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ENGLISH SECULARISM

A CONFESSION OF BELIEF

THE OPEN COURT, in which the series of articles constituting this work originally appeared, has given account of many forms of faith, supplementary or confirmatory of its own, and sometimes of forms of opinions dissimilar where there appeared to be instruction in them. It will be an advantage to the reader should its editor state objections, or make comments, as he may deem necessary and useful. English Secularism is as little known in America as American and Canadian Secularisation is understood in Great Britain. The new form of free thought known as English Secularism does not include either Theism or Atheism. Whether Monism, which I can conceive as a nobler and scientific form of Theism, might be a logical addition to the theory of Secularism, as set forth in the following pages, the editor of The Open Court may be able to show. If this be so, every open-minded reader will better see the truth by comparison. Contrast is the incandescent light of argument.

George Jacob Holyoake. Eastern Lodge, Brighton, England, February, 1896.

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

AMONG the representative freethinkers of the world Mr. George J. Holyoake takes a most prominent position. He is a leader of leaders, he is the brain of the Secularist party in England, he is a hero and a martyr of their cause.

Judged as a man, Mr. Holyoake is of sterling character; he was not afraid of prison, nor of unpopularity and ostracism, nor of persecution of any kind. If he ever feared anything, it was being not true to himself and committing himself to something that was not right. He was an agitator all his life, and as an agitator he was--whether or not we agree with his views--an ideal man. He is the originator of the Secularist movement that was started in England; he invented the name Secularism, and he was the backbone of the Secularist propaganda ever since it began. Mr. Holyoake left his mark in the history of thought, and the influence which he exercised will for good or evil remain an indelible heirloom of the future.

Secularism is not the cause which The Open Court Publishing Co. upholds, but it is a movement which on account of its importance ought not to be overlooked. Whatever our religious views may be, we must reckon with the conditions that exist, and Secularism is powerful enough to deserve general attention.

What is Secularism?

Secularism espouses the cause of the world versus theology; of the secular and temporal versus the sacred and ecclesiastical. Secularism claims that religion ought never to be anything but a private affair; it denies the right of any kind of church to be associated with the public life of a nation, and proposes to supersede the official influence which religious institutions still exercise in both hemispheres.

Rather than abolish religion or paralyse its influence, The Open Court Publishing Co. would advocate on the one hand to let the religious spirit pervade the whole body politic, together with all public institutions, and also the private life of every single individual; and on the other hand to carry all secular interests into the church, which would make the church subservient to the real needs of mankind.

Thus we publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith, which is y an exposition of Secularism, not because we are Secularists, which we are not, but because we believe that Mr. Holyoake is entitled to a hearing. Mr. Holyoake is a man of unusually great common sense, of keen reasoning faculty, and of indubitable sincerity. What he says he means, and what he believes he lives up to, what he recognises to be right he will do, even though the whole world would stand up against him. In a word, he is a man who according to our conception of religion proves by his love of truth that, however he himself may disclaim it, he is actually a deeply religious man. His religious earnestness is rare, and our churches would be a good deal better off if all the pulpits were filled with men of his stamp.

We publish Mr. Holyoake's Confession of Faith not for Secularists only, but also and especially for the benefit of religious people, of his adversaries, of his antagonists; for they ought to know him and understand him; they ought to appreciate his motives for dissenting from church views; and ought to learn why so many earnest and honest people are leaving the church and will have nothing to do with church institutions.

Why is it that Christianity is losing its bold on mankind? Is it because the Christian doctrines have become antiquated, and does the church no longer adapt herself to the requirements of the present age? Is it that the representative Christian thinkers are lacking in intellectuality and moral strength? Or is it that the world at large has outgrown religion and refuses to be guided by the spiritual counsel of popes and pastors?

Whatever the reason may be, the fact itself cannot be doubted, and the question is only, What will become of religion in the future? Will the future of mankind be irreligious ; or will religion regain its former importance and become again the leading power in life, dominating both public and private affairs?

The first condition of a reconciliation between religion and the masses of mankind would be for religious men patiently to listen to the complaints that are made by the adversaries of Christianity, and to understand the position which honest and sensible freethinkers, such as Mr. Holyoake, take. Religious leaders are too little acquainted with the world at large; they avoid their antagonists like outcasts, and rarely, if ever, try to comprehend their arguments. In the same way, freethinkers as a rule despise clergymen as hypocrites who for the sake of a living sell their souls and preach doctrines which they cannot honestly believe. In order to arrive at a mutual understanding, it would be necessary first of all that both parties should discontinue ostracising one another and become mutually acquainted. They should lay aside for a while the weapons with which they are wont to combat one another in the public press and in tract literature; they should cease scolding and ridiculing one another and simply present their own case in terse terms.

This Mr. Holyoake has done. His Confession of Faith is as concise as any book of the kind can be; and he, being the originator of Secularism and its standard-bearer, is the man who speaks with authority.

For the sake of religion, therefore, and for promoting the mutual understanding of men of a different turn of mind, we present his book to the public and recommend its careful perusal especially to the clergy, who will learn from this book some of the most important reasons why Christianity has become unacceptable to a large class of truth-loving men, who alone for the sake of truth find it best to stay out of the church.

The preface of a book is as a rule not deemed the right place to criticise an author, but such is the frankness and impartiality of Mr. Holyoake that he has kindly permitted the manager of The Open Court Publishing Co. to criticise his book freely and to state the disagreements that might obtain between publishers and author in the very preface of the book. There is no need of making an extensive use of this permission, as a few remarks will be sufficient to render clear the difference between Secularism and the views of The Open Court Publishing Co., which we briefly characterise as "the Religion of Science."

Secularism divides life into what is secular and what is religious, and would consign all matters of religion to the sphere of private interests. The Religion of Science would not divide life into a secular and a religious part, but would have both the secular and the religious united. It would carry religion into all secular affairs so as to sanctify and transfigure them; and for this purpose it would make religion practical, so as to be suited to the various needs of life; it would make religion scientifically sound, so as to be in agreement with the best and most scientific thought of the age; it would reform church doctrines and raise them from their dogmatic arbitrariness upon the higher plain of objective truth.

In emphasising our differences we should, however, not fail to recognise the one main point of agreement, which is our belief in science. Mr. Holyoake would settle all questions of doubt by the usual method of scientific investigation. But there is a difference even here, which is a different conception of science. While science to Mr. Holyoake is secular, we insist on the holiness and religious significance of science. If there is any revelation of God, it is truth; and what is science but truth ascertained? Therefore we would advise all preachers and all those to whose charge souls of men are committed, to take off their shoes when science speaks to them, for science is the voice of God.

The statement is sometimes made by those who belittle science in the vain hope of exalting religion, that the science of yesterday has been upset by the science of to-day, and that the science of today may again be upset by the science of to-morrow. Nothing can be more untrue.

Of course, science must not be identified with the opinion of scientists. Science is the systematic statement of facts, and not the theories which are tentatively proposed to fill out the gaps of our knowledge. What has once been proved to be a fact has never been overthrown, and the actual stock of science has grown slowly but surely. The discovery of new facts or the proposition of a new and reliable hypothesis has often shown the old facts of science in a new light, but it has never upset or disproved them. There are fashions in the opinions of scientists, but science itself is above fashion, above change, above human opinion. Science partakes of that stern immutability, it is endowed with that eternality and that omnipresent universality which have since olden times been regarded as the main attribute of Godhood.

There appears in all religions, at a certain stage of the religious development, a party of dogmatists. They are people who, in their zeal, insist on the exclusiveness of their own religion, as if truth were a commodity which, if possessed by one, cannot be possessed by anybody else. They know little of the spirit that quickens, but believe blindly in the letter of the dogma. It is not faith in their opinion that saves, but the blindness of faith. They interpret Christ's words and declare that he who has another interpretation must be condemned.

The dogmatic phase in the development of religion is as natural as boyhood in a human life and as immaturity in the growth of fruit; it is natural and necessary, but it is a phase only which will pass as inevitably by as boyhood changes into manhood, and as the prescientific stage in the evolution of civilisation gives way to a better and deeper knowledge of nature.

The dogmatist is in the habit of identifying his dogmatism with religion; and that is the reason why his definitions of religion and morality will unfailingly come in conflict with the common sense of the people. The dogmatist makes religion exclusive. In the attempt of exalting religion he relegates it to supernatural spheres, thus excluding it from the world and creating a contrast between the sacred and the profane, between the divine and the secular, between religion and life. Thus it happens that religion becomes something beyond, something extraneous, something foreign to man's sphere of being. And yet religion has developed for the sake of sanctifying the daily walks of man, of making the secular sacred, of filling life with meaning and consecrating even the most trivial duties of existence.

Secularism is the reaction against dogmatism, but secularism still accepts the views of the dogmatist on religion; for it is upon the dogmatist's valuations and definitions that the secularist rejects religion as worthless.

The religious movement, of which The Open Court Publishing Co. is an exponent, represents one further step in the evolution of religious aspirations. As alchemy develops into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy, as blind faith changes into seeing face to face, as belief changes into knowledge, so the religion of miracles, the religion of a salvation by magic, the religion of the dogmatist, ripens into the religion of pure and ascertainable truth. The old dogmas, which in their literal acceptance appear as nonsensical errors, are now recognised as allegories which symbolise deeper truths, and the old ideals are preserved not with less, but with more, significance than before.

God is not smaller but greater since we know more about Him, as to what He is and what He is not, just as the universe is not smaller but larger since Copernicus and Kepler opened our eyes and showed us what the relation of our earth in the solar system is and what it is not.

Secularism is one of the signs of the times. It represents the unbelief in a religious alchemy; but its antagonism to the religion of dogmatism does not bode destruction but advance. It represents the transition to a purer conception of religion. It has not the power to abolish the church, but only indicates the need of its reformation.

It is this reformation of religion and of religious institutions which is the sole aim of all the publications of The Open Court Publishing Co., and we see in Secularism one of those agencies that are at work preparing the way for a higher and nobler comprehension of the truth.

Mr. Holyoake's aspirations, in our opinion, go beyond the aims which he himself points out, and thus his Confession of Faith, although nominally purely secular, will finally, even by churchmen, be recognised in its religious importance. It will help to purify the confession of faith of the dogmatist.

In offering Mr. Holyoake's best and maturest thoughts to the public, we hope that both the secularists and the believers in religion will by and by learn to understand that Secularism as much as dogmatism is a phase--both are natural and necessary phases--in the religious evolution of mankind. There is no use in scolding either the dogmatist or the secularist, or in denouncing the one on account of his credulity and superstition, and the other on account of his dissent; but there is a use in--nay, there is need of--understanding the aspirations of both.

There is a need of mutual exchange of thought on the basis of mutual esteem and good-will. Above all, there is a need of opening the church doors to the secularist.

The church, if it has any right of existence at all, is for the world, and not for believers alone. Church members can learn from the secularist many things which many believers seem to have forgotten, and, on the other hand, they can teach the unbeliever what he has overlooked in his sincere attempts at finding the truth, May Mr. Holyoake's confession of faith be received in the spirit in which the author wrote it, which is a candid love of truth, and also in the spirit in which the publishers undertook its publication, with the irenic endeavor of letting every honest aspiration be rightly understood and rightly valued.

Paul Carus, Manager of The Open Court Publishing Co.

"It is not prudent to be in the right too soon, nor to be in the right against everybody else. And yet it sometimes happens that after a certain lapse of time, greater or lesser, you will find that one of those truths which you had kept to yourself as premature, but which has got abroad in spite of your teeth, has become the most commonplace thing imaginable."

--Alphonse Karr.

ONE purpose of these chapters is to explain how unfounded are the objections of many excellent Christians to Secular instruction in State, public, or board schools. The Secular is distinct from theology, which it neither ignores, assails, nor denies. Things Secular are as separate from the Church as land from the ocean. And what nobody seems to discern is that things Secular are in themselves quite distinct from Secularism. The Secular is a mode of instruction; Secularism is a code of conduct. Secularism does conflict with theology; Secularist teaching would, but Secular instruction does not.

Persuaded as I am that lack of consideration for the convictions of the reader creates an impediment in the way of his agreement with the writer, and even disinclines him to examine what is put before him; yet some of these pages may be open to this objection. If so, it is owing to want of thought or want of art in statement, and is no part of the intention of the author.

Open thought, which in this chapter is brought under the reader's notice is sometimes called "self-thought," or "free thought," or "original thought"--the opposite of conventional second-hand thought--which is all that the custom-ridden mass of mankind is addicted to.

Open thought has three stages:

The first stage is that in which the right to think independently is insisted on; and the free action of opinion--so formed--is maintained. Conscious power thus acquired satisfies the pride of some; others limit its exercise from prudence. Interests, which would be jeopardised by applying independent thought to received opinion, keep more persons silent, and thus many never pass from this stage.

The second stage is that in which the right of self-thought is applied to the criticism of theology, with a view to clear the way for life according to reason. This is not the work of a day or year, but is so prolonged that clearing the way becomes as it were a profession, and is at length pursued as an end instead of a means. Disputation becomes a passion and the higher state of life, of which criticism is the necessary precursor, is lost sight of, and many remain at this stage when it is reached and go no further.

The third stage is that where ethical motives of conduct apart from Christianity are vindicated for the guidance of those who are indifferent about theology, or who reject it altogether. Supplying to such persons Secular reasons for duty is Secularism, the range of which is illimitable. It begins where free thought usually ends, and constitutes a new form of constructive thought, the principles and policy of which are quite different from those acted upon in the preceding stages. Controversy concerns itself with what is; Secularism with what ought to be.

It is pertinent here to say that Christianity does not permit eclecticism--that is, it does not tolerate others selecting portions of Christian Scriptures possessing the mark of intrinsic truth, to which many could cheerfully conform in their lives. This rule compels all who cannot accept the entire Scriptures to deal with its teachings as they find them expressed, and for which Christianity makes itself responsible.

All the while it is quite evident that Christians do permit eclecticism among themselves. The great Congress of the Free Churches, recently held in Nottingham, representing the personal and vital form of Christianity, had a humanness and tolerance un manifested by Christianity before, showing that humanity is stronger than historical integrity. If any one, therefore, should draw up, as might be done, a theory of Christianity solely from such doctrines as are represented in the elliptical preaching, practice, and social life of Christians of to-day, a very different estimate of the Christian system would have to be given from that with which the author deals in the subsequent chapters. In them Christianity is represented as Free-thought has found it, and as it exists in the Scriptures, in the law, in the pulpit, and in the school, which constitute its total force in the respects in which it represses and discourages independent thought. Science, truth, and criticism have engrafted themselves on historic Christianity. It has now new articles of belief. When it avows them it will win larger concurrence and respect than it can now command.

--Edward Everett Hale, D. D.

But though this combined defamation of inquiry set many against it, it did not intimidate men entirely. There arose independent thinkers who held that unfettered investigation was the discoverer of truth and dangerous to error only, and that the freer it was the more effective it must be.

Pilgrim to withstand the Apollyons who opposed it, and a combat began which lasted for centuries, and is not yet ended. But though theology was always in power, men of courage at length established the right of free inquiry, and established also a free press for the publication of the results arrived at. These rights were so indispensable for progress and were so long resisted, that generations fought for them as ends in themselves. Thus there grew up, as in military affairs, a class whose profession was destruction, and free thinkers came to be regarded as negationists. When I came into the field the combat was raging. Richard Carlile had not long been liberated from successive imprisonments of more than nine years duration in all. Charles Southwell was in Bristol gaol. Before his sentence had half expired I was in Gloucester gaol. George Adams was there; Mrs. Harriet Adams was committed for trial from Cheltenham. Matilda Roalfe, Thomas Finlay, Thomas Paterson, and others were incarcerated in Scotland. Robert Buchanan and Lloyd Jones, two social missionaries--colleagues of my own--only escaped imprisonment by swearing they believed what they did not believe,--an act I refused to imitate, and no mean inconvenience has resulted to me from it. I took part in the vindication of the free publicity of opinion until it was practically conceded. At the time when I was arrested in 1842, the Cheltenham magistrates who were angered at defiant remarks I made, had the power of committing me to the Quarter Sessions as a "felon," where the same justices could resent, by penalties, what I had said to them. On representations I made to Parliament--through my friend John Arthur Roebuck and others--Sir James Graham caused a Bill to be passed which removed trials for opinion to the Assizes. I was the first person tried under this act. Thus for the first time heresy was ensured a dispassionate trial and was no longer subject to the jurisdiction of local prejudice and personal magisterial resentment.

When overt acts of outrage were no longer possible against the adherents of free thought, Christians, some from fairness, and others from necessity, began to reason with them and asked: "Now you have established your claim to be heard. What have you to say?" The reply I proposed was: "Secularism--a form of opinion relating to the duty of this life which substituted the piety of useful men for the usefulness of piety."

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