* April 26,1891.
There seems to be an ineradicable malignancy in the heart of
professional Christianity. St. Paul, indeed in a fine passage of his
first epistle to the Corinthians, speaks with glowing eloquence of
the "charity" which "thinketh no evil." But the hireling advocates and
champions of Christianity have ever treated the apostle's counsel with
contempt in their dealings with sceptics and heretics. Public discussion
is avoided by these professors of the gospel of love and practisers of
the gospel of hatred. They find it "unprofitable." Consequently they
neglect argument and resort to personalities. They frequently insinuate,
and when it is safe they openly allege, that all who do not share their
opinions are bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens, and bad men. Thus
they cast libellous dust in the eyes of their dupes, and incapacitate
them from seeing the real facts of the case for themselves. A notable
illustration of this evil principle may be found in a recent speech by
the Bishop of Chester. Dr. Jayne presided at a Town Hall meeting of the
local branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, and took advantage of the occasion to slander a considerable
section of his fellow citizens. With a pious arrogance which is peculiar
to his boastful faith, he turned what should have been a humanitarian
assembly into a receptacle for his discharge of insolent fanaticism.
Parentage is a natural fact, and the love of offspring is a well-nigh
universal law of animal life. It would seem, therefore, that a Society
for preventing cruelty to children by parents of perverted instincts,
might live aloof from sectarian squabbles. But the Bishop of Chester
is of a different opinion. He is a professional advocate of one form of
faith, and his eye is strictly bent on business. He appears to be unable
to talk anything but "shop." Even while pressing the claims of poor,
neglected, ill-used children on the sympathy and assistance of a
generous public, he could not refrain from insulting all those who have
no love for his special line of business. And the insult was not only
gratuitous; it was groundless, brutal, and malignant; so much so,
indeed, that we cherish a hope that the Bishop has overreached himself,
and that his repulsive slander will excite a re-action in favor of the
objects of his malice.
Dr. Jayne told the meeting that "the persons who were most liable to be
guilty of cruelty to their children were those artisans who had taken up
Secularist opinions, and who looked upon their children as a nuisance,
and were glad to get them out of the way."
Now, on the face of it, the statement is positively grotesque in its
absurdity. If Secular principles tend to make parents hate their own
children, why should their evil influence be confined to artisans? And
if Secular principles do not produce parental hatred in the wealthier
classes, why does Dr. Jayne hurl this disgraceful accusation at the
poorer class of unbelievers? It cannot be simply because they are
poorer, for he was delighted to know that "poverty by no means
necessarily meant cruelty." What, then, is the explanation? It seems to
us very obvious. Dr. Jayne was bent on libelling sceptics, and, deeming
it _safer_ to libel the _poorer_ ones, he tempered his valor with a
convenient amount of discretion. He is not even a brave fanatic. His
bigotry is crawling, cowardly, abject, and contemptible.
Dr. Jayne relied upon the authority of Mr. Waugh, who happened to be
present at the meeting. This gentleman jumped up in the middle of the
Bishop's speech, and said "it was the case, that the class most guilty
of cruelty to children were those who took materialistic, atheistic,
selfish and wicked views of their own existence." Surely this is a "fine
derangement of epitaphs." It suggests that Mr. Waugh is less malignant
than foolish. What connection does he discover between Secularism and
selfishness? Is it in our principles, in our objects, or in our policy?
Does he really imagine that the true character of any body of men and
women is likely to be written out by a hostile partisan? Such a person
might be a judge of our _public_ actions, and we are far from denying
his right to criticise them; but when he speaks of our _private_ lives,
before men of his own faith, and without being under the necessity of
adducing a single scrap of evidence, it is plain to the most obtuse
intelligence that his utterances are perfectly worthless.
We have as much right as Mr. Waugh to ask the world to accept our view
of the private life of Secularists. That is, we have no right at all.
Nevertheless we have a right to state our experience and leave the
reader to form his own opinion. Having entered the homes of many
Secularists, we have been struck with their fondness for children The
danger lies, if it lies anywhere, in their tendency to "spoil" them. It
is a curious fact--and we commend it to the attention of Dr. Jayne and
Mr. Waugh--that the most sceptical country in Europe is the one where
children are the best treated, and where there is no need for a Society
to save them from the clutches of cruelty. There is positively a
child-cultus in the great French cities, and especially in Freethinking
Paris. In this Bible-and-beer-loving land the workman, like his social
"superior," stands or sits drinking in a public-house with male cronies;
but the French workman usually sits at the _cafe_ table with his wife,
and on Sundays with his children, and takes his drink, whatever it may
be, under the restraining eyes of those before whom a man is least ready
to debase himself.
One Secular home, at least, is known to us intimately. It is the home
of the present writer, who for the moment drops the editorial "we" and
speaks in the first person My children are the children of an Atheist,
yet if they do not love me as heartily as Dr. Jayne's or Mr. Waugh's
children love their father, "there's witchcraft in it." There is no rod,
and no punishment in my home. We work with the law of love. Striking
a child is to me a loathsome idea. I shrink from it as I would from a
physical pollution. Strike a child once, be brutal to it once, and there
is gone forever that look of perfect trust in the child's eyes, which is
a parent's dearest possession, and which I would not forfeit for all the
prizes in the world.
I know Christians who are less kind to their children than I am to mine.
They are not my natural inferiors. Humanity forbid that I should play
the Pharisee! But they are degraded below their natural level by the
ghastly notion of parental "authority" I do not say there are no rights
in a family. There _are_; and there are also duties. But all the rights
belong to the children, and all the duties belong to the parents.
Personally I am not fond of talking about myself. Still less am I
anxious to make a public exhibition of my home. But if the Dr. Jaynes
and the Mr. Waughs of the Christian world provoke comparisons, I have
no fear of standing with my little ones opposite them with theirs, and
letting the world judge between us.
Dropping again into the editorial style, we have a question to ask of
the Bishop of Chester, or rather of Mr. Waugh. It is this. Where are
the statistics to justify your assertion? Men who are sent to gaol, for
whatever reason, have their religions registered. Give us, then, the
total number of convictions your Society has obtained, and the precise
proportion of Secularists among the offenders. And be careful to give us
their names and the date and place of their conviction.
We have a further word to all sorts and conditions of libellous
Christians. Where are the evidences of Atheistic cruelty? The humanest
of the Roman emperors were those who were least under the sway of
religion. Julius Caesar himself, the "foremost man of all this world,"
who was a professed Atheist, was also the most magnanimous victor that
ever wore the purple. Akbar, the Freethinker, was the noblest ruler of
India. Frederick the Great was kind and just to his subjects. But, on
the other hand, who invented and who applied such instruments of cruelty
as racks, wheels, and thumbscrews? Who invented separate tortures
for every part of the sensitive frame of man? Who burnt heretics? Who
roasted or drowned millions of "witches"? Who built dungeons and filled
them? Who brought forth cries of agony from honest men and women that
rang to the tingling stars? Who burnt Bruno? Who spat filth over the
graves of Paine and Voltaire? The answer is one word--Christians.
Yet with all this blood on their hands, and all this crime on their
consciences, they turn round and fling the epithet of "cruel" at the
perennial victims of their malice.