do you
believe in regard to God?' We may controvert Christian doctrines one
after another; point by point we may be driven from the various beliefs
of our churches; reason may force us to see contradictions where we had
imagined harmony, and may open our eyes to flaws where we had dreamed of
perfection; we resign all idea of a revelation; we seek for God in Nature
only: we renounce for ever the hope (which glorified our former creed
into such alluring beauty) that at some future time we should verily
'see' God; that 'our eyes should behold the King in his beauty', in that
fairy 'land which is very far off'. But every step we take onwards
towards a more reasonable faith and a surer light of Truth, leads us
nearer and nearer to the problem of problems: 'What is THAT which men
call God?".

I sketched out the plan of my essay and had written most of it when on
returning one day from the British Museum I stopped at the shop of Mr.
Edward Truelove, 256 High Holborn. I had been working at some Comtist
literature, and had found a reference to Mr. Truelove's shop as one at
which Comtist publications might be bought. Lying on the counter was a
copy of the _National Reformer_, and attracted by the title I bought it.
I had never before heard of nor seen the paper, and I read it placidly in
the omnibus; looking up, I was at first puzzled and then amused to see an
old gentleman gazing at me with indignation and horror printed on his
countenance; I realised that my paper had disturbed his peace of mind,
and that the sight of a young woman, respectably dressed in crape,
reading an Atheistic journal in an omnibus was a shock too great to be
endured by the ordinary Philistine without sign of discomposure. He
looked so hard at the paper that I was inclined to offer it to him for
his perusal, but repressed the mischievous inclination, and read on
demurely.

This first copy of the paper with which I was to be so closely connected
bore date July 19th, 1874, and contained two long letters from a Mr.
Arnold of Northampton, attacking Mr. Bradlaugh, and a brief and
singularly self-restrained answer from the latter. There was also an
article on the National Secular Society, which made me aware that there
was an organisation devoted to the propagandism of Free Thought. I felt
that if such a society existed, I ought to belong to it, and I
consequently wrote a short note to the editor of the _National Reformer_,
asking whether it was necessary fo