The tables are now turning. The Church, to-day, instead of burning unbelievers, and strangling science by immuring in dungeons its votaries, is herself being strangled by science (with no loss of human blood, however). Her cruel theology and irrational dogmas are prostrate, writhing in their death throes, at the feet of the Hercules of modern science and criticism.
A little digression will not be out of order here. Our comic caricaturist at Toronto (of which, on the whole, Canada may feel proud), recently had a cartoon representing the theological Gamaliel of St. Michael's Palace, Toronto, strangling the serpent "Freethought." Now, though usually on the side of truth and impartiality, Grip has undoubtedly, in this case, taken an oblique squint at truth and justice, and has for once, at least, got the cart before the horse. Facts and truth demand that the positions of the gladiators in his cartoon must be reversed, and the zoological nomenclature corrected. And if Grip had read Huxley and Tyndall, and correctly observed the signs of the times, he would scarcely have fallen into this unpardonable error. Let us quote Prof. Huxley on this subject of strangling serpents:—
"It is true that, if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply revenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that, whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and, though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralyzed hands can hurl those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism."—Lay Sermons, p. 277-8.
From this, Grip will see that instead of the fair form of reason and Freethought (which he represents as a snake) being strangled by a prelate of the church, it is the serpent, orthodoxy, which is being strangled by the Hercules of science. It is to be regretted that Grip, notwithstanding his professions of independence and impartiality, is himself obnoxious to the very moral cowardice he has so often fearlessly and justly exposed in others. Else why does he represent Freethought as a snake? Is it because Freethought is yet comparatively weak in numbers, and unpopular, and because this sort of thing will please the Church, which is popular and powerful? What characteristic of the snake attaches to Freethought or Freethinkers? None; and we fearlessly challenge Grip and the Church on this point. Freethought has none of the reptilian qualities of hypocrisy, cunning or deceit, but is frank and fearless. Amid all the obloquy, denunciation, persecution, social ostracism, calumny, and "holy bulls" hurled at them, Freethinkers have the courage of their opinions; and bear all these, as well as business detriment, for the sake of what they sacredly regard as truth.
What does Prof. Tyndall say of Freethinkers and Atheists? To Archbishop Lynch, who, in his pronunciamiento, says, "A person who, disbelieves in the Ten Commandments, in hell or in Heaven, can hardly be trusted in the concerns of life;" and to Grip who cowardly crystalizes this base assertion into a baser cartoon, I quote with pride the language of this noble man, and eminent scholar and scientist. In the Fortnightly Review for November, 1877, Prof. Tyndall says:
"It may comfort some to know that there are amongst us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say 'offensive' I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because Atheism or Materialism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular offensiveness to me. If I wished to find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engagements, whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a loving father, a faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and a just citizen, I would seek him among the band of Atheists to which I refer. I have known some of the most pronounced amongst them, not only in life, but in death—seen them approaching with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a 'hangman's whip,' with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended on their latest deeds."
Let the Archbishop, and Grip, and every reader ponder these brave words of so high an authority in defence of the reprobated class-stigmatised as "infidels," to which they refer; and then, for corroboration, compare the testimony given with the living facts around them..
The Archbishop says, these "foolish men" (the Freethinkers) are "striving to replunge the world into the depths of Barbarism and Paganism," etc., etc. To those who know that the present attitude of all the great scientists and eminent savans towards the dogmas of the Christian Church, is one of undoubted unbelief and hostility; and who are conversant with the history of the Archbishop's own church in particular, during the past fifteen centuries,—to them the Archbishop's vituperation is as foolish as it is ridiculous. From the days of Constantine to this year, 1880, the Church, of which this learned (?) prelate is a representative, has strenuously opposed learning, and retarded civilization; has tolerated no freedom of conscience or liberty of thought, thus narrowing instead of extending the liberty enjoyed in Pagan and Imperial Rome, over whose ruins she reared her tyrannical head. Talk of "Paganism!" His Church needs, as Emerson puts it, "some good Paganism." She left behind her the liberty even of Pagan Rome, her maligned precursor. Renan tells us, "We may search in vain, the Roman law before Constantine, for a single passage against freedom of thought, and the history of the imperial government furnishes no instance of a prosecution for entertaining an abstract doctrine." And, Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, tells us that the Romans exercised this toleration in the amplest manner.
"The prosecutions of the Christians by the Pagans, it is now universally conceded by Christian historians, have been greatly exaggerated; Christians have killed, in one day, for their faith nearly half as many heretics as all the Christians put to death by the Pagans during the whole period of the Pagan Empire." (The Influence of Christianity on Civilization, pp. 24-5, Underwood.)
The Archbishop's Church is, therefore, no improvement in respect of liberty or toleration, on the Paganism he reviles.