lty. There is positively a
child-cultus in the great French cities, and especially in Freethinking
Paris. In this Bible-and-beer-loving land the workman, like his social
"superior," stands or sits drinking in a public-house with male cronies;
but the French workman usually sits at the _cafe_ table with his wife,
and on Sundays with his children, and takes his drink, whatever it may
be, under the restraining eyes of those before whom a man is least ready
to debase himself.

One Secular home, at least, is known to us intimately. It is the home
of the present writer, who for the moment drops the editorial "we" and
speaks in the first person My children are the children of an Atheist,
yet if they do not love me as heartily as Dr. Jayne's or Mr. Waugh's
children love their father, "there's witchcraft in it." There is no rod,
and no punishment in my home. We work with the law of love. Striking
a child is to me a loathsome idea. I shrink from it as I would from a
physical pollution. Strike a child once, be brutal to it once, and there
is gone forever that look of perfect trust in the child's eyes, which is
a parent's dearest possession, and which I would not forfeit for all the
prizes in the world.

I know Christians who are less kind to their children than I am to mine.
They are not my natural inferiors. Humanity forbid that I should play
the Pharisee! But they are degraded below their natural level by the
ghastly notion of parental "authority" I do not say there are no rights
in a family. There _are_; and there are also duties. But all the rights
belong to the children, and all the duties belong to the parents.

Personally I am not fond of talking about myself. Still less am I
anxious to make a public exhibition of my home. But if the Dr. Jaynes
and the Mr. Waughs of the Christian world provoke comparisons, I have
no fear of standing with my little ones opposite them with theirs, and
letting the world judge between us.

Dropping again into the editorial style, we have a question to ask of
the Bishop of Chester, or rather of Mr. Waugh. It is this. Where are
the statistics to justify your assertion? Men who are sent to gaol, for
whatever reason, have their religions registered. Give us, then, the
total number of convictions your Society has obtained, and the precise
proportion of Secularists among the offenders. And be careful to give us
their names and the date and place of their conviction.

We have a further word to al