Read the full interview in Catholic New York.
Tags: asylum, Catholic New York, Central America, child trafficking, deportation, illegal immigrants, illegal immigration., Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, native countries, President George W. Bush, unaccompanied minors


text:
Note: Contains soft, descriptive giantess vore. This story is slightly more graphic than my previous works. If this offends you, please do not read this. Also, if you have any requests at all, feel free to ask me. I make no guarantee, but I'll do my best to get to them. (For free, of course : - P)
This is going to be kind of long, and have somewhat of a storyline. Hope you enjoy ; - )
Also, all resemblances of characters to real people, living or dead, is completely coincidental and fictitious.
Giantess Vore (Soft) II:
The Revenge
It seemed like just any other day, but something was off about it. Many in the small town of Brookview woke up that morning with a sinking feeling in their guts. It was as if they knew that something was wrong that day. Little did they know how wrong the events of that day would turn out to be.
On the news, one could hear about the usual: A lying politician, some random man blowing people up, taxes rising and falling, the weather, etc. Nothing should have been up that day. Maybe they knew. Maybe they didn't. But one thing was certain: Should the news have chosen to broadcast the truth, would anyone believe it, even for a second? The events that day were so odd, so unreasonable, that neither you nor I would have believed them if they were told to us. Nevertheless, something odd, something dangerous, was happening at that very second, in the town square of Brookview, though few knew about it, and few that did got to live to tell about it.
For you see, the event that was so strange, so unbelievable, was a giantess in the town square, at least four, maybe even five, stories tall, wreaking havoc in the town of Brookview. Going through the small town, the giantess was eating and (possibly accidentally, for she hated wasting good food) crushing people underneath her massive girth. Few people that she saw got away, and the few that did would be found and soon find themselves inside the giantess' massive stomach.
It seemed as if there was no hope at all, and maybe there wasn't, but there was one person, only one, who had the courage to fight her. His name, or what he was called, for his true name was unknown, was Quicksilver. He seemed old, yet he couldn't be a day over twenty. He seldom spoke, and when he did, it was almost never of himself or his past. Regardless of his personality, he was the last hope Brookview had. Quicksilver wore a grey suit and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded his face. He was an agent, trying to uncover the identity of the giantess, so maybe she could be stopped.
The giantess wasn't always a giantess. As a matter of fact, she became one on her own free will. When she was normal sized, her name was Elizabeth Devoré. She was a small, shy, blonde girl. She was very cute, very sweet, and always had her beautiful blonde hair in an adorable ponytail. Her beauty made her the envy of all the girls at her high school, and the fantasy of all the boys. As a result, she was bullied by the girls, and harassed by the boys.
One thing made Elizabeth stand out even more than her beauty: her fetish. Ever since Elizabeth was a small child, she liked vore. Even weirder, she liked voring things, and had always fantasized about swallowing people, whole and alive, and thinking of them squirming, wiggly, and digesting alive inside of her. As a result, she studied the arts of Black Magic, and learned how to make a mystical potion to make a person a giantess.. She planned to strike revenge on the town for making her miserable.
She went to the mall and found her worst enemy: Marissa White, who had harassed her the most. Marissa laughed at Elizabeth, called her horrible names, bullied her, pushed her around, and alienated her. Marissa was what you and I would call preppy. Nevertheless, Marissa was about to get hers!
Elizabeth stuck her finger through the mall window and broke it, grabbed Marissa, and laughed evilly. "E-Elizabeth???" Marissa begged. "I-Is that y-you? What are you d-doing?" Marissa was terrified. Elizabeth smiled an evil, wicked smile. A smile that reflected the hell Marissa had put her through. "I'm eating you, Marissa. I want you to squirm and wiggle inside of me!"
"I'm sorry, Elizabeth. I didn't mean to call you those names
DON'T!" Marissa begged. But it was too late; Elizabeth opened up her mouth and stuck out her long, wet tongue. Marissa saw the tongue, which was much more massive than she was. Saliva dangled from the roof of her mouth and the tip of her tongue. It was obvious that Elizabeth was getting great pleasure from this.
Marissa begged Elizabeth, "LET ME GO!!!" Marissa begged. "OK!" Elizabeth laughed, and dropped Marissa into her open mouth. Marissa tried to escape. Marissa squirmed and wiggled, but she was so covered in saliva that nothing could be done. Elizabeth's mouth was dark and warm, and her tongue was so soft and squishy that Marissa could barely move. Marissa cried and wailed and was terrified, but this only pleased the giantess.
Elizabeth smiled, and swallowed Marissa whole. Marissa tried to escape as the giantess' tongue pushed her to the roof of the mouth, but she failed. The tongue squeezed her and forced her into the throat, where Marissa had abandoned all hope, and fell, headfirst, into the warm, large, slimy belly of the giantess. After about five seconds, Marissa was inside of Elizabeth's belly, and was being digested alive.
Elizabeth laughed an evil laugh. "ONE DOWN!" she laughed. "TWO TO GO!!"
A few miles away, Quicksilver received secret Intel that the giantess had feasted again. This time, her target was sixteen and a half year old Marissa White. Quicksilver read further into the record of Marissa White, and interviewed a few girls. With this, he hoped to unmask the identity of the giantess, who was so tall you could barely make her face out when you were standing on the ground.
"Are you Ariel Snow?" A low, scratchy grunt came out of the man. A girl with long brown hair sat across from his desk. She obviously had something to hide.
"Would you like to tell me anything?" "Ummm
." "DON'T YOU DARE LIE TO ME, GIRL!" Quicksilver wanted an answer, and not just any answer; Quicksilver wanted the truth. The anger in his eyes terrified Ariel.
"I- I- I'm not sure
. Elizabeth Devoré. Marissa
and I
. Well
" Ariel was scared. "You and Marissa did WHAT?" Quicksilver was getting irritated, very quickly. "Who are you? Can I see your credentials?" Ariel asked.
Quicksilver gave a low, mysterious chuckle. "I am Quicksilver. Do you know what quicksilver is, girl?" he asked. "Is it
mercury?" she stuttered. "Yes, my dear, mercury. Isn't it odd to look at, as it slides around a dish, yet it all stays together? Oddly liquid, oddly solid. What happens if you ingest it, my dear?" he smiled. "You- You die?" Quicksilver smiled, "Yes, you die. So don't play with me girl!" "WHAT IS YOUR REAL NAME?" Ariel asked.
"My true name, my past
it is for me to know. Not even this agency knows my name, let alone a teenage girl. I chose Quicksilver because I am deadly. Here is my badge. I am MORE than qualified. NOW TALK!"
Marissa White, Lenora Smith, and I
we bullied this one girl. Her name, was Elizabeth Devoré. I only did it to fit in! Now, Elizabeth has left school
that's all I really know!"
"Allow me to test your theory, my dear." An odd smile came across Quicksilver's face. "But be warned- should you be right
" Quicksilver broke into an evil laugh that terrified Ariel.
Elizabeth was walking through Brookview, swallowing people as she pleased, dangling them over her open throat, and dropping them in to be swallowed whole. She saw an airplane fly by, grabbed it, and shook the people out of it and into her mouth. One by one she swallowed people, feeling them resist and wiggle. But then, she saw a person that she had something
special in store for.
It was Ariel Snow, one of the three girls that harassed her. She was the one that did the least out of the three, but nonetheless, Ariel still stood by and watched it. Ariel laughed at her, embarrassed her, and encouraged the bullying to take place. She would pay for it in the same way Marissa did.
Ariel was tied to the flagpole at the high school. Unable to move, she couldn't avoid being untied by Elizabeth. Just then, a camera flashed. A picture had been taken of the giantess' face! Elizabeth looked around, but found nobody. "Oh well," she laughed. "I have something special for you, Ariel!"
"W-What are you going to do to me?" Ariel asked, terrified. "Why, sweet Ariel," Elizabeth smiled. "Do you miss Marissa?" "Yes, Elizabeth. What did you do to her?" Ariel demanded. "Nothing too bad," Elizabeth replied. "As a matter of fact, I was just about to take you to her."
Elizabeth opened up her mouth and went, "AHHHHH!" She figured the sound would strike more fear into her next meal. Revenge was so close, she could almost taste it! (Literally!) Ariel was terrified, and struggled to avoid being eaten, but she knew she would fail.
Then, a long, pink tongue stuck out of the giantess' mouth and came towards Ariel's face. Ariel let out a squeal, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" "Tasting you, my dear." The tongue was so big, especially compared to Ariel. The tongue licked her, and took at least three seconds to complete the lick. Even worse, Elizabeth forced Ariel onto her tongue and rolled her around, fully absorbing her flavor. After a while, Elizabeth simply slurped Ariel into her mouth. Ariel was covered in spit and was miserable.
Slimy, wet, warm, smelly spit surrounded Ariel. The saliva was plentiful, and produced an oddly pleasurable tingling sensation. Elizabeth's breath was warm and somewhat smelly. The warmth, darkness, and softness of Elizabeth's mouth, however, produced an oddly comfortable feeling.
Ariel simply remained still as she was swallowed whole and alive, forced by Elizabeth's tongue into the back of the throat, where she fell into the esophagus. Then, she started to struggle. The esophagus was so tight and powerful. It caused painful sensations as it pulsed, but then forced her into Elizabeth's belly.
Ariel took out her flashlight and turned it on. What she saw was scary. A lot of people were sitting in the stomach, which looks of terror on their faces. Then, she saw Marissa, in a corner of the stomach, sobbing uncontrollably. "We deserve this
we bullied her badly
" she cried. Ariel sobbed, too. She would spend the rest of her life inside of her victim's belly. Maybe she did deserve this
"Excuse me, Lenora Smith; is there anything you have to share with me? Do you have any questions to ask?" Quicksilver sat across from a girl with black hair and pigtails. She was very beautiful, and clearly arrogant.
"Excuse me, but, I like, plead the fifth." She said. "Save your stupid teen bullcrap for someone who cares. ANSWER ME!" "The fifth amendment says
"I am agent Quicksilver and I am trying to save the town from digestion. Too bad for your friends, though
it's really too late
"YOU KNOW ABOUT ARIEL AND MARISSA! Like, what happened to my friends? I TOTALLY need to know." Quicksilver showed a picture of a giantess holding onto Ariel, about to eat her. "I have taken this picture of the giantess recently. Excuse me, Lenora, but do you know an Elizabeth Devoré?" "Yes, she's like, a loser!"
Quicksilver started to smile. He loved bursting people's bubbles. "That 'loser' swallowed your friends whole. Marissa and Ariel are rotting inside of Elizabeth's belly. If you don't watch out, you will too! So talk! What did you do to her that was so bad you drove her to this extreme behavior?"
we pulled pranks, embarrassed her, bullied her
" Lenora was nervous. "Revenge, my dear, is soon to come. If I were you, I would be terrified. Now, come with me
"Elizabeth! I have her! The last one!" A mysterious man yelled towards a giantess, feasting upon the town. "WHAT!" Lenora was confused and terrified. Both Quicksilver and Elizabeth laughed evilly.
"Would you like to know the truth, Lenora?" Elizabeth asked. "Don't tell her!" Quicksilver blurted out. Elizabeth only laughed "It's okay, Blain, she'll be in my tummy soon enough."
"Okay, then, let me tell my side, then you can tell yours." Quicksilver said. "I am not a secret agent. I assume you know Elizabeth came to me to learn the arts of Black Magic. She learned how to make a potion to make herself grow to gigantic size. My real name is Blain Krevins, a dark magician. I taught her how to do this. I pretended to be a secret agent in order to bring her to the three girls she sought revenge against, so she could swallow them alive!"
"WHAT! NO! This like, totally cannot be happening!" Lenora yelled. "But it is!!" Elizabeth yelled out. "All of your friends are in my belly, and you are about to meet them. You three treated me with such hatred it forced me to do this. My revenge is almost over."
And with that, Elizabeth picked Lenora up, using only her thumb and her index finger. As Lenora was brought closer and closer to Elizabeth's mouth, she became more and more terrified, and started to squirm and wiggle. Upon realizing that if she did succeed and got free that she would fall to her death, Lenora started to calm down and cry. Only two choices stood before Lenora: A painful fall, or digestion. Neither one of these sounded appealing, but since she was afraid of heights, and was already terrified, she decided to be swallowed.
Maybe, just maybe she could reason with Elizabeth? "Elizabeth
I'm sorry
I'm sorry about what Marissa, Ariel and I did to you. We never knew we had this much of an effect on you
forgive me
" Elizabeth didn't buy it. She knew that the only reason Lenora apologized was to avoid being eaten, so she replied, "Oh, NOW you're sorry! The only reason you are sorry is because you want to avoid being eaten! There's no way to avoid the inevitable. You will pay for what you did!"
Elizabeth opened up her mouth again. As Lenora looked down she saw the massive mouth that would swallow her whole. The tongue was long and wet. Lenora cringed as she saw Elizabeth's throat and uvula pulsate and flux. It became apparent that she would soon be feeling the wet, squeezing motion of Elizabeth's esophagus.
Elizabeth wasted no more time, she dropped Lenora right into her mouth. Lenora slid down the middle of the tongue and came to an abrupt stop. Lenora was covered in spit. The mouth was dark, wide, and slimy. Her nose was pressed into Elizabeth's tongue, and as she inhaled the breath of the giantess, she let out a scream. She couldn't believe this was happening. She wiggled and squirmed, trying to avoid the tongue as it pushed her to the roof of Elizabeth's mouth, but the more she struggled, the more she was soaked in saliva. This only made her wetter, and easier to swallow. She still didn't stop, she continued to struggle. She was slowly being swallowed whole, slowly being pushed farther and farther back into the giantess' mouth. She was slowly going through more of the wet, strong muscular tongue, until she had been forced into the very back of the mouth.
Lenora tried to struggle even more as the throat started to open wider, and flux faster, in anticipation for its final meal. After one more flick, Lenora heard a GULP, and fell, headfirst, into the giantess' esophagus. The esophagus was warmer than the mouth, and much less roomy. The esophagus squeezed Lenora as it pulsated slowly, forcing her into the stomach. Lenora tried to resist, but the esophagus only squeezed as pulsed harder and faster. Soon, Lenora was even wetter, warmer, and even more scared. In a few more mere moments, Lenora had been forced through the esophagus and into Elizabeth's stomach.
Elizabeth's stomach was very roomy. The stomach was even darker, warmer, and wetter than the rest of Elizabeth's body. The acids produced a somewhat painful sensation, yet the tingle felt oddly relaxing against Lenora's skin. Lenora yelled out, "Marissa? A-Ariel? Anyone? ARE YOU IN HERE? LIKE, PLEASE!!! HELP!"
"Is that you, Lenora?" A familiar voice came from nearby. "Yes, is this Marissa?" "No, I'm Ariel. Marissa fell asleep. She was starting to feel very weak after a while. Let me ask you something, Lenora, do you think we deserve this?"
"WHAT? NOBODY DESERVES THIS!!! So we were mean and horrible to Elizabeth. Do you think that anything, ANYTHING, that we could possibly do in, like, the entire UNIVERSE, could ever justify, EATING SOMEONE???" Lenora was stressed out and terrified.
"Hey, Lenora, chill out! It's not THAT bad in here. I mean, it is somewhat soft
and kinda fun, actually. But still
I think you're right. We were awful
and I mean AWFUL, to Elizabeth, but nobody deserves this." Ariel was the calmer of the two. It was as if she had come to terms with it. "Now, if I were you, Lenora, I would calm down, and try to get some sleep. I know the acids feel weird, but you might as well get over it. We're going to be in here for a LONG time."
Lenora let out a cry. She found a soft, squishy part of Elizabeth's stomach walls, and rested her head against them. It was plush, soft, wet, and oddly relaxing. It was, in a weird way, the best pillow Lenora had ever slept on. She cried herself to sleep as she slowly drifted into unconsciousness
Elizabeth smiles. She had successfully gotten revenge on her enemies. In a few weeks, she would be back to normal. The only person who saw her face and lived to tell it was her magic teacher, who would never betray her. There was no way she would get caught. She laughed, "Payback, my dears, is truly a &*^%#!"
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Giantess Vore (Soft) 2: The Revenge by Nerdking27Watch
Mature Content
Another giantess vore, unrelated to my first. This one is somewhat longer and slightly more graphic than my previous stories. Feel free to comment, or make requests for another vore story. :-D
Mmmmm more please!!! I loved your first story about her
Great Story! Is there a contination?
And if not here's a suggestion: Maybe Blain Krevins alias Quicksilver will get another pupil in arts of dark magic then both girls grow to gargantuan size and destroy an entire town during a giantess' cat-fight!
And if not here's a suggestion: Maybe Blain Krevins alias Quicksilver will get another pupil in arts of dark magic then both girls grow to gargantuan size and destroy an entire town during a giantess' cat-fight!


text:
Aug. 11, 2011
Walnut Creek, Calif. - Following a vote of league coaches, the UCLA women's soccer team was picked to finish second behind Stanford in this year's Pac-12 title race, as the conference released its 2011 Pac-12 Preseason Coaches' Poll on Thursday.
UCLA is coming off a fourth-place finish in last year's league standings, ending the conference season with a 5-4 record. The Bruins, however, should be much improved from a year ago, as the team returns a number of veteran players, including player-of-the-year candidate Sydney Leroux. UCLA also signed 12 newcomers for this season, most of which have been involved with the U.S. National Team Program.
UCLA recently checked in at No. 16 in the Preseason NSCAA Rankings, while the Bruins were picked No. 1 overall in Top Drawer Soccer's Tournament 64.
The Bruins have an exhibition match against CSU Bakersfield this Saturday at 7:00 p.m. in Bakersfield, Calif. The team's season opener will be on Aug. 19 at Cal State Northridge.
2011 PAC-12 Women's Coaches Poll
1. Stanford (11)
3. Oregon State (1)
5. Washington
6. California
7. Arizona State
8. Oregon/Washington St.
10. Colorado
11. Utah
12. Arizona