radiction of all evidence, to all the powers of the
understanding and the dictates of common sense, that it may well be
questioned whether any man can really fall into it by a deliberate use
of his judgment. All nature so clearly points out, and so clearly
proclaims a Creator of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, that
whoever hears not its voice and sees not its proofs may well be thought
wilfully deaf and obstinately blind.'

These are notable specimens of zeal turned sour.

Now, when it is considered that such writings are carefully put into
popular hands, and writings of an irreligious character as carefully
kept out of them, astonishment at human intolerance must cease. So far,
indeed, from wondering that the 'giddy multitude' shrink aghast from
Atheists we shall conceive it little short of miraculous, that they do
not fall upon and tear them to pieces.

Beattie, another Christian doctor, towards the close of his celebrated
Essay on the Immutability of Truth, denounces every sincere outspoken
unbeliever as a 'murderer of human souls,' and it being obvious that the
murderer of a single soul must to the 'enlightened' majority of our
people appear an act infinitely more horrible than the butchery of many
bodies, it really does at first view seem 'passing strange' that body
murderers are almost invariably hanged, whilst they who murder 'souls,'
if punished at all, usually escape with some harmless abuse and a year
or two's imprisonment.

Even the 'tolerant' Richard Watson, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, wrote with
contemptuous bitterness of 'Atheistical madmen,' and in his Apology for
the Bible, assured Deistical Thomas Paine, Deism was so much better than
Atheism, he (Bishop Watson) meant 'not to say anything to its
discredit.'

The Rev. Mr. Ward, whose 'Ideal of a Christian Church' spread such
consternation in the anti-popish camp, describes his own hatred of
Protestantism as 'fierce and burning.' Nothing can go beyond that--it is
the _ne plus ultra_ of bigotry, and just such hatred is displayed
towards Atheists by at least nine-tenths of their opponents. Strange to
say, in Christians, in the followers of him who is thought to have
recommended, by act and word, unlimited charity, who is thought to have
_commanded_ that we judge not, that we be sat judged; the Atheist finds
his most active foe, his bitterest and least scrupulous maligner. To
exaggerate their bigotry would be difficult, for whether sage or simple,
le