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    <h1>
      HUMANITY'S GAIN from UNBELIEF
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Charles Bradlaugh
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h4>
      [Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889.]
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <h5>
      LONDON <br /><br /> FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY, <br /><br /> 1889.
    </h5>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF.
    </h2>
    <p>
      As an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been real gainer
      from scepticism, and that the gradual and growing rejection of
      Christianity&mdash;like the rejection of the faiths which preceded it&mdash;has
      in fact added, and will add, to man's happiness and well being. I maintain
      that in physics science is the outcome of scepticism, and that general
      progress is impossible without scepticism on matters of religion. I mean
      by religion every form of belief which accepts or asserts the
      supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning
      all phenomena, every phænomenon, all that is necessary for the happening
      of any and every phænomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and at
      any given time is the measure of the civilisation attained by what Guizot
      described as the <i>juste milieu</i> of those who profess it. Each
      religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and practice by the
      gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it is professed. Each
      discovery destroys in whole or part some theretofore cherished belief. No
      religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually
      out-grown. None see a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages
      and obsolete customs; the decay is long and&mdash;like the glacier march&mdash;is
      only perceptible to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long
      periods. A superseded religion may often be traced in the festivals,
      ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has replaced it. Traces of
      obsolete religions may often be found in popular customs, in old wives'
      stories, and in children's tales.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood, that I should
      explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very attempt at this
      explanation there will, I think, be found strong illustration of the value
      of unbelief. Christianity in practice may be gathered from its more
      ancient forms, represented by the Roman Catholic and the Greek Churches,
      or from the various churches which have grown up in the last few
      centuries. Each of these churches calls itself Christian. Some of them
      deny the right of the others to use the word Christian. Some Christian
      churches treat, or have treated, other Christian churches as heretics or
      unbelievers. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants in Great Britain and
      Ireland have in turn been terribly cruel one to the other; and the
      ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enacted by the
      English Protestants against English and Irish Papists, are a disgrace to
      civilisation. These penal laws, enduring longest in Ireland, still bear
      fruit in much of the political mischief and agrarian crime of to-day. It
      is only the tolerant indifference of scepticism that, one after the other,
      has repealed most of the laws directed by the Established Christian Church
      against Papists and Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church
      of England clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing
      nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of such
      denunciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox catechism written
      by the Rev. F. A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex, the popularity of which
      is vouched by the fact that it has gone through ten editions. This
      catechism for little children teaches that "Dissent is a great sin", and
      that Dissenters "worship God according to their own evil and corrupt
      imaginations, and not according to his revealed will, and therefore their
      worship is idolatrous". Church of England Christians and Dissenting
      Christians, when fraternising amongst themselves, often publicly draw the
      line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these have any sort of right
      to call themselves Christians.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were flogged and
      imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early Christian settlers in
      New England, escaping from the persecution of Old World Christians, showed
      scant mercy to the followers of Fox and Penn.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is customary, in controversy, for those advocating the claims of
      Christianity, to include all good done by men in nominally Christian
      countries as if such good were the result of Christianity, while they
      contend that the evil which exists prevails in spite of Christianity. I
      shall try to make out that the ameliorating march of the last few
      centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite
      concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the
      pious of one century, are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a
      later generation.
    </p>
    <p>
      What then is Christianity? As a system or scheme of doctrine, Christianity
      may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from the Old and New Testaments.
      It is true that some Christians to-day desire to escape from submission to
      portions, at any rate, of the Old Testament; but this very tendency seems
      to me to be part of the result of the beneficial heresy for which I am
      pleading. Man's humanity has revolted against Old Testament barbarism; and
      therefore he has attempted to disassociate the Old Testament from
      Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are accepted as God's
      revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim than any other of the
      world's many religions, if no such claim can be made out for it apart from
      the Bible. And though it is quite true that some who deem themselves
      Christians put the Old Testament completely in the background, this is, I
      allege, because they are out-growing their Christianity. Without the
      doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, Christianity, as a religion,
      is naught; but unless the story of Adam's fall is accepted, the redemption
      from the consequences of that fall cannot be believed. Both in Great
      Britain and in the United States the Old and New Testaments are forced on
      the people as part of Christianity; for it is blasphemy at common law to
      deny the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
      authority; and such denial is punishable with fine and imprisonment, or
      even worse. The rejection of Christianity intended throughout this paper,
      is therefore the rejection of the Old and New Testaments as being of
      divine revelation. It is the rejection alike of the authorised teachings
      of the Church of Rome and of the Church of England, as these may be found
      in the Bible, the creeds, the encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and
      homilies of either or both of these churches. It is the rejection of the
      Christianity of Luther, of Calvin, and of Wesley.
    </p>
    <p>
      A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the progress
      and civilisation of the world are due to Christianity; and the discussion
      is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of humanity have
      been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My allegation will
      be that the special services rendered to human progress by these
      exceptional men, have not been in consequence of their adhesion to
      Christianity, but in spite of it; and that the specific points of
      advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to
      precise Biblical enactments.
    </p>
    <p>
      A. S. Farrar says (1) that Christianity "asserts authority over religious
      belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God, and
      claims the right to control human thought in virtue of possessing sacred
      books, which are at once the record and the instrument of the
      communication, written by men endowed with supernatural inspiration".
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     1 Farrar's "Critical History of Freethought".
</pre>
    <p>
      Unbelievers refuse to submit to the asserted authority, and deny this
      claim of control over human thought: they allege that every effort at
      freethinking must provoke sturdier thought.
    </p>
    <p>
      Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief, i.e. in the
      abolition of slavery in some countries, in the abolition of the slave
      trade in most civilised countries, and in the tendency to its total
      abolition. I am unaware of any religion in the world which in the past
      forbade slavery. The professors of Christianity for ages supported it; the
      Old Testament repeatedly sanctioned it by special laws; the New Testament
      has no repealing declaration. Though we are at the close of the nineteenth
      century of the Christian era, it is only during the past three-quarters of
      a century that the battle for freedom has been gradually won. It is
      scarcely a quarter of a century since the famous emancipation amendment
      was carried to the United States Constitution. And it is impossible for
      any well-informed Christian to deny that the abolition movement in North
      America was most steadily and bitterly opposed by the religious bodies in
      the various States. Henry Wilson, in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power
      in America"; Samuel J. May, in his "Recollections of the Anti-Slavery
      Conflict"; and J. Greenleaf Whittier, in his poems, alike are witnesses
      that the Bible and pulpit, the Church and its great influence, were used
      against abolition and in favor of the slaveowner. I know that Christians
      in the present day often declare that Christianity had a large share in
      bringing about the abolition of slavery, and this because men professing
      Christianity were abolitionists. I plead that these so-called Christian
      abolitionists were men and women whose humanity, recognising freedom for
      all, was in this in direct conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty
      years since the European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the
      slave trade. What of the effect of Christianity on these powers in the
      centuries which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet pleaded powerfully for
      freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-holding. For many
      centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal held slaves. Porto Rico
      freedom is not of long date; and Cuban emancipation is even yet newer. It
      was a Christian King, Charles 5th, and a Christian friar, who founded in
      Spanish America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For
      some 1800 years, almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold
      slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool less
      than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. Daring the ninth
      century week Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the eleventh
      century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and the profit
      went to the Church.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a Christian.
      But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted with unbelief. As an
      abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus xxv, 44-6; he must have rejected
      Exodus xxi, 2-6; he could not have accepted the many permissions and
      injunctions by the Bible deity to his chosen people to capture and hold
      slaves. In the House of Commons on 18th February, 1796, Wilberforce
      reminded that Christian assembly that infidel and anarchic France had
      given liberty to the Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic England was
      "obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice".
    </p>
    <p>
      Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery, found the whole
      influence of the English Court, and the great weight of the Episcopal
      Bench, against him. George III, a most Christian king, regarded abolition
      theories with abhorrence, and the Christian House of Lords was utterly
      opposed to granting freedom to the slave. When Christian missionaries some
      sixty-two years ago preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of
      Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges, holding
      commission from Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A
      Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of
      England, signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as the
      year 1824. In the evidence before a Christian court-martial, a missionary
      is charged with having tended to make the negroes dissatisfied with their
      condition as slaves, and with having promoted discontent and
      dissatisfaction amongst the slaves against their lawful masters. For this
      the Christian judges sentenced the Demerara abolitionist missionary to be
      hanged by the neck till he was dead. The judges belonged to the
      Established Church; the missionary was a Methodist. In this the Church of
      England Christians in Demerara were no worse than Christians of other
      sects: their Roman Catholic Christian brethren in St. Domingo fiercely
      attacked the Jesuits as criminals because they treated negroes as though
      they were men and women, in encouraging "two slaves to separate their
      interest and safety from that of the gang", whilst orthodox Christians let
      them couple promiscuously and breed for the benefit of their owners like
      any other of their plantation cattle. In 1823 the <i>Royal Gazette</i>
      (Christian) of Demerara said:
    </p>
    <p>
      "We shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves, who are by law our
      property, till you can demonstrate that when they are made religious and
      knowing they will continue to be our slaves."
    </p>
    <p>
      When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most earnest
      abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in Boston,
      Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in which to speak, was
      the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the "infidel" editor of the <i>Boston
      Investigatory</i> who had been sent to gaol for blasphemy. Every Christian
      sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd Garrison the use of the buildings they
      severally controlled. Lloyd Garrison told me himself how honored deacons
      of a Christian Church joined in an actual attempt to hang him.
    </p>
    <p>
      When abolition was advocated in the United States in 1790, the
      representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the Southern
      clergy "did not condemn either slavery or the slave trade"; and Mr.
      Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded that "from Genesis to
      Revelation" the current was favorable to slavery. Elias Hicks, the brave
      Abolitionist Quaker, was denounced as an Atheist, and less than twenty
      years ago a Hicksite Quaker was expelled from one of the Southern American
      Legislatures, because of the reputed irreligion of these abolitionist
      "Friends".
    </p>
    <p>
      When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North America, large
      numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination were found ready to
      defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the famous abolitionist, was
      driven from the pulpit as irreligious, solely because of his attacks on
      slaveholding. Northern clergymen tried to induce "silver tongued" Wendell
      Philips to abandon his advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits rang with
      praises for the murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The slayers of Elijah
      Lovejoy were highly reputed Christian men.
    </p>
    <p>
      Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church exerted its
      influence to restrain slavery, says ("European Civilisation", vol. i., p.
      110):
    </p>
    <p>
      "It has often been repeated that the abolition of slavery among modern
      people is entirely due to Christians. That, I think, is saying too much.
      Slavery existed for a long period in the heart of Christian society,
      without its being particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude of
      causes, and a great development in other ideas and principles of
      civilisation, were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all
      iniquities."
    </p>
    <p>
      And my contention is that this "development in other ideas and principles
      of civilisation" was long retarded by Governments in which the Christian
      Church was dominant. The men who advocated liberty were imprisoned,
      racked, and burned, so long as the Church was strong enough to be
      merciless.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Rev. Francis Minton, Hector of Middlewich, in his recent earnest
      volume (1) on the struggles of labor, admits that "a few centuries ago
      slavery was acknowledged throughout Christendom to have the divine
      sanction....
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     1 "Capital and Wages", p. 19.
</pre>
    <p>
      Neither the exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the belief
      in the righteousness of slavery can be defined. It was doubtless due to a
      combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the recognition
      of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline of the belief the
      abolition of slavery took place."
    </p>
    <p>
      The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian Scotland in
      the 17th century, where the white coal workers and salt workers of East
      Lothian were chattels, as were their negro brethren in the Southern States
      thirty years since; they "went to those who succeeded to the property of
      the works, and they could be sold, bartered, or pawned". (1) "There is",
      says J. M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant clergy of Scotland
      ever raised a voice against the slavery which grew up before their eyes.
      And it was not until 1799, after republican and irreligious France had set
      the example, that it was legally abolished."
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     1 "Perversion of Scotland," p. 197. 2 "Capital and Wages ",
     pp. 15, 16.
</pre>
    <p>
      Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief, or rather
      disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by
      Christians towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to
      scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably great so long as
      belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the past two centuries, and
      especially those of the 18th century, might have benefitted mankind much
      earlier and much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft
      and the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected of necromancy.
      After quoting a large number of cases of trial and punishment for
      witchcraft from official records in Scotland, J. M. Robertson says: "The
      people seem to have passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they
      became more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church,
      till after many generations the slow spread of human science began to
      counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy resisting reason and
      humanity to the last".
    </p>
    <p>
      The Rev. Mr. Minton concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which
      has rendered the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
      grotesquely ridiculous". He admits that "for more than 1500 years the
      belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom", and that "the public
      mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in the economy of
      nature". He adds: "If we ask why the world now rejects what was once so
      unquestioningly believed, we can only reply that advancing knowledge has
      gradually undermined the belief".
    </p>
    <p>
      In a letter recently sent to the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> against modern
      Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares,
    </p>
    <p>
      "... that the older form of the same fundamental delusion&mdash;the belief
      in possession and in witchcraft&mdash;gave rise in the fifteenth,
      sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of
      innocent men, women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more
      murderous than any to which the Christians of the first three centuries
      were subjected by the authorities of pagan Rome."
    </p>
    <p>
      And Professor Huxley adds:
    </p>
    <p>
      "No one deserves much blame for being deceived in these matters. We are
      all intellectually handicapped in youth by the incessant repetition of the
      stories about possession and witchcraft in both the Old and the New
      Testaments. The majority of us are taught nothing which will help us to
      observe accurately and to interpret observations with due caution."
    </p>
    <p>
      The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was disfigured by
      enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the Christian
      churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of the
      disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shaft not suffer a witch to
      live". The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all persons
      invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining,
      employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit", or generally practising
      any "infernal arts". This was not repealed until the eighteenth century
      was far advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280 years ago have insured
      martyrdom for its inventor; the utilisation of electric force to transmit
      messages around the world would have been clearly the practice of an
      infernal art. At least we may plead that unbelief has healed the bleeding
      feet of science, and made the road free for her upward march.
    </p>
    <p>
      Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has been apparent
      in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on the unbelief in the
      Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were examples either of
      demoniacal possession or of special visitation of deity? For centuries
      under Christianity mental disease was most ignorantly treated. Exorcism,
      shackles, and the whip were the penalties rather than the curatives for
      mental maladies. From the heretical departure of Pinel at the close of the
      last century to the position of Maudsley to-day, every step illustrates
      the march of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in the unbelief not yet
      complete, but now largely preponderant, in the dogma that sickness,
      pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine anger, the results of
      which could neither be avoided nor prevented. The Christian Churches have
      done little or nothing to dispel this superstition. The official and
      authorised prayers of the principal denominations, even to-day, reaffirm
      it. Modern study of the laws of health, experiments in sanitary
      improvements, more careful applications of medical knowledge, have proved
      more efficacious in preventing or diminishing plagues and pestilence than
      have the intervention of the priest or the practice of prayer. Those in
      England who hold the old faith that prayer will suffice to cure disease
      are to-day termed "peculiar people", and are occasionally indicted for
      manslaughter when their sick children die, because the parents have
      trusted to God instead of appealing to the resources of science.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the Church which
      tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been overborne by the
      growing unbelief of the age, even though our little children are yet
      taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand still, and that for
      Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record. As Buckle, arguing for the
      morality of scepticism, says (1):
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     1 "History of Civilisation", vol. i, p. 345.
</pre>
    <p>
      "As long as men refer the movements of the comets to the immediate finger
      of God, and as long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by
      which the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the
      blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural
      appearances. Before they could dare to investigate the causes of these
      mysterious phænomena, it is necessary that they should believe, or at all
      events that they should suspect, that the phænomena themselves were
      capable of being explained by the human mind."
    </p>
    <p>
      As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to humanity has been
      almost solely in measure of the rejection of the Christian theory. A
      century since it was almost universally held that the world was created
      6,000 years ago, or at any rate, that by the sin of the first man, Adam,
      death commenced about that period. Ethnology and Anthropology have only
      been possible in so far as, adopting the regretful words of Sir W. Jones,
      "intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity
      of the accounts delivered by Moses concerning the primitive world".
    </p>
    <p>
      Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung up against
      the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe that the monarch is
      "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be are ordained of God". In the
      struggles for political freedom the weight of the Church was mostly thrown
      on the side of the tyrant. The homilies of the Church of England declare
      that "even the wicked rulers have their power and authority from God ",
      and that "such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against their
      princes disobey God and procure their own damnation". It can scarcely be
      necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States of America that
      the origin of their liberties was in the rejection of faith in the divine
      right of George III.
    </p>
    <p>
      Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not certain gain
      to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal
      torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family? Is
      it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the
      wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which
      providence had awarded them?
    </p>
    <p>
      If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as justification
      for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty for the utterance of
      all opinions achieved because of growing unbelief. At one period in
      Christendom each Government acted as though only one religious faith could
      be true, and as though the holding, or at any rate the making known, any
      other opinion was a criminal act deserving punishment. Under the one word
      "infidel", even as late as Lord Coke, were classed together all who were
      not Christians, even though they were Mahommedans, Brahmins, or Jews. All
      who did not accept the Christian faith were sweepingly denounced as
      infidels and therefore <i>hors de la loi</i>. One hundred and forty-five
      years since, the Attorney-General, pleading in our highest court, said
      (1): "What is the definition of an infidel? Why, one who does not believe
      in the Christian religion. Then a Jew is an infidel." And English history
      for several centuries prior to the Commonwealth shows how habitually and
      most atrociously Christian kings, Christian courts, and Christian
      churches, persecuted and harassed these infidel Jews. There was a time in
      England when Jews were such infidels that they were not even allowed to be
      sworn as witnesses. In 1740 a legacy left for establishing an assembly for
      the reading of the Jewish scriptures was held to be void (2) because it
      was "for the propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the
      Christian religion ". It is only in very modern times that municipal
      rights have been accorded in England to Jews. It is barely thirty years
      since they have been allowed to sit in Parliament. In 1851, the late Mr.
      Newdegate in debate (3) objected "that they should have sitting in that
      House an individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor". Lord Chief
      Justice Raymond has shown (4) how it was that Christian intolerance was
      gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but heretofore he could
      not; for then they were looked upon as enemies, but now commerce has
      taught the world more humanity."
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right of any kind,
      with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt was payable. The plea
      of alien infidel as answer to a claim was actually pleaded in court as
      late as 1737. (5) In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says (6): "All infidels
      are in law <i>perpetui inimici</i>; for between them, as with the devils
      whose subjects they be, and the Christian, there is perpetual hostility".
      Twenty years ago the law of England required the writer of any periodical
      publication or pamphlet under sixpence in price to give sureties for £800
      against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last person prosecuted in
      1868 for non-compliance with that law, which was repealed by Mr. Gladstone
      in 1869. Up till the 23rd December, 1888, an infidel in Scotland was only
      allowed to enforce any legal claim in court on condition that, if
      challenged, he denied his infidelity. If he lied and said he was a
      Christian, he was accepted, despite his lying. If he told the truth and
      said he was an unbeliever, then he was practically an outlaw, incompetent
      to give evidence for himself or for any other. Fortunately all this was
      changed by the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on 24th December. Has not
      humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through unbelief?
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     1 Omychund v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 29.

     2  D'Costa. D'Pays, Amb. 228.

     3 Hansard cxvi. 381.

     4 Lord Raymond's reports 282, Wells v. Williams.

     5 Ramkissenseat v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 61.

     6 Coke's reports, Calvin's ease.
</pre>
    <p>
      For more than a century and a-half the Roman Catholic had in practice
      harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant Christian, than
      was even during that period the fate of the Jew or the unbeliever. If the
      Roman Catholic would not take the oath of abnegation, which to a sincere
      Romanist was impossible, he was in effect an outlaw, and the "jury
      packing" so much complained of to-day in Ireland is one of the habit
      survivals of the old bad time when Roman Catholics were thus by law
      excluded from the jury box.
    </p>
    <p>
      The <i>Scotsman</i> of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the Rev. Dr.
      Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening lectures on
      Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity and untenableness of
      regarding every word in the Bible as inspired; and it adds:
    </p>
    <p>
      "We well remember the awful indignation such opinions inspired, and it is
      refreshing to contrast them with the calmness with which they are now
      received. Not only from the pulpits of the city, but from the press
      (misnamed religious) were his doctrines denounced. And one eminent U.P.
      minister went the length of publicly praying for him, and for the students
      under his care. It speaks volumes for the progress made since then, when
      we think in all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the
      chair, differs in his teaching from the Confession of Faith much more
      widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely orthodox,
      whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other all his life."
    </p>
    <p>
      And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual progress of
      unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take from differing
      Churches two recent illustrations: The late Principal Dr. Lindsay
      Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his important work on "Biblical
      Theology", claims that "all the statements of Scripture are alike to be
      deferred to as presenting to us the mind of God ".
    </p>
    <p>
      Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says:
    </p>
    <p>
      "We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors]
      statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research has
      shown to be the scientific truths&mdash;i.e., we find in them statements
      which modern science proves to be erroneous."
    </p>
    <p>
      At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at Derby, the
      Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J. G. Richardson said of the Old
      Testament that
    </p>
    <p>
      "it was no longer honest or even safe to deny that this noble literature,
      rich in all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given&mdash;so
      the Church had always taught, and would always teach&mdash;under the
      inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was
      sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and
      accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical world
      which science had abandoned and could never resume; it contained passages
      of narrative which devout and temperate men pronounced discredited, both
      by external and internal evidence; it praised, or justified, or approved,
      or condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the teaching of Christ and the
      conscience of the Christian alike condemned."
    </p>
    <p>
      Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that "the
      teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and humanised,
      and that "the conscience of the Christian" is in quantity and quality made
      fitter for human progress by the ever increasing additions of knowledge of
      these later and more heretical days.
    </p></html>