The following pages consist mainly of editorial articles written for the +
"ESSEX COUNTY WASHINGTONIAN," and "THE PIONEER," * interspersed,—
for sake of variety, and to give the book a redeeming trait in the minds
of those who have a strong aversion to its leading principles,—with some
thirty or forty of the first poems of the age, and two or three of less pre-
tensions, which may well congratulate themselves on having an opportunity
to appear in so good company.
The sentiments which characterise the work, as will be seen at a glance,
are at open war with our popular Religion, and nearly all its "Institutions."
The writer sees no beauty in its rites, and no comeliness in its temples.
They seem to him cold, barbarous, repulsive, and degrading. Seeing its
priesthood enlisted against every radical movement for the removal of
human misery, and its places of worship closed hermetically against nearly
all the advocates of human progress, he fails to perceive in that Religion
any elements of moral beauty or spiritual life.—Its faith is a gloomy, inhu-
man, sepulchral principle which may, as its partisans contend, do very well
"to die by," but which is utterly unfit for any intelligent being to live by
-either here or hereafter.-Its God is a haughty, despotic, revengeful king,
glorying chiefly in the abasement of his subjects, and of so low a character
* "THE PIONEER " is a continuation of the " ESSEX COUNTY WASHINGTONIAN," with
no change except of name. It is published weekly, in Lynn, Mass., under the editorial
care of the writer, and is devoted to the advocacy of such sentiments on the subject of
reform as its name indicates. It endeavors to be "independent in everything, neutral
in nothing," asking "a fair field" and such favor as it deserves.