https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c410a3e267a5fc493307c92641f8fc88.pdf?Expires=1779321600&Signature=n03bEKlrupNaMsW8VAoloPJQxPyS1o06jhmNR-8Dto4eJ3tgLj4Ke%7ElagPka538W4CqhapJdl2Q2eeh22l1F%7EMpzZMbPTXhYd2Hft4dCF7O9%7EJlR4A%7EQvHvX6QHqwVv9-1CQb6TcS4zNScJSzuVsEM8LdecRIyS2FVg2MEH76IYLXIQ3xu-cFJrwPzPngC4fBKkHZQleIHj2ZdR7kzHGKta%7EWzC9K633ovS8byrWV9%7E8jBJzp42u6hsTIo6RUfl72Yn9SZ6fB7rEsEW6wlzUfB2t48%7EgE-QKKEmjAQKxJTxcN2EdcAOlROplbjfvibpKaYI0%7E3xqMBvIyFiLkRGBpA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM bdd6c16bd76e9f24dd135f2773c84ae8 PDF Text Text PROFESSOR TYNDALL 8 2ZT75 • bi l\0 ON FREETHINKERS AND FREETHOUGHT. Bisho^agaifLlastitute. MORALITY OF FREETHOUGHT. It may comfort some to know that there are amongst us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favourably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say “offensive” I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because Atheism or Materialism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular offensiveness to me. If I wished to find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engage­ ments, whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind is subjectively unknown ; if I wanted a loving father, a faithful hus­ band, an honourable neighbour, and a just citizen, I would seek him among the band of Atheists to which I refer. I have known some of the mostf pronounced amongst them, not only in life, but in death—seen them approaching with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a “hang­ man’s whip,” with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended upon their latest deeds.—Fortnightly Review, November, 1877. SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS. The Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. To the grasp of geology, which it resisted for a time, it at length yielded, like potter’s clay ; its authority as a system of cosmogony being discredited on all hands by the abandonment of the obvious meaning of its writers. It is a poem not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever beautiful; in the latter aspect it has been, and it will continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful. To knowledge its value has been negative, leading, in rougher ages than ours, to physical, and in our “ free ” age to moral, violence.—-Belfast \ Address, 1874; Preface.. ABSURDITY OF BIBLE MIRACLES. Transferring our thoughts from this little sand-grain of an earth to the immeasurable heavens, where countless worlds, with freights of life, probaty-' revolve unseen, the very suns which warm them being barely visible across the abysmal space ; reflecting that, beyond these sparks of solar fire, suns innumerable may burn, whose light can never stir the optic nerve at all ; and bringing these reflections face to face with the idea of the Builder and Sustainer of all showing himself in a burning bush, exhibiting his hinder parts, or behaving in other familiar ways ascribed to him in the Jewish Scriptures, the incongruity must appear.—Fragments of Science, p. 407. BIBLE CHRONOLOGY. Bishop Butler accepted with unwavering trust the chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as “ confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world, collected from common historians, from the state of the eart and from the late invention of arts and sciences.” These words mark pic �FROFESSOR TYNDALL ON FREETHINKERS AND FREETHOUGHT. | gress, and they must seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop’s successors of to-day. It is hardly necessary to inform you that since his time the domain of the naturalist has been immensely extended—the whole science of geology, with its astounding revelations regarding the life of the ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist and the palaeontolo­ gist, from sub-cambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the sea­ bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are, as you know, stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those formed by the ,ink of history, which carry the mind back into abysses of time, compared with which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to have a visual angle.—Belfast Address. MATTER AND MIND. Let us reverently, but honestly, look the question in the face. Divorced from matter, where is life ? Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge ' .ows them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control of mind by matter.—Belfast ' ddress. IMPORTANCE OF THE MATERIAL. On our dealings with matter depends our weal or woe, physical and moral. The state of mind which rebels against the recognition of the claims of Materialism is not unknown to me. I can remember a time when I re­ garded my body as a weed, so much more highly did I prize the conscious strength and pleasure derived from moral and religious feeling—which, I may add, was mine without the intervention of dogma. The error was not an ignoble one ; but this did not save it from the penalty attached to error. Saner knowledge taught me that the body is no weed, and that, if it were treated as such, it would infallibly avenge itself. Am I personally lowered l r tv's change of front? Not so. Give me their health, and there is no k izitual experience of those earlier years, no resolve of duty, or work of mercy, or act of self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy in the life and aspects of nature, that would not still be mine ; and this without the least reference or regard to any ptirely personal reward or punishment looming in the future.—Apology for Belfast Address. FUTILITY OF PRAYER. Once upon a time we prayed against the ravages of small-pox—with what effect ? You may answer (and rightly answer) that you do not know. But you will, at all events, admit that the prayer, as a preventive or remedial agent, proved no match for vaccination. Would the suppliant voice of a whole nation have atoned for the bad engineering, or caused a suspension , '• the laws of hydraulic pressure, in the case of the Bradford reservoir ? I tmnk not. The great majority of sane persons at the present day believe in the necessary character of natural laws, and it is only when the antece­ dents ot a calamity are vague or disguised that they think of resorting to n ■’yer to avert it.—Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, October nth, 1865. .♦ W hed for the British Secular Union by Charles Watts, 84, Fleet Street, London.—Sixbence per hundred. �_ . Smntfjihg:in UJrinft FEAR OF HELL. A person who should labour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented eternally in hell would, with reference to that motive, possess as little claim to the epithet of virtuous as he who should torture, imprison, and burn them alive—a more usual and natural consequence of such prin­ ciples for the sake of the enjoyment of heaven.—Shelley. HUMANITY V. THEOLOGY. The purpose of my writing is to make men zz^ZZ/rapologians, instead of Mwlogians ; man-lovers, instead of God-lovers ; students of this world, instead of candidates of the next; self-reliant citizens of the earth, instead of subservient and wily ministers of a celestial and terrestrial Monarchy. My object is, therefore, anything but negative, destructive ; it is positive : I deny in order to affirm. I deny the illusions of theology and religion in order that I may affirm the substantial being of man.—Feuerbach. EVIL OF PUBLIC PATRONAGE OF CREEDS. Suppose Government were to offer large rewards to all who believed in witches, or in the personality and marvellous feats of Hercules or Jack the Giant-Killer, and to threaten proportionate punishment to all disbelievers. No one would question that these offers and threats, if they were at all effective, would contribute to produce a general perversion of intellect, and that thay would mislead men’s judgments in numerous other cases besides that one to which they immediately applied. Error, when once implanted, uniformly and inevitably propagates its species. Precisely the same, in all cases, is the effect of erecting belief into an act of merit, and rendering un­ belief punishable. You either produce no result at all, or you bribe and suborn a man into believing what he would not otherwise have believed —that is, what appears to him inadequately authenticated.—feremv Ben­ tham. y CHRISTIANITY AND MIRACLES. Upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to con­ vince us of its veracity ; and whoever is moved by faith to assent to it is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.— SUPPRESSION OF PAGAN WRITINGS. heathen taxed the Jews even with idolatry ; the Jews joined with the heathen to render Christianity odious ; but the Church, who beat them at their own weapons during these contests, has had this further triumph over them, as well as over the several sects that have arisen within her own pale : the works of those who have written against her have been destroyed and whatever she advanced to justify herself and to defame her adversaries ts preserved in her annals and the writings of her doctors.—Lord Bolins;broke. * IMMORALITY OF UNREASONABLE FAITH. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood, or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down or pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call m question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it; the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.—Professor Clifford. �SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. THE RIGHT FAITH. The right faith of man is not intended to give him repose, but to enable him to do his work. It is not that he should look away from the place he lives in now, and cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to live in next, but that he should look stoutly into the world, in faith that, if he does his work thoroughly here, some good to others or himself—with which however, he is not at present concerned—will come of it hereafter. And this kind of brave, if not very hopeful or cheerful, faith, I perceive to be always rewarded by clear, practical success and splendid intellectual power ; while the faith which dwells on the future fades away into rosy mist and emptiness of musical air.—John Ruskin. THOMAS PAINE’S CREED. All the world is my country, and to do good my religion.—Thomas Paine. DIFFERENCES AMONG BELIEVERS. I find Armenian Christians who say that it is a sin to eat a hare ’ Greeks who affirm that the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son ; Nestorians who deny that Mary is the mother of God ; Latins who boast that in the extreme West the Christians of Europe think quite contrary to those of Asia and Africa. I know that ten or twelve sects in Europe anathe­ matise each other ; the Mussulmen disdain the Christians, whom they nevertheless tolerate; the Jews hold in equal execration the Christians and the Mussulmen; the Fire-worshippers despise them all ; the rem­ nant of the Sabeans will not eat with either of the other sects ; and the Brahmin cannot suffer either Sabeans, or Fire-worshippers, or Christians or Mussulmen, or Jews.' I have a hundred times wished that Jesus Christ’ in coming to be incarnated in Judea, had united all the sects under his laws’ I have asked myself why, being God, he did not use the rights of his divinity ; why, in coming to deliver us from sin, he has left us in sin ; why, in coming to enlighten all men, he has left almost all men in darkness. I know I am nothing ; I know that from the depth of my nothingness I have no right to interrogate the Being of Beings ; but I may, like Job, raise a voice of re­ spectful sorrow from the bosom of my misery.— Voltaire. WHY DO JEWS DISBELIEVE IN CHRIST? But, all the Jews in Jerusalem were apparently converted on seeing the miracles of Jesus Christ? Not at all. Far from believing in him, they crucified him. It must be admitted that the Jews were the strangest of men : everywhere we see peoples led away by a'single false miracle, and Jesus Christ could not influence the Jews with a multitude of true ones ! The miracle to be accounted for is the incredulity of the Jews, not the Resurrec­ tion.—Diderot. CHRISTIAN MORALITY NOT ORIGINAL. To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown argues, on the part of the assertor, either gross ignorance, or else wilful fraud.—Buckle. MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY. Self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts t° establish morality, right, on theology. Where we are in earnest about the right we need no incitement from above. We need no Christian rule o^ political right; we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good, has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its qualityWhere man is in earnest about ethics they have in themselves the validity of a divine power.—Feuerbach. Published for the British Secular Union, by Charles WatTS, 84, Fleet Street, London.—Price Sixpence per hundred. �SBIjat <reat Outers about Hjc ISifcle. x<ldV DkMVv jjighopsgateJiJstitutc. The fourth and last possible theory is that this mass of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the race of men towards the discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are no more trust­ worthy than as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest men oppressed by the world’s darkness; and have no more atethoritative claim on our faith than the religious speculations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in common with all these, to be reverently studied as containing the best wisdom which the human intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has hitherto been able to gather between birth and death. This has been for the last half century the theory of the leading scholars and thinkers ot Europe.—John Ruskin. Letter to a Friend in the Manchester Examiner, March 16th, 1867. The history of Christ is contained in records which exhibit contra­ dictions that cannot be reconciled, imperfections that would greatly de­ tract from even admitted human compositions, and erroneous principles of morality that would hardly have found a place in the most in­ complete systems of the philosophers of Greece and Rome.—Rev. Dr. Giles. It is difficult to assign a shorter date for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of million of years, and human existence antedates that.. But not only is it this grand fact that confronts us, we have to admit also a primitive animalised state, and a slow, a gradual, develop­ ment. But this forlorn, this savage, condition of humanity is in strong contrast to the paradisiacal happiness of the Garden of Eden, and, what is far more serious, it is inconsistent with the theory of the Fall.—Pro­ fessor Draper. The search after the Philosopher’s Stone, or after Perpetual Motion, was a less pitiful imbecility than this modern notion, that fallible man can,, by selecting his own Bible or his own Church, or by demonstrating the infallibility of the system in which he was educated, get rid of his natural fallibility. It obviously cleaves to him like his own personality, and infects.every decision at which he arrives. Those, therefore, use words of wild boasting who, with superior pity, look down on another as without chart and without compass on the deep,” because he does not admit the infallibility of the Bible.—Prof. F. W. Newman. 1 he time has comewhen the minds of men no longer put as a matter of course the Bible miracles in a class by themselves. Now, from the moment this time.commences, from the moment that the compara tive history of all miracles is a conception entertained, and a studv admitted, the conclusion is certain, the reign of the Bible miracles is doomed.—Matthew Arnold. The author, of Supernatural Religion, who has evidently a turn for inquiries of this kind, has pursued the thing much further. He seems to have looked out and brought together, to the best of his powers, �WHAT GREAT WRITERS SAY ABOUT THE BIBLE. every extant passage in which, between the year 70 and the year 170 of our era, a writer might be supposed to be quoting one of our Four Gospels. And it turns out that there is constantly the some sort of variation from our Gospels, a variation inexplicable in men quoting from a real Canon, and quite unlike what is found in men quoting from our Four Gospels later. It may be said that the Old Testament, too, is often quoted loosely. True; but it is also quoted exactly; and long passages of it are thus quoted. It would be nothing that our Canonical Gospels were often quoted loosely, if long passages from, them, or if passages, say, of even two or three verses, were sometimes quoted exactly. But from writers before Irenseus [a.d. 170] not one such passage of our Canonical Gospels can be produced so quoted. And the author of Supernatural Religion, by bringing all the alleged quotations forward, has proved it....... This, which it is the main object of his book to show: that there is no evidence of the establishment of our Four Gospels as a Gospel-Canon, or even of their existence as they now finally stand at all, before the last quarter of the second century—• nay, that the great weight of evidence is against it—he has shown, and in the most minute and exhaustive detail.—Matthew Arnold. There are many more vital points of contact between the New Testa­ ment and the Talmud than divines seem yet fully to realise ; for such terms as Redemption, Baptism, Grace, Faith, Salvation, Regeneration, Son of Man, Son of God, Kingdom of Heaven, were not, as we are apt to think, invented by Christianity, but were household words of Talmudic Judaism....... The fundamental mysteries of the new Faith are matters totally apart, but the ethics in both are in their broad out­ lines identical. The grand dictum, “ Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by,” is quoted by Hillel, the president, at whose death Jesus was ten years of age, not as anything new, but as an old and well-known dictum, “that compriseth the whole law.”—Emanuel Deutch, Quarterly Review, October, 1867. These Gospels, so important to the Church, have not come to us in one undisputed form. We have no authorised copy of them in their original language, so that we may know in what precise words they were originally written. The authorities from which we derive their sacred text are various ancient copies, written by hand on parchment. Of the Gospels there are more than five hundred of these manuscripts of various ages, from the fourth century after Christ to the fifteenth, when printing superseded manual writing for publication of books. Of these five hundred and more, no two are in all points alike : probably in no two of the more ancient can even a few consecutive verses be found in which all the words agree.—Dean Alford, “ How to Study the Dew Testaments Published for the British Secular Union by Charles Watts, 84, Fleet Street, London.—Sixpence per hundred. t �Bishopsgate Institute. SOME EXTRACTS EROM THOMAS CARLYLE. OUR KNOWLEDGE RELATIVE. To the minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its little native Creek may have become familiar: but does the minnow understand the Ocean-tides and periodic currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon’s Eclipses, by all which the condition of its little creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (zzzzmiraculously enough), be quite over-set and reversed ? Such a minnow is Man ; his creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All.—-Sartor Resartus. \ OUR SPHERE. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest—here or nowhere is thy ideal: work it out therefrom ; and, working, believe, live, be free.—Sartor Resartus. J WORK IS WORSHIP. 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 of the old monks—“ Laborare est orare” (Work is worship).—Past and Present. CANT OF OUR TIME. Inanity well tailored and upholstered, mild-spoken Ambiguity, de­ corous Hypocrisy, which is astonished you should think it hypocritical, taking their room and drawing their wages : from zenith to nadir you have Cant, Cant—a universe of incredibilities which are not even credited, which each man at best only tries to persuade himself that he credits.—Latter-Day Pamphlets. TESTING OUR GODS. A poor man, in our day, has many gods foisted on him; and big voices bid him “ Worship or be--------- ” in a menacing and confusing manner., What shall he do ? By far the greater part of said gods, current in, the public, whether canonised by Pope or Populus, are mere .dumb apises and beatified prize-oxen—nay, some of them, who have articulate faculty, are devils instead of gods. A poor man that would save his soul alive is reduced to the sad necessity of sharply trying his gods, whether they are divine or not, which is a terrible pass for man­ kind, and lays an awful problem upon each man.—Latter-Day Pamphlets. INSPIRATION. Is there no 11 inspiration,” then, but an ancient Jewish, Greekish, Roman one, with big revenues, loud liturgies, and red stockings ?— Latter-Day Pamphlets. ORTHODOX COWARDICE. “Be careful how you believe truth,” cries the good man everywhere. “ Composure and a whole skin are very valuable. Truth—who knows ? �SOME EXTRACTS FROM THOMAS CARLYLE. many things are not true; most things are uncertainties—very pros­ perous things are even open falsities that have been agreed upon. There is little certain truth going. If it isn’t orthodox truth, it will play the very devil with you !”—Latter-Day Pamphlets. 1 ' TRUTH RELIGIOUS. Simple souls still clamour occasionally for what they call “anew religion. My friends, you will not get this new religion of yours • I peiceive you already have it, have always had it! All that is true is your religion is it not ?—Latter-Day Pamphlets. THE GREAT CHRISTIAN TREE DEAD ? , 5he.e7ent at Betjilehem was of the Year One; but all years since that eighteen hundred of them now—have been contributing new growth . to it, and see, . there it stands—the Church ! Touching the earth with one small point; springingout of one small seed-grain - risina out therefrom, ever higher, ever broader—high as the heaven itself broad till it overshadow the whole visible heaven and earth—and no star can be seen but through it....... The world-tree of the nations for so long ! Alas ! if its roots are now dead, and it have lost hold of the firm earth, or clear belief of mankind—what, great as it is, can by possibility become of it ? Shaken to and fro in the storms of inevit­ able Fate, it must sway hither and thither; nod ever farther from the perpendicular; nod at last too far; and, sweeping the eternal heavens clear of its old brown foliage and multitudinous rooks’ nests, come to the ground with much confused crashing, and disclose thè diurnal and nocturnal Upper Lights again ! The dead world-tree will have declared itself dead.—Latter-Day Pamphlets. THE CLERGY OF TO-DAY. Legions of them, in their black or other gowns, I still meet in everv country; masquerading in. strange costume of body, and still stranger of soul; mumming, primming, grimacing—poor devils ; shamming, and endeavouring not to sham : that is the sad fact. Brave men many of them, after their sort, and m a position which we may admit to be won­ derful and dreadful! On the outside of their heads some singular headgear, tulip mitre, felt coalscuttle, purple hat; and in the inside—I must, say, such a Theory of God Almighty’s universe as I, for my share, am right thankful to have. no concern with at all. I think, on the whole, as broken-winged, self-strangled, monstrous a mass of in­ coherent incredibilities as ever dwelt in the human brain before.— Latter-Day Pamphlets. FREEDOM. Understand that well—it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being to be free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man’s struggles, toilings, and suffer­ ings in this earth.—French Revolution. Published for the British Secular Union by Charles Watts, <5y, Fleet Street, London.—Price Sixpence per hundred. �SECULARISM : ITS TRUTH AND WORTH. Operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.” All for each and each for all is the rule of social health—a grand reciprocity of duties and rights. Beyond each social unit is the do­ mestic circle, beyond that the State, and beyond that humanity, including all. The individual, besides seeking his own welfare, must participate in the general life of society ; and, in return, society must do its utmost to im­ prove the condition of the individual, and afford free scope for the fruitful exercise of his activities. The grand object of Secularism is, then, the pro­ motion of our individual and of the general well-being, which it declares to _e at once our highest wisdom and duty. For the achievement of this object Secularism relies on human effort ased upon knowledge and experience. In this world, at least, salvation meth not by prayer, nor by faith in the unseen, but by practical work under guidance of wisdom and the inspiration of love. Secularism believes ; science is man’s only providence. Ignorant of Nature’s laws, we are <en to pieces and ground to dust ; knowing them, we build up an empire nduring civilisation within her borders. n morality Secularism is utilitarian. Conduct which conduces to the ’ ral well-being in this world is right ; conduct which has the opposite ency is wrong. Whatever may be theoretically urged against this stanL it is certain that no other is universally respected in practice. Juris'¡/hce is not required to adapt itself to revelation, and he would be thought ange legislator who should insist on judging a Parliamentary Bill by it” nity or disagreement with Scripture. mlogians assert that men will not do right, and refrain from wrong, un,>ey have the hope of heaven and the fear of hell before them. But a great mistake, and a libel upon humanity. Great writers like an. in, Spencer, and Tylor, have conclusively shown that morality is a uman growth, not a divine gift. Man has advanced from barbarism to •ivilisation by natural steps, and the agencies which have caused progress m the past assure its continuance in the future. Besides our loveof self, we all have more or less sympathy with others, and that sympathy may be cultivated quite as well as any of our physical or intellectual powers. A man loves his wife, his children, his parents, his kindred, his friends, without re­ ference to his posthumous hopes and fears ; and the continued cultivation of his moral nature will ultimately lead him to regard all his fellow men and women as brothers and sisters of one great family. Secularism is often called “ irreligious,” which indeed it is if religion and theology are the same. But if religion means devotion to an ideal, and not mere belief in creeds and dogmas, then Secularism is religious in the fullest sense of the word. Love, Reverence, and Service are the three great sentiments which all religions have claimed to satisfy. Secularism amply provides for their exercise and satisfaction. It bids us love our fellow men, instead of dissipating our affection on imaginary beings; it de­ mands our reverence for the noble heroes and martyrs of truth in all ages and lands, whose struggles and sufferings have lightened our burdens and smoothed our path ; and it enjoins service, not to omnipotence, which cannot need it, but to humanity, which does. The legacy of good we inherited from our forefathers cost them labour and anguish ; let us, as wise stewards, trans­ mit it to posterity improved by our use. A I Published for the British Secular Union by Charles Watts, §4, Fleet Street, London.—Price Sixpence per hundred. �'gt© Institlit®' SECULARISM; X i \ ITS TRUTH AND WORTH. Secularism is too frequently thought to be a denial of the existence of God aad of a future life. This opinion, however, is quite erroneous. Secu­ larism neither affirms nor denies these metaphysical beliefs, nor does it concern itself with them unless they are employed to obstruct its path and hinder its progress. There is no Secular Society existing which requires its members to believe or disbelieve in God and Immortality. The province of Secularism lies outside natural theology ; it includes all the moral, intel­ lectual, and material agencies of improvement, which are available to all men in every land, whether they accept or reject belief in supernatui powers. But while Secularism does not affirm or deny the existence of God, it fir. itself opposed to many ideas of his relationship to man current in popu. theology. It does not, for instance, admit that he inspired the various writf» of the Bible ; its denies the myths of Genesis which contradict sciencfc ; : rejects the story of the Fall, which is untrue in fact and vicious in principlit repudiates all the miracles of the Old and New Testaments as unsup;, ortc by evidence, and repugnant to reason and natural law ; it declines to believi that Jesus was God, or that his words carry any greater authority than natu­ rally attaches to them; it recognises no objective efficacy in prayer. Be­ lieving that these statements and conceptions are false and hurtful, Secularism is obliged to oppose them when, as is too frequently the case, they stand in the way of human happiness and improvement. Such opposition, how­ ever, is not a denial of God’s existence. Upon that subject every Secularist is free to hold what opinion he pleases. Having no certain knowledge of Deity, Secularism does not impose upon its adherents any profession of belief concerning him. It merely stipulates that speculation as to the origin of the universe shall not interfere with the cultivation of that sm; province of it in which our lot is cast. t Similarly with the doctrine of a future life. Secularism does not den} '■ affirm its truth ; it neither forbids nor recommends the hope of reunion > 5 dear ones loved and lost. But, in the absence of any knowledge of a Im beyond the grave, it censures the moulding of our present life by considera­ tions of futurity, which at the best are suppositious; and it maintains that veracity, honour, and heroism, all the virtues that ennoble life and the graces that adorn it, are possible without belief in its prolongation through eternity. Holding that this life is the only one of which we have certain knowledge, Secularism maintains that its concerns claim our primary attention. The teachers of theology are engaged in making men fit candidates for heaven ; Secularism would make them fit citizens of earth. If one tithe of the means, the time, the energy, the ability, the enthusiasm, which have been devoted to preparing men for the future, had been applied to their improvement and elevation in the present, most of the evils that afflict the world would now be unknown ; poverty would be extirpated, ignorance removed, reason triun phant, morality universal, and a fair prospect of happiness the certain heri­ tage of all. The Secular rule of concentrating attention on the present life is not a mere theory; it is fraught with practical consequences of the highp moment. *■ The greatest moralists of all ages have asserted the solidarity of ourr J Beneath all differences of nationality, race, or creed, throbs the same hun heart. In the words of the great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius,, the wisest and purest spirit that ever sat on a throne, (( We are made for co-. �A FEW WORDS TO A CHRISTIAN. world’s inhabitants, except Noah’s family, at one fell swoop, for being what he himself had made them. He loves supple villains like Jacob, and hates magnanimous men like Esau. He declares David, a murderer and an adulterer, to be a man after his own heart. He commands his chosen people to commit atrocities which make us shudder ; such as, in some cities they make war against, to slay all the males, and keep the females for themselves ; and, in other cities, to slay all—men, women, and children—and leave alive nothing that breatheth. Men who believe in a God blaspheme his name in ascribing to him such atrocities as these. You, as a Christian, believe that Jesus was born without a father. A similar story is told of Buddha, and hundreds of millions of people believe it. Why do you not believe it also ? You rely on the testimony of the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Doubtless you will be surprised to hear that there is no evidence that they wrote the Gospels bearing their names, and very strong evidence that they did not. Every scholar admits that our Four Gospels were not in existence until more than a hundred years after the death of Jesus. Nobody knows when, where, or by whom they were written. They existed side by side with dozens of other Gospels, all of which were thought to be inspired. Thè authority of the Church made them canonical, and the rest apocryphal. Our Gospels are ^merely the voice of tradition a century after Jesus’s death. And what is tradition? News passed from mouth to mouth. Surely stronger evidence us required to warrant our believing that a virgin brought forth a son, and a child was born without a father. Tradition, too, is the only evidence of the Resurrection. The first Gospel says that at the Crucifixion darkness covered the land for three hours, the veil of the temple was rent, the earth opened, and dead saints arose from their graves, and went into the city. Profane history does not mention these startling wonders. Is not this strange? The Jews, amongst whom these miracles are said to have happened, remained as sceptical about Jesus as before. Is not this stranger still? What need was there for the Son of God to come on earth simply to teach what is preserved in the Four Gospels? They contain nothing new. As Buckle says in his “ History of Civilisation,” “ To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown argues, on the part of the assertor, either gross ignorance, or else wilful fraud.” Christianity holds out the hope of heaven and the fear of hell as motives ?o virtue. These motives are purely selfish. We should do right for right’s k ake.. He who refrains from wrong through fear of hell is no more * irtuous than the burglar who refrains from breaking into a house through fear of the policeman. The doctrine of eternal punishment is an awful blasphemy. A parent who held his child’s little finger in the flame of a candle for a minute would be hooted and put in prison. Yet the Christian religion says that God, the universal father, will plunge our whole bodies in fire for ever and ever. A being who could do that would not be a God, but a Devil. Your creed says also that only those who have faith can go to heaven. But faith is no virtue. Belief does not depend on the will. Men are good or bad because of their actions, not their opinions. A heaven not catholic enough to receive all honest men is not worth going to. Christian reader, men of science and philosophy are outside your Church, instead of inside, and many of them actively oppose its teachings. The more we know of the great Book of Nature the less we believe in the Chris­ tian Bible. Is not this a fatal sign ? Ponder these things. Seriously examine your creed. If, having done so, you find it true, you will believe it more earnestly and vitally ; if you find it false, discard it, for nothing is orofitable to any man but truth. Published for the British Secular Union by Charles Watts, ¿’y, Fleet Street, London.—Price Sixpence per hundred. �Jg8K0 laLSíitUtCa, A FEW WORDS TO A CHRISTIAN. Whv are you a Christian ? Probably you were never asked this question before, and scarcely know what answer to give. Nevertheless, you ought to an answer. There is intellectual as well as moral honesty, and a man v a^e give as good an account of his opinions as of his property. ”then, are you a Christian ? If you reflect, you will most likely be com­ pelled to answer that you can give no other reason except that you were born in a Christian country, educated by Christian teachers, and always surrounded by Christian influences. This, however, while a very good ex­ planation of how you became a Christian, is no satisfactory reason why you are one. The Turk has as good a reason for being a Mohammedan. You should be able to make a better reply than this when asked to “give a reason for the faith that is in you.” A great number of intelligent people cannot accept Christianity ; many eminent philosophers have publicly expressed disbelief in it; and some men of great intellectual power, who were brought up as Christians, after examin- ’ ing their creed have found it repugnant to reason and morality, and been obliged to discard it, not with joy, but with more or less pain. These men 1 are by the priests palled “ Infidels but they are no more unfaithful (for that is what the word “ Infidel” means) than the most pious believers. They are faithful to truth, which is the noblest rectitude. You will, therefore, not¿refuse to hear why they think the Christian religion untrue, and un6&>forf your acceptance as for theirs. You, as a Christian, believe the Bible to be God’s word. But Sceptics who have studied it cannot so regard it, although they know it contains many beautiful and true things. Why? you will ask. There are manyó reasons. “ The Bible contradicts Science. It gives an account of creation which scientific men smile at. It says that light existed, and evening and morn­ ing, three days before the creation of the sun, without which those pheno­ mena could not occur. It says that fish and fowl were created on the same day, or in the same epoch • but geology shows us that marine animals existed countless ages before fowl. It gives an account of man’s origin which no living biologist believes. It says that the human race is less than 6,000 years old, while Science proves it to be far more ancient. It says that the whole earth was deluged about 4,500 years ago, while geology flatly denies that any such devastation as an universal-flood has visited the earth since man’s appearance on it. We must disbelieve either Science or the Bible ; we cannot believe both. The Bible outrages reason. It is full of marvellous stories, which no sane man would ever believe if he had not been taught in his childhood to regard the book which contains them as God’s word. Dead people come to life again ; iron floats in water ; an ass speaks ; the walls of a city are blown down by trumpeters ; the sea opens to let people pass through ; men are thrown into fire without being burnt, and into the den of hungry lions with­ out being eaten ; and, last, though not least,' a whale, whose gullet is not large enough for the passage of a fish bigger than a herring, swallows a man, keeps him alive in its belly for three days, and finally vomits him up safe and sound on dry land. Such marvels do not happen now ; but all other ancient literature, as well as the Bible, is full of them. If the Bible miracles really happened, why not all the others also ? What reason is there lor believing some and disbelieving others? Besides, it seems an insult to Deity to imagine for a moment that he could condescend to such puerilities. It degrades God to the level of a showman, working wonders for a gaping crowd. The Bible outrages our moral sense. It depicts a savage, cruel, and vengeful God. The God of the Bible curses the whole human race for the offence of their first parents, which is as right and reasonable as hanging a man because his grandfather committed a murder. He drowns all "the � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [Six leaflets] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tyndall, John [1820-1893] Carlyle, Thomas Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 6 loose leaves ; 21 cm. Notes: Contents: A few words to a Christian -- Professor Tyndall on freethinkers and freethought -- Secularism: its truth and worth -- Some extracts from Thomas Carlyle -- Something to think about -- What great writers say about the Bible. All six leaves bear stamp: Bishopsgate Institute. Published for the British Secular Union. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charles Watts Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N110 Subject The topic of the resource Free thought Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([Six leaflets]), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Bible Free Thought NSS