leo was inventing the
telescope. While Church of Englandism and Methodism were fighting over
the faith in England, Watt was discovering the use of steam. Faith never
saved men here, and why should it save them hereafter? God, if he exist,
must be too humane and sensible to judge men according to their belief;
and if he endowed us with reason, he will never damn us for exercising
it.

Wandering in an immense forest during the night, said Diderot, I have
only one little light to guide me. A stranger comes to me and says, "My
friend, blow out your candle to find your way better." That light is
reason, and that stranger is a theologian.

Science, no less than common sense, dispels Christian superstition.
Evolution destroys the idea of a general catastrophe. There was a time
when life could not exist on the earth, and there will probably come
a time when it will cease to exist. Long before then man will have
disappeared. But the aeon of our race may extend to millions of years.
Is not this time practically infinite? And do not those who make it
a cause for lamentation and despair resemble the man that Spinoza
ridicules, who refuses to eat his dinner to-day because he is not sure
of a dinner for ever and ever? Sit down, you fool, and eat.

SHELLEY'S ATHEISM. *

* On August 4, 1892, the centenary of Shelley's birth was
celebrated at Horsham, where it is intended to found a
Shelley Library, if not a Shelley Museum. The celebrants
were a motley collection. They were all concealing the
poet's principles and paying honor to a bogus Shelley. A
more honest celebration took place in the evening at the
Hall of Science, Old-street, London, E.C. Six or seven
hundred people were addressed by Dr. Furnivall, Gr. B. Shaw,
and G. W. Foote; and every pointed reference to Shelley's
religious, social, and political heresy was enthusiastically
applauded.

Charles Darwin, the Newton of biology, was an Agnostic--which is only a
respectable synonym for an Atheist. The more he looked for God the
less he could find him. Yet the corpse of this great "infidel" lies in
Westminster Abbey, We need not wonder, therefore, that Christians and
even parsons are on the Shelley Centenary committee, or that Mr.
Edmund Gosse was chosen to officiate as high pontiff at the Horsham
celebration. Mr. Gosse is a young man with a promising past--to borrow a
witticism from Heine. In the old _Examiner_ day