426 
the will. They are words with so very little meaning to me that I acknow- 
ledge I am obliged to translate them in order to get at any sense. I do not 
acknowledge these separate faculties or constituents of human nature, and 
how the one can be said to necessitate and invariably guide the other is 
to me very amazing. I only quote this one passage to explain to you my 
whole and entire recoil from the style of treatment adopted in this paper. 
But the Council I think has done very wisely in putting the paper before us, 
because it exhibits to us the condition of some men’s minds — how they 
assume to proceed from what they imagine to be premisses, and so amuse 
themselves and convince nobody. I regret to speak so strongly in Mr. 
English’s absence, but if I have to speak at all, your lordship will understand 
I have nothing to say but what I think. Here, as lovers of free thought, in 
this great city of London, in this hard-thinking age, we are bound to be 
quite candid and outspoken with one another, and I give Mr. English my 
full permission (so far as he needs it, though of course it is not necessary) to 
pull my paper to pieces when it comes before you, and to speak of it as 
plainly and clearly as I have spoken of his. I do not know Mr. English 
personally, and therefore I have been actuated in what I have said by no other 
feeling whatever than that of the love of truth, and a desire to deal honestly 
with the paper before us. I am the more earnest on this subject because I 
do believe in the high destiny which is before us if we are faithful to our 
trust. Christianity and moral truth are being attacked with an earnestness 
and with a reality in our day which have never been known before. No one 
can have read the startling pamphlets of the Bishop of Orleans without 
being aware that there is now throughout Europe, and in our own favoured 
land as well as others, an organization of atheism and of extreme infidelity, 
which can only be met on our part by deep earnest faith in Our Blessed 
Lord, and that solid reasoning which He has given us to use in His service. 
They must never be separated. We find that there are now 127 associations 
of workmen in different parts of Europe, from Berlin to Rome, which are 
meeting at this very moment at Nuremburg by deputation, and the men 
forming these associations have laid it down in their programme, that there 
is no God ; that the idea of God is hostile to human progress ; that there should 
be no such thing as inequality of rank ; that all that is to be entirely obli- 
terated ; and that the idea of a workman being a w r orkman is itself unlawful. 
These 127 associations throughout Europe, which are to be affiliated with our 
own trades’ unions, are disseminating principles throughout the whole of 
Christendom which must be subversive of everything like civilization, and 
must reduce mankind to a savage state if carried out. Now, my Lord, if 
these words appear exaggerated in the slightest degree to any one present, 
I would simply ask him to look at the statistics and the proved facts as set 
forth by Mgr. Dupanloup, the Bishop of Orleans. He leaves you in no 
doubt of this real atheism of the working classes, who immensely out- 
number all other classes in Europe. That we are in a great crisis no 
thoughtful man can doubt. But I say this without the least panic. We 
know who has placed His church upon a rock, that Rock Himself. I have 
