Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/257

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MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY.
243

month or so. Both churches, I imagine, would be completely emptied. To the eclectics of South Place Mr. Spurgeon's doctrines would be mere foolishness, while to the Calvinists of the Tabernacle Mr. Conway would be worse than a stumbling-block: he would be Antichrist. Yet there is a golden bridge over this terrible chasm of conflicting beliefs. Mr. Conway and Mr. Spurgeon have a common object for which they toil; viz., the moral elevation of mankind. Where this essence of all true religions is present, the form is of secondary consequence. Creed or no creed, for the good the path of duty is the same.

"The soul is still oracular: amid the market's din
 List the ominous, stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,
 'They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.'"

Moncure Daniel Conway, it need scarcely be recorded, is by birth an American. He was born in 1832 near Fredericksburg, Stafford County, Va., where his father, Walker Peyton Conway,, a gentleman of independent fortune, enjoyed universal esteem. The elder Conway was both a county magistrate and a member of the State legislature. The stock had come originally from Wales, and in the course of a century or more had multiplied rapidly in Stafford County. Intermarriage with other "leading families" of Moncures and Daniels had been very frequent. The Moncures were of Scottish Jacobite extraction, while the Daniels were English. The father of young Conway's mother was John Moncure Daniel, a graduate in medicine of Edinburgh University, and surgeon-general of the United States army. Among her ancestors was likewise Stone, the