Part 4 (2/2)
CHARLES BRADLAUGH
During all these months the intellectual life had not stood still; I was slowly, cautiously feeling my way onward And in the intellectual and social side of e First, there was the joy of freedoht Truly, I had a right to say: ”With a great price obtained I this freedo paid the price, I revelled in the liberty I had bought Mr Scott's valuable library was at ed ested phases of thought hitherto untouched I studied harder than ever, and the study noas unchecked by any fear of possible consequences I had nothing left of the old faith save belief in ”a God,” and that began slowly to melt away The Theistic axioood as His highest creature,” began with an ”if,” and to that ”if” I turned s,” writes Miss Frances Power Cobbe, ”the most i of the good and the noble, and that it should prove at last that his Creator was less good and less noble than he had dreamed” But, I questioned, are we sure that there is a Creator?
Granted that, if there is, He ? ”The ground,” says the Rev Charles Voysey, ”on which our belief in God rests is ood thoughts and good deeds
Man, the ht on earth Man, the text-book of all spiritual knowledge Neither miraculous nor infallible, man is nevertheless the only trustworthy record of the Divineto God Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the only true revelation of his Maker” But what if God were only e reflected in the mirror of man's mind? What if man were the creator, not the revelation of his God?
It was inevitable that such thoughts should arise after the more palpably indefensible doctrines of Christianity had been discarded
Once encourage the huain be set by authority Once challenge traditional beliefs, and the challenge will ring on every shi+eld which is hanging in the intellectual arena Aroundrepression, my mind leapt up to share in the strife with a joy in the intellectual tumult, the intellectual strain
I often attended South Place Chapel, where Moncure D Conas then preaching, and discussion with hiious problems; I re-read Dean Mansel's ”Ba me in the direction of Atheism; I re-read Mill's ”Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy,” and studied carefully Conised the lience and its incapacity for understanding the nature of God, presented as infinite and absolute; I had given up the use of prayer as a blaspheestions, nor an all-good God require s But God fades out of the daily life of those who never pray; a personal God who is not a Providence is a superfluity; when fro Father, it soon becomes an empty space, whence resounds no echo of man's cry I could then reach no loftier conception of the Divine than that offered by the orthodox, and that broke hopelessly away as I analysed it
At last I said to Mr Scott, ”Mr Scott, may I write a tract on the nature and existence of God?”
He glanced at , then, that probleht it must come Write away”
While this pamphlet was in MS an event occurred which coloured all h One day in the late spring, talking with Mrs Conway--one of the sweetest and steadiest natures whom it has been my lot to meet, and to whoenerously shohen I was poor and had but few friends--she asked me if I had been to the Hall of Science, Old Street I answered, with the stupid, ignorant reflection of other people's prejudices so sadly coh is rather a rough sort of speaker, is he not?”
”He is the finest speaker of Saxon-English that I have ever heard,”
she answered, ”except, perhaps, John Bright, and his power over a crowd is soree with hi July I went into the shop of Mr Edward Truelove, 256, High Holborn, in search of so come across his name as a publisher in the course of my study at the British Museum On the counter was a copy of the _National Reforht it I read it placidly in the omnibus on my way to Victoria Station, and found it excellent, and was sent into convulsions of inwardatfro wo an Atheistic journal, had evidently upset his peace of mind, and he looked so hard at the paper that I was tempted to offer it to him, but repressed the mischievous inclination
This first copy of the paper hich I was to be so closely connected bore date July 19, 1874, and contained two long letters froh, and a brief and singularly self-restrained answer from the latter There was also an article on the National Secular Society, which anisation devoted to the propagandisht
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 Refor whether it was necessary for a person to profess Atheis admitted to the Society The answer appeared in the _National Reformer_:--
”SE--To be a member of the National Secular Society it is only necessary to be able honestly to accept the four principles, as given in the _National Refor required to avow hi-place between the entire acceptance of authority, as in the Roman Catholic Church, and theto the Principles of the Society, you can accept them, we repeat to you our invitation”
I sent my name in as an active member, and find it is recorded in the _National Refor received an intimation that Londoners could receive their certificates at the Hall of Science fro, I betook ust 2, 1874, that I first set foot in a Freethought hall
The Hall was crowded to suffocation, and, at the veryburst forth, a tall figure passed swiftly up the Hall to the platfor, Charles Bradlaugh took his seat I looked at hirave, quiet, stern, strong face, the nificent breadth and height of forehead--was this the norant de out the resemblances between the Krishna and the Christ rew in force and resonance, till it rang round the hall like a trumpet Familiar with the subject, I could test the value of his treate was as sound as his language was splendid Eloquence, fire, sarcasainst Christian superstition, till the great audience, carried away by the torrent of the orator's force, hung silent, breathing soft, as he went on, till the silence that followed a nificent peroration broke the spell, and a hurricane of cheers relieved the tension
He calanced round, and handed”Mrs Besant?” Then he said, referring to my question as to a profession of Atheisly talk over the subject of Atheism with me if I wouldin his lecture Long afterwards I asked hiht to hed and said he did not know, but, glancing over the faces, he felt sure that I was Annie Besant
Fro in the Hall of Science dated a friendshi+p that lasted unbroken till Death severed the earthly bond, and that to ether still As friends, not as strangers, wefrom eye to eye; and I kno that the instinctive friendliness was in very truth an outgrowth of strong friendshi+p in other lives, and that on that August day we took up again an ancient tie, we did not begin a new one And so in lives to coain, and help each other as we helped each other in this And let me here place on record, as I have done before, soh, indeed, how great is my debt to him I can never tell Some of his wise phrases have ever remained in my memory ”You should never say you have an opinion on a subject until you have tried to study the strongest things said against the viehich you are inclined” ”You must not think you know a subject until you are acquainted with all that the best minds have said about it” ”No steady work can be done in public unless the worker study at hoe, listen to your own speech and criticise it; read abuse of yourself and see what grains of truth are in it” ”Do not waste ti opinions that are ree with, and you will catch aspects of truth you do not readily see” Through our long coentlest critic, pointing out to me that in a party like ours, where our own education and knowledge were above those e led, it was very easy to gain indiscriminate praise and unstinted admiration; on the other hand, we received from Christians equally indiscriminate abuse and hatred It was, therefore, needful that we should be our own harshest judges, and that we should be sure that we knew thoroughly every subject that we taught He saved me froht so easily have induced; and when I began to taste the intoxication of easily won applause, his criticisument, were of priceless service to ely due to his influence, which at once sti characteristic of his was his extreme courtesy in private life, especially to woracefully on his n rather than English--for the English, as a rule, save such as go to Court, are a singularly unpolished people--and it gave his manner a peculiar charracious fashi+ons that were so un-English--he would stand with uplifted hat as he asked a question of a e--and he answered, with a half-sland he was an outcast from society In France, in Spain, in Italy, he was alelcohest social rank, and he supposed that he had unconsciously caught the foreign tricks of manner Moreover, he was absolutely indifferent to all questions of social position; peer or artisan, it was to him exactly the same; he never seemed conscious of the distinctions of which menat the Hall of Science, took place a day or two later in his little study in 29, Turner Street, Co with books, in which he looked singularly out of place Later I learned that he had failed in business in consequence of Christian persecution, and, resolute to avoid bankruptcy, he had sold everything he possessed, save his books, had sent his wife and daughters to live in the country with his father-in-law, had taken two tiny rooms in Turner Street, where he could live for aoff the liabilities he had incurred--incurred in consequence of his battling for political and religious liberty I took with me my MS essay ”On the Nature and Existence of God,” and it served as the basis for our conversation; we found there was little difference in our views ”You have thought yourself into Atheised in the essay was the correction of the vulgar error that the Atheist says ”there is no God,” by the insertion of a passage disclai this position froh And at this stage of my life-story, it is necessary to put very clearly the position I took up and held so many years as Atheist, because otherwise the further evolution into Theosophist will be wholly incomprehensible It will lead me into metaphysics, and to some readers these are dry, but if any one would understand the evolution of a Soul heto face the questions which the Soul faces in its growth And the position of the philosophic Atheist is so misunderstood that it is the more necessary to put it plainly, and Theosophists, at least, in reading it, will see how Theosophy stepped in finally as a further evolution towards knowledge, rendering rational, and therefore acceptable, the loftiest spirituality that the human mind can as yet conceive
In order that I ht, I take my statements from pamphlets written when I adopted the Atheistic philosophy and while I continued an adherent thereof No charge can then be made that I have softenedthem with those now held
CHAPTER VII