* Carlyle, Past and Present.
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 inspired 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, association, transformation of the corrupted medium in which we are now living, the overthrow of all idolatries, shams, lies, and conventionalities. 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 living 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 most deeply inspired of God, men have seen on the earth was Jesus." Mazzini's impassioned protest against unbelief was itself a form of unbelief. He believed 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 morality 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 independence of America, and Lloyd Garrison gave liberty 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 inspirethemwith ethical principles, since they do not believe in morality unless based on their supernatural 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.
"You can tell more about a man's character by trading horseswith him once than you can by hearing him talk for a year inprayer 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 retain attention, if it obtains it.
If a sum in arithmetic be wrong, it can be discovered by a new way of working; if a medical recipe is wrong, the effect is manifest in the health; if a political law is wrong, it is sooner or later apparent in the mischief it produces; if a theorem in navigation is erroneous, 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," exclaims a famous preacher,* "men know their true interests 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."
* W. J. Fox.
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 byfixed laws, 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 instruction. Men must be taught:
"1. The physical laws on which health depends.
"2. The moral laws on which happiness depends.
"3. The intellectual laws on which knowledge depends.
"4. The social and political laws on which national prosperity and advancement depend.
"5. The economic laws on which wealth depends."
Mr. Spurgeon had flashes of Secularistic inspiration, 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 reason and science. What is incapable of proof is usually 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 commercial 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 orthodox firms.
On the other hand, Secularism proposes to transact the business of life on purely mercantile principles. 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. Nature 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 entirely unknown way. By lack of judgment, or sense, the Secularist may transact bad business; but he gives good security. His surety is experience. His references are to the facts of the present time. He puts all who have dealings with him on their guard. Secularism tells men that they must look out for themselves, act for themselves, within the limits of neither injuring nor harming others. Secularism does not profess to be infallible, but it acts on honest principles. It seeks to put progress on the business footing 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 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 existence 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 distant horizon. Priests have denounced them for not perceiving what was invisible. Sectaries have clamored, 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.
* See Secularism a Religion which Gives Heaven no Trouble.
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 untrodden 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 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 atmosphere, 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 religious 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 intelligent sincerity and material service.
We leave to others their own way of faith and worship. 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.
"It was one of the secrets of my craft in the old days, whenI wanted to weld iron or work steel to a fine purpose, tobegin gently. If I began, as all learners do, to strike myheaviest blows at the start, the iron would crumble insteadof welding, or the steel would suffer under my hammer, sothat when it came to be tempered it would 'fly,' as we usedto say, and rob the thing I had made of its finest quality."—Robert Coliyer, D. D.
"THEY who believe that they have truth ask no favor, save that of being heard; they dare the judgment of mankind; refused co-operation, they invoke 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 contended 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 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 ethical effort. Yet theological questions are always sought to be forced upon us. The Rev. Henry Townley followed me to theLeaderoffice (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 discuss 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 objected 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 authenticity 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, lasting 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 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 otherwise themselves. Christians seem incapable of understanding 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 invited me to hear him lecture upon the principles of theChristian 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 proving Scriptural doctrine could ever be made even intelligible, except to students of very considerable research. Such theories, I contended, must rest, more or less, on critical and conjectural interpretation, and could never enable a workingman to dare the understanding of others in argument. Scientific interpretation 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 knowledge enabling them to determine the divine origin of Christianity.
* The last periodical Mr. Carlile edited.
On the platform he who has most knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin will always be able to silence 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 nature 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 misfortune 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 Commissioners 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 honest and just, no miracle is wanted to attest it; indeed, 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 commanding 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 judgment; 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 Scripture, what does it matter how they got there?
"There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight"—Goethe.
IN 1847 I commenced in theReasonerwhat I entitled "The Moral Remains of the Bible,"—a selection of some splendid moral stories, incidents, and sentences having ethical characteristics such as I doubted not would "remain" when the Bible came to be regarded as a human book. I wrote a "Logic of Life."* MyTrial of Theismwas only "as accused of obstructing 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, butthey, who blasphemed.
* Companion to the "Logic of Death," both contained in TheTrial of Theism.
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 implies, 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 jawbone of an ass." With this singular instrument he killed, one after the other, a thousand Philistine soldiers, 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 warriors 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 asininecoup de grâce, 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 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 remarkable 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 narration 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 question; while the test of moral probability decides the invalidity of the story within the compass of the knowledge of an ordinary audience.
In the same manner, keeping to the policy of affirmation, 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 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 Christianity welcome to so many tyrants. Christ, whatever other sentiments he had, had a slave heart. Every friend of freedom knows that "resistance is the backbone of the world." The patriot poet* exclaims:
"Land of our Fathers—in their hour of needGod help them, guarded by the passive creed."* Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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 materialistic evidence to Thomas showed that he recognised the right of scepticism to relevant satisfaction. His concession of proof in this case needed no supernatural testimony to render it admirable.
The reader will now see what the policy of Secularist advocacy is,—mainly to test theology by its ethical import. To many all policy is restraint; they cry down policy, and erect blundering into a virtue.
Whereas policy is guidance to a chosen end. Mathematics 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 affection. 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.
"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 experience.
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 accordance 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 deception 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 accept 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.
* Midland Evening News, 1893.
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, devote 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 outside the pale of respect. Prayer, in which the oppressed and poor are taught to trust, is of no avail for 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 belief that it will. The eyes of forethought are closed by trust in such aid, thrift is an affront to the generosity of heaven, and labor is foolishness. 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 invocations 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 saveThy sailor!While thy head is bowed,His heavy-shotted hammock-shroudDrops in his vast and wandering grave!"* See Westminister Gazette London Letter, November 19, 1895.
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 vanity 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: "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High. Our soundest knowledge 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."*** Ecclesiastical Polity, book I., | 2.** Charles Lamb was of this opinion when he remarked: "Had Ito say grace, I would rather say it over a good book thanover a mutton chop." Christians say grace over anindigestible meal. But perhaps they are right, since theyneed supernatural aid to assimilate it.
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 expecting to meet him, and from the vanity and conceit 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 lifeIn doing naught but good,Who has not half the confidence I haveIn Jesus Christ, His blood."** From a volume of verse privately circulated in Liverpoolat the time, by W. H. Rathbone.
By quoting these lines, which Burns might have written, 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 impossibility.
Christianism is too often but a sour influence on life. It tolerates nature, but does not enjoy it. Instead 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, sanitation, 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 indifference. 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.
"Mankind is an ass, who kicks those who endeavor to take offhis panniers."—Spanish Proverb.
NO 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 promoting 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 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 mitigate 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 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 imitators, 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 undertakes this trouble as far as his means permit. As an advocate of open thought and the free action of opinion, 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.
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 apparition, 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 occupation 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 forgive 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. Temperance advocates made more converts by exhibiting the biological effects of alcohol than by all their exhortations.
The moral nature of man is as palpable as the physical to those who look for its signs. There is a 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 alikeCan wait and watch, can rush and strike.Which marks thee? One of them, be rare,—"
few thought the bold prediction true; but it came to pass, and the Napoleonic name and race became extinct, to the relief of Europe.
Trouble comes from avowing unpopular ideas. Diderot well saw this when he said: "There is less inconvenience in being mad with the mad than in being 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.
"So many gods, so many creeds—So many paths that wind and wind,While just the art of being kindIs all the sad world needs."—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
LADY HESTER STANHOPE said she knew "Lord Byron must be a bad man, for he was alwaysintendingsomething." 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 indicate a dangerous form of "badness." 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."
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 necessary 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 principles, simple and unpretending as they are, being founded on considerations apart from modes of orthodox thought, have had a militant career. The Spanish 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. Holyoake's views were wrang, but he seemed to have clean principles." He who believes in the influence of material 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 will be able to regard this book as one of "clean principles," 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 discrimination of Secularism. Newspapers and the clerical 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 afterwards 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 affirmative and constructive; it is impossible to thoroughly negate any falsehood without making more or less clear the opposing truth."*