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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Thinker's Library, NO. 4
HUMANITY'S GAIN
FROM UNBELIEF
and Other Selections
from the Works of
CHARLES BRADLAUGH
WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY HIS DAUGHTER
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER
LONDON:
WATTS & CO:
5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE
THROWN on his own resources as a boy, with every man's hand
against him, my father was both essentially and by force of
circumstances a man of action, and his writings were usually
inspired by the need of the time. His pen and his tongue were
servants to be used to further the causes he had at heart: weapons
with which he sought to overcome the dragons of intolerance and
superstition, Most of his writings appeared in his weekly journal,
the 'National Reformer,' or were issued in pamphlet form. There
are, unfortunately, few books to his credit; for these demanded
more time than he was able to give.
The essay, "Humanity's Gain from Unbelief," which gives the
title to the present selection, was prepared at the request of
Allen Thorndike Rice for the 'North American Review' of March,
1889. Although written less than two years before his death and
when disease had already begun to sap his fine physique, the paper
shows no sign of failing vigor in style or argument. In the opening
sentences, commenting on the continuous modification in the dogma
and practice of religion, he used the phrase, "None sees a religion
die," which has been quoted again and again down to quite recent
times, While acknowledging the good done by individual Christians,
he contended that the special services rendered to human progress
by these exceptional men were not in consequence of their adhesion
to Christianity, but in spite of it, and in direct opposition to
Biblical enactments.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
This essay was immediately reprinted in various parts of
America and Australia as well as here in England, and at once gave
rise to a storm of controversy. Sermons were preached in
refutation, and discussions took place in the provincial press.
The 'Newcastle Weekly Chronicle,' in particular, opened its columns
to a lengthy discussion of the subject; and, as a consequence, in
the following June Mr. Bradlaugh received an invitation from the
Rev. Marsden Gibson, a Newcastle vicar, to substantiate in debate
the statements he had made. This debate took place in September,
and caused much excitement in and around Newcastle. People came
from long distances to hear it, and the hall proved too small to
accommodate the crowds who desired to attend, so that large numbers
were turned away on each of the two nights. Years afterwards some
pitmen in a Durham mining village, talking to me of that occasion,
recalled with pride and delight how they had clubbed together to
hire a break to take them to Newcastle and back, and how they never
went to bed that night but stayed up going over the points raised
in the debate until the hour of their morning shift came round.
Such was the enthusiasm of yester-year.
The word "Atheist" has always been used as a term of obloquy
by Christians, even by educated Christians who have not the excuse
of ignorance. Misapprehension and deliberate misrepresentation of
Atheism have been constant, and indeed are not unknown at the
present day. In the late seventies of the last century my father
wrote "A Plea for Atheism," a brief but careful examination of what
Atheism really is and what it is not. He wrote this, he said, in
the hope of removing some of the many prejudices against Atheists.
In comparing Atheism with Theism he gave special consideration to
the Baird lectures upon Theism, then recently delivered by
Professor Flint.
The "Doubts in Dialogue," of which some are included in this
selection, were written from time to time between 1884 and January,
1891 -- the month in which my father died. The "Doubts " dealt with
were either put to him personally by letter or by spoken word, or
were suggested by some book he had been reading. They represent the
opinions upon religious questions held by him up to the very hour
of his death.
Just recently the Rev. R.J. Campbell declared that "it is not
Romanism, but secularism, that is the most dangerous enemy of true
religion to-day." What "true religion" is is a perennial matter of
dispute among religionists, but I presume that at the time of
writing the Rev. R.J. Campbell believed it was to be found in the
Church of England. In any case, these selections from the works of
my father are issued in order that they may play their part in
promoting the cause of "secularism" in the future as they have done
in the past. Now, as always, the open discussion of questions which
concern the welfare of humanity is a fundamental principle of
Rationalism.
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
January, 1929.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
CONTENTS
(of origional book)
PAGE
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF 1
A PLEA FOR ATHEISM 23
WHO WAS JESUS CHRIST, AND WHAT DID HE TEACH? 59
DOUBTS IN DIALOGUE 90
(These titles are in other files in this computer series.)
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
by
Charles Bradlough
AS an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been
a real gainer from skepticism, and that the gradual and growing
rejection of Christianity -- like the rejection of the faiths which
preceded it -- has in fact added, and will add, to man's happiness
and well-being. I maintain that in physics science is the outcome
of skepticism, and that general progress is impossible without
skepticism on matters of religion. I mean by religion every form of
belief which accepts or asserts the supernatural. I write as a
Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning all phenomena, every
phenomenon, all that is necessary for the happening of any and
every phenomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and at any
given time is the measure of the civilization attained by what
Guizot described as the "juste milieu" of those who profess it.
Each religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and
practice by the gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it
is professed. Each discovery destroys in whole or part some
theretofore cherished belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by
any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion
die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs:
the decay is long and -- like the glacier march -- is perceptible
only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long
periods. A superseded religion may often be traced in the
festivals, ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has
replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in
popular customs, in old wives' stories, and in children's tales.
It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood,
that I should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very
attempt at this explanation there will, I think, be found strong
illustration of the value of unbelief. Christianity in practice may
be gathered from its more ancient forms, represented by the Roman
Catholic and the Greek Churches, or from the various Churches which
have grown up in the last few centuries. Each of these Churches
calls itself Christian. Some of them deny the right of the others
to use the word Christian. Some Christian Churches treat, or have
treated, other Christian Churches as heretics or unbelievers. The
Roman Catholics and the Protestants in Great Britain and Ireland
have in turn been terribly cruel one to the other; and the
ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enacted
by the English Protestants against English and Irish Papists, are
a disgrace to civilization. These penal laws, enduring longest in
Ireland, still bear fruit in much of the political mischief and
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
agrarian crime of to-day. It is only the tolerant indifference of
skepticism that, one after the other, has repealed most of the laws
directed by the Established Christian Church against Papists and
Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church of England
clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing
nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of
such denounciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox
catechism written by the Rev. F.A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex,
the popularity of which is vouched by the fact that it has gone
through ten editions. This catechism for little children teaches
that "Dissent is a great sin," and that Dissenters "worship God
according to their own evil and corrupt imaginations, and not
according to his revealed will, and therefore their worship is
idolatrous." Church of England Christians and Dissenting
Christians, when fraternizing amongst themselves, often publicly
draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these have
any sort of right to call themselves Christians.
In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were
flogged and imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early
Christian settlers in New England, escaping from the persecution of
Old World Christians, showed scant mercy to the followers of Fox
and Penn. It is customary, in controversy, for those advocating the
claims of Christianity, to include all good men in nominally
Christian countries, as if such good were the result of
Christianity. while they contend that evil which exists prevails in
spite of Christianity. I shall try to make out that the
ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by
the heretics of each age, though I quote concede that the men and
women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one
century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later
generation.
What, then, is Christianity? As a system or scheme of
doctrine, Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from
the Old and New Testaments. It is true that some Christians to-day
desire to escape from submission to portions, at any rate, of the
Old Testament; but this very tendency seems to me to be part of the
result of the beneficial heresy for which I am pleading. Man's
humanity has revolted against Old Testament barbarism, and
therefore he has attempted to dissociate the Old Testament from
Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are accepted as God's
revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim than any other
of the world's many religions, if no such claim can be made out for
it apart from the Bible. And though it is quite true that some who
deem themselves Christians put the Old Testament completely in the
background, this is, I allege, because they are out-growing their
Christianity. Without the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of
Jesus, Christianity, as a religion, is naught; but unless the story
of Adam's fall is accepted, the redemption from the consequences of
that fall cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the
United States the Old and New Testaments are forced on the people
as part of Christianity; for it is blasphemy at common law to deny
the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
authority; and such denial is punishable with fine and
imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity intended
throughout this paper is therefore the rejection of the Old and New
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the rejection alike
of the authorized teachings of the Church of Rome and of the Church
of England, as these may be found in the Bible, the creeds, the
encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and homilies of either or
both of these Churches. It is the rejection of the Christianity of
Luther, of Calvin, and of Wesley.
A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the
progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and
the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent
servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other
of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services
rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been
in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of
it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have
been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical
enactments.
A.S. Farrar says [Farrar's "Critical History of Free
Thought."] that Christianity "asserts authority over religious
belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God,
and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of
possessing sacred books, which are at once the record and the
instrument of the communication, written by men endowed with
supernatural inspiration." Unbelievers refuse to submit to the
asserted authority, and deny this claim of control over human
thought; they allege that every effort at freethinking must provoke
sturdier thought.
Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief --
i.e., in the abolition of slavery in some countries, in the
abolition of the slave trade in most civilized countries, and in
the tendency to its total abolition, I am unaware of any religion
in the world which in the past forbade slavery. The professors of
Christianity for ages supported it; the Old Testament repeatedly
sanctioned it by special laws; the New Testament has no repealing
declaration. Though we are at the close of the nineteenth century
of the Christian era, it is only during the past three-quarters of
a century that the battle for freedom has been gradually won. It is
scarcely a quarter of a century since the famous emancipation
amendment was carried to the United States Constitution. And it is
impossible for any well-informed Christian to deny that the
abolition movement in North America was most steadily and bitterly
a opposed by the religious bodies in the various States. Henry
Wilson, in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America";
Samuel J. May, in his "Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict";
and J. Greenleaf Whittier, in his poems, alike are witnesses that
the Bible and pulpit, the Church and its great influence, were used
against abolition and in favor of the slave-owner. I know that
Christians in the present day often declare that Christianity had
a large share in bringing about the abolition of slavery, and this
because men professing Christianity were abolitionists. I plead
that these so-called Christian abolitionists were men and women
whose humanity, recognizing freedom for all, was in this in direct
conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty years since the
European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the slave
trade. What of the effect of Christianity on these powers in the
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
centuries which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet pleaded
powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-
holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal
held slaves. Porto Rico freedom is not of long date: and Cuban
emancipation is even yet newer. It was a Christian King, Charles V,
and a Christian friar, who founded in Spanish America the slave
trade between the Old World and the New. For some 1800 years,
almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, bred
slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool less than
100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. During the ninth
century Greek Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the
eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome,
and the profit went to the Church.
It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a
Christian. But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted
with unbelief. As an abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus xxv.
44-6; he must have rejected Exodus xxi. 2-6; he could not have
accepted the many permissions and injunctions by the Bible deity to
his chosen people to capture and hold slaves. In the House of
Commons on 18th February, 1796, Wilberforce reminded that Christian
assembly that infidel and anarchic France had given liberty to the
Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic England was "obstinately
continuing a system of cruelty and injustice."
Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery, found
the whole influence of the English Court, and the great weight of
the Episcopal Bench, against him. George III, a most Christian
king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and the
Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting freedom to
the slave. When Christian missionaries some sixty-two years ago
preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of Christian England,
they were treated by Christian judges, holding commission from
Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A Christian
commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of England,
signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as the
year 1824. In the evidence before a Christian court-martial, a
missionary is charged with having tended to make the negroes
dissatisfied with their condition as slaves, and with having
promoted discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the slaves against
their lawful masters. For this the Christian judges sentenced the
Demerara abolitionist missionary to be hanged by the neck till he
was dead. The judges belonged to the Established Church; the
missionary was a Methodist. In this the Church of England
Christians in Demerara were no worse than Christians of other
sects; their Roman Catholic Christian brethren in St. Domingo
fiercely attacked the Jesuits as criminals because they treated
negroes as though they were men and women, in encouraging "two
slaves to separate their interest and safety from that of the
gang," whilst orthodox Christians let them couple promiscuously and
breed for the benefit of their owners like any other of their
plantation cattle. In 1823 the 'Royal Gazette' (Christian) of
Demerara said: "We shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves,
who are bylaw our property, till you can demonstrate that when they
are made religious and knowing they will continue to be our
slaves."
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most earnest
abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in Boston,
Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in which to
speak, was the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the "infidel"
editor of the 'Boston investigator,' who had been sent to gaol for
blasphemy. Every Christian sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd
Garrison the use of the buildings they severally controlled. Lloyd
Garrison told me himself how honored deacons of a Christian Church
joined in an actual attempt to hang him.
When abolition was, advocated in the United States in 1790,
the representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the
Southern clergy did not condemn either slavery or the slave trade
and Mr. Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded that
"from Genesis to Revelation" the current was favorable to slavery.
Elias Hicks, the brave Abolitionist Quaker, was denounced as an
Atheist, and less than twenty years ago a Hicksite Quaker was
expelled from one of the Southern American Legislatures, because of
the reputed irreligion of these abolitionist "Friends."
When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North
America, large numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination
were found ready to defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the
famous abolitionist, was driven from the pulpit as irreligious,
solely because of his attacks on slave-holding. Northern clergymen
tried to induce "silver tongued" Wendell Phillips to abandon his
advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits rang with praises for the
murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The slayers of Elijah Lovejoy
were highly reputed Christian men.
Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church
exerted its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European
Civilization," vol. i., p.110)" "It has often been repeated that
the abolition of slavery among modem people is entirely due to
Christians. That, I think, is saying too much. Slavery existed for
a long period in the heart of Christian society, without its being
particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude of causes, and a
great development in other ideas and principles of civilization,
were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all
iniquities." And my contention is that this "development in other
ideas and principles of civilization" was long retarded by
Governments in which the Christian Church was dominant. The men who
advocated liberty were imprisoned, racked, and burned, so long as
the Church was strong enough to be merciless.
The Rev. Francis Minton, Rector of Middlewich, in his recent
earnest volume ["Capital and Wages," p. 19] on the struggles of
labor, admits that "a few centuries ago slavery was acknowledged
throughout Christendom to have the divine sanction. ... Neither the
exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the belief in
The righteousness of slavery, can be defined. It was doubtless due
to a combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the
recognition of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline
of the belief the abolition of slavery took place."
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian
Scotland in the seventeenth century, where the white coal workers
and salt workers of East Lothian were chattels, as were their negro
brethren in the Southern States thirty years since; they "went to
those who succeeded to the property of the works, and they could be
sold, bartered, or pawned." ["Perversion of Scotland," p. 197.]
"There is," says J.M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant
clergy of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which
grew up before their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after
republican and irreligious France had set the example, that it was
legally abolished."
Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief,
or rather disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the
brutality by Christians towards, those suspected of witchcraft, the
hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably
great so long as belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the
past two centuries, and especially those of the eighteenth century,
might have benefitted mankind much earlier and much more largely,
but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and the shocking ferocity
exhibited against those suspected of necromancy. After quoting a
large number of cases of trial and punishment for witchcraft from
official records in Scotland, J.M. Robertson says: "The people seem
to have passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they became
more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church,
till after many generations the slow spread of human science began
to counteract the ravages, of superstition, the clergy resisting
reason and humanity to the last."
The Rev. Mr. Minton ["Capital and Wages," pp. 15, 16.]
concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which has rendered
the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
grotesquely ridiculous." He admits that "for more than 1,500 years
the belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom," and that
"the public mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in
the economy of nature." He adds: "If we ask why the world now
rejects what was once so unquestioningly believed, "we can only
reply that advancing knowledge has gradually undermined the
belief."
In a letter recently sent to the 'Pall Mall Gazette' against
modem Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares "that the older form
of the same fundamental delusion -- the belief in possession and in
witchcraft -- gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent
men, women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more
murderous than any to which the Christians of the first three
centuries were subjected by the authorities of pagan Rome." And
Professor Huxley adds: "No one deserves much blame for being
deceived in these matters. We are all intellectually handicapped in
youth by the incessant repetition of the stories about possession
and witchcraft in both the Old and the New Testaments. The majority
of us are taught nothing which will help us to observe accurately
and to interpret observations with due caution."
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The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was
disfigured by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure
from the Christian Churches, which Acts have been repealed only in,
consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live." The statute I James 1, C. 12,
condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or
consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or
rewarding any evil spirit," or generally practicing any "infernal
arts." This was not repealed until the eighteenth century was far
advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280 years ago have ensured
martyrdom for its inventor; the utilization of electric force to
transmit messages around the world would have been clearly the
practice of an infernal art. At least we may plead that unbelief
has healed the bleeding feet of Science, and made the road free for
her upward march.
Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has
been apparent in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on
the unbelief in the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were
examples either of demoniacal possession or of special visitation
of deity? For centuries under Christianity mental disease was most
ignorantly treated. Exorcism, shackles, and the whip were the
penalties rather than the curatives for mental maladies. From the
heretical departure of Pinel at the close of the last century to
the position of Maudsley to-day, every step illustrates the march
of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in the unbelief not yet
complete, but now largely preponderant, in the dogma that sickness,
pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine anger, the
results of which could neither be avoided nor prevented. The
Christian Churches have done little or nothing to dispel this
superstition. The official and authorized prayers of the principal
denominations, even to-day, reaffirm it. Modern study of the laws
of health, experiments in sanitary improvements, more careful
applications of medical knowledge, have proved more efficacious in
preventing or diminishing plagues and pestilence than have the
intervention of the priest or the practice of prayer. Those in
England who hold the old faith that prayer will suffice to cure
disease are to-day termed "peculiar people," and are occasionally
indicted for manslaughter when their sick children die, because the
parents have trusted to God instead of appealing to the resources
of science.
It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the
Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been
overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our
little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon
stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its
record. As Buckle, arguing for the morality of skepticism, says:
["History of Civilization," vol. 1, p. 345.] "As long as men refer
the movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God, and as
long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by which
the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the
blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural
appearances. Before they could dare to investigate the causes of
these mysterious phenomena, it is necessary that they should
believe, or at all events that they should suspect, that the
phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by the human
mind."
Bank of Wisdom
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to
humanity has been almost solely in measure of the rejection of the
Christian theory. A century since it was almost universally held
that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or, at any rate, that
by the sin of the first man, Adam, death commenced about that
period. Ethnology and Anthropology have only been possible in so
far as, adopting the regretful words of Sir, W. Jones, "intelligent
and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the
accounts delivered by Moses concerning the primitive world."
Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung
up against the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe
that the monarch is "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be
are ordained of God." In the struggles for political freedom the
weight of the Church was mostly thrown on the side of the tyrant.
The homilies of the Church of England, declare that "even the
wicked rulers have their power and authority from God," and that
"such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against their
princes disobey God and procure their own damnation." It can
scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States
of America that the origin of their liberties was in the rejection
of faith in the divine right of George III.
Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend, that it is not
certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible
doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great
majority of the human family? Is it not gain to have diminished the
faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be
content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?
If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as
justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty
for the utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing
unbelief. At one period in Christendom each Government acted as
though only one religious faith could be true, and as though the
holding, or at any rate the making known, any other opinion was a
criminal act deserving punishment. Under the one word "infidel,"
even as late as Lord Coke, were classed together all who were not
Christians, oven though they were Mohammedans, Brahmins, or Jews.
All who did not accept the Christian faith were sweepingly
denounced as infidels and therefore 'hors de la loi.' One hundred
and forty-five years since, the Attorney-General, pleading in our
highest court, said: [Omychund v. Barker, I Atkyns 29.] "What is
the definition of an infidel? Why, one who does not believe in the
Christian religion. Then a Jew is an infidel." And English history
for several centuries prior to the Commonwealth shows how
habitually and most atrociously Christian kings, Christian courts,
and Christian churches persecuted and harassed these infidel Jews.
There was a time in England when Jews were such infidels that they
were not even avowed to be sworn as witnesses. In 1740 a legacy
left for establishing an assembly for the reading of the Jewish
scriptures was held to be void [D'Costa v. D'Pays, Amb. 228.]
because it was "for the propagation of the Jewish law in
contradiction to the, Christian religion." It is only in very
modern times that municipal rights have been accorded in England to
Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have been allowed to sit
in Parliament. In 1851 the late Mr. Newdegate in debate [3 Hansard
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
cxvi. 381.] objected "that they should have sitting in that House
an individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor." Lord
Chief. Justice Raymond has shown [1 Lord Raymond's records 282,
Wells v. Williams.] how it was that Christian intolerance was
gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but heretofore
he could not; for then they were looked upon as enemies, but now
commerce has taught the world more humanity."
Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right
of any kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt
was payable. The plea of alien infidel as answer to a claim was
actually pleaded in court as late as 1737. [Ramkissenseat v.
Barker, 1 Atkyus, 51.] In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says [7
Coke's reports, Calvin's case.]: "All infidels are in law Perpetui
inimici; for between them, as with the devils whose subjects they
be, and the Christian, there is perpetual hostility.". Twenty years
ago the law of England required the writer of any periodical
publication or pamphlet under sixpence in price to give sureties
for 800 pounds against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last
person prosecuted in 1868 for non-compliance with that law, which
was repealed by Mr. Gladstone in 1869. Up till the 23rd December,
1888, an infidel in Scotland was allowed to enforce any legal claim
in court only on condition that, if challenged, he denied his
infidelity. If he lied and said he was a Christian, he was
accepted, despite his lying. If he told the truth and said he was
an unbeliever, then he was practically an outlaw, incompetent to
give evidence for himself or for any other. Fortunately all this
was changed by the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on 24th December.
Has not humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through
unbelief?
For more than a century and a half the Roman Catholic had in
practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant
Christian than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or
the unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of
abnegation, which to a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in
effect an outlaw, and the "jury packing" so much complained of
to-day in Ireland is one of the habit survivals of the old bad time
when Roman Catholics were thus by law excluded from the jury box.
The 'Scotsman' of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the
Rev. Dr. Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening
lectures on Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity
and untenableness of regarding every word in the Bible as inspired:
and it adds: "We well remember the awful indignation such opinions
inspired, and it is refreshing to contrast them with the calmness
with which they are now received. Not only from the pulpits of the
city, but from the press (misnamed religious) were his doctrines
denounced. And one eminent U.P. minister went the length of
publicly praying for him, and for the students under his care. It
speaks volumes for the progress made since then, when we think in
all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the chair,
differs in his teaching from the Confession of Faith much more
widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely
orthodox, whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other
all his life."
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HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual
progress of unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take
from differing Churches two recent illustrations: The late
Principal Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his
important work on "Biblical Theology," claims that "all the
statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting
to us the mind of God." Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says: "We
find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred
authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what
modem research has shown to be the scientific truth -- i.e., we
find in them statements which modern science proves to be
erroneous."
At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at
Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J.G.
Richardson said of the Old Testament that "it was no longer honest
or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the
elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given -- so the Church had
always taught, and would always teach -- under the inspiration of
Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes
inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and
accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical
world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it
contained passages of narrative which devout and temperate men
pronounced discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it
praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated,
conduct which the teaching of Christ and the conscience of the
Christian alike condemned."
Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that
"the teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and
humanized, and that "the conscience of the Christian is in quantity
and quality made fitter for human progress by the ever-increasing
additions of knowledge of these later and more heretical days.
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