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Oh, don't say anything," cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist. The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a fanatic.
Selah listened in blank amazement to this singular avowal of heterodox opinion from an obviously religious person. What Ronald Le Breton could be she couldn't imagine; and she thought with an inward smile of the very different way in which her friends at Hastings would have discussed the spiritual character of a wicked secularist.
In organic connection with it was a large debating hall, in which the most notorious secularist lecturers held forth every Sunday evening; and next door to it, under its shadow and patronage, was a little dingy shop filled to overflowing with the coarsest freethinking publications, Colonel Ingersoll's books occupying the place of honor in the window and the 'Freethinker' placard flaunting at the door.
The popularity of such Reviews means that really large audiences, le gros public, are eagerly interested In the radical discussion of propositions which twenty years ago were only publicly maintained, and then in their crudest, least true, and most repulsive form, in obscure debating societies and little secularist clubs.
Daddy found himself marvellously at ease among the Secularist and Radical stockingers of the town, and soon became well known to them as a being half butt, half oracle. Dora set herself to learn dressmaking, and did her best to like the new place and the new people.
Was this hot-tempered Erica? That Mr. Fane-Smith's words were hurting her very much he could see; he guessed, too, that the consciousness that he, a secularist, was looking on at this unfortunate display of Christian intolerance, added a sting to her grief. "It is useless to profess Christianity," stormed Mr. Fane-Smith, "if you openly encourage infidelity by consorting with these blasphemers.
Apart from the fact that the Pope and some lesser religious leaders have denounced and deplored the conflict, and that a comprehensive answer to Mr. McCabe's question would somewhat modify the implied moral impotence of the clergy, we might ask the same questions of the leaders of secularist morality. What have they done to prevent the conflict?
At last it was alleged by the most evangelical of the disputants that Charles Bradlaugh, the most formidable atheist on the Secularist platform, had taken out his watch publicly and challenged the Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and disapproved of atheism.
Does his question imply, that if these doctrines were true, he would have just reason to fear death? or does it mean merely, that whether they be true or false, he can have no reason to fear death, simply because he disbelieves them? On the former supposition, how vast the difference between the Secularist and the Christian?
"My lord is there no loss already to be faced, of another kind? is all well with the Church? How often have I found you here forgive me! grieving for the loss of souls the decline of faith the empty churches the dwindling communicants the spread of secularist literature the hostility of the workmen! And yet what devotion, what zeal, there is in this diocese, beginning with our Bishop.
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