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<html>
    <h1>
      FLOWERS OF FREETHOUGHT
    </h1>
    <h3>
      (First Series)
    </h3>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      BY G. W. FOOTE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h4>
      LONDON <br /> <br /> 1893.
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <blockquote>
      <p class="toc">
        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
      </p>
      <p>
        <br />
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> OLD NICK. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> FIRE!!! </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> SKY PILOTS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> DEVIL DODGERS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> FIGHTING SPOOKS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> DAMNED SINNERS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> WHERE IS HELL? </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> SPURGEON AND HELL. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IS SPURGEON IN HEAVEN? </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> GOD IN JAPAN. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> STANLEY ON PROVIDENCE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> GONE TO GOD. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THANK GOD. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> JUDGMENT DAY. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> SHELLEY'S ATHEISM. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> LONG FACES. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> OUR FATHER. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> WAIT TILL YOU DIE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> DEAD THEOLOGY. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> MR. GLADSTONE ON DEVILS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> HUXLEY'S MISTAKE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> THE GOSPEL OF FREETHOUGHT. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> ON RIDICULE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS? </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> CHRISTIANITY AND COMMON SENSE. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> THE LORD OF LORDS. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> CONSECRATING THE COLORS </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> CHRISTMAS IN HOLLOWAY GAOL. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> WHO KILLED CHRIST? </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> DID JESUS ASCEND? </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> THE RISING SON. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> ST. PAUL'S VERACITY. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> NO FAITH WITH HERETICS. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> THE LOGIC OF PERSECUTION. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> LUTHER AND THE DEVIL. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> BIBLE ENGLISH. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> LIVING BY FAITH. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> VICTOR HUGO. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> DESECRATING A CHURCH. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> WALT WHITMAN. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> TENNYSON AND THE BIBLE. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> CHRIST'S OLD COAT. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> CHRIST'S COAT, NUMBER TWO. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> SCOTCHED, NOT SLAIN. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> GOD-MAKING. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> GOD AND THE WEATHER. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> MIRACLES. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> A REAL MIRACLE. * </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> JESUS ON WOMEN. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> PAUL ON WOMEN. </a>
      </p>
      <p class="toc">
        <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> MOTHER'S RELIGION. </a>
      </p>
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
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    </p>
    <h2>
      PREFACE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Heinrich Heine called himself a soldier in the army of human liberation.
      It was a modest description of himself, for he was more; his position was
      that of a leader, and his sword was like the mystic Excalibur, flashing
      with the hues of his genius, and dealing death to the enemies of freedom.
    </p>
    <p>
      Humbler fighters than Heine may count themselves as simple soldiers in
      that great army, whose leaders' names are graven deep in the history of
      modern Europe. I also venture to rank myself with them, and it is the
      summit of my ambition. To be indeed a soldier in that army, however low
      and obscure, is not to have lived in vain; to persevere, to fight to the
      end, is to live (if unknown) in the future of humanity.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the course of my service to "the cause" I have wielded tongue and pen
      as weapons. The spoken word has gone, like spilt water, except as it may
      have made an impression on the listeners. The written word remains. Most
      of it, in truth, was only the week's work, done honestly, but under no
      special impulse. Some of the rest&mdash;as I have been told, and as in a
      few cases I feel&mdash;is of less doubtful value; having occasionally the
      merit of a free play of mind on subjects that are too often treated with
      ignorance, timidity, or hypocrisy.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is my reason for publishing in a separate and durable form the
      articles in this collection. Whether it is a sufficient reason the reader
      will judge for himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      No serious attempt has been made at classification. Here and there
      articles have been placed in intended proximity, though written at
      different intervals in the past ten years. Sometimes, for an obvious
      reason, the date of composition has been indicated. Otherwise there is no
      approach to systematic arrangement; and if this is a defect, the reader
      has on the other hand the benefit of variety.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ambitious, and hardly excusable, thing about this collection is its
      title. But the selection of a label for such a miscellany was not an easy
      task, and I ask the reader's indulgence in consideration ef the
      difficulty. The title I have chosen is at least a pretty one, and in a
      sense it is appropriate. These articles are flowers of <i>my</i>
      Freethought; the blossomings of my mind on particular occasions, after
      much investigation and pondering.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wherever I have made a rash statement I shall be happy to be corrected;
      wherever I may have argued wrongly, I shall be happy to be set right. But
      I am less amenable to appeals on the ground of "taste." They are almost
      invariably made by those who wish failure to one's propaganda. A fair
      controversialist will refrain from personalities. I have done this, and I
      will do no more. I believe in free thought and honest speech. In the war
      of ideas there is neither treaty nor truce. To ask for quarter is to admit
      defeat; and to give it is treachery to Truth.
    </p>
    <p>
      April, 1893. G. W. FOOTE.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
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    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      OLD NICK.
    </h2>
    <p>
      This gentleman is of very ancient descent. His lineage dwarfs that of the
      proudest nobles and kings. English peers whose ancestors came in with the
      Conqueror; the Guelphs, Hapsburgs, and Hohenzollens of our European
      thrones; are things of yesterday compared with his Highness the Devil. The
      Cæsars themselves, the more ancient rulers of Assyria, and even the
      Pharaohs of the first dynasty, are modern beside him. His origin is lost
      in the impenetrable obscurity of primitive times. Nay, there have been
      sages who maintained his eternity, who made him coeval with God, and
      placed upon his head the crown of a divided sovereignty of the infinite
      universe.
    </p>
    <p>
      But time and change are lords of all, and the most durable things come to
      an end. Celestial and infernal, like earthly, powers are subject to the
      law of decay. Mutability touches them with her dissolving wand, and strong
      necessity, the lord of gods and men, brings them to the inevitable stroke
      of Death. Senility falls on all beings and institutions&mdash;if they are
      allowed to perish naturally; and as our august Monarchy is the joke of
      wits, and our ancient House of Lords is an object of popular derision, so
      the high and mighty Devil in his palsied old age is the laughing-stock of
      those who once trembled at the sound of his name. They omit the lofty
      titles he was once addressed by, and fearless of his feeble thunders and
      lightnings, they familiarly style him Old Nick. Alas, how are the mighty
      fallen! The potentate who was more terrible than an army with manners is
      now the sport of children and a common figure in melodrama. Even the
      genius of Milton, Goethe, and Byron, has not been able to save him from
      this miserable fate.
    </p>
    <p>
      When this sobriquet of Old Nick first came into use is unknown. Macaulay,
      in his essay on Machiavelli, says that "Out of his surname they have
      coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for
      the Devil." A couplet from <i>Hudibras</i> is cited to support this view.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick Tho' he gave his name to our Old Nick.
    </p>
    <p>
      "But we believe," adds Macaulay, "there is a schism on this subject among
      the antiquaries." The learned Zachary Gray's edition of <i>Hudibras</i>
      shows that "our English writers, before Machiavel's time, used the word
      Old Nick very commonly to signify the Devil," and that "it came from our
      Saxon ancestors, who called him Old Nicka." No doubt Butler, whose
      learning was so great that he "knew everything," was well acquainted with
      this fact. He probably meant the couplet as a broad stroke of humor. But
      there was perhaps a chronological basis for the joke. Our Saxon ancestors
      did not speak of Old Nicka in a spirit of jest or levity. The bantering
      sense of our modern sobriquet for the Devil appears to have crept in
      during the decline of witchcraft. That frightful saturnalia of
      superstition was the Devil's heyday. He was almost omnipotent and
      omnipresent. But as witchcraft died out, partly through the growth of
      knowledge, and partly through sheer weariness on the part of its devotees,
      the Devil began to lose his power. His agency in human affairs was seen to
      be less potent than was imagined. People called him Old Nick playfully, as
      they might talk of a toothless old mastiff whose bark was worse than his
      bite. At length he was regarded as a perfect fraud, and his sobriquet took
      a tinge of contempt. He is now utterly played out except in church and
      chapel, where the sky-pilots still represent him as a roaring lion. Yet,
      as a curious relic of old times, it may be noted that in the law-courts,
      where conservatism reigns in the cumbrous wig on the judge's head, and in
      the cumbrous phraseology of indictments, criminals are still charged with
      being instigated by the Devil. Nearly all the judges look upon this as so
      much nonsense, but occasionally there is a pious fossil who treats it
      seriously. We then hear a Judge North regret that a prisoner has devoted
      the abilities God gave him to the Devil's service, and give the renegade a
      year's leisure to reconsider which master he ought to serve.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the witch mania the world was treated to a great deal of curious
      information about Old Nick. What Robert Burns says of him in <i>Tam
      O'Shanter</i> is only a faint reminiscence of the wealth of demonology
      which existed a few generations earlier. Old Nick used to appear at the
      witches' Sabbaths in the form of a goat, or a brawny black man, who
      courted all the pretty young witches and made them submit to his embraces.
      Some of these crazy creatures, under examination or torture, gave the most
      circumstantial accounts of their intercourse with Satan; their revelations
      being of such an obscene character that they must be left under the veil
      of a dead tongue. It is, of course, absurd to suppose that anything of the
      kind occurred. Religious hysteria and lubricity are closely allied, as
      every physician knows, and the filthy fancies of a lively witch deserve no
      more attention than those of many females in our lunatic asylums.
    </p>
    <p>
      Behind these tales of the Devil there was the pagan tradition of Pan,
      whose upper part was that of a man and his lower part that of a goat. The
      devils of one religion are generally the gods of its predecessor; and the
      great Pan, whose myth is so beautifully expounded by Bacon, was degraded
      by Christianity into a fiend. Representing, as he did, the nature which
      Christianity trampled under foot, he became a fit incarnation of the
      Devil. The horns and hooves and the goat thighs were preserved; and the
      emblems of strength, fecundity and wisdom in the god became the emblems of
      bestiality and cunning in the demon.
    </p>
    <p>
      Heine's magnificent <i>Gods in Exile</i> shows how the deities of Olympus
      avenged themselves for this ill-treatment. They haunted the mountains and
      forests, beguiling knights and travellers from their allegiance to Christ.
      Venus wooed the men who were taught by an ascetic creed to despise sexual
      love; and Pan, appearing as the Devil, led the women a frightful dance to
      hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      But as the Christian superstition declined, the gods of Paganism also
      disappeared. Their vengeance was completed, and they retired with the
      knowledge that the gods of Calvary were mortal like the gods of Olympus.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the last two centuries the Devil has gradually become a subject for
      joking. In Shakespeare's plays he is still a serious personage, although
      we fancy that the mighty bard had no belief himself in any such being.
      But, as a dramatist, he was obliged to suit himself to the current fashion
      of thought, and he refers to the Devil when it serves his purpose just as
      he introduces ghosts and witches. His Satanic Majesty not being then a
      comic figure, he is spoken of or alluded to with gravity. Even when
      Macbeth flies at the messenger in a towering rage, and cries "the Devil
      damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon," he does not lose his sense of the
      Devil's dignity. In Milton's great epic Satan is really the central
      figure, and he is always splendid and heroic. Shelley, in fact, complained
      in his preface to <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> that "the character of Satan
      engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry, which leads us to weigh his
      faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed
      all measure." Goethe's Mephistopheles is less dignified than Milton's
      Satan, but he is full of energy and intellect, and if Faust eventually
      escapes from his clutches it is only by a miracle. At any rate,
      Mephistopheles is not an object of derision; on the contrary, the laugh is
      generally on his own side. Still, Goethe is playing with the Devil all the
      time. He does not believe in the actual existence of the Prince of Evil,
      but simply uses the familiar old figure to work out a psychological drama.
      The same is true of Byron. Satan, in the <i>Vision of Judgment</i>, is a
      superb presence, moving with a princely splendor; but had it suited his
      purpose, Byron could have made him a very different character.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Devil is, indeed, treated with much greater levity by Coleridge and
      Southey, and Shelley knocks him about a good deal in <i>Peter Bell the
      Third</i>&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     The Devil, I safely can aver,
     Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
     Nor is he, as some sages swear,
     A spirit, neither here nor there,
     In nothing&mdash;yet in everything.
     He is&mdash;what we are! for sometimes
     The Devil is a gentleman;
     At others a bard bartering rhymes
     For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
     A swindler, living as he can.
</pre>
    <p>
      These and many other verses show what liberties Shelley took with the once
      formidable monarch of hell. The Devil's treatment by the pulpiteers is
      instructive. Take up an old sermon and you will find the Devil all over
      it. The smell of brimstone is on every page, and you see the whisk of his
      tail as you turn the leaf. But things are changed now. Satan is no longer
      a person, except in the vulgar circles of sheer illiteracy, where the
      preacher is as great an ignoramus as his congregation. If you take up any
      reputable volume of sermons by a Church parson or a Dissenting minister,
      you find the Devil either takes a back seat or disappears altogether in a
      metaphysical cloud. None of these subtle resolvers of ancient riddles,
      however, approaches grand old Donne, who said in one of his fine
      discourses that "the Devil himself is only concentrated stupidity." What a
      magnificent flash of insight! Yes, the great enemy of mankind is
      stupidity; and, alas, against that, as Schiller said, the gods themselves
      fight in vain. Yet time fights against it, and time is greater than the
      gods; so there is hope after all.
    </p>
    <p>
      Gradually the Devil has dropped, until he has at last peached the lowest
      depth. He is now patronised by the Salvation Army. Booth exhibits him for
      a living, and all the Salvation Army Captains and Hallelujah Lasses parade
      him about to the terror of a few fools and the amusement of everyone else.
      Poor Devil! Belisarius begging an obolus was nothing to this. Surely the
      Lord himself might take pity on his old rival, and assist him out of this
      miserable plight.
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Nick is now used to frighten children with, and by-and-bye he may be
      employed like the old garden-god to frighten away the crows. Even his
      scriptural reputation cannot save him from such a fate, for the Bible
      itself is falling into disbelief and contempt, and his adventures from
      Genesis to Revelation are become a subject of merriment. Talking to Mrs.
      Eve about apples in the form of a serpent; whispering in David's ear that
      a census would be a good thing, while Jehovah whispers a similar
      suggestion on the other side; asking Jesus to turn pebbles into penny
      loaves, lugging him through the air, perching him on a pinnacle, setting
      him on the top of a mountain whence both squinted round the globe, and
      playing for forty days and nights that preposterous pantomime of the
      temptation in the desert; getting miraculously multiplied, bewildering a
      herd of swine, and driving them into a watery grave; letting seven of
      himself occupy one lady called Magdalen, and others inhabit the bodies of
      lunatics; going about like a roaring lion, and then appearing in the new
      part of a dragon who lashes the stars with his tail; all these
      metamorphoses are ineffably ludicrous, and calculated to excite
      inextinguishable laughter. His one serious appearance in the history of
      Job is overwhelmed by this multitude of comic situations.
    </p>
    <p>
      Poor Old Nick is on his last legs and cannot last much longer. May his end
      be peace! That is the least we can wish him. And when he is dead, let us
      hope he will receive a decent burial. Those to whom he has been the best
      friend should follow him to the grave. His obsequies, in that case, would
      be graced by the presence of all the clergy, and the Burial Service might
      be read by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Fancy them, burying their dear
      departed brother the Devil, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious
      resurrection!
    </p>
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    <h2>
      FIRE!!!
    </h2>
    <p>
      Do not be alarmed, dear reader; there is no need to rush out into the
      street, like poor old Lot flying from the doomed Cities of the Plain. Sit
      down and take it easy. Let your fire-insurance policy slumber in its nest.
      Lean back in your chair, stretch out your legs, and prepare to receive
      another dose of Free-thought physic&mdash;worth a guinea a bottle. So! Are
      you ready? Very well then, let us begin.
    </p>
    <p>
      What would man be without fire? Would he not be a perfect barbarian? His
      very food, even the meat, would have to be eaten raw, and as knives and
      forks would be unknown, it would have to be devoured with hands and teeth.
      We read that the Tartar horseman will put a beefsteak under his saddle,
      and supple and cook it in a ten-mile ride; but we cannot all follow his
      example, and many would think the game was not worth the candle. But not
      only should we be obliged to eat our food uncooked; we should enjoy none
      of the blessings and comforts bestowed upon us by science, which
      absolutely depends on fire. Nay, our houses would be too cold to shelter
      us in the winter, and we should be compelled to burrow in the ground. The
      whole human race would have to live in tropical countries; all the
      temperate regions would be deserted; and as it is in the temperate regions
      that civilisation reaches its highest and most permanent developments, the
      world would be reduced to a condition of barbarism if not of savagery.
    </p>
    <p>
      No wonder, then, that this mighty civiliser has figured so extensively in
      legend and mythology. "Next to the worship of the sun," says Max Müller,
      "there is probably no religious worship so widely diffused as that of
      Fire." At bottom, indeed, the two were nearly identical. The flame of
      burning wood was felt to be akin to the rays of the sun, and its very
      upward motion seemed an aspiration to its source. Sun and fire alike gave
      warmth, which meant life and joy; without them there reigned sterility and
      death. Do we not still speak of the <i>sunshine</i> of prosperity, and of
      basking in the <i>rays</i> of fortune? Do we not still speak of the <i>fire</i>
      of life, of inspiration, of love, of heroism? And thus when the tide of
      our being is at the flood, we instinctively think of our father the Sun,
      in whom, far more than in invisible gods, we live and move&mdash;for we
      are all his children.
    </p>
    <p>
      Like everything else in civilised existence, fire was a human discovery.
      But superstitious ages imagined that so precious a thing must have
      descended from above. Accordingly the Greeks (to take but one
      illustration) fabled that Prometheus stole Jove's fire from Heaven and
      gave it to mankind. And as the gods of early ages are not too friendly to
      human beings, it was also fabled that Prometheus incurred the fierce anger
      of Jove, who fastened him to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where he was
      blistered by day and frozen by night, while Jove's vulture everlastingly
      preyed upon his vitals.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sun himself, in oriental countries, shining down implacably in times
      of prolonged drought, became a terrible demon, and as Baal or Moloch was
      worshipped with cruel and bloody rites. The corruption of the best is the
      worst; beneficence changes to malignity. Thus fire, which is a splendid
      servant, is an awful master. The very wild beasts dread it. Famishing
      lions and tigers will not approach the camp-fire to seize their prey. Men
      have something of the same instinctive apprehension. How soon the nerves
      are disturbed by the smell of anything burning in the house. Raise the cry
      of "Fire!" in a crowded building, and at once the old savage bursts
      through the veneer of civilisation. It is helter-skelter, the Devil take
      the hindmost. The strong trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to
      devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church&mdash;where a
      believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself booked through
      to glory&mdash;there is just the same stampede. People who sit and listen
      complacently to the story of eternal roastings in an everlasting hell,
      will fight like maniacs to escape a singeing. Rather than go to heaven in
      a chariot of fire they will plod for half a century in this miserable vale
      of tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      Man's dread of fire has been artfully seized upon by the priests. All over
      the world these gentlemen are in the same line of business&mdash;trading
      upon the credulous terrors of the multitude. They fill Hell with fire,
      because it frightens men easily, and the fuel costs nothing. If they had
      to find the fuel themselves Hell would be cold in twenty-four hours. "Flee
      from the wrath to come," they exclaim. "What is it?" ask the people.
      "Consuming fire," the priests exclaim, "nay, not consuming; you will burn
      in it without dying, without losing a particle of flesh, for ever and
      ever." Then the people want to get saved, and the priests issue insurance
      policies, which are rendered void by change of opinion or failure to pay
      the premium.
    </p>
    <p>
      Buddhist pictures of hell teach the eye the same lesson that is taught the
      ear by Christian sermons. There are the poor damned wretches rolling in
      the fire; there are the devils shovelling in fuel, and other devils with
      long toasting-forks thrusting back the victims that shove their noses out
      of the flames.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wherever the priests retain their old power over the people's minds they
      still preach a hell of literal fire, and deliver twenty sermons on Hades
      to one on Paradise. Hell, in fact, is always as hot as the people will
      stand it. The priests reduce the temperature with natural reluctance.
      Every degree lost is a sinking of their power and profit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even in England&mdash;the land of Shakespeare and Shelley, Newton and
      Darwin, Mill and Spencer&mdash;the cry of "Fire!" is still raised in
      thousands of pulpits. Catholics bate no jot of their fiery damnation;
      Church of England clergymen hold forth on brimstone&mdash;with now and
      then a dash of treacle&mdash;in the rural districts and small towns; it is
      not long since the Wesleyans turned out a minister who was not cocksure
      about everlasting torment; Mr. Spurgeon preaches hell (hot, without sugar)
      in mercy to perishing souls; and General Booth, who caters for the
      silliest and most ignorant Christians, works hell into his trade-mark.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Blood and Fire" is a splendid summary of the orthodox faith. All who
      would be saved must be washed in the Blood of the Lamb&mdash;a disgusting
      ablution! All who are not saved fall into the Fire. A blood-bath or a
      sulphur-bath is the only alternative.
    </p>
    <p>
      Happily, however, the people are becoming more civilised and more humane.
      Science and popular education are working wonders. Reason, self-reliance,
      and sympathy are rapidly developing. The old primitive terrors are losing
      their hold upon us, and the callous dogmas of savage religion are growing
      impossible. Priests cannot frighten men who possess a high sense of human
      dignity; and the doctrine of an angry God, who will burn his own children
      in hell, is loathsome to those who will fight the flames and smoke of a
      burning house to save the life of an unknown fellow creature.
    </p>
    <p>
      How amusing, in these circumstances, are the wrigglings of the "advanced"
      Christians. Archdeacon Farrar, for instance, in despite of common sense
      and etymology, contends that "everlasting" fire only means "eternal" fire.
      What a comfort the distinction would be to a man in Hell! Away with such
      temporising! Let the ghastly old dogma be defied. Sensible people should
      simply laugh at the priests who still raise the cry of "Fire!"
    </p>
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    <div style="height: 4em;">
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    <h2>
      SKY PILOTS.
    </h2>
    <p>
      The authorship of the designation "sky pilot" is as unknown as that of the
      four gospels. Yet its origin is recent. It has only been in use for a few
      years, say ten, or at the outside twenty. Nobody knows, however, who was
      the first man from whose lips it fell. Probably he was an American, but
      his name and address are not ascertained. Surely this fact, which has
      thousands if not millions of parallels, should abate the impudence of
      religionists who ask "Who made the world?" when they do not know who made
      nine-tenths of the well-known things it contains.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whatever its origin, the designation is a happy one. It fits like a glove,
      Repeat it to the first man you meet, and though he never heard it before,
      he will knew that you mean a minister. For this very reason it makes the
      men of God angry. They feel insulted, and let you see it. They accuse you
      of calling them names, and if you smile too sarcastically they will
      indulge in some well-selected Bible language themselves.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are some trades that will not bear honest designations, and the
      minister's is one of them. Call him what you please, except what he is,
      and he is not disquieted. But call him "sky-pilot" and he starts up like
      Macbeth at the ghost of Banquo, exclaiming "Come in any other form but
      that!"
    </p>
    <p>
      Go down to the seaside and look at one of those bluff, weather-beaten,
      honest fellows, who know all the rocks and shoals, and tides and channels,
      for miles around. Call one of them a "pilot," and he will not be offended.
      The term is legitimate. It exactly denotes his business. He is rather
      proud of it. His calling is honorable and useful. He pilots ships through
      uncertain and dangerous waters to their destination. He does his work,
      takes his pay, and feels satisfied; and if you cry "pilot!" he answers
      merrily with a "what cheer?"
    </p>
    <p>
      But "sky" in front of "pilot" makes all the difference. It makes the man
      of God feel like having a cold shower bath; then the reaction sets in and
      he grows hot&mdash;sometimes as hot as H&mdash;&mdash; well, Hades.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     We are not going to swear if the parson does,
     But after all, he <i>is</i> a "pilot" and a "sky" pilot.
     He undertakes to pilot people to Heaven.
</pre>
    <p>
      Let him board your ship and take the helm, and he will guide you over the
      Black Sea of Death to Port Felicity that, at least, is what he says in his
      trade circular, though it turns out very differently in practice, as we
      shall see presently.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us first notice a great difference between the sea pilot and the sky
      pilot. The honest salt boards the ship, and takes her out to sea, or
      brings her into port. When the work is over he presents his bill, or it is
      done for him. He does not ask for payment in advance. He neither takes nor
      gives credit. But the sky pilot does take credit and he gives none. He is
      always paid beforehand. Every year he expects a good retaining fee in the
      shape of a stipend or a benefice, or a good percentage of the pew rents
      and collections. But when his services are really wanted he leaves you in
      the lurch. You do not need a pilot to Heaven until you come to die. Then
      your voyage begins in real earnest. But the sky-pilot does not go with
      you. Oh dear no! That is no part of <i>his</i> bargain. "Ah my friend," he
      says, "I must leave you now. You must do the rest for yourself. I have
      coached you for years in celestial navigation; if you remember my lessons
      you will have a prosperous voyage. Good day, dear friend. I'm going to see
      another customer. But we shall meet again."
    </p>
    <p>
      Now this is not a fair contract. It is really obtaining money under false
      pretences. The sky pilot has never been to Heaven himself. He does not
      know the way. Anyhow, there are hundreds of different routes, and they
      cannot all lead to the same place. Certainly they all start from this
      world, but that is all they have in common, and where they end is a
      puzzle. To pay money in such circumstances is foolish and an encouragement
      to fraud. The best way to pay for goods is on delivery; in the same way
      the sky pilot should be paid at the finish.
    </p>
    <p>
      But how is that to be done? Well, easily. All you have to do is to address
      the sky pilot in this fashion&mdash;"Dearly beloved pilot to the land of
      bliss! let our contract be fair and mutual. Give me credit as I give you
      credit. Don't ask for cash on account. I'll pay at the finish. Your
      directions may be sound; they ought to be, for you are very dogmatic.
      Still, there is room for doubt, and I don't want to be diddled. You tell
      me to follow your rules of celestial navigation. Well, I will. You say we
      shall meet at Port Felicity. Well, I hope so; and when we do meet I'll
      square up."
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course, it may be objected that this would starve the sky pilots. But
      why should it do anything of the kind? Have <i>they</i> no faith! Must all
      the faith be on <i>our</i> side? Should they not practise a little of what
      they preach? God tells them to <i>pray</i> for their daily bread, and no
      doubt he would add some cheese and butter. All they have to do is to <i>ask</i>
      for it. "Ask and ye shall receive," says the text, and it has many
      confirmations. For forty years the Jews were among the unemployed, and
      Jehovah sent them food daily. "He rained down bread from heaven." The
      prophet Elijah, also, lived in the wilderness on the sandwiches God sent
      him&mdash;bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the
      evening. There was likewise the widow's cruse of oil and barrel of flour,
      which supported her and the man of God day by day without diminishing.
      These things actually happened. They are as true as the Bible. And they
      may happen again. At any rate they <i>should</i> happen. The sky-pilots
      should subsist on the fruits of prayer. Let them live by faith&mdash;not
      <i>our</i> faith, but <i>their</i> own. This will prove their sincerity,
      and give us some trust in their teaching. And if they <i>should</i> starve
      in the experiment&mdash;well, it is worth making, and they will fall
      martyrs to truth and human happiness. <i>One</i> batch of martyrs will
      suffice. There will be no need of what Gibbon calls "an annual
      consumption."
    </p>
    <p>
      The men of God pilot <i>us</i> to Heaven, but they are very loth to go
      there themselves. Heaven is their "home," but they prefer exile, even in
      this miserable vale of tears. When they fall ill, they do not welcome it
      as a call from the Father. They do not sing "Nearer my God to thee." We do
      not find them going about saying "I shall be home shortly." Oh no! They
      indulge freely in self-pity. Like a limpet to a rock do they cling to this
      wretched, sinful world. Congregations are asked if they cannot "do
      something," a subscription is got up, and the man of God rushes off to the
      seaside, where prayer, in co-operation with oxygen and ozone, restore him
      to health, enable him to dodge "going home," and qualify him for another
      term of penal servitude on earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      It appears to us that sky pilots, like other men, should be judged by
      their practice. If they show no belief in what they preach, we are foolish
      to believe in it any more than they do. It also appears to us that their
      profession is as fraudulent as fortune-telling. Many a poor old woman has
      been imprisoned for taking sixpence from a servant girl, after promising
      her a tall, dark husband and eight fine children; but men dressed in black
      coats and white chokers are allowed to take money for promises of good
      fortune in the "beautiful land above." It further appears to us that the
      sky pilots should be compelled to come to a reasonable agreement before
      their trade is licensed. They should settle <i>where Heaven</i> is before
      they begin business. Better still, perhaps, every applicant for a license
      should prove that <i>some</i> human soul <i>has been</i> piloted to
      Heaven. Until that is done, the profession is only robbery and imposture.
    </p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      DEVIL DODGERS.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Most people suppose this phrase to be a recent Americanism. It occurs,
      however, in the Memoirs of James Lackington, published in 1791. Speaking
      of certain ranting preachers, he says&mdash;"These <i>devil-dodgers</i>
      happened to be so very powerful that they soon sent John home, crying out,
      that he should be damned."
    </p>
    <p>
      Admitting the age of the phrase, some will ask, Is it respectable? Well,
      that is a matter of taste. Is there any standard of respectability? Does
      it not vary with time, place, and circumstance? Some people hate wearing
      gloves, while other people feel half naked without them. A box hat is a
      great sign of respectability; when a vestryman wears one he overawes
      philosophers; yet some men would as soon wear the helmet of Don Quixote.
      Flannel suits are quite shocking in town; at the seaside they are the
      height of fashion. And as it is with dress so it is with speech. The
      "respectable" classes are apt to rob language of its savor, clipping and
      trimming it like the trees in a Dutch garden. You must go to the common,
      unrespectable classes for racy vigor of tongue. They avoid
      circumlocutions, eschew diffuseness, go straight to the point, and prefer
      concrete to abstract expressions. They don't speak of a foolish man, they
      call him a fool; a cowardly talebearer they call a sneak; and so on to the
      end of the chapter. But is this really vulgar? Open your Shakespeare, or
      any other dramatic poet, and you will find it is not so. A look, a
      gesture, is more expressive than words; and concrete language carries more
      weight than the biggest abstractions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us break up the phrase, and see where the "vulgarity" comes in. There
      is nothing vulgar about the Devil. He is reputed to be a
      highly-accomplished gentleman. Milton, Goethe, and Byron have even felt
      his grandeur. And is not "dodger" clear as well as expressive? David
      dodged Saul's javelin. That was smart and proper. Afterwards he attempted
      a dodge on Uriah. That was mean and dirty. So that "dodge" may be good,
      bad, or indifferent, like "man" or "woman." There is nothing objectionable
      about it <i>per se</i>. And if "devil" and "dodger" are respectable in
      their single state, how do they become vulgar when they are married?
    </p>
    <p>
      Of course it is quite natural for the clergy and their thorough-paced
      dupes to cry out against plain language. The clerical trade is founded on
      mystery, and "behind every mystery there is a cheat." Calling things by
      their right names will always be ugly to impostors.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Reverend" sounds so much nicer than "mystery-man," "priest" is more
      dignified than "fortuneteller," "clergyman" is pleasanter than
      "sky-pilot," and "minister" is more soothing than "devil-dodger." But
      plain speech is always wholesome if you keep within the bounds of truth.
      It does us good to see ourselves occasionally as others see us. And if
      this article should fall under the eyes of a Christian man of God, we beg
      him to keep his temper and read on to the end.
    </p>
    <p>
      We tell the men of God, of every denomination, that they are Devil
      Dodgers, and when they cease to be that their occupation is going. Old
      Nick, in some form or other, is the basis of every kind of Christianity.
      Indeed, the dread of evil, the terror of calamity, is at the bottom of all
      religion; while the science which gives us foresight and power, and
      enables us to protect ourselves and promote our comfort, is religion's
      deadliest enemy. Science wars against evil practically; religion wars
      against it theoretically. Science sees the material causes that are at
      work, and counteracts them; religion is too lazy and conceited to study
      the causes, it takes the evil in a lump, personifies it, and christens it
      "the Devil." Thus it keeps men off the real path of deliverance, and
      teaches them to fear the Bogie-Man, who is simply a phantom of
      superstition, and always vanishes at the first forward step of courage.
    </p>
    <p>
      What is the Christian scheme in a nutshell? God made man perfect&mdash;though
      some people, after reading the life of Adam, say that God made him a
      perfect fool. This perfect man was tackled by the Devil, a sort of
      spiritual Pasteur, who inoculated him with sin, which was transmitted to
      his posterity as <i>original</i> sin. God desires man's welfare, but the
      Devil is too strong tor Omnipotence. Jesus Christ steps in with the Holy
      Ghost and saves a few men and women, but the Devil bags all the rest, and
      Hell is thronged while Heaven is half empty; the one place having three
      families on every flat, the other having leagues of spacious mansions "to
      let."
    </p>
    <p>
      Now in every generation the Devil is after us. Without schools, or
      churches, or armies of professional helpers, or even so much as an
      occasional collection, he carries on single-handed a most successful
      business. The clergy tell us, as the Bible tells them, that he is
      monstrously able, active and enterprising; never overlooking a single
      customer, and delivering damnation at the door, and even carrying it
      upstairs, without charging for carriage or waiting for his bill. All that
      sort of thing he leaves to the opposition firm, whose agents are clamorous
      for payment, and contrive to accumulate immense sums of the filthy lucre
      which they affect to despise.
    </p>
    <p>
      This accommodating fiend is the <i>bête noir</i> of the clergy. They are
      always on his track, or rather he is on theirs. They help us to dodge him,
      to get out of his way, to be from home when he calls, to escape his
      meshes, to frustrate his wiles, to save our souls alive&mdash;O. "Here you
      are," they say, "he's coming down the street. We are just running an
      escape party. If you want to keep out of Hell, come and join us. Don't ask
      questions. There's no time for that. Hurry up, or you'll be left behind."
      And when the party turns the corner the clergy say, "Ah, that was a narrow
      escape. Some of you had a very close shave." And the next morning a
      collector calls for a subscription for the gentleman who saved you from
      the Devil.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nearly fifty thousand gentlemen are engaged in this line of business, to
      say nothing of the Salvation Army. Fifty thousand Devil Dodgers! And this
      in England alone. If we include Europe, America, South Africa, and
      Australia, there are hundreds of thousands of them, maintained at the
      expense of probably a hundred millions a year. Yet the Devil is not
      outwitted. Mr. Spurgeon says he is as successful as ever; and, to use Mr.
      Stead's expression, Spurgeon has "tips from God."
    </p>
    <p>
      By their own confession, therefore, the Devil Dodgers are perfectly
      useless. They take our money, but they do little else. Honesty would make
      them disband. But they will never do that. They will have to be cashiered,
      or starved out by cutting off the supplies. The real truth is, they never
      <i>were</i> useful. They were always parasites. They gained their livings
      by false pretences. They dodged an imaginary enemy. The Devil is played
      out in educated circles. Presently he will be laughed at by everybody.
      Then the people will dismiss the priests, and there will be and end of
      Devil Dodgers.
    </p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      FIGHTING SPOOKS.
    </h2>
    <p>
      "Spooks" means ghosts, sprites, goblins, and other such phantasms. The
      word is not yet endenizened in England, but it will probably take out
      letters of naturalisation here, settle down, and become a very respectable
      member of the English vocabulary.
    </p>
    <p>
      Twelve months ago I met an American in London, who told me that he was a
      Freethinker, but he did not trouble himself about Freethought. His mind
      was made up on the supernatural, and he did not care to spend his time in
      "fighting spooks." That is, being emancipated himself from superstition,
      he was indifferent about the matter, although millions of his fellow men
      were still in bondage.
    </p>
    <p>
      This American gentleman's remark shows how people can be misled by
      phrases. "Fighting spooks" is a pretty locution, and every Freethinker
      would admit that fighting spooks is a most unprofitable business. But, in
      reality, it is not the aggressive Secularist or Atheist who fights these
      imaginary beings. He fights those who do fight them&mdash;which is a very
      different thing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let the priests and preachers of all religions and denominations cease
      abusing the callow mind of childhood; let them refrain from teaching their
      fanciful conjectures about "the unseen"; let them desist from a peopling
      the air with the wild creations of their own lawless imagination; let them
      tell no more than they know, and confine their tongues within the strict
      limits of honest speech; let them do this, and Free-thought will be happy
      to expire in the blaze of its triumph. There is no joy in fighting
      superstition, any more than there is joy in attacking disease. Each labor
      is beneficent and is attended by a <i>relative</i> satisfaction; but
      health is better than the best doctoring, and mental sanity than the
      subtlest cure.
    </p>
    <p>
      The clergy are the fighters of spooks. They babble of gods, who get angry
      with us; of devils, who must be guarded against; of angels, who fly from
      heaven to earth, and earth to heaven; of saints, who can do us a good turn
      if they are properly supplicated. But the chief spooks are of course the
      devils, headed by <i>the</i> Devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Abaddon,
      the Serpent&mdash;in short, Old Nick. "We have an army of red coats," said
      old Fox, "to fight the French; and an army of black coats to fight the
      Devil&mdash;of whom he standeth not in awe."
    </p>
    <p>
      Before the great procession of Humanity go the priests. "Hush!" they cry,
      "the hedges are full of devils. Softly, gently, beloved! Do not rush into
      unspeakable danger. We will bear the brunt of it, out of our fatherly
      affection for you. See, we stand in front, on the perilous edge of battle.
      We dare the demons who lie in wait to catch your immortal souls. We beat
      the bushes, and dislodge them from their hiding-places; strong not in our
      own strength, but in the grace of God. And behold they fly! Did you not
      see them? Did you not perceive the flutter of their black wings? Did you
      not smell their sulphurous taint? Beloved, the road is now clear, the
      hedges are safe. Forward then! But forget not our loyal services.
      Remember, beloved, that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and&mdash;shell
      out!"
    </p>
    <p>
      The services of the black-coats are imaginary, and their payment should be
      of the same description. Let them live on <i>their own</i> faith, and
      trust to him who fed Elijah in the desert with sandwiches brought by
      ravens' beaks.
    </p>
    <p>
      Clearly the belief in spooks is profitable to the clergy. Just as clearly
      it is expensive to the people. Whistling between the hedges is as good as
      keeping a parson. But that is not the priest's teaching. He says the
      spooks are real, and he is the only person to keep them off. Grant the
      first point, and the second is sure to follow. But <i>are</i> the spooks
      real? Can the clergy show a single live specimen? They cannot, and they
      know they cannot, either for love or money. Why then does the business
      hold out? Because an imaginary spook is as good as a real spook, if the
      clergy can twist and prejudice the youthful mind in their direction. If a
      showman never lifts the curtain, it does not matter whether he has
      anything or nothing on the other side.
    </p>
    <p>
      The belief in spooks is more than profitable to the priests. It enervates
      and paralyses the human mind. It is the parent of all sorts of mischief.
      It is our worst inheritance from our savage progenitors. The black spirits
      that haunted the swamps and forests of primeval ages, and terrified the
      ape-man who lived in mystery and fear, are not suffered to depart with the
      ignorance that gave them birth. They are cultivated by priests, and used
      to overawe the cradles and schools of civilisation.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Freethinker does not fight spooks. He would not waste an ounce of
      powder upon them. He fights the fighters of spooks. He assails the
      superstition on which they flourish. He seeks to free the human mind from
      gratuitous fears. He dispels the shadows and deepens the sunshine of life.
    </p>
    <p>
      Surely this is a good work. Whoever takes part in it is giving the race an
      unmixed blessing. War with the army of enslavement! Down with the seducers
      of childhood&mdash;the spiritual profligates who debauch the youthful
      mind! Banish them, with their spooks, from the school, the college, the
      court of justice, the hall of legislation! Let us train generations of
      sound minds in sound bodies, full of rich blood, and nervous energy, and
      frank inquiry, and dauntless courage, and starry hope; with faces that
      never pale at truth, hearts that hold no terms with falsehood, knees that
      never bend before power or mystery, heads that always keep a manly poise,
      and eyes that boldly challenge all things from height to depth.
    </p>
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    </div>
    <h2>
      DAMNED SINNERS.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     "Thou shalt be brought unto the blood of sprinkling, as an
     undone helpless, damned sinner."
     &mdash;John Wesley, Sermon on "Justification by Faith."
</pre>
    <p>
      Polite ears, which are often the longest, will be shocked at the title of
      this article. This is an age in which it is accounted vulgar to express
      plain doctrines in plain language. Spurgeon was the last doctor of a good
      old school. Their theology was hateful: an insult to man and a blasphemy
      against God&mdash;if such a being exists; but they did not beat about the
      bush, and if they thought you were booked for hell, as was most likely,
      they took care to let you know it. They called a spade a spade, not a
      common implement of agricultural industry. They were steeped in Bible
      English, and did not scruple to use its striking substantives and
      adjectives. When they pronounced "hell" they aspirated the "h" and gave
      the full weight of the two "l's." "Damn" and "damnation" shot from their
      mouths full and round, like a cannon ball sped with a full blast of
      gunpowder.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, alas, how are the mighty fallen! No longer do the men of God indulge
      in thunderous Saxon. They latinise their sermons and diminish the effect
      of terrible teaching. You shall hear them designate "hell" with twenty
      roundabout euphemisms, and spin "damnation" into "condemnation" and
      "damned" into "condemned," until it has not force enough to frighten a cat
      off a garden wall.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us not be blamed, however, if we emulate the plain speech of the
      honest old theologians, and of the English Bible which is still used in
      our public schools. We despise the hypocritical cry of "vulgar!" We are
      going to write, not on "condemned transgressors," but on "damned sinners."
      Yes, DAMNED SINNERS.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, beloved reader, it behoves us to define and distinguish, as well as
      amplify and expatiate. We must therefore separate the "damned" from the
      "sinners." Not indeed in fact, for they are inseparable, being in truth
      one and the same thing; for the adjective is the substantive, and the
      substantive is the adjective, and the "damned" are "sinners" and "sinners"
      are the "damned." The separation is merely <i>mental</i>, for reasons of
      <i>convenience</i>; just as we separate the inseparable, length from
      breadth, in our definition of a line. This is necessary to clear and
      coherent thought; man's mind being finite, and incapable of operating in
      all directions at once.
    </p>
    <p>
      What then are <i>sinners</i>? A simple question, but not so easy to
      answer. <i>All</i> men are <i>sinners</i>. But what is a <i>man</i>? A
      featherless biped? So was the plucked fowl of Diogenes. A man is&mdash;well
      a man; and a sinner is&mdash;well a sinner. And this is near enough for
      most people. But it does not satisfy a rational investigator, to say
      nothing of your born critic, who will go on splitting hairs till his head
      is as bare as a plate, and then borrow materials from his neighbor's
      cranium.
    </p>
    <p>
      In ancient Egypt it was a sin to kill a cat; in England cats are slain in
      myriads without a tremor of compunction. Among the Jews it is a sin to eat
      pork, but an English humorist writes you a delicious essay on Roast Pig.
      Bigamy is a sin in the whole of Europe but the south-eastern corner, and
      there it is a virtue, sanctioned by the laws of religion. Marrying your
      deceased wife's sister is a sin in England; four thousand years ago, in
      another part of the world, it was no sin at all; in fact, a gentleman of
      remarkable piety, whom God is said to have loved, married his wife's
      sister without waiting for a funeral. Did not Jacob take Rachel and Leah
      together, and walk out with them, one on each arm?
    </p>
    <p>
      Sin as a <i>fact</i> changes with time and place. Sin as an <i>idea</i> is
      disobedience to the law of God; that is, to the doctrines of religion;
      that is, to the teaching of priests. <i>Crime</i> is quite another thing.
      It is far less heinous, and far more easily forgiven. Of course crime and
      sin may overlap; they may often be the same thing practically; but this is
      an accident, for there are crimes that are no sins, and sins that are no
      crimes. It is a crime, but not a sin, to torture a heretic; it is a sin,
      but not a crime, to eat meat on a Friday.
    </p>
    <p>
      A sinner is a person on bad terms with his God. But who, it may be asked,
      is on good terms with him? No one. According to Christianity, at any rate,
      we have all sinned; nay, we are all full of original sin; we derived it
      from our parents, who derived it from Adam, who caught it from Old Nick,
      who picked it up God knows where. Now every sinner is a damned sinner. He
      may not know it, but he is so; and the great John Wesley advises him to
      recognise it, and come as a "damned sinner" to God, to be sprinkled or
      washed with the blood of Christ.
    </p>
    <p>
      What is <i>damned</i> then? We take it that "damned sinners," that is <i>all</i>
      sinners, are persons to whom God says "Damn you!" To whom does he say it?
      To all sinners; that is, to all men. And why does he say it? Because he is
      wroth with them. And why is he wroth with them? Because they are sinners.
      And why are they sinners? Because they are men. And why are they men?
      Because they cannot help it. They were born in sin and shapen in iniquity,
      and in sin did their mothers conceive them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Every Christian admits this&mdash;theoretically. He goes to church and
      confesses himself a "miserable sinner," but if you called him so as he
      came out of church he would call you something stronger.
    </p>
    <p>
      A sinner may be damned here, apparently, without being damned hereafter.
      He is liable to hell until he dies, but after that event he is sometimes
      reprieved and sent to heaven. But the vast majority of the human race have
      no share in the atoning blood of Christ. They were "damned sinners" <i>in
      posse</i> before they were born, they are "damned sinners" <i>in esse</i>
      while they live, and they will be "damned sinners" for ever when they leap
      from this life into eternity, and join the immortal fry Of almost
      everybody born to die.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a very comfortable doctrine for the narrow, conceited, selfish
      elect. For other people&mdash;all the rest of us&mdash;it is calculated to
      provoke unparliamentary language. Why should God "damn" men? And how can
      men be "sinners"? Certainly they can sin against each other, because they
      can injure each other. But how can they sin against God? Can they injure
      him? He is unchangeable. Can they rob him? He is infinite. Can they
      deceive him? He is omniscient.
    </p>
    <p>
      Can they limit his happiness? He is omnipotent. No, they <i>cannot</i> sin
      against him, but he <i>can</i> sin against them. And if he exists he <i>has</i>
      sinned against every one of them. Not one human being has ever been as
      strong, healthy, wise, noble, and happy as God might have made him. Nor is
      man indebted to God for his creation. There cannot be a debt where there
      is no contract. It is the creator and not the creature who is responsible,
      and the theological doctrine of responsibility is the truth turned upside
      down.
    </p>
    <p>
      Suppose a man had the power of creating another thinking and feeling
      being. Suppose he could endow him with any qualities he chose. Suppose he
      created him sickly, foolish, and vicious. Would he not be responsible for
      the curse of that being's existence?
    </p>
    <p>
      Man is what he is because he is. He is practically without choice. The
      cards are dealt out to him, and he must take them as they come. Is it just
      to damn him for holding a bad hand? Is it honest to give him hell for not
      winning the game?
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us use for a moment the cant language of theology. Let us imagine the
      <i>vilest</i> of "damned sinners" in Gehenna. Does not every scientist,
      and every philosopher, know that the orb of his fate was predetermined?
      Would not that "lost soul" have the right to curse his maker? Might he not
      justly exclaim "I am holier than thou"?
    </p>
    <p>
      Do not imagine, reader, that this new reading of the book of fate has no
      practical significance. When we get rid of the idea of "damned sinners,"
      when we abolish the idea of "sin" altogether and its correlative
      "punishment," and learn to regard man as a complicated effect in a
      universe of causation, we shall bring wisdom and humanity into our
      treatment of the "criminal classes," we shall look upon them as moral
      lunatics and deal with them accordingly. And this spirit will extend
      itself to all human relations. It will make us less impatient and angry
      with each other. We shall see that "to know all is to pardon all." Thus
      will the overthrow of theology be the preparation for a new moral
      development. Another link of the old serpent of superstition will be
      uncoiled from the life of humanity, leaving it freer to learn the splendid
      truth, taught by that divine man Socrates, that wisdom and virtue are one
      and indivisible.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      WHERE IS HELL?
    </h2>
    <p>
      This is a question of great importance, or at least of very great
      interest. According to the Christian scheme of salvation, the vast
      majority of us will have to spend eternity in "sulphurous and tormenting
      flames," and we are naturally curious as to the situation of a place in
      which we shall experience such delightful sensations.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there is hardly any subject on which we can obtain so little
      information. The clergy are becoming more and more reticent about it. What
      little they ever knew is being secreted in the depths of their inner
      consciousness. When they are pressed for particulars they look injured.
      Sometimes they piteously exclaim "Don't." At other times they wax wroth,
      and exclaim to the questioners about the situation of hell, "Wait till you
      get there."
    </p>
    <p>
      Just as heaven used to be spoken of as "up above," hell was referred to as
      "down below." At one time, indeed, it was believed to be underground. Many
      dark caves were thought to lead to it, and some of them were called "Hell
      Mouth." Volcanoes were regarded as entrances to the fiery regions, and
      when there was an eruption it was thought that hell was boiling over.
      Classic mythology, before the time of Christ, had its entrances to hell at
      Acherusia, in Bithynia; at Avernus, in Campania, where Ulysses began his
      journey to the grisly abodes; the Sibyl's cave at Cumæ, in Argolis; at
      Tænarus, in the southern Peloponnesus, where Hercules descended, and
      dragged Cerberus up to the daylight; and the cave of Trophonius, in
      Lebadea, not to mention a dozen less noted places.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Bible always speaks of hell as "down," and the Apostles' Creed tells
      us that Christ "descended" into hell. Exercising his imagination on this
      basis, the learned Faber discovered that after the Second Advent the
      saints would dwell on the crust of the earth, a thousand miles thick, and
      the damned in a sea of liquid fire inside. Thus the saints would tread
      over the heads of sinners, and flowers would bloom over the lake of
      damnation.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
Sir John Maundeville, a most engaging old liar, says he found a descent
into hell "in a perilous vale" in Abyssinia. According to the Celtic
legend of "St. Brandon's Voyage," hell was not "down below," but in
the moon, where the saint found Judas Iscariot suffering incredible
tortures, but let off every Sunday to enjoy himself and prepare for a
fresh week's agony. That master of bathos, Martin Tupper, finds this
idea very suitable. He apostrophises the moon as "the wakeful eye of
hell." Bailey, the author of <i>Festus</i>, is somewhat vaguer. Hell,
he says, is in a world which rolls thief-like round the universe,
imperceptible to human eyes:

     A blind world, yet unlit by God,
     Boiling around the extremest edge of light,
     Where all things are disaster and decay.
</pre>
    <p>
      Imaginations, of course, will differ. While Martin Tupper and other
      gentlemen look for hell in the direction of the moon, the Platonists,
      according to Macrobus, reckoned as the infernal regions the whole space
      between the moon and the earth. Whiston thought the comet which appeared
      in his day was hell. An English clergyman, referred to by Alger,
      maintained that hell was in the sun, whose spots were gatherings of the
      damned.
    </p>
    <p>
      The reader may take his choice, and it is a liberal one. He may regard
      hell as under the earth, or in the moon, or in the sun, or in a comet, or
      in some concealed body careering through infinite space. And if the choice
      does not satisfy him, he is perfectly free to set up a theory of his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      Father Pinamonti is the author of a little book called <i>Hell Open to
      Christians</i>, which is stamped with the authority of the Catholic
      Church, and issued for the special edification of children. This book
      declares that hell is four thousand miles distant, but it does not
      indicate the direction. Anyhow, the distance is so small that the priests
      might easily set up communication with the place. But perhaps it only
      exists in the geography or astronomy of faith.
    </p>
    <p>
      Father Pinamonti seems particularly well informed on this subject. He says
      the walls of hell are "more than four thousand miles thick." That is a
      great thickness. But is it quite as thick as the heads of the fools who
      believe it?
    </p>
    <p>
      Our belief is that hell is far nearer than the clergy teach. Omar Khayyam,
      the grand old Persian poet, the "large infidel," as Tennyson calls him,
      wrote as follows&mdash;in the splendid rendering of Edward Fitzgerald:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      I sent my soul through the invisible, Some letter of that after-life to
      spell, And by and bye my soul returned to me, And answered, I myself am
      heaven and hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hell, like heaven, is within us, and about us in the hearts of our
      fellow-men. Yes, hell is on earth. Man's ignorance, superstition,
      stupidity, and selfishness, make a hell for him in this life. Let us
      cease, then, to dread the fabled hell of the priests, and set ourselves to
      the task of abolishing the real hell of hunger, vice, and misery.
    </p>
    <p>
      The very Churches are getting ashamed of their theological hell. They are
      becoming more and more secularised. They call on the disciples of Christ
      to remedy the evils of this life, and respond to the cry of the poor for a
      better share of the happiness of this world. Their methods are generally
      childish, for they overlook the causes of social evil, but it is
      gratifying to see them drifting from the old moorings, and little by
      little abandoning the old dogmas. Some of the clergy, like Archdeacon
      Farrar, go to the length of saying that "hell is not a place." Precisely
      so, and that is the teaching of Secularism.
    </p>
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    </div>
    <h2>
      SPURGEON AND HELL.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Charles Lamb was one of the best men that ever lived. He had his failings,
      but he never harmed anyone but himself. He was capable of astonishing
      generosity, and those acquainted with the inner tragedy of his life know
      that it was a long act of self-denial. He was also extremely modest but
      not utterly devoid of indignation; and if he could not denounce bitterly,
      he could speed a shaft of satire into the breast of wickedness or cruelty.
      On one occasion, in the days of his youth, he was justly annoyed by his
      friend Coleridge, whose character was very inferior to his own, though he
      always assumed a tone of moral superiority. Lamb was so galled by
      Coleridge's air of virtue and piety, at a moment when the humorist was
      suffering terribly in consequence of his sister's calamity, that he sent
      the transcendental poet a list of stinging questions. One of them asked
      whether one of the seraphim could fall, and another whether a man might
      not be damned without knowing it.
    </p>
    <p>
      This last question suggests itself in the case of Mr. Spurgeon. Mrs.
      Spurgeon, Dr. Pierson, and other of the great preacher's friends, are all
      assuring us that he is in glory. Writing seven days after his death, Mrs.
      Spurgeon said "he has now been a week in heaven." It is natural that she
      should think so, and we do not wish to rob her of any consolation, nor do
      we suppose that this article will ever come under her notice. But is it
      not just possible that Spurgeon has gone to hell? And why should not the
      question be raised? We mean no personal offence; we speak in the interest
      of justice and truth. Spurgeon was very glib in preaching about hell, and
      we do not know that he had a monopoly of that special line of business. He
      never blenched at the idea of millions of human beings writhing in
      everlasting torment; and why should it be blasphemy, or even incivility,
      to wonder if he himself has gone to perdition?
    </p>
    <p>
      Predestination, as the Church of England article says, is wonderfully
      comforting to the elect; that is, to those who imagine themselves to be
      so. But what if they are mistaken? What if a man, yea a fancied saint, may
      be damned without knowing it? God Almighty has not published lists of the
      Sect. Many a Calvinistic Pharisee is perhaps a self-elected saint after
      all, and at the finish of his journey may find that he has been walking in
      the wrong direction.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of Spurgeon's rooted notions was that unbelievers were <i>sure</i> of
      hell. They bore the mark of predestinate damnation broad upon their
      fore-heads. Now at the bottom this means that a man may be damned for
      believing wrongly. But how can anyone be sure that Spurgeon was absolutely
      right? The Baptists are only one division of Christians. There are scores
      of other divisions. All cannot be right, and all may be wrong. Even if one
      is entirely right, how do we know it is the Baptists? According to the law
      of probabilities, Spurgeon was very likely in the wrong; and if wrong
      belief, however sincere, entails damnation, it is quite possible that at
      11.5 p.m. on Sunday, January 31, Spurgeon entered Hell instead of Heaven.
      *
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * The next article will explain this matter.
</pre>
    <p>
      Far be it from us to wish a fellow creature in Hell, but there is always a
      certain pleasure in seeing the engineer hoist with his own petard. All
      tragedy has a touch of comedy. Fancy Spurgeon in Hades groaning "I sent
      other people here by the million, and here I am myself."
    </p>
    <p>
      How would this be worse than the groan of any other lost soul? Few men are
      devils or angels. Most are neither black nor white, but grey. Between the
      best and vilest how much difference is there in the eye of infinite
      wisdom? And if God, the all-knowing and all-powerful, created men as they
      are, strong and weak, wise and foolish, good, bad, and indifferent; there
      is no more injustice in Spurgeon's burning in Hell than in the damnation
      of the worst wretch that ever cursed the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      Spurgeon used to preach hell with a certain gusto. Here is a hot and
      strong passage from his sermon on the Resurrection of the Dead:
    </p>
    <p>
      "When thou diest', thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a hell
      for it; but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then
      thou wilt have twin-hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body
      suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy
      body will lie, asbestos-like, for ever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for
      the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the Devil
      shall for ever play his diabolical tune of Hell's Unutterable Lament."
    </p>
    <p>
      After preaching this awful doctrine a man should be ill for a fortnight.
      Would it not afflict a kind-hearted man unspeakably to think that millions
      of his fellow beings, or hundreds, or even one, would suffer such a
      terrible fate? Would it not impair his sleep, and fill his dreams with
      terror? But it did not have this effect on Spurgeon. After preaching hell
      in that way, and rolling damnation over his tongue as a dainty morsel, he
      went home, dined with a good appetite, drank his wine, and smoked his
      cigar.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was not the slightest doubt in Spurgeon's mind as to the endless
      doom of the damned. Here is an extract from another sermon&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God and it shall be written,
      'For ever!' When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torment they
      shall say, 'For ever!' When they howl, echo cries, 'For ever!'
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     'For ever' is written on their racks,
     'For ever' on their chains;
     'For ever' burneth in the fire,
     'For ever' ever reigns."
</pre>
    <p>
      How bodies are to burn without consuming, how a fire could last for ever,
      or how a good God could roast his own children in it, are questions that
      Spurgeon did not stop to answer. He took the damnable doctrine of
      damnation as he found it. He knew it was relished by myriads of callous,
      foolish people; and it gave such a pungent flavor to a long sermon! His
      listeners were not terrified. Oh dear no! Smith, the Newington
      greengrocer, was not alarmed; he twirled his thumbs, and said to himself,
      "Spurgeon's in fine form this morning!"
    </p>
    <p>
      Archdeacon Farrar protests against the notion of a fiery, everlasting hell
      as the result of fear, superstition, ignorance, hate, and slavish
      letter-worship. He declares that he would resign all hope of immortality
      to save a single human soul from the hell of Mr. Spurgeon. But is not the
      hell of Mr. Spurgeon the hell of the New Testament? Does not Jesus speak
      of everlasting fire? Why seek to limit the duration of hell by some
      hocus-pocus of interpretation? It is idle to pretend that "everlasting"
      means something less than everlasting. If it means that in relation to
      hell it must also mean it in relation to heaven. Dr. Farrar cannot have
      two different meanings for the same word in the same verse; and should he
      ever go to hell (he will pardon us the supposition), how much consolation
      would he derive from knowing that his doom was not "everlasting" but only
      "eternal"? There was more honesty and straightforwardness in Mr. Spurgeon.
      He preached what the Bible taught him. He set forth a hateful creed in its
      true colors. His presentation of Christianity will continue to satisfy
      those who belong to the past, but it will drive many others out of the
      fold of faith into the broad pastures of Freethought.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      IS SPURGEON IN HEAVEN?
    </h2>
    <p>
      When Mrs. Booth died, the wife of the famous "General," the "Army"
      reported her as "Promoted to Glory from Clacton-on-Sea." It was extremely
      funny. Clacton-on-Sea is such a prosaic anti-climax after Glory. One was
      reminded of Sir Horace Glendower:
    </p>
    <p>
      Sprat. But the sense of humor is not acute in religious circles.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Spurgeon frequently gave expression to his dislike and mistrust of the
      antics or the Salvation Army. He was far from prim himself, but he held
      that if people were not "won over to Christ" by preaching, it was idle to
      bait the hook with mere sensationalism. Yet by a strange irony his closest
      friends, in announcing his death to his flock, actually improved on the
      extravagance of the Salvationists. Here is a copy of the telegram that was
      affixed to the rails of the Metropolitan Tabernacle the morning after his
      decease:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Mentone, 11.50.
     Spurgeon's Tabernacle, London.

     Our beloved pastor entered heaven 11.5 Sunday night.
     Harrald.
</pre>
    <p>
      This Harrald was Mr. Spurgeon's private secretary, but he writes like the
      private secretary of God Almighty. A leading statesman once said he wished
      he was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay was cocksure of everything;
      but what was Macaulay's cocksureness to the cocksureness of Harrald? The
      gentleman could not have spoken with more assurance if he had been Saint
      Peter himself, and had opened the gate for Pastor Spurgeon.
    </p>
    <p>
      We take it that Spurgeon expired at 11.5 on Sunday night. That is the <i>fact</i>.
      All the rest is conjecture.
    </p>
    <p>
      How could his soul enter heaven at the very same moment? Is heaven in the
      atmosphere? He who asserts it is a very bold speculator. Is it out in the
      ether? If so, where? And how is it our telescopes cannot detect it? If
      heaven is a place, as it must be if it exists at all, it cannot very well
      be within the astronomical universe. Now the farthest stars are
      inconceivably remote. Our sun is more than 90,000,000 miles distant, and
      Sirius is more than 200,000 times farther off than the sun. There are
      stars so distant that their light takes more than a thousand years to
      reach us, and light travels at the rate of nearly two hundred thousands
      miles per second!
    </p>
    <p>
      It is difficult to imagine Spurgeon's soul travelling faster than that;
      and if heaven is somewhere out in the vast void, beyond the sweep of
      telescopes or the register of the camera, Spurgeon's soul has so far <i>not</i>
      "entered heaven" that its journey thither is only just begun. In another
      thousand years, perhaps, it will be nearing the pearly gates. <i>Perhaps</i>,
      we say; for heaven may be a million times further off, and Spurgeon's soul
      may pull the bell and rouse Saint Peter long after the earth is a frozen
      ball, and not only the human race but all life has disappeared from its
      surface. Nay, by the time he arrives, the earth may have gone to pot, and
      the whole solar system may have vanished from the map of the universe.
    </p>
    <p>
      What a terrible journey! Is it worth travelling so far to enter the Bible
      heaven, and sing hymns with the menagerie of the Apocalypse? Besides, a
      poor soul might lose its way, and dash about the billion-billion-miled
      universe like a lunatic meteor.
    </p>
    <p>
      It appears to us, also, that Mr. Harrald and the rest of Mr. Spurgeon's
      friends have forgotten his own teaching. He thoroughly believed in the
      bodily resurrection of the dead, and an ultimate day of judgment, when
      bodv and soul would join together, and share a common fate for eternity.
      How is this reconcileable with the notion that Spurgeon's soul "entered
      heaven at 11.5" on Sunday evening, the thirty-first of January, 1892? Is
      it credible that the good man went to the New Jerusalem, will stay there
      in perfect felicity until the day of judgment, and will then have to
      return to this world, rejoin his old bodv, and stand his trial at the
      great assize, with the possibility of having to shift his quarters
      afterwards? Would not this be extremely unjust, nay dreadfully cruel? And
      even if Spurgeon, as one of the "elect," only left heaven for form's sake
      at the day of judgment, to go through the farce of a predetermined trial,
      would it not be a gratuitous worry to snatch him away from unspeakable
      bliss to witness the trial of the human species, and the damnation of at
      least nine-tenths of all that ever breathed?
    </p>
    <p>
      As a matter of fact, the Christian Church has never been able to make up
      its mind about the state or position of the soul immediately after death.
      Only a few weeks ago we saw that Sir G. G. Stokes, unconsciously following
      in the wake of divines like Archbishop Whately, holds the view that the
      soul on leaving the body will lie in absolute unconsciousness until the
      day when it has to wake up and stand in the dock. The controversies on
      this subject are infinite, and all sorts of ideas have been maintained,
      but nothing has been authoritatively decided. Mr. Spurgeon's friends have
      simply <i>cut</i> the Gordian knot; that is, they are only dogmatising.
    </p>
    <p>
      Laying all such subtle disputes aside, we should like Mr. Harrald to tell
      us how he knows that Spurgeon has gone, is going, or ever will go to
      heaven. What certainty can they have in the matter? Saint Paul himself
      alluded to the possibility of his being "a castaway." How can an inferior
      apostle be <i>sure</i> of the kingdom of heaven?
    </p>
    <p>
      Saint Paul taught predestination, and so did Spurgeon. According to this
      doctrine, God knew beforehand the exact number of human beings that would
      live on this planet, though Omniscience itself must have been taxed to
      decide where the anthropoid exactly shaded off into the man. He also knew
      the exact number of the elect who would go to heaven, and the exact number
      of the reprobate who would go to hell. The tally was decided before the
      spirit of God brooded over the realm of Chaos and old Night. Every child
      born into the world bears the stamp of his destiny. But the stamp is
      secret. No one can detect it. Lists of saved and damned are not published.
      If they were, it would save us a lot of anxiety. Some would say, "I'm all
      right." Others would say, "I'm in for it; I'll keep cool while I can." But
      we must all die before we ascertain our fate. We may feel confident of
      being in the right list, with the rest of the sheep; but confidence is not
      proof, and impressions are not facts. When we take the great leap we shall
      know. Until then no man has any certitude; not even the most pious
      Christian that ever rolled his eyes in prayer to his Maker, or whined out
      the confession of his contemptible sins. All are in the same perplexity,
      and Spurgeon was no exception to the rule.
    </p>
    <p>
      When predestination was really believed, the friends of the greatest saint
      only <i>hoped</i> he had gone to heaven. When they are <i>sure</i> of it
      predestination is dead. Nay, hell itself is extinguished. Spurgeon's
      friends think he has gone to heaven because they feel he was too good to
      go to hell. They knew him personally, and it is hard to think that a man
      whose hand once lay in yours is howling in everlasting fire. Such
      exceptions prove a new rule. They show that the human heart has outgrown
      the horrible doctrine of future torment, that the human mind has outgrown
      foolish creeds, that man is better than his God.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      GOD IN JAPAN.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Japan has just been visited by a terrible earthquake. Without a moment's
      warning it swept along, wrecking towns, killing people, and altering the
      very shape of mountains. A vast tidal wave also rushed against the coast
      and deluged whole tracts of low-lying country. It is estimated that 50,000
      houses have been destroyed, and at least 5,000 men, women, and children.
      The first reports gave a total of 25,000 slain, but this is said to be an
      exaggeration. Nevertheless, as a hundred miles or so of railway is torn to
      pieces, and it is difficult to convey relief to the suffering survivors,
      the butcher's bill of this catastrophe may be doubled before the finish.
    </p>
    <p>
      If earthquakes are the work of blind, unconscious Nature, it is idle to
      spend our breath in discussion or recrimination. Even regret is foolish.
      We have to take the world as we find it, with all its disadvantages,
    </p>
    <p>
      and make the best of a not too brilliant bargain. Instead of screaming we
      must study; instead of wailing we must reflect; and eventually, as we gain
      a deeper knowledge of the secrets of Nature, and a greater mastery over
      her forces, we shall be better able to foresee the approach of evil and to
      take precautionary measures against it.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the standard teaching of England, to say nothing of less civilised
      nations, is not Naturalism but Theism. We are told that there is a God
      over all, and that he doeth all things well. On the practical side this
      deity is called Providence. It is Providence that sends fine weather, and
      Providence that sends bad weather; Providence that sends floods, and
      Providence that sends drought; Providence that favors us with a fine
      harvest, and Providence that blights the crops, reducing millions of
      people, as in Russia at this moment, to the most desperate shifts of
      self-preservation. It is Providence that saves Smith's precious life in a
      railway accident, and of course it is. Providence that smashes poor Jones,
      Brown and Robinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now it will be observed that the favorable or adverse policy of Providence
      is quite irrespective of human conduct, There is no moral discrimination.
      If Grace Darling and Jack the Ripper were travelling by the same train,
      and it met with an accident, everybody knows that their chances of death
      are precisely equal. If there were any difference it would be in favor of
      Jack, who seems very careful of his own safety, and would probably take a
      seat in the least dangerous part of the train.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some people, of course, and especially parsons, will contend that
      Providence does discriminate. They have already been heard to hint that
      the Russian famine is on account of the persecution of the Jews. But this
      act of brutality is the crime of the Government, and the famine falls upon
      multitudes of peasants who never saw a Jew in their lives. They have to
      suffer the pangs of hunger, but the Czar will not go without a single meal
      or a single bottle of champagne.
    </p>
    <p>
      No doubt a pious idiot or two will go to the length of asserting or
      insinuating that the earthquake in Japan is a divine warning to the
      people, from the Mikado down to his meanest subject, that they are too
      slow in accepting Christianity. In fact there is a large collection of
      such pious idiots, only they are deterred by a wholesome fear of ridicule.
      Hundreds of thousands of people have seen Mr. Wilson Barrett in <i>Claudian</i>,
      without being in the least astonished that an earthquake, which ruins a
      whole city, should be got up for the hero's spiritual edification.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let the pious idiots, however numerous, be swept aside, and let the
      Christian with a fair supply of brains in his skull consider Providence in
      the light of this earthquake. It is folly to pretend that the Japanese are
      particularly wicked at this moment. It is greater folly to pretend that
      the earthquake killed the most flagitious sinners. It slew like Jehovah's
      bandits in the land of Canaan, without regard to age, sex, or character.
      The terrible fact must be faced, that in a country not specially wicked,
      and in a portion of it not inhabited by select sinners, the Lord sent an
      earthquake to slay man, woman, and child, and if possible to "leave alive
      nothing that breatheth."
    </p>
    <p>
      Lay your hand upon your heart, Christian, and honestly answer this
      question. Would you have done this deed? Of course not. Your cheek flames
      at the thought. You would rush to save the victims. You would soothe the
      dying and reverently bury the dead. Why then do you worship a Moloch who
      laughs at the writhings of his victims and drinks their tears like wine?
      See, they are working and playing; they are at business and pleasure; one
      is toiling to support the loved ones at home; another is sitting with them
      in peace and joy; another is wooing the maiden who is dearer to him than
      life itself; another is pondering some benevolent project; another is
      planning a law or a poem that shall be a blessing and a delight to
      posterity. And lo the mandate of Moloch goes forth, and "his word shall
      not return unto him void." Swifter than thought calamity falls upon the
      gay and busy scene. Hearts that throbbed with joy now quiver with agony.
      The husband folds his wife in a last embrace. The mother gathers her
      children like Niobe. The lover clasps in the midst of horror the maiden no
      longer coy. Homes are shaken to dust, halls fall in ruins, the very
      temples of the gods are shattered. Brains are dashed out, blood flows in
      streams, limbs are twisted, bodies are pinned by falling masonry, cries of
      anguish pierce the air, groans follow, and lastly silence. Moloch then
      retires to his inmost sanctuary, filled and sated with death and pain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Is it not better, Christian friend, to defy Moloch instead of worshipping
      him? Is it not still better to regard this deity as the creation of
      fanciful ignorance? Is not existence a terror if Providence may swoop upon
      us with inevitable talons and irresistible beak? And does not life become
      sweeter when we see no cruel intelligence behind the catastrophes of
      nature?
    </p>
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    <h2>
      STANLEY ON PROVIDENCE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Buckle, the historian of Civilisation, points out that superstition is
      most rampant where men are most oppressed by external nature. Wild and
      terrible surroundings breed fear and awe in the human mind. Those who lead
      adventurous lives are subject to the same law. Sailors, for instance, are
      proverbially superstitious, and military men are scarcely less so. The
      fighter is not always moral, but he is nearly always religious.
    </p>
    <p>
      No one acquainted with this truth will be surprised at the piety of
      explorers. There is a striking exception in Sir Richard Burton, but we do
      not remember another. From the days of Mungo Park down to our own age,
      they have been remarkable for their religious temperaments. Had they
      remained at home, in quiet and safety, they might not have been
      conspicuous in this respect; but a life of constant adventure, of daily
      peril and hairbreadth escapes, developed their superstitious tendencies.
      It is so natural to feel our helplessness in solitude and danger, and
      perhaps in sickness. It is so easy to feel that our escape from a calamity
      that hemmed us in on every side was due to a providential hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whether Stanley, who is now the cynosure of all eyes, began with any
      considerable stock of piety, is a question we have no means of
      determining; but we can quite understand how a very little would go a very
      long way in Africa, amid long and painful marches through unknown
      territory, the haunting peril of strange enemies, and the oppressive gloom
      of interminable forests. Indeed, if the great explorer had become as
      superstitious as the natives themselves, we could have forgiven it as a
      frailty incident to human nature in such trying circumstances. But when he
      brings his mental weakness home with him, and addresses Englishmen in the
      language of ideas calculated for the latitude of equatorial Africa, it
      becomes necessary to utter a protest. Stanley has had a good spell of rest
      in Egypt, and plenty of time to get rid of the "creeps." He should,
      therefore, have returned to Europe clothed and in his right mind. But
      instead of this he deliberately sits down and writes the following rubbish
      for an American magazine, with one eye on God above and the other on a
      handsome cheque below:
    </p>
    <p>
      "Constrained at the darkest hour humbly to confess that without God's help
      I was helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest solitudes that I would confess
      his aid before men. Silence, as of death, was round about me; it was
      midnight; I was weakened by illness, prostrated by fatigue, and wan with
      anxiety for my white and black companions, whose fate was a mystery. In
      this physical and mental distress I besought God to give me back my
      people. Nine hours later we were exulting with a rapturous joy. In full
      view of all was the crimson flag with the crescent, and beneath its waving
      folds was the long-lost rear column."
    </p>
    <p>
      Danger and grief are apt to make us selfish, and no one would be hard on
      Stanley for showing weakness in such circumstances. But he rather glories
      in it. The danger is gone, and alas! the egotism remains. Others perished
      miserably, but he escaped. Omnipotence took care of him and let them go to
      the Devil. No doubt they prayed in their extremity as heartily as he did,
      but their prayers were unheard or neglected. Stanley was the lion of the
      party. Yes, and in parading his egotistic piety in this way, he is in
      danger of becoming a <i>lion comique</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is something absolutely farcical in Stanley's logic. While he was
      praying to God, millions of other persons were engaged in the same
      occupation. Agonised mothers were beseeching God to spare their dear
      children; wives were imploring him to restore the bread-winner of the
      family to health; entombed miners were praying in the dark depths of
      coalpits, and slowly perishing of starvation; shipwrecked sailors were
      asking for the help that never came. Providence could not, apparently,
      take on too much business at once, and while Stanley's fate trembled in
      the balance the rest of mankind might shift for themselves.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the farce does not end here. Stanley's attitude was much like Jacob's.
      That smooth-skinned and smooth-tongued patriarch said that if God would
      guarantee him a safe journey, feed him, clothe him, find him pocket money,
      and bring him safe back again&mdash;well, then the Lord should be his God.
      Stanley was not so exacting, but his attitude was similar. He asked God to
      give him back his people (a few short, killed or starved, did not matter),
      and promised in return to "confess his aid before men." Give me the solid
      pudding, he says, and I will give you the empty praise. And now he is safe
      back in Europe he fulfils his part of the contract, and goes about
      trumpeting the praise of Omnipotence; taking care, however, to get as much
      cash as possible for every note he blows on the instrument.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even this does not end the farce. Stanley's piety runs away with his
      arithmetic. He reminds us of a Christian lady we heard of the other day.
      She prayed one night, on going to bed, for news from her daughter, and
      early the next morning a letter came bearing the Edinburgh post-mark. This
      was clearly an answer to her prayer. But a sceptical friend showed her
      that the letter must have been posted at Edinburgh before she prayed for
      it. Now Stanley reasons like that lady. Nine hours is no time in central
      Africa. The "long-lost rear column" must have been near, though invisible,
      when Stanley struck his little bargain with the Almighty. Had it been two
      or three hundred miles off, and miraculously transported, the hand of
      Providence would have been unmistakable; but in the circumstances its
      arrival was natural, and the miracle is obviously the creation of
      Stanley's heated brain. He was "weakened by illness" and "prostrated by
      fatigue," and the absurdity was pardonable. We only protest against his
      playing the child when he is well and strong.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      GONE TO GOD.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Stanley, the African traveller, is a man of piety. He seems to be on
      pretty familiar terms with the "one above." During his last expedition to
      relieve Emin&mdash;a sceptical gentleman, who gets along with less
      bloodshed than Stanley&mdash;he was troubled with "traitors"; that is,
      black fellows who thought they had a better right in Africa than the
      intrusive whites, and acted upon that opinion. This put Stanley in a
      towering rage. He resolved to teach the "traitors" a lesson. One of them
      was solemnly tried&mdash;by his executioners, and sentenced to be hung. A
      rope was noosed round his neck, and he was taken under a tree, which was
      to be his gallows. The poor devil screamed for mercy, but Stanley bent his
      inexorable brows, and cried, "Send him to God!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "We were troubled with no more traitors," says Stanley. Very likely. But
      the great man forgot to say what he meant by the exclamation, "Send him to
      God!" Did he mean "Send him to God for judgment?" If so, it was rather
      rough to hang the prisoner before his proper trial. Did he mean, "The
      fellow isn't fit for earth, so send him to heaven?" If so, it was a poor
      compliment to Paradise. Or did he simply use a pious, impressive form of
      speech to awe the spectators, and give them the notion that he had as much
      traffic with God as any African mystery-man or Mohammedan dervish?
    </p>
    <p>
      The middle one of these three theories fits in best with the general
      sentiment, or at any rate the working sentiment, of Christian England.
      Some brutal, drunken, or passionate wretch commits a murder. He is
      carefully tried, solemnly sentenced, and religiously hanged. He is
      declared unfit to live on this planet. But he is still a likely candidate
      for heaven, which apparently yawns to receive all the refuse of earth. He
      is sedulously taken in hand by the gaol chaplain, or some other spiritual
      guide to glory, and is generally brought to a better frame of mind.
      Finally, he expresses sorrow for his position, forgives everybody he has
      ever injured, delivers himself of a good deal of highly edifying advice,
      and then swings from the gallows clean into the Kingdom of Heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      The grotesque absurdity of all this is enough to wrinkle the face of a cab
      horse. Society and the murderer are both playing the hypocrite, and of
      course Society is the worse of the two, for it is acting deliberately and
      methodically, while the poor devil about to be hung is like a hunted thing
      in a corner, up to any shift to ease his last moments and make peace with
      the powers of the life to come. Society says he has killed somebody, and
      he shall be killed; that he is not fit to live, but fit to die; that it
      must strangle him, and call him "brother" when the white cap is over his
      face, and God must save his soul; that he is too bad to dwell on earth,
      but it hopes to meet him in heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      Religion does not generate sense, logic, or humaneness in the mind of
      Society. Its effect on the doomed assassin is simply horrible. He is
      really a more satisfactory figure when committing the murder than when he
      is posing, and shuffling and twisting, and talking piously, and exhibiting
      the intense, unmitigated selfishness which is at the bottom of all
      religious sentiment. The essence of piety comes out in this tragi-comedy.
      Personal fear, personal hope, self, self, sell, is the be-all and the
      end-all of this sorry exhibition.
    </p>
    <p>
      A case in point has just occurred at Leeds. James Stockwell was hung there
      on Tuesday morning. While under sentence of death, the report says, he
      slept well and ate heartily, so that remorse does not appear to have
      injured his digestion or any other part of his physical apparatus. On
      learning that he would not be reprieved, and must die, he became very
      attentive to the chaplain's ministrations; in fact, he took to preaching
      himself, and wrote several letters to his relatives, giving them sound
      teetotal advice, and warning them against the evils of drink.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the fellow lied all the time. His crime was particularly atrocious. He
      outraged a poor servant girl, sixteen years of age, and then cut her
      throat. He was himself thirty-two years of age, with a wife and one child,
      so that he had not even the miserable excuse of an unmated animal. A plea
      of insanity was put forward on his behalf, but it did not avail. When the
      wretched creature found he was not to be reprieved, and took kindly to the
      chaplain's religion, he started a fresh theory to cover his crime. He said
      he was drunk when he committed it. Now this was a lie. The porter's speech
      in <i>Macbeth</i> will explain our meaning. James Stockwell may have had a
      glass, but if he was really drunk, in the sense of not knowing what he was
      about, we believe it was simply impossible for him to make outrage the
      prelude to murder. If he had merely drunk enough to bring out the beast in
      him, without deranging the motor nerves, he was certainly not <i>drunk</i>
      in the proper sense of the word. He knew what he was doing, and both in
      the crime and in his flight he showed himself a perfect master of his
      actions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Religion, therefore, did not "convict him of sin." It did not lay bare
      before him his awful wickedness. It simply made him hypocritical. It
      induced or permitted him to save his <i>amour propre</i> by a fresh
      falsehood.
    </p>
    <p>
      James Stockwell's last letter from gaol was written the day before his
      execution. It was a comprehensive epistle, addressed to his father and
      mother and brothers and sisters. "God" and "Christ" appear in it like an
      eruption. The writer quotes the soothing text, "Come unto me all you that
      labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." He was evidently
      familiar with Scripture, and thought this text especially applicable to
      himself. "Many a prayer," he says, "have I offered to God both on behalf
      of you and myself," and he winds up by "hoping to meet you all hereafter."
    </p>
    <p>
      Not a word about his crime. Not a word about his injury to society. Not a
      word about the poor girl he outraged and murdered. James Stockwell had no
      thought for her or her relatives. He did not trouble about what had become
      of Kate Dennis. He was careless whether she was in heaven or hell. Not
      once, apparently, did it cross his mind that he had destroyed her young
      life after nameless horror; that he had killed her in the bloom of
      maidenhood; that at one fell swoop he had extinguished all that she might
      have been&mdash;perhaps a happy wife and mother, living to a white old
      age, with the prattle of grandchildren soothing her last steps to the
      grave. Such reflections do not occur to gentlemen who are anxious about
      their salvation, and in a hurry to get to heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      "I and mine"&mdash;my fate, my mother, my father, my sisters, my brothers&mdash;this
      was the sole concern of James Stockwell under the chaplain's
      ministrations. In this frame of mind, we presume, he has sailed to glory,
      and his family hope to meet him there snug in Abraham's bosom. Well, we
      don't. We hope to give the haunt of James Stockwell a wide berth. If he
      and others like him are in the upper circles, every decent person would
      rather be in the pit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let not the reader suppose that James Stockwell's case is uncommon. We
      have made a point of reading the letters of condemned murderers, and thev
      all bear a family likeness. Religion simply stimulates and sanctifies
      selfishness. In selfishness it began and in selfishness it ends. Extreme
      cases only show the principle in a glaring light; they do not alter it,
      and the light is the light of truth.
    </p>
    <p>
      James Stockwell has gone to God. No doubt the chaplain of Leeds gaol feels
      sure of it. Probably the fellow's relatives are just as sure. But what of
      Kate Dennis. Is <i>she</i> with God? What an awful farce it would be if
      she were in hell. Perhaps she is. She had no time to prepare for death.
      She was cut off "in her sins." But her murderer had three weeks to prepare
      for his freehold in New Jerusalem. He qualified himself for a place with
      the sore-legged Lazarus. He dwells in the presence of the Lamb. He drinks
      of the river of life. He twangs his hallelujah harp and blows his
      hallelujah trumpet. Maybe he looks over the battlements and sees Kate
      Dennis in Hades. The murderer in heaven, and the victim in hell! Nay more.
      It has been held that the bliss of the saved will be heightened by
      witnessing the tortures of the damned. In that case Kate Dennis may burn
      to make James Stockwell's holiday. He will watch her writhings with more
      than the relish of a sportsman who has hooked a lusty trout. "Ha, ha," the
      worthy James may exclaim, "I tortured her before I killed her, and now I
      shall enjoy her tortures for ever."
    </p>
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    <h2>
      THANK GOD.
    </h2>
    <p>
      The peculiarly selfish character of religion is often exemplified, but we
      do not remember a better illustration than the one which recently occurred
      at Folkestone. The twenty-seven seamen who were rescued from the <i>Benvenue</i>
      attended a thanksgiving service at the parish church, where the vicar
      delivered "a short address suitable to the occasion." Their captain and
      four of his crew were drowned, and the lucky survivors thanked the Lord
      for saving them, though he let the others perish in the yeasty waves.
    </p>
    <p>
      We should like to see a copy of that vicar's suitable discourse. We
      suspect it would be an interesting study to a cynic. No doubt the man of
      God's chief motive was professional. The saving of those shipwrecked men
      was a splendid piece of work, but it required to be rounded off. It was
      not complete unless the parson blessed it and approved it with a text. He
      came in at the finish when the danger was all over, and gave the
      perfecting touch in the shape of a cheap benediction. Probably the man of
      God put in a good word for Providence. The poor sailors had been snatched
      from the jaws of death; their minds were therefore in a state of
      agitation, and at the very best they are not a logical or reflective race
      of men. Very likely, therefore, they assented to the theory that they owed
      their deliverance to the blessing of God, but a little quiet thought about
      the matter would possibly make them see it in a different light.
    </p>
    <p>
      The persons who visibly <i>did</i> save them from drowning were gallant
      lifeboat-men, who put their own lives in deadly peril, fighting the storm
      inch by inch in the hope of rescuing a number of unknown fellow creatures.
      All honor to <i>them!</i> We would sooner doff the hat to them than to any
      prince in Christendom. Some of them, perhaps, take a drop too much
      occasionally, and their language may often be more vigorous than polite.
      But all that is superficial. The real test of a man is what he will do
      when he is put to it. When those rough fellows saw a brave task before
      them, all the skin-deep blackguardism dropped away; the heroic came out in
      supreme majesty, and they were consecrated by it more truly than any smug
      priest at his profitable altar. As they jumped into the boat they proved
      the nobility of human nature, and the damnable falsehood of the Christian
      doctrine of original sin.
    </p>
    <p>
      What share Providence had in the matter is not very apparent. Strong arms
      and stout hearts were in the lifeboat, and that accounts for her reaching
      the wreck. Had the rowers the choice of a stimulus, we dare say they would
      have taken a swig of brandy in preference to any quantity of the Holy
      Spirit. What Providence <i>might</i> have done if he, she, or it was in
      the humor, was to keep the shipwrecked sailors safe until the lifeboat
      arrived. But this was <i>not</i> done, Those who were lashed to the
      rigging were saved, while the captain and four others, less fortunately
      situated, were lost. Where the <i>material</i> means were efficacious
      there was salvation, and where they failed there was disaster and death.
    </p>
    <p>
      So much for the logical side of the matter. Now let us look at the moral
      side. Religion pretends to minister to the unselfish part of our nature.
      That is the theory, but how does it work out in practice? Thanking God for
      saving the survivors of a shipwreck implies that he could have saved those
      who perished. It also implies that he did not choose to do so. It further
      implies that the saved are more worthy, or more important, than the lost;
      at least, it implies that they are greater favorites in the "eye of
      heaven." Now this is a frightful piece of egotism, which everyone with a
      spark of manhood would be disgusted at if he saw it in its true colors.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor is this all. It is not even the worst. There is a viler aspect of this
      "thanksgiving" business. One man is saved in a disaster and another is
      killed. When the first realises his good luck he congratulates himself,
      This is natural and pardonable, but only for a moment. The least
      disinterestedness, the least sympathy, the least imagination, would make
      him think of his dead companion. "Did he suffer much, poor fellow? What
      will his wife do? How will his little ones get on without a father? After
      all, mightn't it have been better if he had been spared instead of me? Who
      knows?"
    </p>
    <p>
      If these reflections did not occur under the stimulated instinct of
      self-preservation it would be bad enough. How much worse when the survivor
      keeps up the selfish attitude in cold blood, and deliberately goes about
      thanking God for <i>his</i> preservation! Ordinary reason and humanity
      would cry shame on such egotism, but religion steps in and sanctifies it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of these days an honest man will be provoked into a bit of good
      strong "blasphemy." When he hears a fellow thanking Providence for <i>his</i>
      safety, while others perished, this honest man will shrug his shoulders.
      And when the fellow cries "Bless God!" this honest man will exclaim "Damn
      God!"
    </p>
    <p>
      No doubt the priests would burn that honest man alive if they had the
      power. But his logic and his feelings will be better than theirs. He will
      abhor selfishness even in the disguise of piety, and he will argue that if
      God is to be credited with the lives of those who are saved, he should
      also be debited with the lives of those who are lost. And how would the
      account stand then?
    </p>
    <p>
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    <h2>
      JUDGMENT DAY.
    </h2>
    <p>
      The end of the world has been a fertile and profitable theme with pulpit
      mountebanks and pious adventurers. Ever since the primitive ages of
      Christianity it has served to frighten the credulous and feather the nests
      of their deceivers.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the apostolic days the Second Coming of Christ was generally and
      constantly expected. According to the twenty-fourth of Matthew, Jesus
      predicted that the end of all things would soon arrive. The sun and moon
      were to be darkened; the stars were to fall from heaven; and the Son of
      Man was to come through the clouds with great power and glory, and gather
      the elect together from every quarter of the earth, According to the
      twenty-fifth of Matthew, this wondrous scene was to be followed by a Great
      Assize. All the nations were to be judged before the heavenly throne, and
      divided into two lots, one destined for heaven and the other for hell. And
      Jesus significantly added, "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall
      not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
    </p>
    <p>
      St. Paul also, in the fourth chapter of the first of Thessalonians, said
      that the Lord would "descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of
      the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall
      rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
      with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing of the sort has happened. There is no sign of the Lord's coming,
      and he is already eighteen centuries behind date. "Behold I come quickly"&mdash;"Surely
      I come quickly." Such was the announcement. But, like many other divine
      promises, it has been falsified. The only orthodox way out of the
      difficulty is to say that the Lord does not reckon time as we do; with him
      a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day.
    </p>
    <p>
      The general public, however, eighteen hundred years ago, did not know how
      long the prophecy was to remain unfulfilled, and it had an extraordinary
      power over them. Being mostly very ignorant, and therefore very credulous,
      they were easily terrified by the notion that the world was to be burnt up
      speedily; and they as readily embraced the doctrine which promised to
      bring them safely through the catastrophe. From the way in which the game
      answers still with the Christian mob, after nearly two thousand years of
      exposure, we can understand what a splendid instrument of proselytising it
      must have been in the hands of the fanatical preachers of the early
      Church. Combine with it the Millennium promised to the saints after the
      Second Coming of Christ, in which they were to enjoy themselves royally,
      and you will feel the justice of Gibbon's remark that "it must have
      contributed in a very considerable degree to the progress of the Christian
      faith." It was inculcated by a succession of Fathers, from Justin Martyr
      to Lactantius. But when it had served its purpose it was allowed to drop.
      As Gibbon says, "it was at first treated as a profound allegory, was
      considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion, and was at length
      rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and fanaticism." The Millennium
      is stigmatised, in what once stood as the forty-first Article of the
      English Church, as "a fable of Jewish dotage." We wonder whether the
      plain-spoken divines who drew up that article included Jesus Christ, St.
      Paul, and St. John among the Jewish dotards.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the end of the tenth century the doctrine of the Second Coming was
      revived. The people were led to believe that the old serpent's thousand
      years of bondage was nearly up, that he would be let loose about the year
      1,000, that Antichrist would then appear, and that the end of the world
      would follow. Churches and houses were therefore left to decay, as they
      would cease to be wanted. Whenever an eclipse of the sun or moon took
      place, the people ran into caverns and caves. Multitudes hurried off to
      Palestine, where they supposed Christ would make his descent. They
      transferred their property to the priests, who could say with Iago, "thus
      do I ever make my fool my purse." Others not only gave their property to
      the priests, but actually became their slaves; hoping, says Mosheim, that
      "the supreme Judge would be more favorable to them if they made themselves
      servants to <i>his</i> servants."
    </p>
    <p>
      Jortin justly observes that the priests industriously cherished the
      delusion for the sake of filthy lucre. They accepted the gifts of their
      poor dupes, although earthly possessions would be as useless to them as to
      the laity if the last days were at hand. Donations to the Church were
      given by fools and received by knaves. The reason assigned for the gift is
      generally thus expressed: <i>Appropinquante mundi termino&mdash;The end of
      the world being now at hand</i>.*
    </p>
    <p>
      When the tenth century ended without a sign of the Second Advent, people
      looked at each other and said "He is not come then." And the priests
      chuckled, "No, he has not come, but your property is gone." There was no
      chance of bringing an action for obtaining money under false pretences,
      and Holy Mother Church never gives back a farthing of what she obtains,
      for what is once devoted to God can never be alienated without sacrilege.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although the delusion has been milder since then, it has always lurked
      among the ignorant, and occasionally become acute. Silly Christians still
      shake their heads when a comet is visible, and regard it as a blazing
      portent. They even hint that one of these wanderers through space may
      collide with our globe and cause the final smash; not knowing that comets
      are quite harmless, and that hundreds of cubic miles of their tails would
      not outweigh a jar-ful of air.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dr. Cumming foretold the grand collapse several times. His books were read
      by thousands of superstitious people. Finally, he was played out, and he
      went to his grave a discredited prophet. Had he been wiser he would have
      fixed the event some time after he was likely to be buried. Then the game
      would have lasted his lifetime, and what does it matter if you are found
      out when you are dead?
    </p>
    <p>
      How far Gumming believed his own prophecies is a moot point. It is said
      that he bought the lease of a house, which expired about twenty-five years
      after his date for the day of judgment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Prophet Baxter, of the <i>Christian Herald</i>, now runs the business. He
      wrote a book to prove that Louis Napoleon was Antichrist. Louis Napoleon
      is dead and nearly forgotten. Then he proved that Gambetta was Antichrist.
      Gambetta is dead and not forgotten. Then he proved that Prince Jerome was
      Antichrist. Prince Jerome is nowhere, and Baxter is looking out for a
      fresh Antichrist. Yet his paper is read by hundreds of thousands. As Heine
      said, the fool-crop is perennial.
    </p>
    <p>
      Over in America the Second Adventists are a numerous body. They watch and
      pray for the coming of Christ, and keep white robes ready for their
      ascension. Some time ago they donned their linen in the expectation that
      the Lord was coming that very night. But the Lord did not put in an
      appearance, and the robes were laid up in lavender again. A fat matron
      trying to fly in that outfit would be a sight worth seeing. It would take
      several angels to float some of them. Even the archangel Michael might
      shrink from tackling twenty-stone.
    </p>
    <p>
      Like everything else in Christianity, except the accursed doctrine of
      salvation by faith, the idea of the end of the world and a day of judgment
      is derived from older sources.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Hindu <i>Kalpas</i>, covering thousands of millions of years, are
      periods of creation and destruction, and each is called a day of Brahma.
      During this enormous interval the universe begins and ends. Brahma wakes
      from his slumbrous solitude, and his thoughts and emotions embody
      themselves in worlds and creatures. When he falls to rest again, the whole
      system of finite things vanishes like the baseless fabric of a vision.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Stoics also believed in a periodical destruction and renovation of all
      things. They, as Alger says, "conceived of God as a pure artistic force or
      seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the evolution of
      the cosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into fire and vanishes. The
      universal periodical conflagration destroys all evil, and leaves the
      indestructible God alone in his pure essence again."
    </p>
    <p>
      The Persians entertained a similar conception, which more closely
      resembles the Christian doctrine. Ahura-Mazda creates all things good, and
      the race of men happy and immortal. But Angra-Mainyas, his adversary, the
      old serpent, corrupts them, brings upon them misery and death, and leads
      their souls to his dark abode. Good and evil spirits fill all creation
      with their conflict. But at last Ahura-Mazda subdues Angra-Mainyas,
      nullifies all the mischief he has done by means of a great deliverer, who
      is sent to instruct and redeem mankind, raises the dead, purifies the
      world with fire, and restores all nature to its paradisiacal condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Scandinavians had their Ragnarok, or Twilight of the Gods, when all
      the powers of good and evil join in battle. The horn sounds, the last day
      dawns in fire and splendor from the sky, in fog and venom from the abyss.
      Flames destroy the earth, the combatants mostly slay each other, but
      Gimli, the heaven of the All-Father, is a refuge for the survivors, and
      the beginning of a new and fairer world.
    </p>
    <p>
      Chiefly influenced by the Persian, and partly by other systems, the later
      Jewish theology, as represented by the Pharisees, taught that Jehovah
      would reappear in the last days; and the Day of the Lord, which in former
      ages meant any national calamity, became transformed into the Day of
      Judgment. What was to happen on that occasion is described in the Book of
      Enoch. This was written about a century before Christ, yet it is quoted in
      the Epistle of Jude as the work of old transported Enoch, the seventh from
      Adam; a fact which throws a singular light on the critical acumen of the
      early Christians. Jesus Christ, Paul, and especially the author of
      Revelation, are indebted to the Book of Enoch. It provided them with
      nearly all the plot, dialogue and scenery of their judgment drama.
    </p>
    <p>
      As judges of the dead, the Greeks had Minos, who presided at the trial of
      souls from Europe; Rhada-mauthus, who examined those from Asia; and Æacus,
      who tried those from Africa, America and Australia were then unknown, and
      souls from those continents were not provided with inspectors. Of course
      the dead who held communication with the living, never told them more than
      they knew. The same thing continues to this day. All the messages from the
      departed given at all the Spiritist <i>séances</i> have not added a single
      fragment to the world's stock of information.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ancient Egyptians believed in "after death the judgment." Souls were
      tried in the Hall of the two-Truths, or the double Justice. They were
      weighed in the balance. Thoth noted the result, and Osiris pronounced
      sentence. Before burial, also, the Egyptian dead underwent a saner trial.
      The friends and relatives, the enemies and accusers of the deceased,
      assembled around the sarcophagus before forty-two assessors. He was put on
      his trial before them; and if justified, awarded an honorable burial; but,
      if condemned, disgraced by the withholding of funeral rites. Kings, as
      well as commoners, were apparently subject to the same ordeal. Does this
      account for the beneficent character of their government, and the
      prosperous-content of the people, which is reflected in the placid smile
      of their sphinxes?
    </p>
    <p>
      Probably the antique notion of a general Day of Judgment arose from the
      imposing trials, where the King sat in judgment, throned, jewelled, and
      guarded; where all were free to approach and claim justice; and where the
      sentences were executed by the soldiers-directly they were passed. Add to
      this scene a general <i>auto da fé</i>, in which Christ plays the part of
      Grand Inquisitor, the saints that of familiars, and the Devil; that of
      executioner, and you have a very fair idea of the Christian Day of
      Judgment.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Day," we presume, must not be taken too literally. The Mohammedans
      believe the Great Assize will last thousands of years. In that case the
      people who are fond of hearing trials will have a fine time, until their
      own turn comes. After all, even the Mohammedan computation seems too
      slender. To say nothing of the scientific antiquity of man, and reckoning
      according to the Bible chronology, about two hundred thousand million
      souls have passed into eternity already, and the Lord knows how many more
      will join them. Imagination fails in conceiving the time it would take to
      try all that multitude, especially if there are a good number of Tichborne
      cases. Besides, the whole thing seems unfair. Those who get a ticket for
      heaven at the end of the Day will enjoy a few thousand years less of bliss
      than the more fortunate ones who came early; and those who get a ticket
      for hell in the first hour will suffer a few thousand years of torture
      more than those who are sentenced at the finish.
    </p>
    <p>
      The criterion at the Day of Judgment will be Faith. That is a difficult
      virtue to wise men, and an easy one to fools. The ninnies, therefore, will
      have the best chance. This must be very consoling to mankind if Carlyle's
      estimate of England's population&mdash;"thirty millions, mostly fools"&mdash;may
      be extended to the rest of the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      All who have faith enough to secure a seat in heaven are called "sheep,"
      and they could not be labelled better. All the others are called "goats,"
      that is, lusty, strong-legged fellows who despise the game of
      follow-my-leader, who object to walking along the road made for them, and
      are always leaping the fence to see what is on the other side. There was
      war in heaven once, we are told, but that was before Satan and his crew
      were kicked out. There will never be war in heaven again. Jesus Christ
      will easily be able to manage his sheep. But the Devil will have a tougher
      job with his goats. There will always be a kingdom in heaven, but ten to
      one there will be a republic in hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Christianity says we are to be saved by faith. Our view is different. Men
      are saved by thinking and acting. While Christian monks were trying to
      degrade men below the level of brutes, some unknown Secularists invented
      windmills and glass windows. While the Inquisition was exterminating
      heresy and purifying the faith, Galileo was inventing the telescope. While
      Church of Englandism and Methodism were fighting over the faith in
      England, Watt was discovering the use of steam. Faith never saved men
      here, and why should it save them hereafter? God, if he exist, must be too
      humane and sensible to judge men according to their belief; and if he
      endowed us with reason, he will never damn us for exercising it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wandering in an immense forest during the night, said Diderot, I have only
      one little light to guide me. A stranger comes to me and says, "My friend,
      blow out your candle to find your way better." That light is reason, and
      that stranger is a theologian.
    </p>
    <p>
      Science, no less than common sense, dispels Christian superstition.
      Evolution destroys the idea of a general catastrophe. There was a time
      when life could not exist on the earth, and there will probably come a
      time when it will cease to exist. Long before then man will have
      disappeared. But the aeon of our race may extend to millions of years. Is
      not this time practically infinite? And do not those who make it a cause
      for lamentation and despair resemble the man that Spinoza ridicules, who
      refuses to eat his dinner to-day because he is not sure of a dinner for
      ever and ever? Sit down, you fool, and eat.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      SHELLEY'S ATHEISM. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * On August 4, 1892, the centenary of Shelley's birth was
     celebrated at Horsham, where it is intended to found a
     Shelley Library, if not a Shelley Museum. The celebrants
     were a motley collection. They were all concealing the
     poet's principles and paying honor to a bogus Shelley. A
     more honest celebration took place in the evening at the
     Hall of Science, Old-street, London, E.C. Six or seven
     hundred people were addressed by Dr. Furnivall, Gr. B. Shaw,
     and G. W. Foote; and every pointed reference to Shelley's
     religious, social, and political heresy was enthusiastically
     applauded.
</pre>
    <p>
      Charles Darwin, the Newton of biology, was an Agnostic&mdash;which is only
      a respectable synonym for an Atheist. The more he looked for God the less
      he could find him. Yet the corpse of this great "infidel" lies in
      Westminster Abbey, We need not wonder, therefore, that Christians and even
      parsons are on the Shelley Centenary committee, or that Mr. Edmund Gosse
      was chosen to officiate as high pontiff at the Horsham celebration. Mr.
      Gosse is a young man with a promising past&mdash;to borrow a witticism
      from Heine. In the old <i>Examiner</i> days he hung about the army of
      revolt. Since then he has become a bit of a Philistine, though he still
      affects a superior air, and retains a pretty way of turning a sentence.
      The selection of such a man to pronounce the eulogy on Shelley was in
      keeping with the whole proceedings at Horsham, where everybody was lauding
      a "bogus Shelley," as Mr. Shaw remarked at the Hall of Science
      celebration.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Gosse was good enough to tell the Horsham celebrants that "it was not
      the poet who was attacked" in Shelley's case, but "the revolutionist, the
      enemy of kings and priests, the extravagant and paradoxical humanitarian."
      Mr. Gosse generously called this an "intelligent aversion," and in another
      sense than his it undoubtedly was so. The classes, interests, and abuses
      that were threatened by Shelley's principles, acted with the intelligence
      of self-preservation. They gave him an ill name and would gladly have hung
      him. Yes, it was, beyond all doubt, an "intelligent aversion." Byron only
      dallied with the false and foolish beliefs of his age, but Shelley meant
      mischief. This accounts for the hatred shown towards him by orthodoxy and
      privilege.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Gosse himself appears to have an "intelligent aversion" to Shelley's
      <i>principles</i>. He professes a great admiration for Shelley's <i>poetry</i>;
      but he regards it as a sort of beautiful landscape, which has no other
      purpose than gratifying the aesthetic taste of the spectator. For the
      poet's <i>teaching</i> he feels or affects a lofty contempt. Shelley the
      singer was a marvel of delicacy and power; but Shelley the thinker was at
      best a callow enthusiast. Had he lived as long as Mr. Gosse, and moved in
      the same dignified society, he would have acquired an "intelligent
      aversion" to the indiscretions of his youthful passion for reforming the
      world; but fate decided otherwise, and he is unfortunate enough to be the
      subject of Mr. Gosse's admonitions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Shelley lived like a Spartan; a hunk of bread and a jug of water, dashed
      perhaps with milk, served him as a dinner. His income was spent on the
      poor, on struggling men of genius, and on necessitous friends. Now as the
      world goes, this is simply asinine; and Mr. Gosse plays to the Philistine
      gallery by sneering at Shelley's vegetarianism, and playfully describing
      him as an "eater of buns and raisins." It was also lamented by Mr. Gosse
      that Shelley, as a "hater of kings," had an attraction for
      "revolutionists," a set of persons with whom Mr. Gosse would have no sort
      of dealings except through the policeman. "Social anarchists," likewise,
      gathered "around the husband of Godwin's daughter"&mdash;a pregnant
      denunciation, though it leaves us in doubt whether Shelley, Godwin, or
      Mary was the anarch, or all three of them together; while the "husband"
      seems to imply that getting married was one of the gravest of Shelley's
      offences.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the worst of all is to come: "Those to whom the restraints of religion
      were hateful marshalled themselves under the banner of the youth who had
      rashly styled himself as an Atheist, forgetful of the fact that All his
      best writings attest that, whatever name he might call himself, he, more
      than any other poet of the age, saw God in everything."
    </p>
    <p>
      We beg to tell Mr. Gosse that he is libellous and impertinent. He knows
      little or nothing of Atheists if he thinks they are only repelled by the
      "restraints of religion." They have restraints of their own, quite as
      numerous and imperative as those of any religionist who fears his God.
      What is more, they have incentives which religion weakens. Mr. Gosse is
      perhaps in a state of ignorance on this matter. He probably speaks of the
      moral condition of Atheists as a famous American humorist proposed to
      lecture on science, with an imagination untrammeled by the least
      acquaintance with the subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      So much (it is quite enough) for the libel; and now for the impertinence.
      Mr. Gosse pretends to know Shelley's mind better than he knew it himself.
      Shelley called himself an Atheist; that is indisputable; but he did so
      "rashly." He was mistaken about his own opinions; he knew a great many
      things, but he was ignorant of himself. But the omniscient Mr. Gosse was
      born (or <i>was</i> he born?) to rectify the poet's blunder, and assure
      the world that he was a Theist without knowing it&mdash;in fact, a really
      God-intoxicated person.
    </p>
    <p>
      What wonder is it that Mr. Gosse became intoxicated in turn, and soared in
      a rapture of panegyric over a Shelley of his own construction? "The period
      of prejudice is over," he exclaimed, "and we are gathered here to-day
      under the auspices of the greatest poet our language has produced since
      Shelley died, encouraged by universal public opinion and by dignitaries of
      all the professions&mdash;yea, even by prelates of our national Church."
      Here the preacher's intoxication became maudlin, and there should have
      been an interval for soda-water.
    </p>
    <p>
      Curiously enough, the very last page of Trelawny's <i>Records of Shelley
      and Byron</i> contains a conversation between that gallant friend of the
      two poets and a "prelate of our national Church."
    </p>
    <p>
      "Some years ago, one of the most learned of the English Bishops questioned
      me regarding Shelley; he expressed both admiration and astonishment at his
      learning and writings. I said to the Bishop, 'You know he was an Atheist.'
      He said, 'Yes.' I answered: 'It is the key and the distinguishing quality
      of all he wrote. Now that people are beginning to distinguish men by their
      works, and not creeds, the critics, to bring him into vogue, are trying to
      make out that Shelley was not an Atheist, that he was rather a religious
      man. Would it be right in me, or anyone who knew him, to aid or sanction
      such a fraud?' The Bishop said: 'Certainly not, there is nothing righteous
      but truth.' And there our conversation ended."
    </p>
    <p>
      Trelawny's bishop was willing (outside church, and in private
      conversation) to deprecate prejudice and acknowledge the supremacy of
      truth; and perhaps for that reason he allowed that Shelley <i>was</i> an
      Atheist. Mr. Gosse's bishops will soon be converting him into a pillar of
      the Church.
    </p>
    <p>
      Trelawny knew Shelley a great deal better than Mr. Gosse. He enjoyed an
      intimate friendship with the poet, not in his callow days, but during the
      last year or two of his life, when his intellect was mature, and his
      genius was pouring forth the great works that secure his immortality.
      During that time Shelley professed the opinions he enunciated in <i>Queen
      Mab</i>. He said that the matter of that poem was good; it was only the
      treatment that was immature. Again and again he told Trelawny that he was
      content to know nothing of the origin of the universe; that religion was
      chiefly a means of deceiving and robbing the people; that it fomented
      hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; and that it also fettered the
      intellect, deterring men from solving the problems of individual and
      social life, as well as the problems of nature, out of regard for the
      supposed oracles of Omniscience, which were after all the teachings of
      bigoted and designing priests. Shelley called himself an Atheist; he wrote
      "Atheist" after his name on a famous occasion; and Trelawny says "he never
      regretted having done this."
    </p>
    <p>
      "The principal fault I have to find," wrote Trelawny, "is that the
      Shelleyan writers, being Christians themselves, seem to think that a man
      of genius cannot be an Atheist, and so they strain their own faculties to
      disprove what Shelley asserted from the earliest stage of his career to
      the last day of his life. He ignored all religions as superstitions."
    </p>
    <p>
      On another occasion Shelley said to Trelawny&mdash;"The knaves are the
      cleverest; they profess to know everything; the fools believe them, and so
      they govern the world." Which is a most sagacious observation. He said
      that "Atheist!" in the mouth of orthodoxy was "a word of abuse to stop
      discussion, a painted devil to frighten the foolish, a threat to
      intimidate the wise and good."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Gosse may reply that Shelley's conversations with Trelawny are not
      absolute evidence; that they were written down long afterwards, and that
      we cannot be sure of Shelley's using the precise words attributed to him.
      Very well then; be it so. Mr. Gosse has appealed to Shelley's "writings,"
      and to Shelley's writings we will go. True, the epithet "best" is inserted
      by Mr. Gosse as a saving qualification; but we shall disregard it, partly
      because "best" is a disputable adjective, but more because <i>all</i>
      Shelley's writings attest his Atheism.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us first go to Shelley's prose, not because it is his "best" work
      (though some parts of it are exquisitely beautiful, often very powerful,
      and always chaste), but because prose is less open than verse to false
      conception and interpretation. In the fine fragment "On Life" he acutely
      observes that "Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties,
      and beyond that experience how vain is argument! cannot create, it can
      only perceive." And he concludes "It is infinitely improbable that the
      cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind." Be it observed,
      however, that Shelley does not dogmatise. He simply cannot conceive that
      mind is the <i>basis</i> of all things. The cause of life is still
      obscure. "All recorded generations of mankind," Shelley says, "have
      wearily-busied themselves in inventing answers to this question; and the
      result has been&mdash;Religion."
    </p>
    <p>
      Shelley's essay "On a Future State" follows the same line of reasoning as
      his essay "On Life." He considers it highly probable that <i>thought</i>
      is "no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely
      varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which
      ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their positions with regard
      to each other." His conclusion is that "the desire to be for ever as we
      are, the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change," which is
      common to man and other living beings, is the "secret persuasion which has
      given birth to the opinions of a future state."
    </p>
    <p>
      If we turn to Shelley's published letters we shall find abundant
      expressions of hostility to and contempt for religion. Those letters may
      deserve the praise of Matthew Arnold or the censure of Mr. Swinburne; but,
      in either case, they may be taken as honest documents, written to all
      sorts of private friends, and never intended for publication. Byron's
      letters were passed about freely, and largely written for effect;
      Shelley's were written under ordinary conditions, and he unbosomed himself
      with freedom and sincerity.
    </p>
    <p>
      From one of his early letters we find that he contemplated a translation
      of the <i>System of Nature</i>, which is frequently quoted in the notes to
      <i>Queen Mob</i>. He couples Jehovah and Mammon together as fit for the
      worship of "those who delight in wickedness and slavery." In a letter to
      Henry Reveley he pictures God as delighted with his creation of the earth,
      and seeing it spin round the sun; and imagines him taking out "patents to
      supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture." When the poet was
      informed by Oilier that a certain gentleman (it was Archdeacon Hare) hoped
      he would humble his soul and "receive the spirit into him," Shelley
      replied: "if you know him personally, pray ask him from me what he means
      by receiving the <i>spirit into me</i>; and (if really it is any good) how
      one is to get at it." He goes on to say: "I was immeasurably amused by the
      quotation from Schlegel about the way in which the popular faith is
      destroyed&mdash;first the Devil, then the Holy Ghost, then God the Father.
      I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the same thing." In the very year
      of his death, writing to John Gisborne, he girds at the popular faith in
      God, and with reference to one of its most abhorrent doctrines he exclaims&mdash;"As
      if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to be roasted alive for
      sixty million more in hell, or charitably annihilated by a <i>coup de
      grâce</i> of the bungler who brought us into existence at first."&mdash;A
      dozen other quotations from Shelley's letters might be given, all to
      pretty much the same effect, but the foregoing must suffice.
    </p>
    <p>
      A thorough analysis of Shelley's poetry, showing the essential Atheism
      which runs through it from beginning to end, would require more space than
      we have at our command. We shall therefore simply point out, by means of
      instances, how indignantly or contemptuously he always refers to religion
      as the great despot and impostor of mankind.
    </p>
    <p>
      The <i>Revolt of Islam</i> stigmatises "Faith" as "an obscene worm." The
      sonnet on the Fall of Bonaparte concludes with a reference to "Bloody
      Faith, the foulest birth of time." Shelley frequently conceives Faith as
      serpentine and disgusting. In <i>Rosalind and Helen</i> he writes&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
           Grey Power was seated
     Safely on her ancestral throne;
     And Faith, the Python, undefeated,
     Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
     Her foul and wounded train.
</pre>
    <p>
      In the great and splendid <i>Ode to Liberty</i> the image undergoes a
      Miltonic sublimation.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves
     Hung tyranny; beneath, sat deified
     The sister-pest, congregator of slaves.
</pre>
    <p>
      Invariably does the poet class religion and oppression together&mdash;"Religion
      veils her eyes: Oppression shrinks aghast."&mdash;"Destruction's sceptred
      slaves, and Folly's mitred brood."&mdash;"And laughter fills the Fane, and
      curses shake the Throne."
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Herbert Spencer writes with learning and eloquence about the Power of
      the Universe and the Unknowable. Shelley pricked this bubble of
      speculation in the following passage:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                 What is that Power?
     Some moonstruck sophist stood
     Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown
     Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood
     The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,
     His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown.
</pre>
    <p>
      In one verse of the <i>Ode to Liberty</i> the poet exclaims:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     O that the free would stamp the impious name
     Of &mdash;&mdash;&mdash; into the dust or write it there.
</pre>
    <p>
      What is the omitted word? Mr. Swinburne says the only possible word is&mdash;God.
      We agree with him. Anything else would be a ridiculous anti-climax, and
      quite inconsistent with the powerful description of&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
             This foul gordian word,
     Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
     Into a mass, irrefragably firm,
     The axes and the rods that awe mankind.
</pre>
    <p>
      "Pope" and "Christ" are alike impossible. With respect to "mankind" they
      are but local designations. The word must be universal. It is <i>God</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      The glorious speech of the Spirit of the Hour, which terminates the third
      Act of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>&mdash;that superb drama of emancipate
      Humanity&mdash;lumps together "Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and
      prisons," as parts of one gigantic system of spiritual and temporal
      misrule. Man, when redeemed from falsehood and evil, rejects his books "of
      reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance"; and the veil is torn aside from
      all "believed and hoped." And what is the result? Let the Spirit of the
      Hour answer.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
     Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
     Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
     Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
     Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man
     Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain,
     Which were, for his will made or suffered them;
     Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
     From chance, and death, and mutability,
     The clogs of that which else might oversoar
     The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
     Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
</pre>
    <p>
      What a triumphant flight! The poet springs from earth and is speedily away
      beyond sight&mdash;almost beyond conception&mdash;like an elemental thing.
      But his starting-point is definite enough. Man is exempt from awe and
      worship; from spiritual as well as political and social slavery; king over
      himself, ruling the anarchy of his own passions. And the same idea is sung
      by Demogorgon at the close of the fifth Act. The "Earth-born's spell yawns
      for heaven's despotism," and "Conquest is dragged captive through the
      deep."
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Love, from its awful throne of patient power
     In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
         Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
     And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
     And folds over the world its healing wings.

     Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and endurance,
     These are the seals of that most firm assurance
          Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
     And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
     Mother of many acts and hours, should free
          The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
     These are the spells by which to re-assume
     An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

     To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
     To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
          To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
     To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
          Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
     This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
     Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
     This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
</pre>
    <p>
      This is the Atheism of Shelley. Man is to conquer, by love and hope and
      thought and endurance, his birthright of happiness and dignity. Humanity
      is to take the place of God.
    </p>
    <p>
      It has been argued that if Shelley had lived he would have repented the
      "indiscretions of his youth," and gravitated towards a more "respectable"
      philosophy. Well, it is easy to prophesy; and just as easy, and no less
      effectual, to meet the prophet with a flat contradiction. "Might have
      been" is no better than "might not have been." Was it not declared that
      Charles Bradlaugh would have become a Christian if he had lived long
      enough? Was not the same asserted of John Stuart Mill? One was nearly
      sixty, the other nearly seventy; and we have to wonder what is the real
      age of intellectual maturity. Only a few weeks before his death, Shelley
      wrote of Christianity that "no man of sense could think it true." That was
      his deliberate and final judgment. Had he lived long enough to lose his
      sense; had he fallen a victim to some nervous malady, or softening of the
      brain; had he lingered on to a more than ripe (a rotten) old age, in which
      senility may unsay the virile words of manhood; it is conceivable that
      Shelley might have become a devotee of the faith he had despised. But none
      of these things did happen. What Shelley <i>was</i> is the only object of
      sane discussion. And what he was we know&mdash;an Atheist, a lover of
      Humanity.
    </p>
    <p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      LONG FACES.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Every one who has turned over old volumes of sermons, adorned with the
      authors' portraits, must have been struck with the length of their faces.
      They seem to say&mdash;parodying the famous line of Dante&mdash;"Abandon
      jokes all ye who enter here." Those men preached a solemnly absurd creed,
      and they looked absurdly solemn. Their faces seemed as devoid of merriment
      as the faces of jackasses, and the heads above them were often as stupid.
      Justice forbid that I should run down a Hooker, a Barrow, a Taylor, or a
      South. They were men of <i>genius</i>, and all genius is of the blood
      royal. I read their writings with pleasure and profit, which is more than
      nine-tenths of the clergy can say with any approach to honesty. But a
      single swallow does not make a summer, and a few men of genius do not
      elevate a profession. I am perfectly convinced that the great bulk of the
      preaching fraternity have cultivated a solemn aspect&mdash;not perhaps
      deliberately, but at least instinctively&mdash;in order to impose on the
      ignorant and credulous multitude. The very tone of voice in which they
      pray, give out hymns, and preach, is <i>artificial</i>; in keeping with
      their artificial ideas and artificial sentiments; which, if they were
      expressed in natural tones, would excite universal contempt and derision.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now this solemnity is the best trick in the priest's game. Gravity is
      always mistaken by the multitude for wisdom. A round-faced merry fellow
      shall make a bright, sensible speech, and he will be voted frivolous; but
      a long-faced, saturnine fellow shall utter a string of dull platitudes,
      and he will be voted a Solon. This is well known to the clergy, who have
      developed a perfect art of dullness. They talk an infinite deal of
      nothing, use a multitude of solemn words to hide an absurdity or no
      meaning at all, and utter the inherited shibboleths of their craft like
      the august oracles of a recent revelation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Concede them the advantage of solemnity, or reverence, or whatever else it
      is called, and you give them the victory at the beginning of the battle.
      If <i>you</i> pull a long face over their nonsense, the spectators, after
      all your arguments, will say, "There <i>must</i> be something in it,
      though, for see how <i>serious</i> he is." Whereas a light jest and a
      merry smile will show you are heart-free, and beyond the range of clerical
      artillery.
    </p>
    <p>
      I do not pretend, however, that the efforts of Free-thought critics should
      have no background of seriousness. Wit without reason, says Heine, is but
      a sneeze of the intelligence. But has not wit ever been the keenest weapon
      of the great emancipators of the human mind? Not the mere plaything of an
      idle mind in an idle hour, but the coruscating blade to pierce the weak
      places of folly and imposture. Aristophanes, Lucian, Rabelais, Erasmus,
      and Voltaire&mdash;to take a few great instances&mdash;were all serious in
      aim and intention. They valued truth, goodness, and beauty, as much as the
      dreariest preachers. But they felt, because of their temperament, that
      while the dry light of the intellect is suited to the study of science, it
      is inadequate in the realm of political, social, and religious debate,
      where everything is steeped in feeling, and hopes and fears strive
      together, and imagination kindles the very senses into keener play.
    </p>
    <p>
      After all, perhaps, this word <i>temperament</i> is a solution in itself.
      When Bishop South was taken to task by a brother bishop for his
      witticisms, he replied, "Do you mean to say that if God had given you any
      wit you would not have used it?" Thus is wisdom justified of her children.
    </p>
    <p>
      My friendly though severe critic, Dr. Coit, who recently discoursed at
      South-place Institute (or is it Chapel?) on the National Secular Society
      in general and myself in particular, could hardly deny that Voltaire was a
      master of wit, sarcasm, irony, and ridicule. Well, now, let us see what
      some serious writers have said of this nimble spirit. Robert Browning, in
      <i>The Two Poets of Croisic</i> thus salutes him:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Ay, sharpest shrewdest steel that ever stabbed
     To death Imposture through the armor-joints!
</pre>
    <p>
      Carlyle says "He gave the death-stab to modern superstition," and "it was
      a most weighty service." Buckle says he "used ridicule, not as the test of
      truth, but as the scourge of folly," and thus "produced more effect than
      the gravest arguments could have done." "Nor can any one since the days of
      Luther be named," says Brougham, "to whom the spirit of free inquiry, nay,
      the emancipation of the human mind from spiritual tyranny, owes a more
      lasting debt of gratitude."
    </p>
    <p>
      There is a story of the manuscript of Harrington's <i>Oceana</i> being
      filched and given to Cromwell, and the sagacious "usurper" returned it
      saying, "My government is not to be overturned with paper pellets." But
      the ironical pamphlet, <i>Killing no Murder</i>, produced a different
      effect. Nor did the royal and imperial despots, and their priestly
      abettors, in the eighteenth century, dread the solemn lovers of freedom.
      But the winged pen of Voltaire was a different matter. "Bigots and
      tyrants," says Macaulay, "who had never been moved by the wailing and
      cursing of millions, turned pale at his name."
    </p>
    <p>
      If Dr. Coit imagines that Voltaire has lost his influence in France, I
      venture to say he is mistaken. The hand of Voltaire is on Renan, and on
      dozens of living soldiers in the French army of progress. And what man of
      letters in England&mdash;a country abounding in "the oxen of the gods,"
      strong, slow, and stupid&mdash;is free from his influence? Carlyle's early
      essay on Voltaire is a mixture of hatred and admiration. But read the Life
      of Frederick, and see how the French snake fascinates the Scotch Puritan,
      until at last he flings every reservation aside, and hails with glowing
      panegyric the Savior of Calas.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let me refer Dr. Coit to the delightful preface of a delightful book&mdash;Leland's
      introduction to his fine translation of Heine's <i>Reisebilder</i>. "Woe
      to those who are standing near," says Leland, "when a humorist of this
      stamp is turned loose upon the world. He knows nothing of your old laws,&mdash;like
      an Azrael-Napoleon he advances conscienceless, feeling nothing but an
      overpowering impulse, as of some higher power which bids him strike and
      spare not." But, after all, the main cause of progress is <i>agitation</i>,
      and though the agitation may be "eminently disagreeable to many, even
      friends, who are brought within its immediate action, it will be eminently
      beneficial in the end."
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, the hard-bound human mind, like the hardbound soil, has to be
      ploughed up. Let it shriek as it will, the work must be done, or the light
      and air will never penetrate, and an ocean of seeds will lie barren on the
      surface.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dr. Coit need not fear that ridicule will excite apprehensions about the
      multiplication table. Ridicule has a fine scent for its proper prey. It
      must detect the <i>ridiculous</i> before it couches and springs. Truth,
      honor, consistency, disinterestedness, are invulnerable. What ridicule can
      kill deserves to die.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. George Meredith writes of "that first-born of common-sense, the
      vigilant Comic, which is the genius of thoughtful laughter." Folly is the
      natural prey of this hunter, and Folly is found in the churches as well as
      in the streets. Some men, however, are non-laughers by birthright, and as
      men are apt to make a virtue of their deficiencies, it is not surprising
      if, as Mr. Meredith observes, the "laughter-hater soon learns to dignify
      this dislike as an objection in morality."
    </p>
    <p>
      Persons who have read the <i>Freethinker</i> from the first do not need to
      be assured of the earnest spirit of its conductors. They fight no less
      sternly for the iridescent jewels in their swords. But Dr. Coit appears to
      object to fighting altogether. He seems to bid us rest content with what
      we have won. That is, he bids us leave superstition, with all its brood of
      lies and wrongs, in possession of the schools, the universities, the
      churches, the hospitals, the workhouses, and every other institution. He
      bids us leave it with its large grasp on the private and public life of
      the community, and go on with our constructive work in face of all this
      overwhelming frustration. No doubt he means well, but we are not foolish
      enough to take his advice. We tell Dr. Coit that he does not understand
      the obstructive power of theology, and that he is thus unable to
      appreciate the work of the National Secular Society.
    </p>
    <p>
      But let us return to the point of ridicule, and the point of "blasphemy."
      Dr. Coit found two "lessons for the day" in my <i>Philosophy of Secularism</i>,
      and he spoke of my <i>Shadow of the Sword</i> as "a noble plea for peace."
      But he complained of my exposing the absurdities and immoralities of the
      Bible&mdash;a book which is thrust into the hands of little children in
      our public schools. He also complained of my dragging to light the Crimes
      of Christianity. But his anger was most excited by one of my "Bible
      Romances"&mdash;<i>A Virgin Mother</i>. Some fastidious persons even
      object to the title, thus showing their abysmal ignorance of Christian
      literature. The phrase is common in Catholic books of devotion, like the
      Mother of God. It occurs in Milton's Ode on the Nativity and in <i>Paradise
      Lost</i>. I have marked it a dozen times in Professor Palgrave's
      collection of Sacred Songs. But Dr. Coit objects to my comparison of the
      Holy Ghost's "overshadowing" of the Virgin Mary with the divine
      impregnations of earthly women by the gods of the Greek pantheon. He
      regards the one as a "mystery" and the others as vulgar amours. But this
      depends on your point of view. Lord Bacon found a mine of hidden wisdom in
      some of these "amours," and Mr. Morris makes beautiful poetry of the loves
      of Zeus and Danae, which is more than any one has ever succeeded in doing
      with the relations between the Holy Ghost and Mary. I admit, however, that
      taste is not disputable; and I refer Dr. Coit to the passage of my <i>Virgin
      Mother</i> in which I cite Justin Martyr as appealing to the Pagan not to
      mock at the Incarnation, on the express ground that they also taught the
      same doctrine in their stories-of the demi-gods who were born of women
      after the embraces of deities. Surely, then, it is idle to complain of <i>my</i>
      disrespect of this Christian dogma. Nor is it just to say that my
      criticism of it cannot be read to a mixed audience. That is the fault of
      the <i>doctrine</i>. So far as my <i>words</i> go, there is not a syllable
      to shock any but a prurient modesty.
    </p>
    <p>
      With respect to Dr. Coit's plea for bringing the kindness of social
      intercourse into the war of ideas, I have this to say&mdash;It is
      impossible. Timid persons have always sighed for this policy, but when the
      fight began they have found themselves "between the fell incensed points
      of mighty opposites." Religion should be treated as freely as other
      subjects. That is all I claim, and I will not be satisfied with less. I
      cannot consent to relinquish any weapon that is legitimate in other
      warfare. Nor for the sake of temporary <i>feeling</i> will I be false to
      the permanent <i>interests</i> of my species. I will laugh at folly, scorn
      hypocrisy, expose falsehood, and bathe my sword in the heart's blood of
      imposture. But I will not descend to personalities. I do not war with <i>persons</i>,
      but with <i>principles</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      My object is to destroy the Christian superstition and prepare the way for
      a more rational and humane condition of society. I shall adapt myself, as
      well as I can, to the shifting conditions of the struggle. My aim is to <i>succeed</i>.
      My policy, therefore, will never be determined by a personal preference. I
      shall follow the path that promises victory. But I do not, and will not,
      dictate to others. Within the scope of our principles there is room for
      many policies. Let each do his best, according to his light and
      opportunity. Let Dr. Coit, too, go his way as I go mine. We travel by
      different routes, but perhaps we shall meet at the goal.
    </p>
    <p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      OUR FATHER.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     God's in his heaven,
     All's right with the world.
     &mdash;R. Browning, Pippa Passes.
</pre>
    <p>
      The Apostles' Creed, with which the Apostles never had anything to do,
      begins with the words "I believe in God the Father Almighty." The last
      word, "Almighty," is an adjective which we owe to the metaphysical genius
      of Christian theologians; and the first words, "I believe," are the
      customary shibboleth of the priests of every religion. For the rest, this
      extract from the Creed is taken from the Lord's Prayer, which itself is a
      brief selection from common Jewish prayers before the days of Jesus.
      According to the evangelists&mdash;whoever <i>they</i> were&mdash;Jesus
      taught his disciples to pray to "Our Father which art in Heaven for a
      number of things which no one ever obtained by that process. Nevertheless
      the petition is offered up, generation after generation, by millions of
      Christians, whose hands are first folded in the gesture of prayer on their
      mothers' knees, and whose lips are taught at the same time a form of words
      that clings to them for life.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Our Father!" The words are pretty and touching. When the child hears them
      he thinks of some one like his own father, but immensely bigger and more
      powerful; and as the child is taught that all the necessaries and comforts
      of life he enjoys, at the expense of his parents' labor and loving care,
      are really gifts from the Father behind the scenes, it is no wonder that
      this mysterious being becomes the object of gratitude and affection.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Which art in Heaven!</i> Up there in the region of dreams, beyond the
      sailing clouds, far away through the deep blue, where imagination builds
      its fairy palace of delight, and God sits on his golden throne, and swift,
      bright angels speed forth to execute his commands. Tell a child anything
      you please about that land of fancy and you will be believed, especially
      if the tale comes from beloved lips, or from lips that bear the glamor of
      authority. And what the child is to the adult, early or savage man is to
      the civilisee. To the African negroes the highest god is the Sky; the
      great deity <i>Dyu</i> of our Aryan ancestors was the Sky; the Greek <i>Zeue</i>
      and the Latin <i>Jupiter</i> were both the Heaven-Father; and we still say
      "Heaven forgive me!" or "Fear the vengeance of Heaven!"
    </p>
    <p>
      This Heaven, however, is no longer credible to any one with a tincture of
      science. Hard as the truth to a child or a savage, the sky is not a
      reality, but an optical illusion. For forty or forty-five miles from the
      earth's surface there is a belt of atmosphere, growing rarer and rarer as
      it approaches the infinite ocean of æther. Gone for ever is the old
      delusion of a solid Heaven overhead, with windows in it, through which God
      and the angels looked down upon the earth and its inhabitants. And what
      site is there for Heaven out in the cold blackness of space?
    </p>
    <p>
      That Heaven is gone, and where is Our Father? Science shows us a world of
      absolute order, in which what we call the laws of nature&mdash;the
      observed sequence and recurrence of phenomena&mdash;are never broken. The
      world was not fashioned for man's dwelling, nor is it maintained for his
      benefit. Towards the poles he freezes, towards the equator he burns. The
      rain nourishes his crops or rots them, without asking his pleasure; the
      sea bears him or drowns him, with equal unconcern; the lightning slays him
      or spares him, whether good, bad or indifferent, as he happens to be in or
      out of the line of its dazzling flight; famine pinches his! cheeks if he
      cannot procure food; the pestilence seizes upon his nerves and blood
      unless he learns the antidote to its ravages. He stands amidst the play of
      terrific forces, and only preserves himself by vigilance, patience,
      courage and industry. If he falls the enemy is upon him, and the doom of
      the vanquished is death. Nature shows him no mercy. His mistakes are as
      fatal as his crimes.
    </p>
    <p>
      "God" has been in his "Heaven" for eternity, but all is <i>not</i> right
      with the world. Man is always endeavoring to improve it, but what
      assistance comes from above? A Father in Heaven would be a glorious fact.
      But who can believe it? "Our Father" is utterly careless of his children.
      The celestial Rousseau sends all his offspring to the Foundling.
    </p>
    <p>
      The late hard weather has thrown thousands of honest men out of
      employment, and increased the death-rate alarmingly. Where is the wisdom
      of this? Where is the goodness? The worst of men would alter it if they
      could. But God, they say, can do it, and he does not. Yet they still look
      up and say "Our Father." And the Father looks down with a face as
      blenchless as the Sphinx's, gazing forthright across the desert sands.
    </p>
    <p>
      What father would permit in his family the gross disparities we see in
      human life? One gorges and another starves; one is bloated and another is
      death's counterfeit; one is dressed in three-piled velvet and another goes
      in looped and windowed rags; one is idle and another slaves; one is sated
      with pleasure and another is numbed with pain; one lolls in a palace and
      another shivers in a hovel. What human father would not be ashamed to
      treat his children with such infamous partiality?
    </p>
    <p>
      Look at the physical and moral filth, and the mental abasement, in our
      great Christian cities, where new churches are constantly built for the
      worship of God, where Bibles are circulated by the million, and where
      hundreds of sleek gentlemen flourish on the spoils of philanthropy. Read
      Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story of East-end life; read the lucubrations of
      General Booth; listen to the ever-swelling wail over the poverty, misery,
      and degradation of hosts of our people; and then say if it is not high
      time to cease all this cant about Our Father which art in Heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      Man has always been his own Savior. His instrument is science, his wisdom
      is self-help. His redemption begins when he turns his eyes from the
      delusive Heaven and plucks up his heart from the fear of Hell. Despair
      vanishes before the steady gaze of instructed courage. Hope springs as a
      flower in the path of endeavor.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      WAIT TILL YOU DIE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Pascal remarked that, whether Christianity were true or false, the
      Christian was on the safe side; and Diderot replied that the priests and
      apologists of Mohammedanism, or any other creed, could say the very same
      thing with equal force. The argument, if it be an argument, implies the
      possibility of error, and what applies to one religion applies to all. The
      votaries of every creed may be mistaken if there is no absolute certitude;
      or, if there should be one true religion among the multitude, and but one,
      only the devotees of that single faith can be on the safe side. But as no
      one knows <i>which</i> is the only true religion, it follows, according to
      the law of probabilities, that the odds are greatly against any particular
      religion being the right one. The Christian therefore would have one
      chance of being right, and nine hundred and ninety-nine chances of being
      wrong. He has thus one chance in a thousand above the Atheist.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, on the other hand, if all religions but one are certainly wrong, what
      is the chance of a single one being certainly right? Does not the
      Christian's slight percentage of safety fade into something quite
      inappreciable in the light of this question? And is what is left&mdash;if
      <i>anything</i> is left&mdash;an adequate price for the abnegation of
      manhood? Would it tempt an honest man, with a sense of human dignity, to
      play fast and loose with his intellect, and accept a creed because it
      appeals to his selfish hopes and fears? Could such a slender chance of
      profit in the next life compensate for slavery in this life?
    </p>
    <p>
      If belief is the safe side, the proper course is to believe <i>everything</i>.
      And it is useless to cry that this is impossible. Faith enables men to
      believe against reason, and one act of credulity is little easier than a
      thousand. He whose creed is determined by his fears should give free scope
      to such emotions. If they are his guides let him follow them. Why should
      he argue when argument may mislead? Why should he stumble at trifles when
      he has surmounted the first great obstacle to credulity? Let him believe
      all the religions of the world at once. He can do this as easily as he can
      believe in the Trinity. And having embraced all, he may rest satisfied
      that if there be a true religion he undoubtedly possesses it.
    </p>
    <p>
      We do not suppose, however, that this reasoning will have any effect on
      Christians, Buddhists, Brahmins, Mohammedans, or Jews. But that very fact
      shows the hollow character of the argument from which we started. When the
      Christian talks about the safe side he is only displaying the weakness of
      his faith, and appealing to timidity when he has no further appeal to
      reason.
    </p>
    <p>
      The argument of "the safe side" would have no pertinency, even with the
      imbecile, if man were immortal. It seeks advantage from the fact that
      every man must die. It tries to paralyse reason with the clutch of fear.
    </p>
    <p>
      How frequent is the superstitionist's remark, "Wait till you come to die!"
      He does not always use these very words, but this is the meaning of all
      his verbiage. He forgets, or does not know, that philosophy destroys the
      terror of death. A rational man is aware of the truth expressed by Mill,
      that death is but one incident in life, and often the least important. He
      recognises with Bacon that we die daily. He knows that every hour is a
      step towards death. He does not play, like an ostrich, with the universal
      law of mortality; nor, on the other hand, does he allow the tomb to cast
      its chill obscurity over the business and pleasure of life. He lives
      without hypocrisy, and when the time comes he will die without fear. As
      Hamlet says, "the readiness is all." Another word also comes from the
      wisest of men&mdash;"Cowards do often taste of death; the valiant die but
      once."
    </p>
    <p>
      A belief that will do for life will do for death. The religionists prove
      this themselves. Whatever a man is confident of is sustaining. The
      Christian dies a Christian, and the Mohammedan a Mohammedan. The one has
      dying visions of angels&mdash;or may be of devils; the other sees heaven
      burst open, and the black-eyed houris of paradise beckon him with rosy
      fingers. What they leaned on in life supports them in death. Its truth or
      falsity makes no difference at that moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethinkers are sustained by <i>convictions</i>. Intellect and emotion
      concur in their case. They have no visions of angels or devils, but dear
      loved faces are better than phantoms, and he who has done a little good in
      the world, however humbly and obscurely, may dream of the happier and
      nobler days to come, when true words and good deeds will have brought
      forth the glorious fruit of happiness for the children of men.
    </p>
    <p>
      We do not mean to assert that no Freethinker, at any time, ever relapsed
      on his death-bed. Such cases have apparently occurred during life, and
      while one particular religion is in the ascendant it is not difficult to
      understand them. The relapses are always to the creed a man finds about
      him, or to the creed of his childhood. They simply prove the power of
      environment and early training, and that a man needs all his strength to
      stand against big majorities. At best they are cases of mental pathology.
    </p>
    <p>
      Great historic Freethinkers have always died true to their convictions.
      They were used to standing alone. For ample proof of this the reader is
      referred to my <i>Infidel Death Beds</i>. And when smaller Freethinkers
      are numerous enough they avoid the greatest danger of physical weakness.
      It is easy for Christian relatives or friends to pester a dying
      Freethinker; it is easy even, in the worst moments of weakness, to put
      words in his mouth. But if Freethought friends visit him, he feels
      strengthened and relieved. Allies may well be needed, sometimes, in such a
      battle with bigotry.
    </p>
    <p>
      After all, "Wait till you die!" is an argument of folly and cowardice.
      What can we conjecture of any other life except from our experience of
      this? On this earth reason is the safe side, honesty is the safe side,
      humanity is the safe side; and what is the safe side here is likely to be
      the safe side elsewhere.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      DEAD THEOLOGY.
    </h2>
    <p>
      This is an age of "series." Every publisher issues one, and the number of
      them is legion. As far as possible they are written by "eminent hands," as
      old Jacob Tonson used to call his wretched scribblers in Grub-street
      garrets. But not every publisher can secure such an eminent hand as a live
      Archbishop, This has been achieved, however, by Messrs. Sampson, Low,
      Marston, and Company. Having projected a series of "Preachers of the Age,"
      they were fortunate enough to enlist the Archbishop of Canterbury under
      their banner. His Grace, as it is etiquette to call him, though his
      natural name is Edward White Benson, leads off the publishers' attack on
      the British public with a volume of sermons entitled <i>Living Theology</i>.
      It is well printed on good paper, the binding is appropriate, and the
      price of three-and-sixpence puts it within the reach of the great
      middle-class public which cares for such things. We are far from sharing
      the opinion of a carper who remarked that, as sermons go, this volume is
      rather dear. Thirteen sermons by an Archbishop! Could any man in his
      senses expect them for less money? The real wonder is that a man with
      £15,000 a-year should condescend to publish at all. We ought to feel
      thankful that he does not charge us a guinea a volume.
    </p>
    <p>
      Prefixed to the thirteen sermons, at fourpence apiece, including the
      binding, is an excellent photogravure portrait of the Archbishop. The face
      is keen and scholarly, and not unpleasant. A noticeable nose, a large
      fluent mouth, shrewd eyes, and a high well-shaped head, make on the whole
      an agreeable picture. Something about the features shows the preacher, and
      something more the ecclesiastic. It is the type, and the best type, of the
      learned priest. Nobody could look at this portrait and call Edward White
      Benson a fool. But is any one in danger of doing so? Would not every one
      admit some ability in the unhereditary recipient of fifteen thousand a
      year? Parsons are not a brilliant body, but to wriggle, or climb, or rise
      to the top of the Black Army involves the possession of uncommon
      faculties.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Archbishop is seldom eloquent, in the popular sense of the word; but
      his style has a certain force and color, always within the limits of
      exquisite breeding. If he consigned you to Gehenna, he would do it with
      bland graciousness; and if he swore at all, he would swear in Latin. His
      language in these sermons, as in another volume we noticed a year ago, is
      pure and nervous, with an etymological reason for every word. Sometimes he
      is quite felicitous. Now and then he uses metaphor with skill and
      illumination. The habitual concreteness of his style shows the clearness
      of his perceptions. Occasionally he is epigrammatic "Strong enemies," he
      says in one place, "are better to us than weak friends. They show us our
      weak points." Finer and higher is another passage in the same sermon&mdash;"The
      yearning of multitudes is not in vain. After yearning comes impulse,
      volition, movement." It would be difficult, if not impossible, to better
      this, unless a great poet cast it in the mould of a metaphor.
    </p>
    <p>
      We confess that, on the whole, we have read the Archbishop's sermons with
      some pleasure, as well as with much attention. It is to his credit that he
      defies a superficial reading. We do not expect to find another volume in
      the series at all comparable with his. Dr. Maclaren, who comes second, is
      on a lower level, and the next descent to Mr. Price Hughes is a fall into
      a slough of incapable and reckless sentimentalism.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Living Theology</i> is the title of the Archbishop's volume, but this
      is a misnomer, for the title belongs only to the first sermon. It misled
      us in this general application, as it will probably mislead others. We
      took it to be a setting forth of so much theology as the Archbishop
      thought <i>living</i>, in contradistinction to what he allowed to be <i>dead</i>.
      But we find a very miscellaneous lot of sermons, sometimes rather on
      Church work than on Church teaching. The title, therefore, is what Walt
      Whitman would call "a suck and a sell." Yet it is hardly worth while to
      labor the complaint, for titles are often better than the pages that
      follow them. Sometimes, indeed, a writer puts all his head into the title,
      and the rest of the book displays his imbecility. But this cannot be said
      of the Archbishop.
    </p>
    <p>
      Another difficulty is this. The Archbishop's sermons are hard for a
      Freethinker to criticise. He seldom expounds and rarely argues. He
      addresses an audience who take the fundamentals of Christianity for
      granted. Yet he lays himself open here and there, and where he does so we
      propose to meet him.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the first sermon Dr. Benson is surely going beyond his actual belief in
      referring to "the earliest race of man, with whom the whole race so nearly
      passed away." He can scarcely take the early chapters of Genesis literally
      at this time of day. In the very next sermon he speaks cheerfully of the
      age of Evolution. That sermon was preached at St. Mary's, Southampton, to
      the British Association in 1882. It is on "The Spirit of Inquiry." "The
      Spirit of Inquiry," he says, "is God's spirit working in capable men, to
      enlarge the measure and the fulness of man's capacity." But if <i>capable</i>
      men are necessary, to say nothing of favorable conditions, the working of
      God's spirit seems lost in the natural explanation. Still, it is pleasant
      to find the Archbishop welcoming the Spirit of Inquiry, under any
      interpretation of its essence; and it may be hoped that he will vote
      accordingly when the Liberty of Bequest Bill reaches the Upper Chamber. It
      is also pleasant to read his admission that the Spirit of Inquiry (we keep
      his capitals) "has made short work not only of the baser religions, but of
      the baser forms of ours"&mdash;to wit, the Christian. Some of those "baser
      forms" are indicated in the following passage:
    </p>
    <p>
      "I know not whether any stern or any sensuous religion of heathendom has
      held up before men's astonished eyes features more appalling or more
      repulsive than those of the vindictive father, or of the arbitrary
      distributor of two eternities, or again of the easy compromiser of
      offences in return for houses and lands. Dreadful shadows under which,
      thousands have been reared."
    </p>
    <p>
      Dreadful shadows indeed! And not thousands, but countless millions, have
      been reared under them. Those dreadful shadows were for centuries the
      universal objects of Christian worship. They still hover over Spurgeon's
      tabernacle and a host of other houses of God. But they are hateful to Dr.
      Benson. To him the God of orthodoxy, the God of the Thirty-nine Articles,
      is dead. He dismisses Predestination, a vindictive God, and Everlasting
      Torment. He speaks of the very "prison" where Christ is said to have
      preached after his death, as a place "where spirits surely unlearn many a
      bias, many a self-wrought blindness, many a heedless error." Hell is
      therefore a place of purgation, which is certainly an infinite improvement
      on the orthodox idea of eternal and irremediable woe, however it fall(s)
      below the conception that the Creator has no right to punish his own
      failures.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let the reader note who makes these admissions of the intellectual and
      moral death of the "baser forms" of Christianity. It is not an
      irresponsible <i>franc-tireur</i> of the Black Army, nor an expelled
      soldier like Mr. Voysey, nor a resigned soldier like Dr. Momerie. It is
      the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest dignitary of the Church of
      England.
    </p>
    <p>
      His Grace does not reflect&mdash;he cannot afford to reflect&mdash;that as
      the dead theology of to-day was the living theology of the past, so the
      living theology of to-day may be the dead theology of to-morrow.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Archbishop still dogmatises, even in this sermon on the Spirit of
      Inquiry. In opposition to the man of science who knows of no limits to
      nature, he declares that "There is a <i>sum</i> of created things, and
      therefore a real end (however far off) to what can be known of them." In a
      certain sense, truly, there <i>is</i> an end to what can be known of
      nature, for human knowledge must ever be relative and not absolute. But
      the Archbishop's limit is not qualitative in man; it is quantitative in
      the universe. Herein he goes beyond the bounds of knowledge, and indulges
      in the very dogmatism for which he reprehends the materialist.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is dogmatism also to assert that "the soul has every reason to believe
      itself absolutely eternal." Absolutely is a word of vast significance. How
      can it apply to "the soul"? Were "the soul" to subsist eternally in the
      future, it could not be <i>absolutely</i> eternal if it once began to be.
      "Every reason" is also too comprehensive. Dr. Benson may think he has good
      reasons for "the soul's" immortality, but he must be aware that divines of
      his own church have held the contrary doctrine.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before the Spirit of Inquiry, says Dr. Benson, every other religion than
      Christianity fades away; though he has admitted that some parts of
      Christianity, the "baser forms," have shared the same fate. Every fresh
      conquest of the Spirit of Inquiry has "brought out some trait in the
      character, or some divine conception in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth."
      This sweeping statement is supported by "three very clearly marked"
      instances.
    </p>
    <p>
      The first is that science shows us the unity of life. "The latest
      discovered laws involve at least this, that the Life of man is one Life."
      And this is "no more than the scientific verification of what was long ago
      stated, and by Christians (at least for a while) acted on."
    </p>
    <p>
      In support of the Christian idea of the Unity of Life the Archbishop cites
      St. Paul, who once asked in a callous way if God cared for oxen. Had the
      Archbishop appealed to Jesus he would have found the oracle dumb, or
      something worse; for the Nazarene distinctly told his apostles to preach
      only to the Jews, and leave the Samaritans and Gentiles in darkness. St.
      Paul took a flight beyond this narrow patriotism. It was he, and not the
      personal disciples of Jesus, who broke down the barriers between Jew and
      Gentile. It was he who scorned the idea that Jesus, to use his own
      language, was only sent to the lost sheep of the house ot Israel. It was
      he, and not Peter, or James, or John, who said that God had made all
      nations of one blood; he who declared "ye are all one in Christ." Yet it
      is easy to make too much of this; for St. Paul did not include the heathen
      and unbelievers within the fold of brotherhood; and when he asserted the
      fatherhood of God, he appealed to the previous utterance of a Greek poet,
      thus conceding his own want of originality.
    </p>
    <p>
      One might imagine, too, that the old Jewish story of Creation&mdash;which
      in turn was not original&mdash;involved the common descent of the human
      race; and as this idea was almost, if not quite, universal, being based on
      the obvious generic resemblance of the various races of mankind, it seems
      a stretch of fancy to put it forward as "a Christian statement" in some
      way connected with "Jesus of Nazareth."
    </p>
    <p>
      The Archbishop's second instance of the concurrence of modern progress
      with the teaching of Jesus, is, to say the least of it, peculiar. "From
      the liberty to inquire," he says, "comes the liberty to express the
      results of inquiry. And this is the preamble of the Charter of Jesus
      Christ."
    </p>
    <p>
      We defy Dr. Benson to find a single plain passage about freedom of thought
      in the teachings of Jesus. The Nazarene was fond of saying, "He that hath
      ears to hear let him hear." But it was reserved for Ingersoll to say, "He
      that hath a brain to think let him think."
    </p>
    <p>
      The Archbishop goes on to claim Darwin as "our aged Master"&mdash;Darwin,
      who rejected Christianity for forty years of his life! He quotes from
      Beale the sentence, "Intellectual work of every kind must be free." "And
      the New Testament," he adds, "is still the one volume of books on religion
      which accepts thia whole statement."
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a bold&mdash;some would say a brazen&mdash;assertion. If the New
      Testament teaches anything clearly, it teaches that belief is necessary to
      salvation. That doctrine stifles free speech and extinguishes inquiry. Why
      investigate if you may be damned for your conclusions? And why allow
      investigation if another man's errors may involve your perdition? These
      questions have been answered logically enough by the Christian Church, and
      the "Charter of Jesus Christ" has been the worst of spiritual oppressions.
      No religion has been so intolerant as the Christian. Mohammedanism has
      been far less bigoted. Buddhism has the proud distinction of never having
      persecuted one human being in twenty-four centuries. The Archbishop's
      third instance is fantastic to the point of grotesqueness. Both
      Christianity and the spirit of Inquiry, he says, are at one in "the demand
      for fruit." Does he mean to imply that other religions set their faces
      against "fruit"? Buddhism is quite imperative about moral duties.
      Mohammedanism gets itself obeyed in matters of conduct, while Christianity
      is quite ineffectual. Drink, gambling, and prostitution abound in
      Christian countries; in the Mohammedan world they have been sternly
      repressed. This is admitted by Dr. Benson in his volume on <i>Christ and
      his Times</i>; admitted, and even emphasised; so that he may, as it were,
      be confuted out of his own mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      If we take a leap to the penultimate sermon in the present volume, we find
      Archbishop Benson indulging in the same kind of loose statement and
      inconsequential reasoning. Its title is "Christ's Crucifixion, an All in
      All." The preacher scorns the Greek notion of the Crucifixion as "the
      shocking martyrdom of a grand young moralist." Such a notion, he says, is
      "quite inconsistent with the facts." Either we know not what Christ
      taught, or else he was more than man. And the Archbishop sets about
      proving this by means of a series of leaps over logical chasms.
    </p>
    <p>
      After dilating on the innocence of Christ, who was certainly guilty
      according to the Mosaic law, and deserving of death according to the
      express command of Jehovah, the Archbishop writes as follows:
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then we look back through our eighteen centuries, and we see that before
      the age of three-and-thirty he had fashioned sayings, had compacted
      thoughts, had expressed principles about duty, about the relative worth of
      things, about life, about love, about intercourse with God, about the
      formation of character, the relation of classes, the spirit of law, the
      essence of government, the unity of man, which had not existed, or which
      were not formulated when he opened his lips, but which have been and are
      the basis of society from the time they were known till now."
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a tissue of false assumptions. The sayings, thoughts, and
      principles of Jesus <i>did</i> exist before, and they <i>were</i>
      formulated when he opened his lips. Not one original utterance is ascribed
      to him in the whole of the Gospels. It is idle to bandy generalisations;
      let the Archbishop select specimens of Christ's teaching, and we will find
      parallels to them, sometimes better and more wisely expressed, in the
      utterances of his predecessors. Nor is it true that Christ's teachings
      have been, or are, the basis of society. Society exists in defiance of
      them. It is never based, and it never will be based, on any abstract
      teaching. Its basis is <i>self-interest</i>, ever increasing in
      complexity, and ever more and more illuminated by the growth of knowledge.
    </p>
    <p>
      Take the case of oaths. Jesus said plainly, "Swear not at all." But when
      earthly potentates wanted their subjects to swear fidelity, the Christian
      priests discovered that Jesus meant, "Swear only on special occasions."
      And it was reserved for an Atheist, in the nineteenth century, to pass an
      Act allowing Christians to obey Jesus Christ.
    </p>
    <p>
      Take the injunction, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."
      Society could never exist upon such a basis, so the clergy find that
      Jesus, like Polonius, spoke tropically. Every Christian is busy laying up
      treasures on earth, and Archbishop Benson is well to the front in the
      competition.
    </p>
    <p>
      Having made ridiculous claims for Jesus Christ, the Archbishop proceeds in
      this wise: "Next ask yourself whether a stainless, loving, sincere,
      penetrating person like that makes or enlarges on unfounded declarations
      as to matters of fact. Is it consistent with such a character?" Now Jesus
      speaks of "the immense importance of his own person," he speaks of "My
      flesh, My blood" as of vital power, he says "I and my Father are one."
      Could he have been deceived? Well, why not? Honesty does not guarantee us
      against error. The best of men have been mistaken, And sincere natures are
      most liable to be deceived by taking subjective impressions for external
      realities.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is another explanation which the Archbishop is too shrewd to pass
      over in silence. Perhaps others said those things for Jesus, perhaps they
      "attributed to him sayings which he did not utter." But this, the
      Archbishop says, only multiplies the difficulty and the astonishment; for,
      to put it briefly, his biographers in that case were as good at predicting
      and inventing as himself. And why not? Do we not know that the story of
      the woman taken in adultery, which is finely told, and has all along been
      thought to contain some of Christ's most characteristic teaching, does not
      exist in the earlier manuscripts? It was invented by an unknown writer.
      And if one unknown writer could (and did) invent this story, other unknown
      writers may have invented every part of the Gospel narratives.
    </p>
    <p>
      The attempt to make Jesus sponsor for himself is the last refuge of
      hard-driven Christians. The frame of mind it evinces is seen in Dr.
      Benson's interpretation of the exclamation "I thirst," ascribed to Jesus
      on the cross. Crucifixion produced an intolerable thirst, and the
      exclamation is very natural; but Dr. Benson says that Jesus meant "I
      thirst for souls," and and adds that "no man can doubt" it. Such are the
      shifts to which Christians are reduced when they cling to faith in
      defiance of reason.
    </p>
    <p>
      Dr. Benson's "living theology" is dead theology. It is sentimentalism and
      make-believe. Perfectly scriptural doctrines are cast aside while others
      are arbitrary retained. Vague talk about "Christ and him crucified" takes
      the place of time-honored dogmas, logically deduced from the "Word of
      God," and stamped with the deliberate approval of councils and synods.
      Christianity, in short, is becoming a matter of personal taste and
      preference. The time is approaching when every Christian will have a
      Christianity of his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is the moral of the Archbishop's volume. Had space permitted we
      should have liked to notice other features of his sermons. In one place he
      says that "the so-called Secularist is the man who deprives things secular
      of all power and meaning and beauty." We think that he deprives
      Christianity of all meaning, and that being gone its "power" and "beauty"
      are idle themes of wasted eloquence.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      MR. GLADSTONE ON DEVILS.
    </h2>
    <p>
      When the Grand Old Man crossed swords with Professor Huxley on the miracle
      of Gadara, he spent all his time in discussing whether the pigs belonged
      to Jews or Gentiles. The more serious point, whether a legion of devils
      were actually cast out of one or two men and sent into a herd of swine, he
      sedulously avoided. Professor Huxley, however, is too wide-awake to be
      drawn off the scent; and while he disputed the points of geography and
      ethnology, he insisted upon the fact that their only importance was their
      relation to a miraculous story, which marked the parting of the ways
      between Science and Christianity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The demonic theory of disease, including insanity, is universal among
      savages. For proof and illustration the reader has only to consult Dr.
      Tylor's splendid work on <i>Primitive Culture</i>. There are special
      demons for every malady, and the way to cure the disease is to cast out
      the evil spirit. Of course insanity is a striking disorder, and in default
      of the pathological explanation the savage regards the wild, wandering
      words and inexplicable actions of the sufferer as the words and actions of
      a demon, who has taken possession of the man's body, and driven his soul
      abroad or put it in abeyance. This theory of madness survived through all
      the centuries of Christian history until the advent of modern science. Mad
      people were chained up, exhibited as objects of derision, and often beaten
      unmercifully. It was the <i>devil</i> in them, as in the poor witches,
      that was treated in this fashion. And it was a recognised part of a
      clergyman's business to cast out devils. The Church of England canon is
      still unrepealed which provides that the clergy, before engaging in this
      useful if not agreeable occupation, must obtain the written authority of
      their bishops.
    </p>
    <p>
      Laugh or smile as we will at this superstition, it is an integral part of
      the New Testament. The demonic theory of disease is confessed in the story
      of Jesus rebuking the fever of Peter's mother-in-law, so that it left her
      instantaneously, flying out of the door or window, or up the chimney.
      Jesus repeatedly cast out devils. He expelled seven, in succession or at
      one fell swoop, from Mary Magdalene. He turned a legion&mdash;that is,
      several thousands&mdash;out of the possessed Gadarenes; there being at
      least one apiece for the bedevilled swine who were driven to destruction.
      Paul likewise cast out devils. Indeed, if demonic possession in the New
      Testament is explained away, there is no reason why every other miraculous
      element should not be dealt with in the same manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Gladstone perceives this, although he does not commit himself in his
      <i>Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture</i>. "I am afraid," he says, in a
      letter to the Rev. J. W. Belcher, "that the objections to demoniacal
      possession involve in germ the rejection of all belief in the
      supernatural." This is wonderfully clear and straightforward for the Grand
      Old Man. Give up the belief that mad people may be tenanted by devils, and
      you should immediately join the National Secular Society. You have taken
      the first decisive step on the broad road of "infidelity," and nothing but
      a want of logic or courage prevents you from hastening to the inevitable
      conclusion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Archbishop Trench, in his <i>Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord</i>,
      rejects the theory that the "demoniacs" were simply insane. No doubt, he
      says, there was "a substratum of disease, which in many cases helped to
      lay open the sufferer to the deeper evil." But "our Lord Himself uses
      language which is not reconcileable" with the naturalist theory. "It may
      well be a question moreover," says Trench, "if an Apostle, or one with
      apostolic discernment of spirits, were to enter now into one of our
      madhouses, how many of the sufferers there he might not recognise as thus
      having more immediately fallen under the tyranny of the powers of
      darkness."
    </p>
    <p>
      Dean Milman, the discreet, plausible, and polished historian of the
      Christian superstition, did not shrink from regarding the New Testament
      demoniacs as merely insane; and "nothing was more probable," he remarked,
      "than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of the
      prevailing superstition of the times." Precisely so. But why did Jesus
      imitate the lunatics? He addresses the evil spirit and not the madman.
      "Hold thy peace," he says, "and come out of him." No doubt the demoniacs
      were simply insane; but in that case Jesus himself was mistaken, or the
      evangelists put into his mouth words that he never used. The first
      alternative destroys the divinity of Jesus; the second destroys the
      authority of the evangelists.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Gladstone's position is the only honest and logical one for a
      professed Christian. Demonic possession cannot be cut out of the New
      Testament without leaving a gap through which all the "infidelity" in the
      world might pass freely. Devils are not confined to hell. They are
      commercial travellers in brimstone and mischief. They go home
      occasionally; the rest of the time they are abroad on business. When they
      see a promising madman they get inside him, and find warmer quarters than
      the universal air. Very likely they have started Theosophy, in order to
      provide themselves with fresh residences.
    </p>
    <p>
      Little devils of course involve the big Devil&mdash;Apollyon, Beelzebub,
      Abaddon, Satan, Lucifer, Old Nick. He commands the infernal armies, and is
      one of the deities in Mr. Gladstone's pantheon. He is even embedded in the
      revised version of the Lord's Prayer&mdash;like a fly in amber. "Deliver
      us from evil" now reads "Deliver us from the Evil One." Thus the Devil
      triumphs, and the first of living English statesmen is reduced by
      Christian superstition to the level of modern savages and ancient
      barbarians. Mr. Gladstone is perhaps the highest type of the Christian
      statesman. But how small and effeminate he appears, after all, in
      comparison with a great Pagan statesman like Julius Cæsar, whose brain was
      free from all superstition! Were the "mighty Julius" to re-appear on
      earth, and see a great statesman believing the story of devils being
      turned out of men into pigs, he would wonder what blight had fallen upon
      the human intellect in two thousand years.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      HUXLEY'S MISTAKE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      No one will suspect us of any prejudice against Professor Huxley. We have
      often praised his vigorous writings, and his admirable service to
      Freethought. We recognise him as a powerful fighter in the great battle
      between Reason and Faith. He is a born controversialist, he revels in the
      vivisection of a theological opponent, and it is easy to understand how
      the more placid Darwin could cry to him admiringly, "What a man you are!"
    </p>
    <p>
      But for some reason or other it seems the fate of Professor Huxley, as it
      is the fate of Herbert Spencer, to be made use of by the enemies of
      Freethought; and it must be admitted that, to a certain extent, he
      gratuitously plays into their hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Herbert Spencer has been a perfect god-send to the Christians with his
      "Unknowable"&mdash;the creation of which was the worst day's work he ever
      accomplished. It is only a big word, printed with a capital letter, to
      express the objective side of the relativity of human, knowledge. It
      connotes all that we do not know. It is a mere confession of ignorance; it
      is hollowness, emptiness, a vacuum, a nothing. And this nothing, which Mr.
      Spencer adorns with endless quasi-scientific rhetoric, is used as a
      buttress to prop up tottering Churches.
    </p>
    <p>
      Professor Huxley has been nearly as serviceable to the Churches with his
      "Agnosticism," which belongs to the same category of substantially
      meaningless terms as the "Unknowable." No doubt it serves the turn of a
      good many feeble sceptics. It sounds less offensive than "Atheism." An
      Agnostic may safely be invited to dinner, while an Atheist would pocket
      the spoons. But this pandering to "respectability" is neither in the
      interest of truth nor in the interest of character. An Atheist is without
      God; an Agnostic does not know anything about God, so he is without God
      too. They come to the same thing in the end. An Agnostic is simply an
      Atheist with a tall hat on. Atheism carries its own name at the Hall of
      Science; when it occupies a fine house at Eastbourne, and moves in good
      society, it calls itself Agnosticism. And then the Churches say, "Ah, the
      true man of science shrinks from Atheism; he is only an Agnostic; he
      stands reverently in the darkness, waiting for the light."
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor is this the only way in which Professor Huxley has helped "the enemy."
      He is, for instance, far too fond of pressing the "possibility" of
      miracles. We have no right, he says, to declare that miracles are
      impossible; it is asserting more than we know, besides begging the
      question at issue. Perfectly true. But Professor Huxley should remember
      that he uses "possibility" in one sense and the theologians in another. He
      uses it theoretically, and they use it practically. They use it where it
      has a meaning, and he uses it where it has no meaning at all, except in an
      <i>à priori</i> way, like a pair of brackets with nothing between them.
      When the Agnostic speaks of the "possibility" of miracles, he only means
      that we cannot prove a universal negative.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us take an instance. Suppose some one asserts that a man can jump over
      the moon. No one can demonstrate that the feat is impossible. It is <i>possible</i>,
      in the sense that <i>anything</i> is possible. But this is theoretical
      logic. According to practical logic it is impossible, in the sense that no
      rational man would take a ticket for the performance.
    </p>
    <p>
      Why then does Professor Huxley press the "possibility" of miracles against
      his Freethinking friends? He is not advancing a step beyond David Hume. He
      is merely straining logical formulæ in the interest of the Black Army.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now let us take another instance. In a recent letter to the <i>Times</i>,
      with respect to the famous letter of the thirty-eight clergymen who have
      given the Bible a fresh certificate, Professor Huxley is once more careful
      to point out that science knows nothing of "the primal origin" of the
      universe. But who ever said that it did? Atheists, at any rate, are not
      aware that the universe ever <i>had</i> an origin. As to the "ultimate
      cause of the evolutionary process," it seems to us mere metaphysical
      jargon, as intolerable as anything in the mounding phraseology of the
      theologians.
    </p>
    <p>
      But this is not all. Professor Huxley delivers himself of the following
      utterance: "In fact it requires some depth of philosophical incapacity to
      suppose that there is any logical antagonism between Theism and the
      doctrine of Evolution." This is food and drink to a paper like the <i>Christian
      World</i>. But what does it mean? Certainly there is no antagonism between
      the terms "Theism" and "Evolution." They do not fight each other in the
      dictionary. But is there not antagonism between Evolution and any kind of
      Theism yet formulated? The word "God" means anything or nothing. Give your
      God attributes, and see if they are consistent with Evolution. That is the
      only way to decide whether there is any "logical antagonism" between
      Evolution and Theism. The trouble begins when you are "logical" enough to
      deal in definitions; and the only definition of God that will stand the
      test of Evolution is "a sort of a something."
    </p>
    <p>
      We leave Professor Huxley to present that highly edifying Theistic
      conclusion to his old theological opponents, and, if he likes, to flaunt
      it in the faces of his Freethinking friends. But is it really worth while
      for Samson to grind chaff for the Philistines? We put the question to
      Professor Huxley with all seriousness. Let him teach truth and smite
      falsehood, without spending so much time in showing that they harmonise
      when emptied of practical meaning. A sovereign and a feather fall with
      equal rapidity in a vacuum; and if you take away fact and experience, one
      proposition is as "possible" as another. But why should a great man waste
      his energies in propagating such a barren truism?
    </p>
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    <h2>
      THE GOSPEL OF FREETHOUGHT.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Christians are perpetually crying that we destroy and never build up.
      Nothing could be more false, for all negation has a positive side, and we
      cannot deny error without affirming truth. But even if it were true, it
      would not lessen the value of our work. You must clear the ground before
      you can build, and plough before you sow. Splendor gives no strength to an
      edifice whose foundations are treacherous, nor can a harvest be reaped
      from fields unprepared for the seed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethought is, in this respect, like a skilful physician, whose function
      it is to expel disease and leave the patient sound and well. No sick man
      claims that the doctor shall supply him with something in place of his
      malady. It is enough that the enemy of his health is driven out. He is
      then in a position to act for himself. He has legs to walk with, a brain
      to devise, and hands to execute his will What more does he need? What more
      can he ask without declaring himself a weakling or a fool? So it is with
      superstition, the deadliest disease of the mind. Freethought casts it out,
      with its blindness and its terrors, and leaves the mind clear and free.
      All nature is then before us to study and enjoy. Truth shines on us with
      celestial light, Goodness smiles on our best endeavors, and Beauty thrills
      our senses and kindles our imagination with the subtle magic of her
      charms.
    </p>
    <p>
      What a boon it is to think freely, to let the intellect dart out in quest
      of truth at every point of the compass, to feel the delight of the chase
      and the gladness of capture! What a noble privilege to pour treasures of
      knowledge into the alembic of the brain, and separate the gold from the
      dross!
    </p>
    <p>
      The Freethinker takes nothing on trust, if he can help it; he dissects,
      analyses, and proves everything, Does this make him a barren sceptic? Not
      so. What he discards he knows to be worthless, and he also knows the value
      of what he prizes. If one sweet vision turns out a mirage, how does it
      lessen our enjoyment at the true oasis, or shake our certitude of water
      and shade under the palm-trees by the well?
    </p>
    <p>
      The masses of men do not think freely. They scarcely think at all out of
      their round of business; They are trained not to think. From the cradle to
      the grave orthodoxy has them in its clutches. Their religion is settled by
      priests, and their political and social institutions by custom. They look
      askance at the man who dares to question what is established, not
      reflecting that all orthodoxies were once heterodox, that without
      innovation there could never have been any progress, and that if
      inquisitive fellows had not gone prying about in forbidden quarters ages
      ago, the world would still be peopled by savages dressed in nakedness,
      war-paint, and feathers. The mental stultification which begins in youth
      reaches ossification as men grow older. Lack of thought ends in incapacity
      to think.
    </p>
    <p>
      Real Freethought is impossible without education. The mind cannot operate
      without means or construct without materials. Theology opposes education:
      Freethought supports it. The poor as well as the rich should share in its
      blessings. Education is a social capital which should be supplied to all.
      It enriches and expands. It not only furnishes the mind, but strengthens
      its faculties. Knowledge is power. A race of giants could not level the
      Alps; but ordinary men, equipped with science, bore through their base,
      and make easy channels for the intercourse of divided nations.
    </p>
    <p>
      Growth comes with use, and power with exercise, Education makes both
      possible. It puts the means of salvation at the service of all, and
      prevents the faculties from moving about <i>in vacuo</i>, and finally
      standing still from sheer hopelessness. The educated man has a whole
      magazine of appliances at his command, and his intellect is trained in
      using them, while the uneducated man has nothing but his strength, and his
      training is limited to its use.
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethought demands education for all. It claims a mental inheritance for
      every child born into the world. Superstition demands ignorance,
      stupidity, and degradation. Wherever the schoolmaster is busy, Freethought
      prospers; where he is not found, superstition reigns supreme and levels
      the people in the dust.
    </p>
    <p>
      Free speech and Freethought go together. If one is hampered the other
      languishes. What is the use of thinking if I may not express my thought?
      We claim equal liberty for all. The priest shall say what he believes and
      so shall the sceptic. No law shall protect the one and disfranchise the
      other. If any man disapproves what I say, he need not hear me a second
      time. What more does he require? Let him listen to what he likes, and
      leave others to do the same. Let us have justice and fair play all round.
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethought is not only useful but laudable. It involves labor and
      trouble. Ours is not a gospel for those who love the soft pillow of faith.
      The Freethinker does not let his ship rot away in harbor; he spreads his
      canvas and sails the seas of thought. What though tempests beat and
      billows roar? He is undaunted, and leaves the avoidance of danger to the
      sluggard and the slave. He will not pay their price for ease and safety.
      Away he sails with Vigilance at the prow and Wisdom at the helm. He not
      only traverses the ocean highways, but skirts unmapped coasts and ventures
      on uncharted seas. He gathers spoils in every zone, and returns with a
      rich freight that compensates for all hazards. Some day or other, you say,
      he will be shipwrecked and lost. Perhaps. All things end somehow. But if
      he goes down he will die like a man and not like a coward, and have for
      his requiem the psalm of the tempest and the anthem of the waves.
    </p>
    <p>
      Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty
      and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception.
      The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a
      waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning
      millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a
      fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says
      Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power.
    </p>
    <p>
      Buckle has well said that scepticism is "the necessary antecedent of all
      progress." Without it we should still be groping in the night of the Dark
      Ages. The very foundations of modern science and philosophy were laid on
      ground which was wrested from the Church, and every stone was cemented
      with the blood of martyrs. As the edifice arose the sharpshooters of faith
      attacked the builders at every point, and they still continue their old
      practice, although their missiles can hardly reach the towering heights
      where their enemies are now at work.
    </p>
    <p>
      Astronomy was opposed by the Church because it unsettled old notions of
      the earth being the centre of the universe, and the sun, moon, and stars
      mere lights stuck in the solid firmament, and worked to and fro like
      sliding panels. Did not the Bible say that General Joshua commanded the
      sun to stand still, and how could this have happened unless it moved round
      the earth? And was not the earth certainly flat, as millions of flats
      believed it to be? The Catholic Inquisition forced Galileo to recant, and
      Protestant Luther called Copernicus "an old fool."
    </p>
    <p>
      Chemistry was opposed as an impious prying into the secrets of God. It was
      put in the same class with sorcery and witchcraft, and punished in the
      same way. The early chemists were regarded as agents of the Devil, and
      their successors are still regarded as "uncanny" in the more ignorant
      parts of Christendom. Roger Bacon was persecuted by his brother monks; his
      testing fire was thought to have come from the pit, and the explosion of
      his gunpowder was the Devil vanishing in smoke and smell. Even at the end
      of last century, the clergy-led mob of Birmingham who wrecked Priestley s
      house and destroyed his apparatus, no doubt felt that there was a close
      connection between chemistry and infidelity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Physiology and Medicine were opposed on similar grounds. We were all
      fearfully and wonderfully made, and the less the mystery was looked into
      the better. Disease was sent by God for his own wise ends, and to resist
      it was as bad as blasphemy. Every discovery and every reform was decried
      as impious. Men now living can remember how the champions of faith
      denounced the use of anæsthetics in painful labor as an interference with
      God's curse on the daughters of Eve.
    </p>
    <p>
      Geology was opposed because it discredited Moses, as though that famous
      old Jew had watched the deposit of every stratum of the earth's crust. It
      was even said that fossils had been put underground by God to puzzle the
      wiseacres, and that the Devil had carried shells to the hill-tops for the
      purpose of deluding men to infidelity and perdition. Geologists were
      anathematised from the pulpits and railed at by tub-thumpers. They were
      obliged to feel their way and go slowly. Sir Charles Lyell had to keep
      back his strongest conclusions for at least a quarter of a century, and
      could not say all he thought until his head was whitened by old age and he
      looked into the face of Death.
    </p>
    <p>
      Biology was opposed tooth and nail as the worst of all infidelity. It
      exposed Genesis and put Moses out of court. It destroyed all special
      creation, showed man's' kinship with other forms of life, reduced Adam and
      Eve to myths, and exploded the doctrine of the Fall. Darwin was for years
      treated as Antichrist, and Huxley as the great beast. All that is being
      changed, thanks to the sceptical spirit. Darwin's corpse is buried in
      Westminster Abbey, but his ideas are undermining all the churches and
      crumbling them into dust.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gospel of Freethought brands persecution as the worst crime against
      humanity. It stifles the spirit of progress and strangles its pioneers. It
      eliminates the brave, the adventurous and the aspiring, and leaves only
      the timid, the sluggish and the grovelling. It removes the lofty and
      spares the low. It levels all the hills of thought and makes an
      intellectual flatness. It drenches all the paths of freedom with blood and
      tears, and makes earth the vestibule of hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Persecution is the right arm of priestcraft. The black militia of theology
      are the sworn foes of Free-thought. They represent it as the sin against
      the Holy Ghost, for which there is no forgiveness in this world or the
      next. When they speak of the Holy Ghost they mean themselves. Freethought
      is a crime against <i>them</i>. It strips off the mystery that invests
      their craft, and shows them as they really are, a horde of bandits who
      levy black mail on honest industry, and preach a despot in heaven in order
      to maintain their own tyranny on earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gospel of Freethought would destroy all priesthoods. Every man should
      be his own priest. If a professional soul-doctor gives you wrong advice
      and leads you to ruin, he will not be damned for you. He will see you so
      first. We must take all responsibility, and we should also take the power.
      Instead of putting our thinking out, as we put our washing, let us do it
      at home. No man can do another's thinking for him. What is thought in the
      originator is only acquiescence in the man who takes it at secondhand.
    </p>
    <p>
      If we do our own thinking in religion we shall do it in everything else.
      We reject authority and act for ourselves. Spiritual and temporal power
      are brought under the same rule. They must justify themselves or go. The
      Freethinker is thus a politician and a social reformer. What a Christian
      <i>may</i> be he <i>must</i> be. Freethinkers are naturally Radicals. They
      are almost to a man on the side of justice, freedom and progress. The
      Tories know this, and hence they seek to suppress us by the violence of
      unjust law. They see that we are a growing danger to every kind of
      privilege, a menace to all the idle classes who live in luxury on the
      sweat and labor of others&mdash;the devouring drones who live on the
      working bees.
    </p>
    <p>
      The gospel of Freethought teaches us to distinguish between the knowable
      and the unknowable. We cannot fathom the infinite "mystery of the
      universe" with our finite plummet, nor see aught behind the veil of death.
      Here is our appointed province:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     This world which is the world
     Of all of us, and where in the end
     We find our happiness or not at all.
</pre>
    <p>
      Let us make the best of this world and take our chance of any other. If
      there is a heaven, we dare say it will hold all honest men. If it will
      not, those who go elsewhere will at least be in good company.
    </p>
    <p>
      Our salvation is here and now. It is certain and not contingent. We need
      not die before we realise it Ours is a gospel, and the only gospel, for
      this side of the grave. The promises of theology cannot be made good till
      after death; ours are all redeemable in this life.
    </p>
    <p>
      We ask men to acknowledge realities and dismiss fictions. When you have
      sifted all the learned sermons ever preached, you will find very little
      good grain. Theology deals with dreams and phantasies, and gives no
      guidance to practical men. The whole truth or life may be summed up in a
      few words. Happiness is the only good, suffering the only evil, and
      selfishness the only sin. And the whole duty of man may be expressed in
      one sentence, slightly altered from Voltaire&mdash;Learn what is true in
      order to do what is right. If a man can tell you anything about these
      matters, listen to him; if not, turn a deaf ear, and let him preach to the
      wind.
    </p>
    <p>
      The only noble things in this world are great hearts and great brains.
      There is no virtue in a starveling piety which turns all beauty into
      ugliness and shrivels up every natural affection. Let the heart beat high
      with courage and enterprise, and throb with warm passion. Let the brain be
      an active engine of thought, imagination and will. The gospel of sorrow
      has had its day; the time has come for the gospel of gladness. Let us live
      out our lives to the full, radiating joy on all in our own circle, and
      diffusing happiness through the grander circle of humanity, until at last
      we retire from the banquet of life, as others have done before us, and
      sink in eternal repose.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      ON RIDICULE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Goldsmith said there are two classes of people who dread ridicule&mdash;priests
      and fools. They cry out that it is no argument, but they know it is. It
      has been found the most potent form of argument. Euclid used it in his
      immortal Geometry; for what else is the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> which
      he sometimes employs? Elijah used it against the priests of Baal. The
      Christian fathers found it effective against the Pagan superstitions, and
      in turn it was adopted as the best weapon of attack on <i>them</i> by
      Lucian and Celsus. Ridicule has been used by Bruno, Erasmus, Luther,
      Rabelais, Swift, and Voltaire, by nearly all the great emancipators of the
      human mind.
    </p>
    <p>
      All these men used it for a serious purpose. They were not comedians who
      amused the public for pence. They wielded ridicule as a keen rapier, more
      swift and fatal than the heaviest battle-axe. Terrible as was the
      levin-brand of their denunciation, it was less dreaded than the Greek fire
      of their sarcasm. I repeat that they were men of serious aims, and indeed
      how could they have been otherwise? All true and lasting wit is founded on
      a basis of seriousness; or else, as Heine said, it is nothing but a sneeze
      of the reason. Hood felt the same thing when he proposed for his epitaph:
      "Here lies one who made more puns, and spat more blood, than any other man
      of his time."
    </p>
    <p>
      Buckle well says, in his fine vindication of Voltaire, that he "used
      ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly." And he
      adds&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      "His irony, his wit, his pungent and telling sarcasms, produced more
      effect than the gravest arguments could have done; and there can be no
      doubt that he was fully justified in using those great resources with
      which nature had endowed him, since by their aid he advanced the interests
      of truth, and relieved men from some of their most inveterate prejudices."
    </p>
    <p>
      Victor Hugo puts it much better in his grandiose way, when he says of
      Voltaire that "he was irony incarnate for the salvation of mankind."
    </p>
    <p>
      Voltaire's opponents, as Buckle points out, had a foolish reverence for
      antiquity, and they were impervious to reason. To compare great things
      with small, our opponents are of the same character. Grave argument is
      lost upon them; it runs off them like water from a duck. When we approach
      the mysteries of their faith in a spirit of reverence, we yield them half
      the battle. We must concede them nothing. What they call reverence is only
      conventional prejudice. It must be stripped away from the subject, and if
      argument will not remove the veil, ridicule will. Away with the insane
      notion that absurdity is reverend because it is ancient! If it is
      thousands of years old, treat it exactly as if it were told the first time
      to-day. Science recognises nothing in space and time to invalidate the
      laws of nature. They prevailed in the past as well as in the present, in
      Jerusalem as well as in London. That is how Science regards everything;
      and at bottom Science and common-sense are one and the same.
    </p>
    <p>
      Professor Huxley, in his admirable little book on Hume, after pointing out
      the improbability of centaurs, says that judged by the canons of science
      all "miracles" are centaurs. He also considers what would happen if he
      were told by the greatest anatomist of the age that he had seen a centaur.
      He admits that the weight of such authority would stagger him, but it
      would scarcely make him believe. "I could get no further," says Huxley,
      "than a suspension of judgment."
    </p>
    <p>
      Now I venture to say that if Johannes Müller had told Huxley any such
      thing, he would have at once concluded that the great anatomist was joking
      or suffering from hallucination. As a matter of fact trained investigators
      do not see these incredible monstrosities, and Huxley's hypothetical case
      goes far beyond every attested miracle. But I do say that if Johannes
      Muller, or anyone else, alleged that he had seen a centaur, Huxley would
      never think of investigating the absurdity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yet the allegation of, a great anatomist on such a matter is infinitely
      more plausible than any miraculous story of the Christian religion. The
      "centaurs" of faith were seen centuries ago by superstitious people; and
      what is more, the relation of them was never made by the witnesses, but
      always by other people, who generally lived a few generations at least
      after the time.
    </p>
    <p>
      What on earth are we to do with people who believe in "centaurs" on such
      evidence, who make laws to protect their superstition, and appoint priests
      at the public cost to teach the "centaur" science? The way to answer this
      question is to ask another. How should we treat people who believed that
      centaurs could be seen now? Why, of course, we should laugh at them.
    </p>
    <p>
      And that is how we should treat people who believe that men-horses ever
      existed at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      Does anybody ask that I shall seriously discuss whether an old woman with
      a divining-rod can detect hidden treasures; whether Mr. Home floated in
      the air or Mrs. Guppy sailed from house to house; whether cripples are
      cured at Lourdes or all manner of diseases at Winifred's Well? Must I
      patiently reason with a man who tells me that he saw water turned into
      wine, or a few loaves and fishes turned into a feast for multitudes, or
      dead men rise up from their graves? Surely not. I do what every sensible
      man does. I recognise no obligation to reason with such hallucinate
      mortals; I simply treat them with ridicule.
    </p>
    <p>
      So with the past. Its delusions are no more entitled to respect than those
      of to-day. Jesus Christ as a miracle-worker is just as absurd as any
      modern pretender. Whether in the Bible, the Koran, the Arabian Nights,
      Monte Christo, or Baron Munchausen, a tremendous "walker" is the fit
      subject of a good laugh. And Freethinkers mean to enjoy their laugh, as
      some consolation for the wickedness of superstition. The Christian faith
      is such that it makes us laugh or cry. Are we wrong in preferring to
      laugh?
    </p>
    <p>
      There is an old story of a man who was plagued by the Devil. The fiend was
      always dropping in at inconvenient times, and making the poor fellow's
      life a hell on earth. He sprinkled holy water on the floor, but by-and-bye
      the "old 'un" hopped about successfully on the dry spots. He flung things
      at him, but all in vain. At last he resolved on desperate measures. He
      plucked up his courage, looked the Devil straight in the face, and laughed
      at him. That ended the battle. The Devil could not stand laughter. He fled
      that moment and never returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      Superstition is the Devil. Treat him to a hearty wholesome laugh. It is
      the surest exorcism, and you will find laughter medicinal for mind and
      body too. Ridicule, and again ridicule, and ever ridicule!
    </p>
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    <h2>
      WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS?
    </h2>
    <p>
      Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot
      commit. God is to them merely a word, expressing all sorts of ideas, and
      not a person. It is, properly speaking, a general term, which includes all
      that there is in common among the various deities of the world. The idea
      of the supernatural embodies itself in a thousand ways. Truth is always
      simple and the same, but error is infinitely diverse. Jupiter, Jehovah,
      and Mumbo-Jumbo are alike creations of human fancy, the products of
      ignorance and wonder. Which is <i>the</i> God is not yet settled. When the
      sects have decided this point, the question may take a fresh turn; but
      until then <i>god</i> must be considered as a generic term, like <i>tree</i>
      or <i>horse or man</i>; with just this difference, however, that while the
      words tree, horse, and man express the general qualities of visible
      objects, the word god expresses only the imagined qualities of something
      that nobody has ever seen.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not
      dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for
      he does not admit the existence of any such being.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ideas of god may be good or bad, beautiful or ugly; and according as he
      finds them the Atheist treats them. If we lived in Turkey, we should deal
      with the god of the Koran; but as we live in England, we deal with the god
      of the Bible. We speak of that god as a being, just for convenience sake,
      and not from conviction. At bottom, we admit nothing but the mass of
      contradictory notions between Genesis and Revelation. We attack not a
      person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Brougham long ago pointed out, in his <i>Life of Voltaire</i>, that
      the great French heretic was not guilty of blasphemy, as his enemies
      alleged; since he had no belief in the actual existence of tne god he
      dissected, analysed, and laughed at. Mr. Ruskin very eloquently defends
      Byron from the same charge. In <i>Cain</i> and elsewhere, the great poet
      does not impeach God; he merely impeaches the orthodox creed. We may sum
      up the whole matter briefly. No man satirises the god he believes in, and
      no man believes in the god he satirises.
    </p>
    <p>
      We shall not, therefore, be deterred by the cry of "blasphemy!" which is
      exactly what the Jewish priests shouted against Jesus Christ. If there is
      a God, he cannot be half such a fool and blackguard as the Bible declares.
      In destroying the counterfeit we do not harm the reality. And as it is
      better, in the words of Plutarch, to have no notion of the gods than to
      have notions which dishonor them, we are satisfied that the Lord (if he
      exist) will never burn us in hell for denying a few lies told in his name.
    </p>
    <p>
      The real blasphemers are those who believe in God and blacken his
      character; who credit him with less knowledge than a child, and less
      intelligence than an idiot; who make him quibble, deceive, and lie; who
      represent him as indecent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart
      of a savage and the brain of a fool. These are the blasphemers.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the priest steps between husband and wife, with the name of God on
      his lips, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he resists education
      and science, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes freedom
      of thought and liberty of conscience, he blasphemes. When, in the name of
      God, he robs, tortures, and kills those who differ from him, he
      blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes the equal rights of all,
      he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he preaches content to the poor
      and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful, and makes religious tyranny
      the handmaiden of political privilege, he blasphemes. And when he takes
      the Bible in his hand, and says it was written by the inspiration of God,
      he blasphemes almost beyond forgiveness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Who are the blasphemers? Not we who preach freedom and progress for all
      men; but those who try to bind the world with chains of dogma, to burden
      it, in God's name, with all the foul superstitions of its ignorant past.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHRISTIANITY AND COMMON SENSE.
    </h2>
    <p>
      There are two things in the world that can never get on together&mdash;religion
      and common sense. Religion deals with the next life, common sense with
      this; religion points to the sky, common sense to the earth; religion is
      all imagination, common sense all reason; religion deals with what nobody
      can understand, common sense with what everybody can understand; religion
      gives us no return for our investments but flash notes on the bank of
      expectation, common sense gives us good interest and full security for our
      capital. They are as opposite as two things can possibly be, and they are
      always at strife. Religion is always trying to fill the world with
      delusions, and common sense is always trying to drive them away. Religion
      says Live for the next world, and common sense says Live for this.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is in the very nature of things that religion and common sense should
      hate and oppose each other. They are rivals for the same prize&mdash;aspirants
      to the same throne. In every age a conflict has been going on between
      them; and although common sense is fast getting the upper hand to-day, the
      war is far from ended, and we may see some fierce struggles before the
      combat closes. There can, however, be no doubt as to the issue; for
      science has appeared on the scene with the most deadly weapons of
      destruction, and science is the sworn ally of common sense. Nay, is not
      Science the mighty child of common sense&mdash;the fruit of Reason from
      the lusty embrace of Nature?
    </p>
    <p>
      Common sense is primitive logic. It does not depend on books, and it is
      superior to culture. It is the perception of analogy&mdash;the instinct of
      causation. It guides the savage through trackless forests, and the
      astronomer through infinite space. It makes the burnt child dread the
      fire, and a Darwin see in a few obvious facts the solution of a mystery.
      It built the first hut and the last palace; the first canoe and the last
      ocean steamer. It constructed docks, and laid down railways, applied steam
      to machinery and locomotion, prompted every mechanical discovery,
      instigated all material progress, and transformed an ape-like beast into a
      civilised man.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even the highest art is full of common sense. Sanity and simplicity are
      the distinguishing marks of the loftiest genius, which may be described as
      inspired common sense. The great artist never loses touch of fact; he may
      let his imagination soar as high as the stars, but he keeps his feet
      firm-planted on the ground. All the world recognises the sublimity of
      Greek sculpture and Shakespeare's plays, because they are both true to
      nature and fact and coincident with everlasting laws. The true sublime is
      not fantastic; it is solid and satisfying, like a mighty Alp, deep-rooted
      first of all in the steadfast earth, and then towering up with its
      vineyards, its pastures, its pine-forests, its glaciers, its precipices,
      and last of all the silence of infinitude brooding over its eternal snows.
    </p>
    <p>
      Common sense, the civiliser, has had an especially hard fight with that
      particular form of religion known as Christianity. When Tertullian said
      that Christianity was to be believed because it was incredible, he spoke
      in the true spirit of faith; just as old Sir Thomas Browne did when he
      found the marvels of religion too weak for his credulity, David Hume
      expressed the same truth ironically at the conclusion of his <i>Essay on
      Miracles</i>, when he said that it was not reason that persuaded any
      Christian of the truth of his creed, which was established on the higher
      ground of faith, and could not be accepted without a miracle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Common sense is blasphemy. It is the thing which religion dreads most, and
      which the priests most mortally hate. Common sense dispenses with learned
      disquisitions, and tries everything with simple mother wit. If, for
      instance, it hears that a whale swallowed a man, and vomited him up safe
      and sound three days after, it does not want to know all the physiology of
      men and whales before deciding if the story is true; it just indulges in a
      hearty laugh and blows the story to Hades. Miracle-mongers are quite
      helpless when a man turns round and says, "My dear sir, that story's just
      a trifle too thin." They see his case is a hopeless one, and leave him to
      the tender mercies of the Lord of Hosts.
    </p>
    <p>
      Learning is all very well in its way, but common sense is a great deal
      better. It is infinitely the best weapon to use against Christianity.
      Without a knowledge of history, without being acquainted with any science
      but that of daily life, without a command of Hebrew, Latin and Greek, or
      any other language than his own, a plain man can take the Bible in his
      hand and easily satisfy himself it is not the word of God. Common sense
      tells him not to believe in contradictory statements; common sense tells
      him that a man could not have found a wife in a land where there were no
      women; common sense tells him that three millions of people never marched
      out of any country in one night; common sense tells him that Jesus Christ
      could not have "gone up" from two places at once; common sense tells him
      that turning devils out of men into pigs is a fable not half as good as
      the poorest of Æsop's; common sense tells him that nobody but a skunk
      would consent to be saved from the penalty of his own misdeeds by the
      sufferings of an innocent man; common sense tells him that while men
      object to having their pockets picked and their throats cut, they want no
      divine command against theft and murder; common sense tells him that God
      never ordered the committal of such atrocities as those ascribed to him in
      the Bible; and common sense tells him that a God of mercy never made a
      hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, all this is perfectly clear, and the priests know it. That is why
      they cry out Blasphemy! every time they meet it. But that is also
      precisely the reason why we should employ it against them. The best
      antidote to superstition, the worst enemy of priestcraft, and the best
      friend of man, is (to parody Danton's famous formula) Common Sense, and
      again Common Sense, and for ever Common Sense.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      THE LORD OF LORDS. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * Written in August, 1884.
</pre>
    <p>
      We are in the midst of a political crisis. The House of Lords opposes a
      reform unanimously voted by the House of Commons. Great demonstrations are
      being held all over the country, to insist on the popular will being
      carried into effect, and there is a growing cry of "Down with the Lords."
      A spectator from another planet might wonder at all the fuss. He might
      marvel how forty millions of people needed to stamp and gesticulate
      against a handful of obstructives. He might imagine that they had only to
      decree a thing and it would immediately be; that all opposition to their
      sovereign will would melt away the moment they declared it. This
      traveller, however, would soon be undeceived. A little study would show
      him that the people are kept in check by faith and custom. He would learn
      that the nation is tied down like Gulliver was, by ligatures springing
      from its own head. Behind the King there is a King of Kings; behind the
      Lords there is a Lord of Lords. Behind every earthly despotism there is a
      heavenly one. The rulers of mankind overawe the people by religious
      terrors. They keep a body of men in their pay, the black army of theology,
      whose business it is to frighten people from their rights by means of a
      ghost behind the curtain. Nobody has ever seen the bogie, but we are
      taught to believe in it from our infancy, and faith supplies the
      deficiencies of sight. Thus we are enslaved by our own consent. Our will
      is suborned against our interests. We wear no chains to remind us of our
      servitude, but our liberty is restrained by the subtle web of
      superstition, which is so fine as to be imperceptible except to keen and
      well-practised eyes, and elastic enough to cheat us with a false sense of
      freedom.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, we must seek in religion the secret of all political tyranny and
      social injustice. Not only does history show us the bearing of religion on
      politics&mdash;we see it to-day wherever we cast our gaze. Party feeling
      is so embittered in France because the sharp line of division in politics
      corresponds with the sharp line of division in religion. On the one side
      there is Freethought and Republicanism, and on the other Catholicism and
      Monarchy. Even in England, which at present knows less of the naked
      despotism of the Catholic Church than any other European country, we are
      gradually approximating to a similar state of things. Freethougnt is
      appearing upon the public stage, and will play its peculiar part as
      naturally as religion does. Those who fancy that theology and politics
      have no necessary relations, that you may operate in the one without
      affecting the other, and that they can and should be kept distinct, are
      grossly mistaken. Cardinal Newman has well shown how it is the nature of
      ideas to assimilate to themselves whatever agrees with them, and to
      destroy whatever disagrees. When once an idea enters the human mind it
      acts according to the necessary laws of thought. It changes to its own
      complexion all its mental surroundings, and through every mental and moral
      channel influences the world of practice outside. The real sovereigns of
      mankind, who sway its destinies with irresistible power, are not the
      czars, emperors, kings and lords, nor even the statesmen who enact laws
      when public sentiment is ripe; they are the great thinkers who mould
      opinion, the discoverers and enunciators of Truth, the men of genius who
      pour the leaven of their ideas and enthusiasm into the sluggish brain of
      humanity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even in this crisis it is easy to see how Religion and Freethought are at
      variance. The Liberal party is not pledged to the abolition of the House
      of Lords, but the Radical party is. Orthodox Liberalism is Christian, only
      a little less so than orthodox Conservatism; but Radicalism is very
      largely sceptical. It would surprise the dullards of both parties to learn
      how great a portion of the working energy of Radicalism is supplied by
      Freethinkers. True, many of them are unavowed Freethinkers, yet they are
      of our party although they do not wear our colors. But setting all these
      aside, I assert that Radicalism would be immensely weakened by the
      withdrawal of declared Freethinkers from its ranks. No one in the least
      acquainted with political organisation would think of disputing this.
    </p>
    <p>
      Belief in God is the source and principle of all tyranny. This lies in the
      very nature of things. For what is God? All definitions of religion from
      Johnson's down to that of the latest dictionary agree on this one point,
      that it is concerned with man's relations to <i>the unknown</i>. Yes, God
      is the Unknown, and theology is the science of ignorance. Earl
      Beaconsfield, in his impish way, once said that where our knowledge ends
      our religion begins. A truer word was never spoken.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now the unknown is the terrible. We become fearful the moment we confront
      the incalculable. Go through the history of religions, consult the various
      accounts of savage and barbarous faiths at present extant, and you will
      find that the principle of terror, springing from the unknown, is the
      essential feature in which they all agree. This terror inevitably begets
      slavishness. We cannot be cowardly in this respect without its affecting
      our courage in others. The mental serf is a bodily serf too, and spiritual
      fetters are the agencies of political thraldom. The man who worships a
      tyrant in heaven naturally submits his neck to the yoke of tyrants on
      earth. He who bows his intellect to a priest will yield his manhood to a
      king. Everywhere on earth we find the same ceremonies attending every form
      of dependence. The worshipper who now kneels in prayer to God, like the
      courtier who backs from the presence of the monarch, is performing an
      apology for the act of prostration which took place alike before the altar
      and the throne. In both cases it was the adoration of fear, the debasement
      of the weak before the seat of irresponsible power.
    </p>
    <p>
      Authority is still the principle of our most refined creeds. The majority
      of Christians believe in salvation by faith; and what is the God of that
      dogma but a capricious tyrant, who saves or damns according to his
      personal whim? The ministers of Protestantism, like the priests of
      Catholicism, recognise this practically in their efforts to regulate
      public education. They dare not trust to the effect of persuasion on the
      unprejudiced mind; they must bias the minds of children by means of
      dogmatic teaching. They bend the twig in order to warp the tree.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now God is the supreme principle of authority as he is the essence of the
      unknown. He is thus the head, front and symbol of terror and slavery, and
      as such must be assailed by every true soldier of Progress. We shall never
      enfranchise the world without touching people's superstitions; and even if
      we abolish the House of Lords we shall still dwell in the house of bondage
      unless we abolish the Lord of Lords; for the evil principle will remain as
      a germ to develop into new forms of oppression.
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethought is the real Savior. When we make a man a Freethinker, we need
      not trouble greatly about his politics. He is sure to go right in the
      main. He may mistake here or falter there, but his tendency will always be
      sound. Thus it is that Freethinkers always vote, work and fight for the
      popular cause. They have discarded the principle of authority in the
      heavens above and on the earth beneath, and left it to the Conservative
      party, to which all religionists belong precisely in proportion to the
      orthodoxy of their faith. Freethought goes to the root. It reaches the
      intellect and the conscience, and does not merely work at haphazard on the
      surface of our material interests and party struggles. It aims at the
      destruction of all tyranny and injustice by the sure methods of
      investigation and discussion, and the free play of mind on every subject.
      It loves Truth and Freedom. It turns away from the false and sterile ideas
      of the Kingdom of God and faces the true and fruitful idea of the Republic
      of Man.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CONSECRATING THE COLORS
    </h2>
    <p>
      The Queen has recently presented new colors to the first battalion of the
      Seaforth Highlanders. There was a great parade at Osborne, half the royal
      family being present to witness her Majesty perform the one piece of
      business to which she takes kindly in her old age. She has long been, as
      Lord Beaconsfield said, physically and morally unfit for her many duties;
      but she is always ready to inspect her troops, to pin a medal or a cross
      on the breast of that cheap form of valor which excites such admiration in
      feminine minds, or to thank her brave warriors for exhibiting their
      heroism on foreign fields against naked savages and half-naked barbarians.
      The ruling passion holds out strong to the last, and the respectable old
      lady who is allowed to occupy the English throne because of her
      harmlessness can still sing, like the Grand Duchess in Offenbach's opera,
      "Oh, I dote on the military."
    </p>
    <p>
      But the Queen is not my game. I am "going for" the priests behind her, the
      mystery-men who give the sanction of religion to all the humbug and
      hypocrisy, as well as to all the plunder and oppression, that obtain
      amongst us. Those new colors were consecrated (that is the word) by the
      Dean of Windsor. The old colors were consecrated forty-two years ago by
      the Venerable Dr. Vernon Harcourt, Archbishop of York, who was probably a
      near relative of our pious Home Secretary, the fat member for Derby. If I
      were a courtier, a sycophant, or an ordinary journalist, I might spend
      some time in hunting up the actual relationship between these two
      Harcourts; but being neither, and not caring a straw one way or the other,
      I content myself, as I shall probably content my readers, with hazarding a
      conjecture.
    </p>
    <p>
      Consecrating the colors! What does that mean? First of all it implies the
      alliance between the soldier and the priest, who are the two arms of
      tyranny. One holds and the other strikes; one guards and the other
      attacks; one overawes with terror and delusion, and the other smites with
      material weapons when the spiritual restraints fail. The black and the red
      armies are both retainers in the service of Privilege, and they preach or
      fight exactly as they are bidden. It makes no real difference that the
      soldier's orders are clear and explicit, while the priest's are
      mysteriously conveyed through secret channels. They alike obey the mandate
      of their employers, and take their wages for the work.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the next place it shows the intimate relation between religion and war.
      Both belong to the age of faith. When the age of reason has fairly dawned
      both will be despised and finally forgotten. They are always and
      everywhere founded on ignorance and stupidity, although they are decorated
      with all sorts of fine names. The man of sense sees through all these fine
      disguises. He knows that the most ignorant people are the most credulous,
      and that the most stupid are the most pugnacious. Educated and thoughtful
      men shrink alike from the dogmas of religion and the brutalities of war.
    </p>
    <p>
      Further, this consecration of the colors reminds us that the Christian
      deity is still the lord of hosts, the god of battles. His eyes delight to
      look over a purple sea of blood, and his devotees never invoke his name
      so-much as when they are about to emulate his sanguinary characteristics.
      The Dean of Windsor does not shock, he only gratifies, the feelings of the
      orthodox world, when he blesses the flag which is to float over scenes of
      carnage, and flame like a fiend's tongue over the hell of battle, where
      brothers of the same human family, without a quarrel in the world, but set
      at variance bv thieves and tricksters, maim and mangle and kill each other
      with fractricidal hands, which ought to have been clasped in friendship
      and brotherhood. Yet these hireling priests, who consecrate the banners of
      war, dare to prate that God is a loving father and that we are all his
      children. What monstrous absurdity! What disgusting hypocrisy I Surely the
      parent of mankind, instead of allowing his ministers to mouth his name
      over the symbols of slaughter, would command them to preach "peace,
      peace!"
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Until the war-drums beat no longer and the battle-flags are furled
     In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.
</pre>
    <p>
      Of course there is a comic side to this, as to almost everything else. The
      priests of the various nations consecrate rival banners, pray for victory
      for their own side, and swear that God Almighty is sure to give it them if
      they trust in him. Now what is the Lord to do when they go on in this way
      on opposite sides? He is sure to disappoint one party, and he is likely to
      get devilish little thanks from the other. A wise God would remain
      neutral, and say, "My comical little fellows, if you will go knocking out
      each other's brains because they are not strong enough to settle your
      differences by peaceful means, by all means get through the beastly
      business as soon as possible; but pray don't trouble me with your
      petitions for assistance; both sides are fools, and I wash my hands of the
      whole affair."
    </p>
    <p>
      I have heard of an old Dutch commander who actually prayed the Lord to
      remain neutral, although from a different motive. On the eve of battle he
      addressed the deity in this fashion: "O Lord, we are ten thousand, and
      they are ten thousand, but we are a darned sight better soldiers than
      they, and, O Lord, do thou but keep out of it, and well give them the
      soundest thrashing they ever had."
    </p>
    <p>
      Our Prayer Book pays a very poor compliment to the god of battles. "Give
      peace in our time, O Lord," says the preacher. "Because there is none
      other that fighteth for us but only thou O God," responds the
      congregation. The compilers of the Prayer Book evidently blundered, unless
      they secretly felt that the Lord of hosts was used up, and not worth a keg
      of gunpowder or an old musket.
    </p>
    <p>
      Consecrating colors, like consecrating graveyards, is after all only a
      trick of trade. The Dean of Windsor only practises the arts of his
      profession, and probably laughs in his sleeve at his own public
      performance. Perhaps he knows that God, as Napoleon said, is on the side
      of the big battalions; just as, probably, every bishop knows that Church
      corpses rot exactly like Dissenting corpses, although they lie in
      consecrated ground. Priestly mummeries will last as long as there is a
      demand for them. It is of little use to quarrel with this supply. The
      Freethinker's duty is to lessen the demand.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHRISTMAS IN HOLLOWAY GAOL. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * I was imprisoned there for "blasphemy" from February 1883
     to February 1884, by sentence of a Roman Catholic judge, Mr.
     Justice North.
</pre>
    <p>
      The dullest Christmas I ever spent was in her Majesty's hotel in North
      London. The place was spacious, but not commodious; it was magnificent in
      the mass, but very petty in detail; it was designed with extreme care for
      the safety of its many guests, but with a complete disregard of their
      comfort; and it soon palled upon the taste, despite the unremitting
      attentions of a host of liveried servants. How I longed for a change of
      scene, if what I constantly gazed upon may be so described; but I was like
      a knight in some enchanted castle, surrounded with attendants, yet not at
      liberty to walk out. The hospitality of my residence, however, was by no
      means sumptuous. The table did not groan beneath a weight of viands, or
      gleam with glowing wines. Its poverty was such that a red-herring would
      have been a glorious treat, and a dose of physic an agreeable variety. Why
      then, you may ask, did I not quit this inhospitable hotel, and put up at
      another establishment? Because I was invited by her Majesty, and her
      Majesty's invitations are commands.
    </p>
    <p>
      Speaking by the card, Christmas-day in Holloway was treated as a Sunday.
      There was no work and no play then, the dinner was the poorest and worst
      cooked in the whole week, and the only diversion was a morning or
      afternoon visit to chapel, where we had the satisfaction of learning that
      heaven was an eternal Sunday.
    </p>
    <p>
      The fibre put into my cell to be picked by my industrious fingers had all
      been removed the previous evening, lest I should desecrate the sacred day
      by pursuing my ordinary avocation. My apartment was therefore clean and
      tidy, and by the aid of a bit of dubbin I managed to give an air of
      newness to my well-worn shoes. The attendants had, however, omitted to
      provide me with a Sunday suit, so I was obliged to don my working clothes,
      in which graceless costume I had to perform my religious devotions in the
      house of God, where an ill-dressed person is always regarded as an
      exceptionally bad sinner, and expected to show an extraordinary amount of
      humility and contrition. Linen was never a burning question in Holloway
      Hotel, and cuffs and collars were unknown, except when a short guest wore
      a long shirt. My toilet was therefore easily completed; and with a good
      wash, and the energetic use of a three-inch comb, I was soon ready for the
      festivities of the season.
    </p>
    <p>
      At eight o'clock I received the first instalment of my Christmas fare, in
      the shape of three-quarters of a pint of tea and eight ounces of dry
      bread. Whether the price of groceries was affected by the Christmas
      demand, or whether the kitchen was demoralised by the holiday, I am unable
      to decide; but I noticed that the decoction was more innocuous than usual,
      although I had thought its customary strength could not be weakened
      without a miracle. My breakfast being devised on the plainest vegetarian
      principles, there was no occasion for grace before meat, so I sipped the
      tea and munched the bread (eight ounces straight off requires a great deal
      of mastication) without breathing a word of thanks to the giver of all
      good things.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a remarkably short hour's tramp round the exercise ring in a
      thieves' procession, doing the rogue's march without the music, I returned
      to my cell, and sitting down on my little three-legged stool, I was soon
      lost in thought. I wondered what my wife was doing, how she was spending
      the auspicious day. What a "merry Christmas" for a woman with her husband
      eating his heart out in gaol! But "that way madness lies," and I had
      fought down the demon too long to give way then. Springing to my feet, I
      sped up and down my cell like a caged animal, and after many maledictions
      on "the accursed creed," I succeeded in stilling the tumult of my
      emotions. A great calm followed this storm, and resuming my seat and
      leaning my back against the plank-bed, I took a scornful retrospect of my
      prosecution and trial. How insignificant looked the Tylers, Giffards,
      Norths and Harcourts! How noble the friends and the party who had stood by
      me in the dark hour of defeat! A few short weeks, and I should be free
      again to join their ranks and strike hard in the thickest of the battle,
      under the grand old flag of Freethought.
    </p>
    <p>
      The chapel-bell roused me from phantasy. The other half of the prison
      disgorged its inmates, and I could hear the sound of their tramping to the
      sanctuary. While they were engaged there I read a chapter of Gibbon; after
      which I heard the "miserable sinners" return from the chapel to their
      cells.
    </p>
    <p>
      At twelve o'clock came mv second instalment of Christmas fare: six ounces
      of potatoes, eight ounces of bread and a mutton chop. Being on hospital
      diet, I had this trinity for my dinner every day for nine months, and
      words cannot describe the nauseous monotony of the <i>menu</i>. The other
      prisoners had the regular Sunday's diet: bread, potatoes and suet-pudding.
      After dinner I went for another short hour's tramp in the yard. The
      officers seemed to relax their usual rigor, and many of the prisoners
      exchanged greetings. "How did yer like the figgy duff?" "Did the beef
      stick in yer stomach?" Such were the flowers of conversation that
      afternoon. From the talk around me, I gathered that under the old
      management, before the Government took over the prison, all the inmates
      had a "blow out" on Christmas-day, consisting of beef, vegetables,
      plum-pudding and a pint of beer. Some of the "old hands" bitterly bewailed
      the decadence in prison hospitality. Their lamentations were worthy of a
      Conservative orator at a rural meeting. The present was a poor thing
      compared with the past, and they sighed for "the tender grace of a day
      that is dead."
    </p>
    <p>
      After exercise I went to chapel. The schoolmaster, who was a very pleasant
      gentleman, had drilled the singing class into a fair state of efficiency,
      and they sang one or two Christmas hymns in pretty good style; but the
      effect of their efforts was considerably marred by the rest of the
      congregation, whose unmusical voices, bad sense of time, and ignorance of
      the tune, more than once nearly brought the performance to an untimely
      end. Parson Playford followed with a seasonable sermon, which would have
      been more heartily relished on a fuller stomach. He told us what a blessed
      time Christmas was, and how people did well to be joyous on the
      anniversary of their Savior's birth; after which I presume he returned to
      the bosom of his family, and celebrated the birth of Christ with liberal
      doses of turkey, goose, beef, pudding, and communion wine. Before
      dismissing us with his blessing to our "little rooms," which was his
      habitual euphemism for our cells, he said that he could not wish us a
      happy Christmas in our unhappy condition, but would wish us a peaceful
      Christmas; and he ventured to promise us that boon, if after leaving
      chapel, we fell on our knees, and besought pardon for our sins. Most of
      the prisoners received this advice with a grin, for their cell-floors were
      black-leaded, and practising genuflexions in their "little-rooms" gave too
      much kneecap to their trousers.
    </p>
    <p>
      At six o'clock I had my third instalment of Christmas fare, consisting of
      another eight ounces of bread and three quarters of a pint of tea. The
      last mouthfuls were consumed to the accompaniment of church bells. The
      neighboring gospel-shops were announcing their evening performance, and
      the sound penetrated into my cell through the open ventilator. The true
      believers were wending their way to God's house, and the heretic, who had
      dared to deride their creed and denounce their hypocrisy, was regaling
      himself on dry bread and warm water in one of their prison-cells. And the
      bells rang out against each other from the many steeples with a wild glee
      as I paced up and down my narrow dungeon. They seemed mad with the
      intoxication of victory; they mocked me with their bacchanalian frenzy of
      triumph. But I smiled grimly, for their clamor was no more than the
      ancient fool's-shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Great Christ has
      had his day since, but he in turn is dead; dead in man's intellect, dead
      in man's heart, dead in man's life; a mere phantom, flitting about the
      aisles of churches where priestly mummers go through the rites of a
      phantom creed.
    </p>
    <p>
      I took my Bible and read the story of Christ's birth in Matthew and Luke.
      What an incongruous jumble of absurdities! A poor fairy tale of the
      world's childhood, utterly insignificant beside the stupendous wonders
      which science has revealed to its manhood. From the fanciful little story
      of the Magi following a star, to Shelley's "Worlds on worlds are rolling
      ever," what an advance! As I retired to sleep upon my plank-bed my mind
      was full of these reflections. And when the gas was turned out, and I was
      left alone in darkness and silence, I felt serene and almost happy.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      WHO KILLED CHRIST?
    </h2>
    <p>
      Without committing ourselves to a full acceptance of the Gospel story of
      Christ's death, with all its monstrous miracles and absurd defiance of
      Roman and Jewish legal procedure, we propose to take the story as it
      stands for the purpose of discussing the question at the top of this
      article.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ordinary Christian will exclaim that Jesus was murdered by those
      infernal Jews. Ever since they had the power of persecuting the Jews&mdash;that
      is, ever since the days of Constantino&mdash;the Christians have acted on
      the assumption that the countrymen of Jesus did actually cry out before
      Pilate, "His blood be on our heads!" and that they and their posterity
      deserved any amount of robbery and outrage until they unanimously
      confessed their sin and worshipped him whom they crucified. It made no
      difference that the contemporaries of Jesus Christ could not transmit
      their guilt to their offspring. The Christians continued, century after
      century, to act in the spirit of the sailor in the story. Coming ashore
      after a long voyage, Jack attended church and heard a pathetic sermon on
      the Crucifixion. On the following day he looked into the window of a
      print-shop, and saw a picture of Jesus on the cross. Just then a Jew came
      and looked into the window; whereupon the sailor, pointing to the picture,
      asked the Hebrew gentleman whether he recognised it. "That's Jesus," said
      the Jew, and the sailor immediately knocked him down. Surprised at this
      treatment, the Hebrew gentleman inquired the reason. "Why," said the
      sailor, "didn't you infernal Jews crucify him?" The poor son of Abraham
      admitted the fact, but explained that it happened nearly two thousand
      years ago. "No matter," said the sailor, "I only heard of it yesterday."
    </p>
    <p>
      Now it is perfectly clear, according to the Gospels, that the Jews did <i>not</i>
      kill Jesus. Unless they lynched him they had no power to put him to death.
      Judæa was then a Roman province, and in every part of the Empire the
      extreme penalty of the law was only inflicted by the Roman governor.
      Nevertheless it maybe argued that the Jews <i>really</i> killed him,
      although they did not actually shed his blood, as they clamored for his
      death and terrorised Pontius Pilate into ordering a judicial murder. But
      suppose we take this view of the case: does it therefore follow that they
      acted without justification? Was not Jesus, in their judgment, guilty of
      blasphemy, and was not that a deadly crime under the Mosaic law? "He that
      blasphemeth the name of the Lord," says Leviticus xxiv. 16, "shall surely
      be put to death." Were not the Jews, then, carrying out the plain
      commandment of Jehovah?
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor was this their only justification. In another part of the Mosaic law
      (Deut. xiii. 6-10), the Jews were ordered to kill anyone, whether mother,
      son, daughter, husband, or wife, who should entice them to worship other
      gods. Now it is expressly maintained by the overwhelming majority of
      divines that Jesus asserted his own godhead, he is reported as saying, "I
      and my father are one," and, as St, Paul says, "He thought it no robbery
      to be equal to God." Were not the Jews, then, bound to kill him if they
      could?
    </p>
    <p>
      Let it not be supposed that <i>we</i> would have killed him. We are not
      excusing the Jews as men, but as observers of the Mosaic law and
      worshippers of Jehovah. Their God is responsible for the death of Jesus,
      and if Jesus was a portion of that very deity, he was responsible for his
      own death. His worshippers had learnt the lesson so well that they killed
      their own God when he came in disguise.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is contended by some Christians that Pontius Pilate killed Jesus.
      According to these arguers, Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent, and the
      execution was therefore a murder. But is it not perfectly obvious from the
      Gospel story that Pilate tried to save Jesus? Did not the obstinate
      prisoner plead guilty to what was really a charge of sedition? Did he
      attempt any defence? Did he call any witnesses? Was he not contumacious?
      And had Pilate any alternative to sentencing him to the legal punishment
      of his crime?
    </p>
    <p>
      Other friends of Jesus lay the blame of his death on Judas Iscariot, But
      the whole story of his "betrayal" of Jesus is a downright absurdity. How
      could he <i>sell</i> his master when the commodity was common? What sense
      is there in his being paid to indicate the best-known man in Jerusalem?
      Even if the story were true, it appears that Jesus knew what Judas was
      doing, and as he could easily have returned to Galilee, he was accessory
      to his own fate. It may also be pointed out that Judas only killed Jesus
      if the tragedy would not have occurred without him; in which case he was
      the proximate cause of the Crucifixion, and consequently a benefactor to
      all who are saved by the blood of Christ. Instead of execration,
      therefore, he deserves praise, and even the statue which Disraeli
      suggested as his proper reward.
    </p>
    <p>
      Who killed Christ? Why himself. His brain gave way. He was demented. His
      conduct at Jerusalem was that of a maniac. His very language showed a loss
      of balance. Whipping the dove-sellers and moneychangers, not out of the
      Temple, but out of its unsanctified precincts, was lunatic violence. Those
      merchants were fulfilling a necessary, reputable function; selling doves
      to women who required them as burnt offerings, and exchanging the current
      Roman money for the sacred Jewish coins which alone were accepted by the
      Temple priests. It is easy to call them thieves, but they were not tried,
      and their evidence is unheard. If they cheated, they must have been
      remarkably clever, for all their customers were Jews. Besides, there were
      proper tribunals for the correction of such offences, and no one who was
      not beside himself would think of going into a market and indiscriminately
      whipping the traders and dashing down their stalls. Certainly any man who
      did it now would be arrested, if he were not lynched on the spot, and
      would either be imprisoned or detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      Quite in keeping with these displays of temper was the conduct of Jesus
      before Pilate. A modicum of common sense would have saved him. He was not
      required to tell a lie or renounce a conviction. All that was necessary to
      his release was to plead not guilty and defend himself against the charge
      of sedition. His death, therefore, was rather a suicide than a martyrdom.
      Unfortunately the jurisprudence of that age was less scientific than the
      one which now prevails; the finer differences between sanity and insanity
      were not discriminated; otherwise Jesus would have been remanded for
      inquiries into his mental condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      As a man Jesus died because he had not the sense to live. As a God he must
      have died voluntarily. In either case it is an idle, gratuitous,
      enervating indulgence in "the luxury of woe" to be always afflicting
      ourselves with the story of his doom. Great and good men have suffered and
      died since, and other lessons are needed than any that may be learnt at
      the foot of the Cross.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      DID JESUS ASCEND?
    </h2>
    <p>
      The story of the Ascension of Jesus Christ is as absurd as the story of
      his Resurrection. Both, in fact, are the products of an age prone to
      believe in the wonderful. So prevalent was the popular belief in the
      supernatural character of great men, that the comparatively cultivated
      Romans accepted a monstrous fable about Julius Caesar. "The enthusiasm of
      the multitude," says Mr. Froude, "refused to believe that he was dead. He
      was supposed to have ascended into heaven, not in adulatory metaphor, but
      in literal and prosaic fact."
    </p>
    <p>
      Similarly the enthusiasm of the first followers of Jesus, and especially
      of hysterical ladies like Mary Magdalene, refused to believe that <i>he</i>
      was dead. The fable of his resurrection was gradually developed, and his
      ascension was devised to round off the story. Whoever will read St. Paul's
      epistles first, and the Gospels and the Acts afterwards, will see how the
      Christ myth grew from vagueness to precision under the shaping imagination
      of the Church of the first century after the age of the Apostles.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is a significant fact that the appearances of Jesus after his
      Resurrection were all made to the faithful, and his ascension took place
      before them, without a single impartial person being allowed to witness an
      event of which it was of the utmost importance for the world to have
      positive assurance.
    </p>
    <p>
      When we turn to the Gospels and the Acts, five documents whose authorship
      is absolutely unknown, we find the most contradictory accounts of what
      happened after the Resurrection. It may safely be affirmed that five such
      witnesses would damn any case in a legal court where the laws of evidence
      are respected.
    </p>
    <p>
      These witnesses cannot even agree as to whether the risen Jesus was a man
      or a ghost. Now he comes through a closed door, and anon he eats broiled
      fish and honeycomb; now he vanishes, after walking and talking with his
      disciples, and anon he allows the sceptical Thomas to examine the wounds
      of his crucifixion as a proof that he was not a spirit, but solid flesh
      and blood.
    </p>
    <p>
      According to Matthew's account, Jesus first appeared to the women&mdash;as
      is very probable! Mark says his first appearance was to Mary Magdalene
      alone; Luke says it was two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
    </p>
    <p>
      His subsequent appearances are recorded with the same harmony. While
      Matthew makes him appear but once, Mark makes him appear three times&mdash;to
      the women, to the two disciples going to Emmaus, and to the eleven
      apostles. Luke makes him appear but twice, and John four times&mdash;to
      Mary Magdalene alone, to the disciples in a room without Thomas, to the
      same again with Thomas, and to the same once more at Tiberias. John is the
      only one who tells the pretty story about Thomas, and John of course is
      the only one who mentions the spear-thrust in Christ's side at the
      crucifixion, because he wanted a hole for Thomas to put his hand into, and
      the other evangelists had no need of such a provision. Matthew and Mark
      relate that the disciples were told by an angel to go to Galilee, while
      Luke keeps them in the Holy City, and Acts declares that Jesus expressly
      "commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem."
    </p>
    <p>
      The ascension itself, which involved the last appearance of Jesus, as well
      as his disappearance, is not related by Matthew, nor is it related by
      John. Now Matthew and John are <i>supposed</i> to have been apostles. If
      the ascension happened they must have witnessed it; but both of them are
      silent, and the story of the ascension comes from three writers who were
      <i>not present</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor do these three writers agree with each other. Luke informs us that
      Jesus ascended from Bethany, a short distance from Jerusalem, on the very
      day of the Resurrection, or at the latest the next morning; while Mark,
      without any precision as to time, distinctly affirms that Jesus ascended
      from Galilee, which was at least sixty miles from Jerusalem. Now the
      ascension could not have occurred at two different places, and, in the
      absence of corroborative testimony, Mark and Luke destroy each other as
      witnesses. The author of Acts agrees with Mark as to the place, but
      differs both from Mark and Luke as to the time. He declares that Jesus
      spent forty days (off and on) with his disciples before levitating. This
      constitutes another difficulty. Mark, Luke, and the author of Acts must
      all leave the court in disgrace, for it is too late for them to patch up a
      more harmonious story.
    </p>
    <p>
      According to the detailed account in Acts, Jesus ascended in the presence
      of his apostles, including Matthew and John, who appear to have mistrusted
      their eyesight. After making a speech he was "taken up, and a cloud
      received him out of their sight." He was in a cloud, and they were in a
      cloud, and the millions who believe them are in a cloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      The time of the year is seasonable for an examination of the story of the
      Ascension. Would that the opportunity were taken by Christians, who
      believe what they have been taught with scarcely a moment's investigation,
      and read the Bible as lazily as they smoke their pipes. We do not ask them
      to take our word for anything. Let them examine for themselves. If they
      will do this, we have no fear as to the result. A belief in the New
      Testament story of the supernatural Christ is impossible to any man who
      candidly sifts and honestly weighs the evidence.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Christians would pursue their investigations still further they would
      soon satisfy themselves that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension
      of Jesus Christ are largely, if not entirely, mythical. Now, for instance,
      when they are preparing to celebrate the ascension of Christ, they are
      welcoming the ascension of the Sun. The great luminary is (apparently)
      rising higher and higher in the heaven, shedding his warmer beams on the
      earth, and gladdening the hearts of man. And there is more connection
      between the Son and the Sun than ordinary Christians imagine.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      THE RISING SON.
    </h2>
    <p>
      You are requested to read the above title carefully. Notice the spelling
      of the last word. It is <i>son</i>, not <i>sun</i>. The difference to the
      eye is only in one letter. The substantial difference is very great. Yet
      in the end the distinction between the Son and the Sun vanishes.
      Originally they were one and the same thing, and they will be so again
      when Christianity is properly understood.
    </p>
    <p>
      Supposing that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived, it is impossible to know,
      with any approach to accuracy, what he really was. With the exception of
      four epistles by Saint Paul&mdash;in which we find a highly mystical
      Christ, and not a portrait or even a sketch of an actual man&mdash;we have
      no materials for a biography of Jesus written within a hundred years of
      his death. Undoubtedly <i>some</i> documents existed before the Canonical
      and Apocryphal Gospels, but they were lost through neglect or suppression,
      and what we have is simply the concoction of older materials by an
      unscrupulous Church.
    </p>
    <p>
      During the interval between the real or supposed death of Jesus and the
      date of the gospels, there was plenty of time for the accumulation of any
      quantity of mythology. The east was full of such material, only waiting,
      after the destruction of the old national religions under the sway of
      Rome, to be woven into the texture of a non-national system as wide as the
      limits of the Empire.
    </p>
    <p>
      Protestants are able to recognise a vast deal of Paganism in the teaching
      and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. On that side they keep an open
      eye. On the other side their eye is shut. If they opened it they would see
      plenty of Paganism in the gospels.
    </p>
    <p>
      The only fixed date in the career of Jesus is his birthday. This is known
      by every scholar to be fictitious. The primitive Church was ignorant of
      the day on which Jesus was born. But what was unknown to the apostles, one
      of whom is said to have been his very brother, was opportunely discovered
      by the Church three hundred years afterwards. For some time the nativity
      of Jesus had been celebrated on all sorts of days, but the Church brought
      about uniformity by establishing the twenty-fifth of December. This was
      the Pagan festival of the nativity of the Sun. The Church simply
      appropriated it, in order to bring over the Pagan population by a change
      of doctrine without a change or rites and customs.
    </p>
    <p>
      It may be objected that the primitive Church did not inquire as to the
      birthday of Jesus until it was too late to ascertain it. But this
      objection cannot possibly apply to the resurrection, the date of which is
      involved in equal uncertainty, although one would expect it to be
      precisely known and regularly commemorated. For many ages the celebration
      was irregular. Different Sundays were kept, and sometimes other days, in
      various weeks of March and April. Finally, after fierce disputes and
      excommunications, the present system was imposed upon the whole Catholic
      world.
    </p>
    <p>
      Easter is, in fact, decided astronomically, by a process in which
      sun-worship and moon-worship are both conciliated. The starting point is
      the vernal equinox, which was the time of a common Pagan festival. The
      very name of Easter is of heathen origin. All its customs are bequeathed
      to us from far-off Pagan ancestors. Easter eggs, symbolising the life of
      the universe, have been traced back to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and
      Egyptians.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ they are
      imitating the ancient "heathen," who at the same time of the year
      commemorated the resurrection of the Sun, and his manifest triumph over
      the powers of darkness. And when the moderns prepare to celebrate the
      ascension of Christ, they are really welcoming the ascension of the Sun.
      The great luminary&mdash;father of light and lord of life&mdash;is then
      (apparently) rising higher and higher in heaven, shedding his warmer beams
      on the earth, and gladdening the hearts of men.
    </p>
    <p>
      Churches and altars are decked with vegetation, which is another relic of
      nature-worship. Life is once more bursting forth under the kindling rays
      of the sun. Hope springs afresh in the heart of man. His fancy sees the
      pastures covered with flocks and herds, the corn waving in the breeze, and
      the grapes plumping in the golden sunshine, big with the blood of earth
      and the fire of heaven.
    </p>
    <p>
      According to the Apostles' Creed, Jesus descended into hell between his
      death and resurrection. That is also a relic of sun-worship. During the
      dark, cold winter the sun descended into the underworld, which is the real
      meaning of Hades. Misunderstanding this circumstance, or deliberately
      perverting it, the early Church fabricated the monstrous fable that Jesus
      "preached unto the spirits in prison," as we read in the first epistle of
      Peter. One of the apocryphal gospels gives a lively account of how he
      harried the realm of Old Harry, emptying the place wholesale, and robbing
      the poor Devil of all his illustrious subjects, from Adam to John the
      Baptist.
    </p>
    <p>
      A volume might be filled with illustrations of the mythology of the
      Resurrection. Our present space is limited, and we must let the above
      suffice. Anyone who reads the gospel story of the resurrection and
      ascension of Jesus Christ, with a careful eye and a critical mind, will
      see that it is not historical. Such witnesses, so loose in statement and
      so contradictory of each other, would collapse in a few minutes in any
      court of law. They do not write as spectators, and they were not
      spectators. What they give us is the legendary and mythical story that had
      taken possession of the Christian mind long after all the contemporaries
      of Jesus were dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      Our belief, in conclusion, is that the Rising Sun will outlast the Rising
      Son. The latter is gradually, but very surely, perishing. Even professed
      Christians are giving up the miraculous elements of the gospels. But who
      would give up the Sun, which has warmed, lighted, and fertilised the earth
      for millions of years, and will do so for millions of years after the
      death of Christianity?
    </p>
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    <h2>
      ST. PAUL'S VERACITY.
    </h2>
    <p>
      A very pretty storm has been raised (and settled) by the <i>Independent
      and Nonconformist</i>. It raged around the Apostle Paul and Mr. Herbert
      Spencer, who both come out of it apparently not a penny the worse. Mr.
      Spencer has a chapter on Veracity in his recently published <i>Principles
      of Ethics</i>, wherein he cites Paul as a violator of this virtue, and
      remarks that "apparently piquing himself on his craft and guile," he
      "elsewhere defends his acts by contending that 'the truth of God hath more
      abounded through my lie unto his glory.'" This roused the ire of the <i>Independent</i>,
      and Mr. Spencer was informed that his extraordinary aspersion on the
      Apostle's character was wholly without justification. Whereupon the great
      Evolutionist replied that two days before receiving the <i>Independent</i>
      he had "sent to the printer the copy of a cancel to be substituted for the
      page in which there occurs the error you point out." Mr. Spencer goes on
      to say that he had trusted to assistants, and been misled on this
      particular point as on a few others.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The inductions contained in the <i>Principles of Sociology</i> and in
      Part II. of the <i>Principles of Ethics</i> are based mainly, though not
      wholly, upon the classified materials contained in <i>The Descriptive
      Sociology</i>, compiled between 1867 and 1881 by three University men I
      engaged for the purpose. When using this compilation of facts concerning
      sixty-eight different societies I have habitually trusted to the
      compilers. For even had I been in good health, it would have been
      impossible for me to verify all their extracts from multitudinous books.
      In some cases, where the work was at hand, I have referred for
      verification; and have usually done so in the case of extracts from the
      Bible; now and then, as I remember, rejecting the extracts given to me as
      being not justified by the context. But in the case in point it seems that
      I had not been sufficiently careful. It is only after reading the
      preceding chapter that it becomes clear that the passage I quoted must be
      taken as part of an argument with an imaginary interlocutor, rather than
      as expressive of St. Paul's own sentiment. It must, I think, be admitted
      that the presentation of the thought is a good deal complicated, and, in
      the absence of the light thrown upon it by the preceding chapter, is
      liable to be misunderstood. I regret that I misunderstood it."
    </p>
    <p>
      This explanation and apology are, of course, most satisfactory. Saint Paul
      is cleared by Mr. Spencer's certificate, and the <i>Independent</i>
      remarks that this is "a noble codicil to Mr. Spencer's chapter on
      Veracity." Nay, it professes high "admiration" for him as the "greatest
      living philosopher of the English-speaking race." Thus the "Comedy of
      Errors" is followed by "All's Well that Ends Well," and the curtain falls
      on compliments and embraces.
    </p>
    <p>
      It really seems a shame to disturb this pleasant harmony, but we feel
      compelled to say something to the <i>Independent</i> and to Mr. Herbert
      Spencer about the Apostle Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the first place we must observe that Mr. Spencer's "erroneous"
      statement about the great apostle, while it may be an <i>aspersion</i>, is
      certainly not <i>extraordinary</i>. It has repeatedly been made by the
      apostle's adverse critics, and even by some of his admirers. Without
      citing a long list of them, we will give two&mdash;both English, and both
      judicial. Jeremy Bentham, the great reformer of our jurisprudence, wrote a
      work entitled <i>Not Paul, but Jesus</i>, in which he contends through
      four hundred pages that Paul was mercenary, ambitious, and an unscrupulous
      liar. To cull a single passage from Bentham's book is like picking one
      raisin from a rich plum-pudding. Every sentence is an indictment. And
      surely after Bentham's trenchant performance it is idle for an English
      journal to pretend that there is anything "extraordinary" in Mr. Spencer's
      "erroneous" accusation. The other judicial writer, also belonging to the
      English race, is Sir Richard David Hanson, who was for some time Chief
      Justice of South Australia. In his able work on <i>The Apostle Paul</i>
      there is an admirable summing-up of the hero's character. After admitting
      Paul's ability, persistence, courage, and other virtues, he remarks&mdash;"But
      these are accompanied by what in an uninspired man would be called pride,
      jealousy, disdain, invective, sophistry, time-serving and intolerance."
      This is pretty strong; and "sophistry" and "time-serving" are only
      euphemisms for lying in preaching and practice.
    </p>
    <p>
      So much for the Independent, and now for Mr. Spencer. It must be observed
      that one part of his "erroneous" statement <i>cannot</i> be repudiated.
      The apostle distinctly says, "being crafty, I caught you with guile" (2
      Uor. xii. 16), so that "piquing himself on his craft and guile" must stand
      while this text remains in the Epistle. Mr. Spencer allows that, in the
      third of Romans, the "presentation of the thought is a good deal
      complicated," and "liable to be misunderstood"; but, if read in the light
      of the preceding chapter, the passage about lying to the glory of God
      "must be taken as part of an argument with an imaginary interlocutor."
      Perhaps so; but <i>which</i> is speaking in the seventh verse? Paul or his
      opponent? Mr. Spencer does not say. Yet this is the real point. To us it
      seems that <i>Paul</i> is speaking. Of course it may be urged that he is
      speaking ironically. But this is not Mr. Spencer's contention. It is not
      clear what he <i>does</i> mean; in fact, he seems to have caught a little
      of Paul's confusion.
    </p>
    <p>
      We have no objection to reading the seventh verse of the third of Romans
      in the light of the preceding chapter. But should it not also be read in
      the light of Christian history? Have honest openness and strict veracity
      been <i>ever</i> regarded as essential virtues in the propagation of the
      gospel? And why is it likely that Paul, of all men, escaped the contagion
      of fraud, which has always disgraced the Christian Church? The ordinary
      Protestant imagines, or pretends, that the Catholic Church has been the
      great impostor; but this is nonsense to the student of early Christianity.
      Mosheim remarks that the "pernicious maxim" that "those who make it their
      business to deceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth were
      deserving rather of commendation than of censure," was "<i>very early</i>
      recognised by the Christians." Bishop Ellicott similarly observes that
      "history forces upon us the recognition of pious fraud as a principle
      which was by no means inoperative in the <i>earliest ages</i> of
      Christianity." Middleton likewise reflects that the bold defiance of
      honesty and truth displayed by the Fathers of the fourth century "could
      not have been acquired, or become general at once, but must have been
      carried gradually to that height, by custom and the example of former
      times, and a long experience of what the credulity and superstition or the
      multitude would bear." So far, indeed, were the "earlier ages" from being
      remarkable for integrity, that Middleton says there never was "any period
      of time" in which fraud and forgery more abounded. The learned Casaubon
      also complains that it was in "the <i>earliest times</i> of the Church"
      that it was "considered a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the
      help of invention, in order that the new doctrine might be more readily
      allowed by the wise among the Gentiles." Mosheim even finds that the
      period of fraud began "not long after Christ's ascension." And it
      continued, without a blush of shame on Christian cheeks; not growing
      worse, for that was impossible; until Eusebius, in the fourth century,
      remarked as a matter of course that he had written what redounded to the
      glory, and suppressed whatever tended to the disgrace of religion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now if fraud was practised as a pious principle in the very earliest ages
      of Christianity; if it continued for as many centuries as it could pass
      with impunity; if it was so systematic and prolonged, and carried to such
      a height, that Herder declared "Christian veracity" fit to rank with
      "Punic Faith"; what right has anyone&mdash;even a Christian editor&mdash;to
      place Paul above suspicion, or to find a "monstrous" blunder in his being
      accused of lying, especially when the historic practice of his
      co-religionists seems to many persons to be more than half countenanced by
      his own language?
    </p>
    <p>
      We are not concerned to <i>press</i> the charge of lying against St. Paul.
      There have been so many liars in the Christian Church that one more or
      less makes very little difference. On the other hand, we cannot accept Mr.
      Spencer's certificate without reservation. He admits that Paul's language
      is obscure; and perhaps a little obscurity is to be expected when a man is
      replying to an accusation which he is not wholly able to rebut.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      NO FAITH WITH HERETICS.
    </h2>
    <p>
      During the Crusades, when the Christians were wantonly fighting against
      their superiors in civilisation and humanity, the doctrine, was
      promulgated and obeyed that no faith should be kept with infidels, and
      this was subsequently put in force against heretics. Thousands of
      Mohammedan prisoners were butchered in cold blood, although their safety
      had been confirmed by an oath; and this infamous practice was afterwards
      pursued with respect to the "heretical" sects when the Papal troops
      desolated some of the fairest parts of Europe. Not only was there no
      salvation outside the Church, but even the ordinary laws of human society
      were held to be abrogated. This wickedness, perhaps, reached its
      culmination in the Spanish conquest of America. Few Christians were
      civilised enough to condemn these purjured banditti, but Montaigne in
      France, and Raleigh in England, were glorious exceptions, and both of them
      were under a just suspicion of heterodoxy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Protestants as well as Catholics were infected with this infamous bigotry.
      Luther himself was not free from taint, and Calvin's treachery against
      Servetus is an eternal blot on his character.
    </p>
    <p>
      "No faith with heretics" took a new form when the downright violation of
      an oath became too dissonant to the spirit of an improved civilisation. It
      found expression in robbing the heretic of political and social rights,
      and above all in treating him as outside the pale of honor. Slandering him
      was no libel. Every bigot claimed the right to say anything against his
      character, for the purpose of bringing his opinions into hatred and
      contempt. All the dictates of charity were cast aside; his good actions
      were misrepresented, and his failings maliciously exaggerated. If Voltaire
      spent thousands in charity, he did it for notoriety; if he wrote odes to
      beautiful or accomplished ladies, he was a wretched debauchee. If Thomas
      Paine made sacrifices for liberty, he did it because he had a private
      grudge against authority; if he befriended the wife and family of a
      distressed Republican, he only sought to gratify his lust; if he spent a
      convivial hour with a friend, he was an inveterate drunkard; and if he
      contracted a malignant abscess by lying for months in a damp, unwholesome
      dungeon, his sufferings were the nemesis of a wicked, profligate life.
    </p>
    <p>
      An English precursor of Voltaire and Paine wrote <i>A Discourse on
      Freethinking</i>. His name was Anthony Collins, and in a certain sense he
      was the father of English Freethought. He was a man of exemplary life and
      manners, yet the saintly Bishop Berkeley said he "deserved to be denied
      the common benefit of air and water." One of Collins's antagonists was the
      famous Dr. Bentley; and although Collins was a man of fortune, the
      ridiculous calumny was started that he sought and obtained Bentley's
      assistance in adversity. The author of this calumny was Richard
      Cumberland, a grandson of Bentley, and in other respects an estimable man.
      His mistake was pointed out by Isaac D'Israeli, who told him the person he
      meant was <i>Arthur</i> Collins, the historical compiler. But Cumberland
      perpetuated the calumny, remarking that "it should stand, because it could
      do no harm to any but to Anthony Collins, whom he considered little short
      of an Atheist."
    </p>
    <p>
      Another story about Collins, which has frequently done duty in Christian
      publications, is that a visitor found him reading the New Testament, and
      that he remarked, "I have but one book, but that is the best." Fortunately
      I am able to give the origin of this story. It is told of <i>William</i>
      Collins, the poet, by Dr. Johnson, and may be found in the second volume
      (p. 239) of that writer's "Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces," published
      by Davies in Johnson's lifetime. It was not Anthony Collins, therefore;
      but what does that matter? It was a gentleman named <i>Collins</i>; his
      other name is indifferent. Besides, the story is so much more affecting
      when told of <i>Anthony</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Look at the lying stories of infidel death-beds; glance at the
      scurrilities of an outcast minister which are gratuitously circulated by
      the enemies of Colonel Ingersoll; observe on how many platforms Mr.
      Brad-laugh has pulled out his watch and given the Almighty five minutes to
      strike him dead; listen to the grotesque libels on every leading
      Freethinker which are solemnly circulated by Christian malice; and you
      will behold the last fruit of a very old tree, which is slowly but surely
      perishing. It once bore scaffolds, stakes, prisons and torture rooms; it
      now bears but libels and insinuations.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      THE LOGIC OF PERSECUTION.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Neither the cruelty of tyrants, nor the ambition of conquerors, has
      wrought so much mischief and suffering, as the principle of persecution.
      The crimes of a Nero, the ravages of an Attila, afflict the world for a
      season, and then cease and are forgotten, or only linger in the memory of
      history. But persecution operates incessantly like a natural force. With
      the universality of light, it radiates in every direction. The palace is
      not too proud for its entrance, nor is the cottage too humble. It affects
      every relationship of life. Its action is exhibited in public through
      imprisonment, torture, and bloodshed, and in private through the tears of
      misery and the groans of despair.
    </p>
    <p>
      But worse remains. Bodies starve and hearts break, but at last there comes
      "the poppied sleep, the end of all." Grief is buried in the grave, Nature
      covers it with a mantle of grass and flowers, and the feet of joy trip
      merrily over the paths once trodden by heavy-footed care. Yet the more
      subtle effects of persecution remain with the living. <i>They</i> are not
      screwed down in the coffin and buried with the dead. They become part of
      the pestilential atmosphere of cowardice and hypocrisy which saps the
      intellectual manhood of society, so that bright-eyed inquiry sinks into
      blear-eyed faith, and the rich vitality of active honest thought falls
      into the decrepitude of timid and slothful acquiescence.
    </p>
    <p>
      What is this principle of persecution, and how is it generated and
      developed in the human mind? Now that it is falling into discredit, there
      is a tendency on the part of Christian apologists to ascribe it to our
      natural hatred of contradiction. Men argue and quarrel, and if
      intellectual differences excite hostility in an age like this, how easy it
      was for them to excite the bitterest animosity in more ignorant and
      barbarous ages! Such is the plea now frequently advanced. No doubt it
      wears a certain plausibility, but a little investigation will show its
      fallacy. Men and women are so various in their minds, characters,
      circumstances, and interests, that if left to themselves they inevitably
      form a multiplicity of ever-shifting parties, sects, fashions and
      opinions; and while each might resent the impertinence of disagreement
      from its own standard, the very multiformity of the whole mass must
      preserve a general balance of fair play, since every single sect with an
      itch for persecuting would be confronted by an overwhelming majority of
      dissidents. It is obvious, therefore, that persecution can only be
      indulged in when some particular form of opinion is in the ascendant: and
      if this form is artificially developed; if it is the result, not of
      knowledge and reflection, but of custom and training; if, in short, it is
      rather a superstition than a belief; you have a condition of things highly
      favorable to the forcible suppression of heresy. Now, throughout history,
      there is one great form of opinion which <i>has been</i> artificially
      developed, which has been accepted through faith and not through study,
      which has always been concerned with alleged occurrences in the remote
      past or the inaccessible future, and which has also been systematically
      maintained in its "pristine purity" by an army of teachers who have
      pledged themselves to inculcate the ancient faith without any admixture of
      their own intelligence.
    </p>
    <p>
      That form of opinion is Religion. Accordingly we should expect to find its
      career always attended with persecution, and the expectation is amply
      justified by a cursory glance at the history of every faith. There is,
      indeed, one great exception; but, to use a popular though inaccurate
      phrase, it is an exception which proves the rule. Buddhism has never
      persecuted But Buddhism is rather a philosophy than a religion; or, if a
      religion, it is not a theology, and that is the sense attached to <i>religion</i>
      in this article.
    </p>
    <p>
      All such religions have persecuted, do persecute, and will persecute while
      they exist. Let it not be supposed, however, that they punish heretics on
      the open ground that the majority must be right and the minority must be
      wrong, or that some people have a right to think while others have only
      the right to acquiesce. No, that is too shameless an avowal; nor would it,
      indeed, be the real truth. There is a principle in religions which has
      always been the sanction of persecution, and if it be true, persecution is
      more than right, it is a duty. That principle is Salvation by Faith.
    </p>
    <p>
      If a certain belief is necessary to salvation, if to reject it is to merit
      damnation, and to undermine it is to imperil the eternal welfare of
      others, there is only one course open to its adherents; they must treat
      the heretic as they would treat a viper. He is a poisonous creature to be
      swiftly extinguished.
    </p>
    <p>
      But not <i>too</i> swiftly, for he has a soul that may still be saved.
      Accordingly he is sequestered to prevent further harm, an effort is made
      to convert him, then he is punished, and the rest is left with God. That
      his conversion is attempted by torture, either physical or mental, is not
      an absurdity; it is consonant to the doctrine of salvation by faith. For
      if God punishes or rewards us according to our possession or lack of
      faith, it follows that faith is within the power of will. Accordingly the
      heretic, to use Dr. Martineau's expression, is reminded not of arguments
      but of motives, not of evidence but of fear, not of proofs but of perils,
      not of reasons but of ruin. When we recognise that the understanding acts
      independently of volition, and that the threat of punishment, while it may
      produce silence or hypocrisy, <i>cannot</i> alter belief, this method of
      procedure strikes us as a monstrous imbecility; but, given a belief in the
      doctrine of salvation by faith, it must necessarily appear both logical
      and just. If the heretic <i>will</i> not believe, he is clearly wicked,
      for he rejects the truth and insults God. He has deliberately chosen the
      path to hell, and does it matter whether he travel slowly or swiftly to
      his destination? But does it <i>not</i> matter whether he go alone or drag
      down others with him to perdition? Such was the logic of the Inquisitors,
      and although their cruelties must be detested their consistency must be
      allowed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Catholics have an infallible Church, and the Protestants an infallible
      Bible. Yet as the teaching of the Bible becomes a question of
      interpretation, the infallibility of each Church resolves itself into the
      infallibility of its priesthood. Each asserts that <i>some</i> belief is
      necessary to salvation. Religious liberty, therefore, has never entered
      into the imagination of either. The Protestants who revolted against the
      Papacy openly avowed the principle of persecution. Luther, Beza, Calvin,
      and Melancthon, were probably more intolerant than any Pope of their age;
      and if the Protestant persecutions were not, on the whole, so sanguinary
      as those of the Roman Catholic Church, it was simply due to the fact that
      Catholicism passed through a dark and ferocious period of history, while
      Protestantism emerged in an age of greater light and humanity. Persecution
      cannot always be bloody, but it always inflicts on heretics as much
      suffering as the sentiment of the community will tolerate.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctrine of salvation by faith has been more mischievous than all
      other delusions of theology combined. How true are the words of Pascal: "<i>Jamais
      on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand oh le fait par un
      faux principe de conscience</i>." Fortunately a nobler day is breaking.
      The light of truth succeeds the darkness of error. Right belief is
      infinitely important, but it cannot be forced. Belief is independent of
      will. But character is not, and therefore the philosopher approves or
      condemns actions instead of censuring beliefs. Theology, however,
      consistently clings to its old habits. "Infidels" must not be argued with
      but threatened, not convinced but libelled; and when these weapons are
      futile there ensues the persecution of silence. That serves for a time,
      but only for a time; it may obstruct, but it cannot prevent, the spread of
      unbelief. It is like a veil against the light. It may obscure the dawn to
      the dull-eyed and the uninquisitive, but presently the blindest sluggards
      in the penfolds of faith will see that the sun has risen.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      LUTHER AND THE DEVIL.
    </h2>
    <p>
      "Luther," says Heine, "was not only the greatest, but also the most
      thoroughly German, hero of our history." Carlyle says that "no more
      valiant man, no mortal heart to be called <i>braver</i>, ever lived in
      that Teutonic kindred, whose character is valor." Michelet calls him "the
      Arminius of modern Germany." Twenty tributes to Luther's greatness might
      be added, all more or less memorable; but these, from three very diverse
      men, will suffice for our present purpose. Martin Luther <i>was</i> a
      great man. Whoever questions it must appeal to new definitions.
    </p>
    <p>
      A great difference lay between the cold, saturnine Pope of Geneva and the
      frank, exuberant hero of the German Reformation. Their doctrines were
      similar; there was a likeness between their mistakes; but what a diversity
      in their natures! Calvin was the perfect type of the theological pedant&mdash;vain,
      meagre, and arid; while Luther had in him, as Heine remarks, "something
      aboriginal"; and the world has, after all, profited by "the God-like
      brutality of Brother Martin."
    </p>
    <p>
      The nature of this great man was suited to his task. It required no great
      intellectual power to see through the tricks of Papal priestcraft, which
      had, indeed, been the jest of the educated and thoughtful for generations.
      But it required gigantic courage to become the spokesman of discontent, to
      attack an imposture which was supported by universal popular credulity, by
      a well-nigh omnipotent Church, and by the keen-edged, merciless swords of
      kings and emperors. Still more, it required an indisputable elevation of
      nature to attack the imposture where, as in the sale of indulgences, it
      threatened the very essence of personal and social morality. Hundreds of
      persons may be hatching a new truth in unknown concert, but when a battle
      for humanity has to be fought, someone must begin, and begin decisively.
      Luther stepped out as protagonist in the great struggle of his time; and
      Freethought is not so barren in great names that it need envy Brother
      Martin his righteous applause. Indeed, it seems to me that Freethinkers
      are in a position to esteem Luther more justly than Christians. Seeing
      what was his task, and how it demanded a stormy, impetuous nature, we can
      thank Luther for accomplishing it, while recognising his great defects,
      his faults of temper and the narrowness of his views; defects, I would
      add, which it were unnecessary to dwell on if Protestants did not magnify
      them into virtues, or if they did not illustrate the inherent vices of
      Christianity itself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Strong for his life-task, Luther was weak in other respects. Like Dr.
      Johnson, there were strange depths in his character, but none in his
      intellect. He emitted many flashes of genius in writing and talking, but
      they all came from the heart, and chiefly from the domestic affections. He
      broke away from the Papacy, but he only abandoned Catholicism so far as it
      conflicted with the most obvious morality. He retained all its capital
      superstitions. Mr. Froude puts the case very mildly when he says that
      "Erasmus knew many things which it would have been well for Luther to have
      known." Erasmus would not have called Copernicus "an old fool," or have
      answered him by appealing to Joshua. Erasmus would not have seen a special
      providence in the most trifling accidents. Erasmus would not have allowed
      devils to worry him. Above all, Erasmus would not have pursued those who
      were heretics to <i>his</i> doctrine with all the animosity of a Papal
      bigot. Such differences induced Mr. Matthew Arnold to call Luther a
      Philistine of genius; just as they led Goethe to say that Luther threw
      back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries. Another poet,
      Shelley, seems to me to have hit the precise truth in his "Ode to
      Liberty":
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Luther caught thy wakening glance:
     Like lightning from his leaden lance
     Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
     In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay.
</pre>
    <p>
      Shelley's epithet is perfect. Luther's lance was big and potent. It
      wrought terrible havoc among the enemy. But it was <i>leaden</i>. It
      overthrew, but it did not transfix.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is not the place to relate how Luther played the Pope in his own way;
      how he persecuted the Zwinglians because they went farther than himself on
      the subject of the real presence; how he barked at the Swiss reformers,
      how he pursued Andreas Bodenstein for a difference on infant baptism; how
      he treated Münzer and the Anabaptists; how he hounded on the nobles to
      suppress the peasant revolt and "stab, kill, and strangle them without
      mercy"; or how he was for handing over to the executioner all who denied a
      single article which rested on the Scripture or the authority of the
      universal teaching of the Church. My purpose is to show Luther's attitude
      towards the Devil, witches, apparitions, and all the rest of that ghostly
      tribe; and in doing so I have no wish to indulge in "the most small sneer"
      which Carlyle reprobates; although I do think it a great pity that such a
      man as Luther should have been a slave to superstitions which Erasmus
      would have met with a wholesome jest.
    </p>
    <p>
      Neither Jews nor witches fared any the better for the Reformation, until
      it had far outgrown the intention of its founders. Brother Martin hated
      the Jews, thought many of them sorcerers, and praised the Duke of Saxony
      for killing a Jew in testing a talisman. As for witches, he said, "I would
      have no compassion on them&mdash;I would burn them all." Poor creatures!
      Yet Luther was naturally compassionate. It was the fatal superstition
      which steeled his heart. Still there are dainty sceptics who tell us not
      to attack superstition. I point them to Martin Luther burning witches.
    </p>
    <p>
      Brother Martin lived in God's presence, but they were generally three, for
      the Devil was seldom absent. His Satanic Majesty plagued the poor
      Reformer's life till he wished himself safe in heaven. Sometimes the fiend
      suggested impious doubts, and at ether times suicide. He attributed his
      chronic vertigo to the Devil, because the physic he took did him no good.
      So familiar did the Devil become that Luther, hearing him walk overhead at
      night, would say "Oh, is it you?" and go to sleep again. Once, when he was
      marrying-an aristocratic couple, the wedding ring slipped out of his
      fingers at a critical moment. He was frightened, but, recovering himself,
      he exclaimed, "Listen, Devil, it is not your business, you are wasting
      your time." The famous scene in which Luther threw an inkstand at the
      Devil is legendary, though Coleridge, Carlyle and others have made it the
      theme of their eloquence; and the ink-stain still shown on the wall at
      Wartburg is like the stain of Rizzio's blood in Holyrood Palace.
    </p>
    <p>
      Luther's own visions were largely due to dyspepsia and an active
      imagination. He said that the Devil troubled him less at night when he
      took a good "nightcap," which made him sleep soundly. He found that the
      Devil could not stand music, being a sad and sombre personage; just as,
      long before, music was found a sovereign recipe for the melancholia of
      King Saul. But the surest specific was railing and derision. When Luther
      called him names, or laughed at him, the Devil vanished in a huff. Brother
      Martin was plain-spoken at the best of times, but on these occasions he
      was too-downright for quotation. Michelet gives a choice sample; but
      though the French language allows more licence than ours, he is obliged to
      give but the first letter of one of Luther's vigorous substantives.
      Brother Martin displayed a sly humor in one of his stories about Satan. A
      possessed person was taken into a monastery, and the devil in him said to
      the monks, "O my people, what have I done?"&mdash;"<i>Popule meus, quid
      feci tibi?</i>"
    </p>
    <p>
      According to Luther, fair and foul winds were caused by good and evil
      spirits. He spoke of a terrible lake in Switzerland, haunted by the Devil,
      and said there was a similar one in his own country. If a stone was thrown
      into it, a frightful storm shook the whole locality. The Devil made people
      idiots, cripples, blind, deaf and dumb; and Luther declared that the
      doctors who treated such infirmities as natural had a great deal to learn
      in demonology. One or two of his stories of possession are extremely
      gruesome. With his own lusty love of life, Luther could not understand
      suicide, so he attributed that also to the Devil. Satan made the suicides
      think they were doing something else; even praying, and thus he killed
      them. Brother Martin, indeed, sometimes feared the Devil would twist his
      neck or press his skull into his brains. Nor did he shrink from the
      darkest developments of this superstition. He held that the Devil could
      assume the form of a man or a woman, cohabit with human beings of the
      opposite sex, and become a father or a mother. "Eight years ago," said
      Luther, "I saw and touched myself at Dessau a child who had no parents,
      and was born of the Devil. He was twelve years old, and shaped like an
      ordinary child. He did nothing but eat, and ate as much as three peasants
      or threshers. When he was touched he cried out like one possessed; if any
      unfortunate accident happened in the house, he rejoiced and laughed; if,
      on the contrary, all went well, he wept continually. I said to the princes
      of Anhalt, with whom I then was: If I commanded here I would have that
      child thrown into the Moldau, at the risk of being its murderer. But the
      Elector of Saxony and the princes were not of my opinion."
    </p>
    <p>
      Here is a case in which the Doctor of Divinity, though naturally a kind
      man, is quite ready to take human life at the behest of a devilish
      superstition, while the less fanatical laymen shrink from such inhumanity.
      The only devil in this story is the devil of fearful ignorance and
      misbelief in Brother Martin. He it was who needed the exorcist, although
      the truth would have greatly surprised him. Carlyle may use his snarling
      muscles at the "apothecary's apprentice" who is able to give a scientific
      explanation of Luther's visions; but, after all, the unfortunate persons
      whom Luther would have murdered by mistake might be pardoned for
      preferring the apothecary's apprentice to the Protestant Pope. The fact
      is, the doctrine of devils, of demoniacal possession, of incubi and
      succubi, and of sorcery and witchcraft, was not fostered by laymen so much
      as by the clergy. Lecky remarks that "almost all the great works written
      in favor of the executions were written by ecclesiastics," and Tylor
      asserts that "the guilt of thus bringing down Europe intellectually and
      morally to the level of negro Africa" lies mainly upon the Church,
      Protestant being as bad as Catholic, for they vied in outraging and
      killing those who were doomed, by the ghastliest of superstitions, to be
      "for life and death of all creatures the most wretched." Eternal honor to
      Luther for the heroism which sent him to Worms, and made him exclaim to
      his dissuaders: "I will go if there are as many devils in Worms as there
      are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." But eternal hatred and contempt
      for the Creed which degraded heroes into Jack the Rippers. I say <i>the
      Creed</i>; for Christianity cannot be exculpated. Witchcraft, possession,
      and sexual intercourse between human and superhuman beings, are distinctly
      taught in the Bible; and if there were no other indictment of
      Christianity, the awful massacre and torture of millions of helpless women
      and children would suffice to damn it everlastingly.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      BIBLE ENGLISH.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Turning over the pages of Coleridge's "Table Talk" recently, my attention
      was arrested oy several passages I had marked, many years ago, in that
      suggestive book. Two or three of these, referring to the <i>style</i> of
      the Bible, resuscitated some reflections I made on the first reading, and
      which I now venture to express: with all deference, let me add, to
      Coleridge's ethereal genius and magical mastery of words.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Intense study of the Bible," he says, "will keep any writer from being <i>vulgar</i>,
      in point of style." Granted; and the sacred scriptures of any people and
      any creed would have the some influence. Vulgarity, unless it is bestial,
      is monkeyish. Obviously this is a characteristic alien to religion, which
      is based on the sense of wonder, and deals chiefly with the sublime. While
      the mind is absorbed by the unseen, imagination is called into play; and
      imagination is the antithesis of vulgarity. The unknown is also the
      terrible, and when the mind is alarmed there is no room for the <i>puerilities</i>
      of egotism. Any exaltation of feeling serves the same purpose. The most
      vulgar woman, in terror at a danger to her child, is lifted into the
      sphere of tragedy, and becomes a subject for art; nor could the lowest
      wretch exhibit vulgarity when committing a murder under the influence of
      passion. Vulgarity, in short, is self-consciousness, or at least only
      compatible with it; and displays itself in self-assertion at the expense
      of others, or in disregard or in defiance of their feelings. Now
      Monotheism, such as the Bible in its sublimest parts is pregnant with,
      naturally banishes this disposition, just in proportion as it is real. It
      may tolerate, and even cherish, many other evils, but not that; for
      vulgarity, as I understand it, is absolutely inconsistent with awe. How
      then do I account for the vulgarities of the Salvation Army? Simply by the
      fact that these people have <i>no</i> awe; they show the absurdities of
      religion without its sentiments. They are <i>townspeople</i>, used to
      music-halls, public-houses, street-fights, and frivolous crowds. Their
      antics would be impish to religionists whose awe was nurtured by hills and
      forests, the rising and setting sun, and the majesty of night.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not only do we find the same austere simplicity in the Vedas, the Kurân,
      and other sacred scriptures; we find it in most of the old world
      literature. The characteristic of modern writings is subtlety and
      dexterity; that of the ancient, massiveness and directness; and the same
      difference holds good in a comparison of the various stages of our
      literature. The simplicity of the Elizabethan lyrics, to say nothing of
      Chaucer, is only to be emulated in later ages, whose life is so much more
      complex, by a recluse visionary like Blake. Even when Shelley approaches
      it, in such songs as that of Beatrice in the last act of the "The Cenci,"
      we feel that stream of music is crossed and shaken by subtle
      under-currents.
    </p>
    <p>
      What Coleridge claims for the Bible may be claimed for all imaginative and
      passionate literature. Æschylus, Lucretius, Dante, Milton; how does the
      Bible excel these in that respect? When we come to Shakespeare we find a
      sublimity which transcends that of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Job, with a
      pathos, a humor, and a wit, such as no Hebrew writer ever imagined. And
      Shakepeare's superb style triumphs easily in all these fields. Coleridge
      recommends the Bible as an antidote to vulgarity. I would recommend Milton
      as much, Dante more, and Shakespeare beyond all.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Our version of the Bible," Coleridge elsewhere says, "has preserved a
      purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects. Without this holdfast,
      our vitiated imaginations would refine away language to mere
      abstractions." This is merely saying that our Bible, designed for common
      people centuries ago, is a monument of Saxon English. Clearly that is an
      accident of our translation, and not an essence of the Bible itself. As
      much may be said for all our ancient standards.
    </p>
    <p>
      Coleridge admits that our New Testament is less elegant and correct than
      the Old, and contains "slovenly phrases which would never have come from
      Ben Jonson, or any other good prose writer of the day." Yet our New
      Testament, according to Mr. Swinburne (and there is no better judge), is
      translated from canine Greek into divine English. The truth is, the <i>style</i>
      of our Bible is owing to the translators. They lived before the hurry of
      our cheap periodical press, when men wrote leisurely for leisured readers.
      There was also no great accumulation of native literature, and scholars
      studied almost exclusively the masterpieces of Greece and Rome. Their
      sense of style was therefore superior. Read the Dedication to King James
      in our authorised version, then the introduction to our revised version,
      and see what an immense difference there is between the styles. Or read
      Paul's noble praise of charity in the two versions. By substituting <i>love</i>
      for <i>charity</i>, the revisers have vitiated the sense, and destroyed
      the balance of the style. Their mincing monosyllable is too weak to bear
      the structural weight of the clauses. A closer analysis shows that they
      have spoiled the passage throughout. They had no ear: in other words, no
      style. The old translators <i>had</i> ears, and knew other people had.
      Their work was meant to be read aloud, and it bears the test. That test is
      the supreme one, and goes deeper than hearing. Flaubert, a great master of
      style, always read his manuscript aloud; holding that phrases are right
      when they correspond to all the necessities of respiration, while
      ill-written phrases oppress the chest, disturb the beatings of the heart,
      and contravene the conditions of life. Shakespeare bears this test
      triumphantly. In his great passages, respiration is easy and pronunciation
      simple; the language is a splendid and mellifluous stream.
    </p>
    <p>
      I venture to say in conclusion: Consult the revised version of the Bible
      for meaning, but read the old one for style. It is a treasury of musical
      and vigorous Saxon, a well of strong English undefiled; although Hebrew is
      a poor language, and the Greek of the New Testament is perhaps the worst
      ever written. But do not think, as Macaulay pretended, that the language
      of the Bible is sufficient for every purpose. It sustained the genius of
      Bunyan, but the mightier genius of Shakespeare had to draw from other
      sources to support its flight. Our English Bible contains six thousand
      words; Shakespeare's vocabulary contains nine thousand more.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      LIVING BY FAITH.
    </h2>
    <p>
      What is Faith? Faith, said Paul, "is the substance of things hoped for,
      the evidence of things not seen." This is a faith that sensible men avoid.
      The man of reason may have faith, but it will be a faith according to
      knowledge, and not a faith that dispenses with knowledge. He believes that
      the sun will rise to-morrow, that the ground will remain firm under his
      feet, that the seasons will succeed each other in due course, and that if
      he tills the ground he will reap the harvest. But his belief in these
      things is based upon experience; his imagination extends the past into the
      future, and his expectations are determined by his knowledge. The future
      cannot indeed be demonstrated; it can only be predicted, and prediction
      can never amount to an absolute certitude; yet it may amount to a height
      of probability which is practically the same thing. Religious faith,
      however, is something very different. It is not belief based on evidence,
      but the evidence and the belief in one. The result is that persons who are
      full of faith always regard a demand for evidence as at once a heresy and
      an insult. Their faith seems to them, in the language of Paul, the very <i>substance</i>
      of their hopes; and they often talk of the existence of God and the
      divinity of Christ as being no less certain than their own existence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Properly speaking, faith is trust. This involves a wide latitude beyond
      our knowledge. If we trust a friend, we have faith in him, and we act upon
      that sentiment. But we are sometimes deceived, and this shows that our
      faith was in excess of our knowledge. Sometimes, indeed, it is quite
      independent of knowledge. We trust people because we like them, or because
      they like us. This infirmity is well known to sharpers and adventurers,
      who invariably cultivate a pleasing manner, and generally practise the
      arts of flattery. The same principle holds good in religion. It was
      sagaciously remarked by Hume that we ought to suspect every agreeable
      belief. The mass of mankind, however, are not so fastidious or
      discriminating. On the contrary, they frequently believe a thing because
      it <i>is</i> pleasant, and for no other reason. How often have we heard
      Christian advocates prove the immortality of the soul to the complete
      satisfaction of their auditors by simply harping on man's desire to live
      for ever! Nay, there have been many great "philosophers" who have
      demonstrated the same doctrine by exactly the same means.
    </p>
    <p>
      Religious faith, to borrow a definition from <i>Chambers's Dictionary</i>,
      is usually "belief in the statement of another." There are a few mystics
      who profess to hold personal intercourse with God, but the majority, of
      mankind take their religion on trust. They believe it because they were
      taught it, and those who taught them believed it for the very same reason.
      When you trace back the revelation to its beginning, you always find that
      it is derived from men who lived a long time ago, or who perhaps never
      lived at all. Mohammed vouches for the Koran. Yes, but who will vouch for
      Mohammed?
    </p>
    <p>
      Thomas Paine well said that what is revelation to the man who receives it,
      is only hearsay to the man who gets it at secondhand. If anyone comes to
      you with a message from God, first button your pockets, and then ask him
      for his credentials. You will find that he has none. He can only tell you
      what someone else told him. If you meet the original messenger, he can
      only cry "thus saith the Lord," and bid you believe or be damned. To such
      a haughty prophet one might well reply, "My dear sir, what you say may be
      true, but it is very strange. Return to the being who sent you and ask him
      to give you better credentials. His word may be proof to you, but yours is
      no proof to me; and it seems reasonable to suppose that, if God had
      anything to tell to me, he could communicate personally to me as well as
      to you."
    </p>
    <p>
      In ancient times the prophets who were thus accosted worked miracles in
      attestation of their mission; but our modern prophets have no such power,
      and therefore they can scarcely claim our belief. If they ask us why we
      reject what they tell us on the authority of the ancient prophets who
      possessed greater powers, we reply that what is a miracle to those who see
      it is only a story to those who hear it, and that we prefer to see the
      miracle ourselves. Telling us that a man rose from the dead is no reason
      why we should believe that three times one are one; it is only proving one
      wonder by another, and making a fresh draft on our credulity at every step
      in the demonstration.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are men who tell us that we should live by faith. But that is
      impossible for all of us. The clergy live by faith, yet how could they do
      so if there were not others to support them? Knaves cannot exist without
      dupes, nor the Church without subscribers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Living <i>by</i> faith is an easy profession. Living <i>on</i> faith,
      however, is more arduous and precarious. Elijah is said to have subsisted
      on food which was brought him by inspired ravens, but there are few of
      God's ministers willing to follow his example. They ask God to give them
      their daily bread, yet they would all shrink with horror from depending on
      what he sends them.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      VICTOR HUGO. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * May 31,1885.
</pre>
    <p>
      Two years and a half ago France was mourning the death of Gambetta. Every
      hostile voice was hushed, and the whole nation bent tearfully over the
      bier, where a once mighty heart and fervent brain lay cold and still in
      death. Never, perhaps, since Mirabeau burned out the last of his great
      life had Paris been so profoundly moved. Gambetta was carried to his grave
      by a million of men, and in all that tremendous procession no priest
      figured, nor in all the funeral ceremony was there a word of God. For the
      first time in history a nation buried her hero without a shred of
      religious rites or a whisper of any other immortality than the immortality
      of fame.
    </p>
    <p>
      France now mourns the death of Victor Hugo, the great poet of the
      Republic, as Gambetta was its great orator and statesman. These two, in
      their several ways, did the most to demolish the empire. Gambetta
      organised and led the Republican opposition, and when the <i>déchéance</i>
      came, he played deep for the Republic in the game of life and death,
      making the restoration of the empire an impossibility. But long before the
      young orator challenged the empire, it was arraigned before the bar of
      liberty and humanity by the great poet. From his lonely channel rock, in
      the bitter grandeur of exile, Victor Hugo hurled the lightnings and
      thunders of his denunciation at the political burglar of France and his
      parasitical minions. Practical people laughed at him, not knowing that he
      was more practical than they. They saw nothing but the petty present, and
      judged everything by its immediate success. He was nourished by sovereign
      principles, rooted in the depths of the human heart and blossoming in its
      loftiest aspirations. He was a prophet who chanted his own inspiration to
      the world, knowing that few would listen at first, but assured that the
      message would kindle some hearts, and that the living flame would leap
      from breast to breast till all were wrapt in its divine blaze. He scorned
      the base successful lie and reverenced the noble outcast truth, and he had
      unfaltering faith in the response which mankind would ultimately make to
      the voice of their rightful lord. Great he was as a poet, a romancer and a
      dramatist, but he was greatest as a prophet. He lived to see his message
      justified and his principles triumphant, and died at the ripe old age of
      eighty-three, amid the love and reverence of the civilised world. We are
      not blind to his failings; he had, as the French say, the defects of his
      qualities. But they do not obscure his glory. His failings were those of
      other men; his greatness was his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      Victor Hugo, like Gambetta, was a Freethinker. We know he professed a
      belief in God, but he had no theology. His God was Nature, suffused with
      passion and ideality; and his conviction of "Some far-off divine event, To
      which the whole creation moves," was only his faith in progress, extended
      into the remotest future. He was a true Freethinker in his grand assertion
      of the majesty of reason and conscience. He appealed to the native dignity
      of the individual, and hated priestcraft with a perfect hatred. Lacking
      humor himself, and brilliant without wit, he could recognise these
      qualities in others, and he thought them as valid as his own weapons
      against the dogmas of superstition. How fine was his great word about
      Voltaire&mdash;"Irony incarnate for the salvation of mankind." Like
      Gambetta, Victor Hugo is to be buried without religious rites, according
      to his will. No priest is to profane the sanctity of death by mumbling
      idle words over his grave concerning what he is as ignorant of as the
      corpse at his feet. In death, as in life, the Freethinker would confront
      the universe alone from the impregnable rock of his manhood, convinced
      that
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     There is no danger to a man that knows
     What life and death is: there's not any law
     Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
     That he should stoop to any other law.
</pre>
    <p>
      Not only did Victor Hugo will that no priest should officiate at his
      burial, he ordered that none should approach his bed. But the carrion
      crows of the death-chamber were not to be deterred by his well-known
      wishes. The Archbishop of Paris offered to visit the dying heretic and
      administer to him the supreme unction on behalf of the Church. M. Lockroy,
      the poet's son-in-law, politely declined the offer. Our newspapers,
      especially the orthodox ones, regard the Archbishop's message as a
      compliment. In our opinion it was a brazen insult. Suppose Mr. Bradlaugh
      wrote to say that he would gladly attend the sickbed of Canon Wilberforce
      for the purpose of receiving his confession of Atheism; would the orthodox
      regard it as a compliment or an insult? We fail to see any difference in
      the two cases, and we know not why impertinence in an Atheist becomes
      civility in a Christian. Fortunately, Victor Hugo's death-chamber was not
      intruded upon by impudent priests. His relatives respected his convictions
      the more as they were Freethinkers themselves. No priest will consecrate
      his grave, but it will be hallowed by his greatness; and what pilgrim, as
      he bends over the master's tomb, will hear in the breeze, or see in the
      grass and flowers, any sign that a priest's benison is wanting to his
      repose?
    </p>
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    <h2>
      DESECRATING A CHURCH.
    </h2>
    <p>
      There was a Pantheon at Rome, which was a monument of the religious
      tolerance of the Empire. It was dedicated, as appears from the inscription
      on the portico, by Agrippa, son-in-law to the great Augustus, to Jupiter
      and all the other gods, with the same generosity that prompted the
      Athenians to erect an altar to the gods that might be unknown. A niche was
      afforded within its walls to every deity of the provinces whose devotees
      were willing to accept the hospitality; and Christ himself might have
      figured with the rest, if his worshippers did not scorn all other gods but
      their own.
    </p>
    <p>
      The old Pantheon still exists, and bears the name of the Rotunda. But it
      is no longer a Pagan temple. It was re-dedicated by Pope Boniface the
      Fourth, in A.D. 608, to the Virgin Mary and all the saints. Another Pope,
      a thousand years later, despoiled it of its ornaments, which had been
      spared by so many barbarian conquerors. He cast some into cannon, and with
      the rest formed a high altar for the Church of St. Peter.
    </p>
    <p>
      These alterations were of course justifiable. They were all made in the
      interest of Christianity. What could be more proper than the
      transformation of Pagan temples into Christian churches? What more
      admirable than devoting to the worship of Christ the edifice which had
      echoed to the tread of the priests of Jupiter? What more pious than
      singing the praises of Mary and all the saints in a temple where idolaters
      had celebrated the glories of all the gods and goddesses of Olympus?
    </p>
    <p>
      Such is Christian logic. But if the temples of one faith may be so
      transformed, why may not those of another? If Christianity had the right
      to devote the temples of Paganism to its own uses, why has not modern
      civilisation the right to devote the temples of Christianity to Secular
      purposes?
    </p>
    <p>
      The Church thinks otherwise. It is at present denouncing the
      secularisation of the Church of St. Geneviève, in order that Victor Hugo,
      who died a Freethinker and was buried without religious rites, might
      repose in an unconsecrated place. This building is the French Pantheon. It
      was secularised during the Revolution, and dedicated by the Republic, not
      to the gods of religion, but to the heroes of liberty. When the monarchy
      was restored it was re-consecrated, and purged of the luciferous taint of
      Voltaire's dust. But now the Republic is once more established on the
      ruins of monarchy and imperialism, it again secularises the Church of St.
      Geneviève as a tomb for its mighty dead. The Church is naturally
      indignant, but its anathemas are powerless. God does not interpose, and
      the Republic is too strong. Nay, there is even a rumor that the Roman
      Pantheon may be secularised also, and changed into a national mausoleum,
      where the youth of Italy may bend reverently before the tombs of such
      glorious soldiers of progress as Mazzini and Garibaldi, instead of
      honoring the very counterfeit presentment of fabulous old saints, chiefly
      renowned for their laziness and dirt.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Church of St. Geneviève is desecrated, cries the Archbishop of Paris,
      and special prayers are offered up to that ancient lady in heaven to avert
      her wrath from the infidel city which has so insulted her. In one sense
      the Archbishop is right. The Church is desecrated in the strict
      etymological meaning of the word. It has been converted from sacred to
      secular uses. But in the secondary meaning of the word the building is not
      desecrated, but honored, by being made a fit receptacle for the mortal
      remains of Victor Hugo.
    </p>
    <p>
      A government decree and the removal of the cross on top of the church were
      the only steps necessary to its desecration. The consecrated character of
      the temple is gone. To the carnal eye the structure remains unchanged,
      within and without, except for the loss of a crucifix; but it is quite
      possible that a priestly nose would be able to scent the absence of the
      Spirit. The Holy Ghost has fled, angels no more haunt the nave and aisles,
      and St. Geneviève hides her poor head in grief and humiliation. No doubt;
      yet we dare say the building will stand none the less firmly, and if it
      should ever be pulled down, its materials would fetch as much in the
      market as if they were saturated with divinity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Consecration is, after all, nothing but a priestly trick. What sensible
      man believes that the Holy Ghost, if such a being exist, is at the beck
      and call of every Catholic or Protestant bishop? Can the "universal
      spirit" dwell exclusively in certain places? Can the third person of the
      Trinity have sunk into such an abject state as to dodge in and out of
      buildings, according as he is wanted or not? Is there any difference that
      the nose, or any other sensitive organ, can detect between a consecrated
      church and an unconsecrated chapel? Can the geologist or the chemist
      discern any difference between the consecrated and the unconsecrated
      division in a cemetery? Is the earth affected by priestly mutterings? Do
      the corpses lie any more peacefully, or decompose any more slowly, for the
      words pronounced over the mould that covers them? Or is there any
      appreciable virtue in the consecrated water, with which the Protestant and
      Catholic are alike baptised, and with which the latter sprinkles himself
      periodically as a preservative against evil? Season finds no difference;
      it is perceived only by Faith, which may be defined as the faculty which
      enables a man to see what does not exist.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      WALT WHITMAN. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * April, 1892.
</pre>
    <p>
      Walt Whitman's death can have taken no one by surprise. For years he had
      been at the brink of the grave, and the end comes as a relief. A great
      soul may be cheerful, or at least serene, in all circumstances; but there
      is neither pleasure nor dignity in living on as the ghost of one's self.
    </p>
    <p>
      Few superber specimens of physical manhood than Walt Whitman's have
      appeared on this planet. "He looks like a man," said Abraham Lincoln, as
      his gaze followed the poet past a window of the White House. Whitman stood
      six feet two, his limbs and torso were splendid, and his head was
      magnificently proportioned. His vitality must have been wonderful, and his
      health was absolutely perfect until after the War, during which he too
      assiduously nursed the sick and wounded, to the lasting detriment of his
      phenomenal constitution. The flame of his life burnt on for another thirty
      years, but his strength was seriously undermined, and he is far better
      entitled to be called a martyr than many who have more cheaply earned the
      distinction.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walt Whitman's great personality can hardly be disputed. He impressed
      himself as something colossal on all who came into close contact with him.
      The magnetism of his presence in the military hospitals was more sanative
      than the doctors' physic. Men, women, and children felt glad and satisfied
      in his company. His large, frank, healthy nature radiated a perpetual
      benediction. One who knew him intimately has said that he never saw upon
      Whitman's features any trace of mean or evil passions. The man was
      thoroughly wholesome. Even his occasionally free utterances on sexuality
      are only sins against decorum. They do not violate nature. He never spoke
      on this subject with the slobbery grin of the voluptuary, or the leer of
      prurience. He was at such moments simply unreticent. Meaning no harm, he
      suspected none. In this respect he belonged to a less self-conscious
      antiquity, when nothing pertaining to man was common or unclean, and even
      the worship of the powers of generation was not without dignity and
      solemnity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of the foremost Englishmen of our time have acknowledged Whitman's
      greatness and sanity&mdash;notably Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson. Mr.
      Swinburne is the only one who has unsaid his praise.
    </p>
    <p>
      Tennyson's intimacy with Whitman&mdash;always through correspondence&mdash;was
      simply beautiful. A superficial reader of human nature might have inquired
      what they had in common&mdash;the rough, amorphous American poet, and the
      exquisite English poet, a flower of millenniums of culture. But there is
      something deeper than form. It is substance. There is something deeper
      than language. It is manhood. And on the common ground of the deeper
      things of life, the American and English poets&mdash;otherwise so diverse&mdash;clasped
      hands, as it were, across the sundering ocean.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whitman's claim to be considered a great poet, or even a poet at all, has
      been the subject of hot dispute. But such questions are not so settled.
      Only give time enough, and every writer falls by mere gravitation into his
      proper place, from which all the controversies in the world can never
      shift him. Where the evidence is largely subjective, as it must be in
      appraising genius, there is sure to be much in our judgment that is
      incommunicable. The logic of events, as we say in politics; or the proof
      of the pudding, as we say in the vernacular; is not so brilliant as
      logical sword-play, but it has the merit of being decisive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whitman's poetry looks strange to a reader accustomed to conventional
      models. It positively offends his eyesight. The ear may detect a certain
      rhythm, but where are the set lengths of orthodox versification? Here,
      however, there lurks a fallacy. Poetry is not the antithesis of prose. The
      antithesis of prose is verse. Some of the finest and noblest poetry in the
      world's literature is not cast in rhyme, though rhythm&mdash;often subtler
      than all possible rules&mdash;is indispensable. Yet there is something
      precious in poetical form; ay, and something durable. Many an exquisite
      lyric, with no great depth of feeling or reach of thought, has come down
      the stream of time, and will float upon it for ever. No doubt Dr. Johnson
      was right in calling it a waste of time to carve cherrystones, but
      precious stones are the more valued and admired for the art of the
      lapidary. Whitman did not cultivate versification. He almost despised it.
      He sneered at "dulcet rhymes." Yet this may hinder his access to
      posterity. Mr. Meredith hints as much in his sonnet entitled "An Orson of
      the Muse," which surely refers to Whitman. He allows him to be the Muse's
      son, though he will not wear her livery.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Him, whom he blows of Earth, and Man, and Fate,
     The Muse will hearken to with graver ear
     Than many of her train can waken: him
     Would fain have taught what fruitful things and dear
     Must sink beneath the tidewaves, of their weight,
     If  in no vessel built for sea they swim.
</pre>
    <p>
      That Whitman, however, could do great things with rhythm, and without
      rhyme, is proved by his "Funeral Hymn of President Lincoln," which James
      Thomson ranked with Shelley's "Adonais," and Mr. Swinburne called "the
      most sublime nocturne ever chanted in the cathedral of the world." That
      this is a great poem, and will live, we have not the slightest doubt. Some
      other of Whitman's poems will doubtless live with it, but whole masses of
      his poetry will probably sink to the bottom&mdash;not, however, before
      doing their work and delivering their message.
    </p>
    <p>
      Because of his want of form, Whitman suffers more than other poets in
      extracts. We shall make none, but refer the reader to the whole body of
      his poetry, Some of it is almost wearisome; the rest will repay study. It
      contains the utterance of a great soul, full of love and friendship,
      patriotism and humanity, brooding over the everlasting problems of life
      and death. Untrammelled by schools and systems, Whitman was a true
      Freethinker. Cosmopolitan as he was, he preached the gospel of
      individuality.
    </p>
    <p>
      "This is what you shall do: love the earth and the sun and the animals,
      despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid
      and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue
      not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take
      off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men,
      go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers
      of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in
      any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh
      shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its
      words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the
      lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."
    </p>
    <p>
      Whitman appealed to the brotherhood of all and the dignity of each. He
      declared he would have nothing which every other man might not have on
      equal terms. The business of the great poet was "to cheer up slaves and
      horrify despots." Men, too, should keep in close communion with Nature,
      yet always feel that they could "be good or grand only of the
      consciousness of the supremacy within them."
    </p>
    <p>
      "What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
      deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
      the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of human
      desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul
      which says-Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master
      of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, of all terror and
      all pain."
    </p>
    <p>
      America, perhaps even more than England, has need of Whitman's teaching as
      the poet of Democracy. He derided "the mania of owning things," he scorned
      distinctions of caste and class, he sang the divineness of comradeship&mdash;and,
      what is more, he practised it. Full-blooded, strong-limbed, rich-brained,
      large-hearted men and women are a nation's best products, and if a nation
      does not yield them, its wealth will only hasten its doom and pollute its
      grave.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      TENNYSON AND THE BIBLE. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * October, 1892.
</pre>
    <p>
      We owe no apology for speaking of the dead poet as "Tennyson." This is how
      he will be known by posterity. The rank is but the guinea's stamp, and in
      this case it was not requisite. A true poet's gold can neither be made
      more precious nor more current by empty titles. In our opinion, it is a
      degradation, instead of an honor, for one of nature's aristocrats to herd
      with the artificial nobility of an hereditary peerage. We also take the
      opportunity of regretting that Tennyson ever became Poet Laureate. The
      court poet should not survive the court dwarf and the court jester. It is
      painful to see a great writer grinding out professional odes, and
      bestowing the excrements of his genius on royal nonentities. The
      preposterous office of Poet Laureate should now be abolished. No poet
      should write for a clique or a coterie; he should appeal directly to the
      heart of the nation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Tennyson's funeral took place at Westminster Abbey. The heads of that
      establishment, following the example set by Dean Stanley, now act as
      body-snatchers. They appropriate the corpses of distinguished men, whether
      they believed or disbelieved the doctrines of the service read over their
      coffins. Charles Darwin's body is buried there&mdash;the great Agnostic,
      who repudiated Christianity; Robert Browning's too&mdash;the poet who said
      "I am no Christian" to Robert Buchanan. Carlyle took care that his corpse
      should not join the museum. Tennyson's, however, is now in the catalogue;
      and, it must be admitted, with more plausibility than in the case of
      Browning&mdash;with far more than in the case of Darwin.
    </p>
    <p>
      Christian pulpiteers, all over the country, have been shouting their
      praises of Tennyson as a Christian poet. They are justified in making the
      most of a man of genius when they possess one. We do not quarrel with
      them. We only beg to remark that they have overdone it. The Christianity
      of Tennyson is a very different thing from the Christianity they vend to
      the credulous multitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is no real evidence that Tennyson accepted the legendary part of
      Christianity. Even in "In Memoriam," which was published forty-three years
      ago, the thought is often extremely Pantheistic. It is nearly always so in
      the later poems. God, not Christ, became more and more the object of the
      poet's adoration, "Strong Son of God, immortal Love"&mdash;the first line
      of tne earlier poem&mdash;does not necessarily mean Christ; while the
      exclamation, "Ring in the Christ that is to be," is more symbolic than
      personal. There is also a strong hope, rather than the certitude, of a
      future life. No thoroughly convinced Christian could have written of
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     The Shadow cloaked from head to foot,
     Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
</pre>
    <p>
      Nay, the very deity of Christ is held loosely, if at all, in the
      thirty-third section, where he
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Whose faith has centre everywhere,
     Nor cares to fix itself to form.
</pre>
    <p>
      is bidden to leave his sister undisturbed when she prays; the poet
      exclaiming
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood
     To which she links a truth divine!
</pre>
    <p>
      In the last line of the next stanza this "sacred flesh and blood" of
      Christ (it is to be presumed) is called "a type"&mdash;which is a wide
      departure from orthodox Christianity. And what shall we say of the final
      lines of the whole poem?
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     One God, one law, one element,
     And one far-off divine event,
     To which the whole creation  moves.
</pre>
    <p>
      Like other passages of "In Memoriam," it is a distinct anticipation of the
      thought of "The Higher Pantheism," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "De
      Profundus," and "The Ancient Sage."
    </p>
    <p>
      Much has been made of the "Pilot" in one of Tennyson's last poems,
      "Crossing the Bar."
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     I hope to see my Pilot face to face
     When I have crossed the bar.
</pre>
    <p>
      This has been treated as a reference to Christ; but a friend of
      Tennyson's, writing in the <i>Athenæum</i>, says that the reference was
      really to the poet's son, Lionel Tennyson, who "crossed the bar" of death
      some years previously. How much more natural and human is the reference in
      the light of this explanation! Yet it appears, after all, from a later
      letter to the press by Tennyson's surviving son, that he <i>did</i> mean
      Christ. This is not, however, a confession of orthodoxy. The sentiment
      might be shared by men like the venerable Dr. Martineau, who deny the
      deity of Christ and strongly dissent from many time-honored Christian
      teachings.
    </p>
    <p>
      Tennyson most assuredly revolted against the brutalities of Christianity;
      which, by the way, are countenanced by very explicit texts in the New
      Testament. He did not approve the text, "Great is your reward in heaven."
      He was above such huckstering. He sang of Virtue&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,
     To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky.
     Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
</pre>
    <p>
      A noble petition! though in the teeth of a too patent destiny.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctrine of eternal Hell he first turned from, then denounced, and
      finally despised. It was for wavering as to this hideous dogma that the
      Rev. F. D. Maurice got into trouble with his College. He was godfather to
      Tennyson's little boy, and the poet invited him, in exquisitely charming
      verse, to share his hospitality.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     For, being of that honest few,
     Who give the Fiend himself his due,
     Should eighty-thousand college-councils
     Thunder "Anathema," friend, at you;

     Should all our churchmen foam in spite
     At you, so careful of the right,
     Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
     (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight.
</pre>
    <p>
      Tennyson had already, in "In Memoriam," proclaimed himself a Universalist,
      as Browning did afterwards in his powerful lines on the old Morgue at
      Paris. He had expressed the hope
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     That nothing walks with aimless feet;
     That not one life should be destroyed,
     Or cast as rubbish to the void,
     When God hath made the pile complete;
     That not a worm is cloven in vain;
     That not a moth with vain desire
     Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
     Or but subserves another's gain.
</pre>
    <p>
      Such, a poet could never see the divinity of the wicked, awful words,
      "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He denounced it in
      "Despair," a poem of his old age. Well does he make the Agnostic cry out
      to the minister&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
  What! I should call on that
  Infinite Love that has served us so well?
  Infinite cruelty rather that made everlasting Hell,
  Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does what he will with his own;
  Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan!
</pre>
    <p>
      This is fierce denunciation, but it pales before the attack on Hell in
      "Rizpah"; that splendid poem, which is perhaps the very noblest effort of
      Tennyson's genius; outweighing hundreds of Balaclava charges and
      sea-fights; outshining the flawless perfection of "Maud":&mdash;a poem
      written in heart's blood and immortal tears, with a wondrously potent and
      subtle imagination, and a fire of humanity to burn up whole mountains of
      brutal superstitions.
    </p>
    <p>
      The passionate words of the poor old dying mother, full of a deathless
      love for her boy who was hung, go straight as an arrow to its mark,
      through all the conventions of society and all the teachings of the
      Church.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
    Election, Election and Reprobation&mdash;it's all very well,
    But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell.

    And if he be lost&mdash;but to save my soul, that is all your desire;
    Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?
</pre>
    <p>
      Tennyson gives the very essence of the moral revolt against Hell. Human
      nature has so developed in sympathy that the sufferings of others, though
      out of sight, afflict our imaginations. We loathe the spectacle of Abraham
      and Lazarus gazing complacently on the torture of Dives. Once it was not
      so. Those who were "saved" had little or no care for the "damned." But the
      best men and women of to-day do not want to be saved alone. They want a
      common salvation or none. And the mother's heart, which the creeds have
      trampled upon, hates the thought of any happiness in Heaven while son or
      daughter is agonising in Hell.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is perfectly clear that Tennyson was far from an orthodox Christian.
      Quite as certainly he was not a Bibliolator. He read the Bible, of course;
      and so did Shelley. There are fine things in it, amidst its falsehoods and
      barbarities; and the English version is a monument of our literature. We
      regard as apocryphal, however, the story of Tennyson's telling a boy,
      "Read the Bible and Shakespeare; the one will teach you how to speak to
      God, and the other how to speak to your fellow-men." Anyhow, when the poet
      came to die, he did not ask for the Bible and he did ask for Shakespeare.
      The copy he habitually used was handed to him; he opened it at
      "Cymbeline," one of the most pagan of Shakespeare's plays; he read a
      little, and then held the book until Death came with the fall of "tired
      eyelids upon tired eyes."
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a poetic death, and a pagan death. There lay the aged, world-weary
      poet; artificial light was withdrawn, and the moonlight streamed through
      the window upon his noble figure. Wife and son, doctors and nurses, were
      silent around him. And as Death put the last cold touch on the once
      passionate heart, it found him still clasping the book of the mighty
      magician. * Let it be also noted that no Christian priest was at his
      bedside. He needed not the mum-lings of a smaller soul to aid him in his
      last extremity. Hope he may have had, but no fear. His life ended like a
      long summer day, slowly dying into night.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * The present Lord Tennyson wrote as follows to Sir Arthur
     Hodgson, Chairman of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trustees:
     "I beg to convey from my mother and myself our grateful
     acknowledgment to the Executive Committee of Shakespeare's
     Birthplace for their most kind expression of sympathy and
     for their beautiful wreath. My father was reading 'King
     Lear,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Cymbeline' through the
     last days of his life. On Wednesday he asked for
     Shakespeare. I gave him the book, but said, 'You must not
     try to read.' He answered, 'I have opened the book.' I
     looked at the book at midnight when I was sitting by him,
     lying dead on the Thursday, and found he had opened on one
     of the passages which he had called the tenderest in
     Shakespeare. We could not part with this volume, but buried
     a Shakespeare with him. We had the book enclosed in a metal
     box and laid by his side.
     &mdash;Yours faithfully, Hallam Tennyson."
</pre>
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    <h2>
      CHRIST'S OLD COAT.
    </h2>
    <p>
      The little town of Trier (Treves) will soon wear a festive appearance.
      Pilgrims will be flocking to it from all parts of Germany, and God knows
      from where besides. Its handful of inhabitants have obtained licenses to
      open hotels and restaurants; every inch of available space has been let,
      so that whirligigs, panoramas, and menageries have to be refused the sites
      they apply for; every room in the town is to be let, more or less
      furnished; and not only is the tram company doubling its line, but the
      railway company is constructing special stations for special trains.
    </p>
    <p>
      All this excitement springs from a superstitious source. After an interval
      of several years the Church will once more exhibit an old rag, which it
      calls the Holy Coat, and which it pretends is the very garment we read of
      in the Gospels. Such a precious relic is, of course, endowed with
      supernatural qualities. It will heal the sick, cure cripples, and, let us
      hope, put brains into idiotic heads. Hence the contemplated rush to Trier,
      where more people will congregate to see Christ's coat than ever assembled
      to hear him preach or see him crucified.
    </p>
    <p>
      The pilgrims will not be allowed to examine the Holy Coat. Few of them,
      perhaps, would be inclined to do so. Thev have the faith which removes
      mountains, and swallowing a coat is but a trifle. Nor would the Church
      allow a close inspection of this curious relic, any more than it would
      allow a chemist to examine the bottle in which the blood of St. Januarius
      annually liquefies. The Holy Coat will be held up by priests at a discreet
      and convenient distance; the multitude of fools will fall before it in
      ecstatic adoration; and the result will be the usual one in such cases, a
      lightening of the devotees' pockets to the profit of Holy Mother Church.
    </p>
    <p>
      According to the Gospels, the Prophet of Nazareth had a seamless overcoat.
      Perhaps it was presented to him by one of the rich women who ministered
      unto him of their substance. Perhaps it was a birthday gift from Joseph of
      Arimathaea. Anyhow he had it, unless the Gospels lie; and, with the rest
      of his clothes, it became the property of his executioners. Those
      gentlemen raffled for it. Which of them won it we are not informed. Nor
      are we told what he did with it. It would be a useless garment to a Roman
      soldier, and perhaps the warrior who won the raffle sold it to a
      second-hand clothes-dealer. This, however, is merely a conjecture. Nothing
      is known with certainty. The seamless overcoat disappeared from view as
      decisively as the person who wore it.
    </p>
    <p>
      For many hundreds of years it was supposed to have gone the way of other
      coats. No one thought it would ever be preserved in a Church museum. But
      somehow it turned up again, and the Church got possession of it, though
      the Church could not tell now and when it was found, or where it had been
      while it was lost. One coat disappeared; hundreds of years afterwards
      another coat was found; and it suited the Church to declare them the same.
    </p>
    <p>
      At that time the Church was "discovering" relics with extraordinary
      success and rapidity. Almost everything Christ ever used (or didn't use)
      came to light. His baby linen, samples of his hair and teeth, and the milk
      he drew from Mary's breast, the shoes he wore into Jerusalem, fragments of
      the twelve baskets' full of food after the miracle of the loaves and
      fishes, the dish from which he ate the last supper, the thorns that
      crowned his brow, the sponge put to his lips on the cross, pieces of the
      cross itself&mdash;these and a host of other relics were treasured at
      varions churches in Europe, and exhibited with unblushing effrontery. Even
      the prepuce of Jesus, amputated at his circumcision, was kept at Rome.
    </p>
    <p>
      Several churches boasted the same articles. John the Baptist's body was in
      dozens of different places, and the finger with which he pointed to Jesus
      as his successor was shown, in a fine state of preservation, at Besancon,
      Toulouse, Lyons, Bourges, Macon, and many other towns.
    </p>
    <p>
      John Calvin pointed out, in his grim <i>Treatise on Relics</i>, that the
      Holy Coat of Christ was kept in several churches. In our own time, a book
      on this subject has been written by H. von Sybel, who proves that the
      Trier coat is only one of twenty that were exhibited. All were authentic,
      and all were guaranteed by the same authority. Holy Mother Church lied and
      cheated without a twinge of compunction.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nineteen Holy Coats have gone. The twentieth is the last of the tribe.
      While it <i>pays</i> it will be exhibited. When it ceases to pay, the
      Church will quietly drop it. By and bye the Church will swear it never
      kept such an article in stock.
    </p>
    <p>
      Superstition dies hard, and it always dies viciously. The ruling passion
      is strong in death. A journalist has just been sent to prison for casting
      a doubt on the authenticity of this Holy Coat. Give the Catholic Church
      its old power again, and all who laughed at its wretched humbug would be
      choked with blood.
    </p>
    <p>
      Protestants, as well as Freethinkers, laugh at Catholic relics. Were we to
      quote from some of the old English "Reformers," who carried on a vigorous
      polemic against Catholic "idolatry," we should be reproached for soiling
      our pages unnecessarily. John Calvin himself, the Genevan pope, declared
      that so many samples of the Virgin Mary's milk were exhibited in Europe
      that "one might suppose she was a wet nurse or a cow."
    </p>
    <p>
      Freethinkers, however, laugh at the miracles of Protestantism, as well as
      those of the Catholic Church. They are all of a piece, in the ultimate
      analysis. It is just as credible that Christ's Coat would work miracles,
      as that Elisha's bones restored a corpse to life, or that Paul's
      handkerchiefs cured the sick and diseased. All such things belong to the
      same realm of pious imagination. Thus, while the Protestant laughs at the
      Catholic, the Freethinker laughs at both.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      CHRIST'S COAT, NUMBER TWO.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Jesus Christ is urgently required on earth again, to settle the pious
      dispute between Treves and Argenteuil as to which possesses the real
      seamless coat that was taken from him at the Crucifixion and raffled for
      by the Roman soldiers. No one but the second person of the Trinity, unless
      it be the first or third person of that three-headed monstrosity, is
      adequate to the settlement of this distracting quarrel. Even the Papacy,
      which represents the Holy Trinity on earth, is at variance with itself.
      Pope Leo favors Treves, and the wicked pilgrims who visit that little old
      town are to obtain absolution, if they do not forget to "pray for the
      extirpation of erroneous doctrines." Pope Pius, his predecessor, however,
      favored Argenteuil. A portion of the Holy Coat treasured in the church
      there was sent to him, and in return for the precious gift he forwarded a
      well-blessed and marvellously-decorated wax taper, which is still on show
      in a fine state of preservation.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Popes differ, ordinary people, like pious Christians, and even the
      editors of Freethought journals, may be excused if they hesitate to commit
      themselves. One of these coats <i>may</i> be the true one, though the
      evidence is all against it, being in fact of such a shaky nature that it
      would hardly suffice to substantiate a claim to a bunch of radishes. But
      <i>both</i> of them <i>cannot</i> be authentic, and the problem is, which
      is the very coat that Jesus wore? Now it is obvious that no one&mdash;barring
      his two colleagues aforesaid&mdash;can possibly determine this question
      but himself. His re-appearance on earth is therefore most desirable; nay,
      it is absolutely necessary, unless a lot of people who would fain bow
      before the cast-off clothes of their Redeemer are either to stay at home
      in a state of dubiety or to incur the risk of kneeling before a mouldy old
      rag that perchance belonged to a Moorish slave or a Syrian water-carrier&mdash;in
      any case, to a dog of an infidel who spat at the very name of Christ, for
      such raiment was never worn by the worshippers of the Nazarene.
    </p>
    <p>
      If Christ is coming to decide this great and grave problem, he will have
      to make haste, for Argenteuil is already on the war-path. Its Holy Coat is
      being exhibited before that of Treves, and thousands of pilgrims are
      giving Number Two the preference. Presently the Treves relic will attract
      its thousands, and the spectacle will be positively scandalous. Two
      Richmonds in the field were nothing to two Christ's Coats, each pretending
      to be the real article, and each blessed by a Pope. For the sake of
      decency as well as truth, Christ should peremptorily interfere. It is
      difficult to see how he can refrain. The Second Advent may therefore be
      expected before the date assigned by Prophet Baxter, and we shall probably
      soon hear the faithful singing "Lo he comes in clouds descending."
    </p>
    <p>
      Why should he not come? we may ask the Catholics. His mother has often
      appeared, if we may believe the solemn affidavits of priests and bishops,
      backed up by the Holy See. Why should he not come? we may also ask the
      Protestants. His second coming is an article of their faith; it is plainly
      taught in the New Testament, and was recently propounded by Mr. Spurgeon
      as part of the irreducible minimum of the Christian faith. That he will
      come, then, may be taken for granted; and what better opportunity could be
      desired than the present? Surely the faithful, all over Europe&mdash;ay,
      and in America, to say nothing of Asia, Africa, and Australia&mdash;will
      cry like one man, "Come Lord Jesus, quickly come! Tell us, oh tell us,
      which of these mouldy old rags did once grace thy holy shoulders? Save us,
      oh save us, from the pain, the ignominy of adoring a dirty relic of some
      unknown sinner, who perhaps blasphemed thy holy name. Lighten our
      darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord!" Meanwhile we may point out that, if
      Christ does not come and adjudicate between Treves and Argenteuil, a
      multitude of Christians will certainly go on a fool's errand. Our private
      opinion is that all will do so who visit either or these places.
      Nevertheless they will no doubt congratulate themselves, if they go to
      Treves, on winning absolution. The Holy Father at Rome, who has a
      supernatural dispensing power, promises to wipe out the record of their
      sins. Liars, cheats, seducers, adulterers, and undetected assassins, may
      take a trip, perform genuflexions before something in a glass case, and
      return home with a clean record. Who can conceive an easier method of
      avoiding the consequences of wickedness? As for the prayer which the
      pilgrims are to offer up for "the extirpation of erroneous doctrines," it
      will cost them very little effort, for sinners who are washed clean with
      such delightful celerity are not likely to be in love with "erroneous
      doctrines" that declare the Pope's dispensing power a sham, and sternly
      tell men that the consequences of action, whether good or bad, are
      inevitable. We very much doubt, however, if "erroneous doctrines" will
      disappear through the prayers of the pilgrims or the curses of the Pope.
      Scepticism will probably gain by the spectacle of two rival Coats of
      Christ, both exhibited at the same time, both attracting crowds of
      devotees, and both enjoying the Papal blessing. It will bring superstition
      into still further contempt, and promote the rejection of a creed which
      has ever traded on ignorance and credulity.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      SCOTCHED, NOT SLAIN.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Those who have read the foregoing articles on the Holy Coat exhibitions at
      Treves and Argenteuil may think that enough space has been devoted to such
      a ridiculous subject. It is possible, however, that the present article
      will induce them to alter that opinion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hitherto we have treated this outburst of Christian superstition with
      jocosity, but there is a serious aspect of it which must not be neglected.
      Christianity has often made Freethinkers laugh, but not unfrequently it
      has made them weep tears of blood. Absurdity is not always a laughing
      matter. There was a comic side to the orthodox persecution of Charles
      Bradlaugh&mdash;but it killed him. Bigotry and superstition are fit
      subjects for jest and ridicule; when they gain power, however, they are
      apt to substitute agony for laughter. Celsus ridiculed Christianity in the
      second century; in the fourth his writings were absolutely destroyed, and
      those who shared his opinions, and dared to express them, were on the high
      road to the prison and the stake.
    </p>
    <p>
      More recent events teach the same lesson. Thomas Paine treated
      Christianity not only with trenchant argument, but also with brilliant
      derision. For this he suffered ostracism and calumny, and for publishing
      the <i>Age of Reason</i> Richard Carlile, his wife, his sister, and his
      shopmen rotted in English gaols. The <i>Freethinker</i> derided Christian
      absurdities, and its conductors were sent to herd with criminals in a
      Christian prison. Nearly everyone thought, as Sir James Stephen declared
      in a legal text-book, that the Blasphemy Laws were obsolete; but it was
      proved by the inexorable logic of fact that laws are never obsolete until
      they are repealed. While the Blasphemy Laws exist they are always liable
      to enforcement. They are the standing menace of an absurd creed to those
      who smile at it too ostentatiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us extend the same line of reflection to this Holy Coat business.
      Contemptible as it is to the eye of reason, it excites the piety of
      millions of persons who never reasoned on religion in the whole course of
      their lives. Hundreds of thousands of men and women will visit these sham
      relics of a Savior whose own existence is open to dispute. Superstition
      will be stirred to its depths. The bestial instinct of spiritual slavery
      inherited from ancient semi-human progenitors will be intensely
      stimulated. The sacred function of priests will be heightened and
      intensified. Nor must it be forgotten that the pecuniary offerings of the
      pilgrims will fill the coffers of Holy Mother Church, who promises heaven
      to her dupes and seizes wealth and power for herself on earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Superstition is scotched, but not slain. It has life enough to be a peril
      to civilisation. The faith which wrecked "the grandeur that was Greece and
      the glory that was Rome"&mdash;the faith which buried the science, art,
      philosophy and literature of antiquity under a monstrous heap of brutal
      rubbish, out of which they were slowly and painfully excavated after the
      lapse of a thousand years&mdash;this same faith is still a danger to the
      highest welfare of mankind; to its reason, its conscience, its sense of
      dignity, and its spirit of brotherhood; above all, to freedom of thought,
      which is the sole guarantee of real and durable progress.
    </p>
    <p>
      If we turn to Russia, we see at a single glance the fruits of superstition
      and its twin-sister tyranny. The Czar is the head of the Church and the
      head of the State; not like Queen Victoria, whose sacred function is only
      indicated in Latin on our coinage, but in literal, prosaic fact. By means
      of a swarm of ignorant, and often drunken and immoral priests, the masses
      of the people are kept in wretched subjection&mdash;hewers of wood and
      drawers of water, toilers for the huge army of officials, aristocrats, and
      princes&mdash;and conscripts for the army; while the best and noblest, in
      whom there still throbs the pulse of freedom, blacken the highways to the
      mines of Siberia, where hell is more than realised on earth, and the
      dreams of sour-blooded theologians are outdone in misery and horror. *
    </p>
    <p>
      Over the rest of Europe, even in France, the secular State is often as
      insecure as the footsteps of travellers over thin crusts of volcanic soil.
      Bismarck, the Titan, whose great work, with all its defects and failings,
      may appeal from the clamorous passing hour to the quiet verdict of
      history, only kept the Catholic Church and its Jesuits in check for a
      generation. He could not impair its vitality nor diminish its latent
      power. It is in Germany that the Coat of Christ is being exhibited, with
      priests and professors joining hands at the brazen ceremony of imposture;
      in Germany that myriads of pilgrims are wending their way to the shrine of
      an idolatry as ignominious as anything that Christianity ever supplanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even in France the one great danger to the Republic is Christian
      superstition. It is the Church, her priests and her devotees, that furnish
      the real strength of every reactionary movement. That consummate
      charlatan, General Boulanger, took to going to church and cultivating
      orthodoxy when at the height of his aspiration for power. Happily he was
      defeated by the men of light and leading. Happily, too, the ablest and
      most trusted leaders of public life in France are on the side of
      Freethought. It is this, more than anything else, that makes the country
      of Voltaire the beacon of civilisation as well as the "martyr of
      democracy."
    </p>
    <p>
      Charles Bradlaugh, on a very solemn occasion, warned the Freethought party
      that even in England their great fight would ultimately be with the
      Catholic Church. He knew that superstition was scotched, but he also knew
      it was far from slain. While Freethinkers are laughing at this exhibition
      of old rags, called the Coat of Christ, they should pause for a moment to
      consider the serious meaning of such a grotesque display of superstition
      in the land of Goethe and Heine, and in the age of Darwin. Let us jest
      round our camp-fires, but let us grip our sword-hilts as we hear the
      cries, the jingle of weapons, and the tramp of men in the camp of our
      enemy.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      GOD-MAKING.
    </h2>
    <p>
      "Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be
      making gods by dozens." So wrote honest Montaigne, the first great sceptic
      in modern history, who was so far in advance of his age that he surprised
      the world by venturing to doubt whether it was after all a just and
      sensible thing to burn a man alive for differing from his neighbors.
    </p>
    <p>
      The history of that mental aberration which is called religion, and a
      survey of the present state of the world, from the fetish worshipper of
      central Africa to the super-subtle Theist of educated Europe, furnish us
      with countless illustrations of the truth of Montaigne's exclamation.
      God-making has always been a prevalent pastime, although it has less
      attraction for the modern than for the ancient mind. It was a recreation
      in which everyone could indulge, whether learned or illiterate, young or
      old, rich or poor. All the material needed to fashion gods of was
      ignorance, and there was always an unlimited stock of that article. The
      artificer was imagination, a glorious faculty, which is the highest dower
      of the creative artist and the scientific discoverer, and in their service
      is fruitful in usefulness and beauty, but which in the service of theology
      is a frightful curse, filling the mental world with fantastic monsters who
      waylay and devour.
    </p>
    <p>
      Common people, however, who did the work of the world, were not able to do
      much god-making. Their leisure and ability were both limited. But they had
      a large capacity for admiring the productions of others, and their
      deficiencies were supplied by a special class of men, called priests, who
      were set apart for the manufacture of deities, and who devoted their time
      and their powers to the holy trade. This pious division of labor, this
      specialisation of function, still continues. Carpenters and tailors,
      grocers and butchers, who are immersed all the week in labor or business,
      have no opportunity for long excursions in the field of divinity; and
      therefore they take their religion at second hand from the priest on
      Sunday. It was not the multitude, but the sacred specialists, who built up
      the gigantic and elaborate edifice of theology, which is a purely
      arbitrary construction, deriving all its design and coherence from the
      instinctive logic of the human mind, that operates alike in a fairy tale
      and in a syllogism.
    </p>
    <p>
      Primitive man used conveniently-shaped flints before he fashioned flint
      instruments; discovery always preceding invention. In like manner he found
      gods before he made them. A charm resides in some natural object, such as
      a fish's tooth, a queer-shaped pebble, or a jewel, and it is worn as an
      amulet to favor and protect. This is fetishism. By-and-bve counterfeits
      are made of animals and men, or amalgams of both, and the fetishistic
      sentiment is transferred to these. This is the beginning of polytheism.
      And how far it extends even into civilised periods, let the superstitions
      of Europe attest. The nun who tells her beads, and the lady who wears an
      ornamental crucifix, are to some extent fetishists; while the Catholic
      worship of saints is only polytheism in disguise.
    </p>
    <p>
      Reading the Bible with clear eyes, we see that the ancient Jews worshipped
      gods of their own making, which were handed down as family relics. When
      Jacob made tracks after sucking his uncle dry, Rachel carried off the poor
      old fellow's teraphim, and left him without even a god to worship. Jahveh
      himself, who has since developed into God the Father, was originally
      nothing but an image in an ark. Micah, in the book of Judges, makes
      himself a houseful of gods, and hires a Levite as his domestic chaplain.
      How long the practice persisted we may judge from the royal scorn which
      Isaiah pours on the image-mongers, who hewed down cedars and cypresses,
      oaks and ashes, some for fuel and some for idols. Let us hear the great
      prophet: "He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth
      flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and
      saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: And the residue thereof he
      maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and
      worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art
      my god."
    </p>
    <p>
      Twenty-six centuries have elapsed since Isaiah wrote that biting satire,
      yet image-worship still prevails over three-fourths of the world; and even
      in Christian countries, to use Browning's phrase, we "see God made and
      eaten every day." A wave of the hand and a muttered spell, change bread or
      wafer and port-wine into the body and blood of Christ, which are joyously
      consumed by his cannibal worshippers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not even the higher divinities of the greater faiths are exempt from the
      universal law. They are not creatures of man's hand, yet they are
      creatures of his brain. What are they but his own fancies, brooded on till
      they become facts of memory, and seem to possess an objective existence?
      The process is natural and easy. A figment of the imagination may become
      intensely real. Have we not a clearer idea of Hamlet and Othello than of
      half our closest acquaintances? Feuerbach went straight to the mark when
      he aimed to prove "that the powers before which man crouches are the
      creatures of his own limited, ignorant, uncultured and timorous mind, and
      that in especial the being whom man sets over against himself as a
      separate supernatural existence in his own being."
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, all theology is anthropomorphism&mdash;the making of gods in man's
      image. What is the God of our own theology, as Matthew Arnold puts it, but
      a magnified man? We cannot transcend our own natures, even in imagination;
      we can only interpret the universe in the terms of our own consciousness,
      nor can we endow our gods with any other attributes than we possess
      ourselves. When we seek to penetrate the "mystery of the infinite," we see
      nothing but our own shadow and hear nothing but the echo of our own voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      As we are so are our gods, and what man worships is what he himself would
      be. The placid Egyptian nature smiles on the face of the sphinx. The gods
      of India reflect the terror of its heat and its beasts and serpents, the
      fertility of its soil, and the exuberance of its people's imagination. The
      glorious Pantheon of Greece&mdash;
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
     Fill the hashed air with everlasting love&mdash;
</pre>
    <p>
      embodies the wise and graceful fancies of the noblest race that ever
      adorned the earth, compared with whose mythology the Christian system is a
      hideous nightmare. The Roman gods wear a sterner look, befitting their
      practical and imperial worshippers, and Jove himself is the ideal genius
      of the eternal city. The deities of the old Scandinavians, whose blood
      tinges our English veins, were fierce and warlike as themselves, with
      strong hands, supple wrists, mighty thews, lofty stature, grey-blue eyes
      and tawny hair. Thus has it ever been. So Man created god in his own
      image, in the image of Man created he him; male and female created he
      them.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      GOD AND THE WEATHER.
    </h2>
    <p>
      With characteristic inconsistency the Christian will exclaim "Here is
      another blasphemous title. What has God to do with the weather?"
      Everything, sir. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge,
      and do you think he fails to regulate the clouds? The hairs of your head
      are numbered, and do you think he cannot count the rain-drops? Besides,
      your clergy pray for a change in the weather when they find it necessary;
      and to whom do they pray but God? True, they are getting chary of such
      requests, but the theory is not disavowed, nor can it be unless the Bible
      is 'discarded as waste-paper; and the forms of supplication for rain and
      fine weather still remain in the Prayer Book, although many parsons must
      feel like the parish clerk who asked "What's the use of praying for rain
      with the wind in that quarter?"
    </p>
    <p>
      We might also observe that as God is omnipotent he does everything, or at
      least everything which is not left (as parsons would say) to man's
      freewill, and clearly the weather is not included in that list. God is
      also omniscient, and what he foresees and does not alter is virtually his
      own work. Even if a tile drops on a man's head in a gale of wind, it
      falls, like the sparrow, by a divine rule; and it is really the Lord who
      batters the poor fellow's skull. An action for assault would undoubtedly
      lie, if there were any court in which the case could be pleaded. What a
      frightful total of damages would be run up against the defendant if every
      plaintiff got a proper verdict! For, besides all the injuries inflicted on
      mankind by "accident," which only means the Lord's malice or neglect, it
      is a solemn fact (on the Theist's hypothesis) that God has killed every
      man, woman, and child that ever died since the human race began. We are
      born here without being consulted, and hurried away without the least
      regard to our convenience.
    </p>
    <p>
      But let us keep to the weather. A gentleman who was feeding the fish at
      sea heard a sailor singing "Britannia rules the waves." "Does she?" he
      groaned, "Then I wish she'd rule them straighter." Most of us might as
      fervently wish that the Lord ruled the weather better. Some parts of the
      world are parched and others flooded. In some places the crops are spoiled
      with too much sun, and in others with too little. Some people sigh for the
      sight of a cloud, and others people see nothing else. Occasionally a
      famine occurs in India which might have been averted by half our
      superfluity of water. Even at home the weather is always more or less of a
      plague. Its variation is so great that it is always a safe topic of
      conversation. You may go out in the morning with a light heart, tempted by
      the sunshine to leave your overcoat and umbrella at home; and in the
      evening you may return wet through, with a sensation in the nose that
      prognosticates a doctor's bill. You may enter a theatre, or a hall, with
      dry feet, and walk home through a deluge. In the morning a south wind
      breathes like zephyr on your cheeks, and in the evening your face is
      pinched with a vile and freezing northeaster.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Oh," say the pious, "it would be hard to please everybody, and foolish to
      try it. Remember the old man and his ass." Perhaps so, but the Lord should
      have thought of that before he made us; and if he cannot give us all we
      want, he might show us a little consideration now and then. But instead of
      occasionally accommodating the weather to us, he invariably makes us
      accommodate ourselves to the weather. That is, if we can. But we cannot,
      at any rate in a climate like this. Men cannot be walking almanacks, nor
      carry about a wardrobe to suit all contingencies. In the long run the
      weather gets the better of the wisest and toughest, and when the doctors
      have done with us we head our own funeral procession. The doctor's
      certificate says asthma, bronchitis, pulmonary consumption, or something
      of that sort. But the document ought to read "Died of the weather."
    </p>
    <p>
      Poets have sung the glory of snowy landscapes, and there is no prettier
      sight than the earth covered with a virgin mantle, on which the trees
      gleam like silver jewels. But what an abomination snow is in cities. The
      slush seems all the blacker for its whiteness, and the pure flakes turn
      into the vilest mud. Men and horses are in a purgatory. Gloom sits on
      every face. Pedestrians trudge along, glaring at each other with murderous
      eyes; and the amount of swearing done is enough to prove the whole thing a
      beastly mistake.
    </p>
    <p>
      It seems perfectly clear that when the Lord designed the weather, two or
      three hundred million years ago, he forgot that men would build cities. He
      continues to treat us as agriculturalists, even in a manufacturing and
      commercial country like this. "Why should people get drenched in
      Fleet-street while the Buckinghamshire farmers want rain? The arrangement
      is obviously stupid. God Almighty ought to drop the rain and snow in the
      country, and only turn on enough water in the cities to flush the sewers.
      He ought also to let the rain fall in the night. During the daytime we
      want the world for our business and pleasure, and the Rain Department
      should operate when we are snug in bed. This is a reforming age. Gods, as
      well as men, must move on. It is really ridiculous for the Clerk of the
      Weather to be acting on the old lines when everybody down below can see
      they are behind the time. If he does not improve we shall have to agitate
      on the subject Home Rule is the order of the day. We need Home for the
      globe, and we cannot afford to let the weather be included in the imperial
      functions. It is a domestic affair. And as the Lord has considerably
      mismanaged it, he had better hand it over to us, with full power to
      arrange it as we please."
    </p>
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    <h2>
      MIRACLES.
    </h2>
    <p>
      What is a miracle? Some people would reply, an act of God. But this
      definition is far too wide. In the theistic sense, it would include
      everything that happens; and in the sense of our archaic bills of lading,
      it would include fire and shipwreck.
    </p>
    <p>
      Others would reply, a miracle is a wonder. But this definition would
      include every new, or at least every surprising new fact. A black swan
      would have been a wonder before Australia was discovered, but it would
      have been no miracle. Railways, telegraphs, telephones, electric light,
      and even gas light, would be wonders to savages, yet neither are they
      miracles. One of the Mahdi's followers was astonished by an English
      officer, who pulled out his false eye, tossed it in the air, caught it,
      and replaced it; after which he asked the flabbergasted Arab whether his
      miraculous Mahdi could do that. It was a greater wonder than the Mahdi
      could perform; still it was not a miracle. Ice was so great a wonder to
      the King of Siam that he refused to credit its existence. Yet it was not
      miraculous, but a natural product, existing in practically unlimited
      quantities in the polar regions. We might multiply these illustrations <i>ad
      infinitum</i>, but what we have given will suffice. If not, let the reader
      spend an evening at Maskelyne and Cooke's, where he will see plenty of
      startling wonders and not a miracle amongst them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Hume's definition of a miracle as a violation of a law of nature, is the
      best ever given, and it really is as perfect as such a definition can be.
      It has been carped at by Christian scribblers, and criticised by superior
      theologians like Mozley. But, to use Mr. Gladstone's phrase, it keeps the
      field. Even the criticisms of Mill and Huxley leave its merit unimpaired.
      The ground taken by these is, that to say a miracle is a violation of a
      law of nature is to prejudge the question, and to rule out all future
      facts in the interest of a prepossession. Mill, however, allows that a
      miracle is a violation of a valid induction, and as a law of nature means
      nothing more it is difficult to understand why he takes any exception to
      Hume's statement of the case. It is perfectly obvious that Hume's argument
      is not metaphysical, but practical. He does not discuss the <i>possibility</i>
      but the <i>probability</i> of miracles. He reduces the dispute to a single
      point, namely, whether the person who relates a miracle (for to the world
      at large the question is necessarily one of testimony) is deceived or
      deceiving, or whether the otherwise universal experience of mankind is to
      be disbelieved; in other words, whether he or the rest of the world is
      mistaken. One man may, of course, be right, and all the human race opposed
      to him wrong, but time will settle the difference between them. That <i>time</i>,
      however, simply means general experience through long ages; and that is
      precisely the tribunal which Hume s argument appeals to.
    </p>
    <p>
      Quarrelling with Hume's definition is really giving up miracles
      altogether, for, except as supernatural evidence, they are no more
      important than shooting stars. The very nature of a miracle, in whatever
      formula it may be expressed, is superhuman, and having a purpose, it is
      also supernatural; in other words, it is a special manifestation of divine
      power for a particular object. Whether, being so, it is a violation, a
      contravention, or a suspension of the laws of nature, is a mere question
      about words.
    </p>
    <p>
      We may say that a miracle has three elements. It is first a fact,
      unaccountable by science; secondly, it requires a conscious agent; and
      thirdly, it results from the exercise of a power which that agent does not
      naturally possess.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us descend to illustration. Huxley takes the following case. Suppose
      the greatest physiologist in Europe alleged that he had seen a centaur, a
      fabulous animal, half man and half horse. The presumption would be that he
      was laboring under hallucination; but if he persisted in the statement he
      would have to submit to the most rigorous criticism by his scientific
      colleagues before it could be believed; and everybody would feel sure
      beforehand that he would never pass through the ordeal successfully. The
      common experience, and therefore the common sense, of society would be
      dead against him, and probably he would be refused the honor of
      examination even by the most fervid believers in ancient miracles.
    </p>
    <p>
      But after all the centaur, even if it existed, would not be a miracle, but
      a monstrosity. It does not contain the three elements we have indicated.
      Real miracles would be of a different character. Plenty may be found in
      the Bible, and we may make a selection to illustrate our argument. Jesus
      Christ was once at a marriage feast, when the wine ran short, which was
      perhaps no uncommon occurrence. Being of a benevolent turn of mind, and
      anxious that the guests should remember the occasion, he turned a large
      quantity of cold water into fermented juice of the grape. Now water
      contains oxygen and hydrogen in definite proportions, and nothing else,
      while wine contains in addition to these, carbon and other elements, being
      in fact a very complex liquid. Jesus Christ must, therefore, in turning
      water into wine, have created something, and that transcends human power.
      Here, then, we have a complete miracle, according to Hume's definition and
      our own theory.
    </p>
    <p>
      We do not say the miracle never occurred, although we no more believe in
      it than we believe the moon is made of green cheese. We are willing to
      regard it as susceptible of proof. But does the proof exist? To answer
      this we must inquire what kind of proof is necessary. An extraordinary
      story should be supported by extraordinary evidence. It requires the
      concurrent and overwhelming testimony of eye-witnesses. We must be
      persuaded that there is no collusion between them, that none of them has
      anything to gain by deception, that they had no previous tendency to
      expect such a thing, and that it was practically impossible that they
      could be deluded. Now let any man or any Christian seriously ask himself
      whether the evidence for Jesus Christ's miracle is of this character. Four
      evangelists write his life, and only one mentions the occurrence. Even he
      was certainly not an eye-witness, nor does he pretend to be, and the
      weight of evidence is against his gospel having been written till long
      after the first disciples of Jesus were dead. But even if the writer
      distinctly declared himself an eye-witness, and if it were undeniable that
      he lived on the spot at the time, his single unsupported testimony would
      be absurdly inadequate to establish the truth of the miracle. Every reader
      will at once see that the established rules of evidence are not conformed
      to, and whoever accepts the miracle must eke out reason with faith.
    </p>
    <p>
      So much for the evidence of miracles. Their intellectual or moral value is
      simply nil. The greatest miracle could not really convince a man of what
      his reason condemned; and if a prophet could turn water into wine, it
      would not necessarily follow that all he said was true. In fact, truth
      does not require the support of miracles; it flourishes better without
      their assistance. Universal history shows that miracles have always been
      employed to support falsehood and fraud, to promote superstition, and to
      enhance the profit and power of priests.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      A REAL MIRACLE. *
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * May, 1891.
</pre>
    <p>
      It is a common belief among Protestants, though not among Catholics, that
      the age of miracles is past. For a long time it has been very difficult to
      find a real case of special providence. There are stories afloat of
      wonderful faith-cures, and the followers of John Wesley, as well as the
      followers of William Booth, often shake their heads mysteriously, and
      affect to trace the hand of God in certain episodes of their experience.
      But such cases are too personal, and too subjective, to challenge
      criticism or inquiry. Investigating them is like exploring a cloud. There
      is nothing tangible for the mind to seize, nothing to stand by as the
      basis of discussion. What is wanted is a real objective miracle, a
      positive <i>fact</i>. Happily such a miracle has come to the aid of a
      distressed Christianity; it is worth tons of learned apologetics, and will
      give "the dying creed" a fresh lease of life.
    </p>
    <p>
      Unfortunately the world at large is in gross ignorance of this astonishing
      event. Like the earthquake, the eclipse, and the wholesale resurrection of
      saints at the crucifixion of Christ, it has excited very little public
      attention. But this dense apathy, or Satanic conspiracy of silence, must
      not be allowed to hide a precious truth. We therefore do our best to give
      it publicity, although in doing so we are blasting our own foundations;
      for we belong to a party which boasts that it seeks for truth, and we are
      ready to exclaim, "Let truth prevail though the heavens fall."
    </p>
    <p>
      Most of our readers will remember the late accident on the Brighton line
      at Norwood. A bridge collapsed, and only the driver's presence of mind
      averted a great loss of life. Of course the driver did his obvious duty,
      and presence of mind is not uncommon enough to be miraculous. But that
      does not exhaust the matter. The driver (Hargraves) is perfectly sure he
      received divine assistance. He is a man of pious habits. He never leaves
      his house without kneeling down with his wife and imploring God's
      protection. He never steps on the engine without breathing another prayer.
      On the morning of the accident his piety was in a state of unusual
      excitation. He begged his wife to "pray all that day"&mdash;which we
      presume she did, with intervals for refreshment; and he knelt down himself
      in the passage before opening his front door. When the accident happened
      he put the brake on and cried "Lord, save us," and according to the <i>Christian
      World</i> "it has since been stated by expert engineers that no train was
      ever before pulled up in such a short distance."
    </p>
    <p>
      A carping critic might presume to ask the names and addresses of these
      "expert engineers." He might also have the temerity to inquire the precise
      distance in which the train was pulled up, the shortest distance in which
      other trains have been pulled up, and the weight and velocity of the train
      in each case. He might also meanly suggest that putting on the brake left
      as little as possible to Providence. For our part, however, we will not
      pursue such hyper-criticism. It is applying to a miracle a test which it
      is not fitted to stand. Something must be left to faith, something must be
      reserved from reason, or the stoutest miracle would soon fall into a
      galloping consumption. The man in whom a pious disposition counteracts the
      restless play of thought, will not demand absolute proof; he will only
      require an encouraging amount of evidence; and he will dutifully lift his
      face and hands to heaven, exclaiming, "Lord I believe, help thou mine
      unbelief."
    </p>
    <p>
      The line we shall follow is a different one. Without questioning the
      miracle, we venture to ask why it was not more complete. Lives were saved,
      but several persons were injured. Was this due to the fact that Hargraves'
      prayer was not sufficiently above proof? Did the Lord answer the prayer
      according to its insensity? Was there a sceptic in the train who partially
      neutralised its effect? Or did the Lord proceed on the method favored by
      priests, preventing the miracle from being too obvious, but giving the
      incident a slightly supernatural appearance, in order to confirm the faith
      of believers without convincing the callous sceptics, whose deep sin of
      incredulity places them beyond "the means of grace and the hope of glory?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Nor are these questions exhaustive. Very much remains to be said. It
      appears that the Norwood bridge collapsed through a secret flaw in the
      ironwork. Could not the Lord, therefore, in answer to Hargraves' prayers&mdash;which
      surely extended to the interests of his employers&mdash;have inspired one
      of the Company's engineers with the notion of some unsoundness in the
      structure? This would have saved a good deal of property, and many
      passengers from suffering a shock whose effects may haunt them for years,
      and perhaps send them to untimely graves? Might not the Lord have cleared
      the roadway below, knocked down the bridge in the night, and brought some
      one to see the collapse who could have carried the tidings to the
      signalmen? Certainly there seems a remarkable want of subtlety in the ways
      of Providence. It looks as though the Deity heard a prayer now and then,
      and jerked out a bit of miracle in a more or less promiscuous manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      What has happened to Providence since the Bible days? Miracles then were
      clear, convincing, and artistically rounded. You could not possibly
      mistake them for anything else. Baalam's ass, for instance, was not a
      performing "moke"; it does not appear to have known a single trick; and
      when it opened its mouth and talked in good Moabitish, the miracle was
      certain and triumphant. In the same way, the Norwood miracle might have
      been unadultterated with the usual operations of nature. The bridge might
      have collapsed as the train approached, driver Hargraves might have said
      his prayer, the train might have leapt across the chasm, picked up the
      connection on the other side, and pursued its way to Brighton as if
      nothing had happened. But as the case stands, Providence and the
      safety-brake act together, and it is difficult to decide their shares in
      the enterprise. Further, the miracle is sadly mixed. Any human being would
      have planned it better, and made it stand out clearly and firmly.
    </p>
    <p>
      This Norwood miracle, however, seems the best obtainable in these days. It
      is a minute return for all the prayers of the clergy, to say nothing of
      pious engine-drivers; a miserable dividend on the gigantic investment in
      supernaturalism. We pity the poor shareholders, though we must
      congratulate the directors on the large salaries they draw from the
      business. We also pity poor old Providence, who seems almost played out.
      Once upon a time he was in fine form; miracles were as common as
      blackberries; Nature seldom got an innings, and Jehovah was all over the
      field. But nowadays Nature seems to have got the better of him. She
      scarcely leaves him a corner for his operations, and what little he does
      (if he does anything) has to be done in obscurity. Poor old Providence, we
      fancy, has had his day. His vigor is gone, his lively fancy has
      degenerated into moping ineptitude, the shouts of millions of worshippers
      cannot stimulate his sluggishness into any more effective display than
      this Norwood miracle. Most sincerely we offer him our condolence as the
      sleeping partner in the business of religion. By and bye we may offer our
      condolence to the active partners, the priests of all denominations, who
      still flourish on a prospectus which, if once true, is now clearly
      fraudulent. When their business dwindles, in consequence of a failing
      supply of good supernatural articles, they will only live on the price of
      actual deliveries, and a Norwood miracle will hardly afford six of them a
      mouthful apiece.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      JESUS ON WOMEN.
    </h2>
    <p>
      "For religions," says Michelet, "woman is mother, tender guardian, and
      faithful nurse. The gods are like men; they are reared, and they die, upon
      her bosom." Truer words were never uttered. Michelet showed in <i>La
      Sorcière</i>, from which this extract is taken, as well as in many other
      writings, that he fully understood the fulcrum of priestcraft and the
      secret of superstition. Women are everywhere the chief, and in some places
      the only, supporters of religion. Even in Paris, where Freethinkers
      abound, the women go to church and favor the priest. Naturally, they
      impress their own views on the children, for while the father's influence
      is fitful through his absence from home, the mother's is constant and
      therefore permanent. Again and again the clergy have restored their broken
      power by the hold upon that sex which men pretend to think the weaker,
      although they are obviously the sovereigns of every generation. Men may
      resolve to go where they please, but if they cannot take the women with
      them they will never make the journey. Women do not resist progress, they
      simply stand still, and by their real, though disguised, rule over the
      family, they keep the world with them. Freethinkers should look this fact
      in the face. Blinking it is futile. Whoever does that imitates the hunted
      ostrich, who does not escape his doom by hiding his head. The whole
      question lies in a nutshell. Where one sex is, the other will be; and
      there is a terrible, yet withal a beautiful, truth in the upshot of Mill's
      argument, that if men do not lift women up, women will drag men down. In
      the education and elevation of women, then, lies the great hope of the
      future. Leading Freethinkers have always seen this. Shelley's great cry,
      "Can man be free if woman be a slave?" is one witness, and Mill's great
      essay on <i>The Subjection of Women</i> is another.
    </p>
    <p>
      Go where you will, you find the priests courting the women. They act thus,
      not because they despise men, or fear them, but because they (often
      unconsciously) feel that when they have captured the "weaker" sex, the
      other becomes a speedy prey. Perhaps a dim perception of this truth
      hovered in the minds of those who composed the story of the Fall. The
      serpent does not bother about Adam. He just makes sure of Eve, and she
      settles her "stronger" half. Milton makes Adam reluct and wrangle, but it
      is easy to see he will succumb to his wife's persuasions. He swears he
      won't eat, but Eve draws him all the time with a silken string, mightier
      than the biggest cable.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the Christian monks were proselytising at Rome, they were hated, says
      Jortin, "as beggarly impostors and hungry Greeks who seduced ladies of
      fortune and quality." Hated, yes; but what did the hatred avail? The women
      were won, and the game was over. Men growled, but they had to yield. The
      same holds good to-day. Watch the congregations streaming out of church,
      count ten bonnets to one hat, and you might fancy Christianity played out
      because the men stay at home and neglect its ministrations. Nothing of the
      sort. Men may desert the churches as they like, but while the women go the
      clergy are safe. Examine the church and chapel organisations closely, and
      you will see how nine-tenths of everything is designed for women and
      children. Yes, the bonnet is the priest's talisman. Like Constantine's
      legendary cross, it bears the sign <i>By this Conquer</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the other hand, the clergy never fail to remind women that religion is
      their best friend. Without our doctrines and our holy Church, they say,
      there would be social chaos; the wild passions of men would spurn control,
      marriage would be despised, wives would become mistresses, homes would
      disappear, and children would be treated as encumbrances. There is not a
      grain of truth in this, for religion has fomented, countenanced, or
      cloaked, more sensuality and selfishness than it has ever repressed. But
      it is a powerful appeal to woman's healthy domestic sentiment. She feels,
      if she does not know, that marriage is her sheet-anchor, and the home an
      ark on a weltering flood. When the priest tells her that religion is the
      surety of both, he plucks at her heart, which vibrates to its depths, and
      she regards him as her savior.
    </p>
    <p>
      Historically, the Christian religion, at least, has never been woman's
      real friend. It claims credit for everything; but what has it achieved?
      Monogamy was practised by the rude Teutons before Christianity "converted"
      them by fraud and force, and it was the law in pagan Greece and Rome
      before the Christian era. Yet in the Bible there is not a word against
      polygamy. God's favorites had as many wives as they could manage, and
      Solomon had enough to manage <i>him</i>. In the New Testament there is
      only one man who is told to be "the husband of one wife," and that is a
      bishop. Even in <i>his</i> case, a facetious sceptic hints, and the
      Mormons argue, that the command only means that he must have <i>one wife
      at least</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are two supreme figures in the New Testament, Paul and Jesus. What
      Paul says about women I will deal with presently. For the moment I confine
      myself to Jesus. Let the reader remember that Christianity cannot
      transcend the Bible, any more than a stream can rise above its source.
    </p>
    <p>
      Like most revivalists and popular preachers, Jesus had a number of women
      dangling at his heels, but his teaching on the subject in hand is barren,
      or worse. As a child, he gave his mother the slip at Jerusalem, and caused
      her much anxiety. During his ministry, when his mother and his brethren
      wished to speak with him, he forgot the natural ties of blood, and coolly
      remarked that his family were those who believed his gospel. On another
      occasion he roughly said to Mary, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"
      These examples are not very edifying. If Christ is our great exemplar, the
      fashion he set of treating his nearest relatives is "more honored in the
      breach than in the observance."
    </p>
    <p>
      Jesus appears to have despised the union of the sexes, therefore marriage,
      and therefore the home. He taught that in heaven, where all are perfect,
      there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; the saints being like
      angels, probably of the neuter gender. In Matthew xix. 12 he appears to
      recommend emasculation, praising those who make themselves "eunuchs for
      the kingdom of heaven's sake." This doctrine is too high for flesh and
      blood, but Origen and other early Christians practised it literally. We
      may be sure that those who trample on manhood have no real respect for
      womanhood. Hence the Romish Church has always praised up virginity, which
      is simply an abnegation of sex. Cruden shrinks from the literal sense of
      Christ's words, and says that the "eunuchs" he refers to are those who
      "upon some religious motive do abstain from marriage and the use of all
      carnal pleasures; that they may be less encumbered with the cares of the
      world, and may devote themselves more closely to the service of God."
      Moonshine! Origen was a better judge than Cruden. If Jesus did not mean
      what he said, why did he take the trouble to speak? His doctrine is that
      of the anchorite. It led naturally to the filthy wretches, called monks,
      who dreaded the sight of a woman, and hoped to please God by stultifying
      nature. It also led to the Church law forbidding women to touch the
      sacrament with their naked hands, lest they should pollute it. Only women
      who relish that infamous law can feel any respect for the teaching of
      Jesus.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      PAUL ON WOMEN.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Christianity, as the centuries have revealed its practical character, owes
      more to Paul than to Jesus. Its dogmas are mostly derived from the
      epistles of the great apostle. Many a true believer thinks he is obeying
      the carpenter's son, when all the time he is obeying the Tarsus
      tent-maker. The Christian road to heaven was laid out and paved, not by
      Jesus himself, but by the gentleman he (or a sunstroke) converted outside
      Damascus.
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul was in some respects a better teacher than Jesus. He was more
      practical, and with all his misty metaphysics he had a firmer hold on the
      realities of life. But with respect to women, he follows dutifully in his
      Savior's wake, and elaborates, rather than supplements, the sexual
      injunctions we have already dealt with. Like his Master, he looks down
      upon marriage, and is evidently of opinion that if men should not make
      themselves eunuchs they should live as such, The American Shakers are only
      carrying out his policy in this respect. If all the world imitated them
      the human race would soon expire. It would then be impossible to adopt the
      children of outsiders, families would be gradually extinguished, and the
      second coming of Christ would be prematurely hastened.
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul was a bachelor, and a crusty one. According to tradition or calumny,
      he was jilted by a Jewish woman, and this may account for his peevish
      attitude towards the sex. In the seventh chapter of the first of
      Corinthians he gives vent to a great deal of nasty nonsense. "It is good,"
      he says, "for a man not to touch a woman," If he had meant by this that
      men were not to thrash their wives we should have thoroughly agreed with
      him. But what he means is that there should be no sexual intercourse. He
      was especially severe on young widows who contemplated a second marriage.
      No doubt if he had seen a young widow whose weeds, as is generally the
      case, were arranged coquettishly, he would have muttered "Anathema
      Maranatha." As his own constitution was liable to occasional weaknesses,
      he might have added, "Get thee behind me, Satan."
    </p>
    <p>
      A few verses later he expresses himself with greater clearness than Jesus
      Christ ever attained to: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It
      is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let
      them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." Paul wished the same
      end as Jesus. He desired to see every person celibate, but having a little
      more common sense than Jesus, he saw that such preaching would never be
      extensively practised (especially by young widows) and he was obliged to
      make a concession to human frailty. The very fact, however, shows that his
      view of the question was radically wrong. Marriage is not an excusable
      weakness, but the normal condition of mankind. Physiologically, mentally,
      and morally this truth holds good. Even the highest virtues have never
      sprung from monasteries and convents, but from the rude rough world of
      toiling and suffering men and women outside.
    </p>
    <p>
      According to Paul, although marriage was lawful, virginity was a higher
      state; that is, to be perfect, a woman must stultify her nature and
      trample upon her maternal instincts. It also implies that she is
      essentially impure, and that she can only please God by abnegating her
      sex. This is the deepest disrespect of womanhood, as every healthy wife
      and mother would admit if such stuff were taught by another than Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      The great apostle troubled his poor head about the heads of women. If he
      lived now when the ladies affect short hair he would go raving mad. It was
      a subject on which he felt profoundly. To his mind a woman losing her long
      hair, was like an angel falling from glory. He warns the whole sex against
      meddling with their tresses. Men, however, are recommended to crop close,
      long hair being "shameful." We have a shrewd suspicion that Paul was bald.
      Perhaps if hair restorer had been then invented a successful trial might
      have considerably changed his views upon this subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      Man was not created for woman, says Paul, but woman for man. He is of
      course alluding to the old Rib Story. But a similar observation would have
      been as sensible about the two halves of a pair of scissors. When they
      meet what does it matter which was made for the other? Consistently with
      this view he says, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as
      unto the Lord... as the Church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be
      to their husbands in everything." Some men have tried this with no great
      success, and many a man thinks he is having his own way "in everything"
      when he is sweetly and beautifully led by the nose. Obedience is a hateful
      word in marriage. Its introduction makes the wife a legalised concubine.
      Besides, if there <i>must</i> be obedience, Paul's rule is ridiculously
      sweeping, for some women have more sense and judgment than their husbands.
      Every afflicted woman who applies to the magistrate for relief from the
      sot who curses her home is flying in the face of Paul. "My dear woman,"
      the magistrate <i>should</i> say, "your request is very reasonable, but it
      is very unorthodox. Go home and read the fifth chapter of Ephesians, where
      you will see that wives must obey their husbands in <i>everything</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul (1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35; Tim. ii. 11, 12) warns women to keep silence in
      church, for "it is not permitted unto them to speak." Having written this
      line, Paul must have got up and strutted round the room like a ruffled
      cock. "Let the woman," he says, "learn in silence with all subjection. I
      suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to
      be in silence." Hear, hear! from the males in the body of the synagogue.
      Evidently Paul could bray on occasion as lustily as Balaam's ass. If the
      women "will learn anything," which he clearly thought problematical, "let
      them ask their husbands at home." Fancy some women with no other sources
      of information!
    </p>
    <p>
      The reason Paul gives for woman's inferiority is that Mrs. Eve was first
      tempted by the serpent. And a capital thing too! If Mrs. Eve had not eaten
      that apple the human race would still number two, or else, if none of them
      died, they would be thicker than barrelled herrings.
    </p>
    <p>
      Our Church of England marriage service follows the teaching of Paul. While
      the husband promises to-love the wife, the wife promises to love, honor
      and obey the husband. Many ladies say these words at the altar with a
      mental reservation. When they are obliged to do this they tacitly admit
      that Paul and the Church are wrong. But if so the Bible is wrong. The fact
      is that the "blessed book," instead of being woman's best friend, is her
      worst enemy. The Tenth Commandment makes her domestic property, and Paul
      winds up by telling her that her sole duty is to play second fiddle in a
      minor key.
    </p>
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    <h2>
      MOTHER'S RELIGION.
    </h2>
    <p>
      Religion is the feminine element in human nature. Science is the
      masculine. One accepts, the other inquires; one believes, the other
      proves; one loves the old, the other the new; one submits, the other
      dares; one is conservative, and the other progressive.
    </p>
    <p>
      I say this with no disrespect to women. Evolution has made them what they
      are, and evolution will remake them. Nor do I slight the noble band of
      advanced women, the vanguard of their sex, who have shed a lustre on our
      century. I merely take a convenient metaphor, which crystallises a
      profound truth, though fully conscious of its shortcomings and exclusions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Woman is still the citadel of religion. Thither the priest flies from the
      attacks of scepticism. There he finds an inviolable refuge. The mother,
      the wife, the sister, shield him and his creed; and their white arms and
      soft eyes are a better guard than all the weapons in the armory of his
      faith. His are the coward's tactics, but all creatures&mdash;even priests&mdash;plead
      the necessity of living, and have the artful instinct of
      self-preservation.
    </p>
    <p>
      Religious by inheritance and training, woman rears her children for the
      Church. Spiritual as well as bodily perils shake her prophetic soul as she
      peers into the future through the eyes of the child upon her knee. She
      whispers of God with accents of awe, that fall solemnly on the little
      one's mind. She trains the knee to bend, the hands to meet in prayer, and
      the eyes to look upward. She wields the mighty spell of love, and peoples
      the air of life with phantoms. Infantile logic knows those dear lips
      cannot lie, and all is truth for all is love. Alas! the lesson has to come
      that the logic is faulty, that goodness may be leagued with lies, that a
      twisted brain may top the sweetest heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      But long ere the lesson is learnt&mdash;if it <i>is</i> learnt&mdash;the
      mischief has been wrought. The child has been moulded for the priest, and
      is duly burnished with catechisms and stamped with dogmas. And how often,
      when the strong mind grows and bursts its bonds, when the mental eyes wax
      strong and see the falsehood, the mother's hand, through the child's
      training, plucks the life back from the fulfilment of its promise. How
      often, also, when the vigorous manhood has swept aside all illusions,
      there comes at length the hour of lassitude, and as the mother's voice
      steals through the caverns of memory the spectres of faith are startled
      from their repose.
    </p>
    <p>
      Priests are always warning men against deserting the creed of their
      mothers. And even a <i>savant</i>, like Professor Gazzia, who writes on
      Giordano Bruno, knows the trick of touching this facile cord of the human
      heart. Speaking of Bruno's philosophy, he says: "I call it plainly the
      Negation of God, of that God, I mean, of whom I first heard <i>at my
      mother's knee</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      But Freethinking mothers&mdash;and happily there are such&mdash;will use
      their power more wisely; and, above all, will not shrink from their duty.
      They have the fashioning of the young life&mdash;a transcendent privilege,
      with an awful responsibility. They will see that love nurtures the
      affections without suborning the intellect; that the young mind is
      encouraged to think, instead of being stuffed with conclusions; and they
      will some day find their exceeding rich reward. Their children, trained in
      the school of self-respect and toleration, will be wiser than the pupils
      of faith; and the bonds of love will be all the tenderer and stronger for
      the perception that the free individuality of the child's life was never
      sacrificed to the parent's authority.
    </p>
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