[Previous Page]


 HUMAN NATURE
May, 1872.

GERALD MASSEY'S LECTURES.

THIS favourite Poet of Progress is engaged by an influential committee to give a series of lectures on Spiritualism, on Sunday afternoons, in St. George's Hall, the particulars of which may be found on a page in the advertising department.  This step is one of the most significant that has occurred in the history of Spiritualism, and shows that literary men of the highest standing may identify themselves with this movement without incurring social ruin.  Any man of genius and power may now become an advocate of Spiritualism with perfect safety to his interests; for if popular opinion throw him off, spiritual opinion is powerful enough to take him on.  Since it was announced that Mr. Massey would lecture in London as above stated, a number of other places have caught up the idea, and flooded our table with inquiries as to whether Mr. Massey would visit them on the same mission.  We do not take it upon ourselves to answer for Mr. Massey, but would recommend all to write to him at Ward's Hurst, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.  He is a lecturer by profession; and for years has been notorious for his allusions to Spiritualism in his public duties on the platform.  We think there is a grand field open for lecturers on the subject of Spiritualism, and it would give us infinite pleasure to know that Gerald Massey had entered it.

    As many of our readers as possible, both metropolitan and provincial, should endeavour to be present at the lectures and promote them as much as possible.  It is usual for country people to visit London to attend the May Meetings, and at this season the party of progress have an excellent excuse to follow the usual custom, and participate in Mr. Massey's lectures.

Ed.—this programme of lectures was reported later in The Medium & Daybreak.

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
November 1, 1872.

MR. GERALD MASSEY IN THE NORTH.

    We have received an advertisement bill from Bishop Auckland, intimating that Mr. Massey will lecture in the Town Hall, on Friday evening, November 8.  Subject: "Facts of my own personal experience narrated and discussed, together with various theories of the alleged phenomena."  The lecture to commence at eight o'clock.  Admission—front seats, 1s.; second, 6d.; gallery, 3d.  We also learn, from Mr. Wilson, that Mr. Massey is engaged to lecture at Halifax, on December 18, 19, 20, and 21.  This is a full course, and ought to be imitated in other places of similar size.  If well worked, the effort would prove a great success.  For the benefit of inquirers, we append Mr. Massey's address —Ward's Hurst, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

    GERALD MASSEY'S LECTURES—"We learn that Mr. Gerald Massey is engaged on a prose work, to bear some such title as Myth, Mystery, and Miracle, a series or deep-sea soundings in the abnormal domain of which Mr. Massey has had such a special experience.  Parts of his profoundly interesting subject will be treated by Mr. Massey in a series of lectures, which he is preparing for delivery in this country and the U.S. of America.  Literary societies that desire a preparatory specimen of the work cannot do better than engage Mr. Massey to give them his curious and novel lecture on 'Sun and Serpent Worship.'"—Newcastle Daily Chronicle.

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
November 15, 1872.

MR. GERALD MASSEY IN THE NORTH.

    Mr. Gerald Massey's visit to the county of Durham, to lecture at Darlington, Bishop Auckland, and Barnard Castle, has given great satisfaction in each of those towns, not merely to the Spiritualists, who, we need not say, have had a rare treat, but to the general public who patronised his lectures.  The Darlington and Stockton Times says:—

    On leaving Darlington, where Mr. Massey was the guest of one of the leading gentlemen of the town, Mr. H. K. Spark, he proceeded to the ancient town of Barnard Castle, where he gave the same two lectures as at Darlington, and where he was most warmly welcomed by a small but enthusiastic circle of friends, at the head of whom is Mr. Joseph Lee, who was mainly instrumental in securing Mr. Massey's services for that place.  The lectures were delivered on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.  Great quakings, it is understood, were heard on the part of the orthodox at this invasion of their very quiet little town, but nevertheless curiosity and the energy of local friends secured a good house each evening.  The local scribe of the Northern Echo furnished some account of these lectures to his employer, the Editor, who, it will be remembered, made himself conspicuous by condemning Spiritualism while he admitted the phenomena at the time of the late Conference.  The Northern Echo had a large heading over the article which dealt with the lectures, entitled, " Gerald Massey interviewing the Ghost of Müller the Murderer," and the article, we scarcely need say, was quite in keeping with the heading, and ended with the remark, "Many things were propounded difficult of apprehension, very strange to ears unused to them, and to many minds revolting in their rank heterodoxy."

    On Wednesday night Mr. Massey addressed a considerable audience in the Music Hall.  The subject advertised was, "The Man Shakespeare;" but owing to some mischance Mr. Massey had not been informed of the title, and hence was only prepared, as arranged with the other placers on this tour, to give his course on the subject of Spiritualism.  However, with the approval of the audience, taken by vote, he delivered his No. 2, or "The Spirit World revealed."  The Subject was treated in the lecturer's usual masterly style, and gave much satisfaction, save, perhaps, to those whose religious prejudices influenced their reception of the truth.

    On Thursday the subject was on "The Facts of my own Personal Experience."  Much credit is due to Mr. Lee and Mr. Kepling, who so energetically managed the arrangements of the Barnard-Castle lectures.

    From Barnard Castle Mr. Massey journeyed to Bishop Auckland, where our old friend Mr. N. Kilburn, jun., had made every arrangement for his reception for a lecture on Friday evening (of which there is an account appended).  Mr. Massey again returned to Barnard Castle for Sunday, and, on the evening of that day, delivered the third of his course or lectures on Spiritualism, pertaining to the life and miracles of Jesus Christ.  This lecture was given in place of the usual discourse from the pulpit of the Free Christian Church, of which Mr. Joseph Lee is the pastor—a fact which reveals, both on the part of Mr. Lee and his congregation, a freedom and liberality of thought rarely paralleled in the churches of the present day.

GERALD MASSEY AT BISHOP AUCKLAND.

    On Friday night last, the 8th inst., Mr. Massey lectured in the Town Hall to an audience of 300 people.  The fact that such a number of listeners could be brought together for a lecture will, to those who know the town best, be the most convincing proof of the deep interest taken in the subject of Spiritualism.  Doubtless some few who came out of curiosity rather than in search of knowledge found the lecture technical, deep, and searching; but in Spiritualism, as in other branches or knowledge, there is no royal road to learning; and on this occasion the subject was being fundamentally expounded, rather than any mere oratorical flights indulged in.

    The lecture was in part an exhaustive reply to those who ask for facts in connection with Spiritualism.  Mr. Massey carefully narrated, from notes taken at the time, the various experiences which occurred in his own house through the mediumship of his Wife.  From these facts, most minutely analysed, no other possible conclusion could be arrived at save that spirits who once lived on the earth could, and did, under certain laws or conditions, communicate with us.

    The so-called explanations of the phenomena, by psychic force and unconscious cerebration, were thoroughly sifted without at all damaging the spiritual theory.  This portion or the lecture was characterised by great depth of thought, and thoroughly taxed the mental capacity of the audience.

    The inestimable value of prayer, as a power on the spirit-world, was pointed out in a graphic and touching manner; and its use as a means of spiritual elevation, recalled from that sphere of abstraction into which the creeds have banished it.  Man is a denizen of two worlds: in him meet and blend the spiritual and the natural; prayer is the magnetic link between the two, and is therefore the special attribute of all true Spiritualism.

    Spiritualism claims to have substantiated and made real the spirit-land, which is ever near.  It teaches that our actions here are the arbitrators of our position yonder, rather than any misty faith in a wholesale salvation; and while it upholds the justice of God in the punishment of all wrong-doing, condemns, with trumpet-tongue, the lying farce of an eternal hell.  Man, after death, will be his desires and affections personified; therefore, set your affections on the highest things.

    God is really our father, not a chemical compound.  Let us draw near to him by communion with those departed ones whose exalted position reveals to them more and more of his power and glory.  In our lives let us act so that no dear one may have to look back with sorrow on us; rather may we be a strength and stay to both worlds.  "Be not afraid! eternally shall truth live on, whilst error shall shrivel up and become as nothing."

    We cannot attempt more than the briefest sketch of the lecture, which was characterised by that wealth of thought and illustration which is so profoundly exhibited in the author's works.  It is not to be anticipated, from the very nature of the subject, that all present were satisfied or convinced; but certain it is that seeds of truth were sown in many places, which after-time will abundantly reveal.  Mr. Massey deserves the lasting gratitude of all who love truth and progress, for his courageous avowal of facts, the recital of which must have cost him many a pang.  We heartily wish him God-speed in his labours.

N. K. J.

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
November 22, 1872.

MR. GERALD MASSEY'S LECTURES.

    We hear frequent echoes of the results of Mr. Massey's lectures in the North.  The newspapers have in general given full and appreciative reports, and when falsehoods and bitter spite were vented by obscure scribblers, such were themselves healthy signs of victory gained.  It is not alone the attendance at the lectures, nor the innumerable array of good things said which form the excellency of Mr. Massey's services.  The lecturer's fame and personality are themselves a treasure, even if he spoke not a word.  Every person of culture knows who Gerald Massey is—a man occupying the best-earned and one of the foremost places in literature.  This itself makes Mr. Massey's advocacy a telling incident to thousands who do not go near the hall, and the newspaper reports have given a very full expression to the fact.

    Some gentlemen of Mr. Massey's position would be disposed to please the popular demand by diluting the subject with that form of thought which is already in good repute.  To the lecturer's credit be it said that this odious charge cannot be for a moment sustained, but rather the contrary, as the following letter from Barnard Castle shows:—

    A very certain corroboration of the above letter is found in a newspaper report of the Congregational Anniversary at Barnard Castle.  The Rev. H. Kendall, of Darlington, spoke despairingly of the present state of Church affairs.  "As there are tides in the great ocean, so there are tides of grace.  The churches seemed to be in low water at present."  The speaker then ran aground on Spiritualism, a very dangerous now continent, on the reef surrounding which a previous speaker had scraped his keel.  The reverend gentleman alluded to Mr. Massey as "a certain individual who had been lecturing last week in Darlington and other places on the subject, and he was amused at that gentleman's curious statements and beliefs."

    The opinion of Christians and theologians was given, viz., that the whole thing was due to the agency of his satanic, majesty.  A minister in Darlington, on Sunday last, said that nine-tenths of the matter was humbug—the other tenth due to the devil.  Modern mediums—if living at the time of Moses, or in this country a century ago—would have been put to death.  He warned all Christians to have nothing to do with the matter.  The chairman characterised the lectures on Spiritualism as a mingled mass of nonsense and heterodoxy.  The remarks of Mr. Kendall and the chairman were received with enthusiastic applause, and showed what kind of an impression the lecturer had made on a great number of his hearers.—Bishop Auckland Chronicle.

    This is all very horrid, reverend brethren, and it must be a source of great uneasiness to your charitable feelings that you do not live "at the time of Moses," and have the glorious and god-like satisfaction of putting the heretics to death.  The nearest approach you can come to it is to allude to the lecturer and not mention his name.

    Our chief regret is that Mr. Massey's pressing engagements previous to his departure for America will not permit of his doing much more for our movement, and it is not at his request that we so urgently beseech our friends to take all the work out of him they can.

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
January 3, 1873.

GERALD MASSEY AT HALIFAX.

    To the Editor.—Dear Sir,—During these last few days there has been such a manifestation of profound intellectuality and Spiritual erudition as has not been experienced in Halifax since Mrs. Hardinge, with benedictions on her head, left us.  There are those in Halifax who are inexpressibly thankful to Gerald Massey for the rare, and I may say wondrously unique treat which be has blessed them with; and the writer of these lines is one amongst them.  Mr. Massey's lectures are the very paragon of excellence, because of the rich vein of thought which runs through them—because of the great, yea stupendous, erudition evinced in them, and because of the beautiful and exquisite diction with which such thoughts and erudition are clothed.  I am sorry to say, sir, that the audiences were very meagre; yet it is somewhat gratifying to record that the few who heard the lectures listened with rapt, attention, so much so that it reminded one of that passage in Lord Lytton's play of the "Lady of Lyons" where Pauline is made to say to her lover Claude, "As the bee hangeth on the honey, so hangeth my soul on the eloquence of thy tongue."  Mr. Massey's first lecture, on "The Man Shakspeare," was a production of a very high order.  It was studded with beautiful gems, such as delight and gladden the refined soul.  The characteristics of Shakspeare were exhibited in a manner which will not be forgotten by those who heard the second lecture, which descanted upon the Spiritualism of all ages, brought truth to view, which, to many, was hid in a heap of mythology; ancient faiths and reputed legends were analysed from the débris of myth and crude fancy, and some spiritual truths were culled.

    The third lecture, which was on his own personal experience in connection with Spiritualism, was listened to with mingled feelings of amazement, awe, half incredulity, and yet, withal, with deep and riveted attention.  The statements were so forcibly put as to leave no room for criticism or cavil.  Every loophole by which the prejudiced usually creep out in order to evade the logical conclusion which such facts necessarily involve was effectually stopped up, as it were, to prevent their wonted egress.  Mr. Massey showed incontrovertibly that departed spirits must be the chief agents in producing the phenomena he had described.

    There was a somewhat larger attendance on Sunday to hear the lecture on "Jesus Christ."  This lecture evinced the same characteristics as the other—full of beautiful, humane touches—redolent or appropriate repartee and satire, which cleaved deep through the fabled dogmas of orthodoxy, and made an awful wreck of them.  The true life or Jesus , was exhibited in all its pristine beauty—minus the artificial colouring which theologians have bedaubed it with.  His miracles, from his conception to his death, were considered in the light of spiritual science; and it was shown that they were not accomplished in virtue of suspended law, but in accordance with laws of nature, physical and super-physical; or, as some would term it, material and spiritual.

    In the evening of the same day Mr. Johnson, of Hyde, spoke in the trance, and touched upon various themes in connection with the philosophy of Spiritualism; but, having to go out on business, I cannot say anything about it, save that the chairman did a little bit of exorcising.  I am told that he interrupted the spirit, and contended that it was not speaking to profit.  Judging from Mr. Johnson's previous addresses in the trance, which I thought were of a high nature, I fancy this interruption would be uncalled for; and I am strengthened in this belief by the fact that two prominent Spiritualists in the body of the hall protested against it, and contended that there were no signs of disapprobation in the audience.  Be that as it may, I myself demur to, yea, detest, interferences of this kind.  I say, let spirits have their opinion as well as mortals.  Apologising for my imperfect communication, I am, yours in haste,                A. D. WILSON.

    P.S.—Probably there are three causes which militated against the success of these lectures.  In the first place, the weather was very unfavourable; in the second place, it is too near Christmas; in the third place, there is disruption amongst the Spiritualists here.  I regret to say that many Spiritualists who were not interested in Mr. Massey's coming amongst us ill-naturedly kept away, and even on the Sunday got up an opposition meeting—a mode of proceeding, to say the least of it, exceedingly disrespectful to Gerald Massey, not to mention bad manners in other respects.  I sincerely trust that Dr. Sexton's lectures, which are got up under different auspices, will be attended by all Spiritualists.  Let all help, while differing in minor things, to spread the cause which we all have at heart.                       A. D. W.
                     13, Baker Street, Pellon Lane, Halifax.  December 22nd.

    [We rejoice at the sentiments conveyed in these last words.  Spiritualism does not seem to have taught these "ill-mannered" parties any thing better than a childish retaliation.  We hope the committee thus aggrieved will pay back in good deeds, and do all they can to promote any action for the good of Spiritualism, though it should be "got up under different auspices."—ED. M.]

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
January 31, 1873.

GERALD MASSEY'S LECTURES IN THE NORTH
AND THE PROGRESS OF SPIRITUALISM.

    On Monday of last week Mr. Massey lectured in Middlesborough for the Philosophical Society, the Mayor, R. Stephenson, Esq., in the chair.  There was a pretty large audience, and the remarks of the lecturer were received with repeated salvos of applause.  The Gazette says:—"No one who listened to Mr. Massey could doubt the honesty of his belief, and his lecture, which forms only a part or a book he has in preparation on the subject, was adorned by a wealth of allusion and illustration which imparted a charm quite, independent or the particular line of thought which characterised it."  Besides a copious report of the lecture, the same paper devotes a leader to the subject, in which Spiritualism is treated in a remarkably fair and cordial manner.  It is reported that the Swedenborgians are arranging for a lecturer to visit Middlesborough as an offset to Mr. Massey's teachings.  The editor of the Gazette cannot understand such conduct, seeing that Mr. Massey claims Swedenborg as one of the greatest Spiritualists or all time.  The editor appropriately remarks:—"The discussion thus raised should contribute to the public enlightenment on a subject, to say the least, very perplexing to the uninitiated.  The proposed lecture is only one indication of the peculiar interest which Mr. Massey's visit to Middlesborough has awakened."

    On Tuesday evening Mr. Massey lectured in the Mechanics' Hall, Newcastle, E. Procter, Esq., in the chair.  The lecture is very fully and intelligently reported in the local Chronicle.  Mr. Massey's second lecture was very much better attended than the first.  It was on Mr. Massey's personal experiences.  Mr. Councillor Barkas presided, and admitted the existence of some invisible power.  Mr. Massey was listened to attentively, and frequently applauded.  At the close there was discussion and questions asked, which passed off pleasantly, notwithstanding the efforts of several persons to raise difficulties and misunderstandings.  These lectures have produced a very marked impression in the north of England.

_____________________

 
CHICAGO DAILY TRIBUNE
December 10, 1873.

CHARLES LAMB.
_______

Lecture by Gerald Massey at the Kingsbury Music Hall.

    Gerald Massey, the English poet, lectured last evening at the Music Hall in the Star Course, to a house miserably disproportionate to the fame of the lecturer and the amount of advertising done by his agents in this city.  It may have been the opera, or it may have been something else that left the auditorium about two thirds empty.  The larger part of the audience being chairs, it is not surprising that there was but little applause.  In fact, the audience was rather cold.  It did not applaud any of the effects of the Star orchestra, and waited in mute astonishment, until Mr. Gerald Massey stole quietly in at a side door of the stage, and hurried to his stand, without making a bow, and without introduction. He suddenly opened his manuscript, and began reading with considerable nervous hurriedness. Mr. Massey is not handsome, nor is he in appearance intellectual. His moustache and side whiskers are thin, and his hair is parted in the middle.

    The lecture began with a definition of the two qualities of wit and humour, somewhat after the fashion we have generally heard, Mr. Massey speaking, however, with such rapidity that the force of his illustration was lost be the effort to crowd too much into a short space of time. The illustrations were always bright and original, and occasionally brilliant. The subject of the lecture was "Charles Lamb," and the introductory remarks were admirable suited to the body of the discourse, inasmuch as in Charles Lamb, according to Mr. Massey, wit and humour were inextricably blended. Passing from these remarks, he gave a short sketch of Lamb's life from his entering Christ's Hospital, where he first made the acquaintance of Coleridge. He referred to the taint of hereditary insanity in both Charles Lamb and his sister Mary, treating the subject very closely, and with strong pathetic description. There were, he said, various kinds of madness, one kind, such as that which affected these poor creatures, which was a sort of disorganised somnambulism. Mary Lamb, her brother wrote, was during periods of insanity, far more brilliant in conversation than any of his wittiest friends. To the protection and preservation of this sister Lamb devoted his whole life, giving up for this purpose his love's young dream, the memory of that Alice to whom he refers occasionally in his writings. And it was this devotion to his sister, of the grandeur and heroism of which lamb appeared to be quite unconscious, that the lecturer said he wished his hearers to think. Lamb used to kick against the drudgery of his work at the East India House, but it was the very best thing for him. To be taken out of himself by force for six hours a day, at a good salary, was a godsend to Lamb, and a blessing to us. It had given us all the best of Charles Lamb in the smallest possible space, four pocket volumes containing all his contributions to literature. And if he could write all he had to, in four volumes, how much better for him that he did not dilute them into twenty-four.

    Lamb was a creature of London, the roots of his nature clung to the bricks of that old Babylon; he never breathed freely, save in its limits; was never at home elsewhere. Whenever he was in the country, he walked out of it as fast as possible. He never liked it, except at one time, and that was when he was in love, and then, like all lovers, he had a sympathetic longing for all green things. The fact that lamb's love of the country (in poetry) survived fresh and green in the heart of the great city, was curious in a literary point of view, as curious, he thought to men of letters, as the discovery by small boys, that mustard and cress would grow upon wet flannel, without taking root in the earth at all.

    In describing the appearance of Charles Lamb, Mr. Massey declared that the subject of his discourse was not formed according to the conventional idea of a great man, against which popular fallacy he (the speaker) felt himself to be a standing protest. Charles lamb was not much of a teacher, but he was one of the best good fellows and humorists the world had ever seen, and he left us in his writings, and inexhaustible supply of amusement and keen delicate fun.

    The lecture was made up, in the great part, of extracts from lamb's works, chosen with admirable taste, as illustrative of the character and personality of the man whose genial, simple, nature he was discussing, and anecdotes were given, especially towards the end of the lecture, which were listened to with warm appreciation and marked attention on the part of the audience.

    Mr. Massey possesses considerable initiative, ability and versatility of expression. He was guilty of an occasional omission of the aspirate and said "unctious" for "unctuous" twice. His delivery is very rapid, puzzling to an audience for some time but agreeable after a little. His spiritualistic leanings were expressed in an occasional remark dropped half unconsciously.

_____________________

 
BANNER OF LIGHT
11th Oct., 1873.

Arrival of Gerald Massey.

    It will be seen by the following announcement that Gerald Massey, distinguished as a poet and man of letters, and a Spiritualist withal, was among the recent arrivals at New York.  He is engaged as a lecturer in several of the winter courses, and we hope that our friends will see that he is well cared for.

    Gerald Massey, the English poet who has just just arrived in this country, was born in May, 1828, and is therefore forty-five.  He was the son of a poor canal boatman, and after hard toil in a silk-mill as a boy tender, at fifteen went to London and found work as an errand boy.  His is another example of the power of genius to make itself known despite all repression of circumstance.  He has published some five volumes of poetry--"Poems and Chansons," "The Ballad of Babe Christabel, and other Lyric Poems," "Craigcrook Castle," and, latest of all, "A Tale of Eternity, and Other Poems."  The latter is a ghostly and strange work.  Massey's strength has been in his lyrics, which have won for him the admiration of the English common folk.

_____________________

 
BANNER OF LIGHT
11th Oct., 1873.

Gerald Massey.

    Now in this country on a lecturing tour, delivered recently in London a very successful series of lectures on Spiritualism [Ed.—probably the series in Langham Place].  He is the author of a little volume, bearing the title "Concerning Spiritualism," in which, assuming the facts as proven, he deals chiefly with the philosophy of the subject.  The following passages in reference to the Darwinian system, &c., will be read with interest:

    "Spiritualism will accept evolution, and carry it out and make both ends meet in the perfect circle; with it is the nexus, not on the physical side of the phenomena; without it the doctrine of Mr. Darwin is but a broken link.  Complete evolution is the ever-unfolding of the all-present, all-permeating creative energy working through all forces and forms."

    "Mr. Darwin, as much as any theologian, when he does allude to the Creator, appears to look upon him as operating ab extra, and working from without; a mind dwelling apart from matter and ordaining results which are executed unconsciously in his absence; whereas the Spiritualist apprehends him as the innermost Soul of all existence, the living Will, the spiritual involution that makes the physical evlution—the immediate and personal Causation of dynamic force, no matter by what swift transmutations—the creative Energy in presence penetrating every point of space at each moment of time, effectuating His intentions, and fulfilling His creative being.

    "Spiritualism will also destroy that belief in the eternity of punishment, which has, for many mourning souls, filled the whole universe with the horror of blackness, and made God a darkness visible.  'Ah,' said the dear cheery Old Calvinist, 'these people—the Spiritualists—'believe in a final restitution and the saving of all, but we hope for better things.'  Many good people will cry out in an agony of earnestness, as Charles Lamb stammered in his fun, 'But this is doing away with the Devil; don't deprive me of my Devil.'

    "Spiritualism must not destroy the dogma that God has but one method of communicating his love to men, and but one doorway way through he draws them into his presence.  I tell you the God of heaven bends and broods as lovingly, as divinely, and with a balm as blessed, in the dear, appealing, winsome face of my little child, as He can do in face of Christ."

    We needn't say more to show that Mr. Massey's little tract on Spiritualism is worth reading; but it will require close attention and study in the reading, for he enters into some of the profoundest of questions of life and creation.

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
December 19, 1873.

GERALD MASSEY IN AMERICA.

    Gerald Massey, to quote the Daily Graphic, is no longer the "Coming Man," for the excellent reason that he has come.  He has spoken twice, once in Unity Chapel, Harlem, on Sunday, October 26th, to a crowded, intellectual, and enthusiastic audience.  His subject was based on the Man Friday's question to Robinson Crusoe, "Why does not God Kill the Devil?"  Under the head of a "Poet Preacher," the Graphic says:

    The World has a full and fair report of the lecture.  The Herald intimated that it would take a full page to do justice to its profoundity, and that it was too compactly welded to deal with piece-meal.  The Tribune also rendered a very favourable account.  This paper had put in a claim for Mr. Massey to be heard for himself, even when his subject might not seem attractive from the title.  It wrote, when Mr. Massey first arrived in America:

    On Monday Evening, October 27th, Mr. Massey lectured in Association Hall to an audience which, when the state of the weather and the financial state are considered, was impressively good.  We again quote the Graphic.

    Theodore Tilton, in the Golden Age, characterises Gerald Massey as

    As a lecturer, he depicts Mr. Massey as "original in thought, rapid, ardent, and glowing in expression, and honest as the day is long."  The Evening Mail predicts that Mr. Massey will receive a warm welcome from all classes of our people.

    Mr. Massey's literary lectures—such as those on the more familiar subjects of "Lamb," "Hood," the "Man Shakespeare," and the "Story of the English Pre-Raphaelites"—will attract, entertain, and charm our people.  And these are kept quite distinct from his other utterances, which are reserved for those who desire to hear them, and are not thrust on those who do not.  The Sun called Mr. Massey's first lecture—

"Spiritualism handled so that Spiritualists did not understand it."

    This was a compliment, however unintentional.  They are immensely mistaken who assume that Mr. Massey has come to America to talk over the trivialities of table-tipping.  He has explained in the Golden Age that, by means of a very peculiar experience, he has struck on a lost track of ancient knowledge.  The first fruits of this are offered in a few of his lectures.  But the fuller unfolding will take one or two large volumes.  There can be no doubt that Mr. Massey has most personal affection for the less popular of his subjects, or he would hardly have run the risk of offering these to audiences in Now York against the advice of the Bureau and his more worldly-wise friends; it is because he feels that he has something new to say, and he thought this country the right place to say it.  He proclaimed on Monday night that Spiritualism, as he understood it and had wrought it out, was a New World's gift that amply repaid all America had ever received from the old world, and concluded his peroration with these words:—

_____________________

 
THE SPIRITUALIST.
February 13, 1874.

MR. MASSEY IN AMERICA.

On more than one occasion Mr. Gerald Massey's lectures in the United States have been too unorthodox for the listeners.  The executive committee of the Chicago Philosophical Society recently replied as follows to a protest from the trustees of the Chicago Methodist Church, who had let their building to the society for the delivery of one of Mr. Massey's lectures:—"We fully recognise not only your right, but your duty, to protest, against any improper use of the church property held by you its trustees, and we are free to admit, in the case of Gerald Massey's lecture, we did not use our usual caution in ascertaining the character of it; and are equally free to say that, had we been aware of its character, we should have declined it."

    On the 17th of last mouth, at a dinner which took place in Boston in connection with the Franklin Typographical Society, Mr. Massey said:—

_____________________

 
BANNER OF LIGHT
28th May, 1874.

GERALD MASSEY'S WORK IN SAN FRANSISCO.

    The News Letter, a literary journal of high merit and popular standing, which is published in the above-named city, thus kindly treats in brief—in its issue of April 18th—of the past life-labors in England, and present especial results in the Golden State by this gifted poet and earnest orator, who on Sunday, May 10th, took leave of the Boston friends at Music Hall preparatory to his homeward voyage across the Atlantic.  To the views expressed by our contemporary of the Pacific slope concerning Mr. Massey, we desire to say, Amen!

    "A thoughtful, earnest and original spirit has come amongst us and in the brief space of a week, has created almost a revolution in the domain of intellect, and set those thinking who rarely thought before.  Gerald Massey, until of late years, has been known to the world as a writer of impassioned verse, some of the love strains of which are destined to live as long as our mother tongue shall last, but recently the poetical faculty seems to have given place to the more generally one of the public teacher, and the latter triumphs of our friend have been won upon the lecturer's platform.  Born with somewhat unfavorable conditions for the fostering of the more gentle qualities of our nature, it was somewhat surprising to find a boy of eighteen or nineteen dashing with such charming rhymes as those well-known love-lyrics of his, beginning

'No jewelled beauty is my love,'

    And,

'Heaven hath its crown of stars.'

    The former of which has found has found its way into every selection of poetical beauties which in late years has issued from the press.  Sprung from among the people, his association has always been with them, and sympathy for their sorrows and advocacy of their rights have ever enveloped his life, and borne him onward upon the stream which carries the old prejudices of the past toward the great ocean of oblivion.  A deep and inquiring thinker, he has shaken off the trammels of sectarianism and boldly dared to think for himself on all matters most intimately concerning his own moral and spiritual nature.  The conclusions to which he has come upon religious subjects are such as would startle the class of minds accustomed to regard them through the spectacles of their ancestors; but placed as they are before his audience in terse and vigorous language, and with an earnestness which is the fullest proof that they are the purest convictions of their author's mind, they tell the listener that there is much room for doubt as to many of his cherished theories, and send him seeking into new paths for treasures of truth which may lie there, to him as yet unknown.  Mr. Massey's subjects are various and widely separated, and touch the very opposites of mental thought.  Poetry, science and drama, the ancient myths, modern religious creeds, wit and humor, and the teachings of Spiritualism, are all treated by him in their fullest measure, and receive the advantage of candid and impartial research.  The visit of this remarkable man to this city has been unfortunately too brief, and only three of his many topics have received illustration before a San Francisco audience.  The first of these, 'The Man Shakspeare,' was a careful epitome of the author's more extended analysis of the sonnets and a pleasant inlook upon the private life of the grand poet of the world.  It was full of gems of masterly English, and when published, as it doubtless will be, will serve as a text upon the phases of Shakspeare's life and character of which it professes to treat [Ed.—see 'The Secret Drama of Shakspeare's Sonnets'].  'Why does not God kill the Devil?' is a startling title, and the interest in the subject displayed by a very numerous audience showed how attractive was the lecture in which the question was to be answered.  In this Mr. Massey scattered to the winds the trumpery doctrine of a personal fiend, and showed that God did not kill the devil because there was no devil to kill.  Bold and perfectly outspoken, he cares not to shelter himself behind glittering flowers of rhetoric, but without a fear dashes into the midst of what be believes to be error, and does his best to vanquish it.  His third lecture, on 'The Coming Religion,' we could not hear, but we are willing to believe that it was marked by all the originality and breadth of thought which distinguished his previous efforts.  It is a matter of regret that we should have seen so little of Mr. Massey, and that his many calls among the cities of the Eastern States forbid the prolongation of his stay.  He may, however, be assured that such is the impression he leaves upon the minds of his hearers, that his second visit to the Pacific Coast will be hailed with delight by a large number of the most thoughtful minds among us, and that a warm welcome will be extended to him when he again bends his steps hitherward.  In the hope that we may soon witness his return, we for a time regretfully bid him farewell!"

_____________________

 
THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
July 31, 1874.

GERALD MASSEY'S LIST OF LECTURES FOR 1874—5.

    Mr. Massey has issued the following list of subjects for the ensuing season.  We hope Mr. Massey will be extensively engaged.  The plan which we recently recommended for the introduction of lectures on Spiritualism into the arrangement of Mechanics' Institutions, might be adopted in respect to Mr. Massey.  Special efforts should be made to secure a visit from Mr. Massey in every place where lectures can be got up.  His lectures are of the highest class, fearless and logical, and carry conviction with a class of minds which are repelled by the performances of those where genius is not so sparkling.  The recent triumphant tour in America will re-introduce Mr. Massey to the English public with renewed zest.  The list of subjects offered is as follows:—

1. Charles Lamb, the Most Unique of English Humourists.

2. A Plea for Reality; or the Story of the English Pre-Raphaelites.

3. Why I am a Spiritualist.

4. A Spirit-World Revealed to the Natural World from the Earliest Times by Means of Objective Manifestations, the Only Basis of Man's Immortality.

5. The Life, Character, and Genius of Thomas Hood.

6. Why Does Not God Kill the Devil?  Man Friday's Robinson Crucial Question.

7. The Man Shakespeare, with Something New.

8. The Birth, Life, Miracles, and Character of Jesus Christ, Reviewed from a fresh Standpoint.

9. Robert Burns.

10. The Meaning of the Serpent Symbol.

11. Old England's Sea Kings.

12. The Coming Religion.

Address—Ward's Hurst, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

_____________________

 
ST. LOUIS GLOBE DEMOCRAT
Oct. 21, 1875.

GERALD MASSEY INSANE

The Weaver-Boy Poet in a Lunatic
Asylum.
(From the New York Mercury.)

[Editorial note: "If you don't read newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read newspapers you're misinformed." (Mark Twain) . . . . errors, omissions and exaggerations in newspaper articles are, and always have been, commonplace.  Thus, when used as primary evidence, such material should be treated with caution.  This article is no exception to that rule.

    During the Autumn of 1875, several U.S. newspapers carried brief statements—probably re-postings, as is this article—that Massey had been confined to an asylum.  However, there is no corroborating evidence that this was ever the case.  It is perhaps coincidental that Massey's first wife, Rosina Jane, throughout her married life suffered from an increasingly serious psychological disorder worsened by alcoholism.  Thomas Cooper, writing to a friend in 1861, had this to say of Rosina ".....I wonder that poor Gerald Massey parades the figure of the drunken plague to whom he has so sillily tied himself."—he had little choice; he couldn't leave Rosina on her own.

    Towards the end of her life, Massey was encouraged strongly to place his wife in an asylum; this he resisted. Rosina was to die suddenly, of no definite cause, some nine years before the date of this article, so it is possible that we have here a garbled version of that story, which Massey often related in his lectures on spiritualism (e.g. see the report.... Conviction and Conversion).  That said, this article's author (anon) paints an interesting picture of Rosina, of whom we have little detailed information, and of Massey's early years on the lecture circuit.  There can be no doubt that Rosina greatly influenced Massey's life—not, for the most part, beneficially—sparking off an interest in Spiritualism that was to absorb much of his later years and give him a living on the lecture circuit, both at home and abroad, long after this piece was written.

(Incidentally, the Lancashire poet Samuel Bamford might have owned up to the epithet 'Weaver-Boy Poet', but Massey?  Definitely not!)]

________

Tidings have reached this city from private sources in England that the well-known poet and lecturer, Gerald Massey, is suffering from aberration of mind, and has been placed in a private asylum.  To those that have been at all familiar with the career of the gifted and unfortunate poet, this sad news will not occasion unmixed surprise.  In his marriage, infelicitous as Byron, he has been literally chained to a woman who was at once an Amazon, a Medea and a Venus.

    The writer became acquainted with Mr. Massey in the winter of 1854-55 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.  Gerald was then a young man of twenty-six engaged on a lecturing tour.  For three nights he lectured before the Literary and Philosophical Society of that town, his terms being ten pounds sterling per night.  His success was immense.  Lord Ravensworth was the chairman of his second lecture, and the poet was for a couple of days his lordship's guest at Ravensworth Castle.  At every town he visited on that tour he was the guest of the aristocracy, and though this distinction did not turn his head or make him arrogant, there was no disguising the fact that he became in the slightest degree snobbish.  While engaged in lecturing, he was also a regular contributor to the columns of the Athenaeum.  Consequently his worldly circumstances were easy, and he was a jolly but temperate companion.  He talked much of his home, his baby, his Newfoundland dog, Carlo, and his "beautiful, beautiful wife;" and he used to say that the money he made by his lectures very inadequately repaid him for the home happiness he was deprived of during his tour.  He abhorred tobacco, and repeatedly said he could not understand how a man of culture and refinement could introduce the "beastly ador of tobacco into his home."

    Everything was lovely with Gerald in those days.  The writer was over half a dozen years his junior, and caught some of the poet's enthusiasm while listening to his fervid eloquence.  Let me describe him as he then appeared: A very little man, with a shock of sandy hair combed straight back, without parting, from the forehead; underneath a pale, careworn face; moustache lighter than the hair; a scrambling goatee; large, luminous iron-gray eyes, an upper lip too large for his face, and a painful lack of character about the lines of the mouth.  His hands were as white as those of a hospital patient, and though they were small, the fingers had not that tapering form or delicate tip which are accustomed to associate with the artistic or poetic mind.  He had then written a few poems, one of which was published in the Edinburgh Witness, while the celebrated geologist, Hugh Miller, was its editor.  But that was before poor Gerald was married; or, to adhere strictly to the facts, in the year 1848.  Alas! the year after he was married to his queenly-looking Dulcinea; and as she said herself, "Massey's impassioned poetry won me."  We have no room to print the entire poem of "Unbeloved," which won Gerald's wife, but this notice of the man's life would be incomplete without the first verse, which paints his hopeless passion at the time he was courting the beautiful Mabel:

    Mr. Massey was then living in an elegantly-appointed house in Portobello, a couple of miles from Edinburgh.  The writer visited him there in the summer of 1853.  It was impossible to escape the conviction that the poet was then "overshadowed" and hen-pecked by his wife.  She had a grand presence, large jet-like black eyes, a hard mouth, fine teeth, and a form that a sculptor would love to model.   After luncheon, Gerald and I took a walk round Arthur's Seat, and he commented enthusiastically, as was his want, on the physical and picturesque contours of the Newhaven fishwomen returning home [to] Edinburgh.  As I left him for the night he said, while clasping my hand with both of his, "My boy you must get married; see how happy I am!"

    Two years elapsed, and I heard little of Massey.  But when the winter came I was surprised to see a "poster" in the market-place at South Shields, announcing that "Gerald Massey, the poet, would deliver three lectures in the Central Hall, Chapter Row."  I attended the first lecture.  Its subject was "Hood, and Wit and Humor." [ED.—see also Massey's essays, "Thomas Hood, Poet and Punster" (1855) and "Life and Writings of Thomas Hood" (1863)].

    I occupied a back seat, yet I could distinctly perceive that the poet's face was more haggard and careworn than when I last saw him.  There was probably a majority of ladies in the fashionable audience, and the lecture proceeded with that rippling eloquence of which Massey was such a master.  His voice—always full, musical and mellow—had lost none of its resonance, and his hearers were alternately dissolved in tears or shaking with laughter.  Tender glances from bright eyes were thrown upon him, and before he had progressed half and hour it required no particularly acute observer to discover that half of the young ladies in the hall adored him.  When he began to recite the "Bridge of Sighs" you could have heard a pin drop, and as he, with touching pathos and lingering sadness, repeated the lines:

there was not a dry female eye in the assemblage.

    I saw Mrs. Massey gaze round with astonishment.  She saw that the little man was the idol of the hour—that tears were flowing from aristocratic cheeks; that beautiful young hearts responded to the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin.  The sight was too much for her nature.  With a wild, shrill shriek, she apparently fainted away.  Poor Gerald advanced to the edge of the platform pale with anger and half unnerved.  Four men hoist the woman and bear her from the place, two matronly women attend and apply restoratives, tidings pass round the hall that the fainting woman is the lecturer's wife, and that she is jealous of him, and after a while the lecture proceeds undisturbed.

    At the next lecture I went as a privileged individual with Mr. and Mrs. Massey, to the central Hall.  The lecture was upon "Burns, and Love Poetry."  The hall was crowded; but the lecturer looked as if he expected a sheriff around.  He was fidgety and restless, and his annunciation was at times indistinct.  I sat besides Mrs. Massey.  She said to me in a whisper; "Look"  Gerald is in love with that lady; I know it.  See how he looks at her!"  Almost immediately came the recitation of the poem, "To Mary is Heaven," and with an amazonian yell, Mrs. Massey fainted away, and I was one of the bearers who conveyed her from the premises.  It was the same story wherever he lectured.  Mrs. Massey systematically fainted away, and had to be carried from the hall, while he looked on with an expression of poignant anguish.  There was no aristocratic houses offering their hospitality to the poet and his wife now; but there were humble friends who were not banished like bees by the wintry weather, who now surrounded him, and who offered their "best apartments" as a dwelling for the poet and his wife.  And in one of these comfortable, unpretending houses—No. 9 Summerhill Terrace, Newcastle-on-Tyne—I dined with Massey and his wife in 1858.  it was Sunday, and after dinner Mr. M—, Massey and myself retired to the "library" to smoke.  There was no sentimental aversion to tobacco now in the poet's mind; but he had a lingering fear—and expressed it— that "she" might burst into the room at any moment.  It was as he expected.  She opened the door, and, with the appearance of a Medea, cried: "Gerald! don't you know 'Carlo' is dying?"  This was the dog, and the affect on the little sensitive man was most distressing.  Soon after she returned with the announcement: "Gerald, our little Freddy is sick."  "O, curse you," cried Massey, throwing down and breaking his long clay pipe, "you will kill me!"  At every town in which he lectured these scenes were repeated.  And she would wake him up in the night to retail horrible visions, where some cherished member of his family was predicted dead.  By and by he began to believe that his wife possessed the power of divination, and it was then not a difficult road for him to reach a profound belief in Spiritualism.

    His vagaries in the spiritualistic business are notorious to all newspaper readers.  In all of these eccentricities he has been assisted by his wife.  Together they have seen visions of babies and hogs, and discovered that the bones of the weird visitors were buried beneath the Massey hearthstone.  These absurd visions he minutely described in the London Spiritualist, and then his friends and well-wishers began to suspect that his mental balance was shaken.  A few years since, it will be remembered, he lectured in Boston and other New England towns on spiritualism.  But the man had lost his magnetism, and the lectures, as they deserved to be, were an absolute failure.  In point of fact, poor Massey has been approaching insanity for years.

    Most of Massey's latest writings have been on the subject of spiritualism, and his most intimate friends have regarded every succeeding speech or article as a nearer approach to lunacy.  Massey will not be regarded by critics as a strictly original poet.  Taking Tennyson as his model, he has, to some instances, almost servilely imitated that great master.  Still, there are poems of Massey's that can only perish with the English language.

_____________________

 
From

THE BANNER OF LIGHT
Boston, March 15, 1884.

Gerald Massey in Springfield, Mass.

    Sunday, March 9th, Gerald Massey, the distinguished lecturer on the origins of Religions, gave a learned exposition of the fable of the "Fall of Man" in Genesis.  The audience was very large and paid strict attention.  Many of our editors and professional men were present.  His explanation of the astronomy of the ancient Egyptians throws a flood of light upon the story of the Garden of Eden, the Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge, etc.  It was almost like a new revelation to us to hear such clear and unanswerable explanations of these Bible myths.

    Mr. Massey ought to be heard in every city in New England before he goes West, for he has information of the gravest importance to give to the people.  His lectures lay bare the false foundations of Christianity, and prove conclusively that the dogmas and ceremonies of the Christian Church are misrepresentations of myths of antiquity whose original signification has been lost to the people in the lapse of ages, and yet whose meaning can be restored by a careful study of the mythology of Egypt.

    Public libraries ought to have Mr. Massey's book "Natural Genesis" which gives in full his discoveries; and his lectures, which are a popularized epitome of his researches, should eventually be printed in cheap form for the masses.*

    Mr. Massey has a magnetic voice and an earnest manner, and both his thought and his delivery insure a charmed and instructed audience.  He will give two lectures at Gill's Hall, Sunday, March 16th.  The subject for the evening lecture will be "The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ."

    Prof. Milleson will speak here on March 23rd, and James R. Cocke, the blind musical medium, the 30th. The Spiritualists' Union will have a meeting here on the 31st, particulars of which will be given you next week.

H. A. BUDINGTON.

* Ed.  While not material that the "masses" would readily take up, as Mr. Budington appears to think likely, Massey did eventually arrange (in 1887) for his principal lectures to be printed individually as inexpensive booklets.  These, which are reproduced on our lectures page, remain available in modern reprints.

_____________________

 
From

THE BANNER OF LIGHT
Boston, March 22, 1884.

Gerald Massey in Springfield, Mass.

Another full and very intelligent audience assembled Sunday evening, March 16th, to hear Mr. Massey in his masterly lecture on "The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ."  In this discourse parallels are drawn between the gods of Egypt and the Christian Christ, showing from the "Book of the Dead" that most of the stories of Jesus found in the four gospels are modified copies of the Egyptian myths.

    A number of citizens from other churches and some or our best thinkers among the unchurched were present.  The views of Mr. Massey were new and startling to most, and yet they are founded on the facts of facts of Egyptology.  The Springfield Republican reported the lecture, giving an unusual amount of space to it.

    Prof. Milleson of Boston will lecture here next Sunday, the 23rd, and in the evening exhibit his paintings and diagrams of the spirit-body, which he has made a study of for years, and which he claims to have been shown clairvoyantly some new and beautiful truths.

H. A. BUDINGTON.

____________________
  
From

THE BANNER OF LIGHT
Boston, Saturday, April 19, 1884.

Gerald Massey.

The poet, the scholar and the orator, concerning whom the friends of Spiritualism on both sides of the Atlantic cannot do other than cherish an appreciative memory, in view of the important services which he has, by research, voice and pen, rendered the cause, is at present speaking in the West, having just concluded his initial engagement in that quarter, at Cleveland, O.

    Mr. Massey's first lecture in Cleveland was given on the evening of April 6th.  Though the weather was very inclement, the Church of the Unity, in which it was delivered, was crowded with an appreciative audience.  The subject was "The Mystery of Evil," and it was dealt with in a manner so much out of the common course that every word was listened to with the utmost degree of attention.  The lectures that followed increased the public interest, and when the concluding one of the series was delivered, many regrets were expressed that there were no more to be heard.  Very favorable mention of them was made by the press some of the papers giving quite lengthy notices, including the leading points of each.

    The manner in which Mr. Massey turns his scholarship and learning to spiritualistic account is remarkable.  For example, it is commonly assumed that what is termed the phallic religion, the types and symbols of which are found the world over, originated in a worship of the generative powers.  But Mr. Massey proves, in his lecture on Man in search of his soul during many thousand years, that the phallic imagery was first employed by primitive man in the burial of the dead, whether in the re-birth place of the Egyptians, the caves of Europe, or the "Navel-Mounds" of the red men.  He shows that the dead were buried in the tomb as the locale of re-birth; end that the natural imagery of reproduction in this life was repeated as the symbolism of reproduction and resurrection for another.  In this way he makes use of Spiritualism, the light of to-day, to read the far-off facts that have been obscured in the dark places of the past.  His mode of treatment has proved interesting to all men, whether Spiritualists or not.  For instance, Courtlandt Palmer, the President of the Nineteenth Century Club, testifies that he heard Mr. Massey's lecture in New York with the most profound interest; and although a Positivist himself, he says Mr. Massey's facts and deductions are of the utmost value according to any theory of the world.

____________________

 
From

THE BANNER OF LIGHT
Boston, Saturday, 3 May 1884.

Gerald Massey in Grand Rapids.

The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Eagle, April 21st, speaks as follows regarding Mr. Massey's Sunday discourse in that place:

    Mr. Massey spoke in Grand Rapids April 20th, 23d and 25th, and was to lecture there again the 28th.  As noted in these columns last week, he intends to devote some six weeks in May and June to places between Chicago and San Francisco, on his way to Australia, where it is said he has just concluded negotiations to deliver ten lectures.  The friends all along the route should make every effort to secure the services of this ripe scholar and eloquent speaker.

____________________

 
From

THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
16 January 1885.

Republished from The Harbinger of Light, 1 November, 1884.

GERALD MASSEY IN AUSTRALIA.
_______

    On the evening of September 29, a conversazione was given in Melbourne, to the members and friends of the Victorian Association of Spiritualists, Mr. C. Johnston, President, in the chair.  Between 300 and 400 persons were present. "The Harbinger of Light," November 1, reports the following:—

    "Mr. Gerald Massey, who was received with applause, responded cordially to the words of welcome that had been spoken.  He was, he said, one of those 'cranks' called Spiritualists.  He was not an abnormal medium, as one of the papers had made him say, but his first wife was mediumistic, and through her he had received many proofs.  He spoke of his state of health when he left England, after the completion of his book, as very low, but he was glad to say he now found himself, after his travels, very much better.  He thought that Spiritualists did not, as a rule, learn sufficiently from nature.  They believed in the natural; only that in that expression they properly included the domain of the spiritual.  But some Spiritualists, the moment they found that certain extraordinary phenomena were true, at once thought that it proved all the miracles recorded in the Bible to be true likewise.  These, however, were simply myths, and had to be interpreted by the light of mythology.  Spiritualists ought to be educated in the doctrine of Evolution.  The Denton Museum, which he was glad to see there, was a step in the right direction, and he was also glad to find that the young had an opportunity of being freed from the damnable doctrines which had cursed their forefathers.  Everywhere he went, he had found the Spiritualists in a chaotic state, with many divergences of opinion, and he had come to the conclusion that the object of Spiritualism was essentially to make people independent in mind, and that they were not meant to think alike, and that these divergences of opinion really formed a species of protective bristling chevaux de frise around their facts.  He approved, however, of any attempt at confederation; for though they could not meet to agree to think alike, they could meet to agree to do something, to carry out some plan of action.  He was not exactly a representative sent out by English Spiritualists, but in some sort he did represent them, and, therefore, in conclusion, in their name he tendered to his hearers a cordial greeting."

    Mr. Massey has been lecturing in the Theatre Royal, Sydney, to crowded audiences.  Of his lecture on "The Fall of Man," The Liberal says: "We have no hesitation in describing it as the most elaborate, the most learned, the most profound, and the most absorbingly interesting discourse ever delivered in the City of Sydney."

    We regret to learn that Mr. Massey has been taken ill in Sydney.

____________________

 
From

THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
27 November 1885.

Republished from The Rationalist, Auckland, New Zealand,
Sunday, August 30, 1885.

ORATION BY GERALD MASSEY
_______

 PERORATION TO "A LEAF FROM THE BOOK
OF MY LIFE."

    Mr. Gerald Massey again lectured on Sunday evening last, to a large audience.  The subject of the lecture was "A Leaf out of the Book of my Life."

    In his introductory remarks, Mr. Massey said: We have a class of journalists in London and elsewhere, who grin for the public through the horse-collar of the press.  Their duty is to make fun of all that is foreign to them.  The more the seriousness the greater the absurdity.  Such writers have no comprehension, and can have no respect for the love of truth, which alone could compel a man to volunteer his testimony all the world round to an unpopular truth, in a case so painfully personal as this of mine.  In the course of my life I have been a fighter in the forlorn hope of more than one unpopular cause, beginning as a Chartist, but the clown who grins professionally for the press must not, therefore, assume that I am the champion of an unparalleled imposture.  I am impelled to tell my story solely because it is true, and because it enables me at times to be of use to others who may be in the midst of some peculiar experience, the mystery of which they cannot fathom by themselves.  I am not here to proselytize; only to state facts, and now and again to draw an inference.  We cannot generalize or form an opinion on any subject unless we have the facts to go upon.

    We reproduce the conclusion of the lecture verbatim:—

    Mind you, I am not going to claim for Spiritualism any more than it will carry. These phenomena, if true, are not about to prove and re-establish the mythical miracles of the Old or New Testament as true.  The sun never stood still in heaven, in any time past, tho' all the tables on earth should take to dancing in the present.  I am aware that the first effect of these phenomena on many observers, is to make a profound appeal to the feeling of religions awe, and therefore to confirm the orthodox in all the errors of their early thought.  If certain extensions of recognised laws take place in the present, why may not all the mythical miracles of the past be veritable matters of fact; and of course they may, if we have no means of distinguishing between them.  Thus, the primary tendency of spiritism, is to rehabilitate all the old beliefs that have been founded on misinterpreted mythology, which have been, and are, the cause of natural enmity between men of science and the facts of spiritism themselves.  It seems to me that the diablerie and the grotesquerie of the modern phenomena may be humorously directed against the sham divinity that would otherwise have been exalted to the pedestal from which other false gods have been dethroned.  No more infallibility.  I soon saw that if the old book were plumped into the new boat, unexplained, it would scuttle it and might sink it.  The so-called Christian Spiritualists, for example, are never tired of proclaiming that the facts of Spiritualism and the miracles of the Bible are identical; and that if one are true, the others were.  But, supposing some comparative mythologist comes and shows us that Hebrew miracles are Egyptian myths, and explains their symbolical nature according to evidence yet extant, although unknown to the people of one book—proving that the assumed miracle never meant what has been assumed,—then the tables are turned on the Christian Spiritualists.  This was why I devoted the best years of my life to the matter of mythology; and I have shown that the miracles of misinterpreted mythology are not to be explained by modern Spiritualism, but by mythology itself; when explained they are true to neither the one nor the other, but are repudiated by both.

    There are valid reasons why the theoretic and ideal Spiritualism of orthodox theology, that was based upon a false interpretation of ancient ideas, is, and must be, at enmity by nature with Spiritualism of free and original thought that is based on phenomenal and verifiable facts,—which is at liberty to explore and seek the sources of the manufactured mystery of the present in the primitive mysteries of the past.  It is at enmity to-day.  By and by it will gradually claim our facts in order that these may help to rehabilitate and re-establish its own exploded fallacies!  But, it will be too late!  The fictions will have been found out first!  Hence the necessity for orthodoxy holding aloof a little longer.  Some writers regret its attitude, and its opposition to Spiritualism!  But this is its testimony to the truth,—coming as it does from those who have always opposed that which is scientifically true.  If orthodoxy could have assisted at the birth of Modern Spiritualism it would have been only with the view of procuring an abortion, or of surreptitiously making sure that the babe should be at least still-born!  They have done enough!  They have brought death into the Mental World, enthroned a dying Deity in Heaven!  Theirs is the past with its dead yesterdays!  The living future's long to morrow is ours.  In conclusion, I have to confess that the Spiritualists, as a body, are possibly the most curious agglomerate of human plum-pudding-stone in the world—an aggregate of the most cranky and kinky individualities ever massed together.  We are drawn, but by no means bound together, by the facts to which we testify in common.  We are an inchoate and an incoherent cloud of witnesses.  Of one thing only do we speak with one voice.  That is the reality of our facts; the actuality of our phenomena, to which I bear true witness to-night.  But, mark this!  It was not Spiritualism that created, or is accountable for, this bristling crowd of cranks!  These are the diverse outcome of other systems of thought.  These are the warts on the stricken and stunted tree.  These are the thistles and thorns of uncultivated fields; the wanderers, during forty years, in the theological wilderness; the rebels against usurped authority; devil-may-cares who are determined to do their own thinking, be the consequence what it may.  We club together, all the excrescences of characters that never could attain a natural growth under the old cramping conditions, and of these we will yet make a knottier iconoclastic mace for breaking down the false images set up for worship.  We stand with all our divergences distinct, but massed together like a chevaux-de frize of serried spears around one central truth, whoever, may advance against us, or touch it whoso dares!  Spiritualism is sure to be terribly iconoclastic!  It means a new light of revolution in the world from the old eternal source.  And you cannot have new light let in without seeing many old acquaintances with a new face.  Many aspects of things will change; and some things that we mistook for live faces will turn into the sheerest masks of mockery, and whiten with the sweat of dissolution running down them.  The old grounds of belief are breaking up rapidly, no matter what fresh efforts may be made to deceive, delude, and secure the ignorant, the infants, or the aborigines.  The orthodox creed is doomed to reversal, even as a dish is wiped clean, and turned upside down.  The foundations of the false, cruel, and gory faith are all afloat.  It was built as the Russians rear their Summer Palace on the frozen river Neva, and the great thaw has come suddenly upon them; the ominous sounds of the final break-up are in their ears, their anchorage and place of trust is crumbling before their eyes.  For they had built on the very things (or condition of things) which had sealed up the running springs, and stayed the stream of progress in its course.  They have arrested for the purpose of resting.  And here is the hint of Science, of Spiritualism, of Materialism, of Freethought, in every form.  That they must move on, and get out of the way, or be moved off for ever.  The fraud founded on a fable is found out.  The Christian religion dies, in proportion as it loses the power to persecute.  Spiritualism, as I interpret it, means a new life in the world, and new life is not brought forth without pain and partings, and the sheddings of old decay.  New ideas are not born in the mind without the pains and pangs of parturition and to get rid of our old in-grained errors of false teaching, is like having to tear up by the root the snag of one's own teeth, with our own hand.  But, by our own hand and will this has to be done, for nothing else can do it.  New light and life, however, do not come to impoverish, they come to enrich; and no harm can befall the nature of that which is eternally true.  It is only falsehood that fears the transfiguring touch of light; that must needs shrink and shrink until it shrivels away.  Spiritualism will prove a mighty iconoclast, but the fetishes and idols it destroys will yield up their concealed treasures of innermost truth, as did the statue which was destroyed by Mahmoud, the image-breaker.  The priestly defenders offered him an enormous sum to spare their god, but he resisted the bribe and emote mightily with his iron mace; down fell the image, and as it broke there rolled out of it a river of pent-up wealth, which had been hoarded and hidden within.  It will take a long time, said a learned professor, before this sort of thing—Spiritualism—saves the world.  And this expression of an obsolete system of thought was, no doubt, considered to be a "modern instance" of wisdom.  But the world has never been lost, and consequently, does not need to be, and never can be, saved, in the sense intended such language has lost its meaning for us, it has become one of the dead languages of the past; we have quite another use for the facts found in Nature.  Spiritualism will have done a great work, if only by abolishing that craven fear of dying which has been instilled into us from before birth, the child in embryo having been made to embody the mother's shudderings at the frightful language used by the torturers of souls, who fulminate from the pulpit.  If it sets us free to do our own thinking as rational men and women, who have so long and so profoundly suffered from the pretentions of the Sacerdotalists, who continue to peddle from the pulpit in the name of God, a system of delusion, the foundations of which are to be discovered at last in misinterpreted mythology.  Against which system of false teaching, I, for one, am at war to the death, with any and every weapon I can lay hands on, including this most potent weapon—the sword of Spiritualism.

____________________

 
From the

BROOKLYN EAGLE
Nov. 18, 1883.

The Views of the People Upon a variety of Topics.

Recollections of Gerald Massey.

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:

    Mr. Gerald Massey's presence in this country recalls many old time memories.  It in fully thirty years since I met him last, a young English Radical filled with all the stir and hope expressed in Massey's poems.  We than believed truly that as he sang:

    Let me see, that must have been in 1849, and Mr. Massey must have been less than twenty years of age.  I remember him distinctly.  He was below rather than above the middle stature, of slender frame, not a weakling by any means, with a face of marked beauty and clearness of outline.  It was striking too, with its heavy mane of brown hair falling back in a full unparted wave from a broad and well moulded forehead, beneath which were luminous and large eves, full of light and gray in color, if I am not mistaken.  His nose was strong and straight, and the mouth also full and well shaped.  His manners or ways, were a little rustic, but full of grace and inate dignity of character.  I recall his voice with pleasure, for he talked or lectured at the John street Institute, Fitzroy Square, quite near to Tottenham Court Road.  I think, also, he was a student at the Workingmen's College, in Golden Road,  I believe, under the presidency of Frederick Denison Maurice, and tutored by such types of Christian socialists as Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes.

    Gerald Massey, speaking from the English point of view, is essentially a man of the people; he had a hard time or it too, in his youth, and found out, as he himself said in a preface to the earlier edition of his poems, that the muse does not love entertainment which is not fit for man or beast.  "So many lions are in the way of the gate beautiful," wrote the poet, "that if the poor man's heart breaks out in song, it is like to fall in hailstones, rather than fructifying rain."

    Mr. Massey was born in Devon*, so much I remember.  His father, who labored on a canal, died when Gerald was about nine or ten years old*.  His mother worked hard and effectively to give the boy some sort of education.  It was not much a child of the poor could get in those days—forty years and more ago—in the parish schools of rural England.  But the times were seething with thought.  Gerald Massey became known, almost famous, I might say, by his lyrical outbursts, early in 1848.  Of course I know that he has surpassed the expression of his hot youth, but I am sure that none of us will love him more in the later and more distinctly artistic work of his teeming imagination and scholarly brain than we did then and since, for the splendid passion and power of his outcry.  He voiced, as no young soul and brain had ever done, the cry of English labor and sympathy with the revolutionary outbreaks of that time.  We were all Chartists, of course, and Gerald among the rest.  What a time that was; the march of young Europe in 1848?  I could easily recall song after song, poem after poem, wherein Massey, with fervor and exuberant expression, gave fire and flame, form and harmony to the aspiration of his class and people, his time and its wrongs.  I was a young fellow who looked on afar off and worshipped. And I am glad to have done so; to me, Gerald Massey was really the Alton Locke and more of the period.

    What a time it was, I say!  There were the young men of the Christian Socialist school—knightly fellows all. They included not only Maurice, Kingsley, Hughes, but Neale, Lord Godolphin, Robertson, of Brighton, and many another. "Alton Locke" had just been written and "Yeast" gave form to the problems of unrest and struggle.  Gladstone and Disraeli were still young men.  Mazzini had made a heroic effort for Italy, and Kossuth's name was an oriflame to us all.  I remember a poem in 1849, "England's Welcome," I think is its title, which Gerald Massey issued at the time of the Hungarian apotheosis in London.

    No, I do not positively recollect when Massey first came to London, nor exactly what he did in the way of employment.  I think he was there in 1848, and he probably had some connection with the Liberal press.  The John street Institute, where I saw him first, if I recall the incidents aright, was as to matters of faith, the opposite of the Working Men's College.  It was in fact the college of the Secularist movement founded by George Jacob Holyoake, after his imprisonment as a free thinker for blasphemy in 1845 or '46.  The institute itself existed before that, being for a long period the headquarters of the Free Thinkers' movement in London.  There was a large hall, a fine library, coffee and class rooms.  Lectures were given on educational and scientific themes and classes were formed and carried on, at which hundreds of young people were taught.  The hall was the meeting place of nearly every Radical movement of the times.  Fanny Wright (Mlle. D'Arasmont), Holyoake, Southwick, Hetherington, W.J. Linton (the artist engraver and author), young Bradlaugh, Lloyd Jones, William Howitt, Mazzini, Jullian Harney and many scores more were frequent as speakers and teachers at John street. Gerald Massey soon became known there, and was of course greatly admired and beloved too.

    These are my recollections of the poet.  I left England early in 1851, and only know of him since all the world knows.                                              COLONEL.

* Ed. — Massey was born at Tring in Hertfordshire.  His father, William, died on 6 October 1880, when Massey was 52.

____________________

 
From

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sunday, November 18, 1883.

A NEW PHILOSOPHY.

    It is unfortunate that Mr. GERALD MASSEY has arrived in this country at a time when the Concord School of Philosophy is not in session.  There can be no doubt that Concord is his true sphere.  Anything vaguer and more unthinkable than Mr. MASSEY'S lecture on "Man's Search after His Soul" has never previously been written, and had it been delivered in Concord last Summer, the fame of the Joneses and Harrises would have been at once and for ever eclipsed.

    Being an exceptionally profound philosopher, Mr. MASSEY of course rejects the Christian religion and treats if with lofty contempt. He has a philosophic system which is infinitely better than the philosophy and morality of Revelation.  Through the magnificent vagueness and unequaled unintelligibility of his lecture we find occasional glimpses of the grand system of which Mr. MASSEY is the prophet.  It consists briefly in the theory that man has seven souls, and that he obtains proof of the existence of his seventh and only really valuable soul by getting drunk.  The state of drunkenness is a state of "spiritual awakenment," and in this state man may interrogate nature, become as "a spirit among spirits," and indulge in various other useful and entertaining games.  The divine drunkenness of which Mr. MASSEY treats is not produced exclusively by alcohol or opium.  Mesmerism is a cheaper stimulant, and what is known as the trance state is the variety of drunkenness best adapted for communion with our seventh souls.  A more simple and beautiful system of philosophy and religion than this has never been invented, and its invention proves Mr. MASSEY to be one of the giant philosophic intellects of the age.  Think for a moment how much easier is Mr. MASSEY'S answer to the inquiry what must a man do to be saved? than is the answer set forth in the New Testament—if Mr. MASSEY will excuse the mention of that unphilosophic work in the same breath with his private and patent philosophy.  Mr. MASSEY'S answer virtually is: "Get drunk and commence with your seventh soul."  This is what any man with a little whisky or few pennies can do, and it ought to become immensely popular.

    It is possible that the Concord philosophers will disapprove of Mr. MASSEY'S teachings.  They have been trying with vast labor and waste of words to find out the unthinkable, when, according to Mr. MASSEY, they could have attained the summit of all knowledge by the help of a few mesmeric passes or a few gills of whisky.  This renders the whole Concord School of Philosophy, with its lectures and essays, a waste of time, and takes away from JONES, HARRIS, and their kind their occupation.

    It seems ungrateful to find even the slightest fault with Mr. MASSEY'S lecture, but still it could be wished that he had explained the connection between the seven souls of man and the nine lives of cats.  There must be some connection, for both nine and seven are sacred numbers, and this connection may have an important bearing upon the question whether man may not have two additional and as yet undiscovered souls, the knowledge of which he can attain, not by mere drunkenness, but by positive lunacy.  Mr. MASSEY should investigate this great question, and Colney Hutch would afford him the quiet and seclusion necessary for the purpose.

____________________

 
From the

BROOKLYN EAGLE
Jan. 6, 1884.

GERALD MASSEY.
_________________

He Complains of His Reception in
the United States.
An Interview with the Lecturer and Author. His Estimate of
American Literary Men—The Great Political Question of the
Hour—Free Trade Becoming a Necessity—Science and the
Bible—Adam a Negro—The Mysteries of the Hebrew Scriptures
and Ancient Mythology.

    Mr. Gerald Massey, who recently brought a suit against the New York Times for $5,000 damages for alleged libel is at present residing in this city, with his lawyer, ex-Judge A. H. Dailey.  Mr. Massey came to this country about seven weeks ago intending to deliver several lectures on subjects to which he has given much time and study.  He made one attempt in New York, and, owing partly to ill health and to the alleged libel in the Times, he has not since appeared on the lecture platform.  He proposes, however, to make Brooklyn his headquarters so long as legal proceedings shall demand his attention, in the meantime lecturing when occasion may offer.  Eight years ago Mr. Massey visited this country, and was favourably received in all the large cities, and since that time his name has been prominently before the public through his writings.  His reception this time has not been so warm as he anticipated.  As soon as he can leave he will visit San Francisco, go thence to Australia and will return to the United States next year.  To ascertain the views of this well known English poet, litterateur and lecturer on special matters to which he has given his attention, an EAGLE reporter waited upon him lately and asked for an interview.

    Mr. Massey is an interesting conversationalist.  He is small in stature, with a full, iron gray beard, and head slightly bald.  He is thoroughly English, both in appearance and conversation, and when talking upon one of his favorite subjects becomes very eloquent, even with an audience of one before him.

HIS DUTY AS A PUBLIC MAN.

    Incidentally referring to the libel suit in which he is plaintiff, he said that all be desired was vindication.  He was not after the money, it being his desire to have the damages placed at a still lower figure than $5,000, but he felt it to be his duty as a public man to try and stop the system which he said was practiced with impunity by certain papers in this country.  America, he had supposed, was a free country, where a man could utter his thoughts, however novel they might appear, without being called a lunatic.  For years, he said, he had been at work on his new philosophy, encouraged with the thought that he would be able to present the result of his labors before American audiences, such as he had had when he was here eight years ago.  "It is rather hard," he added, "to be met on the very threshold of my return to America with such a reception."

    In speaking of America, Mr. Massey said "I like this country very much.  All my life I have been a Republican* and am entirely in sympathy with your form of government.  I have watched affairs here with considerable attention, and when time offers shall put in writing some of my observations."

    "What do you regard as some of the important political questions now engaging attention?"

    "The question of capital and labor is assuming large proportions and cannot be overlooked by statesmen and politicians."

THE NECESSITY FOR CO-OPERATION.

    "What are your views on that subject?"

    "I think nothing will solve the difficulty but co-operation.  For instance, all who work on a paper should unite in a co-operative body to protect against unjust treatment.  I believe that trades unions are a necessity, although they have thus far been very expensive: but I don't see how the battle can be fought on any other line.  I think the laboring classes in all countries are benefited by free trade.  Certain industries may suffer pro tem., but the masses of the people will be benefited.  I cannot see how the working classes can favor your protection laws.  Surely they have been misdirected in the matter.  But I can't understand your politics.  The Republican party, I am told, is the party of protection.  If the workingmen will only wake up to a thorough understanding of the the real merits of the question they can't help seeing that it is manifestly for their interest to have free trade in this country.  Our imports in England are £140,000,000 while your imports are only £80,000,000.  We shall be glad to balance up the account."

    At this point Mr. Massey took a patent mucilage bottle from the table, and holding it up said: "I am particularly struck with the ingenuity of Americans; the little devices to save labor.  Now, we have never invented anything of this kind.  Americans do not put near as much labor in their work as Englishmen do.  They are also more deliberate in bodily motion.  The English go in greater hurry than the Americans.  I have noticed this difference in watching your people going to their business in their large cities.  Your orators, too, are much slower in speech than ours.  When I returned home from my last visit to this country I wrote a little epigram.  It was as follows:

Everything in this country is on the point of expectancy.  You have your coming city and coming man and coming greatness."

STANDARD OF LITERARY MEN.

    "How do you regard the literary ability of men in this country?"

    "You have some very popular men, but they are not always the most profound.  Americans are putting more mental force in other departments than in literature.  You notice this in works like the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Pacific Railroads, the rebuilding of Chicago and the like.  Referring to individuals, I think you could cut twenty Longfellows out of Lowell.  Longfellow wrote some very pretty poems, but little that brilliant.  Lowell's rank among poets is permanent.  I have derived a great deal of good from Emerson's writings, especially some years ago, when I began to appreciate what Arnold terms 'the best that has been thought and uttered.'  I think Emerson's little book on England is the best that has ever been written.  Lowell, Emerson and Hawthorn are perfectly unique, and I regard them as national representatives.  I am very fond of Thoreau.  I like his quaint and curious observations on nature.  His style is exceedingly unique.  There is a phrase in his writings that I enjoy very much as is illustrated in his reply to his publisher, who returned 700 copies of his book, saying that he was only able to sell 300 out of the edition of 1,000.  Thoreau said that he rejoiced that his personal privacy had only been invaded by three in ten.  I think Mark Twain is excruciatingly funny, if you are in a mood to fool around with him.  It appears to me that he and those of his school are offering a good antidote to Puritan restriction.  It is so delightfully irreverent that it must help to break and crumble the old theology."

ADAM A BLACK MAN.

    Mr. Massey has recently published two volumes on "Natural Genesis," in which he advances his ideas on evolution.  He accepts the postulates of Darwin and Wallace.  He acknowledges that evolution is only a process and does not touch cause, but as a Spiritualist Mr. Massey himself postulates a cause.  In his works he shows that mythology is a mirror to the prehistoric period of sociology.  In the first volume of his "Genesis" the author attempts to prove that the gesture sign of the Indians and Egyptians were the same.  He shows that the signs of the Indians on air have been stereotyped by the Egyptians on stone monuments; that typology had its origin in signs.  For instance, the left hand clasping the right, the left being lower, was a sign of humility or an act of worship.  The hands held out, with palm downward, was the sign of negation, and was used by the Indians, Egyptians and by modern brakemen.

    "My opinion," said Mr. Massey, "is that the origin of all things human was in inner Africa.  The black race went over the world carrying the earliest signs of words.  The blacks of Australia, India and Britain were from Central Africa.  We have the initial point of departure in every line or color in Africa to-day, from the blackest black through all the shades of brown, red and yellow to the white.  The white will not work back to unify with the black.  The Pima and Comanche Indians in America prepare their dead for burial in the same manner as the Bongo and Bechuna of inner Africa."  Mr. Massey continued to name other instances to illustrate the same point.  He said he had no doubt of the evolution of man from the animal, but what was involved in man's mental breeding was a question.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

    In referring to evolution and the Bible, Mr. Massey said: "In my writings I attempt to show that all the mystery of the Bible has its origin in mythology, and all modern mysterios derived from the ancient have also their origin in mythology, being literally interpreted.  For example: The story of the six days creation when compared with Persian or still earlier Egyptian records can be easily understood.  The fall from Heaven was an Egyptian mythos.  The history of man in the Garden of Eden was only a phase of mythos.  The exodus was first celebrated by the feast of the Passover, or by the transit at the vernal equinox, which was a celestial myth before made historical in the migrations of the Jews.  The Genesis of the Bible gives an account of the historic first human pair.  But there never could have been a first man and woman.  There never was a time but what there was was a whole species of a kind, if extant, at whatever stage of the development of the species.  There is no use trying to harmonize evolution with such a revelation as this is supposed to have been.  Science must go its own way independently."

    The interview closed with Mr. Massey calling the reporter's attention to the following passage in his book on summing up his views in regard to the Bible: "Parents who feel the full responsibility of teaching a little child that accepts as truth whatsoever is seriously affirmed ought surely to consider it an unpardonable sin against the innocence of infancy for their children to be taught that the fables of mythology are the sacred and true 'word of God,' if found in the Hebrew Scriptures."

* Ed. - in U.S. political terms, Massey was undoubtedly 'republican' with a small 'r', and Democrat with a capital 'D'.

____________________

 
From

BROOKLYN EAGLE
30 January 1884.

IN THE MIST OF AGES.
________

Christianity Another Phase of Egyptian Mythology.

Mr. Gerald Massey, the well known English poet and metaphysician, delivered a lecture last night  in the Church of the New Spiritual Dispensation, Clinton avenue, on "The Non Historic Character of the Canonical Gospels."  This was the third essay of the series, and it was listened to with interest.  Mr. Massey commenced his lecture by condemning vaccination, both theological and sanitary.  Children were taught, he said, that the fables of mythology were the true and sacred words of God, and the lecturer was also vaccinated in body and soul, and was now trying to get rid of the evil effects of the virus.  Mr. Massey had found a refuge in Spiritualism, but the Christian Spiritualists were never tired of proclaiming that the facts of Spiritualism and the miracles of the Bible were identical.  And when some mythologist came along and showed that the Hebrew miracles were Egyptian myths then the tables were turned on the Christian Spiritualists.  The lecturer's theory was that the annunciation and immaculate conception, the birth, the time and details of the baptism, the temptation, the miracles, parables, and crucifixion and resurrection recorded in the Canonical Gospels were reproductions of the religious mysteries of Horus and Osiris.  Christian theology was in conclusion severely attacked by Mr. Massey, who held that its dogmas were responsible for much of the misery and suffering that had been measured out to humanity.

____________________

 
From

THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
29 October 1886.

GERALD MASSEY IN GLASGOW.

WATERLOO ROOMS: Subjects and dates:—

    Tuesday, Nov. 9, "The Devil of Darkness; or the Old Mystery of Evil seen in the New Light of Evolution:"

    Thursday, Nov. 11, "The Historical (Jewish) Jesus, and the Mythical (Egyptian) Christ."

    Sunday, Nov. 14, "Paul as a Gnostic Christian, and Peter the 'Man of Sin.' "

    Our readers in Glasgow will do good work if they can fill the hall with a thinking audience.  Everybody should make a point of attending, and take as many friends as possible.

    Letters may be addressed to Mr. Massey, care of Mr. J. Bowman, 65, Jamaica Street, Glasgow.

_________

We have received the following:—

____________________
 
A POET OF YESTER-YEAR
 
By

 James Milne

From Pages in Waiting, The Bodley Head, London, 1926.

WHAT, would you say, has been the most difficult moment of your life?  You would say that there have been many difficult moments, that they have all been different in their difficulty, and that, therefore, it is not easy to answer the question.

    Well, then, let us say the most dramatic, or the most embarrassing, the most harassing or the most anxious moment of your life?  That lessens and tightens the choice, and just as a beautiful woman said of her beauty, "Yes, we all have our moments," so, also, we all have those of drama and embarrassment, of harassment and anxiety.

    Perhaps if I said "worst moment," I might get still nearer what is meant, and I think mine was when I had to speak a word over the coffin of Gerald Massey, the poet, before it was laid in a churchyard on a hill not far from London Town.

    No, I couldn't do it, I told his daughter, when she asked me, and I still said no when she begged me, for it seemed a very high undertaking.  A sensitive man hates to speak the public word, though I have noticed that when he nerves himself to the ordeal, his message and his deliverance are better than those of the insensitive man.  Naturally, because he speaks with his spiritual being as well as with his mind, and so there is personality.

    Wouldn't I do it?  Gerald Massey's friends and contemporaries had nearly all passed away.  He had lived into a generation which scarcely knew him as the mid-Victorian poet, singing lyrics and liberty.  He had long ceased to be the poet, and had become a deep student of Egyptology, a far more important mission, as he thought.  The silent singer should not to be let go silently to the grave—wouldn't I say, over it, what Gerald Massey had been among the English people, what he was, and what, perhaps, he would remain?

    While she spoke thus, his daughter put her hand reverently on the head of his coffin, in the little house they occupied not far from the Crystal Palace.  How could I say "No" any more, and a day later I made that farewell speech.  What I said I never could remember, though the company at the burial assured me it was the fit word.  May be, because in such a tense minute it is not the word or the thought which counts, so much as the feeling; sympathy, understanding, the uniting of hearts into a sincere "hail and farewell."

    Gerald Massey's pen abides with me, a token of that afternoon and of other times I had spent with him.  It is a stout, stubby pen, unusual altogether, like the man himself, even gnarled with use, as he was gnarled with age—for when he died he had nearly counted fourscore years.  But he was never old, apart from the frailties which time loads upon the body, and his blue eyes shone with the light of life.

    Could I describe him further for you?  Not easily, because he had the mystery which is characteristic of all unusual spirits.  They are different from the others, from the ordinary others, and are just themselves.  Gerald Massey was essentially himself and yet essentially of the people, the English people.  He had their characteristics, simplicity, endurance, faith, and he had proved that a thousand times.  But he was English individualized, as you might put it, and this came out markedly in his conversation, which was plain and forthright, like the English, and yet original and poetic like himself.

    "I had no childhood," he once told me softly, speaking of his hard, early days.  His young way took him through the valley of the shadow of want and up the hill of weary toil.  But he climbed, he climbed, not as many "climbers" climb to-day, who are not Gerald Masseys, but seeking the sun of the heights, and seeking it so that he could proclaim it to others, thanks to the very true gift of poetry with which Providence had endowed him:

    Those lines, with their far echo of a labour of love, were written by Massey ever so many years since.  The years have been many, too, since Walter Savage Landor came upon them in a volume which made him cry out that a new John Keats had come.  "Here is such poetry," he wrote, "as Jeffrey would have tossed aside with derision and as Gifford would have torn to pieces in despair.  Can anything more or better be said of it."  There was one in the literary eye for the famous "Edinburgh Reviewers," whom Byron turned on in a famous poem.

    You could see, looking into the seared and seer-like face of old Gerald Massey, that young Gerald Massey had sung because he must, with pathos and love, with beauty and colour in his verse.  He became the Laureate of the Chartist times, and, said John Ruskin, "your poems have been a helpful and precious gift to the working-classes," and "few national services can be greater than that which you have rendered."

    But I was never very successful in getting the old Gerald Massey, the Egyptologist, to talk about young and middle-aged Gerald Massey, the poet.  He had put aside the lyre for the torch of the Egyptologist, hoping to illuminate the history of mankind from its beginnings in ancient Egypt, to him the storied cradle of the world.  Of that he would talk, but then he talked so deeply that you were at once floundering in waters where you could not swim, or even float.  Often I have thought, "Would that Massey had lived until the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.  Here would have been a treasury of the light for which he dug so long and ardently."

    Yes, whenever I saw him, his eager face and his velvet skull-cap were buried in Egyptian hieroglyphics.  But he would leave them to gossip and to look out from his London windows on green trees.  They spoke to him of the country, of his dainty Hertfordshire itself, and recalled the rural scenes amid which he was bred.  He had piped to Nature in many a verse, as Pan might himself, and Nature remained his friend, his comrade, to the end.

    Thus the old Massey immersed, perhaps even lost, in ancient Egypt, never quite got away from the earlier Massey, an undoubtedly sweet soloist in the choir of our Victorian poets.  The salute of recognition had come from low and high, the darger [Ed. casual labourer] in his ditch and the statesman and the novelist.  Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, or, again, George Eliot, Robert Browning, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson—he knew them all; but he wondered if he had kept their letters?  Perhaps not.  He recalled for me a talk he had on some occasion with Tennyson about Spiritualism, a faith with the one, as a strain of it has been read into the "In Memoriam" of the other.  He had "plumbed the void of death" and was as calmly sure of it as he was of the poetic qualities of Browning, whom he helped to proclaim at the market-cross of fame.  You will find Gerald Massey gently portrayed by "George Eliot" in 'Felix Holt,' and that had not displeased him.  Nor, even when he became the self-centred Egyptologist, could he have regretted any influence his poems may have had on other writers.

    His clinking ballad of "Sir Richard Grenville's Last Fight," on the "little ship Revenge," is a fit companion to Tennyson's on the same subject, which came after it.  "I am English to the heart roots," said Massey, and we read that into a verse from his "Sea Kings".

    A great idea, if not great poetry, for Gerald Massey was the singer who sang like branches in the wind.  One thinks of a later poet and turns to Rudyard Kipling's haunting "Song of the Dead":

    By gifts, by achievement, and by a spacious poetic suggestion, Gerald Massey was easily among the genuine poets of the Victorian era.  That was so, even if we estimate him strictly in words which I heard him use, for as Egyptologist he could speak of the lost poet in himself with a very singular detachment.

    "I think the poems real, as far as they go," he said, "but their range is very limited."  His verse might contain the flower, but the fruit of his life, as he regarded it, was to be looked for elsewhere.  When he spoke like that you quoted, probably not quite accurately, the saying of Fletcher of Saltoun: "Give me the writing of a nation's songs and let who will make its laws."  He looked at you with his innocent, wondering eyes, as much as to say, "Well, there's no harm in the saying, but I ceased to write verse because I had a greater task."

    Call it the sacrifice of a poet by himself, hara-kiri on Mount Olympus, call it mistaken zeal, call it what you like, the deed bestirs one's thought, especially in this day of many "hard faces" and much self-seeking.

    "It was not," he admitted, "that I felt the fount and source of song had dried up within or without me.  Nor was it owing to any spiritual lassitude, from lack of faith in man or woman either."  No, but "Instead of nursing ancient delusions, by poetizing misinterpreted mythology, I have been strenuously seeking to get rid of them by explanation."  Away with the muse, he gave himself the stern marching order, and shoulder the spade of knowledge!

    He was amused, telling me so, about a visitor who had called to offer him praise for a poet.  "But," quoth he, "it was the Corn-Law rhymer he really wanted, Ebenezer Elliott, and so I would have disappointed him in any case."  Ebenezer was a contemporary of Massey, but while they were both writing, one rhymes, the other poetry, he had not attained the larger, more objective outlook of his later life.  It bade him prospect for other treasure in his quest after truth, and it was a great thing for any man to make a change like this.

    Said young Gerald Massey, "I have only entered the lists; the race has yet to be run."  Old Gerald Massey was saying that as Egyptologist to the last day of his life, but the world was a better world in his age than in his youth.  We did, as a human family, make progress, and "one may almost expect to see the time when the writer can earn his living by telling the truth."

    So wrote Massey, a little cynically, yet in good faith, when his collected and selected verse, 'My Lyrical Life,' was given to us as a last poetic legacy.   My copy of it stands beside Massey's pen, a second memoir and relic of him, for it bears the inscription in his large dashing hand: "From the writer, with the Bard's kindliest of kind regards."

    You may not find the book, though you call on a dozen booksellers, but students of English verse know it, especially those who love the human associations of that verse.  They are strong and dramatic in the case of Gerald Massey, because it was his lot to start life with something of:

    He observed to me, modestly, indifferently, that a generation had arisen to whom the 'Lyrical Life' "might be as good as MS."  He meant it might be as little known as if it had remained in manuscript, for, after all, if you have ever written poetry you like to think that it is read somehow, somewhere, by somebody.  You may turn your back upon your own early self to take a new road, but it is pathetic to think that the old one you have travelled is only known to yourself.

    It consoled and comforted Massey, therefore, when a friendly singer, writing of his life and work, linked the two roads, the first and the last, in a burst of song:

    Now and then the poet stirred in the Egyptologist, though a little uneasily, perhaps, as if the swing of verse had been forgotten. When there was such a stirring you could feel, all the time, that the Egyptologist was rebuking the Poet in his own words:

    Massey was an angel of deliverance to me one afternoon I had drifted to Norwood and in upon him, for he handed me four unpublished poems, saying "to print them if I liked them."  The silent singer singing again!

    Here was an event, and I found that three of the pieces had been written during the South African War and had Massey's old familiar patriotic fervour, as in this verse of one called "The Dear Old Land":

    Another of the poems had the title "The Empire," and the opening verse runs:

    Myself, I liked better a little poem called "Tommy on Spion Kop," and I said so, and he nodded his grave, grey head, as if meaning, "So do I."  Judge yourselves, however, for here is the poem:

    My chief treasure, however, was the fourth new poem, which Massey had written for his small granddaughter.  He had been telling her of the cruel custom of blinding cage-birds with hot wires, in order to make them sing: and then he wrote the poem and called it "The Lark in London":

    We have the authentic Gerald Massey there, the large heart which warmed English public opinion in his singing-day, the human vision of things, and the easy lilt of the born poet.  It was something, in a good friendship with him, to have and to hold such a poem, and to communicate it to others who have not known Gerald Massey either personally, or perhaps in his writings.  Well, to them something new is born, like Massey's "Babe Christabel":