THE emancipation of the understanding from intimidation and penal restraint soon incited thinkers of enterprise to put their new powers to use. Theology 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 battle often given in the open field; and unforeseen victories are recorded, in the annals of the wars of infantine rationalism, against the full-grown powers of superstition and darkness. In every age valiant thinkers, scholars, philosophers, and critics, even priests in defiance 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 imprisonment 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 relations."
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. Professor Tyndall in the last words he wrote for publication said, "I choose the nobler part of Emerson when, after various disenchantments, he exclaims, 'I covet truth!'" On printing these words the Westminster 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. Murchison, 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 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 resented 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 established, were really open to question, in order to show that if men could not be confident of things of which they had experience, how could the Churches be confident of things of which no man had experience—and which contradicted experience? 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 progress. Many were thereby decoyed to their own destruction. The sirens of the Churches sang alluring songs whose refrains were:
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 orthodox 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 subjects and soon discovered that the fair-seeming propositions which had formerly imposed on their imagination were unsound, unsightly, and unsafe. The Syracusans 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, resolved to see whether such things were true.
Then began the reign of refutation of theological error, by some from indignation at having been imposed upon, by others from zeal that misconception should end; by more from enthusiasm for facts; by the bolder sort from resentment at the intimidation 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 conquest in it.
Self-determined thought is a condition of the progress of nations. Where would science be but for open thought, the nursing mother of enterprise, of discovery, of invention, of new conditions of human betterment?
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 insurgent 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.
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.
1. The Guide of God seemed to be very human—not authentic, not consistent—containing things not readable 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 human book the paternal exaction of such suffering as fell to Christ, would be regarded with alarm and repugnance. Wonder was felt that Scripture, purporting to contain the will of deity, should not be expressed so unmistakably that ignorance could not misunderstand it, nor perversity misconstrue it. The gods know how to write.
2. The origin of all things has excited and disappointed the curiosity of the greatest exploring minds of every age. That the secret of the universe is undisclosed, 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 Providence 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 beguiles 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 belief in natural depravity discourages all efforts of progress. 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 humanity 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 innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme.
Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument 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 understand, that men can trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and dispassionateness 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 philosopher when he exclaims:
Christianity indeed speaks of the love of God in sending 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 character 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 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 hung 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 pulpit, such doctrines remain operative, and the Churches remain answerable for them. Nonconformists do not protest against a State Church on account of its doctrines herein enumerated. When the doctrines which conflict with reason and humanity are disowned by authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denominations, 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 letter and taking a "new range of view." He however holds that to drop the "letter" is to drop the doctrine. To "expand" the "letter" is to change it. New "range of view" is the term under which desertion of the text is disguised. But "new range" means new thought, which in this insidious way is put forward 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 constitute the new letter of progress. The best thing to do with the "dead hand" is to bury it. To try to expand dissolution is but galvanising the corpse and tying the dead to the living.
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 satisfaction in being free from the superstition of the vulgar, in the Church as well as out of it. No wonder many find abiding pleasure in the intellectual refutation 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 regard 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 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. Railway 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 render 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 odium nor danger abates, many castles of superstition 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 who 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 ignorance they ought to be foremost to dissipate. They exclaim in the words of Goethe's Coptic song:
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 independently 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 remember the exclamation of Thackeray: "If thou hast 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 passage 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 unqualified, and the most universal. The mere circumstance 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 dislike towards his antagonist."
Nevertheless it is a reproach to those whom militant 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 indifference 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 published? His notion of immortality and heaven is that at the consummation of all things he, and you, and I, 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 armies, and Noah with all his ancestors and all his posterity,—yea, all men, and all women, and all children that have ever been, or ever shall be, saints and sinners 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 inferiors, unless conscience and generosity takes care of it, and incites it to instruct inferior natures. The prayer of Browning is one of noble discernment:—
Even free thought, so far as it confines itself to itself, becomes stationary. Like the squirrel in its cage:
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 indignation to perfect it, and indignation requires no effort. The faculty of constructiveness is more arduous in exercise, and is later in germination. More men are able to take a state than to make a state. Hence Secularism, though inevitable as the next stage of militant progress, more slowly wins adherents and appreciation.
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 Staël, and more fully expressed by her.
Self-regarding criticism having discovered the insufficiency of theology for the guidance of man, next sought to ascertain what rules human reason may supply for the independent conduct of life, which is the object of Secularism.
At first, the term was taken to be a "mask" concealing sinister features—a "new name for an old thing"—or as a substitute term for scepticism or atheism. 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 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 uncertainties 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 a vast 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 inadequate, 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.
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 thinkers 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 aggression against hurtful or irritating error, or the caprice 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 superstition of its standing-ground and compels theism to reason for its existence. The other force is materialism 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 debatable 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."
FIRST PRINCIPLE: Of material means as conditions of welfare in this world.—Theology works by "spiritual" means, Secularism by material means. Christians and Secularists both intend raising the character of the people, but their methods are very different. 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 clearheaded and candid prelate, surprised his contemporaries (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 understood when he said plainly that it was his firm belief 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 principles 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 definition of Secularism shows its distinctiveness which omits to specify material means as its method of procedure.
But for the theological blasphemy of nature, representing it as the unintelligent tool of God, the Secular would have ennobled common life long ago. Sir Godfrey Kneller said, "He never looked on a bad picture but he carried away in his mind a dirty tint." Secularism would efface the dirty tints of life which Christianity 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 disease, 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 world 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 morality. The measure of a good action is its conducive-ness to progress. The utilitarian test of generous rightness in motive may be open to objection,—there is no test which is not,—but the utilitarian rule is one comprehensible by every mind. It is the only rule which makes knowledge necessary, and becomes more luminous as knowledge increases. A fool may be a believer,* 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 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 "Citizenship" 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 increases 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 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 perform. 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 justification upon intelligent conviction, and a well informed sincerity.
The Secularist, is without presumption of an infallible 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 faith. The Secularist has a creed as definite as science, and as flexible as progress, increasing as the horizon of truth is enlarged. His creed is a confession of his belief. There is more unity of opinion among self-thinkers than is supposed. They all maintain the necessity of independent opinion, 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 opinion 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 respects conscience more than creeds, for all free thinkers have died in this faith. Independent thinkers from Socrates to Herbert Spencer and Huxley* have all agreed:
In the necessity of free thought.
In the rightfulness of it.
In the adequacy of it.
In the considerate publicity 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."*
BEING one of the social missionaries in the propaganda 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 confidence of infinite knowledge. Not having this advantage, I profited as well as I could by such observation as was in my power to make. I could see that material 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 principles which had for their object human improvement by material means, regarding science as the providence of man and justifying morality by considerations 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 Addresses (1846) were written on the principle that morality, 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. (Preface to the Reasoner, 1846.)
4. A series of papers was commenced in the Reasoner 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 knowledge and duty is Secular and that it pertains to this world alone." (Reasoner, Nov. 19, 1851. Article, "Truths to Teach," p. 1.)
This was the first time the word "Secular" was 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" appeared 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 position of Secularism in the provinces." (Reasoner, Dec. 10, 1851, p. 62.)
This was the first time the word "Secularism" appeared in the press.
The meeting above mentioned was held December 29, 1851, at which the statement made might be taken as an epitome of this book. (See Reasoner, No. 294, Vol. 12, p. 129. 1852.)
8. A letter on the "Future of Secularism" appeared 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 Nicholls.
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.)
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 Parliament, but only of such as interfere with Secular progress.
10. "The friends of 'Secular Education' [the Manchester Association was then so known] are not Secularists. 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 instruction. 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 descriptive; 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 "Secularist" is employed to mark the distinction.