'Sanctuary'

A press report which was reproduced in The Vegetarian News (March 1936) where the editor remarked, "... it seems, two things may rightly be inferred: the first that, even in ecclesiastical circles, the time when 'they shall not hurt nor destroy' has not yet fully (but only locally) come to pass; the second that a slaughter-house is a place which, in its very nature, is quite incapable of being consecrated."

'Christmas Dinner'

'Christmas Contrasts'

From The Animals' Champion (October - December 1963)

Quotation: 'The Vegetarian News' (Editorial: December 1921)

"With the advent of the Christmas season comes the annual festival of slaughter of those whom we are pleased to call the "animals," and we have to lament once more that the customary proclamation of "Peace on earth and good will towards men" should be coincident with a holocaust of cruelty towards the members of the sentient creation whose only crime is that they are weaker than ourselves."

HYMN BEFORE MEAT

From The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (August 1943)

The Rev. Walter Murray, B.D. (1878 - 1936)

Obituary published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (March 1936) - sample of his theology presented under the heading, 'Kindness to Animals - not enough' (October 1941 edition)

'Christian Ethics and the Animal Kingdom' by the Duchess of Hamilton

Here's a theological treatise from 1935 which I stumbled upon only recently and some striking excerpts from the author's moral case.

'Christianity and Vegetarianism' by Esme Wynne-Tyson

From The Vegetarian News (Spring 1956) See also: 'The Saviour of the World'

Quotation: H.W. Hales (1957)

"I believe that vegetarianism is a privileged and enlightened way of life. Let us then be tolerant with those less fortunate in spiritual understanding. We look forward with confidence and longing for the Bible's promised VEGETARIAN NEW EARTH. This will fully justify and condone our inspired way of life on this earth." From a letter, headed 'Christians and Animal Welfare' which was published in The Vegetarian News (Winter 1957 edition)

Catholic vegetarians in Germany (1911)

From The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (March 1911)

'Leo Tolstoy: Food Reformer'

Published in January 1911 See also: Letter and 'The First Step: Chapter IX'

Sermon by the Rev. Philip C. Whiteman, M.A. (1936)

Delivered at the Vegetarian Society AGM and published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (November 1936 edition) See tract: 'Vegetarianism as a factor in religious life'

'Vegetarianism in Relation to the Treatment of Animals' by the Rev. Francis Wood

Originally published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (December 1919) and as a tract in the following year. See: Rev Francis Wood (1854-1934)

Quotation: Rev. Victor Allen Callow (1935)

"These two principles of mercy and sacrifice are in perpetual conflict. Shall I suffer or shall I let another suffer for me? I believe that I have no moral right to ask another to do for me what I am not prepared to do for myself. If I do not think it right to kill animals for food neither is it right for me to condemn another man to a trade which I consider demoralising." From a transcript of the Vegetarian Society's annual Church Service published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (November 1935). Sermon conducted by a latter Minister of the Bible Christian Church of Salford.

'Looking back over a Quarter of a Century' By a Rector

From The Vegetarian Messenger & Health Review (Nov/Dec 1952)

'Why the Omission?' by Rev. J. Tyssul Davis

From The Vegetarian Messenger & Health Review (November 1949)

'Vegetarianism's Pilgrim Fathers' by Charles W. Forward

From The Vegetarian News (February 1940)

Bishop Athelstan Lattie, D.D.

From The Vegetarian Messenger & Health Review (November 1945)

'Food Reform in the Early Church' by Rev. G. Nevin Drinkwater, B.Sc.

From a factual portion of a thesis which was eventually published as a twenty page booklet: Food in the Early Church - A Study of Christian Vegetarianism in the light of modern Biblical Research (St. Alban's Press). Above extract taken from The Vegetarian News (Winter 1947 edition)

Quotation: from 'An Open Letter to the Clergy' (1914)

"Truly did St. John say, 'the light shineth in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not.' Does our 20th century darkness comprehend it now? Does the Church understand to-day that a Christianity founded upon carnivorous customs is a contradiction in terms and the destruction of the dumb creation is a perpetual crucifixion of the Lord of life and a continual violation of the law of love?" Published in The Vegetarian (July 1914 edition)

Arnold Hills (1857-1927)

From The Vegetarian News (April 1927) See: Letter to the Daily Mail

Canon Peter Green, M.A. (1871-1961)

From The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (March 1927) An Appreciation

'Tolerant Criticism' by W. Wallace Nash

From The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (August 1947)

'Animal Suffering' by Rev. Francis Wood

"... we vegetarians must never forget that our special protest is not merely against cruelty to animals. We are very much more than a department of the R.S.P.C.A. We are out, I take it, to protest especially and vehemently against that wholesale and wanton destruction of the wonderful and beautiful creature life of the world of which mankind - especially in this Western part of the globe - are constantly and customarily guilty. We believe in the sanctity not alone of human but of all life. We assert that all life has but one great and sacred source. And we hold it a most immoral and impius thing that man - himself an essentially dependent and finite creature, receiving his own life by absolute will of a Higher Power - should rob his humbler fellows of their God given existence in order to satisfy his own selfish appetites and impulses." From a letter published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (August 1929) See Profile

Quotation: C.P. Newcombe (1904)

"Religion is that perfect abnegation of self which seeks its complete realisation in the mitigation of the sorrows of others. The Apostle tells us to be 'first pure, then peacable.' So we give our thoughts to the problems which tend to purity, and to us there is no peace till they are solved. We hate the cruelties of flesh-eating. We charge upon them the degradations which on all hands are so evident, and which are a shadow on the character of our best men, whether called by the name of Christian or by any other." From an essay entitled 'Are Vegetarians Christians?' which was published in The Vegetarian (September 1904)

'The Vicar and the Curlew'

An interesting aside by the Editor of The Vegetarian News (September 1928)

James Simpson: excerpt from a speech of 1854

"Why did Moses permit them to put away their wives? Christ says, Moses permitted this for the hardness of their hearts, showing that these things were permitted when the Jewish nation was not perceptible of a higher level of truth and morals. What we found in the Bible was, therefore, to be carefully looked at in connection with other circumstances, or we might follow fallen examples instead of high principles. It was in this way that slavery was justified by the slaveholder, and so the capital punishment man drew his sanction; but if they went further they would find other principles taught, such as the command to do good to those who hate us and ill treat us. The great thing, then, was not to look at the facts and history of Scripture apart from the principles of Scripture, and they would thus find that there were many things recorded that they were not obliged to act out, but that they had to follow the great and high principles of truth and goodness." From a talk on vegetarian values and experience of the diet given on October 6th, 1854 at the New Jerusalem School, Accrington by the first President of the Vegetarian Society. Text taken from The Vegetarian Messenger (November 1854)

'Our Pioneers: Joseph Brotherton' (1885 series)

Profile of the first MP for Salford and Chairman of the inaugural Vegetarian Society meeting in 1847

'In Praise of our Pioneers' - sermon (1909)

Delivered by the Rev. Prof. John E.B. Mayor and published in The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (January 1910)

Quotation: The Rev. James Clark (1903)

"God had given us dominion over the fowls of the air and fish of the sea, and how were we to exercise that dominion? Not as a cannibal king, who scrupled not to eat any of his subjects, nor as barbarians, who had power in that they might exercise it to the hurt of others; but truly in the spirit of the Lord Christ, who came to save and not to destroy - who came to teach us to nourish each gentle emotion in our soul." From a sermon preached at Dalmarnock Road Congregational Church, Glasgow and reported in The Vegetarian Messenger (August 1903 edition). The summary of Rev. Clark's sermon was subsequently published as a tract by the Vegetarian Society, entitled Scriptural Phase of Vegetarianism.

'Moral and Scriptural Objections' (1852)

An early Vegetarian Society round-up of Bible-based criticism sent their way.