Passing Notes.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 December 1883, Page 3

Passing Notes.

John Stuart Mill said that his father “ looked on religion as the greatest enemy of morality, by setting up a Being as Divine whose character was hateful.” Should it be an offence to describe a hateful character in his true colors ? The ‘ Echo ’ has been publishing the eloquent lectures of Mr Moncure D. Conway, who has the faculty of placing every subject he touches in a new, true and philosophic garb, which at the same time charms and instructs. We much regret to notice that our contemporary the ‘ Echo ’ is to disappear for the present from the ranks of the press. The ‘ Echo ’ has been conducted with conscientious zeal and great ability, and its loss will be severely felt. All Freethinkers will admit it has done a noble work for the cause of Freethought, pointing the way to a wider liberty, and vindicating the cause against misrepresentation, opposition, and all uncharitableness. It is announced that the ‘ Echo ’ may shortly be revived as a monthly. The ‘ National Reformer ’ gives the following account of a brawling clergyman :—“The Rev. George Moore, Vicar of Cowley, a minister of the church that teaches ‘ peace and good will ’ towards all men, has just been summoned for assaulting an undertaker at a funeral. The Chairman of the Oxford Court of Quarter Sessions said the case was thoroughly discreditable and disgraceful. A brawl between a parishioner and incumbent over the dead body of an infant was too objectionable and too vile to be commented upon.”

Miss Ellen Baker, daughter of Sir Samuel Baker, has just committed suicide from religious mania. The Bishop of Gloucester attributes the absence of working men from Church to “ waning interest in doctrine and the desperate struggle for existence.” This is equivalent to the confession that the Church of England at least is not the Church of the poor, and that it is hardly the Church of Jesus. The annual income of the Established Church in England and Wales has been estimated at ten millions, the lowest estimate eight millions. If Freethinkers had only the one-fourth of this gigantic power, how much more might they not accomplish in raising and educating the masses in practical morality ! Bishop Hadfield and the Reverend Mr. Coffey have given two more instances bearing out Herbert Spencer’s assertion, that a theological training does not conduce to stridt adherence to fact or truth. In their evidence before the Education Committee of the House of Representatives, they both state that the Jews are precluded from availing themselves of the present secular system of education. The same Committee put the question, “ Do you believe in secular education ?” to Mr. Shrimski, M.H.R., a Jew, to which he emphatically replied, “We do.” The public will judge between the evidence of the Jew and the Christian. The charge made by “ Ivo ” against the great Bible Society, that it would be better for humanity if it devoted the millions of pounds to improving the homes of the London poor, recalls to memory the following passage from Dickens’s “ Sketches by Boz : “ Gindrinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater, and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery with the pittance which, divided amongst his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies would suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of lethe-water, gin palaces would be numbered among the things that were.’ A correspondent wishes to have the editor of the Freethought Review’s opinion about Spiritualism. The editor is here an Agnostic—he does not know —has never had demonstration. Ele cannot dogmatically say there’s nothing in it, for in this he would be arrogantly setting his negative against the experiences of believers. Science is far from having exhausted the secrets of Nature, and the manifestations of Spiritualism may be in accordance with some hidden law. It is certain that many good earnest men of great intelligence, like the late Professor Denton, accepted Spiritualism upon what no doubt appeared to them sufficient evidence. We cannot accept it without satisfactory evidence to ourselves, and having got rid of a great many ancient delusions, are afraid of making the greater mistake of rushing into modern ones without the romance of antiquity to plead in justification. A debate of interminable duration is proceeding in Auckland on the subject of“ Conditional Immortality.” The champions appear to have a plentiful supply of the old Christian weapons, and abuse each other in the intervals when they are not hurling texts across the table. The controversialists are named Dunn and Brown, and it is termed the “ Dunn-Brown debate.’ Said Mr, Dunn : “ Mr Reid is as far above Mr. Brown as a scholar, and a Christian ’ The ‘ Star ’ reporter continues the sentence thus—“ Here there was a burst of mingled hisses, stamping, groans, and applause, which the Chairman was unable to quell.” The report concludes in the following words: “The course of events last night showed conclusively that party feeling ran high between the Orthodox and the Conditionalists, and the rancour and ill-feeling called forth by the discussion suggest the idea that such debates serve rather to excite bigotry than to advance truth.” Another illustration only of how much the Christians love one another.

Mr. Bradlaugh spoke very eloquently to his constituents at Northampton in September, when he declared he would take a decisive step to be admitted next session to the full rights of a member of the House of Commons. “ The Tories,” he said, “ have thrown down the gauntlet of illegal force. If I cannot break it by law, I will crumble that gauntlet with stronger fingers than any of which they dream.” The works of Huxley, Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer were recently stopped by the Collector of Customs at Montreal, and confiscated as being “ immoral, irreligious, and injurious.” The Premier, Sir J. Macdonald, intervened, and restored to the “ immoral ” literature its freedom. This is an illustration of the tendency on the part of a section of Christians to pronounce all literature which does not meet their approval “indecent ” and immoral.” The Protestant Index Expurgatorius differs little from that of Rome, except that it is hypocritical. Father Le Menant des Chesnais is a French Priest who is winning renown in this colony by unscrupulous attacks on Freethinkers. He gives no authenticated facts about the sensuality he imputes. We shall set him a good example in this respect. In the criminal statistics of France (see ‘Journal Officiel,’ February 14, 1880) there is published a list of condemnations for crimes against public morals from 1871 to 1879. Out of 43,249 lay teachers, 126 were committed for crimes against chastity, and 49 for misdemeanors, making a total of 166. Out of 9,469 religious teachers, all vowed to celibacy, 65 were condemned for crimes against chastity, and 11 for attempted offences of the same kind, making a total of 76 persons. Celibate priests and monks were guilty of more than double the number proportionately of offences against chastity as compared with laymen. In the last Primer of Edward VI. there is a “ Prayer for Landlords” which soon fell into disuse, perhaps from its offensiveness to many who did not recognise in it the economy which “ buys in the cheapest and sells in the dearest market.” Let the prayer speak : “ The earth is Thine, and all that therein is, notwithstanding Thou has given the possession thereof to the children of men. We heartity pray Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds and pastures of the earth ; that they, remembering themselves to be Thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes, after the manner of covetous worldlings ; but so let them out, that the inhabitants thereof may be able to pay the rents, and to live and nourish their families, and to relieve the poor.” This prayer, if it had occupied a prominent place in recent times in the Book, might have shamed the Bench of Bishops into giving a few votes for measures limiting the power to “ rack and stretch out the rents.”

The series of lectures undertaken in support of " Christian Evidence " in Wanganui has given signs of moral disaster. The second lecture was by the Rev. W. J. Williams, Wesleyan Minister, and was marked by coarseness and slander. He referred to the " great Freethought champion Tom Paine"—though in the first lecture by Mr Gordon Forlong, Paine was claimed to have recanted and found ' the truth ' on his deathbed. If Paine is in the heavenly mansion, his future companions in bliss ought to speak of him more respectfully. Colonel Ingersoll was alleged to have signed a petition to the President of the United States, asking permission for " obscene and filthy literature" to be sent through the post. The Secretary of the Wanganui Freethought Association wrote and asked Mr Williams for his authority. The answer was—the Rev. Joseph Cook of Boston, in a lecture delivered in Auckland. The report of the lecture, however, shows that Cook admitted Ingersoll had signed the petition under a misapprehension of its object, and had " withdrawn his name from the movement." This was carefully suppressed by Mr Williams, who thus stands convicted of making an accusation which he must have known—if he had read the report of the' lecture 011 which he

founded his charge—was substantially untrue. Common candor and common honesty required that the qualifying statement should not have been suppressed.