620 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



room in many minds. Possibly, the people who hold such 

 views might be able to illustrate them by individual 

 instances. 



The fear of hell's a hangman's whip, 

 To keep the wretch in order. 



Remove the fear, and the wretch, following his natural 

 instinct, may become disorderly; but I refuse to accept 

 him as a sample of humanity. " Let us eat and drink, 

 for to-morrow we die" is by no means the ethical conse- 

 quence of a rejection of dogma. To many of you the name 

 of George Jacob Holyoake is doubtless familiar, 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 number 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 com- 

 fort is much worse/' He contemptuously calls the Comtist 

 championship of the workingman, " 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 recognize and admire the spiritual 

 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 signally, 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 character which religion does not 

 remove. It may comfort some to know that there are 

 among us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would 

 call "atheists" and "materialists," whose lives, neverthe- 

 less, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would 

 contrast more than favorably 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 material- 



