ubstance of their character. When these methods are not
sufficient, recourse is had to insinuation. Particular sceptics
are spared perhaps, but Freethinkers are depicted--like the poor in
Tennyson's "Northern Farmer"--as bad in the lump. It is broadly hinted
that it is a moral defect which prevents them from embracing the popular
creed; that they reject what they do not wish to believe; that they hate
the restraints of religion, and therefore reject its principles; that
their unbelief, in short, is only a cloak for sensual indulgence or an
excuse for evading irksome obligations.

We are so accustomed to this monstrous theory of scepticism in religious
circles, that it did not astonish us, or give us the least surprise, to
read the following paragraph in the _Christian Commonwealth_--

"Free Life, and No Compulsory Virtue, was the title of a placard borne
by a pamphlet seller of the public highway a few days ago. What the
contents of the pamphlets were we do not know, but the title is a
suggestive sign of the times, and a rather more than usually plain
statement of what a good deal of modern doubt amounts to. Lord Tennyson
was severely taken to task a few years ago for making the Atheist a
villain in his 'Promise of May,' but he was about right. Much of the
doubt of the day is only an outcome of the desire to discredit and throw
off the restraints of religion and moral law in the name of freedom,
wrongly used. Free love, free life, free divorce, free Sundays, in the
majority of cases, are but synonyms for license. Those who hold the
Darwinian doctrine of descent from a kind of ape may yet see it proved
by a reversion to the beast, if men succeed in getting all the false and
pernicious freedom they want."

Now, in reply to this paragraph, we have first to observe that our
contemporary takes Lord Tennyson's name in vain. The villain of the
"Promise of May" is certainly an Agnostic, but are not the villains of
many other plays Christians? Lord Tennyson does not make the rascal's
wickedness the logical result of his principles; indeed, although
our contemporary seems ignorant of the fact, he disclaimed any such
intention, A press announcement was circulated by his eldest son, on
his behalf, that the rascal was meant to be a sentimentalist and
ne'er-do-well, who, whatever his opinions, would have come to a bad end.
When the _Commonwealth_, therefore, talks of Lord Tennyson as "about
right," it shows, in a rather vulgar way,