Progress.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 3, 1 December 1883, Page 5

Progress.

A Freethought Association has been formed at Palmerston North, but we have not received any account of it. We hope to be able to report progress in our next. The Freethinkers’ Convention at Rochester, New York, was a great success. Miss Susan C. Wixon made an eloquent speech on “Woman and the Church.” Another lady Miss Amelia U. Colhy addressed the assembly. A declaration of principles was adopted which we shall make room for in our next number. The advance of Freethought depends on the number of Associations, of organizations and individuals not afraid to declare their opinions. Wherever there are six Freethinkers in a place, however small the centre, they should form an Association, and meet in a member’s house if they are not strong enough to engage a hall. Steps have been taken to form a Freethought Association in Auckland, where there must be a great number of Freethinkers. In the very earliest times of the colony the Freethinkers of the Northern Capital had their meetings and organisation. The notice in the present issue of the Review will, we trust, lead to the formation of an Association, with a Lyceum. We might suggest that when it has been arranged among a few to form, a notice in one of the daily papers, inviting the co-operation of friends, would be effectual in strengthening the movement. At a meeting of the Nelson Freethought Association on Sunday the 18th ult, Mr W. D. Meers gave a most interesting lecture, the subject being “A Review of the Lutheran Commemoration and an analysis of the Bible,” showing the impossibility of its having emanated from a Divine source. The lecturer admired Luther as a man of advanced thought, with courage to declare his opinion, but considered that had Luther lived in the nineteenth century, he would not have translated the Bible in its present form. The lecturer was many times applauded during the evening, and several of the audience expressed a wish that the lecture should be printed in pamphlet form. • Lewis Masquerie, of New York, is a veteran in the ranks of Freethought, to which he has devoted life and fortune. The following resolution he sent to the Rochester Convention: “ Resolved that Liberal Associations be organized in every township of New York, and that they should be established in other States and Nations That the meetings be held in the dwellings, shops, barns, sheds &c., of the central places in the townships during the afternoons of every Sunday, and that all earnest Liberals should welcome the missionary friends free of charge for entertainment and for rooms for meetings—That a fund be established to enable lecturers without means to go through each township or county in New York, with printed Constitutions to aid organizing Societies. I hereby tender the Association one hundred dollars, now in bank, to aid the movement.” Here is earnestness of a practical kind which ought to find many imitators.