English Secularism

"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.

He would have diffidence in expressing, as he does in these pages, his dissent from the opinions of many Christian advocates-for whose character and convictions he has great respect, and for some even affection-did he not perceive that few have any diffidence or reservation (save in one or two exalted instances)* in maintaining their views and dissenting from his.

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.

* Of whom the greatest is Mr. Gladstone.

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.

"Look forward-not backward; Look up-not down; Look around;

Lend a hand."*

-Edward Everett Hale, D. D.

Where a monarchy is master, inquiry is apt to be a disturbing element; and though exercised in the interest of the commonwealth it is none the less resented. Where the priest is master inquiry is sharply prohibited. The priest represents a spiritual monarchy in which the tenets of belief are fixed, assumed to be infallible, and to be prescribed by deity. Thus the priest regards inquiry as proceeding from an impertinent distrust, to which he is not reconciled on being assured that it is undertaken in the interest of truth. Thus the king denounces inquiry as sedition, and the priest as sin. In the end the inquirer finds himself an alien in State and Church, and laws are made against his life, his liberty, property, and veracity.**

* Dr. Hale did not popularise these energetic maxims of

earnestness in the connexion in which they are here used;

but their wisdom is of general application.

**When martyrdoms and imprisonments ceased, disabling laws

remained which imposed the Christian oath on all who

appealed to the courts, and any who had the pride of

veracity and declined to to swear, were denied protection

for property, or credence of their word.

Thus from the time when monarch and priest first set up their pretensions in the world, the inquiring mind has had small encouragement. When Protestantism came it merely conceded inquiry under direction, and only so far as it tended to confirm its own anti-papal tenets. But when inquiry claimed to be independent, unfettered, uncontrolled,-in fact to be free inquiry,-then Papist, Lutheran, and Dissenter, alike regarded it as dangerous, and stigmatised it by every term calculated to deter or dissuade people from it.

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.

Still timorous-minded persons remained suspicious of free thought. At its best they found it involved conflict with false opinion, and conflict, to those without aspiration or conscience, is disquieting; and where impartial investigation interfered with personal interests it was opposed. No one could enter on the search for truth without finding his path obstructed by theological errors and interdictions. Having taken the side of truth, all who were loyal to it, were bound like Bunyan's

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 (and used it) 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."

"He who cannot reason is defenceless; he who fears to reason

has a coward mind; he who will not reason is willing to be

deceived and will deceive all who listen to him."

-Maxim of Free Thought.

FREE THOUGHT is founded upon reason. It is the exercise of reason, without which free thought is free foolishness. Free thought being the precursor of Secularism, it is necessary first to describe its principles and their limitation. Free thought means independent self-thinking. Some say all thought is free since a man can think what he pleases and no one can prevent him, which is not true. Unfortunately thinking can be prevented by subtle spiritual intimidation, in earlier and even in later life.

When a police agent found young Mazzini in the fields of Genoa, apparently meditating, his father's attention was called to the youth. His father was told that the Austrian Government did not permit thinking. The Inquisition intimidated nations from thinking. The priests by preventing instruction and prohibiting books, limited thinking. Archbishop Whately shows that no one can reason without words, and since speech can be, and is, disallowed and made penal, the highway of thought can be closed. No one can think to any purpose without inquiry concerning his subject, and inquiry can be made impossible. It is of little use that any one thinks who cannot verify his ideas by comparison with those of his compeers. To prevent this is to discourage thought. In fact thousands are prevented thinking by denying them the means and the facilities of thinking.

Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.

Fearlessness is the essential condition of effective thought. If Satan sits at the top of the Bible with perdition open underneath it, into which its readers will be pushed who may doubt what they find in its pages, the right of private judgment is a snare. A man is a fool who inquires at this risk. He had better accept at once the superstition of the first priest he meets. It is not conceivable how a Christian can be a free thinker.

He who is afraid to know both sides of a question cannot think upon it. Christians do not, as a rule, want to know what can be said against their views, and they keep out of libraries all books which would inform others. Thus such Christians cannot think freely, and are against others doing it. Doubt comes of thinking; the Christian commonly regards doubt as sin. How can he be a free thinker who thinks thinking is a sin?

Free thought implies three things as conditions of truth:

1. Free inquiry, which is the pathway to truth.

2. Free publicity to the ideas acquired, in order to learn whether they are useful-which is the encouragement of truth.

3. The free discussion of convictions without which it is not possible to know whether they are true or false, which is the verification of truth.

A man is not a man unless he is a thinker; he is a fool having no ideas of his own. If he happens to live among men who do think, he browses like an animal on their ideas. He is a sort of kept man being supported by the thoughts of others. He is what in England is called a pauper, who subsists upon "outdoor relief," allowed him by men of intellect.

Without the right of publicity, individual thought, however praiseworthy and however perfect, would be barren to the community. Algernon Sidney said: "The best legacy I can leave my children is free speech and the example of using it."

The clergy of every denomination are unfriendly to its use. The soldiers of the cross do not fight adversaries in the open. Mr. Gladstone alone among eminent men of piety has insisted upon the duty of the Church to prove its claims in discussion. In his Introduction to his address at the Liverpool College (1872 or 1873) he said: "I wish to place on record my conviction that belief cannot now be defended by reticence any more than by railing, or by any privileges or assumption." Since the day of Milton there has been no greater authority on the religious wisdom of debate.

Thought, even theological, is often useless, ill-informed, foolish, mischievous, or even wicked; and he alone who submits it to free criticism gives guarantees that he means well, and is self-convinced. By criticism alone comes exposure, correction, or confirmation. The right of criticism is the sole protection of the community against error of custom, ignorance, prejudice, or incompetence. It is not until a proposition has been generally accepted after open and fair examination, that it can be considered as established and can safely be made a ground of action or belief.*

* See Formation of Opinions, by Samuel Bailey.

These are the implementary rights of thought. They are what grammar is to the writer, which teaches him how to express himself, but not what to say. These rights are as the rules of navigation to the mariner. They teach him how to steer a ship but do not instruct him where to steer to.

The full exercise of these rights of mental freedom is what training in the principles of jurisprudence is to the pleader, but it does not provide him with a brief. It is conceivable that a man may come to be a master of independent thinking and never put his powers to use; just as a man may know every rule of grammar and yet never write a book. In the same way a man may pass an examination in the art of navigation and never take command of a vessel; or he may qualify for a Barrister, be called to the Bar and never plead in any court. We know from experience that many persons join in the combat for the right of intellectual freedom for its own sake, without intending or caring to use the right when won. Some are generous enough to claim and contend for these rights from the belief that they may be useful to others. This is the first stage of free thought, and, as has been said, many never pass beyond it.

Independent thinking is concerned primarily with removing obstacles to its own action, and in contests for liberty of speech by tongue and pen. The free mind fights mainly for its own freedom. It may begin in curiosity and may end in intellectual pride-unless conscience takes care of it. Its nature is iconoclastic and it may exist without ideas of reconstruction.

Though a man goes no further, he is a better man than he who never went as far. He has acquired a new power, and is sure of his own mind. Just as one who has learned to fence, or to shoot, has a confidence in encountering an adversary, which is seldom felt by one who never had a sword in hand, or practised at a target. The sea is an element of recreation to one who has learned to swim; it is an element of death to one ignorant of the art. Besides, the thinker has attained a courage and confidence unknown to the man of orthodox mind. Since God (we are assured) is the God of truth, the honest searcher after truth has God on his side, and has no dread of the King of Perdition-the terror of all Christian people-since the business of Satan is with those who are content with false ideas; not with those who seek the true. If it be a duty to seek the truth and to live the truth, honest discussion, which discerns it, identifies it, clears it, and establishes it, is a form of worship of real honor to God and of true service to man. If the clergyman's speech on behalf of God is rendered exact by criticism, the criticism is a tribute, and no mean tribute to heaven. Thus the free exercise of the rights of thought involve no risk hereafter.

Moreover, so far as a man thinks he gains. Thought implies enterprise and exertion of mind, and the result is wealth of understanding, to be acquired in no other way. This intellectual property like other property, has its rights and duties. The thinker's right is to be left in undisturbed possession of what he has earned; and his duty is to share his discoveries of truth with mankind, to whom he owes his opportunities of acquiring it.

Free expression involves consideration for others, on principle. Democracy without personal deference becomes a nuisance; so free speech without courtesy is repulsive, as free publicity would be, if not mainly limited to reasoned truth. Otherwise every blatant impulse would have the same right of utterance as verified ideas. Even truth can only claim priority of utterance, when its utility is manifest. As the number and length of hairs on a man's head is less important to know, than the number and quality of the ideas in his brain.

True free thought requires special qualities to insure itself acceptance. It must be owned that the thinker is a disturber. He is a truth-hunter, and there is no telling what he will find. Truth is an exile which has been kept out of her kingdom, and Error is a usurper in possession of it; and the moment Truth comes into her right, Error has to give up its occupancy of her territory; and as everybody consciously, or unconsciously harbors some of the emissaries of the usurper, they do not like owning the fact, and they dispute the warrant of truth to search their premises, though to be relieved of such deceitful and costly inmates would be an advantage to them.

An inalienable attribute of free thought, which no theology possesses, is absolute toleration of all ideas put forward in the interests of public truth, and submitted to public discussion. The true free thinker is in favor of the free action of all opinion which injures no one else, and of putting the best construction he can on the acts of others, not only because he has thereby less to tolerate, but from perceiving that he who lacks tolerance towards the ideas of others has no claim for the tolerance of his own. The defender of toleration must himself be tolerant. Condemning the coercion of ideas, he is pledged to combat error only by reason. Vindictiveness towards the erring is not only inconsistency, it is persecution. Thus free thought is not only self-defence against error but, by the toleration it imposes, is itself security for respectfulness in controversy.