Read Ebook: Christianity in relation to Freethought Scepticism and Faith Three discourses by the Bishop of Peterborough with special replies by Mr. C. Bradlaugh by Bradlaugh Charles Magee William Connor Cooper Robert A Contributor Goulburn Edward Meyrick Contributor

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Norwich, March 1st, 1871.

In the circular letter, you speak of the prevalence, in large cities, of "sceptical views," and also of "modern forms of infidelity," evidently using the words "sceptical" and "infidelity" in their popular and ordinary, and not in their strict, grammatical sense.

I say evidently, because the phrases "sceptical views," and "modern infidelity" appear to be intended as equivalent, and I therefore assume that you use them in their popular sense, because if I am to suppose you use the word "sceptical" in its strict etymological meaning, I must also that you do the word "infidelity," and I am reluctant to think that you would, in speaking of the opinions of people who you must know are as sincere and honest as yourself, deliberately and intentionally do that.

You were, therefore, perfectly entitled to say you had my authority for describing me as a "Sceptic:" what I demurred to was your description of my position as a "Sceptic" as I had adopted the term in the sense in which you seem to use it in your circular, but not in the sense of your letter. I think the misconception would have been avoided had you used the whole instead of the half of my expression--viz., "Sceptic or Infidel," instead of "Sceptic" only; as your description, if correct, of the position of a "Sceptic" will clearly not apply to a "Sceptic or Infidel."

And here I will endeavour to state "my conclusion on the momentous question." I am quite convinced that the history of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament, is a fable entirely unworthy of credence, and that the Christian and all other systems of religion are but mischievous delusions, but the nature of the evidence by which I arrive at these conclusions, is so different from that which convinces me that the sun is shining in the heavens that I could not use that form of words as correctly expressing the strength of my convictions.

I regret it is necessary to occupy your time with so long an explanation. Although I could not agree with what you said, I did not wish to trouble you further on that point, and thought it would be sufficient to indicate a dissent without going into detail. Brevity was a failure, and I apologise.

I am, Rev. Sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ROBERT A. COOPER.

The Very Rev. E. M. Goulburn, Dean of Norwich.

CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO FREETHOUGHT, SCEPTICISM, AND FAITH. CHRISTIANITY AND FREETHOUGHT.

ON Tuesday evening, March 28th, the Right Rev. Dr. Magee, Lord Bishop of Peterborough, preached the first of a series of Sermons on Christianity and Freethought, before a large congregation in the nave of the Cathedral. According to the Dean's previous arrangements, the nave was occupied by men, and the south aisle by ladies. The nave was brilliantly lighted, and the Lord Bishop of Norwich and the full chapter took part in the service.

After prayers were intoned and a hymn sung, the Right Rev. Prelate selected his text from the Gospel according to St. John, viii. 33: "How sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" His Lordship said:

The scene that is described in this chapter makes, I think, a fitting introduction to the series of sermons of which I am here to-night to preach the first. These sermons are meant to be pleadings for Christ. Their object is to win back to him those who may have left him, to cause those who have not left him to cling to him more strongly; to win back disciples to Christ, and to confirm disciples in their discipleship. That is what I and those who are to follow me here have in view. For this reason I ask you to-night to study this story in the life of Christ, because it is one in which we see how Christ himself, long ago, first won and then lost disciples.

The scene commences with a large accession of disciples to Christ. We read, that as he spoke these words many believed on him, and the scene ends with many of those very believers taking up stones to cast at him. First they believed on him, shortly after they seek to take his life; and after this is over, we read how his own disciples came to him again, and said to him, "Master, tell us." Now, brethren, we Christians believe that in this scene was a prophecy of the whole history of Christ's life upon earth in his Church; the story of those who come and those who go, of those who believe in him at first, and of those who cease to believe in him, and also the inner history of those that never forsake him. We believe that when the noisy strife of things has passed away, and the execrations of those that hated him have ceased to ring upon the ear, there still will be heard the voice of the Church, saying "Master, tell us," that which others will not, or cannot listen to; "Master, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life." But it is not on those who thus stay with Christ that I ask you to fix your attention. I ask you to-night to contemplate with me, not those who remain with him, but those who leave him. I ask you to understand a little of that mental history that is here shown us, telling us how they passed from belief to doubt, and from doubt to rejection of Christ.

It will be profitable to us, I think, both to those who believe and to those who unhappily disbelieve in Christ, that we should study a little this early instance of Freethought and disbelief. It will be good for those who do not believe in Christ to look at this scene, because it will show this fact, that there were those who disbelieved in Christ. It will show this fact, that this is not a religion whose origin is lost in the dim distance of time; it is not a legendary faith of which no one can say when it began or who first taught it, as it arose in historical times; a faith continuing from the very first, not without question or dispute, but in spite of the question and notwithstanding the dispute. It will show that Freethought is as old as Christianity itself, and when we read how long it is since men had the same doubts and difficulties, it will occur to us that after all there must be a wonderful power in this faith that struggles into acceptance in spite of those doubts and difficulties, and that there must be some marvellous vitality in the faith that has survived 1800 years, something that is worth inquiring into. This bush that is burning and never burned, is worth turning aside to look at. It will be good for us to look at those early unbelievers, because it strengthens our faith to be reminded that unbelief is no new thing, and that Christianity has survived more than 1800 years.

It is good for another reason; it teaches us to try to understand the feelings of those who don't believe; it teaches us to try to put ourselves in their place, to try to understand how it is they don't agree with us; to make all allowances for the honesty of their disbelief, to try to enter fairly into their motives and feelings. If we don't do this, we are in danger of being hard, and bitter, and unjust in contending for him, but not in his spirit; forgetting that there is not one of those who disbelieve in him, for whom he has not died, forgetting that an unbeliever is not an enemy to be driven back from the fortress, but an exile to be won back by earnest reasoning to his Father in Heaven. Let us learn, above all, that in all our arguments for Christianity we should be filled with the spirit of him for whom we plead, and that we should manifest the truth in love.

We ask you then to contemplate this scene, in which we find Christ winning and losing disciples, and learn something. And the first thing we have to remark is this, how very little those that come and go seem to have been influenced by what we call the evidences of Christianity. They were doubtless drawn to Christ by the fame of his miracles, it does not seem to have been his miracles that converted them. It was as "he said those words many believed on him." Then he said something else, and they left him. It was not that they doubted of his ability to work miracles, but because something he said offended them. They came to him not altogether in consequence of his miracles, and they left him in spite of his miracles. It teaches us that the religion of Christ was not received unquestioningly, even in the case of his miracles, for in spite of his miracles they ventured to question his doctrine; so that those who say Christianity was received in an ignorant age are contradicted by the story of Christianity itself, for many of those who saw his miracles rejected him.

There is another reason for noting this, in order to observe the power of prejudice and passion in influencing men's belief or disbelief. There are few men who believe strictly in accordance with their reflecting faculties. The desires, prejudices, and passions of men largely share in the making of their beliefs; and if this be true of beliefs, it is equally true of men's unbelief. If there be those here who do not believe in Christ, I ask them: Are you quite sure that your unbelief is the result of calm, and thoughtful, and careful study of what Christianity has to say for itself? Are you sure you have not hastily taken up some objections against Christianity without waiting for the answer? Are you quite sure that you have not misunderstood some words of Christ--some words that, having offended you, you have passed away without waiting for the reason? Are you sure that there is no unreason in your unbelief, you that say there is so little reason in our belief? It is because I am deeply convinced of this that I am here. It is because I believe that misconception, prejudice, and hasty adoption of other men's opinions upon slender grounds, make a large part of ignorant belief, often a large part of ignorant unbelief. It is because these misunderstandings may be removed, that I am here to speak of the subjects I have announced. It is because I believe it is useless to argue against prejudices, that I shall endeavour to remove those prejudices, and mistaken feelings and opinions, that make men unwilling to listen to arguments for Christianity. Those who follow me will bring many arguments for Christianity, and I am here to-night to prepare the way for them.

I ask you, then, to turn again to this story, and to see why it was that those new disciples left Christ. It was for this reason, that they were offended because he appeared to deny them the possession of liberty. When they became his disciples he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Then they answered him, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" He had offered them liberty, and this implied that they were not free, and this they regarded as the gravest of affronts. We, the children of Abraham, the aristocracy of humanity, those whom the Lord delivered out of Egypt, whose slaves are we that you venture to offer us freedom? The offer is an absurdity and an affront, and you are denying us freedom in the very words; and so left him, for they deemed it an insult to their birthright of freedom. We, who understand the story, can see how much these men were mistaken. Our Lord was offering them moral freedom, and they supposed that he was offering them political freedom.

There was a misunderstanding as to the nature of liberty; he offered them a liberty for which they were not desirous. It was a dispute about liberty between Christ and those first Freethinkers. Now, may there not be some misunderstanding still? That is the subject of my sermon to-night. It is Christianity and Freethought. What do you understand by Freethought? Something opposed to Christianity; and by a Freethinker, one who rejects all or a part of Christianity. Why do such men give themselves that name? Because it expresses their conviction that Christianity is opposed to freedom of thought, that it puts a restraint on the human intellect. They say that Christianity shackles the human mind. "I boast of my freedom," says the Freethinker; "you require me to submit the freedom of my intellect to the authority of a book. My mind resents such an attempt to fetter it, I submit to no authority. You priests and bigots that come to me with your authority, and threaten me with penalties for daring to think thus and thus, you are convicting yourselves of falsehood before you utter another word, for you are opposed to freedom. I cannot listen to your evidences of Christianity. No proof of miracle will make me give up my freedom of thought." How often do we hear of the bigotry of the priest, and the enlightened Freethought of the age. Mark then, we have the issue raised between Christianity and Freethought. Let us understand it clearly, before we go further. It is true that Christianity comes with a claim of authority. It is true that Christianity says, Believe this and that, because Christ has said it. He is seeking men now, as he did, with authority; and it is true that Christianity does warn men of certain penalties, heavy and grievous penalties, if they don't believe what Christ says. Christianity is authoritative teaching, accompanied with threats of penalties. Now we are told, that is just the point at which Christianity comes into collision with Freethought. Freedom of thought will not endure to hear of authority, and resents the very idea of penalty.

Now we have put before us the issue between Christianity and Freethought. It is necessary that we should define for ourselves what is Freethought. The word is on men's lips, and I am not sure that they understand what they mean by it. Let us try to understand what is Freethought. It may mean one of three things. It may mean freedom as opposed to necessity, it may mean freedom as opposed to authority, or it may mean freedom as opposed to responsibility. As regards the first of these, by freedom as opposed to necessity, we mean that a man is free to think in one way or another, that it is not absolutely necessary for him always to think in one way or another; that is to say, his thought is not the necessary product of physical constitution, that his thoughts do not grow out of him, as the blade grows out of the seed or the flower out of the plant; that it is not mechanical or necessary, but that a man has the power to choose how he will think. Then as to freedom as opposed to authority, we mean that a man is not bound to think like other men--that is, his thought is not subject to any other man's, and he has a right to say, "That is your opinion and not mine." Freedom of thought as opposed to responsibility means that a man is not answerable for his belief, and that whatever he thinks on any subject, he is never to suffer for his belief in any way whatever. These three are the only possible meanings.

Now let us take them in their order.

First, freedom of thought as opposed to necessity. Does Christianity deny this freedom? On the contrary, it asserts and vindicates it. Christianity teaches that man is free, and terribly free, to will his own belief. It teaches this by the fact that it tells us a man is answerable for his belief, for a man cannot be answerable for that in which he has no choice, any more than he has of the colour of his hair. If he be answerable, it can only be because he has the power of choosing. It is remarkable that many people who call themselves Freethinkers, insist on it that man is not answerable for his belief any more than for the colour of his hair. They thus deny the freedom of thought. Freedom and responsibility always go together; so you see in this view of Freethought, Christianity, so far from denying it, asserts it against many Freethinkers; and in this respect the Christian is the Freethinker, and maintains the doctrine of Freethought.

Second, freedom of thought as opposed to the idea of all authority. We are told that thought cannot be free if it submits to any authority, and it is quite true in the abstract. Attend to this. It is true that the abstract idea of freedom is opposed to the abstract idea of authority, in thought or religion. But it is equally true, that these are opposed in everything else. It is just as true in politics, in which the idea of freedom is opposed to the idea of authority. Where there is absolute freedom, there cannot be authority. Where there is absolute authority, we cannot understand logically how there can be any freedom. Starting from the maxim, "Man is free," we arrive logically at the conclusion that there can be no authority for that man. Starting from the axiom, "Authority is supreme," is to arrive at the logical conclusion that there is no room for liberty. The two ideas are logically opposed, the one to the other. But are they so in practice? Is it a fact that freedom is found inconsistent with authority? Is it not true that men reconcile them every day? Is it not true that thought is free, and yet thought submits itself to authority? Many cherished opinions are received on authority, not because we have proved them ourselves. We take the opinion of a lawyer on law, and of a doctor on medicine, as authority. Morality itself is largely received upon authority. We are always submitting ourselves to authority. Logically, freedom and authority are separate, but there never was a society in which the two did not come together. They are like the chemical elements, which have a strong affinity for each other, and are never apart, except when separated in the laboratory of the chemist, but the moment they are liberated they are together again. It is just the same with Freethought and authority. Men are always submitting themselves to authority, and if they did not they would never learn or know anything. When we speak of the authority of a revelation from God, we mean that we bring to Freethought, to judge of, the reasons for believing that the teacher knows more about the things he teaches than others. That is a very large part of what is called "the evidence from miracles." Men speak as if the miracles were the evidences of the morals of the Gospel. That is not what we say. What we say is this, Our Lord coming down from heaven to tell us of another and supernatural world of which he knew and we did not, gave evidence of that knowledge by bringing down the supernatural.

Let us suppose we were walking through one of the church-yards of this city with another person, and the discourse fell upon the resurrection. If you said it was impossible for any authority to prove it, and the person said, I know there can be a resurrection of the dead, and I will give you a proof of it; and suppose he bade the dead rise, and they sprang alive out of the earth; do you mean to say that would be no authority from him on the question of the resurrection of the dead? Would it be a tyranny over Freethought to be told that the dead can rise? So you see Freethought is not inconsistent with the authority of a revelation, for this reason, that the revelation submits its proof to your Freethought.

I am not saying that I have proved the miracles, I am only saying that by miracles we are not violating Freethought; but on the contrary we are maintaining it. I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say.

I now come to the third idea of freedom, that is, freedom as opposed to responsibility; and this is, I really believe, what men mean when they speak of Freethought as opposed to Christianity. They say, "You threaten us with penalties for unbelief, and our whole soul revolts against that. It would be tyrannical to punish a man for his opinions. We cannot endure men to do this. Do you mean to say that God will be less just than man and persecute us for our opinions?" Let us see whether we clearly understand this question. This objection goes to the principle that no man should be punished for his opinions. I will ask you to consider this question. Is it true that no man under any circumstances should be punished for his opinions? And again is it true that men do not suffer for their opinions? It is true that so long as he keeps his thoughts to himself, he will not be punished for them, for the simple reason that they are not known; but when he utters them, he may be punished. Is it not true, that a man who utters a seditious, a libellous, or indecent thought is punished and should be punished? And why? because the law of liberty of the individual comes into collision with the higher law of the general welfare, and must give way to it. There are other penalties; society punishes a man more sharply than the law. There are offences of thought and speech which the law does not and should not punish, and yet which society visits very heavily. Let a man entertain evil and unkind thoughts of his neighbour, and show it by his looks, and we know how society visits him for his Freethought. Every man knows that if all the thoughts of his heart were laid bare, before his fellow men, he might pass a miserable and outcast existence, because society defends itself against this injurious exercise of Freethought.

Then pass a step further, and think of the constitution of nature and of the laws of the world. Does this world of nature allow of Freethought? Do these natural laws allow a man to make mistakes with impunity? Let any man think wrong of the powers of nature, that fire will not burn nor water drown, and he will soon find himself visited with a sharp and merciless punishment, for there are no laws so merciless as those of nature. He that transgresses them ignorantly or wittingly, is beaten alike with many stripes. The great revolving machinery of the world will not arrest its revolutions because of the cry of a human creature that by a very innocent error, even by his mistaken action of Freethought, is ground to pieces beneath them. If the man of science warns us of the consequences of transgressing the laws that he has discovered, we should be at liberty to think differently from him, but it will be at our own proper peril, if we exercise our Freethought. As sure as you do, so you will suffer from it. It is not the prophet or his warning that brings down the penalty, it is not the book upon sanitary law that brings diptheria or scarlet fever, it is not the sinking of the mercury in the glass that brings the storm; the written proof in the one case, the mute proof in the other, foretell the evil, but do not create it. Nature and science, then, have their warnings, and threatenings, and penalties; and nature and science avenge themselves on Freethought.

And mark this, the more and more you lose sight of personal will, the fainter and fainter seems to grow the chance of forgiveness, less and less room there seems to be for Freethought; there is something in the words, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," there is something in the loving will that has power to save the Freethought of his erring creatures from the soulless and merciless machinery of law.

Now we see how little room there is for Freethought in this world of law. Let us introduce into the world a fact; let us introduce the idea of a God; let us suppose for the sake of argument that there is a God. Can it be a matter of indifference how he feels toward us, and how we should feel and act toward him? How can there be a possibility of thought without consequences as regards God, if there be no possibility of thought without consequences as regards the very least of God's works? Does it make no difference to us whether he is an Almighty tyrant or a father to us, whether or not he can suspend the terrible laws of nature which we dread? Can we hear about this God, and not wish to learn all about him? Can there be anything more absurd than the saying, Let us have religion and no theology? Is that more sensible than to say, Let us have sun, moon, and stars, and no astronomy; let us have plants and no botany; let us have the earth and no geology? If God be a fact, there must certainly come theology out of that fact. As geology grows out of the fact with which it deals, so does theology grow out of a fact. Of all the errors of the time there cannot be a greater absurdity than a religion without theology, for every religion teaches our obligations to a higher being. If there be a God, there must be a theology. I will ask you what is this creed of Christendom? It is nearly all the assertion of facts:

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell, the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead."

All these assertions of facts you may say are not facts; but if they be facts, you are bound to think rightly about them. You are bound to think right about them under penalties, but no more so than as to other facts. You are as much bound to think right as to the fact of a God as to any other fact. But men say, These facts are not so certain as the facts of physical science. We answer, They are more certain to us; they are to us facts as certain as the great lights of heaven. We cannot conceive the possibility of ourselves doubting them. We may say, Perhaps there is a God, and we have a right to say, The perhaps may become a certainty. If we think right, and you think wrong, you must suffer the consequences. If a man of science puts into your hand a book, and warns you of the danger of infection, and you say you don't believe it, because you are sceptical about the teaching, he cannot compel you to believe it, but meantime you will suffer; the proof may come in sickness and in death, and you will not escape. And we say, not in anger and bitterness, not in hard denunciation of the wrath of God--God forbid that we should do it; but we speak in the same tone of warning, and not threatening, and we say, If you doubt, remember time is passing, and if you think wrong, there is danger of the judgment. We say, Take heed how you grope in the dark and stumble. We cannot alter the facts if they are facts, and they will affect your happiness. We say, There is in this nothing uncharitable, no violation of Freethought any more in religion than in science. We say that the consequences of thinking erroneously in religion may be as perilous as the consequences of thinking erroneously as to physical facts. It remains to be shown what are the facts of our religion. All that we say now is, that an error about the facts may be fraught with serious consequences, and we no more violate Freethought than when a physician warns you.

Now, then, I trust we have disposed of those prejudices that lay upon the threshold of our inquiry, these prejudices against Christianity as being opposed to Freethought; for if Freethought means freedom as opposed to necessity, religion does not deny it; if Freethought means freedom as opposed to authority, religion does not create the distinction, it is just as easy to reconcile it with religion as with the state of society. If you mean by Freethought, freedom without responsibility as to consequences, there is no such thing either in society or in nature, and you have no right to expect it in religion. All that we say is, that we are not to expect freedom of thought without its responsibility. Christianity gives us glimpses of the means of escape from the operation of material laws in the mercies of the loving Father of the human family.

FIRST REPLY OF MR. C. BRADLAUGH. CHRISTIANITY AND FREETHOUGHT.

WHEN on the 7th of February the Very Reverend the Dean of Norwich issued his circular announcing that a series of discourses would be delivered by "some competent preacher," "having for their object the vindication and establishment of the Christian faith," and "directed against modern forms of infidelity," I felt deep interest, not I presume confined to the ranks of the party which has permitted me to be its advocate upon this occasion. The circular was in point of fact an announcement that the Church of England felt it necessary to challenge and give battle to modern infidelity; and that having determined that the struggle should be a real one, it intended to select its best man, and by his mouth to vindicate and establish the faith, which modern infidelity is doing so much to undermine, not only in the busy North, but even in the quiet and church-shadowed capital of East Anglia.

I pass without comment the fact that the text selected by the Lord Bishop was not only from the Gospel whose authenticity is doubted by many Christians, but from a chapter specially regarded as an interpolated one. On this head, I leave Dr. Magee to debate with Dr. Davidson. But I am bound to draw attention to the very extraordinary exposition given of the contents of this chapter, which we are invited to study. Dr. Magee says that the people who were with Jesus, "were doubtless drawn to Christ by the fame of his miracles," and that when they left him "it was not that they doubted of his ability to perform miracles." Now, so far as this chapter is concerned, there is not the smallest particle of reference to miracles at all, and, therefore, Dr. Magee's words on this head, and even admitting his alleged authority, were only so much foundationless verbiage. And when Dr. Magee says that this chapter teaches that "the religion of Christ was not received unquestioningly, even in the case of his miracles, for in spite of his miracles they ventured to question his doctrine," I can only express my deep regret that the many occupations of the Lord Bishop of Peterborough should have left him without the time to master the actual contents of the chapter on which his sermon was based.

Bishop Magee further urges that "those who say that Christianity was received in an ignorant age, are contradicted by the story of Christianity itself, for many of those who saw his miracles rejected them." I fail to see the contradiction; clearly the Jews were an ignorant people, they had no scientific literature, no philosophy, no recorded oratory, not even a language--for the Hebrew is but that which the captives borrowed from their captors--not a trace of their ancient tongue having been preserved.

On the reference made to the "bigotry of the priest," I desire in this lecture to say but little, for I would willingly follow the example of my Right Reverend antagonist, and entirely avoid those arguments which savour of mere personal denunciation; but it is hard to forget that during the 1800 years which, it was boasted, Christianity has endured it was the policy and practice of priestly bigotry, first in the Church of Rome, and afterwards, and not less, in the Church of England, to oppose, and without mercy to seek to crush out all efforts at Freethought. If to-day the Lord Bishop of Peterborough lifts his powerful and eloquent voice in the Cathedral nave, if to-day we are charmed with his suasive pleading and well-turned periods, we can scarcely forget that it is only since the Church has been unable to strike with the arm of the law that she has condescended to plead with the tongue.

In dealing with "Freedom as opposed to Necessity," Dr. Magee declared "that a man is free to think in one way or another, that it is not absolutely necessary for him always to think in one way or another." This declaration is so obscure, that I should have had to abandon all attempt to solve the Bishop's meaning but for the added explanation--viz., "that is to say, his thought is not the necessary product of physical constitution, that his thoughts do not grow out of him, as the blade grows out of the seed or the flower out of the plant, that it is not mechanical or necessary, but that a man has the power to choose how he will think." I do not imagine that Dr. Magee used the word "thought" as limited by Sir William Hamilton; or that he intended in the loose words he uttered on this head to examine the doctrine as to evolution of thought put forward by German thinkers. I assume that the Lord Bishop regarded brilliancy of speech as preferable to profundity of argument, and fancied that he would best clear the way for the other Christian advocates who are to follow him, by piling well-sounding but often perfectly unmeaning phrases in their pathway. When the Bishop of Peterborough urges that thought is not the necessary product of physical constitution, we answer by opening before him an ethnical map; and pointing to the Australian as probably the lowest human type, the Bushman of the Cape, the Esquimaux, the Negro, the Teuton, we ask whether physical constitution has not something to do with thought-ability? Nay, taking a mal-formed cranium or a diseased brain from a lunatic asylum, we demand further whether the unhealthy and inaccurate thought is not there alleged in precise terms to be the "necessary product of physical constitution?" The assertion "that a man has the power to choose how he will think," may be met by the query--When? Has the old man, partly deaf, partly blind, with failing memory, the power to choose how he will think? Has the drunken man, while intoxicated, the power to choose how he will think? Has the untaught Norfolk farm labourer with Sir W. Hamilton's "Philosophy of the Unconditioned" before him, the power to choose how he will think in opposition to or in support of Cousin or Kant? Has the man to whom Church of England Christianity was taught as a child, whose intellect was bent and bound while yet pliable and scarce resisting, whose scope of inquiry has always been restrained by that line where reason applied becomes blasphemy, has he the power to choose what he will think? Let the wretched subterfuges with which even thinkers above the average--as your Essayists and Reviewers, your Dunbar Heaths, your Drs. Giles and Irons, your Colensos and your Voyseys--try to reconcile orthodoxy and Freethought, be examined, and you will have fuller answer than any I can give. Has man the power to choose how he will think? It may be fairly presumed, that under the words "to think," Dr. Magee included all phases of mental activity, perception, recollection of perception, comparison of perception, judgment, reason, volition. Any word by which any condition of mental activity could be fairly described is, I take leave to submit, included by Dr. Magee under the head of "thought." But is it true that a man can choose his perceptions? Are they not first limited by his perceptive ability, and, next, by the range within which that ability can be exercised, and its development in exercise? And if perception be compulsory, if a man cannot refuse to perceive that which is within the range of his ability, if he cannot elect to perceive that which is not within its range, then how can the thought-processes--all related to, and more or less based upon, the primary perceptions, modified or enlarged as these may afterwards be--how can these be free? And will Dr. Magee contend that a man has the power to choose what he will remember, or what he will forget?

"Christianity," says Dr. Magee, "teaches that man is free, and terribly free, to will his own belief;" but the tenth article of Dr. Magee's own Church, an article which binds him in this argument, declares that "The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God;" nay, the very Litany in which the Lord Bishop took part proceeds on the assumption that all are miserable sinners, who may desire to escape, but cannot escape, from sin without God's help. And the ninth article of the Church of England positively declares that every man "is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh always lusteth contrary to the spirit." "Where there is absolute freedom," says my Lord Bishop of Peterborough, "there cannot be authority." But man is absolutely, "terribly free" to choose his belief, therefore this is a subject upon which God can have no authority. This is a point upon which the power of the Omnipotent is limited. This being monstrously absurd, it was natural that the acute advocate for a falling Church should make some effort to retreat with the honours of war, and he, admitting the difficulty in religion, says that you find precisely the same difficulty in politics in fact, and in law, medicine, and morality, as to opinion. Arguments from analogy are dangerous at best, but here there is no analogy. Dr. Magee should at least read the "Contrat Social" of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the exhaustive essay on Liberty by John Stuart Mill. No one but a madman would contend in politics either for the absolute liberty of the individual, or for the absolute supremacy of authority. Even Guizot's views of government might have saved Bishop Magee from an illustration so faulty. And as to the opinions on law and medicine which we receive submissively from lawyer and doctor, their authority is usually the measure of our ignorance. We swallow the drugs of Dr. Pangloss, and bow to the dictum of Justice Shallow, it is true; but the more we know of physiology, the more we learn of jurisprudence, the less is our acquiescence a mere submission to authority.

When the Bishop says that men are continually submitting to authority, and that if they did not they would never learn anything, he is woefully inaccurate in his analogy. It is perfectly true that Humboldt, Lyell, Huxley, Darwin, Lewes, Spencer, Mill, and such men's names are names of authority, and that our experience is supplemented and aided by the recorded experiences of such men. But our confidence is not an unlimited one, their authority is not supreme. It is limited by the measure of our own experience in the first place, and by our acquaintance with the experience of other men than these in the next; both of these, too, modified and affected by our general intellectual ability. But all that our scientific teachers say is, We have learned such and such things, we learned them in such a fashion, you may if you have leisure and means verify our experiments, we show you the road we have travelled, we have mapped and scaled it for you. But in religion there is no such teaching, the authority of the Church dominates, denies, and annihilates experience with a graveyard resurrection for lack of living verification. Nothing could more fittingly be denounced as a trick of pulpit advocacy had it come from the mouth of any other man, than the supposition of an impossible event in a graveyard as evidence on some equally impossible doctrine. It would be far more natural in thought to suppose deception in the alleged graveyard conjuring, than to suppose anything else. For decomposing bodies, fleshless skeletons, forms in which the vital organisation had been destroyed, and disappearing for days, weeks, months, or years, to suddenly break through coffins, which living they would have been unable to burst, to get through a superincumbent mass of earth, and to stand out in flesh, alive, the blood circulating through newly manufactured veins--a man who saw this instead of crying "A miracle," had far better believe himself subject to delirium, and make his straightway to the nearest physician for medicine to cool his disordered brain. But the Bishop's case is weaker still; his graveyard opened 1800 years ago, the men who saw it have ever rejected it, and we who have not even seen it are required to believe it, and are told, that in this there is no tyranny over our thought. When the Bishop talks of the "soulless and merciless machinery of law," and declares that "there are no laws so merciless as those of nature," we must not forget that by the very terms of his sermon, and by the creed of his Church, he asserts all law as the expression of the "personal will" of Deity; and the soulless and merciless law is, according to the Lord Bishop of Peterborough, the manifested will of the merciful God who is infinite soul and love. Reading to us a portion of the Apostles' Creed, Dr. Magee said, All these are assertions of facts, and "you are bound to think right about them under penalties," but not more so than about other alleged matters of fact. This is untrue. What other alleged matters of fact are men required to believe under Act of Parliament? What other alleged facts are there which if a man deny he may be sent to gaol, lose civil rights, be denied the guardianship of his children, and be made an outlaw in the State? Where of an alleged fact in astronomy or geology is your investigation prefaced with the declaration that if you deny it you shall be sent to a bottomless pit filled with brimstone and fire, and prepared for the Devil and his angels?

SECOND DISCOURSE OF THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH. CHRISTIANITY AND SCEPTICISM.

ON Wednesday evening, March 29th, the Bishop of Peterborough preached his second sermon, on "Christianity and Scepticism," before a large congregation in the nave of the Cathedral, Norwich. His text was from the Gospel according to St. John, xx. 25:--

"The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."

His Lordship said:

My subject to-night is "Christianity, and Scepticism," and I have chosen for my text these words of a sceptic, for as such St. Thomas has been regarded. His name has become proverbial in Church history for unbelief. Among the different characters that surround our Lord in the Gospel story, he has been regarded as the type of the doubter, and he is known as the doubting or the unbelieving Thomas. And yet at first sight we hardly see that he should be so called. It is quite true that he did doubt, and yet his doubt does not at first sight seem to be unreasonable, or so very obstinate that he should be called by way of distinction, the doubter, the unbeliever. It was not unreasonable. On the contrary, it was reasonable and natural that he should feel some doubt about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others had doubts as well as he, and they were called fools and slow of heart to believe, and yet they did not inherit the name of the doubters. Again, his disbelief was not of a very obstinate kind. It seemed to have yielded almost instantaneously; and almost immediately after he was satisfied, he said more than others of the disciples, for he said "My Lord and my God." He not only acknowledged the resurrection of Jesus, but his divinity, and yet he is called Thomas the doubter, the sceptic, and he is rightly so called.

The Christian consciousness did not err when it gave the name, because when he uttered the words which I have just read to you, "Except I see I will not believe," he uttered that which is the very essence of scepticism. He suspended his belief upon an absolutely impossible condition. He declared that he would not give his assent except on this condition, that it should be made absolutely impossible for him to doubt. What he said to his brother disciples amounts to this:--"You tell me that you have seen the Lord, but I cannot believe you. It does not matter to me how strong your testimony may be, or how truthful I believe you to be, I will not be satisfied till I see it for myself. I will not accept of any testimony but that of my own senses." He said his assent was only to be had by absolute demonstration, and its being made impossible for him to have any doubt. I say the condition makes all belief absolutely impossible. Belief, in the proper sense of the word, is assent on an amount of trust. If we have absolute demonstration of anything, the result is not belief at all, it is demonstration. What we see with the eyes of our body or mind, we don't properly believe in. We know it. We have the certainty, not of faith, but of science, and where doubt is impossible, belief or faith is impossible. You may have certainty, but it will be the certainty of knowledge, it will not be the certainty of faith. It is quite clear that if any man makes it a condition of his assent to truth of any kind, that it must first be demonstrated to him as clear as that two and two make four; it is clear that is if there be any class of truths which cannot be so proved as that two and two make four, the man who makes that proof or demonstration a condition of his assent, must always be in doubt about those truths, or that class of truths; he must always in respect of them be a sceptic or doubter.

Now I have shown you that there may be doubt without scepticism; and on the other hand, there may be belief, or at least assent, upon sceptical principles. It is quite possible that a man may be firmly persuaded of some of the truths of religion, and yet be in heart a sceptic. If a man were to say I cannot believe in the existence of a God till I have it demonstrated to me as clear as that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, then he is in principle a sceptic, because it is clear that if he could not have that sort of proof, he would begin to doubt of the existence of God. All the time his assent to the existence of God would not have rested upon any faith or trust, but upon demonstration. But when the idea of God ceased to be a scientific certainty, it is clear that he would be in heart a sceptic. And there is no doubt that the first belief of the apostle Thomas was rendered upon sceptical principles. He said, I will not believe till I put my finger in the print of the nails, &c., as if he had said, I will believe nothing but the evidence of my own senses. He believed only because he got this evidence of his senses; and mark this, when our Lord gave him what he asked, he pronounced no praise on his belief; he did not say to him as he said to another, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee;" but flesh and blood had revealed the fact to Thomas, and our Lord said, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Thus it is possible to doubt without being sceptical, and it is possible to assent, and to be still sceptical. I want you to dwell on this point of belief, doubt, and sceptical belief, because there are certain things that I am going to point out in this way. I ask you to test for yourselves what I am now going to say, and try the effect upon your own feelings. We cannot demonstrate Christianity. It is utterly impossible that I can give you a demonstration of Christianity, such as will leave no possible room for doubt or question. When those who have to follow me have said all they have to say; when they have put before you all the evidences of Christianity in all their fulness and variety; when they have shown how much more reasonable it is to believe than to disbelieve, how many more difficulties there are in the way of disbelief than of belief; when all this is done, there may still be a doubt on your minds; there will be questions that cannot be answered, there will be difficulties that cannot be explained, and which no living man can explain. We can give the highest degree of evidence, short of demonstration, for belief in Christ, but we cannot demonstrate Christianity. Now what effect has that announcement on your hearts? Possibly you have heard it with some disappointment. You may have come to hear these sermons, expecting to have all your doubts removed. You may say, "I thought you were going to answer all the questions with mathematical certainty." Our answer is, If we could prove with as much certainty that there is a God as that two and two make four, or as that this is a book , then our religion would do you as much good as the knowledge that two and two make four. We would not in that case cultivate the quality of faith in your souls, in spite of difficulties and doubts. We cannot demonstrate Christianity, but we can give sufficient reason for our belief in it, in spite of doubt.

What we have to say is this, that the evidences of Christianity are weapons to put in the hands of every one of you, with which every man and woman may fight out in his or her innermost soul the desolating and besieging doubt that from time to time will assault it. This is the real object of evidences of faith, but they are not meant to be the outlying works of the citadel of the soul outside of which the enemy is compelled to keep. The shield of faith in God you have to carry on your own arm, and with it quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Though your own arm tremble, you must carry it to repel the darts that are aimed at your own heart.

There is another word of comfort we have to give you the really distressed doubter. Christianity does not repel the doubter who says, I believe, Lord help my unbelief. What Christianity is intolerant of is not doubt, but the spirit of doubt, not unbelief, but the demand for unreasonable, impossible conditions of belief. We don't tell you to stamp out every doubt before you can become a Christian. We say if you believe but one point, you may come to believe all the rest, and our message to you is, weary as you may be of the load of doubt, the same as that of the Saviour who said "Come unto me all you that are weary and heavy laden," and you will find rest to your souls.

And now I have clearly explained the difference between Christianity and Scepticism. Let us briefly sum up again and show the points of collision between Scepticism and Christianity. We saw last night that the question between Christianity and Freethought was a dispute as to the nature of liberty, so the question between Christianity and Scepticism is a dispute as to the nature of certainty. Christianity offers and gives certainty in the end; Scepticism demands certainty. But the certainty of Christianity is partly the certainty of reason and partly of faith and of experience. The certainty demanded by Scepticism is the certainty of science only. The most extreme of unbelievers will admit that there is something to be said for Christianity; and that it is not unworthy of a hearing as regards its evidences. The men who have believed in Christianity for the last 1800 years, have not been the greatest fools in the world. Liebnitz and Butler were not drivellers, and not those only, but hundreds and thousands of the greatest intellects that humanity has produced. They were not such utter fools that any man is entitled to dismiss Christianity with a wave of his hand. On the other hand, every reasonable Christian will admit that there is something fair and reasonable in some of the objections to Christianity. But the Christian says to the sceptic, It is unreasonable in you to ask that every difficulty should be got rid of and every question answered before you believe in Christianity. The sceptic replies, It is unreasonable in you to ask me to believe in Christianity till you have removed every doubt. I will ask you which is the reasonable demand--the demand of the Christian for faith upon probable evidence, or the demand of the sceptic for assent only upon scientific demonstration?

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