Gerald Massey: Poet, Prophet and Mystic

By B. O. Flower.
(1895)

This book is inscribed to my wife,
HATTIE C. FLOWER
whose noble life, and fine, inspiring
thought, have been a
constant aid in all I have
endeavoured to accomplish for
freedom, justice and truth.

Introductory Word.
________________

This little work briefly discusses the life and work of one of England's poets of the people, who deserves far more from the hands of those who love justice, freedom and truth than he has received.  I have purposely quoted very freely from the writings of Mr. Massey, because I am persuaded that, in order to know the true self or the spiritual ego of an individual, we must see his soul in action, see him battling with injustice or error, when the profound depths of his being are stirred by some high and saving truth; for then is revealed the spirit, unconscious for the moment of the fetters of environment or the trammels of artificiality which surround us all.  Then, the curtain is raised and we catch a glimpse of the holiest of holies of the human soul.  This revelation of the higher self is very marked in the noblest lines of a true poet.  I have had a further purpose in view in thus introducing the poet through his own words.  I desired to bring the high, fine thought of Gerald Massey to the attention of men and women of conviction, believing that his noble ideals, his passionate appeals for justice, his prophetic glimpse of the coming day, would serve to awaken some sleeping souls, while they would strengthen others in their purpose to consecrate life's best endeavours to the cause of earth's miserables and to the diffusion of light.

    In the third chapter I have indicated some striking points of resemblance between the writings of Massey and Whittier.  The former is passionately in love with the beauty in common life.  He is a tireless reformer, hating injustice more than he loves life, and he possesses a spiritual insight equalled by few modern poets.  These also are marked characteristics of our New England Quaker poet.  The titles poet, prophet and seer are as applicable to the one as to the other, although Mr. Massey possesses less intuitional perception than Whittier.  What he lacks here, however, is balanced by his passion for truth, which has led him to search profoundly for hints and facts that demonstrate the reality of another life.

    Mr. Massey has been too fearless and too persistent a reformer to be appreciated in his time, but his words and worth will be treasured in the brighter day, when we shall see dawning a social order which shall end enforced "slavery for man, prostitution for woman, and ignorance for the child."

    As a poet of the common life who has revealed new beauties within and without the homes of the humble, I admire him; as a fearless truth-seeker who has dared to incur the scoffs and sneers of conventionalism and the savage hate of ignorance, bigotry and fanaticism, in the cause of truth, I honour him; and because he has been a true prophet of freedom, fraternity and justice, ever loyal to the interest of the oppressed, I love him.  Mr. Massey's face has been steadfastly set toward the morning; his thoughts are luminous with the light of the coming age; hence it is not surprising that he has disturbed the bats and owls, or enraged the serpents and tigers in society, who instinctively shrink from the holy candour of truth or the sweet reasonableness of justice.

B. O. Flower.

Boston, January, 1895.

THERE are in our midst many poets who attract small attention from conventional critics, as they have studiously avoided the praise of conservatism, choosing the byways of duty in preference to the highway of popularity, and always living up to their highest conviction of right.  The poor, the oppressed, and the sorrowing have been their special charge.  Their lives have been characterized by simplicity, and their words and deeds have inspired unnumbered struggling souls with lofty ideals and nobler conceptions of life.  While the wreath of fame has been placed by conservatism on the brows of many whose empty rhymes have conformed to the dilettante standard of "art for art's sake," these poets have quietly sung courage, hope and love into the hearts of the people, luring them unconsciously to higher altitudes of spirituality.  They have at all times proclaimed the noble altruism of living for others—the song of the to-morrow of civilization.  Amid the ambitions and jealousies of life, the strife for fame and gold, they are not found; but where tyranny mocks freedom and the poor cry for justice, their words ring clear and strong.  They are the people's saviours, for they help the multitudes into the light of truth and up the path of noble endeavour.

    Among this coterie of chosen sons of God, whose unpurchasable love of justice and holy candour of soul have rendered it impossible for them to yield to the siren voices of conventionalism, no name is entitled to a more honoured place than that of Gerald Massey—the poet-prophet of our day, who has stood for truth and right, while less royal souls have sold their heaven-given birthright for earth's pottage.  Had Mr. Massey chosen to devote his rare talent to the humours and dictates of conventionalism, instead of offending the dilettante by boldly pleading the cause of the oppressed; had he devoted his gifts to the creation of popular lyrics, instead of compelling his readers to think upon the wrongs of those who suffer through man's inhumanity to man, he would not have remained comparatively obscure and been compelled to eat the bread of poverty.  For few men of our century have received higher praise from leading literary critics than this poet of the people.  And had wealth been able to flatter him into a fawning sycophant he would have become the idol of a gay, frivolous and amusement-loving class who imagine they are cultured.

    But Gerald Massey was a man before he was a poet.  His love for justice was greater than his desire for the eiderdown of luxury or the chaplet of fame.  He was the son of a poor man.  He himself had tasted the bitterness of want.  He possessed the courage of an Elijah and the spirit of an Isaiah.  He preferred to reflect the best in his soul and devote his divine gift to the service of justice, rather than conform to the vicious standards which conventionalism demands as the price of popularity and preferment.  He championed the cause of the weak, the poor and those whose lives are made bitter by having to bear heavier burdens than rightfully belong to them.

    Now, because of this magnificent loyalty to justice and human rights, because he dared to assail the injustice of entrenched plutocracy and the hypocrisy of creedal religion, he has been denied the justice due to his fine poetic talent and his superb manhood.  But though ignored, in the main, by conservatism, he has won the hearts of millions who love, suffer and wait.  And I believe the future will place him high in the pantheon of England's poets, because he has voiced the real spirit of the on-coming civilization in a truer and braver way than many contemporaries who are basking in popular favour.  The following extracts from his writings reflect the dream ever present in the poet's mind.  They may be said to contain the keynote of his creed:—

"The first duty of men who have to die is to learn how to live, so as to leave the world, or something in it, a little better than they found it.   Our future life must be the natural outcome of this: the root of the whole matter is in this life."

    Gerald Massey was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1828.  His father was extremely poor, and Gerald was compelled at an early age to enter a factory, and thus help support a family which knew all the bitterness of biting poverty.  Many years of his early life were spent in straw plaiting.  At eight he was working twelve hours a day in a silk manufactory, and receiving from nine pence to one shilling and sixpence a week.  Very pathetic is the poet's description of the bitter struggle with poverty which marked his early boyhood.  Still, without this experience it is doubtful if the world would have been enriched by his clarion cries for justice or the inspiring songs of hope and courage which will be sung and re-sung until the wealth producer is emancipated and civilization learns her supreme lesson—that Humanity is one.

    John Ruskin, who has ever seemed to take a special interest in Gerald Massey, on one occasion wrote the poet—"Your education was a terrible one, but mine was far worse;" the one having suffered the bitterness of poverty, the other having been the pampered child of wealth.  Very few books came into the possession of the poor poet boy, and his time was so taken up that he had few moments for the luxury of reading.  He received no instruction save that obtained in a penny school, but his passionate longing for knowledge led him to many fountains of truth which duller minds would never have discerned.  The book of nature attracted his eye, her smile wooed him, her voice charmed his ear; his mind unconsciously drank deeply of her truths.  Like many another poor boy, Mr. Massey learned the value of knowledge.  His mind became a storehouse for truth, rather than a sieve, and his passion for the acquisition of facts, which was awakened before necessity compelled him to enter the rank of the child slaves of factory life, grew stronger as he advanced in years.  At a later period he became a deep student along several lines of thought.  An overmastering determination to possess the truth and an unflinching loyalty to what he conceived to be right, have been marked characteristics of the poet's life.  In him we have a curious combination.  He is one of the most graceful and charming lyric poets England has given the world.  He is also a seer and philosopher, a mystic and scientific student, a prophet and reformer, while all his work reflects simplicity and purity of life inspired by his high ethical code and lofty faith.  For years he has experienced remarkable psychic phenomena within his own home circle.  To him have been given test and evidences which have convinced him beyond all peradventure of doubt that his loved ones who have passed from view are neither in the ground nor in some far-off Heavenly City of the Christian, nor yet in the state of Devachan of the Buddhist, but are around about him, in his daily life.

    He has had proof palpable and of such a reason-compelling character as to leave no doubt in his mind that his dear ones live, love and move onward.  On this point Mr. Massey thus clearly and forcibly expresses his convictions:—

    "My faith in our future life is founded upon facts in nature, and realities of my own personal experience; not upon any falsification of natural fact.  These facts have been more or less known to me personally during forty years of familiar face-to-face acquaintanceship, therefore my certitude is not premature; they have given me the proof palpable that our very own human identity and intelligence do persist after the blind of darkness has been drawn down in death.  He who has plumbed the void of death as I have, and touched this solid ground of fact, has established a faith that can never be undermined nor over-thrown.  He had done with the poetry of desolation and despair, the sighs of unavailing regret, and all the passionate wailing of unfruitful pain.  He cannot be bereaved in soul!  And I have had ample testimony that my poems have done welcome work, if only in helping to destroy the tyranny of death, which has made so many mental slaves afraid to live.

    "The false faiths are fading; but it is in the light of a truer knowledge.  The half Gods are going in order that the whole Gods may come.  There is finer fish in the unfathomed sea of the future than any we have yet landed.  It is only in our time that the data have been collected for rightly interpreting the past of man, and for portraying the long and vast procession of his slow but never-ceasing progress through the sandy wilderness of an uncultivated earth into the world of work, with the ever-quickening consciousness of a higher, worthier life to come.  And without this measure of the human past, we could have no true gauge of the growth that is possible in the future!

    "Indeed it seems to me that we are only just beginning to lay hold of this life in earnest: only just standing on the very threshold of true thought; only just now attaining a right mental method of thinking, through a knowledge of evolution; only just getting in line with natural law, and seeking earnestly to stand level-footed on that ground of reality which must ever and everywhere be the one lasting foundation of all that is permanently true."

On the vital social problems which intimately affect the progress of the race, Mr. Massey evinces the clear perceptions of a broad-visioned philosopher. He observes:—

    "It is only of late that the tree of knowledge has begun to lose its evil character, to be planted anew, and spread its roots in the fresh ground of every board-school, with its fruits no longer accursed, but made free to all.

    "We are beginning to see that the worst of the evils now afflicting the human race are man made, and do not come into the world by decree of fate or fiat of God; and that which is man made is also remediable by man.  Not by man alone!  For woman is about to take her place by his side as true helpmate and ally in carrying on the work of the world, so that we may look upon the fall of man as being gradually superseded by the ascent of woman.  And here let me say, parenthetically, that I consider it to be the first necessity for women to obtain the parliamentary franchise before they can hope to stand upon a business footing of practical equality with men; and therefore I have no sympathy with these would-be abortionists, who have been somewhat too "previously" trying to take the life of woman suffrage in embryo before it should have the chance of being brought to birth."

With the keen penetration of a highly intuitive mind, Mr. Massey long ago perceived that wisdom as well as justice demands that woman be accorded a far more exalted place than she has been permitted to occupy in the past, and he has been an untiring advocate of absolute justice and the same wholesome freedom for her as is good for man.  I know of no writer of any age who has taken higher grounds for true morality, both within and without the marriage relation, than Mr. Massey.  He is one of the few men of our time who have evinced superb courage in demanding that women be protected from involuntary prostitution within the marriage relation.  On this important theme he observes:—

    "The truth is, that woman at her best and noblest must be monarch of the marriage-bed.  We must begin in the creatory if we are to benefit the race, and the woman has got to rescue and take possession of herself, and consciously assume all the responsibilities of maternity, on behalf of the children.  No woman has any right to part with the absolute ownership of her own body, but she has the right to be protected against all forms of brute force.  No woman has any business to marry anything that is less than a man.  No woman has any right to marry any man who will sow the seeds of hereditary disease in her darlings.  Not for all the money in the world!  No woman has any right, according to the highest law, to bear a child to a man she does not love."

Our poet's high ideal of woman and her true position is beautifully expressed in the following lines:—

On the proper rearing of children he has words to say which should appeal to every loving parent:—

"The life we live with them every day is the teaching that tells, and not the precepts uttered weekly that are continually belied by our own daily practices.  Give the children knowledge of natural law, especially in that domain of physical nature which has hitherto been tabooed.  If we break a natural law we suffer pain in consequence, no matter whether we know the law or not.  This result is not an accident, because it always happens, and is obviously intended to happen.  Punishments are not to be avoided by ignorance of effects; they can only be warded off by a knowledge of causes.  Therefore nothing but knowledge can help them.  Teach the children to become the soldiers of duty instead of the slaves of selfish desire.  Show them how the sins against self reappear in the lives of others.  Teach them to think of those others as the means of getting out of self.  Teach them how the laws of nature work by heredity. . . Children have ears like the very spies of nature herself; eyes that penetrate all subterfuge and pretence. . . Let them be well grounded in the doctrine of development, without which we cannot begin to think coherently.  Give them the best material, the soundest method; let the spirit world have a chance as a living influence on them, and then let them do the rest.  Never forget that the faculty for seeing is worth all that is to be seen.  It is good to set before them the loftiest ideals—not those that are mythical and non-natural, but those that have been lived in human reality.  The best ideal of all has to be portrayed by the parents in the realities of life at home.  The teaching that goes deepest will be indirect, and the truth will tell most on them when it is overheard.  When you are not watching, and the children are—that is when the lessons are learned for life."

    These are twentieth-century thoughts, and they are pregnant with the truth which will yet make the world glad.  One thing which impresses the reader, in all Mr. Massey's works, is his sincerity and his abhorrence of hypocrisy or shams of any kind.  This thought, which is present in all his writings, is emphasized in the following passage from his "Devil of Darkness":—

"The devil and hell of my creed consist in that natural Nemesis which follows on broken laws, and dogs the law breaker, in spite of any belief of his that his sins and their inevitable results can be so cheaply sponged out, as he has been misled to think, through the shedding of innocent blood.  Nature knows nothing of the forgiveness for sin.  She has no rewards or punishments—nothing but causes and consequences.  For example, if you should contract a certain disease and pass it on to your children, all the alleged forgiveness of God will be of no avail if you cannot forgive yourself.  Ours is the devil of heredity, working in two worlds at once.  Ours is a far more terrible way of realizing the hereafter, when it is brought home to us in concrete fact, whether in this life or the life to come, than any abstract idea of hell or devil can afford.  We have to face the facts beforehand—no use to whine over them impotently afterwards, when it is too late.  For example:—

    "Only think of a fine lady who, in this life, had been wooed and flattered, sumptuously clad and delicately fed; for whom the pure, sweet air of heaven had to be perfumed as incense, and the red rose of health had to fade from many young human faces to blossom in the robes she wore, whose every sense had been most daintily feasted, and her whole life summed up in one long thought of self,—think of finding herself in the next life a spiritual leper, a walking pestilence, personified disease, a sloughing sore of this life which the spirit has to get rid of, an excrement of this life's selfishness at which all good spirits stop their noses and shudder when she comes near!  Don't you think if she realized that as a fact in time, it would work more effectually than much preaching?  The hell of the drunkard, the libidinous, the blood-thirsty, or gold-greedy soul, they tell us, is the burning of the old, devouring passion which was not quenched by the chills of death.  The crossing of the cold, dark river, even, was only as the untasted water to the consuming thirst of Tantalus!  In support of this, evolution shows the continuity of ourselves, our desires, passions and characters.  As the Egyptians said, "Whoso is intelligent here will be intelligence there!"  And if we haven't mastered and disciplined our lower passions here, they will be masters of us, for the time being, hereafter."

    In lyric verse Gerald Massey ranks among the first English poets.  His descriptions of humble life, portrayal of profoundly human sentiments, and exquisitely delicate reflections of those subtle emotions which are the common heritage of every true man and woman, have rarely been equalled.  They reveal the power of the true poet.  Take, for example, the following stanzas selected from "Babe Christabel," and note the purity, wealth of feeling and beauty of expression which clothe the simple story of dawn and night in the human heart:—

    The lines quoted above are taken from various parts of the poem, and therefore do not present the unity of thought which characterizes the exquisite creation as a whole.  "My Cousin Winnie" is another very charming poem, in which the author describes the child love which throbbed in his heart, when, as a boy, he basked in the smiles of "Cousin Winnie."  I have space for a few stanzas only.  They will be sufficient, however, to call up many long-vanished images to the mind of the reader.  For the chambers of the human brain are stored with springtime treasures, which are forgotten until some magic word is spoken, some picture flashed upon the mental retina, or a sound of long ago is heard, and straightway the sealed door flies open, and forth come trooping, as children from a country school, the dreams and hopes which gilded life's young day:—

    Here again in "The Mother's Idol Broken"—which, in my judgment, is the finest work of this character written by Mr. Massey—we find a depth of emotion, a beauty of imagery, and a wealth of pure poetic power which would have done honour to Tennyson in the best moods of the late poet laureate.

    After describing the mother's joy over the advent of the babe in the household, our poet continues:—

    Poetic genius of a high order is displayed in this remarkable production, and though the extracts given above carry with them the spirit of the poem, they are only threads in what, when taken as a whole, is a cloth of many tints, rich in colour and fine in texture.

    Seldom do we find anything so pure and sweet as the following lines taken from "Wedded Love," in which the poet gives us a glimpse of his own deep and rich experiences:—

    In "The Young Poet to His Wife" are many fine lines, perhaps none more beautiful than the following:—

    Among Mr. Massey's personal poems his tribute to the author of "The Song of the Shirt," is by far the finest [ED.--"Hood"].  Indeed, this poem is a superb production.  The melancholy spectacle of Hood battling with disease, bravely editing his magazine and composing immortal lines while confined to his bed and racked with pain was enough to appeal to the imagination and sympathy of a large-hearted nature like Gerald Massey's.  And then these two champions of the poor were kindred souls.  He who wrote "The Bridge of Sighs" was naturally endeared to the poet who penned "The Cry of the Unemployed."  Hood was worthy of the following tribute, which I regard as among the finest specimens of Massey's work:—

    Many of Europe's most competent and conscientious critics have expressed their appreciation of the high order of much of Mr. Massey's poetical work.  "I rejoice," wrote John Ruskin to the poet, "in acknowledging my own debt of gratitude to you for many an encouraging and noble thought, and expression of thought.  Few national services can be greater than that you have rendered."  Thomas Aird, in a critical review, observed: "Gerald Massey belongs to the new choir.  Pathos and love and a purple flush of beauty steep the colour of all his songs."  The eminent essayist, Walter Bagehot, in criticising Mr. Massey's work, said: "His descriptions of nature show a close observer of her ways, and a delicate appreciation of her beauties.  His images, however subtle and delicately woven, are never false."

    Here are some melodious stanzas which tell us of the poet's hope for a brighter tomorrow, a hope which he entertained before his long and careful psychical investigation, led to the positive conviction expressed in his later prose and poetical works:

    As I have said before, there is little doubt but that Gerald Massey would have become one of England's most famous lyric poets, had he chosen to confine his gifts to subjects pleasing to wealth and conventionalism; but, like other royal souls, who throughout the past have persistently held to the path of duty, he chose to be loyal to truth and faithful to earth's oppressed, ever preferring the bread of poverty with the approval of his higher self, to the applause of the dilettanti with a life of comparative ease.  Such spirits are rarely appreciated until they have passed from earth.  They belong to the Royalty of Nature; they are in truth the Sons of God.

THE reformer is always the possible prophet.  He whose nature is so finely strung and whose conscience so sensitive to the eternal verities as they relate to right and wrong that he feels injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate and injustice practised upon the defenceless as though the evil fell upon himself, sustains an intimate relationship to the highest as well as the humblest expressions of life.  If the cry of the wretch under the wheel wrings his heart, he is also soothed by divine symphonies, which those of duller sensibilities are unconscious of; and upon his spiritual perception there frequently flash the lights and shadows of the coming morrow.  It was thus with the great prophets of Israel.  It was thus with John Huss and Savonarola.  It was thus with Whittier and Wendell Phillips.  And it is thus, in a very marked degree, with Gerald Massey.

    It is something more than an unconquerable faith in the ultimate triumph of good, learned from the slow ascent of man, that inspires the following thrilling lines, which are peculiarly appropriate to our present social conditions, when a new-born sense of right and a quickened intelligence are leading millions throughout civilization to demand a fairer share in the bounties of life:—

    The spiritual intuition or perception of the true prophet soul was beautifully expressed in the legend of the despairing sage.  The story comes from that far-away time when types and symbols were used by the children of earth, and when man was so near to nature that at times he seemed to hear the voice of the Creator.

    The sage, so runs the story, had toiled for his fellow-men through years of suffering and privation.  He had closed his eyes against the temptations of luxury and ease which were held out to lure him from the service of his race.  He had dwelt with poverty and had nursed the plague-stricken, had fed the starving, always striving to fix the eyes of his fellow-men upon that which was enduring and divine.  He reasoned with scholars on the higher philosophy of life, and strove to impress upon them the kinship of mankind.  He appealed to the rich to be just, and boldly assailed tyranny and oppression.  Often he had to fly from city to city, and sometimes he was offered great bribes to hold his peace.  But neither the threat of power nor the bribe of wealth swerved him from his course.  His all-consuming desire was to bring about the realization of the dream which haunted his soul.  He longed to behold justice, peace and love blossom among the children of men.

    At length he became a very old man; his hair was silvered, his face bronzed and furrowed, his step halting and feeble.  Many who had followed him when he had been able to minister to their physical needs now fell away, and the seeds he had planted seemed to have rotted and died.  One day he sought the solitude of the mountains and in bitterness of soul prayed that he might die; in his depression of spirit it seemed to him that he had lived in vain, and the future appeared to be in the possession of the powers of darkness. Virtue, love and peace seemed routed all along the line of human endeavour.

    While lost in prayer, so runs this legend, the sage became overcome with a sense of peace known only to the victor in a glorious cause.  Then the heaviness of earth fell away; his soul entered an ecstatic condition; his spirit was born aloft in a chariot of luminous clouds upheld and guided by invisible hands.  At length his eyes were opened, when lo! he was encompassed by a multitude of radiant souls.  Then his ears caught the symphony of nature; he was bewildered.  The multitudes around him were incarnations of light, of purity, of love and wisdom.  They were victors, and the music which swelled upon the ear was an anthem of triumph.  An angel of lofty mien appeared, saying: "Because of the failing power of the physical form, the truth has become veiled to thy vision.  Now behold the work of thy life."

    Then to him was given the power of the Universal Eye.  He beheld a home where now dwelt a father, once a plague-stricken boy nursed by the sage.  The father sang to his son the songs of love, courage and brotherhood which he had learned from the prophet long years ago.  In another cottage he beheld a mother telling the story of the great man whose life made all men better, and through whose loving care the mother was then alive.  And he noted the radiance of the faces of the eager children as they exclaimed, "We want to be like him!"

    Then he beheld one whom he had taught in years gone by discoursing to a vast multitude upon the truths which the prophet had in former days impressed upon his brain.  He saw thousands of eager ears strained to hear the evangel which fell from the eloquent lips of one he had known as a ragged boy, who had followed him from village to village with other poor people.  And then the panorama broadened, until he beheld that he had all unconsciously kindled fires for truth which should yet illuminate his people.

    Then the angel said, "Look once more," and he beheld the tumult of battle, he heard the screams of the multitude, who sank on every hand.  After the battle came injustice and oppression; he heard the cry of those under the oppressor and beheld the sufferings of the world; and as in horror he sought the angel's face, a light dawned.  It came from the hearts and homes of the multitudes.  Then the light grew brighter; it spread from hut to cottage, from cottage to palace.  A new conflict was in progress.  Man met man in a struggle on a higher plane; ideas were weapons more often than swords, and in the dim future the sage saw the whole world bathed in the light of justice, mantled in peace and prosperity.

    So it is with the reformers of all times.  At moments their souls, so sensitive and responsive to the suffering and misery of life, also catch the strains of the higher music.  Their eyes, which see the suffering of the unfortunate and the poor as though every trial was their own, also at intervals catch glimpses of the coming day.  In one of these great visions Gerald Massey breaks into the following triumphant strain:—

    Jesus, who was the supreme expression of love, was terrible in His denunciations when confronted by the hypocrisy and selfishness of slothful, self-indulgent conventionalism.  Gerald Massey has penned some of the sweetest lines ever written by a poet of the people, but when he faces the plunderers of the toiling millions, when he looks upon the hypocrite and oppressor, he becomes transformed.  His words are no longer soothing and peaceful; the limpid brook becomes a roaring torrent.  The voice which speaks in the following lines is not the voice of one man, but the articulate cry of millions, thrown into speech by the instrument of God, that the wise may be warned, and, being warned, may be saved from the ruin which must and will overtake that society which selfishly imagines it can eternally thwart the upward march of humanity:—

    In the following stanzas we are reminded of some of the old prophets of Israel, who championed the cause of God and the poor at the risk of life, and uttered luminous truths which still light up man's pathway. Mr. Massey is nothing if not a fearless reformer. He does not believe in a half loaf when justice is the issue. The people have certain rights of which they are deprived by the special privileges enjoyed by a favoured few. Against these wrongs, which are day by day becoming more apparent to thoughtful and truly enlightened men and women, our poet speaks with that courage and sincerity which is as refreshing as it is rare in our age of sycophancy:—

In the same strain, and speaking not as an individual but as the articulate voice of eternal justice, Mr. Massey elsewhere utters these words to the toiling millions:—

    In his prose works he takes the same radical and uncompromising stand for absolute justice for the lowliest.  In one place he says:—

"We mean to have a day of reckoning with the unjust stewards of the earth.  We mean to have the national property restored to the people.  We mean that the land, with its inalienable right of living, its mineral wealth below the soil and its waters above, shall be open to all.  We mean to have our banking done by the state, and our railways worked for the benefit of the whole people.  We mean to temper the terror of rampart individualism with the principles of co-operation.  We mean for woman to have perfect equality with man, social, religious and political, and her fair share in that equity which is of no sex.  We mean also that the same standard of morality shall apply to the man as to the woman.  In short, we intend that the redress of wrongs and the righting of inequalities, which can only be rectified in this world, shall not be put off and postponed to any future stage of existence."

In another place he asserts with emphasis:—

"Humanity is one.  The Eternal intends to show us that humanity is one.  And the family is more than the individual member, the Nation is more than the family, and the human race is more than the nation.  And if we do not accept the revelation lovingly, do not take to the fact kindly, why then 'tis flashed upon us terribly, by lightning of hell, if we will not have it by light of heaven—and the poor, neglected scum and canaille of the nations rise up mighty in the strength of disease, and prove the oneness of humanity by killing you with the same infection.

"It has recently been shown how the poor of London do not live, but fester in the pestilential hovels called their homes.  To get into these you have to visit courts which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air, and which never know the virtues of a drop of cleansing water.  Immorality is but the natural outcome of such a devil's spawning ground.  The poverty of many who strive to live honestly is appalling.

"And this disclosure is made with the customary moan that such people attend neither church nor chapel, as if that were the panacea.  I should not wonder if these revelations result in the building of more churches and chapels, and the consecration of at least one or two more bishops.

"The Bishop of Bedford said the other day, ‘It was highly necessary that in these times when the poor have so little earthly enjoyment, the joys of heaven should be made known to them.'  It is not possible to caricature an utterance so grotesque as that."

    In his songs of humanity, there is the calm assurance of the philosopher, that right will ultimately prevail. He pleads for the millions under the rod. He may not see the false falling away around him, but far up the mountain slope he sees the purpling dawn growing brighter. Looking backward he perceives that the present, with its hideousness and wrong is not, so dark as the past, and with that trust in the final triumph of right which makes him optimistic, he thus refers to his songs for the oppressed:—

    There is a certain thought-compelling power in many of his poems of labour found only in the work of an enthusiast, mad with divine love for his fellow-men.  Often he outlines upon his canvas a splendid dream, a big hope, a grand aspiration, and then in the foreground he paints with a few bold strokes a frightful truth.  The antithesis is tremendous in its effects, as will be seen in the following stanza:—

    Many of Massey's poems are as applicable to the problems now confronting us as if called forth by present-day conditions in our own land.  Take for example the following "Cry of the Unemployed," which reveals the profound sympathy and appreciation felt by our poet for the struggling unfortunates:—

    The slow progress of justice frequently makes the faint-hearted waver, and many who start out in youth brave and valiant reformers are lured into the toils of slothful conventionalism, others become despondent and give up even before the sun of life has crossed the meridian.  To such altering ones Gerald Massey speaks in these stirring lines:—

And to the faint heart who would turn aside because the multitude fail to appreciate the single-hearted struggle made for them, our poet has this message:—

    In this little poem, entitled "The Kingliest Kings," the poet makes the same stirring appeal to the conscience of the individual:—

    Such work is very effective.  It gives the glorious ideal to which the noblest of earth's children aspire, and then it turns the flash-light upon the heinous crimes which easy-going conventionalism tolerates.  The reformer beholds the wrong in all its enormity.  He utters a cry of horror.  The slow-thinking people are aroused by the cry, and they ask, Can such things be?  They raise the question, and an agitation is commenced which, sooner or later, ends in victory for justice.  The exclamation and interrogation points are the staff and crook of progress.  I shall choose my extracts from Mr. Massey's inspiring songs of labour by giving two stanzas from "The Awakening":—

    Mr. Massey has laboured throughout his life for the oppressed in every condition of ignorance and superstition.  Wherever man, woman, or child has suffered through injustice, his voice has leaped forth in defence of the wronged, and against the wrong-doer he has waged an incessant warfare.  He has boldly championed the cause of woman, steadfastly demanding for her that full-orbed justice which she must receive before the higher civilization will be assured.  And in the nineteenth century no philosopher or reformer has pleaded more earnestly for the rights of children, and that their lives be permitted to unfold under the best possible conditions, than this pure-souled, earnest man.

    We are entering a struggle which will prove the most momentous Western civilization has ever known, because the conflict is along every line of advance.  Social and economic problems, or the theory of man's relationship to man and to society as a whole; the problem of religion, the realm of psychical science, the rights of woman, the requirements and possibilities of childhood—these are some of the questions around which the forces of conservatism and progress are already rallying for a sanguinary conflict.  Upon all these questions Mr. Massey has spoken, and spoken in no uncertain voice.  And, what is more important, he has always placed himself squarely on the side of progress and the dawn.  Therefore I believe that the generation of the future, who will enjoy, in a measure, the fruits of the higher and truer life for which the prophet worked, will appreciate his splendid services, and enshrine his name among the immortal coterie who placed truth and the good of their fellow-men above the comforts of life or the applause of the world.

    The prophet and mystic must not be confused with the priest, for, speaking broadly, the two represent widely divergent spheres of thought.  The prophet is the herald of progress.  He assails outgrown beliefs, entrenched wrongs, and conventional injustice.  He points from the half truths which were once helpful stepping stones, but which now retard man's onward march, to the broader vision which the future presents.  His eye rests on the luminous peaks which lie before.  He has unbounded faith in freedom.  He is often a destroyer of the old, but it is that the new may rise in fairer forms and be of more enduring character.  If he tears down the log cabin, it is that he may erect the marble palace.

    The priest, on the other hand, is the defender of conservatism.  He distrusts the new.  To him the prophet is a destructionist who ignores that which age has sanctified and time made venerable.  He fears that wider liberty and greater knowledge will prove dangerous.  He worships at the shrine of the past.  What is written, or what other ages have believed, is, in a certain way, sacred to him.  The question, Is it true? breaks powerless as waves before the precipice, when it beats against his prejudice and the veneration with which he views the established order which has been sanctified by time.  The priest is the bulwark of conventionalism.

    This contrast is strikingly illustrated in the history of Israel's prophets.  But nowhere does it find so impressive an illustration as in the life of Jesus.  Here we see the relative attitude of the two great spheres of thought represented by these classes.  On the one side was Jesus, the prophet and mystic; on the other, the priesthood, upholding the past and defending conditions as they existed.  Jesus cried, "Ye have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye,‘ but I say, Love your enemies."  Jesus disregarded the ceremonials, the dogmas, and the forms held sacred by the church.  He was a Sabbath breaker.  He mingled with publicans and sinners.  He healed the sick in a way entirely irregular.  His teachings were regarded as sacrilegious and essentially dangerous to the established order.  The great prophet and mystic pointed to the higher altitudes of spiritual attainment.  He drew inspiration from the lily of the field.  The gold of morning and the flaming scarlet of the evening, the stars and blue Galilee, spoke more eloquently to him of his Father than did the stories of bloody strife in which the God of love was represented as ordering defenceless woman and innocent babes to be mercilessly slain.  The priesthood then, as has been ever the case, worshipped at the tomb of yesterday's thought and drew inspiration from the ideals of earlier ages, which time had made first venerable and then sacred in the eyes of man.  It naturally regarded him at first with apprehension, later with alarm, and finally the fear of its members expressed itself in a deadly hate which ended in his martyrdom.  It was repetition of history.  The reputation and life of the prophet are always in danger.  He will be misrepresented, slandered and misjudged, if he escape the penalty of the death sentence.  At rare intervals the soul of the prophet and mystic has been found under the robes of a priest, but here usually the priesthood has been arrayed against the iconoclast.  Savonarola was a conspicuous example of this class.

    In the sphere of religion the prophet is ever the advance courier of truth.  He blazes the way for the groping multitude.  He is impelled onward by the divine afflatus.  He is always disquieting.  He stimulates reason.  He awakes the soul life.  He points to the lily and says, Consider.  He turns to the sky, glorious in the splendour of dawn or spangled with the silver of night, and exclaims, Behold!  He takes up the record of the past, and, in a word, warns against unlimited scepticism and blind credulity.  Do not, he urges, reject as wholly worthless, or accept as entirely divine, the accumulated wisdom and follies of ancient days, but search for the truth.  He looks into the faces of the thoughtful and says, Come, let us reason together.  Consider—behold—search—reason!  Thus does the prophet awaken the soul of man.  He calls to the sleeping ego to be something more than an animal.  He arouses the divine life, calls into action the higher potentialities of the man's being, and in this way is a saviour to the individual as well as a torch bearer to civilization.

    I speak of the prophet and mystic as one; for in truth the distinction is rather of degree than of nature; or, to be more accurate, they are different manifestations of the divine in man.  The prophet is an engine in action.  He is an aggressive power for righteousness now and here.  He mingles with the surging tide of good and evil, a warrior for justice and truth.  The mystic ascends the mountains of spirituality and drinks deeply from the divine fountains.  The truths of God steal into his soul silently and with an all-pervading influence, as comes the evening dew or the soft light of day.  We are told that Jesus, on occasions, doubtless when weary with battling against the powers of evil on every side, and sick at heart for poor, suffering humanity, withdrew into the mountains to pray—that is, to commune with the Infinite.

    The mystic craves the inspiration of solitude when torn by the discord of human strife.  He possesses a strong intuitional nature.  His interior vision is preternaturally developed.  He hears, sees, and within his soul knows many things which elude the grasp of the self-seeking, business-enthralled struggler upon earth's restless highways.  Some time ago I visited a friend who is a scientist and a deep student of the vibratory law.  Taking down an instrument somewhat resembling a horn, he handed it to me.  I put it to my ear and instantly I heard a great roaring in the room—a noise suggestive of a coming storm.  I had merely been able to gather some of the noises present, which without the instrument, had escaped my hearing.  Doubtless the reader has often tried the same experiment with a shell.  Now, the interior nature of the mystic is so thoroughly awake that his vision penetrates farther than those in whom the spiritual nature is less sensitive, and in moments of exaltation he beholds humanity with face set toward the sky—humanity moving slowly, and often with halting step, but ever moving God-ward.  He hears the voice of the Infinite and knows that the ultimate end of all is Good.  He speaks the words he hears unto those whose eyes are fixed upon the stars.  Sometimes he descends to the seething, struggling world below, where, tiger-like, man devours his fellow-men.  Then the mystic not infrequently becomes the prophet and reformer.  In Jesus, we see the perfect blending—the mystic, prophet and reformer; and in our own time we have frequently seen this trinity in unity.

    The poet Whittier affords a striking illustration in point.  When confronting injustice and inhumanity the sweet-souled Quaker poet became a veritable Isaiah.  His anti-slavery verses reveal a soul lost to self and fear, a brain on fire with holy indignation.  His words burn into the heart; they fire but do not sear the conscience.  They reveal to us a man whose love of justice and freedom has consumed all baser thought.  Hear this heart-cry for the honour of the Old Bay State:—

    So also, in this stanza from "The Crisis," we are reminded of the prophet, who speaks with an authority from within, in bold contrast to the diffident, retiring and mild-mannered Quaker:—

    From the heart and turmoil of the great moral battles which so profoundly aroused the prophet soul, we turn to the poet after he has withdrawn from the forum of public contention—after he has ascended the mountain, if you will—and hear the calm-voiced mystic utter thoughts which flood his soul as the moonlight floods the snow-crowned mountain peaks:—

And again he asserts with that all-sustaining faith which characterizes the true mystic:—

    In Gerald Massey, as in Whittier, we find the union of the prophet, reformer and mystic.  I am aware that Mr. Massey does not like the term "mystic," holding that he advances nothing which has not been proven to him.  Perhaps he would prefer the term "Seer."  I use it here in its larger sense of seer—a see-er of things wrapped in mystery and obscurity for the mass of men.  This gives the word "Mystic" its truest, noblest sense; and in this sense I know of no word which so well expresses the meaning I desire to convey.

    We have seen with what superb courage he has assailed entrenched wrongs and popular injustice.  We have noted his lofty faith, and caught glimpses of the future triumph of right through the mirror of his soul.  We now pass to notice the poet as a mystic.  In the following lines we have a great thought beautifully expressed:—

Here is a companion thought:—

    It will be seen that the poet, while discarding the crude ideas and conceptions of creation which were born in the childhood of the human race, opposes the views popular among certain thinkers, who hold that the human brain is merely an expression of physical evolution, and that the law-governed universe, with art, design and intelligence visible in its every phenomenon, is merely the result of force, working blindly and without intelligence.  The wonderful facts demonstrated through hypnotism, and the results which have crowned the painstaking and careful research of leading scientists in the fields of psychical phenomena, have by external evidence and incontrovertible facts greatly strengthened the position arrived at by the mystic through the intuitional power and acute interior perception.

    Mr. Massey believes that the tree is to be judged by its fruit; that, according as you have performed the will of the Infinite One, or expressed the best and truest in your life, you shall be rewarded—or, rather, that every good deed bears the doer upward, every real sin lowers the soul.  He teaches the high and wholesome morality that, precisely as we help lift and benefit our fellow-men, our souls blossom into the likeness of divinity; that it is by deeds of service that the spirit is made royal.  His teaching touching the future of the soul is thus clearly set forth:—

There is a striking similarity of thought between the above and these lines of Whittier, although the imagery is entirely different:—

    Mr. Massey, while holding that law runs through the universe and that sin brings its own punishment, does not hold to the frightful old-time doctrine that man, environed by sin and surrounded by temptation, having only a few fleeting years in which to obtain wisdom, is nevertheless doomed to be lost for eternity if he falls by the wayside.  Such a belief is abhorrent to so broad, tender and noble a nature as his.  On this point he says:—

    Another truth which Mr. Massey frequently expresses is the presence of the Infinite One here and now, in opposition to the narrow view that God spake to His children only in ancient times.  Like Whittier, he ever teaches that God is with us now and here, and that none of the glory of other days is absent from our own.  In one notable poem he thus sings:—

And again, with the calm assurance of the mystic, he says:—

    The traveller in the valley sees little of what is around him.  He journeys for a day up the mountain slope, and his vision is marvellously broadened.  Another day's journey toward the peak reveals a still more glorious panorama, and when he reaches the highest crest an almost infinite expanse stretches on every side.  So the barbarian caught a contracted and very partial view of God's love and beauty—his own limitation of vision and the animal passions which overmastered him dulled spiritual perception.  But as the race rose through countless ages, the conception of the Infinite became expanded, and as the spirit grew more and more sublimated, the real character of the Deity, uncoloured by human prejudice and passion, became apparent to the most royal natures.  A hint of this thought is given in the last stanza of the above lines.

    Few poets have ever thrown into simple words a more beautiful conception of man's relation to God, or God's broad love and sympathy for his children, who through past ages have been struggling upward toward the light, than is found in these lines of Mr. Massey's:—

    In these verses our poet gives expression to the new religion which is taking possession of the most exalted minds of our day.  It is all very well to say that God is so much more than the finest expression of the divine in man that we cannot comprehend Him: but we cannot use this reasonable assumption to bolster up the unreasonable and impossible one that God's attributes are not in alignment with the most perfect ideal which haunts the noblest brains of the best civilization.  There are certain eternal verities, the highest and most splendid of which is love.  These verities are immutable and unchanging; they form a constellation upon which the eyes of the noblest and most truly divine in all ages have rested.  And as humanity in her slow ascent rises to higher altitudes of civilization, a greater number come to appreciate the supreme truth that it is only that which is divine in essence which can yield enduring happiness and spiritual peace.  The Golden Rule is not peculiar to any one religion.  It has been taught in spirit by philosophers, poets and sages throughout the ages.  There are certain fundamental principles in ethics which, by common consent, the highest and purest souls of all lands and periods have regarded as divine; and in proportion as man has given expression to the godlike attributes in his life he has approached earth's highest dream of divinity.  The lofty ideal which this dream embodies runs like a thread of gold through every civilization.  It was taught by Zoroaster and Confucius, by Gautama and Pythagoras, by the prophets of Israel, and the Stoics of Greece and Rome; it found glorious expression in the life and teaching of Jesus.  God, compared with earth's noblest man, may be as the ocean to the rivulet, as the Himalayas to the ant mound; but His nature, if He is the incarnation of what humanity holds as highest, sweetest and truest, must be all that the most divine expression of manhood is, and inconceivably more than this, in the expression of the divine attributes.  He must be the infinite reservoir of all those virtues which make manhood divine; and being this, He could not do things which would be abhorrent to the noblest man.  If at any point throughout the cycle of eternity, He should draw the dead line across which even the weakest of the children He has called into an eternal existence might not fly from darkness and pain into the light, purity and love of a better life, He would be guilty of a crime so abhorrent to an exalted and humane earthly parent that the parent himself would rather die than condemn his offspring to such a fate.

    The supreme truth, that God must be better than the best man instead of worse than the most cruel savage, is the keynote of the new evangel which our nineteenth-century prophets and mystics have given the children of men.  That is the thought which Whittier, who, in the truest sense, was a mystic, so forcibly put in the following lines:—

This same thought is further impressively taught in the exquisite little allegorical poem, "The Two Angels," in which Whittier gives voice to the conception of God which is the burden of the song of the great poets of our time:—

    In one of his last poems, Tennyson, while the light of the other world was silvering his brow, thus expressed this same conception:—

    The idea of the Eternal Goodness, in varying phraseology, has been presented by almost all the great poets and prophets of our own time.  Gerald Massey, in one of his terse sentences, says: "Any God who demands the worship of fear is unworthy the service of love."  The new religion goes out in love to all life.  It binds up the bruises of him who has fallen by the wayside.  It extends the hand to the sinking.  It calls aloud for justice for the weak and oppressed.  It denounces tyranny, injustice and whatsoever lowers manhood or degrades womanhood.  It demands that the rights of the child and those of the mother be sacredly and inviolably kept.  It whispers hope and love to the despairing.  It gives voice to the words which come from above in the most exalted songs of our time.  It teaches the kinship of man to God in such a way that the old-time nightmare disappears.  And as the child, with open arms and joyous cry, rushes to meet the loved parent, so do earth's children go to the Father above for that sustaining power and holy peace which through all past time sages have drawn from the Infinite.  This thought is beautifully set forth by Mr. Massey in the following lines:—

    In the province of religious thought, Mr. Massey has been a herald of the new day.  His utterances are deeply spiritual, yet charmingly rational.  While recognizing the interior self as the true ego, and fully appreciating the spiritual forces underlying creation, he abhors superstition, and is filled with a holy passion for a more complete knowledge of life.  He cannot understand why men should place prejudice above truth, and believes it to be the sacred duty of every man, woman and child, to use the divine torch of reason to guide his steps.  He is a thorough believer in evolution, and hails modern science as the handmaid of progress.  In a word, Gerald Massey is a child of the dawn.