matter how erroneous may have been the convictions for which they suffered. Those who prosecuted them supposed, of course, that they were defending Christianity, but Christianity can be defended in no such way. It forbids all prosecution-all persecution-for the sake of religion. Force cannot possibly propagate the truth, or produce the faith, or promote the love in which the Gospel consists. The Gospel is intolerant, indeed, with the intolerance which is inherent in the very nature of truth. Truth can only be neglected by a man at his peril. No man is morally free to believe a lie of any kind. All truth carries with it the right to be believed, and moral truth carries with it, in addition, the right to be obeyed. The Gospel as truth, moral and spiritual truth, the highest truth, yea, the truth, does demand of us accordingly that we both believe and obey it—that we submit ourselves to it in mind, heart, and life. It holds us guilty if we do not. It warns us that either unbelief or disobedience is a most grievous sin, and will have most grievous consequences. But this intolerance, if it be intolerance, has nothing to do with coercion. Truth cannot be furthered by force. It must rest its claims to allegiance solely on evidence submitted to the scrutiny of reason and conscience; and if its evidence be rejected, however perversely, there is no help for that in compulsion,

which can only add to what sin already exists the sin of hypocrisy. Persecution can never arise from zeal for the Gospel as truth-from zeal for the Gospel properly understood. If ever due to zeal in any measure, and not to pride, selfishness, anger, ambition, and other hateful lusts which war against the soul, and set men at strife and war with one another, it must be to a zeal which is in alliance with error. Zeal for the Gospel and erroneous views of its nature may lead to persecution, but never zeal and true views of its nature. If the kingdom of God be thought of as a kingdom of truth, if to receive, love, and obey the truth as it is in Jesus be felt to be the only means of belonging to it, the utmost intensity of zeal cannot incline or tempt us to the use of force, since force can have no tendency to promote the interests of such a kingdom. The men, therefore, who by their courage and endurance were specially instrumental in convincing their countrymen that persecution for the avowal and advocacy even of atheism is a folly and a crime, have really rendered a service to the cause of Christian truth, and their names will not be recorded without honour when the history of our century is impartially written.

The person to whom Secularism owes its name, and who has done most to make it what it is in England, is George Jacob Holyoake, and it is chiefly as presented by him that I shall consider it

for a little. In doing so, we must determine first how secularism is related to religion. As I have already indicated, there is on this point a fundamental difference of opinion among secularists. Mr Holyoake and those who agree with him hold that secularism ought to start with the study of nature as manifested to us, and ignore religion. Mr Bradlaugh and those who agree with him hold that secularism can only be founded in the disproof and rejection of religion. Mr Holyoake is an atheist in the same sense and to the same extent as Mr Bradlaugh. He objects, however, to the name, while Mr Bradlaugh does not. The ground of his objection is that atheist is understood to mean one who is not only without God, but without morality." But surely it can only be in very bad dictionaries and by very uncandid persons that the word atheist is so defined and employed. It properly means merely a man who thinks that there is reason for disbelieving that there is a God, or a man who thinks that there is no reason for believing that there is a God. It is in the latter sense that both Mr Holyoake and Mr Bradlaugh are atheists, and the former is so as much as the latter, and he fully acknowledges this, although he would prefer to be called a cosmist to being called an atheist. It is not because he does not accept and advocate atheism in the only sense in which it is accepted and advocated by Mr Bradlaugh that he

entirely differs from him on the question as to whether atheism is or is not involved in secularism.

What, then, are his reasons for maintaining that secularism ought to be severed from atheism? The first is that the severance is rationally necessary. Secularism is, in his view, a theory of life and its duties founded exclusively on a study of the laws of nature. Theism, pantheism, and atheism, are all hypotheses as to the origin of these laws. But if we know what the laws are we may order our life according to them, although ignorant of their origin, or whatever hypothesis we may adopt as to their origin. Our present existence is a fact; and men may agree, and ought to agree, to deal with it as such, although they cannot agree as to whether there is a future life or not. "To ignore is not to deny. To go one way is not to deny that there may be, to other persons, another way. To travel by land is not to deny the water. The chemist ignores architecture, but he does not deny it. And so the secularist concerns himself with this world without denying or discussing any other world, either the origin of this, or the existence of that."

Now I think this reasoning will not stand even a slight examination. One science is, it is true, distinct from another, and yet to cultivate one is not to deny another. So theology, as a mere department of thought, is distinct from the physical

and mental sciences, and he who studies the latter may not direct his attention to the 'former. But observe, first, that although the sciences are so far distinct that to cultivate one is not to deny another, they are also so related that he who cultivates one cannot afford to ignore others. The student of astronomy will not succeed if he ignores mathematics. If you entertain false views of mechanical and chemical laws you will never correctly explain geological phenomena. And in like manner, if there be a theology which directly or indirectly denies any law of nature, the science which establishes that there is such a law must do more than merely ignore the theology which disowns it-it must oppose that theology. It cannot otherwise maintain its own truth and self-consistency. Then observe, secondly, that secularism is not mere knowledge, but an art, or at least the theory of an art, professedly based on knowledge, and that consequently it cannot reasonably ignore any kind of knowledge which may concern it as an art. Architecture is an art-the art of building houses-and as such it cannot afford to ignore any kind of knowledge that bears on the building of houses. An architecture which took no account of the law of gravitation and other principles of mechanics, of the properties of stone, lime, and wood, of wind and water, light and air, would be only the art of trying to build houses that would not stand, or