366 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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ihe name of George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless fami- 

 liar, and you are probably aware that at no man in 

 England has the term ' atheist '' been more frequently 

 pelted. There are, moreover, really few who have more 

 completely liberated themselves from theologic notions. 

 Among working-class politicians Mr. Holyoake is a 

 leader. Does he exhort his followers to ' Eat and drink, 

 for to-morrow we die '? Not so. In the August num- 

 ber of the ' Nineteenth Century ' you will find these 

 words from his pen: * The gospel of dirt is bad enough, 

 but the gospel of mere material comfort is much worse/ 

 He contemptuously calls the Comtist championship of 

 the working man, the championship of the trencher/ 

 He would place ' the leanest liberty which brought with 

 it the dignity and power of self-help ' higher than 

 * any prospect of a full plate without it.' Such is the 

 moral doctrine taught by this ' atheistic ' leader; and 

 no Christian, I apprehend, need be ashamed of it. 



Most heartily do I recognise and admire the spirit- 

 ual radiance, if I may use the term, shed by religion 

 on the minds and lives of many personally known to 

 me. At the same time I cannot but observe how sig- 

 nally, as regards the production of anything beautiful, 

 religion fails in other cases. Its professor and defender 

 is sometimes at bottom a brawler and a clown. These 

 differences depend upon primary distinctions of charac- 

 ter which religion does not remove. It may comfort 

 some to know that there are amongst us many whom 

 the gladiators of the pulpit would call ' atheists ' and 

 'materialists,' whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by 

 any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more 

 than favourably with the lives of those who seek to 

 stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say 

 ' offensive,' I refer simply to the intention of those who 

 use such terms, and not because atheism or materialism, 



