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ENGLISH SECULARISM
A CONFESSION OF BELIEF
GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE
THINK
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
1896
Copyright by
The Open Court Publishing Co.
1896.
^ «b7bb^(^/
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
THE OPEN COURT, in which the series of articles consti-
tuting this work originally appeared, has given account of
many forms of faith, supplementary or confirmatory of its own,
and sometimes of forms of opinions dissimilar where there ap-
peared to be instruction in them. It will be an advantage to the
reader should its editor state objections, or make comments, as he
may deem necessary and useful. English Secularism is as little
known in America as American and Canadian Secularisation is un-
derstood in Great Eritain. The new form of free thought known
as English Secularism does not include either Theism or Atheism.
Whether Monism, which I can conceive as a nobler and scientific
form of Theism, might be a logical addition to the theory of Secu-
larism, as set forth in the following pages, the editor of The Open
Court may be able to show. If this be so, every open-minded
reader will better see the truth by comparison. Contrast is the
incandescent light of argument.
George Jacob Holyoake.
Eastern Lodge, Brighton, England,
February, 1896.
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
AMONG the representative freethinkers of the world Mr.
_ George J. Holyoake takes a most prominent position. He
is a leader of leaders, he is the brain of the Secularist party in
England, he is a hero and a martyr of their cause.
Judged as a man, Mr. Holyoake is of sterling character ; he
was not afraid of prison, nor of unpopularity and ostracism, nor
of persecution of any kind. If he ever feared anything, it was be-
ing not true to himself and committing himself to something that
was not right. He was an agitator all his life, and as an agitator
he was — whether or not we agree with his views — an ideal man.
He is the originator of the Secularist movement that was started
in England ; he invented the name Secularism, and he was the
backbone of the Secularist propaganda ever since it began. Mr.
Holyoake left his mark in the history of thought, and the influence
which he exercised will for good or evil remain an indelible heir-
loom of the future.
Secularism is not the cause which The Open Court Publishing
Co. upholds, but it is a movement which on account of its impor-
tance ought not to be overlooked. Whatever our religious views
may be, we must reckon with the conditions that exist, and Secu-
larism is powerful enough to deserve general attention.
What is Secularism ?
Secularism espouses the cause of the world versus theology:
of the secular and temporal versus the sacred and ecclesiastical.
Secularism claims that religion ought never to be anything but a
vi ENGLISH SECULARISM.
private affair ; it denies the right of any kind of church to be as-
sociated with the public life of a nation, and proposes to supersede
the ofiBcial influence which religious institutions still exercise in
both hemispheres.
Rather than abolish religion or paralyse its influence, The
Open Court Publishing Co. would advocate on the one hand to let
the religious spirit pervade the whole body politic, together with
all public institutions, and also the private life of every single in-
dividual ; and on the other hand to carry all secular interests into
the church, which would make the church subservient to the real
needs of mankind.
Thus we publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith, which is
an exposition of Secularism, not because we are Secularists, which
we are not, but because we believe that Mr. Holyoake is entitled
to a hearing. Mr. Holyoake is a man of unusually great common
sense, of keen reasoning faculty, and of indubitable sincerity.
What he says he means, and what he believes he lives up to, what
he recognises to be right he will do, even though the whole world
would stand up against him. In a word, he is a man who accord-
ing to our conception of religion proves by his love of truth that,
however he himself may disclaim it, he is actually a deeply re-
ligious man. His religious earnestness is rare, and our churches
would be a good deal better off if all the pulpits were filled with
men of his stamp.
We publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith not for Sec-
ularists only, but also and especially for the benefit of religious
people, of his adversaries, of his antagonists ; for they ought to
know him and understand him ; they ought to appreciate his mo-
tives for dissenting from church views ; and ought to learn why so
many earnest and honest people are leaving the church and will
have nothing to do with church institutions.
Why is it that Christianity is losing its hold on mankind ? Is
it because the Christian doctrines have become antiquated, and
does the church no longer adapt herself to the requirements of the
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. vii
present age ? Is it that the representative Christian thinkers are
lacking in intellectuality and moral strength ? Or is it that the
world at large has outgrown religion and refuses to be gjaided by
the spiritual counsel of popes and pastors ?
Whatever the reason may be, the fact itself cannot be doubted,
and the question is only, What will become of religion in the
future? Will the future of mankind be irreligious (as for in-
stance Mr. Lecky and M. Guyau prophesy) ; or will religion regain
its former importance and become again the leading power in life,
dominating both public and private affairs ?
The first condition of a reconciliation between religion and
the masses of mankind would be for religious men patiently to lis-
ten to the complaints that are made by the adversaries of Christi-
anity, and to understand the position which honest and sensible
freethinkers, such as Mr. Holyoake, take. Religious leaders are
too little acquainted with the world at large; they avoid their
antagonists like outcasts, and rarely, if ever, try to comprehend
their arguments. In the same way, freethinkers as a rule despise
clergymen as hypocrites who for the sake of a living sell their souls
and preach doctrines which they cannot honestly believe. In or-
der to arrive at a mutual understanding, it would be necessary
first of all that both parties should discontinue ostracising one an-
other and become mutually acquainted. They should lay aside
for a while the weapons with which they are wont to combat one
another in the public press and in tract literature ; they should
cease scolding and ridiculing one another and simply present their
own case in terse terms.
This Mr. Holyoake has done. His Confession of Faith is as
concise as any book of the kind can be ; and he, being the origin-
ator of Secularism and its standard-bearer, is the man who speaks
with authority.
For the sake of religion, therefore, and for promoting the mu-
tual understanding of men of a different turn of mind, we present
his book to the public and recommend its careful perusal especially
[
▼ill ENGLISH SECULARISM.
to the clergy, who will learn from this book some of the most im-
portant reasons why Christianity has become unacceptable to a
large class of truth-loving men, who alone for the sake of truth
find it best to stay out of the church.
The preface of a book is as a rule not deemed the right place
to criticise an author, but such is the frankness and impartiality of
Mr. Holyoake that he has kindly permitted the manager of The
Open Court Publishing Co. to criticise his book freely and to state
the disagreements that might obtain between publishers and author
in the very preface of the book. There is no need of making an
extensive use of this permission, as a few remarks will be sufficient
to render clear the difference between Secularism and the views of
The Open Court Publishing Co., which we briefly characterise as
" the Religion of Science."
Secularism divides life into what is secular and what is re-
ligious, and would consign all matters of religion to the sphere of
private interests. The Religion of Science would not divide life
into a secular and a religious* part, but would have both the secu-
lar and the religious united. It would carry religion into all secu-
lar affairs so as to sanctify and transfigure them ; and for this pur-
pose it would make religion practical, so as to be suited to the var-
ious needs of life ; it would make religion scientifically sound, so
as to be in agreement with the best and most scientific thought of
the age ; it would reform church doctrines and raise them from
their dogmatic arbitrariness upon the higher plain of objective
truth.
In emphasising our differences we should, however, not fail to
recognise the one main point of agreement, which is our belief in
science. Mr. Holyoake would settle all questions of doubt by the
usual method of scientific investigation. But there is a difference
even here, which is a different conception of science. While sci-
ence to Mr. Holyoake is secular, we insist on the holiness and re-
ligious significance of science. If there is any revelation of God,
it is truth; and what is science but truth ascertained? Therefore
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. ix
we would advise all preachers and all those to whose charge souls
of men are committed, to take o£f their shoes when science speaks
to them, for science is the voice of God.
The statement is sometimes made by those who belittle science
in the vain hope of exalting religion, that the science of yesterday
has been upset by the science of to-day, and that the science of to-
day may again be upset by the science of to-morrow. Nothing can
be more untrue.
Of course, science must not be identified with the opinion
of scientists. Science is the systematic statement of facts, and
not the theories which are tentatively proposed to fill out the gaps
of our knowledge. What has once been proved to be a fact has
never been overthrown, and the actual stock of science has grown
slowly but surely. The discovery of new facts or the proposition
of a new and reliable hypothesis has often shown the old facts of
science in a new light, but it has never upset or disproved them.
There are fashions in the opinions of scientists, but science itself
is above fashion, above change, above human opinion. Science
partakes of that stern immutability, it is endowed with that eter-
nality and that omnipresent universality which have since olden
times been regarded as the main attribute of Godhood.
There appears in all religions, at a certain stage of the religious
development, a party of dogmatists. They are people who, in their
zeal, insist on the exclusiveness of their own religion, as if truth
were a commodity which, if possessed by one, cannot be possessed
by anybody else. They know little of the spirit that quickens, but
believe blindly in the letter of the dogma. It is not faith in their
opinion that saves, but the blindness of faith. They interpret
Christ's words and declare that he who has another interpretation
must be condemned.
The dogmatic phase in the development of religion is as natu-
ral as boyhood in a human life and as immaturity in the growth of
fruit ; it is natural and necessary, but it is a phase only which will
pass as inevitably by as boyhood changes into manhood, and as
X ENGLISH SECULARISM.
the prescientific stage in the evolution of civilisation gives way to
a better and deeper knowledge of nature.
The dogmatist is in the habit of identifying his dogmatism with
religion ; and that is the reason why his definitions of religion and
morality will unfailingly come in conflict with the common sense
of the people. The dogmatist makes religion exclusive. In the at-
tempt of exalting religion he relegates it to supernatural spheres,
thus excluding it from the world and creating a contrast between
the sacred and the profane, between the divine and the secular,
between religion and life. Thus it happens that religion becomes
something beyond, something extraneous, something foreign to
man's sphere of being. And yet religion has developed for the
sake of sanctifying the daily walks of man, of making the secular
sacred, of filling life with meaning and consecrating even the most
trivial duties of existence.
Secularism is the reaction against dogmatism, but secularism
still accepts the views of the dogmatist on religion ; for it is upon
the dogmatist's valuations and definitions that the secularist rejects
religion as worthless.
The religious, movement, of which The Open Court Publish-
ing Co. is an exponent, represents one further step in the evolution
of religious aspirations. As alchemy develops into chemistry, and
astrology into astronomy, as blind faith changes into seeing face to
face, as belief changes into knowledge, so the religion of miracles,
the religion of a salvation by magic, the religion of the dogmatist,
ripens into the religion of pure and ascertainable truth. The old
dogmas, which in their literal acceptance appear as nonsensical
errors, are now recognised as allegories which symbolise deeper
truths, and the old ideals are preserved not with less, but with
more, significance than before.
God is not smaller but greater since we know more about
Him, as to what He is and what He is not, just as the universe is
c
C
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. xi
not smaller but larger since Copernicus and Kepler opened our
eyes and showed us what the relation of our earth in the solar sys-
tem is and what it is not.
Secularism is one of the signs of the times. It represents the
unbelief in a religious alchemy ; but its antagonism to the religion
of dogmatism does not bode destruction but advance. It repre-
sents the transition to a purer conception of religion. It has not
the power to abolish the church, but only indicates the need of its
reformation.
It is this reformation of religion and of religious institutions
which is the sole aim of all the publications of The Open Court
Publishing Co., and we see in Secularism one of those agencies
that are at work preparing the way for a higher and nobler com-
prehension of the truth.
Mr. Holyoake's aspirations, in our opinion, go beyond the
aims which he himself points out, and thus his Confession of Faith,
although nominally purely secular, will finally, even by church-
men, be recognised in its religious importance. It will help to
purify the confession of faith of the dogmatist.
In offering Mr.. Holyoake's best and maturest thoughts to the
public, we hope that both the secularists and the believers in reli-
gion will by and by learn to understand that Secularism as much
as dogmatism is a phase — both are natural and necessary phases —
in the religious evolution of mankind. There is no use in scolding
either the dogmatist or the secularist, or in denouncing the one on
account of his credulity and superstition, and the other on account
of his dissent ; but there is a use in — nay, there is need of — un-
derstanding the aspirations of both.
There is a need of mutual exchange of thought on the basis of
mutual esteem and good-will. Above all, there is a need of open-
ing the church doors to the secularist.
The church, if it has any right of existence at all, is for the
, world, and not for believers alone. Church members can learn
from the secularist many things which many believers seem to have
c
xii ENGLISH SECULARISM.
forgotten, and, on the other hand, they can teach the unbeliever
what be has overlooked in bis sincere attempts at finding the truth,
May Mr. Holyoake's confession of faith be received in the
spirit in which the author wrote it, which is a candid love of truth,
and also in the spirit in which the publishers undertook its publi-
cation, with the irenic endeavor of letting every honest aspiration
be rightly understood and rightly valued.
Paul Carus,
Manager of The Open Court Publishing Co.
CONTENTS.
CHAPIEK PAGE
I. Open Thought the First Step to Intelligence ... i
II. The Question Stated 5
III, The First Stage of Free Thought : Its Nature and
Limitation 9
IV. The Second Stage of Free Thought : Enterprise . . 17
V. Conquests of Investigation 22
VI. Stationariness of Criticism 28
VII. Third Stage of Free Thought : Secularism .... 34
VIII. Three Principles Vindicated 38
IX. How Secularism Arose 45
X. How Secularism was Diffused 50
XI. Secular Instruction Distinct from Secularism ... 56
XII. The Distinctiveness Made Further Evident .... 60
XIII. Self-Defensive for the People 66
XIV. Rejected Tenets Replaced by Better 71
XV. Morality Independent of Theology 76
XVI. Ethical Certitude . 84
XVII. The Ethical Method of Controversy go
XVIII. Its Discrimination 95
XIX. Apart from Christianism 100
XX. Secularism Creates a New Responsibility .... 106
XXI. Through Opposition to Recognition 112
XXII. Self-Extending Principles 118
Secularist Ceremonies 126
On Marriage 127
Naming Children 128
Over the Dead : Reading at a Grave. At the Grave of a
Child. On Men or Women. On a Career of Public
Usefulness 131
CHAPTER I.
OPEN THOUGHT THE FIRST STEP TO INTELLI-
GENCE.
" It is not prudent to be in the right too
soon, nor to be in the right against everybody
else. And yet it sometimes happens that after
a certain lapse of time, greater or lesser, you
will find that one of those truths which you had
kept to yourself as premature, but which has
got abroad in spite of your teeth, has become
the most commonplace thing imaginable.
— Alphonse Karr.
ONE purpose of these chapters is to explain how
unfounded are the objections of many excellent
Christians to Secular instruction in State, public, or
board schools. The Secular is distinct from theology,
which it neither ignores, assails, nor denies. Things
Secular are as separate from the Church as land from
the ocean. And what nobody seems to discern is that
things Secular are in themselves quite distinct from
Secularism. The Secular is a mode of instruction ;
Secularism is a code of conduct. Secularism does con-
flict with theology ; Secularist teaching would, but
Secular instruction does not.
Persuaded as I am that lack of consideration for
the convictions of the reader creates an impediment
2 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
in the way of his agreement with the writer, and even
disinclines him to examine what is put before him ;
yet some of these pages may be open to this objec-
tion. If so, it is owing to want of thought or want of
art in statement, and is no part of the intention of the
author.
He would have diffidence in expressing, as he does
in these pages, his dissent from the opinions of many
Christian advocates — for whose character and convic-
tions he has great respect, and for some even affec-
tion— did he not perceive that few have any diffidence
or reservation (save in one or two exalted instances^)
in maintaining their views and dissenting from his.
Open thought, which in this chapter is brought
under the reader's notice is sometimes called "self-
thought," or "free thought," or "original thought" —
the opposite of conventional second-hand thought —
which is all that the custom-ridden mass of mankind
is addicted to.
Open thought has three stages :
The first stage is that in which the right to think
independently is insisted on ; and the free action of
opinion — so formed — is maintained. Conscious power
thus acquired satisfies the pride of some ; others limit
its exercise from prudence. Interests, which would
be jeopardised by applying independent thought to
received opinion, keep more persons silent, and thus
many never pass from this stage.
lOf whom the greatest is Mr. Gladstone.
OFEN THOUGHT. 3
The second stage is that in which the right of self-
thought is applied to the criticism of theology, with a
view to clear the way for life according to reason.
This is not the work of a day or year, but is so pro-
longed that clearing the way becomes as it were a pro-
fession, and is at length pursued as an end instead of
a means. Disputation becomes a passion and the
higher state of life, of which criticism is the necessary
precursor, is lost sight of, and many remain at this
stage when it is reached and go no further.
The third stage is that where ethical motives of
conduct apart from Christianity are vindicated for the
guidance of those who are indifferent about theology,
or who reject it altogether. Supplying to such persons
Secular reasons for duty is Secularism, the range of
which is illimitable. It begins where free thought
usually ends, and constitutes a new form of construc-
tive thought, the principles and policy of which are
quite different from those acted upon in the preceding
stages. Controversy concerns itself with what is \ Sec-
ularism with what ought to be.
It is pertinent here to say that Christianity does
not permit eclecticism — that is, it does not tolerate
others selecting portions of Christian Scriptures pos-
sessing the mark of intrinsic truth, to which many
could cheerfully conform in their lives. This rule
compels all who cannot accept the entire Scriptures
to deal with its teachings as they find them expressed,
and- for which Christianity makes itself responsible.
4 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
All the while it is quite evident that Christians do
permit eclecticism among themselves. The great Con-
gress of the Free Churches, recently held in Notting-
ham, representing the personal and vital form of
Christianity, had a humanness and tolerance unmani-
fested by Christianity before, showing that humanity
is stronger than historical integrity. If any one, there-
fore, should draw up, as might be done, a theory of
Christianity solely from such doctrines as are repre-
sented in the elliptical preaching, practice, and social
life of Christians of to-day, a very different estimate
of the Christian system would have to be given from
that with which the author deals in the subsequent
chapters. In them Christianity is represented as Free-
thought has found it, and as it exists in the Scriptures,
in the law, in the pulpit, and in the school, which con-
stitute its total force in the respects in which it re-
presses and discourages independent thought. Sci-
ence, truth, and criticism have engrafted themselves
on historic Christianity. It has now new articles of
belief. When it avows them it will win larger con-
currence and respect than it can now command. .
CHAPTER II.
THE QUESTION STATED. -
"Look forward — not backward;
Look up — not down ;
Look around :
Lend a hand." 1
— Edward Everett Hale, D. D.
Where a monarchy is master, inquiry is apt to be
a disturbing element ; and though exercised in the in-
terest of the commonwealth it is none the less re-
sented. Where the priest is master inquiry is sharply
prohibited. The priest represents a spiritual monarchy
in which the tenets of belief are fixed, assumed to be
infallible, and to be prescribed by deity. Thus the
priest regards inquiry as proceeding from an imperti-
nent distrust, to which he is not reconciled on being
assured that it is undertaken in the interest of truth.
Thus the king denounces inquiry as sedition, and the
priest as sin. In the end the inquirer finds himself an
alien in State and Church, and laws are made against
his life, his liberty, property, and veracity.*
IDr. Hale did not popularise these energetic maxims of earnestness in
the connexion in which they are here used; but their wisdom is of general
application.
S When martyrdoms and imprisonments ceased, disabling laws remained
which'imposed the Christian oath on all who appealed to the courts, and any
6 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
Thus from the time when monarch and priest first
set up their pretensions in the world, the inquiring
mind has had small encouragement. When Protes-
tantism came it merely conceded inquiry under direc-
tion, and only so far as it tended to confirm its own
anti-papal tenets. But when inquiry claimed to be
independent, unfettered, uncontrolled, — in fact to be
free inquiry, — then Papist, Lutheran, and Dissenter,
alike regarded it as dangerous, and stigmatised it by
every term calculated to deter or dissuade people
from it.
But though this combined defamation of inquiry
set many against it, it did not intimidate men entirely.
There arose independent thinkers who held that un-
fettered investigation was the discoverer of truth and
dangerous to error only, and that the freer it was the
more effective it must be.
Still timorous-minded persons remained suspicious
of free thought. At its best they found it involved
conflict with false opinion, and conflict, to those with-
out aspiration or conscience, is disquieting ; and where
impartial investigation interfered with personal inter-
ests it was opposed. No one could enter on the search
for truth without finding his path obstructed by theo-
logical errors and interdictions. Having taken the side
of truth, all who were loyal to it, were bound like Bun-
yan's Pilgrim to withstand the Apollyons who opposed
who h«d the pride of veracity and declined so to swear, were denied protec-
tion for property, or credence of their word.
THE QUESTION STATED. 7
it, and a combat began which lasted for centuries, and
is not yet ended. But though theology was always in
power, men of courage at length established the right
of free inquiry, and established also a free press for
the publication of the results arrived at. These rights
were so indispensable for progress and were so long
resisted, that generations fought for them as ends in
themselves. Thus there grew up, as in military affairs,
a class whose profession was destruction, and free
thinkers came to be regarded as negationists. When
I came into the field the combat was raging. Richard
Carlile had not long been liberated from successive
imprisonments of more than nine years duration in all.
Charles Southwell was in Bristol gaol. Before his
sentence had half expired I was in Gloucester gaol.
George Adams was there ; Mrs. Harriet Adams was
committed for trial from Cheltenham. Matilda Roalfe,
Thomas Finlay, Thomas Paterson, and others were
incarcerated in Scotland. Robert Buchanan and Lloyd
Jones, two social missionaries — colleagues of my own
— only escaped imprisonment by swearing they be-
lieved what they did not believe, — an act I refused to
imitate, and no mean inconvenience has resulted to
me from it. I took part in the vindication of the free
publicity of opinion until it was practically conceded.
At the time when I was arrested in 1842, the Chel-
tenham magistrates who were angered at defiant re-
marks I made, had the power (and used it) of com-
mitting me to the Quarter Sessions as a "felon," where
8 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
the same justices could resent, by penalties, what I had
said to them. On representations I made to Parlia-
ment— through my friend John Arthur Roebuck and
others — Sir James Graham caused a Bill to be passed
which removed trials for opinion to the Assizes. I
was the first person tried under this act. Thus for the
first time heresy was ensured a dispassionate trial and
was no longer subject to the jurisdiction of local preju-
dice and personal magisterial resentment.
When overt acts of outrage were no longer pos-
sible against the adherents of free thought. Christians,
some from fairness, and others from necessity, began
to reason with them and asked: "Now you have
established your claim to be heard. What have you
to say?" The reply I proposed was : "Secularism —
a form of opinion relating to the duty of this life which
substituted the piety of useful men for the usefulness
of piety."
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT : ITS NATURE
AND LIMITATION.
"He who cannot reason is defenceless;
he who fears to reason has a coward mind; he
who will not reason is willing to be deceived
and will deceive all who listen to him.
— Maxim of Free Thought.
FREE THOUGHT is founded upon reason. It is
the exercise of reason, without which free thought
is free foolishness. Free thought being the precursor
of Secularism, it is necessary first to describe its prin-
ciples and their limitation. Free thought means inde-
pendent self-thinking. Some say all thought is free
since a man can think what he pleases and no one can
prevent him, which is not true. Unfortunately think-
ing can be prevented by subtle spiritual intimidation,
in earlier and even in later life.
When a police agent found young Mazzini in the
fields of Genoa, apparently meditating, his father's at
tention was called to the youth. His father was told
that the Austrian Government did not permit thinking.
The Inquisition intimidated nations from thinking.
The priests by preventing instruction and prohibiting
lo ENGLISH SECULARISM.
books, limited thinking. Archbishop Whately shows
that no one can reason without words, and since speech
can be, and is, disallowed and made penal, the high-
way of thought can be closed. No one can think to
any purpose without inquiry concerning his subject,
and inquiry can be made impossible. It is of little
use that any one thinks who cannot verify his ideas by
comparison with those of his compeers. To prevent
this is to discourage thought. In fact thousands are
prevented thinking by denying them the means and
the facilities of thinking.
Free thought means fearless thought. It is not
deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual conse-
quences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the
true investigator, who takes truth for authority not au-
thority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is
independent ; he is under no dread ; he yields to no
menace ; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor
pulpits, nor society — whose opinion appals so many.
He who has the manly passion of free thought, has
no fear of anything, save the fear of error.
Fearlessness is the essential condition of effective
thought. If Satan sits at the top of the Bible with
perdition open underneath it, into which its readers
will be pushed who may doubt what they find in its
pages, the right of private judgment is a snare. A
man is a fool who inquires at this risk. He had better
accept at once the superstition of the first priest he
FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. \\
meets. It is not conceivable how a Christian can be
z.free thinker.
He who is afraid to know both sides of a question
cannot think upon it. Christians do not, as a rule,
want to know what can be said against their views,
and they keep out of libraries all books which would
inform others. Thus such Christians cannot think
freely, and are against others doing it. Doubt comes
of thinking ; the Christian commonly regards doubt as
sin. How can he be a free thinker who thinks thinking
is a sin ?
Free thought implies three things as conditions of
truth :
1. Free inquiry, which is the pathway to truth.
2. Free publicity to the ideas acquired, in order to
learn whether they are useful — which is the encourage-
ment of truth.
3. The free discussion of convictions without which
it is not possible to know whether they are true or
false, which is the^verification of truth.
A man is not a man unless he is a thinker ; he is a
fool having no ideas of his own. If he happens to live
among men who do think, he browses like an animal on
their ideas. He is a sort of kept man being supported
by the thoughts of others. He is what in England is
called a pauper, who subsists upon "outdoor relief,"
allowed him by men of intellect.
Without the right of publicity, individual thought,
however praiseworthy and however perfect, would be
xa ENGLISH SECULARISM.
barren to the community. Algernon Sidney said :
"The best legacy I can leave my children is free
speech and the example of using it.*'
The clergy of every denomination are unfriendly to
its use. The soldiers of the cross do not fight adver-
saries in the open. Mr. Gladstone alone among emi-
nent men of piety has insisted upon the duty of the
Church to prove its claims in discussion. In his In-
troduction to his address at the Liverpool College
(1872 or 1873) he said: "I wish to place on record
my conviction that belief cannot now be defended by
reticence any more than by railing, or by any privi-
leges or assumption." Since the day of Milton there
has been no greater authority on the religious wisdom
of debate.
Thought, even theological, is often useless, ill-in-
formed, foolish, mischievous, or even wicked ; and he
alone who submits it to free criticism gives guarantees
that he means well, and is self-convinced. By criti-
cism alone comes exposure, correction, or confirma-
tion. The right of criticism is the sole protection of
the community against error of custom, ignorance,
prejudice, or incompetence. It is not until a proposi-
tion has been generally accepted after open and fair
examination, that it can be considered as established
and can safely be made a ground of action or belief. ^
These are the implementary rights of thought. They
are what grammar is to the writer, which teaches him
ISc* Formation of Opinions, by Samael Bailty.
FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 13
how to express himself, but not what to say. These
rights are as the rules of navigation to the mariner.
They teach him how to steer a ship but do not instruct
him where to steer to.
The full exercise of these rights of mental freedom
is what training in the principles of jurisprudence is to
the pleader, but it does not provide him with a brief.
It is conceivable that a man may come to be a master
of independent thinking and never put his powers to
use ; just as a man may know every rule of grammar
and yet never write a book. In the same way a man
may pass an examination in the art of navigation and
never take command of a vessel; or he may qualify for
a Barrister, be called to the Bar and never plead in any
court. We know from experience that many persons
join in the combat for the right of intellectual freedom
for its own sake, without intending or caring to use
the right when won. Some are generous enough to
claim and contend for these rights from the belief that
they may be useful to others. This is the first stage
of free thought, and, as has been said, many never
pass beyond it.
Independent thinking is concerned primarily with
removing obstacles to its own action, and in contests
for liberty of speech by tongue and pen. The free
mind fights mainly for its own freedom. It may be-
gin in curiosity and may end in intellectual pride—
unless conscience takes care of it. Its nature is icon-
14 ENGLISH SECULARISM,
oclastic and it may exist without ideas of reconstruc-
tion.
Though a man goes no further, he is a better man
than he who never went as far. He has acquired a
new power, and is sure of his own mind. Just as one
who has learned to fence, or to shoot, has a confidence
in encountering an adversary, which is seldom felt by
one who never had a sword in hand, or practised at a
target. The sea is an element of recreation to one who
has learned to swim ; it is an element of death to one
ignorant of the art. Besides, the thinker has attained a
courage and confidence unknown to the man of ortho-
dox mind. Since God (we are assured) is the God of
truth, the honest searcher after truth has God on his
side, and has no dread of the King of Perdition — the
terror of all Christian people — since the business of
Satan is with those who are content with false ideas ;
not with those who seek the true. If it be a duty to seek
the truth and to live the truth, honest discussion, which
discerns it, identifies it, clears it, and establishes it, is
a form of worship of real honor to God and of true
service to man. If the clergyman's speech on behalf
of God is rendered exact by criticism, the criticism is
a tribute, and no mean tribute to heaven. Thus the
free exercise of the rights of thought involve no risk
hereafter.
Moreover, so far as a man thinks he gains. Thought
implies enterprise and exertion of mind, and the re-
sult is wealth of understanding, to be acquired in no
FIRST STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 15
Other way. This intellectual property like other prop-
erty, has its rights and duties. The thinker's right is
to be left in undisturbed possession of what he has
earned ; and his duty is to share his discoveries of
truth with mankind, to whom he owes his opportuni-
ties of acquiring it.
Free expression involves consideration for others,
on principle. Democracy without personal deference
becomes a nuisance ; so free speech without courtesy
is repulsive, as free publicity would be, if not mainly
limited to reasoned truth. Otherwise every blatant
impulse would have the same right of utterance as
verified ideas. Even truth can only claim priority of
utterance, when its utility is manifest. As the number
and length of hairs on a man's head is less important
to know, than the number and quality of the ideas in
his brain.
True free thought requires special qualities to in-
sure itself acceptance. It must be owned that the
thinker is a disturber. He is a truth-hunter, and there
is no telling what he will find. Truth is an exile which
has been kept out of her kingdom, and Error is a
usurper in possession of it ; and the moment Truth
comes into her right. Error has to give up its occu-
pancy of her territory ; and as everybody consciously,
or unconsciously harbors some of the emissaries of the
usurper, they do not like owning the fact, and they
dispute the warrant of truth to search their premises,
i6 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
though to be relieved of such deceitful and costly in-
mates would be an advantage to them.
An inalienable attribute of free thought, which no
theology possesses, is absolute toleration of all ideas
put forward in the interests of public truth, and sub-
mitted to public discussion. The true free thinker is
in favor of the free action of all opinion which injures
no one else, and of putting the best construction he
can on the acts of others, not only because he has
thereby less to tolerate, but from perceiving that he
who lacks tolerance towards the ideas of others has no
claim for the tolerance of his own. The defender of
toleration must himself be tolerant. Condemning the
coercion of ideas, he is pledged to combat error only by
reason. Vindictiveness towards the erring is not only
inconsistency, it is persecution. Thus free thought is
not only self-defence against error but, by the tolera-
tion it imposes, is itself security for respectfulness in
controversy.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT : ENTER-
PRISE.
"Better wild ideas than no ideas at all."
—Profettor Nichol at Horshatn.
'T^HE emancipation of the understanding from in-
-^ timidation and penal restraint soon incited think-
ers of enterprise to put their new powers to use. The-
ology being especially a forbidden subject and the
greatest repressive force, inquiry into its pretensions
first attracted critical attention.
In every century forlorn hopes of truth had set out
to storm one or other of the ramparts of theology.
Forces had been marshalled by great leaders and bat-
tle often given in the open field ; and unforeseen vic-
tories are recorded, in the annals of the wars of infan-
tine rationalism, against the full-grown powers of su-
perstition and darkness. In every age valiant thinkers,
scholars, philosophers, and critics, even priests in de-
fiance of power, ecclesiastical and civil, have, at their
own peril, explored the regions of forbidden truth.
In Great Britain it was the courage of insurgent
thinkers among the working class — whom no imprison
i8 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
ment could intimidate — who caused the right of free
speech and free publicity to be finally conceded. Thus
rulers came round to the conclusion of Caballero, that
"tolerance is as necessary in ideas as in social rela-
tions."
As soon as opinion was known to be emancipated,
men began to think who never thought before. The
thinker no longer had to obtain a "Ticket of Leave "
from the Churches before he could inquire ; he was
free to investigate where he would and what he would.
Power is, as a rule, never imparted nor acquired in
vain, and honest men felt they owed it to those who
had won freedom for them, that they should extend
it. Thus it came to pass that independence was an
inspiration to action in men of intrepid minds. Pro-
fessor Tyndall in the last words he wrote for publica-
tion said, " I choose the nobler part of Emerson when,
after various disenchantments, he exclaims, ' I covet
truth !' " On printing these words the Wesiminsier
Gazette added : "The gladness of true heroism visits
the heart of him who is really competent to say this."
The energies of intellectual intrepidity had doubtless
been devoted to science and social progress ; but as
philosophers have found, down to Huxley's day, all
exploration was impossible in that direction. Murchi-
son, Brewster, Buckland, and other pioneers of science
were intimidated. Lyell held back his book, on the
Antiquity of Man, twenty years. Tyndall, Huxley,
and Spencer were waiting to be heard. As Huxley
SECOND STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 19
has justly said : "there was no Thoroughfare into the
Kingdom of Nature — By Order — Moses." Hence, to
examine theology, to discover whether its authority
was absolute, became a necessity. It was soon seen
that there was ground for scepticism. The priests re-
sented criticism by representing the sceptic of their
pretensions, as being sceptical of everything, whereas
they were only sceptics of clerical infallibility. They
indeed did aver that branches of human knowledge,
received as well establisned, were really open to ques-
tion, in order to show that if men could not be con-
fident of things of which they had experience, how
could the Churches be confident of things of which no
man had experience — and which contradicted experi-
ence? So far from disbelieving everything, scepticism
went everywhere in search of truth and certainty.
Since the Church could not be absolutely certain of
the truth of its tenets, its duty was to be tolerant.
But being intolerant it became as Julian Hibbert put
it — "well-understood self-defence" to assail it. The
Church fought for power, the thinker fought for truth.
Free thought among the people may be likened to
a good ship manned by adventurous mariners, who,
cruising about in the ocean of theology came upon
sirens, as other mariners had done before — dangerous
to be followed by navigators bound to ports of pro-
gress. Many were thereby decoyed to their own de-
struction. The sirens of the Churches sang alluring
songs whose refrains were :
20 ENGLISH SECULARISM,
1. The Bible the guide of God.
2. The origin of the universe disclosed.
3. The care of Providence assured.
4. Deliverance from peril by prayer dependable.
5. Original sin effaceable by grace.
6. Perdition avoidable by faith in crucifixion.
7. Future life revealed.
These propositions were subjects of resonant
hymns, sermons, and tracts, and were not, and are
not, disowned, but still defended in discussion by or-
thodox and clerical advocates. Save salvation by the
blood of Christ (a painful idea to entertain), the other
ideas might well fascinate the uninquiring. They had
enchanted many believers, but the explorers of whom
we speak had acquired the questioning spirit, and had
learned prudently to look at both sides of familiar sub-
jects and soon discovered that the fair-seeming propo-
sitions which had formerly imposed on their imagina-
tion were unsound, unsightly, and unsafe. The Syra-
cusans of old kept a school in which slaves were taught
the ways of bondage. Christianity has kept such a
school in which subjection of the understanding was
inculcated, and the pupils, now free to investigate, re-
solved to see whether such things were true.
Then began the reign of refutation of theological
error, by some from indignation at having been im-
posed upon, by others from zeal that misconception
should end ; by more from enthusiasm for facts ; by
the bolder sort from resentment at the intimidation
SECOND STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 21
and cruelty with which inquiry had been suppressed
so long ; and by not a few from the love of disputation
which has for some the delight men have for chess or
cricket, or other pursuit which has conflict and con-
quest in it.
Self-determined thought is a condition of the pro-
gress of nations. Where would science be but for open
thought, the nursing mother of enterprise, of discov-
ery, of invention, of new conditions of human better-
ment?
A modern Hindu writer^ tells us that : "The Hindu
is sorely handicapped by customs which are prescribed
by his religious books. Hedged in by minute rules
and restrictions the various classes forming the Hindu
community have had but little room for expansion and
progress. The result has been stagnation. Caste has
prevented the Hindus from sinking, but it has also
preventing them from rising."
The old miracle-bubbles which the Jews blew into
the air of wonder two thousand years ago, delight
churches still in their childhood. The sea of theology
would have been stagnant centuries ago, had not in-
surgent thinkers, at the peril of their lives, created
commotion in it. Morals would have been poisoned
on the shores of theology had not free thought purified
the waters by putting the salt of reason into that sea,
freshening it year by year.
1 Pramatba Nath Bom.
CHAPTER V.
CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION.
"The secret of Genius is to suffer no fic-
tion to live." — Goethe.
THEOLOGIANS had so choked the human mind
with a dense undergrowth of dogmas that it was
like cutting through an African forest, such as Stanley
encountered, to find the paths of truth.
On that path, when found, many things unforeseen
before, became plain. The siren songs of orthodoxy
were discovered to have strange discords of sense in
them.
I. The Guide of God seemed to be very human — not
authentic, not consistent — containing things not read-
able nor explainable in the family; pagan fictions, such
as the Incarnation reluctantly believable as the device
of a moral deity. Men of genius and of noble ethical
sympathy do however deem it defensible. In any hu-
man book the paternal exaction of such suffering as
fell to Christ, would be regarded with alarm and re-
pugnance. Wonder was felt that Scripture, purporting
to contain the will of deity, should not be expressed
so unmistakably that ignorance could not misunder-
CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION. 23
Stand it, nor perversity misconstrue it. The gods know
how to write.
2. The origin of all things has excited and dis-
appointed the curiosity of the greatest exploring minds
of every age. That the secret of the universe is un-
disclosed, is manifest from the different and differing
conjectures concerning it. The origin of the universe
remains unknowable. What awe fills or rather takes
possession of the mind which comprehends this ' Why
existence exists is the cardinal wonder.
3. Pleasant and free from anxiety, life would be
were it true, that Providence is a present help in the
day of need. Alas, to the poor it is evident that Prov-
idence does not interfere, either to befriend the good
in their distress, or arrest the bad in the act of crime.
4. The power of prayer has been the hope of the
helpless and the oppressed in every age. Every man
wishes it was true that help could be had that way.
Then every just man could protect himself at will
against his adversaries. But experience shows that
all entreaty is futile to induce Providence to change
its universal habit of non-intervention. Prayer be-
guiles the poor but provides no dinner. Mr. Spurgeon
said at the Tabernacle that prayer filled his meal
barrel when empty. I asked that he should publish
the recipe in the interests of the hungry. But he made
no reply.
5. There is reason to think that original sin is
not anything more than original ignorance. The be-
24 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
lief in natural depravity discourages all efforts of pro-
gress. The primal imperfection of human nature is only
effaceable by knowledge and persistent endeavor. Even
in things lawful to do, excess is sin, judged by human
standards. There may be error without depravity.
6. Eternal perdition for conscientious belief,
whether erroneous or not, is humanly incredible. The
devisors of this doctrine must have been unaware that
belief is an affair of ignorance, prejudice, custom,
education, or evidence. The liability of the human
race to eternal punishment is the foundation on which
all Christianity (except Unitarianism) rests. This
awful belief, if acted upon with the sincerity that
Christianity declares it should be, would terminate all
enjoyment, and all enterprise would cease in the world.
None would ever marry. No persons, with any hu-
manity in their hearts would take upon themselves the
awful responsibility of increasing the number of the
damned. The registrar of births would be the most
fiendish clerk conceivable. He would be practically
the secretary of hell.
The theory that all the world was lost through a
curious and enterprising lady, eating an apricot or an
apple, and that three thousand or more years after,
mankind had to be redeemed by the murder of an in-
nocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to be-
lieve in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a
scheme.
Though this reasoning will seem to many an argu-
CONQ U£S 2 S OF INVEST JG A TJON. 25
ment against the existence of God whereas it is merely
against the attributes of deity, as ascribed to him by
Christianity. If God be not moral, in the human sense
of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is
only he whose principles of justice, men can under-
stand, that men can trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, con-
spicuous for his clearness of view and dispassionate-
ness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said : " The
suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things he is
responsible for evil as well as for good, and it appears
utterly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that
he should punish another for that which he has in fact
done himself." The poet concurs with the philoso-
pher when he exclaims :
"The loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds."*
Christianity indeed speaks of the love of God in send-
ing his son to die for the security of others. But not
less is the heart of the intelligent and humane believer
torn with fear, as he thinks what must be the charac-
ter of that God who could only be thus appeased. The
example of self-sacrifice is noble — but is it noble in
any one who deliberately creates the necessity for it?
The better side of Christianity seems overshadowed
by the worse.
7. Future life is uncertain, being unprovable and
seemingly improbable, judging from the dependence
l-Browaiai;.
26 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
of life on material conditions. Christians themselves
do not seem confident of another existence. If they
were sure of it, who of them would linger here when
those they love and honor have gone before? Ere we
reach the middle of our days, the joy of every heart
lies in some tomb. If the Christian actually believed
that the future was real, would he hang black plumes
over the hearse, and speak of death as darkness? No !
the cemeteries would be bung with joyful lights, the
grave would be the gate of Paradise. Every one would
find justifiable excuse for leaving this for the happier
world. All tenets which are contradicted by reason
had better not be.
Many preachers now disown, in controversy, these
doctrines, but until they carry the professions of the
platform into the statute book, the rubric, and the pul-
pit, such doctrines remain operative, and the Churches
remain answerable for them. Nonconformists do not
protest against a State Church on account of its doc-
trines herein enumerated. When the doctrines which
conflict with reason and humanity are disowned by
authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denomina-
tions, the duty of controverting them as impediments
to progress will cease.
It may be said in reply to what is here set forth as
tenets of Christian Scripture, that the writer follows
the letter and not the spirit of the word. Yes, that is
what he does. He is well aware of the new practice
of seeking refuge in the "spirit," of "expanding" the
CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION. 27
letter and taking a "new range of view." He however
holds that to drop the "letter" is to drop the doc-
trine. To "expand" the "letter" is to change it.
New " range of view " is the term under which deser-
tion of the text is disguised. But " new range" means
new thought, which in this insidious way is put for-
ward to supersede the old. The frank way is to say
so, and admit that the "letter" is obsolete — is gone,
is disproved, and that new views which are truer con-
stitute the new letter of progress. The best thing to
do with the "dead hand " is to bury it. To try to ex-
pand dissolution is but galvanising the corpse and
tying the dead to the living. , -4 -
CHAPTER VI.
STATIONARINESS OF CRITICISM.
" Zt-i] without knowledge is like expedi-
tion to a man in the dark." — /akn Newton.
CRITICISM in theology, as in literature, is with
many an intoxication. Zest in showing what is
wrong is apt to blunt the taste for what is right, which
it is the true end of criticism to discover. Lord Byron
said critics disliked Pope because he afforded them so
few chances of objection. They found fault with him
because he had no faults. The criticism of theology
begets complacency in many. There is a natural satis-
faction in being free from the superstition of the vul-
gar, in the Church as well as out of it. No wonder
many find abiding pleasure in the intellectual refuta-
tion of the errors of supernaturalism and in putting its
priests to confusion. Absorbed in the antagonism of
theology, many lose sight of ultimate utility, and re-
gard error, not as a misfortune to be alleviated, so
much as a fault to be exposed. Like the theologian
whose color they take, they do not much consider
whether their method causes men to dislike the truth
through its manner of being offered to them. Their
STATIONAKINESS OF CRITICISM. 29
ambition is to make those in error look foolish. Free
thinkers of zeal are apt to become intense, and like
Jules Ferry (a late French premier), care less for power,
than for conflict, and the lover of conflict is not easily
induced to regard the disproof of theology as a means
to an end' higher than itself. It is difficult to impart
to uncalculating zealots a sense of proportion. They
dash along the warpath by their own momentum. Rail-
way engineers find that it takes twice as much power
to stop an express train as it does to start it.
When I first knew free thought societies they were
engaged in Church-fighting — which is still popular
among them, and which has led the public to confuse
criticism with Secularism, an entirely different thing.
Insurgent thought exclusively directed, breeds, as
is said elsewhere, a distinguished class of men — among
scholars as well as among the uninformed — who have
a passion for disputation, which like other passions
" grows by what it feeds upon." Yet a limited number
of such paladins of investigation are not without uses
in the economy of civilisations. They resemble the
mighty hunters of old, they extirpate beasts of prey
which roam the theological forests, and thus they ren-
der life more safe to dwellers in cities, open to the
voracious incursions of supernaturalism.
Without the class of combatants described, in whom
discussion is irrepressible, and whose courage neither
1 Buckle truly says, " Liberty is not a means, it is an end in itself." But
the uses of liberty are means to ends Else why do we want liberty ?
3°
ENGLISH SECULARISM.
odium nor danger abates, many castles of supersti-
tion would never be stormed. But mere intellectual-
ism generates a different and less useful species of
thinkers, who neither hunt in the jungles of theology
nor storm strongholds. We all know hundreds in every
great town who have freed themselves, or have been
freed by others, from ecclesiastical error, who remain
supine. Content with their own superiority (which
they owe to the pioneers v/ho went before them more
generous than they) they speak no word, and lend no
aid towards conferring the same advantages upon such
as are still enslaved. They affect to despise the ig-
norance they ought to be foremost to dissipate. They
exclaim in the words of Goethe's Coptic song :
" Fools from their folly 'tis hopeless to stay,
Mules will be mules by the laws of their mulishness,
Then be advised and leave fools to their foolishness,
What from an ass can be got but a bray."
These Coptic philosophers overlook that they would
have been "asses" also, had those who vindicated
freedom before their day, and raised it to a power,
been as indifferent and as contemptuous as believers
in the fool-theory are. Coptic thinkers forget that
every man is a fool in respect of any question on which
he gives an opinion without having thought independ-
ently upon it. With patience you can make a thinker
out of a fool ; and the first step from the fool stage is
accomplished by a little thinking. It is well to re-
member the exclamation of Thackeray: "If thou hast
STATIONARINESS OF CRITICISM. 31
never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise
man."
It is, however, but justice to some who join the
stationariness, to own that they have fared badly on
the warpath against error, and are entitled to the
sympathy we extend to the battered soldier who falls
out of the ranks on the march. Grote indicates what
the severity of the service is, in the following pas-
sage from his Mischiefs of Natural Religion : — "Of all
human antipathies that which the believer in a God
bears to the unbeliever, is the fullest, the most un-
qualified, and the most universal. The mere circum-
stance of dissent involves a tacit imputation of error
and incapacity on the part of the priest, who discerns
that his persuasive power is not rated so highly by
others as it is by himself. This invariably begets dis-
like towards his antagonist."
Nevertheless it is a reproach to those whom mili-
tant thought has made free, if they remain unmindful
of the fate of their inferiors. Yet Christian churches,
with all self-complacent superiority to which many of
them are prone, are not free from the sins of indif-
ference and superfineness. This was conspicuously
shown by Southey in a letter to Sir Henry Taylor, in
which he says : — "Have you seen the strange book
which Anastasius Hope left for publication and which
his representatives, in spite of all dissuasion, have pub-
lished? His notion of immortality and heaven is that
at the consummation of all things he, and you, and I,
32 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
and John Murray, and Nebuchadnezzar, and Lambert
the fat man, and the Living Skeleton, and Queen
Elizabeth, and the Hottentot, Venus, and Thutell,
and Probert, and the Twelve Apostles, and the noble
army of martyrs, and Genghis Khan and all his ar-
mies, and Noah with all his ancestors and all his pos-
terity,— yea, all men, and all women, and all children
that have ever been, or ever shall be, saints and sin-
ners alike, are all to be put together and made into
one great celestial, eternal human being ... I do not
like the scheme. I don't like the notion of being
mixed up with Hume, and Hunt, and Whittle Harvey,
and Philpotts, and Lord Althorp, and the Huns, and
the Hottentots, and the Jews, and the Philistines, and
the Scotch, and the Irish. God forbid ! I hope to be
I, myself, in an English heaven, with you yourself, —
you and some others without whom heaven would be
no heaven to me."
Most of these persons would have the same dislike
to be mixed up with Mr. Southey. Lord Byron would
not have been enthusiastic about it. The Comtists
have done something to preach a doctrine of humanity,
and to put an end to this pitiful contempt of a few
men for their fellows, — fellows who in many respects
are often superior to those who despise them.
All superiority is apt to be contemptuous of inferi-
ors, unless conscience and generosity takes care of it,
and incites it to instruct inferior natures. The prayer
of Browning is one of noble discernment : —
STA TIONARINESS OF CRITICISM. 33
" Make no more giants, God —
But elevate the race at once."
Even free thought, so far as it confines itself to it-
self, becomes stationary. Like the squirrel in its cage:
" Whether it turns by wood or wire,
Never gets one hair's breadth higher."
If any doubt whether stationariness of thought is
possible, let them think of Protestantism which climbed
on to the ledge of private judgment three centuries
ago — and has remained there. Instead of mounting
higher and overrunning all the plateaus of error above
them, it has done its best to prevent any who would
do it, from ascending. There is now, however, a new
order of insurgent thought of the excelsior caste which
seeks to climb the heights. Distinguished writers
against theology in the past have regarded destructive
criticism as preparing the way to higher conceptions
of life and duty. If so little has been done in this
direction among working class thinkers, it is because
destructiveness is more easy. It needs only indigna-
tion to perfect it, and indignation requires no effort.
The faculty of constructiveness is more arduous in ex-
ercise, and is later in germination. More men are
able to take a state than to make a state. Hence Sec-
ularism, though inevitable as the next stage of mili-
tant progress, more slowly wins adherents and appre-
ciation.
CHAPTER VII.
THIRD STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT— SECULARISM.
" Nothing is destroyed until it has been re-
placed."— Madame de Stael.
SEEING this wise maxim in a paper by Auguste
Comte, I asked my friend Wm. de Fonvielle, who
was in communication with Comte, to learn for me the
authorship of the phrase. Comte answered that it was
the Emperor's (Napoleon III.). It first appeared, as I
afterwards found, in the writings of Madame de Stael,
and more fully expressed by her.
Self-regard ing criticism having discovered the in-
sufficiency of theology for the guidance of man, next
sought to ascertain what rules human reason may sup-
ply for the independent conduct of life, which is the
object of Secularism.
At first, the term was taken to be a "mask" con-
cealing sinister features — a "new name for an old
thing" — or as a substitute term for scepticism or athe
ism. If impressions were always knowledge, men
would be wise without inquiry, and explanations would
be unnecessary. The term Secularism was chosen to
express the extension of free thought to ethics. Free
JIIIRD STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 35
thinkers commonly go no further than saying, "We
search for truth"'; Secularists say we have found it —
at least, so much as replaces the chief errors and un-
certainties of theology.
Harriet Martineau, the most intrepid thinker among
the women of her day, wrote to Lloyd Garrison a letter
(inserted in the Liberator, 1853) approving " the term
Secularism as including a large number of persons who
are not atheists and uniting them for action, which has
Secularism for its object. By the adoption of the new
term avast amount of prejudice is got rid of." At
length it was seen that the "new term" designated a
new conception.
Secularism is a code of duty pertaining to this life,
founded on considerations purely human, and intended
mainly for those who find theology indefinite or inade-
quate, unreliable or unbelievable.
Its essential principles are three :
1. The improvement of this life by material means.
2. That science is the available^ Providence of man.
3. That it is good to do good. Whether there be
other good or not, the good of the present life is good,
and it is good to seek that good.
1 M. Aurelius Antoninus said, " I seek the truth by which no maft was ever
injured." It would be true had he said mankind. Men are continually in-
jured by the truth, or how do martyrs come, or why do we honor them ?
2This phrase was a suggestion of my friend the Rev. Dr. H. T. Crosskey
about 1854. I afterwards used the word "available" which does not deny,
nor challenge, nor affirm the belief in a theological Providence by others,
who, therefore, are not incited to assail the effectual proposition that material
resources are an available Providence where a spiritual Providence is inac-
tive.
36 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
Individual good attained by methods conducive to
the good of others, is the highest aim of man, whether
regard be had to human welfare in this life or personal
fitness for another. Precedence is therefore given to
the duties of this life.
Being asked to send to the International Congress
of Liberal Thinkers, (1886), an account of the tenets
of the English party known as Secularists, I gave the
following explanation to them.
"The Secular is that, the issues of which can be
tested by the experience of this life.
**The ground common to all self-determined think-
ers is that of independency of opinion, known as free
thought, which though but an impulse of intellectual
courage in the search for truth, or an impulse of ag-
gression against hurtful or irritating error, or the ca-
price of a restless mind, is to be encouraged. It is
necessary to promote independent thought — whatever
its manner of manifestation — since there can be no
progress without it. A Secularist is intended to be a
reasoner, that is as Coleridge defined him, one who
inquires what a thing is, and not only what it is, but
why it is what it is.
"One of two great forces of opinion created in this
age, is what is known as atheism,^ which deprives su-
perstition of its standing-ground and compels theism.
to reason for its existence. The other force is material-
1 Huxley's term agnosticism implies a dillerent thing— unknowingness
without denial.
THIRD STAGE OF FREE THOUGHT. 37
ism which shows the physical consequences of error,
supplying, as it were, beacon lights to morality.
"Though respecting the right of the atheist and
theist to their theories of the origin of nature, the
Secularist regards them as belonging to the debat-
able ground of speculation. Secularism neither asks
nor gives any opinion upon them, confining itself to
the entirely independent field of study — the order of
the universe. Neither asserting nor denying theism
or a future life, having no sufficient reason to give if
called upon ; the fact remains that material influences
exist, vast and available for good, as men have the
will and wit to employ them. Whatever may be the
value of metaphysical or theological theories of morals,
utility in conduct is a daily test of common sense, and
is capable of deciding intelligently more questions of
practical duty than any other rule. Considerations
which pertain to the general welfare, operate without
the machinery of theological creeds, and over masses
of men in every land to whom Christian incentives are
alien, or disregarded. "
CHAPTER VIII.
THREE PRINCIPLES VINDICATED.
"Be -wisely worldly, but not worldly wise."
— Francis Quarles.
FIRST PRINCIPLE : Of material means as condi-
tions of ivelfare in this world. — Theology works
by "spiritual" means, Secularism by material means.
Christians and Secularists both intend raising the char-
acter of the people, but their methods are very differ-
ent. Christians are now beginning to employ material
agencies for the elevation of life, which science, and
not theology, has brought under their notice. But the
Christian does not trust these agencies; the Secularist
does, and in his mind the Secular is sacred. Spiritual
means can never be depended upon for food, raiment,
art, or national defence.
The Archbishop of York (Dr. Magee), a clear-
headed and candid prelate, surprised his contempora-
ries (at the Diocesan Conference, Leicester, October
19, 1889") by declaring that "Christianity made no
claim to rearrange the economic relations of man in
the State, or in society. He hoped he would be un-
derstood when he said plainly that it was his firm be-
THREE PEINCJPLES VINDICATED. 39
lief that any Christian State, carrying out in all its
relations, the Sermon on the Mount, could not exist
for a week. It was perfectly clear that a State could
not continue to exist upon what were commonly called
Christian principles."
From the first. Secularism had based its claims to
be regarded on the fact that only the rich could afford
to be Christians, and the poor must look to other prin-
ciples for deliverance.
Material means are those which are calculable,
which are under the control and command of man,
and can be tested by human experience. No defini-
tion of Secularism shows its distinctiveness which
omits to specify material means as its method of pro-
cedure.
But for the theological blasphemy of nature, repre-
senting it as the unintelligent tool of God, the Secular
would have ennobled common life long ago. Sir God-
frey Kneller said, "He never looked on a bad picture
but he carried away in his mind a dirty tint." Secu-
larism would efface the dirty tints of life which Chris-
tianity has prayed over, but not removed.
Second Principle : Of the providence of science. —
Men are limited in power, and are oft in peril, and
those who are taught to trust to supernatural aid are
betrayed to their own destruction. We are told we
should work as though there were no help in heaven,
and pray as though there were no help in ourselves.
Since, however, praying saves no ship, arrests no dis-
40 ENGLISH SECULARISM,
ease, and does not pay the tax-gatherer, it is better
to work at once and without the digression of sinking
prayer-buckets into empty wells, and spending life in
drawing nothing up. The word illuminating secular
life is self-help. The Secularist vexes not the ear of
heaven by mendicant supplications. His is the only
religion that gives heaven no trouble.
Third Principle : Of goodness as fitness for this
7vorId or another. — Goodness is the service of others
with a view to their advantage. There is no higher
human merit. Human welfare is the sanction of mo-
rality. The measure of a good action is its conducive-
ness to progress. The utilitarian test of generous right-
ness in motive may be open to objection, — there is no
test which is not, — but the utilitarian rule is one com-
prehensible by every mind. It is the only rule which
makes knowledge necessary, and becomes more lumi-
nous as knowledge increases. A fool may be a be-
liever,^ but not a utilitarian who seeks his ground of
action in the largest field of relevant facts his mind is
able to survey.
Utility in morals is measuring the good of one by
its agreement with the good of many. Large ideas
are when a man measures the good of his parish by
the good of the town, the good of the town by the
good of the county, the good of the county by the
good of the country, the good of the country by the
ITtie Guardian told us about 1887 that the Bishop of Exeter confirmed
fire idiots.
THREE PRINCIPLES VINDICATED. 41
good of the continent, the good of the continent by
the cosmopolitanism of the world.
Truth and solicitude for the social welfare of others
are the proper concern of a soul worth saving. Only
minds with goodness in them have the desert of future
existence. Minds without veracity and generosity die.
The elements of death are in the selfish already. They
could not live in a better world if they were admitted.
In a noble passage in his sermon on "Citizen-
ship" the Rev. Stopford Brooks said: "There are
thousands of my fellow-citizens, men, and women, and
children, who are living in conditions in which they
have no true means of becoming healthy in body,
trained in mind, or comforted by beauty. Life is as
hard for them as it is easy for me. I cannot help them
by giving them money, one by one, but I can help
them by making the condition of their life easier by a
good government of the city in which they live. And
even if the charge on my property for this purpose in-
creases for a time, year by year, till the work is done,
that charge I will gladly pay. It shall be my ethics,
my religion, my patriotism, my citizenship to do it."^
The great preacher whose words are here cited, like
Theodore Parker, the Jupiter of the pulpit in his day,
as Wendell Phillips described him to me, is not a
Secularist ; but he expresses here the religion of the
1 Preached in reference to the London County Council election, March,
189s.
42 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
Secularist, if such a person can be supposed to have
a religion.
A theological creed which the base may hold, and
usually do, has none of the merit of deeds of service
to humanity, which only the good intentionally per-
form. Conscience is the sense of right with regard to
others, it is a sense of duty towards others which tells
us that we should do justice to them ; and if not able
to do it individually, to endeavor to get it done by
others. At St. Peter's Gate there can be no passport
so safe as this. He was not far wrong who, when
asked where heaven lay, answered: "On the other
side of a good action."
If, as Dr. James Martineau says, "there is a
thought of God in the thing that is true, and a will of
God in that which is right," Secularism, caring for
truth and duty, cannot be far wrong. Thus, it has a
reasonable regard for the contingencies of another life
should it supervene. Reasoned opinions rely for justi-
fication upon intelligent conviction, and a well in-
formed sincerity.
The Secularist, is without presumption of an in-
fallible creed, is without the timorous indefiniteness
of a creedless believer. He does not disown a creed
because theologians have promulgated Jew-bound,
unalterable articles of faitli. The Secularist has a
creed as definite as science, and as flexible as pro-
gress, increasing as the horizon of truth is enlarged.
His creed is a confession of his belief. There is more
THREE PRINCIPLES VINDICA'lED. 43
unity of opinion among self-thinkers than is supposed.
They all maintain the necessity of independent opin-
ion, for they all exercise it. They all believe in the
moral rightfulness of independent thought, or they are
guilty for propagating it. They all agree as to the
right of publishing well-considered thought, otherwise
thinking would be of little use. They all approve of
free criticism, for there could be no reliance on thought
which did not use, or could not bear that. All agree
as to the equal action of opinion, without which opin-
ion would be fruitless and action a monopoly. All
agree that truth is the object of free thought, for many
have died to gain it. All agree that scrutiny is the
pathway to truth, for they have all passed along it.
They all attach importance to the good of this life,
teaching this as the first service to humanity. All are
of one opinion as to the efficacy of material means in
promoting human improvement, for they alone are
distinguished by vindicating their use. All hold that
morals are effectively commended by reason, for all
self-thinkers have taught so. All believe that God, if
he exists, is the God of the honest, and that he re-
spects conscience more than creeds, for all free think-
ers have died in this faith. Independent thinkers from
Socrates to Herbert Spencer and Huxley^ have all
agreed :
In the necessity of free thought.
1 See Biographical Dictionary of Free Thinkers of all Ages and Nations, by
J. M. Wheeler, and Four Hundred Years of Free Thought from Columbus to
Ingersoll, by Samuel Porter Putnam, containing upwards of 1,000 biographies.
^4 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
In the rightfulness of it.
In the adequacy of it.
In the considerate pubHcity of it.
In the fair criticism of it.
In the equal action of conviction.
In the recognition of this life, and
In the material control of it.
The Secularist, like Karpos the gardener, may say
of his creed, " Its points are few and simple. They
are : to be a good citizen, a good husband, a good
father, and a good workman. I go no further," said
Karpos, "but pray God to take it all in good part and
have mercy on my soul."*
1 Dialogue between Karpos the gardener and Bashiew Tucton, by Voltaire.
CHAPTER IX.
HOW SECULARISM AROSE.
" We must neither lead nor leave men to
mistake falsehood for truth. Not to undeceive
is to deceive." — Archbishop Whately.
T)EING one of the social missionaries in the propa-
^ ganda of Robert Owen, I was, like H. Viewssiew, a
writer of those days, a "student of realities." It soon
became clear to me, as to others, that men are much
influenced for good or evil, by their environments.
The word was unused then, "circumstances" was the
term employed. Then as now there were numerous
persons everywhere to be met with who explained
everything on supernatural principles with all the con-
fidence of infinite knowledge. Not having this advan-
tage, I profited as well as I could by such observation
as was in my power to make. I could see that ma-
terial laws counted for something in the world. This
led me to the conclusion that the duty of watching the
ways of nature was incumbent on all who would find
true conditions of human betterment, or new reasons
for morality — both very much needed. To this end
the. name of Secularism was given to certain princi-
46 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
pies which had for their object human improvement
by material means, regarding science as the provi-
dence of man and justifying morality by considera-
tions which pertain to this life alone.
The rise and development (if I may use so fine a
term) of these views may be traced in the following
records.
1. "Materialism will be advanced as the only sound
basis of rational thought and practice." (Prospectus
of the Movement, 1843, written by me.)
2. Five prizes awarded to me, for lectures to the
Manchester Order of Odd-fellows. These Degree Ad-
dresses (1846) were written on the principle that mo-
rality, apart from theology, could be based on human
reason and experience.
3. The Reasoner restricts itself to the known, to
the present, and seeks to realise the life that is. (Pref-
ace to the Reasoner, 1846.)
4. A series of papers was commenced in the i?^a-
j^;«^r entitled "The Moral Remains of the Bible," one
object of which was to show that those who no longer
held the Bible as an infallible book, might still value
it wherein it was ethically excellent. {Reasoner, Vol.
v., No. 106, p. 17, 1848.)
5. " To teach men to see that the sum of all knowl-
edge and duty is Secular and that it pertains to this
world alone." {Reasoner, Nov. 19, 1851. Article,
"Truths to Teach," p. i.
This was the first time the word "Secular "was
HOiy SECULARISM AKOSE. 47
applied as a general test of principles of conduct apart
from spiritual considerations.
6. " Giving an account of ourselves in the whole
extent of opinion, we should use the word Secularist
as best indicating that province of human duty which
belongs to this life." {Reasoner, Dec. 3, 1851, p. 34.
This was the first time the word "Secularist" ap-
peared in literature as descriptive of a new way of
thinking.
7. " Mr. Holyoake, editor of the Reasoner, will lay
before the meeting [then proposed] the present posi-
tion of Secularism in the provinces." {Reasoner, Dec,
10, 1851, p. 62.)
This was the first time the word "Secularism " ap-
peared in the press.
The meeting above mentioned was held December
29, 1851, at which the statement made might betaken
as an epitome of this book. (See Reasoner, No. 294,
Vol. 12, p. 129. 1852.)
8. A letter on the "Future of Secularism" ap-
peared in the Reasoner. {Reasoner, Feb. 4, 1852, p.
187.)
This was the first time Secularism was written upon
as a movement. The term was the heading of a letter
by Charles Frederick NichoUs.
9. "One public purpose is to obtain the repeal of
all acts of Parliament which interfere with Secular
practice." (Article, "Nature of Secular Societies,"
Reasoner, No. 325, p. 146, Aug. 18, 1852.)
43 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
This is exactly the attitude Secularism takes with
regard to the Bible and to Christianity. It rejects
such parts of the Scriptures, or of Christianism, or
Acts of Parliament, as conflict with or obstruct ethical
truth. We do not seek the repeal of all Acts of Parlia-
ment, but only of such as interfere with Secular pro-
gress.
lo. "The friends of * Secular Education ' [the Man-
chester Association was then so known] are not Secu-
larists. They do not pretend to be so, they do not
even wish to be so regarded, they merely use the word
Secular as an adjective, as applied to a mode of in-
struction. We apply it to the nature of all knowledge. "
We use the noun Secularism. No one else has done
it. With others the term Secular is merely a descrip-
tive ; with us the term is used as a subject. With
others it is a branch of knowledge ; with us it is the
primary business of life, — the name of the province of
speculation to which we confine ourselves.^ When so
used in these pages the word "Secularism" or "Sec-
ularist" is employed to mark the distinction.
A Bolton clergyman reported in the Bolton Guard-
ian that Mr. Holyoake had announced as the first sub-
ject of his Lectures, "Why do the Clergy Avoid Dis-
cussion and the Secularists Seek it? " {Reasoner, No.
328, p. 294, Vol. 12, 1852.
These citations from my own writings are sufficient
iSee article "The Seculars — the Propriety of Their Name," by G.J.
Holyoake. Reasoner, p. 177, Sep. i, 1852.
HOW SECULARISM AROSE. 49
to show the origin and nature of Secularism. Such
views were widely accepted by liberal thinkers of the
day, as an improvement and extension of free thought
advocacy. Societies were formed, halls were given a
Secular name, and conferences were held to organise
adherents of the new opinion. The first was held in
the Secular Institute, Manchester (Oct. 3, 1852). Del-
egates were sent from Societies in Ashton-under-Lyne,
Bolton, Blackburn, Bradford, Burnley, Bury, Glas-
gow, Keighley, Leigh, London, Manchester, Miles
Platting, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Oldham, Over Darwen,
Owen's Journal, Paisley, Preston, Rochdale, Stafford,
Sheffield, Stockport, Todmorden.
Among the delegates were many well known, long
known, and some still known — James Charlton (now
the famous manager of the Chicago and Alton Rail-
way), Abram Greenwood (now the cashier of the Co-
operative Wholesale Bank of Manchester), William
Mallalieu of Todmorden (familiarly known as the
** Millionaire " of the original Rochdale Pioneers),
Dr. Hiram Uttley of Burnley, John Crank of Stock-
port, Thomas Hayes, then of Miles Platting, now
manager of the Crumpsall Biscuit Works of the Co-
operative Wholesale Society, Joseph Place of Notting-
ham, James Motherwell of Paisley, Dr. Henry Travis
(socialist writer on Owen's system), Samuel Ingham
of Manchester, J. R. Cooper of Manchester, and the
present writer.
CHAPTER X.
HOW SECULARISM WAS DIFFUSED.
•'Only by varied iteration can alien con-
ceptions be forced on reluctant minds."
— Herbert Spencer,
IN 1853 the Six-Night Discussion took place in
Cowper Street School Rooms, London, with the
Rev. Brewin Grant, B. A. A report was published by
Partridge and Oakley at 2s. 6d , of which 45,900 were
sold, which widely diffused a knowledge of Secularis-
tic views. Our adversary had been appointed with
clerical ceremony, on a "Three years' mission" against
us. He had wit, readiness, and an electric velocity of
speech, boasting that he could speak three times faster
than any one else. But he proved to be of use to us
without intending it,
' ' His acrid words
Turned the sweet milk of kindness into curds."
whereby he set many against the cause he represented.
He had the cleverness to see that there ought to be a
"Christian Secularism," which raised Secularism to
the level of Christian curiosity. In Glasgow, in 1854,
I met Mr. Grant again during several nights' discus-
HOIV SECULARISM WAS DIFFUSED. 51
sion in the City Hall. This debate also was published,
as was one of three nights with the Rev. J. H. Ruther-
ford (afterwards Dr. Rutherford) in Newcastle on
Tyne, who aimed to prove that Christianity contained
the better Secularism. Thus that new form of free
thought came to have public recognition.
The lease of a house, 147 Fleet Street, was bought
(1852), where was established a Secular Institute, con-
nected with printing, book-selling, and liberal pub-
lishing. Further conferences were held in July, 1854,
one at Stockport. At an adjourned conference Mr.
Joseph Barker (whom we had converted) presided.^
We had a London Secular Society which met at the
Hall of Science, City Road, and held its Council meet-
ings in Mr. Le Blond's handsome house in London
Wall. This work, and much more, was done before
and while Mr. Bradlaugh (who afterwards was con-
spicuously identified with the movement) was in the
army.
It was in 1854 that I published the first pamphlet
on Secularism the Practical Philosophy of the People. It
commenced by showing the necessity of independent,
self-helping, self-extricating opinions. Its opening
passage was as follows :
"In a state of society in which every inch of land,
every blade of grass, every spray of water, every bird
and flower has an owner, what has the poor man to
do with orthodox religion which begins by proclaim-
\Reasoner, No. 428, Vol. XVII., p. 87.
Sa
ENGLISH SECULARISM.
ing him a miserable sinner, and ends by leaving him
a miserable slave, as far as unrequited toil goes ?
"The poor man finds himself in an armed world
where might is God, and poverty is fettered. Abroad
the hired soldier blocks up the path of freedom, and
the priest the path of progress. Every penniless man,
woman, and child is virtually the property of the cap-
italist, no less in England than is the slave in New
Orleans. 1 Society blockades poverty, leaving it scarce
escape. The artisan is engaged in an imminent strug-
gle against wrong and injustice ; then what has he
the struggler, to do with doctrines which brand him
with inherited guilt, which paralyse him by an arbit-
rary faith, which deny saving power to good works,
which menace him with eternal perdition?"
The two first works of importance, controverting
Secularist principles, were by the Rev. Joseph Parker
and Dr. J. A. Langford; Dr. Parker was ingenious,
Dr. Langford eloquent. I had discussed with Dr.
Parker in Banbury. In his Six Chapters on Secularism'^
which was the title of his book, he makes pleasant
references to that debate. The Christian Weekly News
of that day said: "These Six Chapters have been
written by a young provincial minister of great power
and promise, of whom the world has not yet heard,
but of whom it will hear pleasing things some day."
1 Not entirely so. The English slave can run away — at his own peril,
t Published by my, then, neighbour, William Freeman, of 69 Fleet Street,
himself an energetic, pleasant-minded Christian.
//OIV SECULARISM WAS DIFFUSED. 53
This prediction has come true. I had told Mr. Free-
man that the "young preacher" had given me that
impression in the discussion with him. Dr. Parker
said in his first Chapter that, "If the New Testament
teachings oppose our own consciousness, violate our
moral sense, lead us out of sympathy with humanity,
then we shall abandon them." This was exactly the
case of Secularism which he undertook to confute.
Dr. Langford held a more rational religion than Dr.
Parker. His Answer, which reached a "second thou-
sand, had passages of courtesy and friendship, yet he
contended with graceful vigor against opinions — three-
fourths of which justified his own.
In an address delivered Sept. 29, 1851, I had said
that, "There were three classes of persons opposed
to Christianity : —
"I. The dissolute.
"2. The indifferent.
"3. The intellectually independent.
"The dissolute are against Christianity because
they regard it as a foe to sensuality. The indifferent
reject it through being ignorant of it, or not having
time to attend to it, or not caring to attend to it, or
not being able to attend to it, through constitutional
insensibility to its appeals. The intellectually inde-
pendent avoid it as opposed to freedom, morality and
progress." It was to these classes, and not to Chris-
tians, that Secularism was addressed. Neither Dr.
Parker nor Dr. Langford took notice that it was in-
54 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
tended to furnish ethical guidance where Christianity,
whatever might be its quality, or pretensions, or merit,
was inoperative.^
The new form of free thought under the title of the
** Principles of Secularism" was submitted to John
Stuart Mill, to whose friendship and criticism I had
often been indebted, and he approved the statement
as one likely to be useful to those outside the pale of
Christianity.
A remarkable thing occurred in 1854. A prize of
j^ioo was offered by the Evangelical Alliance for the
best book on the "Aspects, Causes, and Agencies" of
what they called by the odious apostolic defamatory
name of " Infidelity."^ The Rev. Thomas Pearson of
Eyemouth won the prize by a brilliant book, which I
praised for its many relevant quotations, its instruc-
tion and fairness, but I represented that its price (los.
6d.) prevented numerous humble readers from pos-
sessing it. The Evangelical Alliance inferred that the
"relevancy" was on their side, altogether, whereas I
meant relevant to the argument and to those supposed
to be confuted by it. They resolved to issue twenty-
thousand copies at one shilling a volume. The most
eminent Evangelical ministers and congregations of the
1 In 1857 Dr. Joseph Parker published a maturer and more important vol-
ume, Helps to Truth Seekers, or, Christianity and Scepticism, containing "The
Secularist Theory — A Critique." At a distance of more than thirty-five
years it seems to tne an abler book, from the Christian point of view, than I
thought it on its appearance.
2 A term of intentional o£fence as here used. Infidelity means treachery
to the truth, whereas the heretic has often sacrificed bis life from fidelity
toil.
JJOIV SECULARISM WAS DIFFUSED. 55
day subscribed to the project. Four persons put down
their names for one thousand copies each, and a strong
list of subscribers was sent out. Unfortunately I pub-
lished another article intending to induce readers of the
Reasoner to procure copies, as they would find in its can-
did pages a wealth of quotations of free-thought opin-
ion with which very few were acquainted. The number
of eminent writers, dissentients from Christianity, and
the force and felicity of their objections to it, as cited
by Mr. Pearson, would astonish and instruct Chris-
tians who were quite unfamiliar with the historic litera-
ture of heretical thought. This unwise article stopped
the project. The "Shilling Edition" never appeared,
and the public lost the most useful and informing book
written against us in my time. The Rev. Mr. Pearson
died not long after ; all too soon, for he was a minister
who commanded respect. He had research, good
faith, candor, and courtesy, qualities rare in his day.
CHAPTER XI.
SECULAR INSTRUCTION DISTINCT FROM
SECULARISM.
"A mariner must have his eye on the rock
and the sand as well as upon the North Star."
— Maxitn of the Sea.
IT IS time now to point out, what many never seem
to understand, that Secular instruction is entirely
distinct from Secularism. In my earlier days the term
** scientific" was the distressing word in connexion
with education, but the trouble of later years is with
the word "Secular." Theological critics run on the
"rock" there.
Many persons regard Secular teaching with dis-
trust, thinking it to be the same as Secularism. Sec-
ular instruction is known by the sign of separateness.
It means knowledge given apart from theology. Sec-
ular instruction comprises a set of rules for the guid-
ance of industry, commerce, science, and art. Secular
teaching is as distinct from theology as a poem from a
sermon. A man may be a mathematician, an archi-
tect, a lawyer, a musician, or a surgeon, and be a
SECULAR INSTRUCTION. 57
Christian all the same ; as Faraday was both a chem-
ist and a devout Sandemanian ; as Buckland was a
geologist as well as a Dean. But if theology be mixed
up with professional knowledge, there will be muddle-
headedness.^ At a separate time, theology can be
taught, and any learner will have a clearer and more
commanding knowledge of Christianity by its being
distinctive in his mind. Secular instruction neither
assails Christianity nor prejudices the learner against
it; anymore than sculpture assails jurisprudence, or
than geometry prejudices the mind against music. If
the Secular instructor made it a point, as he ought to
do, to inculcate elementary ideas of morality, he would
confine himself to explaining how far truth and duty
have sanctions in considerations purely human — leav-
ing it to teachers of religion to supplement at another
time and place, what they believe to be further and
higher sanctions.
Secular instruction implies that the proper busi-
ness of the school-teacher is to impart a knowledge of
the duties of this world ; and the proper business of
chapel and church is to explain the duties relevant
to another world, which can only be done in a second-
hand way by the school-teacher. The wonder is that
the pride of the minister does not incite him to keep
his own proper work in his own hands, and protest
1 Edward Baines (afterwards Sir Edward) was the ^i eatest opponent in
his day, of national schools and Secular instruction, sent his son to a Secular
school, because he wanted him to be clever as well as Christian. He was
both as I well know.
58 ENGLISH SECULARISM,
against the school-teacher meddling with it. By doing
so he would augment his own dignity and the distinc-
tiveness of his office.
By keeping each kind of knowledge apart, a man
learns both, more easily and more effectually. Secu-
lur training is better for the scholar and safer for the
State ; and better for the priest if he has a faith that
can stand by itself.
If the reader does not distrust it as a paradox, he
will assent that the Secular is distinct from Secularism,
as distinct as an act is distinct from its motive. Secu-
lar teaching comprises a set of rules of instruction in
trade, business, and professional knowledge. Secular-
ism furnishes a set of principles for the ethical con-
duct of life. Secular instruction is far more limited in
its range than Secularism which defends secular pur-
suits against theology, where theology attacks them
or obstructs them. But pure Secular knowledge is
confined to its own pursuit, and does not come in con-
tact with theology any more than architecture comes
in contact with preaching.
A man may be a shareholder in a gas company or
a waterworks, a house owner, a landlord, a farmer, or
a workman. All these are secular pursuits, and he
who follows them may consult only his own interest.
But if he be a Secularist, he will consider not only his
own interest, but, as far as he can, the welfare of the
community or the world, as his action or example may
tell for the good of universal society. He will do "his
SECULAR INSTRUCTJO.V. 59
best," not as Mr. Ruskin says, '*the best of an ass,"
but "the best of an intelligent man." In every act he
will put his conscience and character with a view so
to discharge the duties of this life as to merit another,
if there be one. Just as a Christian seeks to serve
God, a Secularist seeks to serve man. This it is to be
a Secularist. The idea of this service is what Secular-
ism puts into his mind. Professor Clifford exclaimed :
"The Kingdom of God has come — when comes the
Kingdom of man ? A Secularist is one who hastens
the coming of this kingdom : which must be agreeable
to heaven if the people of this world are to occupy the
mansions there.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE FURTHER EVIDENT.
"The cry that so-called secular education
is Atheistic is hardly worth notice. Cricket is
not theolo|;ical ; at the same time, it is not
Atheistic."— ^«w. Joseph Parker, D. D., Times,
October iz, 1894.
ATOR is Secularism atheism. The laws of the uni-
^ ^ verse are quite distinct from the question of the
origin of the universe. The study of the laws of nature,
which Secularism selects, is quite different from spec-
ulation as to the authorship of nature. We may judge
and prize the beauty and uses of an ancient edifice,
though we may never know the builder. Secularism
is a form of opinion which concerns itself only with
questions the issues of which can be tested by the ex-
perience of this life. It is clear that the existence of
deity and the actuality of another life, are questions
excluded from Secularism, which exacts no denial of
deity or immortality, from members of Secularist so-
cieties. During their day only two persons of public
distinction — the Bishop of Peterborough and Charles
Bradlaugh — maintained that the Secular was athe-
istic. Yet Mr. Bradlaugh never put a profession of
THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE EVIDENT. 6i
atheism as one of the tenets of any Secularist Society.
Atheism may be a personal tenet, but it cannot be a
Secularist tenet, from which it is wholly disconnected.
No one would confuse the Secular with the atheistic
who understood that the Secular is separate. Mr.
Hodgson Pratt, a Christian, writing in Concord (Octo-
ber, 1894), a description of the burial of Angelo Maz-
zoleni, said "the funeral was entirely Secular," mean-
ing the ceremony was distinct from that of the Church,
being based on considerations pertaining to duty in
this world.
In the indefiniteness of colloquial speech we con-
stantly hear the phrase, "School Board education."
Yet School Boards cannot give education. It is be-
yond their reach. Most persons confuse instruction
with education. Instruction relates to industrial, com-
mercial, agricultural, and scientific knowledge and like
subjects. Education implies the complete training
and "drawing out of the whole powers of the mind."^
Thus instruction is different from education. Instruc-
tion is departmental knowledge. Education includes
all the influences of life ; instruction gives skill, edu-
cation forms character.
The Rev. Dr. Parker is the first Nonconformist
preacher of distinction who has avowed his concur-
rence with Secular instruction in Board Schools. When
Mr. W. E. Forster was framing his Education Act, I
. 1 Henry Drummond gave this definition in the House of Commons, and it
was adopted by W. J. Fox and other leaders of opinion in that day.
63 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
besought him to raise English educational policy to
the level of the much smoking, much-pondering Dutch.
" The system of education in Holland dates from 1857.
It is a Secular system, meaning by Secular that the
Bible is not allowed to be read in schools, nor is any
religious instruction allowed to be given. The use of
the school-room is, however, granted to ministers of all
denominations for the purpose of teaching religion out
of school-hours. The schoolmaster is not allowed to
give religious instruction, or even to read the Bible in
school at any time."^ No State rears better citizens or
better Christians than the Dutch. Mr. Gladstone,
with his customary discernment, has said that "Sec-
ular instruction does not involve denial of religious
teaching, but merely separation in point of time." It
seems incredible that Christian ministers, generally,
do not see the advantage of this. I should probably
have become a Christian preacher myself, had it not
been for the incessantness with which religion was ob-
truded on me in childhood and youth. Even now my
mind aches when I think of it. For myself, I respect
the individuality of piety. It is always picturesque.
Looking at religion from the outside, I can see that
concrete sectarianism is a source of religious strength.
A man is only master of his own faith when he sees it
clearly, distinctly, and separately. Rather than per-
mit Secular instruction and religious education to be
1 Report from the Hague, by Mr. (now Right Hon.) Jesse Collings, M. P.,
May, 187a
THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE EVIDENT. 63
imparted separately, Christian ministers permit the
great doctrines they profess to maintain to be whittled
down to a School Board average, in which, when done
honestly towards all opinions, no man can discern
Christianity without the aid of a microscope. And this
passes, in these days, for good ecclesiastical policy.
In a recent letter (November, 1894) Mr. Gladstone
has re-affirmed his objection to "an undenominational
system of religion framed by, or under the authority
of, the State." He says : "It would, I think, be better
for the State to limit itself to giving Secular instruc-
tion, which, of course, is no complete education." Mr.
Gladstone does not confound Secular instruction with
'education, but is of the way of thinking of Miltou,
who says: "I call a complete and generous education
that which fits a man to perform justly^ skilfully, and
magnanimously all the offices, both private and pub-
lic, of peace and war." Secular instruction touches
no doctrine, menaces no creed, raises no scepticism in
the mind. But an average of belief introduces the
aggressive hand of heresy into every school, tampering
with tenets rooted in the conscience, wantonly alarm-
ing religious convictions, and substituting for a clear,
frank, and manly issue a disastrous, blind, and timid
policy, wriggling along like a serpent instead of walk-
ing with self-dependent erectness. This manly erect-
ness would be the rule were the formula of the great
preacher accepted who has said: "Secular education
by the State, and Christian education by the Chris-
64 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
tian Church is my motto. "^ Uniformity of truth is de-
sirable, and it will come, not by contrivance, but by
conviction.
Some one quoted lately in the Daily News (Sep-
tember 19, 1895) the following sentences I wrote in
1870:
"With secular instruction only in the day school, religion
will acquire freshness and new force. The clergyman and the
minister will exercise a new influence, because their ministrations
will have dignity and definiteness. They will no longer delegate
things declared by them to be sacred to be taught second-hand by
the harassed, overworked, and oft-reluctant schoolmaster and
schoolmistress, who must contradict the gentleness of religion by
the peremptoriness of the pedagogue, and efface the precept that
' God is love ' by an incontinent application of the birch. ... It is
not secular instruction which breeds irreverence, but this ill-timed
familiarity with the reputed things of God which robs divinity of
its divineness."
The Bible in the school-room will not always be to
the advantage of clericalism, as it is thought to be
now.
Mr. Forster's Education Act created what Mr.
Disraeli contemptuously described as a new "sacer-
dotal caste," — a body of second-hand preachers, who
are to be paid by the money of the State to do the
work which the minister and the clergyman avow they
are called by heaven to perform, — namely, to save
the souls of the people. According to this Act, the
clergy are really no longer necessary ; their work can
1 The Rev. Joseph Parker, D. D.
THE DISTINCTIVENESS MADE EVIDENT. 65
be done by a commoner and cheaper order of artificer.
Mr. Forster insisted that the Bible be introduced into
the school-room, which gives great advantage to the
Freethinker, as it makes a critical agitation against
its character and pretensions a matter of self-defence
for every family. Another eminent preacher, Mr. C.
H. Spurgeon, wrote, not openly in the Times as Dr.
Parker did, but in The Sword and Trowel thus : "We
should like to see established a system of universal
application, which would give a sound Secular educa-
tion to children, and leave the religious training to
the home and the agencies of the Church of Christ."
It is worthy of the radiant common sense of the fa-
mous orator of the Tabernacle that he should have
said this anywhere.
CHAPTER XIII.
SELF-DEFENSIVE FOR THE PEOPLE.
"What suits the gods above
Only the gods can know ;
What we want is This World's sense
How to live below."
BY its nature, Secularism is tolerant with regard to
religions. I once drew up a code of rules for an
atheistic school. One rule was that the children should
be taught the tenets of the Christian, Catholic, Mos-
lem, Jewish, and the leading theological systems of
the world, as well as Secularistic and atheistic forms
of thought ; so that when the pupil came to years of
discretion he might be able, intelligently, to choose a
faith for himself. Less than this would be a fraud
upon the understanding of a man. In matters wiiich
concern himself alone, he must be free to choose for
himself, and know what he is choosing from. That
form of belief which has misgivings as to whether it
can stand by itself, is to be distrusted.
It is the scandal of Christianity that, for twenty-
five years, it has paralysed School Board instruction
by its discord of opinion as to the religious tenets to
SELF-DEFENSIVE FOR THE PEOPLE. 67
be imparted ; while in Secularity there is no disunity.
Everybody is agreed upon the rules of arithmetic. The
laws of grammar command general assent. There are
no rival schools upon the interpretation of geometrical
problems. It is only in divinity that irreconcilable
diversity exists. When Secular instruction is con-
ceded, denominational differences will be respected,
as aspects of the integrity of conscience, which no
longer obstruct the intellectual progress of the peo-
ple.
But there are graver issues than the pride and pref-
erence of the preacher; namely, the welfare of the
children of the people. What the working classes want
is an industrial education. Poverty is a battle, and
the poor are always in a conflict — a conflict-in which
the most ignorant ever go to the wall. The accepted
policy of the State leaves the increase of population to
chance. It suffers none to be killed ; it compels people
to be kept alive, and abandons their subsistence to the
accident of capitalists requiring to hire their services.
Thus our great towns are crowded with families, im-
pelled there by the wild forces of hunger and of pas-
sion. From the workingman thus situated, the gov-
erning class exacts four duties :
1. That he shall give the parish no disquietude by
asking it to maintain his family.
2. That he shall pay whatever taxes are leyied
upon him.
3. That he shall give no trouble to the police.
68 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
4. That he shall fight generally whomsoever the
Government may see fit to involve the nation in war
with.
Whatever knowledge is necessary to enable the
future workman to do these things, is his right, and
should be given to him in his youth in the speediest
manner ; and any other inculcation which shall delay
this knowledge on its way, or confuse the learner in
acquiring it, is a cruelty to him and a peril to the com-
munity which permits it ; and the State, were it dis-
cerning and just, would forbid it.
In April, 1870, in a letter which appeared in the
Spectator y I wrote as follows :
"In the speech of the Bishop of Peterborough, delivered at
the Educational Conference at Leicester, and published in a sep-
arate form by the National Education Union, his Lordship quotes
from a recent letter of mine to the Daily News some words in
which I explained that ' unsectarian education amounts to a new
species of parliamentary piety.' It is a satisfaction to find that the
Bishop of Peterborough is able to * entirely endorse these words. '
The Bishop asks : ' Whose words do you suppose they are ? They
are the words of that reactionary maintainer of creeds and dogmas
— Mr. Holyoake. ' So far from being a ' reactionary ' in this mat-
ter, I have always maintained that every form of sincere opinion,
religious or secular, should have free play and fair play. I have
never varied in advocating the right of free utterance and free ac-
tion of all earnest conviction. The State requires a self-support-
ing and tax-paying population. But the State cannot insure this,
except by imparting productive knowledge to the people. It is
necessary for the people to receive, it is the interest of the State to
give, productive instruction in national schools."
SELF-DEFENSIVE FOR THE PEOPLE. 69
If people realised how much extended secular in-
struction is needed, they would be impatient with the
obstruction of it by contending sects. Children want
industrial education to fit them for emigrants. A
knowledge of soils, of cattle, of climate, and crops,
and how to nail up a wigwam and grow pork and
corn, is what they need. For want of such knowledge
Clerkenwell watchmakers, Northampton shoemakers,
Lancashire weavers, and Durham miners perish as
emigrants, and their bones bleach the prairies. Yet
all orthodox teaching turns out its pupils uninstructed,
for, as Tillottson has said, "He that does not know
those things which are of use and necessity for him
to know, is but an ignorant man, whatever he may
know beside." To know this world, and the Secular
conditions of prosperity in it, is indispensable to the
people.
Christianity is entirely futile in industry. If a
workman cannot pay his taxes, the most devout Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer will not abate sixpence in con-
sideration of the defaulter's piety. The poor man may
believe in the Thirty-nine Articles, be able to recite
all the Collects ; he may spend his Sundays at church,
and his evenings at prayer- meeting; but the reverend
magistrate, who has confirmed him and preached to
him, will send him to gaol if he does not pay. The
sooner workmen understand that Christianity has no
commercial value, the better for them.
Why should purely Secular instruction be regarded
70 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
with distrust, when purely religious education does
not answer ? It does not appear in human experience
that purely religious teaching, even when dispensed
in a clergyman's family, is a security for good con-
duct. It is matter of common remark that the sons
of clergymen turn out worse than the sons of parents
in other professions.
We want no whining or puling population. The
elements of science and morality will give children
the use of their minds, and minds to use, and teach
justice and kindness, self-direction, self-reliance, forti-
tude, and truth. There is piety in this instruction, —
piety to mankind, — exactly that sort of piety for the
want of which society suffers.
The principles for which during two centuries Non-
conformity in England has contended are, that the
State should forbid no religion, impose no religion,
teach no religion, pay no religion. In 1870, the year
in which Mr. Forster's Act came into operation, I was
the only person who issued a public address to the
"School Board Electors" in favor of free compulsory,
and Secular instruction. Two of the proposals, the
least likely to be favorably received, have since been
adopted. The turn of the third must be near, unless
fools are always at the polls*
CHAPTER XIV.
REJECTED TENETS REPLACED BY BETTER.
"False ideas can be confuted by argument,
but it is only by true ideas they can be ex-
pelled." — Cardinal Newman.
ERROR will live wherever vermin of the mind may
burrow ; and error, if expelled, will return to its
accustomed haunt, unless its place be otherwise occu-
pied by some tenant of truth. Suppose that criticism
has established :
1. That God is unknown.
2. That a future life is unprovable.
3. That the Bible is not a practical guide.
4. That Providence sleeps.
5. That prayer is futile.
6. That original sin is untrue.
7. That eternal perdition is unreal.
What is free thought going to do? All these the-
ological ideas, however untrue, are forces of opinion
on the side of error. After taking these doctrines out
of the minds of men, as far as reasoning criticism may
do it, what is proposed to be put in their place? When
we call out to men that they are going down a wrong
7a ENGLISH SECULARISM.
road, we are more likely to arrest their attention if we
can point out the right road to take.
No mind is ever entirely empty. The objection to
ignorance is not that it has no ideas, but that it has
wrong ones. Its ideas are narrow, cramped, vicious.
It likes without reason, hates without cause, and is
suspicious of what it might trust. It is not enough to
tell a man who is eating injurious food that it will harm
him. If he has no other aliment, he must go on feed-
ing upon what he has. If you cannot supply better,
you cannot reproach him who takes the bad. But if
you have true principles, they should be offered as
substitutes for the false. Secularist truth should tread
close upon the heels of theological error.
1. For the study of the origin of the universe Sec-
ularism substitutes the study of the laws and uses of
the universe, which. Cardinal Newman admitted, might
be regarded as consonant to the will of its author.
2. For a future state Secularism proposes the wise
use of this, as he who fails in this "duty nearest hand "
has no moral fitness for any other.
3. For revelation it offers the guidance of observa-
tion, investigation, and experience. Instead of taking
authority for truth, it takes truth for authority.
4. For the providence of Scripture, Secularism di-
rects men to the providence of science, which provides
against peril, or brings deliverance when peril comes.
5. For prayer it proposes self-help and the em-
ployment of all the resources of manliness and indus-
REJECTED TENETS REPLACED BY BETTER. 73
try. Jupiter himself rebuked the waggoner who cried
for aid, instead of putting his own shoulder to the
wheel.
6. For original depravity, which infuses hopeless-
ness into all effort for personal excellence, Secularism
counsels the creation of those conditions, so far as
human prevision can provide them, in which it shall
be "impossible for a man to be depraved or poor."
The aim of Secularism is to promote the moralisation
of this world, which Christianity has proved ineffec-
tual to accomplish.
7. For eternal perdition, which appals every human
heart, Secularism substitutes the warnings and pen-
alties of causation attending the violation of the laws
of nature, or the laws of truth — penalties inexorable
and unevadable in their consequences. Though they
extend to the individual no farther than this life, they
are without the terrible element of divine vindictive-
ness, yet, being near and inevitable — following the
offender close as the shadow of the offence — are more
deterrent than future punishment, which ' ' faith " may
evade without merit.
The aim of Secularism is to educate the conscience
in the service of man. It puts duty into free thought.
Men inquired, for self-protection, and from dislike of
error. But if a man was in no danger himself, and was
indifferent whether an error — which no longer harmed
him — prevailed or not. Secularism holds that it is still
a duty to aid in ending it for the sake of others. It
74 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
was W. J. Fox, the most heretical preacher of his day,
who said (1824): "I believe in the right of religion
and the duty of free inquiry." He is a very exceptional
person — as we know in political as well as in questions
of mental freedom — who cares for a right he does not
need himself. A man is generally of opinion, as I
have seen in many agitations, that nobody need care
for a form of liberty he does not want himself. It is as
though a man on the bank should think that a man in
the water does not want a rope. Duty is devotion to
the right. Right in morals is that which is morally
expedient. That is morally expedient which is con-
ducive to the happiness of the greatest numbers. The
service of others is the practical form of duty. "He,"
says Buddha, "who was formerly heedless, and after-
wards becomes earnest, lights up the world like the
moon escaped from a cloud."
Constructiveness is an education which attains suc-
cess but slowly. Some men have no distinctive notion
whatever of truth. It seems never to have occurred
to them that there is anything intrinsic in it, and they
only fall into it by accident. Others have a wholesome
idea that truth is essential, and that, as a rule, you
ought to tell it, and some do it. This is a small con-
ception of truth, but it is good as far as it goes, and
ought to be valued, as it is scarce. If any one asks
such a person whether what he says is what he thinks,
or what he knows, to be true, he is perplexed. The
difference between the two things has not occurred to
REJECTED TENETS REPLACED BY BETTER. 75
him. He has been under the impression that what he
believes is the same thing as what he knows, and
when he finds the two things are very different, his
idea of truth is doubled and is twice as large as it was
before.
There is yet a larger view, to which many never
attain. To them all truth is truth of equal value. All
geese are geese, but all are not equally tender. Though
all horses are horses, all are not equally swift. Yet
many never observe that all facts are not equally suc-
culent or swift, nor all truth of equal value or useful-
ness.
Social truth has three marks, — it must be explicit,
relevant to the question in hand, and of use for the
purpose in hand. But it requires some intelligence to
observe this, and judgment to act upon it.
CHAPTER XV.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY.
" Religion, as dealing with the confessedly
incomprehensible, is not the basis for human
union, in social, or industrial, or political cir-
cles, but only that portion of old religion
which is now called moral."
— Professor Francis Williant Newman,
BISHOP ELLICOTT was the first prelate whom I
heard admit (in a sermon to the members of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science)
that men might be moral from other motives than
those furnished by Christianity. Renan says that Jus-
tin Martyr "in his Apology, never attacks the principle
of the empire. He wants the empire to examine the
Christian doctrines." A Secularist would have at-
tacked the principle, regarding freedom as of more
consequence to progress than any doctrine without.it.
Those who seek to guide life by reason are not
without a standard of appeal. "Secularism accepts
no authority but that of nature, adopts no methods
but those of science and pnilosophy, and respects in
practice no rule but that of the conscience, illustrated
by the common sense of mankind. It values the les-
sons of the past, and looks to tradition as presenting
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY. 77
a storehouse of raw materials for thought, and in many
cases results of high wisdom for our reverence ; but it
utterly disowns tradition as a ground of belief, whether
miracles and supernaturalism be claimed or not claimed
on its side. No sacred Scripture or ancient Church
can be made a basis of belief, for the obvious reason
that their claims always need to be proved, and can-
not without absurdity be assumed. The association
leaves to its individual members to yield whatever re-
spects their own good sense judges to be due to the
opinions of great men, living or dead, spoken or writ-
ten ; as also to the practice of ancient communities,
national or ecclesiastical. But it disowns all appeal
to such authorities as final tests of truth. "^
Morality can be inspired and confirmed by percep-
tion of the consequences of conduct. Theology regards
free will as the foundation of responsibility. But free
will saves no man from material consequences, and
diverts attention from material causes of evil and good.
Under the free will doctrine the wonder is that any
morality is left in the world. It is a doctrine which
gives scoundrels the same chance as a saint. When
a man is assured that he can be saved when he be-
lieves, and that, having free will, he can believe when
he pleases, he, as a rule, never does please until he
has had his fill of vice, or is about to die, — either of
disease or by the hangman. If by the hangman, he is
1 1 owe the expression of this passage, whose comprehensiveness and
felicity of phrase exceed the reach of my pen, to Professor Francis William
Kewman.
78 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
told that, provided he repents before eight o'clock in
the morning, he may find himself nestling in Abra-
ham's bosom before nine. Free will is the doctrine of
rascalism. It is time morality had other foundation
than theology. The relations of life can be made as
impressive as ideas of supernaturalism. But in this
Christians not only lend no help, they disparage the
attempt to control life by reason. When Secularism
was first talked of, the President of the Congregational
Union, the Rev. Dr. Harris, commended to the Union
the words of Bishop Lavington of a century earlier
(1750): "My brethren, I beg you will rise up with
me against mere moral preaching. "^ A writer of dis-
tinction, R. H. Hutton, writing on *< Secularism" in
the Expositor so late as 1881, argues strenuously that
moral government is impossible without supernatural
convictions. The egotism of Christianity is as con-
spicuous as that of politics. No ethic is genuine un-
less it bears the hall-mark of the Church. Secularism
does not deny the efficacy of other theories of life
upon those who accept them, and only claims to be of
use as commending morality on considerations purely
human, to those who reject theories purely spiritual.
Any one familiar with controversy knows that
Christianity is advertised like a patent medicine which
will cure all the maladies of mankind. Everybody
who tries reasoned morality is encouraged to condemn
it, and is denounced if he commends it.
IBritith Banner, October 27, 185J.
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY. 79
It is a maxim of Secularism that, wherever there
is a rightful object at which men should aim, there is
a Secular path to it.
Nearly all inferior natures are susceptible of moral
and physical improvability, which improvability can
be indefinitely advanced by supplying proper material
conditions.
Since it is not capable of demonstration whether
the inequalities of human condition will be compen-
sated for in another life, it is the business of intelli-
gence to rectify them in this world. The speculative
worship of superior beings, who cannot need it, seems
a lesser duty than the patient service of known inferior
natures and the mitigation of harsh destiny, so that
the ignorant may be enlightened and the low elevated.
Christians often promote projects beneficial to men;
but are they not mainly incited thereto by the hope of
inclining the hearts of those they aid to their cause?
Is not their motive proselytism? Is it not a higher
morality to do good for its own sake, careless whether
those benefited become adherents or not?
Going to a distant town to mitigate some calamity
there, will illustrate the principle of Secularism. One
man will go on this errand from pure sympathy with
the unfortunate ; this is goodness. Another goes be-
cause the priest bids him ; this is obedience. Another
goes because the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew tells
him that all such persons will pass to the right hand
of the Father ; this is calculation. Another goes be-
8o ENGLISH SECULARISM.
cause he believes God commands him ; this is theo-
logical piety. Another goes because he is aware that
the neglect of suffering will not answer ; this is utili-
tarianism. But another goes on the errand of mercy
because it is an immediate service to humanity, know-
ing that material deliverance is piety and better than
spiritual consolation ; this is Secularism.
One whose reputation for spirituality is in all the
Churches says : ' ' Properly speaking, all true work is
religion, and whatsoever religion is not work may go
and dwell among the Brahmins, the Antinomians,
Spinning Dervishes, or where it will. Admirable was
that maxim of the old monks. Labor are est or are (Work
is worship). 1 In his article on Auguste Comte, Mr.
J. S. Mill says he "uses religion in its modern sense
as signifying that which binds the convictions, whether
to deity or to duty, — deity in the theological sense, or
duty in the moral sense." This is the only sense in
which a Secularist would employ the term. Religious
moralism is a term I might use, since it binds a man
to humanity, which religion does not. *' Without
God," said Mazzini to the Italian workingmen forty
years ago, — "without God you may compel, but not
persuade. You may become tyrants in your turn ;
you cannot be educators or apostles." One night,
when Mazzini was speaking in this way, in the hear-
ing of Garibaldi, arguing that there was no ground of
duty unless based on the idea of God, the General
ICar'.y'e, Past ^md Present,
MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THE OLOGV. 81
turned round and said : "I am an Atheist. Am I de-
ficient in the sense of duty ?" "Ah," replied Mazzini,
"you imbibed it with your mother's milk." All around
smiled at the quick-witted evasion.
In one sense Mazzini was as atheistic in mind as
orthodox Christians. He disbelieved that truth, duty,
or humanity could have any vitality unless derived
from belief in God. Devout as few men are, in the
Church or out of it, yet Mazzini believed alone in
God. Dogmas of the Churches were to him as though
they were not ; yet there were times when he seemed
to admit that other motives than the one which in«
spired him might operate for good in other minds. In
a letter he once addressed to me there occurred this
splendid passage : —
"We pursue the same end, — progressive improvement, asso-
ciation, transformation of the corrupted medium in which we are
now living, the overthrow of all idolatries, shams, lies, and con-
ventionalities. We both want man to be, not the poor, passive,
cowardly, phantasmagoric unreality of the actual time, thinking
in one way and acting in another; bending to power which he
hates and despises ; carrying empty popish or Thirty-nine Article
formulas on his brow, and none within ; but a fragment of the liv-
ing truth, a real individual being linked to collective humanity, —
the bold seeker of things to come ; the gentle, mild, loving, yet
firm, uncompromising, inexorable apostle of all that is just and
heroic, — the Priest, the Poet, and the Prophet."
Mazzini saw in the conception of God the great
"Indicator" of duty, and that the one figure, "the
morst deeply inspired of God, men have seen on the
8a ENGLISH SECULARISM.
earth was Jesus." Mazzini's impassioned protest
against unbelief was itself a form of unbelief. He be-
lieved only in one God, not in three. If Jesus was
inspired of God, he was not God, or he would have
been self-inspired. But, apart from this repellent
heresy, if Theism and Christianism are essential to
those who would serve humanity, all propaganda of
freedom must be delayed until converts are made to
this new faith.
The question will be put. Has independent moral-
ity ever been seen in action ?
Voltaire, at the peril of his liberty and life, rescued
a friendless family from the fire and the wheel the
priests had prepared for them. Paine inspired the in-
dependence of America, and Lloyd Garrison gave lib-
erty to the slaves whose bondage the clergy defended.
The Christianity of three nations produced no three
men in their day who did anything comparable to the
achievement of these three sceptics, who wrought this
splendid good, not only without Christianity, but in
opposition to it. Save for Christian obstruction, they
had accomplished still greater good without the peril
they had to brave.
None of the earlier critics of Secularism, as has
been said (and not many in the later years), realised
that it was addressed, not to Christians, but to those
who rejected Christianity, or who were indifferent to
it, and were outside it. Christians cannot do anything
to inspire them with ethical principles, since they do
MORALITY INDEFENDENT OF THEOLOGY. Zi
not believe in morality unless based on their super-
natural tenets. They have to convert men to Theism,
to miracles, prophecy, inspiration of the Scriptures,
the Trinity, and other soul-wearying doctrines, before
they can inculcate morality they can trust. We do
not rush in where they fear to tread. Secularism
moves where they do not tread at all.
CHAPTER XVI.
ETHICAL CERTITUDE.
" You can tell more about a man's charac*
ter by trading horses with him once than you
can by hearing him talk for a year in prayer
meeting." — American Maxim,
A FORM of thought which has no certitude can
*^^ command no intelligent trust. Unless capable
of verification, no opinion can claim attention, nor re-
tain attention, if it obtains it.
If a sum in arithmetic be wrong, it can be discov-
ered b}' a new way of working ; if a medical recipe is
wrong, the effect is manifest in the health ; if a polit-
ical law is wrong, it is sooner or later apparent in the
mischief it produces ; if a theorem in navigation is er-
roneous, delay or disaster warns the mariner of his
mistake ; if an insane moralist teaches that adherence
to truth is wrong, men can try the effects of lying,
when distrust and disgrace soon undeceive them. But
if a theological belief is wrong, we must die to find it
out. Secularism, therefore, is safer. It is best to
follow the double lights of reason and experience than
the dark lantern of faith. "In all but religion," ex-
ETHICAL CERTITUDE. 85
claims a famous preacher,^ "men know their true in-
terests and use their own understanding. Nobody
takes anything on trust at market, nor would anybody
do so at church if there were but a hundredth part the
care for truth which there is for money."
Mr. Rathbone Greg has shown, in a memorable
passage, that ** the lot of man — not perhaps altogether
of the individual, but certainly of the race — is in his
own hands, from his being surrounded by ^jr^// /awj,
on knowledge of which, and conformity to which, his
well-being depends. The study of these and obedience
to them form, therefore, the great aim of public in-
struction. Men must be taught :
"I. 1h.Q physical laws on which health depends.
"2. The moral laws ow.^\\\^ happiness depends.
"3. The intellectual laws on which knowledge de-
pends.
* * 4. The social and political laws on which national
prosperity and advancement depend.
"5. The economic laws on vihich. wealth depends."
Mr. Spurgeon had flashes of Secularistic inspira-
tion, as when engaging a servant, who professed to
have taken religion, he asked "whether she swept
under the mats." It was judging piety by a material
test.
There is no trust surer than the conclusions of rea-
son and science. What is incapable of proof is usually
IW. J. Fox.
86 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
decided by desire, and is without the conditions of
uniformity or certitude.
Duty consists in doing the right because it is just
to others, and because we must set the example of
doing right to others, or we have no claim that others
shall do right to us. Certitude is best obtained by the
employment of material means, because we can better
calculate them, and because they are less likely to
evade us, or betray us, than any other means available
to us.
Orthodox religions are pale in the face now. They
still keep the word of material promise to the ear, and
break it to the heart ; and a great number of people
now know it, and many of the clergy know that they
know it. The poor need material aid, and prayer is
the way not to get it ; while science, more provident
than faith, has brought the people generous gifts, and
inspired them with just expectations. What men need
is a guide which stands on a business footing. The
Churches administer a system of foreign affairs in a
very loose way, quite inconsistent with sound commer-
cial principles. For instance, a firm giving checks on
a bank in some distant country — not to be found in
any gazetteer of ascertained places, nor laid down in
any chart, and from which no persons who ever set out
in search of it were ever known to return — would do
very little business among prudent men. Yet this is
precisely the nature of the business engaged in by or-
thodox firms.
ETHICAL CERTITUDE. 87
On the other hand, Secularism proposes to trans-
act the business of life on purely mercantile princi-
ples. It engages only in that class of transactions the
issue of which can be tested by the experience of this
life. Its checks, if I may so speak, are drawn upon
duty, good sense, and material effort, and are to be
cashed from proceeds arising in our midst — under our
own eyes — subject to ordinary commercial tests. Na-
ture is the banker who pays all notes held by those
who observe its laws. To use the words of Macbeth,
it is here, "on this bank and shoal of time" upon
which we are cast, that nature pays its checks, and
not elsewhere ; which are honored now, and not in an
unknown world, in some unknown time, and in an en-
tirely unknown way. By lack of judgment, or sense,
the Secularist may transact bad business ; but he gives
good security. His surety is experience. His ref-
erences are to the facts of the present time. He puts
all who have dealings with him on their guard. Sec-
ularism tells men that they must look out for them-
selves, act for themselves, within the limits of neither
injuring nor harming others. Secularism does not
profess to be infallible, but it acts on honest prin-
ciples. It seeks to put progress on the business foot-
ing of good faith. ^ Adherents who accept the theory
of this life for this life dwell in a land of their own —
the land of certitude. Science and utilitarian morality
are kings in that country, and rule there by right of
- 1 See Secularism a Religion which Gives Heaven no Trouble,
h8 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
conquest over error and superstition. In the kingdom
of Thought there is no conquest over men, but over
foolishness only. Outside the world of science and
morality lies the great Debatable Ground of the ex-
istence of Deity and a Future State. The Ruler of
the Debatable Ground is named Probability, and his
two ministers are Curiosity and Speculation. Over
that mighty plain, which is as wide as the universe
and as old as time, no voice of the gods has ever been
heard, and no footsteps of theirs have ever been traced.
Philosophers have explored the field with telescopes
of a longer range than the eyes of a thousand saints,
and have recognised nothing save the silent and dis-
tant horizon. Priests have denounced them for not
perceiving what was invisible. Sectaries have clam-
ored, and the most ignorant have howled — as the most
ignorant always do — that there is something there,
because they want to see it. All the while the white
mystery is still unpenetrated in this life.
But a future being undisclosed is no proof that
there is no future. Those who reason through their
desires will believe there is ; those who reason through
their understanding may yet hope that there is. In
the meantime, all stand before the portals of the un-
trodden world in equal unknowingness. If faith can
be piety, work is more so. To bring new beauty out
of common life — is not that piety? To change blank
stupidity into intelligent admiration of any work of
nature — is not that piety? If our towns and streets be
ETHICAL CERTITUDE. 89
made to give gladness and cheerfulness to all who live
or walk therein — is not that piety? If the prayer of
innocence ascend to heaven through a pure atmos-
phere, instead of through the noisome and polluted
air of uncleanness common in the purlieus of towns
and of churches, and even cathedrals — is not that
piety ? Can we, in these days, conceive of refigious
persons being ignorant and dirty? Yet they abound.
If, therefore, we send to heaven clean, intelligent,
bright-minded saints — is not that piety? It is no bad
religion — as religions go — to believe in the good God
of knowledge and cleanliness and cheerfulness and
beauty, and offer at his altar the daily sacrifice of in-
telligent sincerity and material service.
We leave to others their own way of faith and wor-
ship. We ask only leave to take our own. Carlyle
has told us that only two men are to be honored, and
no third — the mechanic and the thinker : he who works
with honest hand, making the world habitable ; and
he who works with his brain, making thought artistic
and true. "All the rest," he adds with noble scorn,
**are chaff, which the wind may blow whither it list-
eth." The certainty of heaven is for the useful alone.
Mere belief is the easiest, the poorest, the shabbiest
device by which conscientious men ever attempted to
scale the walls of Paradise.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ETHICAL METHOD OF CONTROVERSY.
"It was one of the secrets of my craft in
the old days, when I wanted to weld iron or
work steel to a fine purpose, to begin gently.
If I began, as all learners do, to strike my heav-
iest blows at the start, the iron would crumble
instead of welding, or the steel would suffer
under my hammer, so that when it came to be
tempered it would 'fly,' as we used to say, and
rob the thing I had made of its finest quality."
—Robert Coliyer, D. D.
'* 'T^HEY who believe that they have truth ask no
J- favor, save that of being heard ; they dare the
judgment of mankind ; refused co-operation, they in-
voke opposition, for opposition is their opportunity."
This was the maxim I wrote at the beginning of the
Secularistic movement, to show that we were willing
to accept ourselves the controversy, which we con-
tended was the sole means of establishing truth. No
proposition, as Samuel Bailey showed, is to be trusted
until it has been tested by very wide discussion. We
soon found that the free and open field of Milton was
not sufficient. It needed a "fair" as well as a "free
and open encounter." Disputants require to be equally
matched in debate as in arms.
THE ETHICAL METHOD OF CONTROVEkSY. 91
The Secularist policy is to accept the purely moral
teaching of the Bible, and to controvert its theology,
in such respects as it contradicts and discourages eth-
ical effort. Yet theological questions are always sought
to be forced upon us. The Rev. Henry Townley fol-
lowed me to the Leader office (1853-1854) to induce
me to discuss the question of the "existence of God."
I never had done so, and objected that it would give
the impression that Secularism was atheistic. He was
so insistent and importunate that I consented to dis-
cuss the question with him. Never after did I do so
with any one. The Rev. Brewin Grant endeavored
to get my acceptance of propositions which pledged
me to a wild opposition to Christianity. Mr. Samuel
Morley, honorable in all things, admitted I had ob-
jected to it, but in the end I assented to it, that the
discussion might not be broken off. Thomas Cooper
was persistent that I should discuss with him the au-
thenticity of the Scriptures. What I proposed was
the proposition that the authenticity of the Scripture,
its miracles, and prophecies are quite apart from moral
truth.
The discussion took place in the city of York, last-
ing five nights. Canon Robinson and Canon Hey
presided alternately. Mr. Cooper was an able man in
dealing with the stock propositions of Christianity; but
their relevance as tests of morality was an entirely new
subject to him. He protested rather than reasoned,
and declared he would never discuss the question of
93 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
the ethical test of the truth of Scriptures ; nor have I
ever found any responsible minister willing to do so
down to this day. Thus Christians should condemn
with reservation the tendency in Secularists to debate
theology, seeing how reluctant they are to do other-
wise themselves. Christians seem incapable of under-
standing how much the objection to their cause arises
in the revolt of the moral sense against it.
On first meeting Richard Carlile in 1842, some
years before Secularism took a distinctive form, he in-
vited me to hear him lecture upon the principles of
the Christian Warrior,^ of which he was editor, and to
give my opinion thereon. In doing so I explained the
ideas from which I have never departed ; namely, that
no theologic, astronomic, or miraculous mode of prov-
ing Scriptural doctrine could ever be made even intel-
ligible, except to students of very considerable re-
search. Such theories, I contended, must rest, more
or less, on critical and conjectural interpretation, and
could never enable a workingman to dare the under-
standing of others in argument. Scientific interpre-
tation laid entirely outside Christian requirements,
and seemed to Christians as disingenuous evasion of
what they took to be obvious truths. My contention
was that the people have no historic or critical knowl-
edge enabling them to determine the divine origin of
Christianity.
On the platform he who has most knowledge of
ITbe last periodical Mr. Carlile edited.
THE ETHICAL METHOD OF CONTROVERSY. 93
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin will always be able to si-
lence any dissentient who has not equal information.
If by accident a controversialist happen to possess
this knowledge, it goes for nothing unless he has credit
for classical competency. In controversy of this na-
ture it is not enough for a man to know ; he must be
known to know before his conclusions can command
attention. To myself it was not of moment whether
the Scriptures were authentic or inspired. My sole
inquiry was. Did they contain clear moral guidance ?
If they did, I accepted that guidance with gratitude.
If I found maxims obviously useful and true, judged
by human experience, I adopted them, whether given
by inspiration or not. If precepts did not answer to
this test, they were not acceptable, though all the
apostles in session had signed them. To miracles I
did not object, nor did I see any sense in endeavoring
to explain them away. We all have reason to regret
that no one performs them now. It was our misfor-
tune that the power, delegated with so much pomp of
promise to the saints, had not descended to these days.
If any preacher or deacon could, in our day, feed five
thousand men on a few loaves and a few small fishes,
and leave as many baskets of fragments as would run
a workhouse for a month, the Poor Law Commission-
ers would make a king of that saint. But if a precept
enjoined me to believe what was not true, it would be
a base precept, and all the miracles in the Scriptures
could not alter its character ; while, if a precept be
94 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
honest and just, no miracle is wanted to attest it ; in-
deed, a miracle to allure credence in it would only
cast suspicion on its genuineness. The moral test of
the Scriptures was sufficient, since it had the com
manding advantage of appealing to the common sense
of all sorts and conditions of men, of Christian or of
Pagan persuasion. Ethical criticism has this further
merit, that on the platform of discussion the miner,
the weaver, or farm-laborer is on the same level as the
priest. A man goes to heaven upon his own judg-
ment ; whereas, if his belief is based on the learning
of others, he goes to heaven second-hand.
When Mr. J. A. Froude wrote for John Henry
Newman the Life of St. Belletin, he ended with the
words : "And this is all that is known, and more than
all, of the life of a servant of God." In the Bible there
appears to be a great deal more than was ever known.
This does not concern the Secularist, though it does
the scholar. If there be moral maxims in the Scrip-
ture, what does it matter how they got there?
CHAPTER XVIII.
ITS DISCRIMINATION.
"There is nothing so terrible as activity
without insight." — Goethe,
TN 1847 I commenced in the Reasoner what I entitled
^ "The Moral Remains of the Bible," — a selection
of some splendid moral stories, incidents, and sen-
tences having ethical characteristics such as I doubted
not would "remain" when the Bible came to be re-
garded as a human book. I wrote a " Logic of Life."^
My Trial of Theism was only <' as accused of obstruct-
ing Secular life," as stated on the title-page. The
object was to show how much useful criticism could
be entered upon without touching the questions of
authenticity, or miracles, or the existence of deity.
Thus it was left to opponents to declare that things
morally incredible were inspired by God. In this case
it was not I, but they, who blasphemed.
Take the case of Samson's famous engagement
with the Philistines at Ramath, — Lehi surrounded by
a band of warlike Philistines (though, as the text im-
-ICompanion to the "Logic of Death," both contained in The Trial oj
Theism.
96 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
plies, 3,000 of his own armed countrymen were at
hand). Samson, who had no weapon, was not given
one by them, but had to look about for a "new jaw-
bone of an ass." With this singular instrument he
killed, one after the other, a thousand Philistine sol-
diers, who were big, strong men, and, unless every
blow was fatal, it must have taken several blows to
kill some of them.
Are there three places in the human body where
a single blow will be sure to kill a man ? Did Samson
know those places ? And was he always able to direct
his blow with unerring precision to one or other of
those particular spots? If the thousand Philistines
"surrounded" him, how did he keep the others off
while he struggled with the one he was killing ? It is
not conceivable that the Philistines stood there to be
killed, and meekly submitted to ignoble blows, death,
and degradation. The jawbone must have been of
strange texture to have crashed through armor, and
have turned aside spears and swords of stalwart war-
riors without chipping, splitting, or breaking in two.
What time it must have taken Samson to pursue each
man, beat off his comrades, drag him from their midst,
give him the asinine coup de grdce, drag and cast his
dead body upon the "heaps" of slain he was piling
up ! What struggling, scuffling, and turmoil of blood
and blows Samson must have gone through ! Spurted
all over with blood, Barnum would have bought him
for a Dime Museum as the deepest-colored Red Indian
ITS DISCRIMINA TION. 97
known. No Deerfoot could have been nimbler than
Samson must have been on this mighty day. When
this Herculean fight was over, which, with the utmost
expedition, must have occupied Samson six days, —
which would give 166 killed single-handed per day, —
the only effect produced upon Samson appears to have
been that he was "sore athirst." Even after this
extraordinary use of the jawbone it was in such good
condition that, a hollow place being "clave" in it, a
fount of water gushed forth for refreshing this remark-
able warrior. Were it not recorded in the Bible, it
would be said that the writer intended to imply that
the jawbone of the ass is to be found only in the mouth
of the reader.
Can it need miracle or prophecy, authenticity, or
inspiration, to attest this story of the Jewish Jack-the-
Giant-killer ? What moral good can arise from a nar-
ration which it is reverence to reject? By leaving it
to the Christian to say it is given by "inspiration" of
God, it is he who blasphemes. But if the question of
authenticity were raised, the character of the narrative
would be lost sight of, and would not come into ques-
tion ; while the test of moral probability decides the
invalidity of the story within the compass of the knowl-
edge of an ordinary audience.
In the same manner, keeping to the policy of af-
firmation, he who maintains the self- existence, the
self-action, and eternity of the universe can be met
only by those who defame nature as a second-hand
g8 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
tool of God. Such are atheists towards nature, the
author of their existence, and God must so regard
them.
A single precept of Christ's, "Take no thought
for the morrow," has bred swarms of mendicants in
every age since this day ; but a far more dangerous
precept is "Resist not evil," which has made Christi-
anity welcome to so many tyrants. Christ, whatever
other sentiments he had, had a slave heart. Every
friend of freedom knows that "resistance is the back-
bone of the world." The patriot poet^ exclaims :
•'Land of oar Fathers — in their hour of need
God help them, guarded by the passive creed."
No miracle could make these precepts true, and
he who proved their authenticity would be the enemy
of mankind.
Whether Christ existed or not affects in no way
what excellence and inimitableness there was in his
delineated character. His offer of palpable material-
istic evidence to Thomas showed that he recognised
the right of scepticism to relevant satisfaction. His
concession of proof in this case needed no supernatu-
ral testimony to render it admirable.
The reader will now see what the policy of Secu-
larist advocacy is, — mainly to test theology by its eth-
ical import. To many all policy is restraint; they
cry down policy, and erect blundering into a virtue.
1 Pr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
ITS DISCRIMINATION. 99
Whereas policy is guidance to a chosen end. Mathe-
matics is but the policy of measurement ; grammar but
the policy of speech ; logic but the policy of reason ;
arithmetic but the policy of calculation ; temperance
but the policy of health ; trigonometry but the policy
of navigation ; roads but the policy of transit ; music
but the policy of controlling sound ; art but the policy
of beauty ; law but the policy of protection ; discipline
but the policy of strength ; love but the policy of af-
fection. An enemy may object to an adversary having
a policy, because he is futile without one. The policy
adopted may be bad, but no policy at all is idiocy,
and commits a cause to the providence of Bedlam.
CHAPTER XIX.
APART FROM CHRISTIANISM.
"What is written by Moses can only be
read by God." — Bikar Proverb.
SECULARISM differs from Christianism in so far
as it accepts only the teachings which pertain to
man, and which are consonant with reason and ex-
perience.
Parts of the Bible have moral splendor in them,
but no Christian will allow any one to take the parts
he deems true, and reject as untrue those he deems
false. He who ventured to be thus eclectic would be
defamed as Paine was. Thus Christians compel those
who would stand by reason to stand apart from them.
To accept a part, and put that forward as the whole
— to pretend or even to assume it to be the whole — is
dishonest. To retain a portion, and reject what you
leave, and not say so, is deceiving. To contend that
what you accept as the spirit of Christianity is in ac-
cordance with all that contradicts it, is to spend your
days in harmonising opposite statements — a pursuit
demoralising to the understanding. The Secularist
has, therefore, to choose between dishonesty, the de-
APART FROM CHRISTIANISM. loi
ception of others and deception of himself, or ethical
principles independent of Christianity — and this is
what he does :
The Bible being a bundle of Hebrew tracts on
tribal life and tribal spite, its assumed infallibility is a
burden, contradicting and misleading to all who ac-
cept it as a divine handbook of duty.
In papers issued by religious societies upon the
Bible it is declared to be " so complete a system that
nothing can be added to it, or taken from it," and that
"it contains everything needful to be known or done."
This is so false that no one, perceiving it, could be
honest and not protest against it in the interest of
others. Recently the Bishop of Worcester said: "It
was of no use resisting the Higher Criticism. God
had not been pleased to give us what might be called
a perfect Bible. "^ Then it is prudence to seek a more
trustworthy guide.
If money were bequeathed to maintain the eclectic
criticism of the Scripture, it would be confiscated by
Christian law. So to stand apart is indispensable self-
defence. Individual Christians, as I well know, de-
vote themselves with a noble earnestness to the service
of man, as they understand his interests ; but so long
as Christianity retains the power of fraud, and uses it,
Christianism as a system, or as a cause, remains out-
side the pale of respect. Prayer, in which the op-
pressed and poor are taught to trust, is of no avail for
\ Midland Evening News, 1893.
loa ENGLISH SECULARISM.
protection or food, and the poor ought to know it.
The Bishop of Manchester declared, in my hearing,
that the Lord's Prayer will not bring us "daily bread,"
but that "it is an exercise of faith to ask for what we
shall not receive." But if prayer will not bring "daily
bread," it is a dangerous deception to keep up the be-
lief that it will. The eyes of forethought are closed
by trust in such aid, thrift is an affront to the generos-
ity of heaven, and labor is fooHshness. But, alas ! aid
does not come by supplication. The prayer-maker
dies in mendicancy. It is not reverence to pour into
the ears of God praise for protection never accorded.
Dean Stanley, admirable as a man as well as a saint,
was killed in the Deanery, Westminster, by a bad
drain, in spite of all his Collects. Dean Farrar has
been driven from St. Margaret's Rectory, in Dean's
Yard, by another drain, which poisons in spite of the
Thirty-nine Articles ; and Canon Eyton refuses to take
up his residence until the sanitary engineers have
overhauled^ the place, which, notwithstanding the in-
vocations of the Church, Providence does not see to.
To keep silence on the non-intervention of Providence
would be to connive at the fate of those who come to
destruction by such dependence.
"O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor ! While thy head is bowed,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave 1 "
1 See Wettmintter Ganatte London Letter, November xg, 1895.
APART FROM CHRISTIANISM. 103
True respect would treat God as though at the least
he is a gentlemen. Christianity does not do this. No
gentleman would accept thanks for benefits he had
not conferred, nor would he exact thanks daily and
hourly for gifts he had really made, nor have the van-
ity to covet perpetual thanksgivings. He who would
respect God, or respect himself, must seek a faith
apart from such Christianity.
A divine, who excelled in good sense, said : "Dan-
gerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far
into the doings of the Most High. Our soundest knowl-
edge is, to know that we know him not ; and our safest
eloquence concerning Him is our silence ; therefore it be-
hoveth our words to be wary and few."^
Mrs. Barbauld may have borrowed from Richard
Hooker her fine line :
" Silence is our least injurious praise."'
An earnest Christian, not a religious man (for all
Christians are not religious), assuming the professional
familiarity with the mind of God, said to me : "Should
the Lord call you to-day, are you prepared to meet
Him ?" I answered : Certainly ; for the service of man
in some form is seldom absent from my thoughts, and
must be consonant with his will. Were I to pray, I
should pray God to spare me from the presumption of
\ Ecclesiastical Polity, book i., § 2-
X Charles Lamb was of this opinion when he remarked: "Had I to say
grace, I would rather say it over a good book than over a mutton chop."
Christians say grace over an indigestible meal. But perhaps they are right,
since they need supernatural aid to assimilate it.
104 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
expecting to meet him, and from the vanity and con-
ceit of thinking that the God of the universe will take
an opportunity of meeting me.
Who can have moral longing for a religion which
represents God as hanging over York Castle to receive
the soul of Dove, the debauchee, who slowly poisoned
his wife, and whose final spiritual progress was posted
day by day on the Castle gates until the hour of the
hangman came ? Dove's confession was as appalling
as instructive. It ran thus :
' ' I know that the Eternal One,
Upon His throne divine,
Gorged with the blood of His own Son,
No longer thirsts for mine.
Many a man has passed his life
In doing naught but good,
Who has not half the confidence I have
In Jesus Christ, His blood. " ^
By quoting these lines, which Burns might have writ-
ten, the writer is sorry to portray, in their naked form,
principles which so many cherish. But the anatomy
of creeds can no more be explained, with the garments
of tradition and sentiment upon them, than a surgeon
can demonstrate the structure of the body with the
clothes on. Divine perdition is an ethical impossi-
bility.
Christianism is too often but a sour influence on
IFrom a volume of verse privately circulated in Liverpool at the time, by
W. H. Rathbone.
APART FROM CHRISTIANISM. 105
life. It tolerates nature, but does not enjoy it. In-
stead of giving men two Sundays, as it might, — one
for recreation and one for contemplation, — it converts
the only day of the poor into a penal infliction. It is
always more or less against art, parks, clubs, sanita-
tion, equity to labor, freedom, and many other things.
If any Christians eventually accept these material
ideas, they mostly dislike them. Art takes attention
from the Gospel. In parks many delight to walk,
when they might be at chapel or church. Clubs teach
men toleration, and toleration is thought to beget in-
difference. Sanitation is a form of blasphemy. Every
Christian sings : —
' ' Diseases are Thy servants, Lord ;
They come at Thy command."
But sanitation assassinates these "servants of the
Lord." In every hospital they are tried, condemned,
and executed as the enemies of mankind. If labor
had justice, it would be independent, and no longer
hopeless, as the poor always are. Freedom renders
men defiant of subjection, which all priests are prone
to exercise. Secularism has none of this distrust and
fear. It elects to be on the side of human progress,
and takes that side, withstand it who may. Thus,
those who care for the improvement of mankind must
act on principles dissociated from doctrines repellent
to humanity and deterrent of ameliorative enterprise.
CHAPTER XX.
SECULARISM CREATES A NEW RESPONSIBILITY.
" Mankind is an ass, who kicks those who
endeavor to take oS his panniers."
— Spanish Proverb.
1VT0 ONE need go to Spain to meet with animals
^ ^ who kick you if you serve them. Spanish asses
are to be found in every land. Could we see the legs
of truth, we should find them black and blue with the
kicks received in unloosening the panniers of error,
strapped by priests on the backs of the people. Even
philosophers kick as well as the ignorant, when new
ideas are brought before them. No improvement
would ever be attempted if friends of truth were afraid
of the asses' hoofs in the air.
He who maintains that mankind can be largely
improved by material means, imposes on himself the
responsibility of employing such means, and of pro-
moting their use as far as he can, and trusting to their
efficacy, — not being discouraged because he is but
one, and mankind are many. No man can read all
the books, or do all the work, of the world. It is
enough that each reads what he needs, and, in matter
A NEW RESPONSIBILITY. 107
of moral action, does all he can. He who does less,
fails in his duty to himself and to others.
Christian doctrine has none of the responsibility
which Secularism imposes. If there be vice or rapine,
oppression or murder, the purely Christian conscience
is absolved. It is the Lord's world, and nothing could
occur unless he permitted it. If any Christian heart
is moved to compassion, it commonly exudes in prayer.
He " puts the matter before the Lord and leaves it in
His hands." The Secularist takes it into his own.
What are his hands for ? The Christian can sit still
and see children grow up with rickets in their body
and rickets in their soul. He will see them die in a
foul atmosphere, where no angel could come to receive
their spirit without first stopping his nose with his
handkerchief, as I have seen Lord Palmerston do on
entering Harrow on Speech Day. The Christian can
make money out of unrequited labor. When he dies,
he makes no reparation to those who earned his
wealth, but leaves it to build a church, as though he
thought God was blind, not knowing (if Christ spake
truly) that the Devil is sitting in the fender in his
room, ready to carry his soul up the chimney to bear
Dives company. Why should he be anxious to miti-
gate inequality of human condition ? It is the Lord's
will, or it would not be. When it was seen that I was
ceasing to believe this, Christians in the church to
which I belonged knelt around me, and prayed that I
might be influenced not to go out into the world to
io8 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
see if these things could be improved. It was no light
duty I imposed on myself.
A Secularist is mindful of Carlyle's saying, "No
man is a saint in his sleep." Indeed, if any one takes
upon himself the responsibility of bettering by reason
the state of things, he will be kept pretty well awake
with his understanding.
Many persons think their own superiority sufficient
for mankind, and do not wish their exclusiveness to
be encroached upon. Their plea is that they distrust
the effect of setting the multitude free from mental
tyranny, and they distrust democracy, which would
sooner or later end political tyranny.
These men of dainty distrust have a crowd of imi-
tators, in whom nobody recognises any superiority to
justify their misgivings as to others. The distrust of
independence in the hands of the people arises mainly
from the dislike of the trouble it takes to educate the
ignorant in its use and limit. The Secularist under-
takes this trouble as far as his means permit. As an
advocate of open thought and the free action of opin-
ion, he counts the responsibility of trust in the people
as a duty.
It will be asked. What are the deterrent influences
upon which Secularism relies for rendering vice, of
the major or minor kind, repellent ? It relies upon
making it clear that in the order of nature retribution
treads upon the heels of transgression, and, if tardy
in doing it, its steps should be hastened.
A NEW RESPONSIBILITY. 109
The mark of error of life is — disease. Science can
take the body to pieces, and display mischief palpable
to the eyes, when the results of vice startle, like an
apparation, those who discern that :
"Their acts their angels are, — if good ; if ill,
Their fatal shadows that walk by them still."
A man is not so ready to break the laws of nature
when he sees he will break himself in doing it. He
may not fear God, but he fears fever and consumption.
He may have a gay heart, but he will not like the oc-
cupation of being his own sexton and digging his own
grave. When he sees that death lurks in the frequent
glass, for instance, that spoils the flavor of the wine.
He takes less pride in the beeswing who sees the
shroud in the bottle. He may hope that God will for-
give him, but he knows that death will not. He who
holds the scythe is accustomed to cut down fools,
whether they be peers or sweeps. Death knows the
fool at a glance. To prevent any mistake, Disease
has marked him with her broad arrow. The young
man who once has his eyes well open to this state of
the case, will be considerate as to the quality of his
pleasures, especially when he knows that alluring but
unwholesome pleasure is in the pay of death. Tem-
perance advocates made more converts by exhibiting
the biological effects of alcohol than by all their ex-
hortations.
The moral nature of man is as palpable as the
physical to those who look for its signs. There is a
HO ENGLISH SECULARISM.
moral squint in the judgment, as plain to be seen as
a cast in the eyes. The voice is not honest ; it has
the accent of a previous conviction in it. The speech
has contortions of meaning in it. The sense is limp
and flaccid, showing that the mind is flabby. Such a
one has the backbone of a fish ; he does not stand
upright. As the Americans say, he does not "stand
square" to anything. There is no moral pulse in his
heart. If you could take hold of his soul, it would
feel like a dead oyster, and would slip through your
fingers. Everybody knows these people. You don't
consult them ; you don't trust them. You would
rather have no business transactions with them. If
they are in a political movement, you know they will
shuffle when the pinch of principle comes.
Crime has its consequences, and criminals, little
and great, know it. When Alaric A. Watts wrote of
the last Emperor of the French : —
"Safe art thou, Louis ! — for a time ;
But tremble ! — never yet was crime,
Beyond one little space, secure.
The coward and the brave alike
Can wait and watch, can rush and strike.
Which marks thee ? One of them, be sure, — "
few thought the bold prediction true; but it came to
pass, and the Napoleonic name and race became ex-
tinct, to the relief of Europe.
Trouble comes from avowing unpopular ideas.
Diderot well saw this when he said : ** There is less
A NEW RESPONSIBILITY. iii
inconvenience in being mad with the mad than in be-
ing wise by oneself." One who regards truth as duty
will accept responsibilities.
It is the American idea
" To make a man and leave him be."
But we must be sure we have made him a man, — self-
acting, guided by reasoned proof, and one who, as
Archbishop Whately said, "believes the principles he
maintains, and maintains them because he believes
them."
A man is not a man while under superstition, nor
is he a man when free from it, unless his mind is built
on principles conducive and incentive to the service
of man.
CHAPTER XXI.
THROUGH OPPOSITION TO RECOGNITION.
" So many gods, so many creeds —
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs."
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
LADY HESTER STANHOPE said she knew
"Lord Byron must be a bad man, for he was
always intending something. " Any improvement in the
method of life is ''intending something," and society
ought to be tolerant of those whose badness takes
no worse form. The rules Secularism prescribes for
human conduct are few, and no intelligent preacher
would say they inchoate a dangerous form of "bad-
ness. " They are :
1. Truth in speech.
2. Honesty in transaction.
3. Industry in business.
4. Equity in according the gain among those whose
diligence and vigilance help to produce it.
"Though this world be but a bubble,
Two things stand like stone —
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own."
THROUGH OPPOSITION TO RECOGNITION. 113
Learning and fortune do but illuminate these virtues.
They cannot supersede them. The germs of these
qualities are in every human heart. It is only neces-
sary that we cultivate them. Men are like billiard
balls — they would all go into the right pockets in a
few generations, if rightly propelled. Yet these prin-
ciples, simple and unpretending as they are, being
founded on considerations apart from modes of ortho-
dox thought, have had a militant career. The Span-
ish proverb has been in request : "Beware of an ox
before, of a mule behind, and of a monk on every
side." The monk, tonsured and untonsured, is found
in every religion.
In Glasgow I sometimes delivered lectures on the
Sunday in a quaint old hall situated up a wynd in
Candleriggs. On the Saturday night I gave a woman
half-a-crown to wash and whiten the stairs leading to
the hall, and the passage leading to the street and
across the causeway, so that the entrance to the hall
should be clean and sweet. Sermons were preached
in the same hall when the stairs were repulsively dirty.
The woman remarked to a neighbor that "Mr. Holy-
oake's views were wrang, but he seemed to have clean
principles." He who believes in the influence of ma-
terial conditions will do what he can to have them
pure, not only where he speaks, but where he frequents
and where he resides. The theological reader, who
by accident or curiosity looks over these pages, will
find much from which he will dissent ; but I hope he
114 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
will be able to regard this book as one of ** clean prin-
ciples," as far as the limited light of the author goes.
Accepting the "golden rule" of Huxley — "Give
unqualified assent to no propositions but those the
truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot
be doubted " — causes the Secularist to credit less than
his neighbors, and that goes against him ; being, as it
were, a reproach of their avidity of belief. One reason
for writing this book is to explain — to as many of the
new generation as may happen to read it — the dis-
crimination of Secularism. Newspapers and the cler-
ical class, who ought to be well informed, continually
speak of mere free-thinking as Secularism. How this
has been caused has already been indicated. Two or
three remarkable and conspicuous representatives of
free thought, who found iconoclasticism easier, less
responsible, and more popular, have given to many
erroneous impressions. When Mr. Bradlaugh, Mrs.
Besant, and Mr. Foote came into the Secularistic
movement, which preceded their day, they gave proof
that they understood its principles, which they after-
wards disregarded or postponed. I cite their opinions
lest the reader should think that this book gives an
account of a form of thought not previously known.
One wrote :
" From very necessity, Secularism is afiSrmative and construc-
tive ; it is impossible to thoroughly negate any falsehood without
making more or less clear the opposing truth. "^
1" Secularism: What Is It?" National Secular Society's Tracts— tio. j .
By Charles Bradlaugh.
THROUGH OPPOSITION TO RECOGNITION. 115
Again :
"Secularism conflicts with theology in this : that the Secular-
ist teaches the improvability of humanity by human means ; while
the theologian not only denies this, but rather teaches that the Sec-
ular effort is blasphemous and unavailing unless preceded and ac-
companied by reliance on divine aid."*
Mrs. Besant said :
' ' Still we have won a plot of ground — men's and women's
hearts. To them Secularism has a message ; to them it brings a
rule of conduct ; to them it gives a test of morality, and a guide
through the difficulties of life. Our morality is tested only — be it
noted — by utility in this life and in this world."'
Mr. Foote was not less discerning and usefully ex-
plicit, saying :
"Secularism is founded upon the distinction between the
things of time and the things of eternity. . . . The good of others
Secularism declares to be the law of morality ; and although cer-
tain theologies secondarily teach the same doctrine, yet they differ
fiom Secularism in founding it upon the supposed will of God, thus
admitting the possibility of its being set aside in obedience to some
other equally or more imperative divine injunction."'
For several years the National Reformer bore the
subtitle of "Secular Advocate."
We could not expect early concurrence with the
policy of preferring ethical to theological questions of
1 " Why Are We Secularists? ' ' National Secular Stciety's Tracts — No. 8.
By Charles Bradlaugh.
S " Secular Morality." National Secular Society's Trad* — Ne. 3. By Annie
Besant.
i Secularism and Its Misrepresentatian, by G. W. Foote, who subsequently
succeeded Mr. Bradlaugb as President of the National Secular Society.
1X6 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
theism and unprovable immortality. We accepted
the maxim of Sir Philip Sydney — namely, that " Rea-
son cannot show itself more reasonable than to leave
reasoning on things above reason." We are not in the
land of the real yet, common sense is not half so ro
mantic to the average man as the transcendental, and
an atheistical advocacy got the preference with the
impetuous. The Secularistic proposal to consult the
instruction of an adversary proved less exciting than
his destruction. The patience and resource it implies
to work by reason alone are not to the taste of those
to whom a kick is easier than a kindness, and less
troublesome than explanation. Those who have the
refutatory passion intense say you must clear the
ground before you can build upon it. Granted ; never-
theless, the signs of the times show that a good deal
of ground has been cleared. The instinct of progress
renders the minority, who reflect, more interested in
the builder than the undertaker. What would be
thought of a general who delayed occupying a country
he had conquered until he had extirpated all the in-
habitants in it? So, in the kingdom of error, he who
will go on breaking images, without setting statues up
in their place, will give superstition a long life. The
savage man does not desert his idols because you call
them ugly. It is only by slow degrees, and under the in-
fluence of better-carved gods, that his taste is changed
and his worship improved. The reader will see that
Secularism leaves the mystery of deity to the chartered
THROUGH OPPOSITION TO RECOGNITION. 117
imagination of man, and does not attempt to close the
door of the future, but holds that the desert of another
existence belongs only to those who engage in the
service of man in this life. Prof. F. W. Newman
says : ** The conditions of a future life being unknown,
there is no imaginable means of benefiting ourselves
and others in it, except by aiming after present good-
ness. "^
Men have a right to look beyond this world, but
not to overlook it. Men, if they can, may connect
themselves with eternity, but they cannot disconnect
themselves from humanity without sacrificing duty.
The purport of Secularism is not far from the tenor
of the famous sermon by the Rev. James Caird, of
which the Queen said :
"He explained in the most simple manner what real religion
is — not a thing to drive us from the world, not a perpetual moping
over ' good ' books ; but being and doing good."'
This end we reach not by a theological, but by a
Secular, path.
iProf. F. W. Newman, who is always clear beyond all scholars, and can-
did beyond all theologians, has published a Palinode retracting former con-
clusions he had published, and admitting the uncertainty of the evidence in
favor of after-existence.
2The Queen on the Rev. J. Caird's sermon, Leaves from the Journal of Our
Life in the Highlands.
CHAPTER XXII.
SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES.
" Prodigious actions may as well be done
By weaver's issue as by prince's son."
— Dry den.
SO FAR as Secularism is reasonable, it must be
self- extending among all who think. Adherents
of that class are slowly acquired. Accessions begin
in criticism, though that, as we have seen, is apt to
stop there. In all movements the most critical per-
sons are the least suggestive of improvements. Con-
structiveness only excites enthusiasm in fertile minds.
After the Cowper Street Discussion with the Rev.
Brewin Grant in 1853, see Chapter X, page 50, socie-
ties, halls, and newspapers adopted the Secular name.
In 1863 appeared the Christian Reasoner, edited by the
Rev. Dr. Rylance, a really reasoning clergyman, whom
I afterwards had the pleasure to know in New York.
His publication was intended to be a substitute for
the Reasoner^ which I had then edited for seventeen
years. But when the Reasoner commenced, in 1846,
Christian believing was far more thought of than
Christian reasoning. One line in Dr. Rylance's Chris-
SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES. xig
tian Reasoner was remarkable, which charged us with
"forgetfulness of the necessary incompleteness of Re-
velation." So far from forgetting it, it was one of the
grounds on which Secularism was founded. However,
it is to the credit of Dr. Rylance that he should have
preceded, by thirty years, the Bishop of Worcester
in discerning the shortcomings of Revelation, as cited
in Chapter XIX, page loi.
In 1869 we obtained the first Act of Secular affir-
mation, which Mr. J. S. Mill said was mainly due to
my exertions, and to my example of never taking an
oath. In obtaining the Act, I had no help from Mr.
Bradlaugh, he being an ostentatious oath-taker at
that time. It was owing to Mr. G. W. Hastings
(then, or afterwards, M. P.), the founder of the Social
Science Association, that the Affirmation clause was
added to the Act of 1869. One of the objects we
avowed was "to procure a law of affirmation for per-
sons who objected to take the oath. "^
Another of our aims was stated to be : "To con-
vert churches and chapels into temples of instruction
for the people .... to solicit priests to be teachers of
useful knowledge."' We strove to promote these
ends by holding in honor all who gave effect to such
human precepts as were contained in Christianity.
This fairness and justice has led many to suppose
ISectUarism the Practical Philosophy of the People, p. la; 1854. Fifteen
years before the first Act was passed.
^Secularism the Practical Philosophy of the People, by G. J. Holyoake, p. la ;
1854.
120 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
that I accepted the theological as well as the ethical
passages in the Scriptures. But how can a Christian
preacher be inclined to risk the suspicion of the nar-
rower-minded members of his congregation, if no one
gives him credit for doing right when he does it?
With our limited means and newness of doctrine,
we could not hope to rival an opulent hierarchy and
occupy its temples ; but we knew that the truth, if we
had it, and could diffuse it in a reasonable manner,
would make its way and gradually change the convic-
tions of a theological caste. The very nature of Free-
thought makes it impossible for a long time yet, that
we should have many wealthy or well-placed support-
ers. Where the platform is open to every subject
likely to be of public service — subjects suppressed
everywhere else, and open to the discussion of the
wise or foolish present who may arise to speak, out-
rages of good taste will occur. Persons who forget
that abuse does not destroy use, and that freedom is
more precious than propriety, cease to support a free-
speaking Society. The advocacy of slave emancipa-
tion was once an outrage in America. It is now re-
garded as the glory of the nation. In an eloquent
passage it has been pointed out what society owes to
the unfriended efforts of those who established and
have maintained the right of free speech.
" Theology of the old stamp, so far from encouraging tw to
love nature, teaches us that it is under a curse. It teaches us to
look upon the animal creation with shuddering disgust ; upon the
SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES. 121
whole race of man, outside our narrow sect, as delivered over to
the Devil ; and upon the laws of nature at large as a temporaury
mechanism, in which we have been caught, but from which we
are to anticipate a joyful deliverance. It is science, not theology,
which has changed all this ; it is the atheists, infidels, and ration-
alists, as they are kindly called, who have taught us to take fresh
interest in our poor fellow denizens of the world, and not to des-
pise them because Almighty Benevolence could not be expected to
admit them to Heaven. To the same teaching we owe the recog-
nition of the noble aspirations embodied in every form of religion,
and the destruction of the ancient monopoly of divine influences. "^
Those who, in storm and stress, bring truth into
the world may not be able to complete its triumph,
but it makes its own way, and finally conquers the
understanding of mankind.
Priestley, without fortune, with only the slender
income of a Unitarian minister, created and kept up a
chemical laboratory. There alone he discovered oxy-
gen. Few regarded him, few applauded him ; only a
few Parisian philosophers thanked him. He had no
disciples to spread his new truth. He was not even
tolerated in the town which he endowed with the fame
of his priceless discovery. His house was burnt by a
Church-and-King mob ; his instruments, books, and
manuscripts destroyed ; and he had to seek his fortune
in a foreign land.
Yet what has come out of his discovery ? It has
become part of the civilisation of the world, and man-
kind owe more to him than they yet understand.
1 Leslie Stephens's Fretthinking and Plain Speaking.
122 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
When a young man, he forsook the Calvinism in
which he was reared. "I came," he said, "to em-
brace what is called heterodox views on every ques-
tion."^ He cared for this world as well as for another,
and hence was distrusted by all <'true believers."
Though he had "spiritual hopes," he agreed that he
should be called a materialist.
We have now had (1895) a London Reform Sun-
day, more than two hundred and fifty (one list gave
four hundred) preachers of all denominations taking
for their unprecedented text, "The Duties and Re-
sponsibilities of Citizenship," — a thing the most san-
guine deemed incredible when suggested by me in
1854.'^ Within twenty years Dr. Felix Adler has
founded noble Ethical Societies. Dr. Stanton Coit is
extending them in Great Britain. They are Secular-
ist societies in their nature. South Place Chapel now
has taken the name of Ethical Society. Since the
days of W. J. Fox, who first made it famous, it has
been the only successor in London of the Moral
Church opened by Thomas Holcroft. Though mod-
ern Secular societies, to which these pages relate,
have been anti-theological mainly, the Secular So-
ciety of Leicester is a distinguished exception. It has
long had a noble hall of its own, and from the earliest
inception of Secularism it has been consistent and
1 See Chambers's Encycloptedia {1888) ; article : Priestley.
2 We have now a Museum Sunday. Even twenty years ago those who ad-
vocated the Sunday opening of museums were counted irreverent and beyond
the pale of grace. Their opening is now legalised (1896).
SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES. 123
persistent in its principles. As stated elsewhere,' the
"Principles of Secularism " were submitted to John
Stuart Mill in 1854, and his approval was of impor-
tance in the eyes of their advocates. In the first issue
of Chambers's Encyclopedia a special article appeared
upon these views, and in the later issue of that work
in 1888 a new article was written on Secularism. In
the Rev. Dr. Molesworth's History of England a very
clear account was given of the rise of Secularist opin-
ions. This will be sufficient information for readers
unacquainted with the subject.
The cause of reason has had more to confront than
the cause of Christianity, which has always been on
the side of power since the days of Christ. The two
most influential ideas which, in every age since Chris-
tianity arose, have given it currency among the ignor-
ant and the credulous, have been the ideas of Hell
and prayer. Hell has been the terror, and prayer the
bribe, which have won the allegiance of the timid and
the needy. These two master passions of alarm and
despair have brought the unfortunate portions of man-
kind to the foot of the Cross.
The cause of reason has no advantages of this na-
ture, and only the intelligent have confidence in its
progress. If we have expected to do more than we
have, we are not the only party who have been pre-
maturely sanguine. The Rev. David Bogue, preach-
ing in Whitfield's Tabernacle, Tottenham-Court Road,
1 Sixty Years of an Agitatm't Life, Chap. CX.
124 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
at the foundation of the Foreign Missionary Society
(1790) of the Congregational denomination, exclaimed
amid almost unequalled enthusiasm: "We are called
together this evening to the funeral of bigotry." Judg-
ing from what has happened since, bigotry was not
dead when its funeral was prepared, or it was not ef-
fectually buried, as it has been seen much about since
that day.
Bigotry, like Charles II., takes an unconscionable
time in dying. Down to Sir Charles Lyell's days, so
harmless a study as geology was distrusted, and Lyell,
like Priestley, had to seek auditors in America. While
he lectured at Boston to 1,500 persons, 2,000 more
were unable to obtain tickets, which were bought at
a guinea each extra. At our great ancient seat of
learning, Oxford, Buckland lectured on the same in-
teresting subject to an audience of three.
Secularism keeps the lamp of free thought burning
by aiding and honoring all who would infuse an ethi-
cal passion into those who lead the growing army of
independent thinkers. Our lamp is not yet a large
one, and its supply of oil is limited by Christian law ;
but, like the fire in the Temple of Montezuma, we
keep it burning. In all the centuries since the torch
of free thought was first lighted, though often threat-
ened, often assailed, often dimned, it has never been
extinguished. We could not hope to captivate society
by splendid edifices, nor many cultivated advocates ;
but truth of principle will penetrate where those who
SELF-EXTENDING PRINCIPLES. 125
maintain it will never be seen and never heard. The
day Cometh when other torches will be lighted at the
obscure fire, which, borne aloft by other and stronger
hands, will shed lasting illumination where otherwise
darkness would permanently prevail. As Elizabeth
Barrett Browning has said : "Truth is like sacramen-
tal bread, — we must pass it on."
SECULARIST CEREMONIES.
" Death is the decisive test of the value of
the education and morality of society; Secular
funerals are the symbol of the social renova-
tion."— J. P. Proudhon.
CERTAIN ceremonies are common to all human so-
ciety, and should be consistent with the opinions
of those in whose name the ceremonies take place.
The marriage service of the Church contains things
no bride could hear without a blush, if she understood
them ; and the Burial Service includes statements the
minister ought to know to be untrue, and by which
the sadness of death is desecrated. The Secularist
naturally seeks other forms of speech. It being a
principle of Secularism to endeavor to replace what it
deems bad by something better — or more consistent
with its profession — the following addresses are given.
Other hands may supply happier examples ; but, in
the meantime, these which follow may meet with the
needs of those who have no one at hand to speak for
them, and are not accustomed to speak for them-
selves.
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 127
ON MARRIAGE.
Marriage involves several things of which few per-
sons think beforehand, and which it is useful to call
their attention to at this time. The bridegroom, by
the act of marriage, professes that he has chosen out
of all the women of the world, known to him, the one
to whom he will be faithful while life shall last. He
declares the bride to be his preference, and, whoever
he may see hereafter, or like, or love, the door of as-
sociation shall be shut upon them in his heart for
ever. The bride, on her part, declares and promises
the same things. The belief in each other's perfection
is the most beautiful illusion of love. Sometimes the
illusion happily continues during life. It may happen
— it does happen sometimes — that each discovers
that the other is not perfect. The Quaker's advice
was: **Open your eyes wide before marriage, but
shut them afterwards." Those who have neglected
the first part of this counsel will still profit by observ-
ing the second. Let those who will look about, and
put tormenting constructions on innocent acts : be-
ware of jealousy, which kills more happiness than ever
Love created.
The result of marriage is usually offspring, when
society will have imposed upon it an addition to its
number. It is necessary for the credit of the parents,
as well as for the welfare of the children, that they
128 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
should be born healthy, reared healthy, and be well
educated ; so that they may be strong and intelligent
when the time comes for them to encounter, for them-
selves, the vicissitudes of life. Those who marry are
considered to foreknow and to foresee these duties,
and to pledge themselves to do the best in their power
to discharge them.
In the meantime, and ever afterwards, let love
reign between you. And remember the minister of
Love is deference towards each other. Ceremonial
manners are conducive to affection. Love is not a
business, but the permanence of love is a business.
Unless there are good humor, patience, pleasant-
ness, discretion, and forbearance, lo^'e will cease.
Those who expect perfection will lose happiness. A
wise tolerance is the sunshine of love, and they who
maintain the sentiment will come to count their mar-
riage the beginning of the brightness of life.
NAMING CHILDREN.
In naming children it is well to avoid names whose
associations pledge the child, without its consent, to
some line of action it may have no mind to, or capa-
city for, when grown up. A child called "Brutus"
would be expected to stab Caesar — and the Caesars are
always about. The name " Washington " destroyed
a politician of promise who bore it. He could never
live up to it. A name should be a pleasant mark to
be known by, not a badge to be borne.
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 129
In formally naming a child it is the parents alone
to whom useful words can be addressed.
Heredity, which means qualities derived from par-
entage, is a prophecy of life. Therefore let parents
render themselves as perfect in health, as wise in
mind, and as self-respecting in manners as they can ;
for their qualities in some degree will appear in their
offspring. One advantage of children is that they con-
tribute unconsciously to the education of parents. No
parents of sense can fail to see that children are aa
imitative as monkeys, and have better memories. Not
only do they imitate actions, but repeat forms of ex-
pression, and will remember them ever after. The
manners of parents become more or less part of the
manners and mind of the child. Sensible parents,
seeing this, will put a guard upon their conduct and
speech, so that their example in act and word may be
a store-house of manners and taste from which their
children may draw wisdom in conduct and speech.
The minds of children are as photographic plates on
which parents are always printing something which
will be indelibly visible in future days. Therefore
the society, the surroundings, the teachers of the child,
so far as the parents can control them, should be well
chosen, in order that the name borne by the young
shall command respect when their time comes to play
a part in the drama of life. To this end a child should
be taught to take care what he promises, and that
when he has given his promise he has to keep it, for
I30 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
he whose word is not to be trusted is always suspected,
and his opinion is not sought by others, or is disre-
garded when uttered. A child should early learn that
debt is dependence, and the habit of it is the mean-
ness of living upon loans. There can be no independ-
ence, no reliance upon the character of any one, who
will buy without the means of payment, or who lives
beyond his income. Such persons intend to live on
the income of some one else, and do it whether they
intend it or not. He alone can be independent who
trusts to himself for advancement. No one ought to
be helped forward who does not possess this quality,
or will not put his hand to any honest work open to
him. Beware of the child who has too much pride to
do what he can for his own support, but has not too
much pride to live upon his parents, or upon friends.
Such pride is idleness, or thoughtlessness, or both,
unless illness causes the inability.
Since offspring have to be trained in health and
educated in the understanding, there must not be many
in the family unless the parents have property. The
poor cannot afford to have many children if they in-
tend to do their duty by them. It is immoral in the
rich to have many because the example is bad, and
because they are sooner or later quartered upon the
people to keep them ; or, if they are provided for by
their parents, they are under no obligation to do an)-
thing for themselves, which is neither good for them
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 131
nor good for the community, to which they contribute
nothing.
Believing this child will be trained by its parents
to be an honor to them, and a welcome addition to the
family of humanity, it is publicly named with pleasure.
_. - OVER THE DEAD.
I. READING AT A GRAVE.
Esdras and Uriel.
[An argument in which the Prophet speaks as a Secnlartst.]
And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name
was Uriel, said : — I am sent to show thee three ways,
and to set forth three similitudes before thee : whereof,
if thou canst declare me one, I will show thee also
the way that thou desirest to see ....
And I said. Tell on, my Lord.
Then said he unto me, Go thy way ; weigh me the
weight of the fire, or measure me the blast of the wind,
or call me again the day that is past.
Then answered I and said, What man is able to
do that, that thou shouldest ask such things of me ?
And he said unto me. If I should ask thee how
great dwellings are in the midst of the sea, or how
many springs are in the beginning of the deep, or how
many springs are above the firmament, or which are
the outgoings of Paradise, peradventure thou wouldst
say unto me, I never went down into the deep, nor
132 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
as yet into Hell, neither did I ever climb up into
Heaven.
Nevertheless, now have I asked thee but only of
the fire, and wind, and of the day wherethrough thou
hast passed, and of things from which thou canst not
be separated, and yet canst thou give me no answer
of them.
He said, moreover, unto me. Thine own things,
and such as are grown up with thee, canst thou not
know ? How should thy vessel, then, be able to com-
prehend the way of the Highest ? . . . .
Then said I unto him. It were better that we were
not at all than that we should live still in wickedness
and to suffer, and not to know wherefor.
He answered me and said, I went into a forest,
into a plain, and the trees took counsel, and said,
Come, let us go and make war against the sea, that it
may depart away before us, and that we may make us
more woods.
The floods of the sea also in like manner took
counsel, and said, Come, let us go up and subdue the
woods of the plain : that there also we may make us
another country.
The thought of the wood was in vain, for the fire
came and consumed it. The thought of the floods of
the sea came likewise to nought, for the sand stood
up and stopped them.
If thou wert judge now betwixt these two, whom
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 133
wouldest thou begin to justify ? or whom wouldest
thou condemn ?
I answered, and said, Verily it is a foolish thought
that they both have devised ; for the ground is given
unto the wood, and the sea also hath his place to bear
his floods.
Then answered he me and said, Thou hast given a
right judgment ; but why judgest thou not thyself
also ? For like as the ground is given unto the woods,
and the sea to his floods, even so they that dwell upon
the earth may understand nothing but that which is
upon the earth : and he that dwelleth upon the heavens
may only understand the things that are above the
height of the heavens.
Then answered I and said, I beseech thee, O Lord,
let me have understanding.
For it was not my mind to be curious of the high things,
but of such as pctss by us daily.
Harriet Martineau^s Hymn. ^
[The only hymn known to me in which a Supreme Cause is implied with-
out being asserted or denied, or the reader committed to belief in it.]
Beneath this starry arch
Nought resteth or is still,
' But all things hold their march
' , As »/ by one great will :
' ' ' Moves one, move all :
Hark to the footfall 1
On, on, for ever I
1 Which may be sung where it can be so arranged.
134 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
Yon sheaves were once but seed ;
Will ripens into deed.
As eave-drops swell the streams,
Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams ;
And sorrow tracketh wrong,
As echo follows song,
On, on, for ever 1
By night, like stars on high,
The hours reveal their train ;
They whisper and go by ;
I never watch in vain :
Moves one, move all :
Hark to the footfall !
On, on, for ever I
They pass the cradle-head,
And there a promise shed ;
They pass the moist new grave,
And bid bright verdure wave ;
They bear through every clime,
The harvests of all time,
On, on, for ever I
II. AT THE GRAVE OF A CHILD.
The death of a child is alone its parents' sorrow.
Too young to know, too innocent to fear, its life is a
smile and its death a sleep. As the sun goes down
before our eyes, so a mother's love vanishes from the
gaze of infancy, and death, like evening, comes to it
with quietness, gentleness, and rest. We measure the
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 135
loss of a child by the grief we feel. When its love is
gone, its promise over, and its prattle silent, its fate
excites the parents' tears ; but we forget that infancy,
like the rose, is unconscious of the sweetness it sheds,
and it parts without pain from the pleasure it was too
young to comprehend, though engaging enough to
give to others. The death of a child is like the death
of a day, of which George Herbert sings :
" Sweet day, so clear, so calm, so bright
Bridal of the earth and sky ;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night—
For thou must die."
It is no consolation to say, "When a child dies it
is taken from the sorrows of life." Yes ! it is taken
from the sorrows of life, and from its joys also. When
the young die they are taken away from the evil, and
from good as well. What parents' love does not in-
clude the happiness of its offspring ? No ! we will
not cheat ourselves. Death is a real loss to those who
mourn, and the world is never the same again to those
who have wept by the grave of a child. Argument
does not, in that hour, reach the heart. It is human
to weep, and sympathy is the only medicine of great
grief. The sight of the empty shoe in the corner will
efface the most relevant logic. Not all the preaching
since Adam has made death other than death. Yet,
though sorrow cannot be checked at once by reason,
it may be chastened by it. Wisdom teaches that all
136 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
human passions must be subordinate to the higher
purposes of life. We must no more abandon ourselves
to grief than to vice. The condition of life is the lia-
bility to vicissitude, and, while it is human to feel, it
is duty to endure. The flowers fade, and the stars go
down, and youth and loveliness vanish in the eternal
change. Though we cannot but regret a vital loss, it
is wisdom to love all that is good for its own sake ; to
enjoy its presence fully, but not to build on its con-
tinuance, doing what we can to insure its continuance,
and bearing with fortitude its loss when it comes. If
the death of infancy teaches us this lesson, the past
may be a charmed memory, with courage and dignity
in it.
III. MEN OR WOMEN.
The science of life teaches us that while there is
pain there is life. It would seem, therefore, that
death, with silent and courteous step, never comes
save to the unconscious. A niece of Franklm's, known
for her wit and consideration for others, arrived at her
last hour at the age of ninety-eight. In her compo-
sure a friend gently touched her. "Ah," murmured
the old lady, "I was dying so beautifully when you
brought me back ! But never mind, my dear ; I shall
try it again." This bright resignation, worthy of the
niece of a philosopher, is making its way in popular
affection.
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 137
Lord Tennyson, when death came near to him,
wrote :
" Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me !
And may there be no moaning of the bar
' ' " When I put out to sea.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark,
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark."
There is just a touch of superstition in these genial
lines. He writes : "After death the dark." How did
he know that ? What evidence is there that the un-
known land is "dark"? Why not light? The un-
known has no determinate or ascertained color.
Where we know nothing, neither priest nor poet
has any right to speak as though he had knowledge.
Improbability does not imply impossibility. That
which invests death with romantic interest is, that it
may be a venture on untried existence. If a future
state be true, it will befall those who do not expect it
as well as those who do. Another world, if such there
be, will come most befittingly and most agreeably to
those who have qualified themselves for it, by having
made the best use in their power of this. By best use
is meant the service of man. Desert consists alone in
the service of others. Kindness and cheerfulness are
the two virtues which most brighten human life.
138 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
Wide-eyed philanthropy is not merely money-giving
goodness, but the wider kindness which aids the as-
cendancy of the right and minimises misery every-
where.
Death teaches, as nothing else does, one useful
lesson. Whatever affection or friendship we may have
shown to one we have lost, Death brings to our mem-
ory countless acts of tenderness which we had neg-
lected. Conscience makes us sensible of these omis-
sions now it is too late to repair them. But we can
pay to the living what we think we owe to the dead ;
whereby we transmute the dead we honor into bene-
factors of those they leave behind. This is a useful
form of consolation, of which all survivors may avail
themselves.
Mrs. Ernestine Rose — a brave advocate of un-
friended right — when age and infirmity brought her
near to death, recalled the perils and triumphs in
which she had shared, the slave she had helped to set
free from the bondage of ownership, and the slave
minds she had set free from the bondage of author-
ity; she was cheered, and exclaimed: "But I have
lived."
The day will come when all around this grave shall
meet death ; but it will be a proud hour if, looking
back upon a useful and generous past, we each can
say : "I have lived.**
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 139
IV. — ON A CAREER OF PUBLIC USEFULNESS.
In reasoning upon death no one has surpassed the
argument of Socrates, who said: "Death is one of
two things : either the dead may be nothing and have
no feeling — well, then, if there be no feeling, but it be
like sleep, when the sleeper has no dream, surely
death would be a marvellous gain, for thus all futurity
appears to be nothing more than one night. If, on
the other hand, death be a removal hence to another
place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are
there, what greater blessing can there be than this ? "
Sir Edwin Arnold, in his Secret of Death, writes :
' ' Nay, but as when one layetb
His worn-out robes away,
And, taking new ones, sayetb,
' These will I wear to-day I *
So putteth by the spirit
Lightly its garb of flesh,
And passeth to inherit
A residence afresh."
This may be true, and there is no objection to it if it
is. But the pity is, nobody seems to be sure about it.
At death we may mourn, but duty ceaseth not. If we
desist in endeavors for the right because a combatant
falls at our side, no battle will ever be won. " Life,"
Mazzini used to say, " is a battle and a march." Those
who serve others at their own peril are always in
I40 ENGLISH SECULARISM.
"battle." Let us honor them as they pass. Some of
them have believed :
" Though love repine and reaison chafe,
There came a voice without reply —
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.' "
They are of those who, as another poet has said, "are
not to be mourned, but to be imitated."^ The mystery
of death is no greater than the mystery of life. All
that precedes our existence was unseen, unimaginable,
and unknown to us. What may succeed in the future
is unprovable by philosopher or priest :
• ' A flower above and the mould below :
And this is all that the mourners know."*
The ideal of life which gives calmness and confi-
dence in death is the same in the mind of the wise
Christian as in the mind of the philosopher. Sydney
Smith says : "Add to the power of discovering truth
the desire of using it for the promotion of human hap-
piness, and you have the great end and object of our
existence."" Putting just intention into action, a man
fulfils the supreme duty of life, which casts out all fear
of the future.
A poet who thought to reconcile to their loss those
whose lines have not fallen to them in pleasant places
wrote :
1 W. J. Linton. « Barry Cornwall. 8 Moral Philotophy.
SECULARIST CEREMONIES. 141
"A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam on a winter's day.
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave."
This is not true ; the proud and mighty have rest at
choice, and play at will. The "sunbeam" is on them
all their days. Between the cradle and the grave is
the whole existence of man. The splendid inheritance
of the "proud and mighty " ought to be shared by all
whose labor creates and makes possible the good for-
tune of those who "toil not, neither do they spin";
and whoever has sought to endow the industrious with
liberty and intelligence, with competence and leisure,
we may commit to the earth in the sure and certain
hope that they deserve well, and will fare well, in any
"land of the leal" to which mankind may go.
INDEX.
Act, the, which accorded heresy a
State trial, 8.
Adams, Mrs. Harriet, imprisoned
1842, 7-
Adams, George, imprisoned, 7.
Adier, Dr. Felix, founder of Ethical
Societies, 122.
Adversaries of inquiry, the monarch
and the priest, 5.
American maxim, 84.
Archbishop of York regards Chris-
tian principles fatal to the State, 38.
Archbishop Whately, on primary es-
sential of reasoning, ro ; his thor-
oughness, 45.
Arnold, Sir Edwin, on the transition
of death, 139.
Atheism intrinsically tolerant, 66.
Aurelius Antoninus, his famous
quest, 35, footnote.
Bailey, Samuel, examination the jus-
tifier of belief, 12.
Baines, Edward, his Secular choice,
57, footnote.
Barker, Joseph, 51.
Besant's, Mrs. Annie, description of
Secularism, 115.
Bihar Proverb, 100.
Bishop of Exeter confirms idiots, 40,
footnote.
Bishop of Manchester, his remark-
able admission, 102.
Bishop of Peterborough, regards the
Secular as atheistic, 60; the au-
thor's answer to, 68.
Bogue, Rev. David, bis premature-
ness, 123.
Bose, Pramatha Nath, on Hindu
thought, 21.
Bradlaugh, C, never made atheism
a Secular tenet, 60 ; his description
of Secularism, 115.
Bridal promises, 127.
Brooke, Rev. Stopford A., Secular
acts religious, 41.
Browning, E. B., truth to be passed
on, 125.
Browning, Robert, against a " love-
less God," 25; his wise prayer, 32,
33-
Buchanan, Robert, escapes by the
oath, 7.
Buckland, deserted at Oxford, 124.
Buckle, T. H., liberty an end, 29,
footnote.
Buddha, saying of, 74.
Byron, Lord, his choice of company,
32; a "bad man," 112.
Caballero's maxim of tolerance, 18.
Carlile, Richard, first debate with
him, 92.
Carlyle, T., the maxim of the monks,
80, 89; "No man a saint in his
sleep," 108.
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, 123.
Charlton, James, 49.
Christian distrust of morality, 78.
Christianity, three classes stand
apart from it, 53.
Church sirens, their seven songs, 19,
20.
Clean principles, 113.
Clifford, Prof., on the " Kingdom of
Man," 59.
144
INDEX.
Coit, Dr. Stanton, ethical advocate,
122.
Coleridge, S. D., bis definition of a
reasoner, 36.
Collings, Right Hon. Jesse, his letter
from the Hague, 62.
Collyer, Dr. Robert, his advice to
propagandists, 90.
Comte Augusta, services of his disci-
ples, 34.
Cooper, J. R., 49.
Cooper, Thomas, defender of stock
propositions, 91.
Cornwall, Barry, on all we know, 140.
Crank, John, 49.
Criticism, seven things established
by it, 71.
Critics, their universal error, 84.
Crosskey, Rev. Dr. Henry, his sug-
gestion, 35, footnote.
Dead band, the, 27.
Death, discerning sympathy the chief
consolation, 135 ; sometimes a duty,
140.
Debatable ground of theology, 88.
Democracy connotes deference, 15.
De Stagl, Madame, her saying, 34.
Diderot's perspicacity, no.
Diseases divine, 105.
Disputants should be equally
matched, 90.
Disraeli, B., objects to Board-school
preachers, 64.
Dryden. John, his democratic lines,
118.
Duty defined, 74.
Eclecticism, not permitted by Chris-
tians, 3.
Ellicot, Bishop, his admission, 76.
Emerson, R. W., his noble choice, 18.
Expanding the letter, 26.
Eyton, Canon, distrusts Providence,
102.
Farrar, Dean, distrusts the Thirty-
nine Articles, 102.
Finlay, Thomas, imprisoned, 7.
Fleet Street House commeuced 1852,
51-
Foote, G. W., his description of Sec-
ularism, 115.
Foreign affairs of theology, 86.
Forster, W. E., letter to him, 61 ; his
injurious insistance, 65 ; creates a
new sacerdotal caste, 64.
Fox, W. J., defines education, 61; the
market and the Church, 85, 122.
Franklin's niece, 136.
Free mind, its quality and security,
13-
Free thought, the field in 1842, 7; de-
fined, 10; its three conditions, 11.
Froude, J. A., his life of Saint Belle-
tin, 94.
Garibaldi, his question to Mazzini,
80.
Garrison, L., frees the slave without
Christian aid, 82.
Gladstone, W. E., his defence of dis-
cussion, 12 ; in favor of Secular in-
struction, 62.
Goethe, his secret of genius, 22 ; his
Coptic song, 30 ; his warning say-
ing, 95-
Graham, Sir James, confers legal ad-
vantages on heresy, 8.
Grant, Rev. Brewin, B. A., 50.
Greenwood, Abraham, 49.
Greg, Rathbone, his five laws of life,
85.
Grote, George, on the resentment of
the priest, 31.
Hastings, G. W., his services to Sec-
ular a£Brmation, 119.
Herbert, George, on the death of a
day, 135.
Hey, Canon, 91.
Hibbert, Julian, regarded criticism
as self-defence, 19.
Holcroft, Thomas, his moral Church,
122.
Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, his re-
ply to Christ, 98.
Hooker, Richard, his wise warning,
103.
Hutton, R. H., his distrust of moral-
ity, 78.
Huxley, T. H., makes a new thof-
INDEX.
MS
oughfare, 19; defines God's justice,
25 ; his definition of agnosticism,
36, footnote; bis golden rule, 114.
Infidelity, a term intentionally offen-
sive, 54.
Ingersoll, Colonel R. G., orator of
free thought, 43, footnote.
Instruction confused with education,
61.
Jones, Lloyd, escapes by the oath, 7.
Karr, Alphonse, his prediction, i.
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, his confession,
39-
Lamb, Charles, his taste in grace,
103, footnote.
Langford, Dr. J. A., 52.
Le Blond, Robert, 51.
Leicester Secular Society, 122.
Linton, W. J., his heroic saying, 140.
Lyell, Sir C, his geology exiled, 124.
Marriage, new ceremony of, 127, 128.
Martineau, Dr. James, a fine sentence
from, 42.
Martineau, H., defends the term
" Secularism," 35 ; her hymn of the
grave, 133, 134.
Martyr, Justin, his servile prudence,
76.
Maxim, of free thought, 9; of the sea,
56.
Mazzini forbidden to think, 9; his
absolute Theism, 81 ; his letter to
the author, 81; a heretic himself, 82.
Mendicancy of prayer, 102.
Mill, J. S., his definition of religion,
80; bis testimony, 119; approves of
the principles of Secularism, 54,
123.
Milton, 63; his " free and open field "
deficient, 90.
Molesworth, Rev. Dr., his historical
account of Secularism, 123.
Montezuma, the fire in his temple,
124.
Moral nature palpable as the physi-
cal, 109.
Morley, Samuel, his honorablencss,
91.
Morley, John, holds independent
thinking to be conceded, z.
Motherwell, James, 49.
Murderers thrust on God, 104.
Naming children, suggestions there-
on, 128, 129.
Napoleon III., 34.
''New range of view" misleading,
27-
Newman, Cardinal, on destruction
by replacement, 71.
Newman, F.W., morals, not religion,
the basis of union, 76, 77; present
goodness the chief aim, 117.
Newton, John, on ignorant zeal, 28.
Nicholls, Charles Frederick, 47.
Nicol, Professor, wild ideas better
than none, 17.
Oddfellows' Prize Lectures, the prin-
ciple on which they were written,
46.
Open thought, its three stages, 2, 3.
Owen, Robert, 45.
Paine, Thomas, greater than any
priest, 82.
Palmerston, Lord, at Harrow Speech
Day, 107.
Parents, obligations of, 129.
Parker, Rev. Dr. J., gives an onder-
taking, 53; his Critique 0/ the Secu-
larist Theory, 54, footnote ; declares
Secular education not atheistic, 60:
his motto, 63, 64.
Parker, Theodore, the "Jupiter of
the pulpit," 41.
Partridge and Oakley, 50.
Patersou, Thomas, imprisoned, 7.
Pearson, Rev. T., fate of bis Prize
Essay, 54.
Phillips, Wendell, bis description of
Theodore Parker, 41.
Place, Joseph, 49.
Policy in practice, 98.
Pratt, Hodgson, on Mazzoleni's bur-
ial, 61.
Priestley, Dr., a materialist, I2Z.
146
INDEX.
Principle in the young, 130.
Proudhon, P. J., regards Secular fu-
nerals as symbols, 126.
Putnam, Samuel Porter, 43, footnote.
Quarles, Francis, on wise worldli-
ness, 38.
Queen, the, on Rev. James Caird's
Secular sermon, 117.
Rathbone, W. H., the murderer be-
fore the philosopher, 104, footnote.
Reading, its limits, 106.
Restitution to the dead, 138.
Right defined, 74.
Roalfe, Matilda, imprisoned in Scot-
land, 7.
Robinson, Canon, gi.
Roebuck, John Arthur, always vindi-
cated free speech, 8.
Rose, Mrs. Ernestine, her last words,
138.
Rutherford, Dr. J. H., 51.
Rylance, Rev. Dr., his Christian Rea-
soner, 118, iig.
Samson, his famous engagement at
Ramath-Lehi, 95.
Secular, the, distinct from Secular-
ism, 56; instruction neutral, 57.
Secularism defined, 8; individuality
in piety, 62; its three principles,
38, 39, 40; its origin, 45, 46, 47; not
atheism, 60 ; seven errors it re-
places, 71; its moral path, 76; its
aim, 73; the revolt of the moral
sense, 92.
Secularist tenets provable, 84 ; piety,
88, 89; maxim of controversy, 90;
accepts Christian morality, 100;
four rules of conduct, 112.
Self-determined thought, 21.
Sidney, Algernon, his legacy, 12.
Smith, Sydney, on end and object of
existence, 140.
Social Truth, its three marks, 75.
Socrates, his argument on death, 139.
Sophistry on death, 141.
South Place Chapel, 12a.
Southey's self-complacent letter, 31.
Southwell, Charles, in prison at
Bristol, 7.
Spanish proverb, 106.
Spencer, Herbert, varied iteration a
necessity, 18, 50.
Spirit, an evasive refuge, 26.
Spurgeon, C. H., in favor of Secular
instruction, 65.
Stanhope, Lady Hester, "she knew,"
112.
Stanley, Dean, how he perished, 102.
Stanley, H. M., 22.
Stephen, Leslie, his testimony, 120,
121.
Superfine distrust, 108.
Sydney, Sir Philip, on reasonable-
ness, 116.
Syracusan, the school of, bondage,
Taylor, Sir Henry, 31.
Tennyson, Lord, his cheerful re-
quest, 137.
Thinker, the, a disturber, 17.
Townley, Rev. Henry, his compro-
mising pertinacity, 91.
Travis, Dr. Henry, 49.
Tyndall, Professor, his noble choice,
18.
Uriel's Secularist argument with
Esdras, 131.
Uttley, Dr. Hiram, 49.
Voltaire, who withstood the priests
of his day, 82.
Watts, Alaric A., his warning to Na-
poleon HL, no.
Westminster Gazette, i8.
Wheeler, J. M., 43, footnote.
When a man is not a man, 11.
Wilcox, Ella W., on the want of the
world, 112.
Worcester, Bishop of, his candid
admission, loi.
Workingman, bis four State duties,
67, 63.
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