bly, the people who hold such views
might be able to illustrate them by individual instances.

The fear of hell's a hangman's whip,
To keep the wretch in order.

Remove the fear, and the wretch, following his natural instinct, may
become disorderly; but I refuse to accept him as a sample of humanity.
'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die' is by no means the
ethical consequence of a rejection of dogma. To many of you the name
of George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless familiar, and you are probably
aware that at no man in England has the term 'atheist' been more
frequently pelted. There are, moreover, really few who have more
completely liberated themselves from theologic notions. Among
working-class politicians Mr. Holyoake is a leader. Does he exhort
his followers to 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'? Not so. In
the August number of the 'Nineteenth Century' you will find these
words from his pen: 'The gospel of dirt is bad enough, but the gospel
of mere material comfort is much worse.' He contemptuously calls the
Comtist championship of the working man, 'the championship of the
trencher.' He would place 'the leanest liberty which brought with it
the dignity and power of self-help' higher than 'any prospect of a
full plate without it.' Such is the moral doctrine taught by this
'atheistic' leader; and no Christian, I apprehend, need be ashamed of
it.

Most heartily do I recognise and admire the spiritual radiance, if I
may use the term, shed by religion on the minds and lives of many
personally known to me. At the same time I cannot but observe how
signally, as regards the production of anything beautiful, religion
fails in other cases. Its professor and defender is sometimes at
bottom a brawler and a clown. These differences depend upon primary
distinctions of character which religion does not remove. It may
comfort some to know that there are amongst us many whom the
gladiators of the pulpit would call 'atheists' and 'materialists,'
whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of
morality, would contrast more than favourably with the lives of those
who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say
'offensive,' I refer simply to the intention of those who use such
terms, and not because atheism or materialism, when compared with many
of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, has
any particular offensiveness for me. If I wished to find men