E.—REFORM.
The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.
Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The [[191]]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.
The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”
We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their [[192]]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.
“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand [[193]]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.
By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth. [[194]]