My Path to Atheism

TO THOMAS SCOTT, WHOSE NAME IS HONORED AND REVERED WHEREVER FREETHOUGHT HAS— WHOSE WIDE HEART AND GENEROUS KINDNESS WELCOME ALL FORMS OF THOUGHT, PROVIDED THE THOUGHT BE EARNEST AND HONEST; WHO KNOWS NO ORTHODOXY SAVE THAT OF HONESTY, AND NO RELIGION SAVE THAT OF GOODNESS; TO WHOM I OWE MOST GRATEFUL THANKS, AS ONE OF THE EARLIEST OF MY FREETHOUGHT FRIENDS, AND AS THE FIRST WHO AIDED ME IN MY NEED;— TO HIM I DEDICATE THESE PAGES, KNOWING THAT, ALTHOUGH WE OFTEN DIFFER IN OUR THOUGHT, WE ARE ONE IN OUR DESIRE FOR TRUTH. ANNIE BESANT.
The Essays which form the present book have been written at intervals during the last five years, and are now issued in a single volume without alterations of any kind. I have thought it more useful—as marking the gradual growth of thought—to reprint them as they were originally published, so as not to allow the later development to mould the earlier forms. The essay on Inspiration is, in part, the oldest of all; it was partially composed some seven years ago, and re-written later as it now stands.
The first essay on the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth was written just before I left the Church of England, and marks the point where I broke finally with Christianity. I thought then, and think still, that to cling to the name of Christian after one has ceased to be the thing is neither bold nor straightforward, and surely the name ought, in all fairness, to belong to those historical bodies who have made it their own during many hundred years. A Christianity without a Divine Christ appears to me to resemble a republican army marching under a royal banner—it misleads both friends and foes. Believing that in giving up the deity of Christ I renounced Christianity, I place this essay as the starting-point of my travels outside the Christian pale. The essays that follow it deal with some of the leading Christian dogmas, and are printed in the order in which they were written. But in the gradual thought-development they really precede the essay on the Deity of Christ . Most inquirers who begin to study by themselves, before they have read any heretical works, or heard any heretical controversies, will have been awakened to thought by the discrepancies and inconsistencies of the Bible itself. A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the groundwork of heresy. Many who think they read their Bibles never read them at all. They go through a chapter every day as a matter of duty, and forget what is said in Matthew before they read what is said in John; hence they never mark the contradictions and never see the discrepancies. But those who study the Bible are in a fair way to become heretics. It was the careful compilation of a harmony of the last chapters of the four Gospels—a harmony intended for devotional use—that gave the first blow to my own faith; although I put the doubt away and refused even to look at the question again, yet the effect remained—the tiny seed, which was slowly to germinate and to grow up, later, into the full-blown flower of Atheism.