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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 16
…s slide. So, fearing that I might go, they hurried off themselves, and told him how that wicked Crowley had tried to lead them away from Jesus. Worse, I had called Page I a Pharisee. That was true ; I had said it. Dreadful of me ! And Page I, who “ walked very close to Jesus ”, of course went and told. Yes, they all walked very close to Jesus — as close as Judas did. 4. A boy named Barton was sentenced to 120 strokes of the cane on his bare shoulders, for some petty theft of which he was presumably innocent. Superb was the process of trial. It …
1910 · PDF PAGE 24
…that it literally stank. So did the women ! I stood it for breakfast, I stood it for lunch, I stood it for tea — but ’twasn't tea, ’twas Jesus ! Dinner came ; cold boiled Jesus, and the scrag end of it at that ! I went out and stood by the sea. I was lost in reverie. Here were these hags of hell, the product of an unvarying diet of cold boiled Jesus ! By God ! could I not save somebody ? These had once been fresh healthy English girls, fit for life and laughter. C. B. J. had mummified them to what they were. I would be the Saviour of the future…
1910 · PDF PAGE 23
… mange- bitten cats ! But there was worse. Only one food was on the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ; and that food cold boi- led Jesus. I stomached it well enough — God’s blood ! I had my belly full of yore and knew to despise it — but in vain I tried to talk of other things. The Boulter blasphemy case was on, and the cold boiled Jesus was so
1910 · PDF PAGE 34
…t that anyone can take deities so seriously as to do anyone an injury on their behalf. He is at heart a Pagan ; Mary is his mistress and Jesus his « Bambino », and he loves to play with them in the woods where the sunlight traces its faint fan-patterns among the leaves. The idea of a Jesus who objected to people playing on a Sunday — who insisted on being worshipped in a silk hat and frock coat, who couldn’t stand people obtaining re- freshment after 12-30 — well, it never struck him, that’s all ! So when I go wandering among country-side Catho…
1910 · PDF PAGE 47
…idens who rave in Lesbian desire ; The buck of sixty, cunning as a trapper, Stalking the pig-tailed, masturbating flapper ; The creeping Jesus — Caution ! we may shock it ! — With one hand through his torn-out breeches pocket ; Flagellates shrieking in our streets and schools, Our men all hogs, and all our women ghouls : — This is our England, pious dame and prude, Who calls me blasphemous, unchaste, and rude ! Come to sweet air, poor sirens of the stews !
1910 · PDF PAGE 33
XXVIII PREFACE. large a number of peers there are against whom I have not a shadow of evidence or even suspicion. Luckily the jud- ges are less wary. While the bishops are such easy game as to be hardly worth powder and shot. There, I’ve done it now ! Vous avez écrit contre le bon Dieu ; c’est mauvais, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Vous avez écrit contre Jésus Christ ; c’est pire encore, mais Il le vous pardonnera. Mais vous avez écrit contre Leurs Excellences, et Elles ne le vous pardonneront jamais. But this lion can bite back ! Nor after all, …
1910 · PDF PAGE 13
…e out of sect. He had voted at the Parliamentary elections by cros- sing out the names of the candidates and writing : “ I vote for King Jesus ”. He had started a school for the Sons of Brethren at 51, Bateman Street, Cambridge. May God bite into the bones of men the pain of that hell on earth (I have prayed often) that by them it may be sowed with salt, accursed for ever ! May the maiden that passes it be barren, and the pregnant woman that beholdeth it abort ! May the birds of
1910 · PDF PAGE 19
…ded and abetted me in extinguishing street lamps ; and how when a policeman pounced upon me, he forsook me and fled ! A true disciple of Jesus ! I had no playmates ; my morals might be corrupted ! Only the “ children of brethren ” were eligible, and these were as a rule socially impossible. I was always being watched for signs of masturbation, and always being warned and worried about it. It says something for human innocence that after four years of this insane treatment I was still absolutely ignorant, though on fire in every nerve to learn t…
1910 · PDF PAGE 30
…aisiaz and elsewhere ; cleaner, truly, than the furtive eroticism in Prometheus Unbound. Shelley was more consciously under the curse of Jesus.) It is this consciousness of sin which is to my mind the essen- tially Christian attitude. It is this which inspires the out- cry against art and simple pleasures ; these swine nose eve- rywhere for filth, and grunt with shocked glee when they find it. All serious subject are tabooed as “ bad form ! ” (I must add in parenthesis that the eugenic prigs and sex- problem pigs are every whit as bad. They are…
1910 · PDF PAGE 38
… blare of all the trumpets. Call me Israfel, last of the angles, and let the dead rise from their tombs ! I therefore hold the legendary Jesus in no wise respon- sible for the trouble : it began with Luther, perhaps, and went on with Wesley : but no matter ! — what I am trying to get at is the religion which makes England to-day a hell for any man who cares at all for freedom. That religion they call Christianity ; the devil they honour they call God. I accept these definitions, as a poet must do, if he is to be at all intelligible to his age, …
1910 · PDF PAGE 27
XXII PREFACE. There can be no peace between Socrates and Athens, between Jesus and Jerusalem. We must then first throw moral bombs, and this book is mine ! It is a curious position. All my sympathy is with my own class — birth, education, wealth, courage, pride. These are my heritage. But all my own people are busy pretending to live the dirty, stinking, lousy, poor ; Corio- lanus “ licking the breech of a leprous hangman.” (Not Crowley, this time : Catullus). So that on mature consideration I drop the Revd. C. Verey of “ Clouds without Water ”…
1910 · PDF PAGE 17
…, sentence. Last, execution, with intervals of prayer ! Champney’s physique being impaired, one may suppose by his excessive devotion of Jesus, he arranged to give 60 strokes one day, and 60 the next. My memory fails — perhaps Barton will one day oblige with his reminiscences — but I fancy the first day came so near killing him that he escaped the second. I remember one licking I got — on the legs, because flog- ging the buttocks excites the victim’s sensuality ! — 15 mi- nutes prayer, 15 strokes of the cane, 15 minutes more prayer, 15 more str…
1910 · PDF PAGE 40
…nection. The satyr and nymph crowd are mostly painted from imagination, for on my honour I hardly know so many decent people ; I painted Jesus first as a joke — the brass bottle of our braying clergy ; I developed him as a low class Jew [not knowing any South African millionnaires I took him straight out of the Gospel] and lastly I miracu- lously turned him into a real man, chiefly out of compli- ment to the distinguished fictionist Ernest Renan. In other words, I have kept as close to my documents as any one has any reason to expect. With rega…
1910 · PDF PAGE 35
XXX PREFACE. defining Christianity as the religious expression of the slave- spirit in man. I do not wish to argue that the doctrines of Jesus, they and they alone, have degraded the world to its present con- dition. I take it that Christianity is not only the cause but the symptom of slavery. There were slaves in Rome, of course, even under the republic. But it was only through Paul that the slime found tongue, and uttered its agony and blasphemy. Now, through the steady growth of alt- ruism pari-passu with the Gospel that advocates it, the wo…
1910 · PDF PAGE 11
…resoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them ” it was all very well : but two forms a quorum. Jesus will not come for less. This has never been disputed by any doctor of the Brethren. Wigram is clear on the point ; if Darby had ever been clear on any point, it would have been on that ; Kelly never denied