is dirty worst to misrepresent this picture, and perhaps it was he
who induced the Home Secretary to believe that our publication was
"obscene." In reality the obscenity is in the Bible. The writer of
Exodus contemplated sheer nudity, but the _Freethinker_ dressed Jahveh
in accordance with the more decent customs of the age of reason. I would
cite on this point the judgment of Mr. Moncure D. Conway, the famous
minister of South Place Chapel. He expressed himself as follows in a
discourse on Blasphemous Libel immediately after our imprisonment, since
published in "Lessons for the Day":--

"The prosecutor described the libels as 'indecent,' an ambiguous
word which might convey to the public an impression that there
was something obscene about the pictures or language, which
is not the fact. The coarsest picture is a sidewise view of
a giant's form, in laborer's garb, the upper and lower part
veiled by a cloud. Only when one knows that the figure is
meant for Jahveh could any shock be felt. The worst sense
of the word 'indecent' was accentuated by the prosecutor's
saying that the libels were too bad for him to describe.
In this way they were withheld from the public intelligence
while exaggerated to its imagination. The fact under this is
that some bigots wished to punish some Atheists, but could only
single them out beside eminent men equally guilty, and forestall
public sympathy by pretending they had committed a libel partly
obscene. This is not English."

Frederick the Great, being a king, was a privileged blasphemer. In some
unquotable verses written after the battle of Rossbach, where he routed
the French and drove them off the field pell-mell, he sings, as Carlyle
says, "with a wild burst of spiritual enthusiasm, the charms of the
rearward part of certain men; and what a royal ecstatic felicity there
is in indisputable survey of the same." "He rises," adds Carlyle, "to
the heights of Anti-Biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of
Vision." To Soubise and Company the poet of Potsdam sings--

"Je vous ai vu comme Moise
Dans des ronces en certain lieu
Eut l'honneur de voir Dieu."

Frederick's verse is halting enough, but it has "a certain heartiness
and epic greatness of cynicism"; and so his biographer continues
justifying this royal outburst of racy profanity with Rabelaisian
gusto. I dare not fo