368 THE KIDDLE OF THE UNIVEBSE. 



" Freethought " Party and the Utopian social demo- 

 cracy coquette with the favour of the Centre. 



The modern state that would lift not only the 

 material, but the moral, life of its people to a higher 

 level is entitled, and indeed bound, to sweep away 

 such unworthy and harmful conditions. The obliga- 

 tory celibacy of the Catholic clergy is as pernicious 

 and immoral as the practice of auricular confession 

 or the sale of indulgences. All three have nothing 

 whatever to do with primitive Christianity. All three 

 are directly opposed to true Christian morality. All 

 three are disreputable inventions of the Papacy, 

 designed for the sole purpose of strengthening its 

 despotic rule over the credulous masses and making 

 as much material profit as possible out of them. 



The Nemesis of history will sooner or later exact a 

 terrible account of the Roman Papacy, and the 

 millions who have been robbed of their happiness by 

 this degenerate religion will help to give it its death- 

 blow in the coming twentieth century — at least, in 

 every truly civilized state. It has been recently 

 calculated that the number of men who lost their lives 

 in the Papal persecutions of heretics, the Inquisition, 

 the Christian religious wars, etc., is much more than 

 10,000,000. But what is this in comparison with the 

 tenfold greater number of the unfortunate moral victims 

 of the institutions and the priestly domination of the 

 degenerate Christian Church — with the unnumbered 

 millions whose higher mental life was extinguished, 

 whose conscience was tortured, whose family life was 

 destroyed, by the Church ? We may with truth 

 apply the words of Goethe, in his Bride of Corinth : — 



"Victims fall, nor lambs nor bulls, 

 But human victims numberless." 



