Part 5 (2/2)

With equal vigour did I maintain that ”virtue was its oard,” and that payrave was unnecessary as an incentive to right living ”What shall we say to Miss Cobbe's contention that duty will 'grow grey and cold' without God and immortality? Yes, for those hom duty is a matter of selfish calculation, and who are virtuous only because they look for a 'golden crown' in payrave Those of us who find joy in right-doing, ork because work is useful to our felloho live well because in such living we pay our contribution to the world's wealth, leaving earth richer than we found it--we need no paltry payment after death for our life's labour, for in that labour is its own 'exceeding great reward'”[18] But did any one yearn for immortality, that ”not all of me shall die”? ”Is it true that Atheism has no immortality? What is true immortality? Is Beethoven's true imlorious music deathless while the world endures? Is Shelley's true life in his existence in so liberty his lyrics send through men's hearts, when they respond to the strains of his lyre? Music does not die, though one instruh one brain be shi+vered; love does not die, though one heart's strings be rent; and no great thinker dies so long as his thought re-echoes through the ages, its melody the fuller-toned the more hue is this i to the measure of his deeds; world-wide life for world-wide service; straitened life for straitened work; each reaps as he sows, and the harvest is gathered by each in his rightful order”[19]

This longing to leave behind a naht of service done thes naturally from the practical and intense realisation of hu motives in the breasts of the eneration identified theh the written and spoken words of Charles Bradlaugh all through his life, and every friend of his kno often he has expressed the longing that ”when the grass grows green over rave, men may love me a little for the work I tried to do”

Needless to say that, in the ainst me that such motives were insufficient, that they appealed only to natures already ethically developed, and left the average e, with no sufficiently constraining ht conduct I resolutely held to my faith in human nature, and the inherent response of the hue--I often think now--this instinctive certainty I had of ht, inconsistent as that certainty ith my belief in his purely anie in a passionate disdain for all who did not hear the thrilling voice of Virtue and love her for her oeet sake ”I have myself heard the question asked: 'Why should I seek for truth, and why should I lead a good life, if there be no immortality in which to reap a reward?' To this question the Freethinker has one clear and short answer: 'There is no reason why you should seek Truth, if to you the search has no attracting power There is no reason why you should lead a noble life, if you find your happiness in leading a poor and a base one' Friends, no one can enjoy a happiness which is too high for his capabilities; a bookwill very hest interest is centred in his own ain his own ends, to him who seeks only his own individual coht can have no attraction Such a ious by a bribe of heaven; he ain his reward hereafter by the search; but Truth disdains the service of the self-seeker; she cannot be grasped by a hand that itches for reward If Truth is not loved for her own pure sake, if to lead a noble life, if to htness around us, if to leave the world better than we found it--if these aihts do not inspire us, then we are not worthy to be Secularists, we have no right to the proud title of Freethinkers If you want to be paid for your good lives by living for ever in a lazy and useless fashi+on in an idle heaven; if you want to be bribed into nobility of life; if, like silly children, you learn your lesson not to gain knowledge but to win sugar-pluo back to your creeds and your churches; they are all you are fit for; you are not worthy to be free

But ho, having caught a glimpse of the beauty of Truth, deem the possession of her worth more than all the world beside; who havefor no reward beyond the results which spring up fro men, until the sad minor melodies of Christianity have sobbed out their lastbreeze, and on the freshout the chorus of hope and joyfulness, frolad lips of men whom the Truth has at last set free”[20]

The intellectual comprehension of the sources of evil and the reat plank in my ethical platform

The study of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, of Huxley, Buchner and Haeckel, had not only convinced me of the truth of evolution, but, with help from WH Clifford, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky, and many another, had led me to see in the evolution of the social instinct the explanation of the growth of conscience and of the strengthening of man's mental andhience to the subdual of external nature, had already acco the same road lead to his complete emancipation? All the evil, anti-social side of his nature was an inheritance froradually eradicated; he could not only ”let the ape and tiger die,” but he could kill theed that enitors various bestial tendencies which are in course of eliht is one of these, and this has been encouraged, not checked, by religion Another bestial tendency is the lust of the male for the feain has been encouraged by religion, as witness the polygae of the Hebrews--as in Abraham, David, and Solomon, not to mention the precepts of the Mosaic laws--the bands of an temples, and the curious outbursts of sexual passion in connection with religious revivals and est grabbing all he can and trale for wealth; how and when has religion modified this tendency, sanctified as it is in our present civilisation? All these bestial tendencies will be eradicated only by the recognition of huion has not eradicated the them to their source in our brute ancestry, has explained thenises that the anti-social tendencies are the bestial tendencies infurther must evolve out of these, each also feels it part of his personal duty to curb these in himself, and so to rise further frouishes the scientific froation is beco faith in God, have gained hope forof oneself on the side of the forces working for evolution implied active co-operation by personal purity and nobility” To the Atheist it see of the race is only possible by the i ined for efforts after personal perfection The Theist may desire personal perfection, but his desire is self-centred; each righteous individual is righteous, as it were, alone, and his righteousness does not benefit his fellows save as it s with them The Atheist desires personal perfection not only for his joy in it as beautiful in itself, but because science has taught him the unity of the race, and he knows that each fresh conquest of his over the baser parts of his nature, and each strengthening of the higher, is a gain for all, and not for hiainst evil, regarded as transitory and as a necessary conco with evil, Atheism is full of hope instead of despair To the Christian, evil is as everlasting as good; it exists by the permission of God, and, therefore, by the will of God Our nature is corrupt, inclined to evil; the devil is ever near us, working all sin and all misery What hope has the Christian face to face with a world's wickedness? what answer to the question, Whence coure of despair Evil conorance of physical and of norance of physical order; parents ell in filthy, unventilated, unweathertight houses, who live on insufficient, innutritious, unwholesome food, will necessarily be unhealthy, will lack vitality, will probably have disease lurking in their veins; such parents will bring into the world ill-nurtured children, in whoenerally be the least developed part of the body; such children, by their very formation, will incline to the ani an animal, or natural, life will be deficient in those qualities which are necessary in social life Their surroundings as they grow up, the home, the food, the associates, all are bad They are trained into vice, educated into criminality; so surely as fro of misery, filth, and starvation shall arise crinorance Educate the children, and give theradually diminish and ultimately disappear Man is God-made, says Theism; man is circumstance-made, says Atheism Man is the resultant of what his parents were, of what his surroundings have been and are, and of what they have made him; himself the result of the past he o on, he himself the effect of what is past, and one of the causes of what is to coood, for healthy bodies and healthy brains may be built up, and from a State composed of such the disease of crime will have disappeared

Thus is our work full of hope; no terrible will of God have we to struggle against; no despairful future to look forward to, of a world growing more and lad, fair future of an ever-rising race, where eneral education, norance, nourish independence, a future to be les, a future to be made the nearer by our toil”[23]

This joyous, self-reliant facing of the world with the resolute determination to improve it is characteristic of the noblest Atheis factor in the reed of modern civilisation It is a virile virtue in theand slothful spirit which too ofter veils itself under the pretence or religion It will have no putting off of justice to a far-off day of reckoning, and it is ever spurred on by the feeling, ”The night cometh, when no man can work” Bereft of all hope of a personal future, it binds up its hopes with that of the race; unbelieving in any aid froles the th

”To us there is but ss and agonies' 'will be righted hereafter' Granting for a moment that man survives death what certainty have we that 'the next world' will be any improvement on this? Miss Cobbe assures us that this is 'God's world'; whose world will the next be, if not also His?

Will He be stronger there or better, that He should set right in that world the wrongs He has pered His ? To ht that the world was in the hands of a God who pers and pains to exist would be intolerable,earth's wrongs and of curing earth's pains if the reason and skill of man which have already done so ainst omnipotence, hopeless indeed is the future of the world It is in this sense that the Atheist looks on good as 'the final goal of ill,' and believing that that goal will be reached the sooner the more strenuous the efforts of each individual, he works in the glad certainty that he is aiding the world's progress thitherward

Not drea a personal payment from heavenly treasury, he works and loves, content that he is building a future fairer than his present, joyous that he is creating a new earth for a happier race”[24]

Such was the creed and such the hts fros to 1889, and froles and distress And I shall ever reave me, for the self-reliance it nurtured, for the altruis of the unity of man that it fostered, for the inspiration to work that it lent And perhaps the chief debt of gratitude I owe to Freethought is that it left thequestioning of Nature, and shrank from no new conclusions, however adverse to the old, that were based on solid evidence I admit sorrowfully that all Freethinkers do not learn this lesson, but I worked side by side with Charles Bradlaugh, and the Freethought we strove to spread was strong-headed and broad-hearted

The antagonisainst me fronorance, was partly aroused by my direct attacks on Christianity, and by the coely by ainst eneral, and I attacked theies, but joyously and defiantly, with sheer delight in the intellectual strife

I was fired, too, with passionate sys of the poor, for the overburdened, overdriven masses of the people, not only here but in every land, and wherever a bloas struck at Liberty or Justiceof the fiery cross, and the co therew out of ignorance regarded Atheisraded morality and bestial life, and they assailed my conduct not on evidence that it was evil, but on the presumption that an Atheist must be immoral Thus a Christian opponent at Leicester assailedon me viehich were maintained in a book that I had not read, but which, before I had ever seen the _National Reformer_, had been reviewed in its columns--as it was reviewed in other London papers--and had been commended for its clear statement of the Malthusian position, but not for its contention as to free love, a theory to which Mr Bradlaugh was very strongly opposed

Nor were the attacks confined to the ascription to ents of the Christian Evidence Society, in their street preaching, ainst me of personal istroht voluble protestations of disavowal and disapproval; but as the peccant agents were continued in their eies were of small value No accusation was too coarse, no slander too baseless, for circulation by these nities caused ood naood name to the winds for the sake of theto merit, even ostensibly, such attacks Even by educated writers, who should have known better, the most wanton accusations of violence and would-be destructiveness were brought against Atheists; thus Miss Frances Power Cobbe wrote in the _Conte about the secularisation _or destruction_ of all cathedrals, churches, and chapels ”Why,” I wrote in answer, ”should cathedrals, churches, and chapels be destroyed? Atheism will utilise, not destroy, the beautiful edifices which, once wasted on God, shall hereafter be consecrated for man Destroy Westlorious tones of soft, rich colour, its stonework light as if of cloud, its dreareat rock in a weary land'? Nay, but reconsecrate it to huuns and banners on soldiers' graves will fitly be reer race of lines of pillar and of arch; but the glorious building wherein now barbaric psal canons preach of Eastern follies, shall hereafter echo the ner and Beethoven, and the teachers of the future shall there unveil to thronging multitudes the beauties and the wonders of the world The 'towers and spires' will not be effaced, but they will no longer be syion which sacrifices earth to heaven and Man to God”[25] Between the cultured and the uncultured burlesques of Atheisarded, as the late Cardinal Manning termed us, as mere ”cattle”

Thewere overlooked by y

Against the teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious atonement, of the infallibility of the Bible, I levelled all the strength of ue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church with unsparing hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its cruelties, its oppressions S inflicted on myself, and wroth with the cruel pressure continually put on Freethinkers by Christian e under constant threats of prosecution, identifying Christianity with the political and social tyrannies of Christendom, I used every weapon that history, science, criticisainst the Churches; eloquence, sarcasm, mockery, all were called on to make breaches in the wall of traditional belief and crass superstition

To argument and reason I was ever ready to listen, but I turned a front of stubborn defiance to all attempts to compel assent to Christianity by appeals to force ”The threat and the enforceainst unbelief can never coained by demonstration; it can never be forced by punish us bitter; the weaker a us hypocrites; it never has made and never can make an honest convert”[26]

That men and women are now able to speak and think as openly as they do, that a broader spirit is visible in the Churches, that heresy is no longer regarded as ely due to the active and anda carried on under the leadershi+p of Charles Bradlaugh, whose nearest and ue was in the early days bitterer than it should have been, I frankly acknowledge; that I ignored the services done by Christianity and threw light only on its cri injustice, I a ere I left the Atheistic camp, and they were the faults of my personality, not of the Atheistic philosophy And my main contentions were true, and needed to be made; from many a Christian pulpit to-day s; ed; and while I condee, I rejoice that I played land which has made impossible for evermore the crude superstitions of the past, and the repetition of the cruelties and injustices under which preceding heretics suffered

But eneral feeling of hatred hich I was regarded Politics, as such, I cared not for at all, for the necessary compromises of political life were intolerable to me; but wherever they touched on the life of the people they beca interest The land question, the incidence of taxation, the cost of Royalty, the obstructive power of the House of Lords--these were the matters to which I put my hand; I was a Home Ruler, too, of course, and a passionate opponent of all injustice to nations weaker than ourselves, so that I found ainst our aggressive and oppressive policy in Ireland, in the Transvaal, in India, in Afghanistan, in Burreat towns, trying to touch the consciences of the people, and to , piratical policy Against war, against capital punish national education instead of big guns, public libraries instead of warshi+ps--no wonder I was denounced as an agitator, a firebrand, and that all orthodox society turned up at me its most respectable nose

CHAPTER VIII

AT WORK

From this sketch of the inner sources of action let me turn to the actions themselves, and see how the outer life was led which fed itself at these springs

I have said that the friendshi+p between Mr Bradlaugh and , and a few days after our talk in Turner Street he came down to see me at Norwood It was characteristic of the man that he refused my first invitation, and bade me to think well ere I asked hilish society that any friend of his would be certain to suffer, and that I should pay heavily for any friendshi+p extended to hihim that I had counted the cost, he came to see me His words came true; my friendshi+p for him alienated froth and the happiness of it outweighed a thousand tiret touched me that I clasped hands with him in 1874, and won the noblest friend that woman ever had He never spoke to me a harsh word; where we differed, he never tried to override ment, nor force on me his viee discussed all points of difference as equal friends; he guarded ht, and shared with htness of htfulness, his ever-ready syenerous love He was the most unselfishMy quick, ith it needed, and learned from him the self-control it lacked

He was the merriest of companions in our rare hours of relaxation; for , after the hours always set aside by hial and other matters--for he was a veritable poorhis books and papers, he would sit writing, hour after hour, I equally busy witha word, breaking off just for lunch and dinner, and working on again in the evening till about ten o'clock--he alent early to bed when at hos, about three-quarters of a mile away So our favourite garave, ould make holiday so over with ht and speech; all the country round London has for s--Richhty trees; Windsor, with its groves of bracken; Kehere we had tea in a funny little room, atercress _ad libitum_; Hampton Court, with its dishevelled beauties; Maidenhead and Taplohere the river was the attraction; and, above all, Broxbourne, where he delighted to spend the day with his fishi+ng-rod, wandering along the river, of which he knew every eddy For he was a great fisherht me all the mysteries of the craft, mirthfully disdainful of ht them And in those days he would talk of all his hopes of the future, of his work, of his duty to the thousands who looked to hiuidance, of the time when he would sit in Parliament as member for Northampton, and help to pass into laws the projects of reforue How often he would voice his love of England, his admiration of her Parliament, his pride in her history Keenly alive to the blots upon it in her sinful wars of conquest, in the cruel wrongs inflicted upon subject peoples, he was yet an Englishlishripped power and held it, to understand the needs of those he ruled, and to do justice willingly, since compulsion to justice there was none His service to India in the latest years of his life was no suddenly accepted task He had spoken for her, pleaded for her, for h press and on platfor ere he was member of Parliament

A place on the staff of the _National Reformer_ was offered me by Mr