Of his influence on his followers those can best speak who have mixed with them. Personal and magnetic as it was, it depended for its continuance on the unvarying nobility of his appeal to the best instincts—to courage, honour, justice, and the love of truth. Hundreds of men—men to whom the generality of pulpit sermons are either inane commonplaces or maudlin nonsense—can testify to the fashion in which he stirred them to high sympathies and generous determinations, making life for all of them, however narrow their sphere, a vista of worthy activities and abiding consolations.
It is part of the condemnation of modern orthodoxy that its warfare with Atheism has run mainly to libel—not merely libel on individual Atheists, but sweeping aspersion of the whole movement. The records are embarrassing in the sheer multitude of the samples; and one utterance may serve for a thousand. In the early part of Bradlaugh's Parliamentary struggle an orthodox periodical named Social Notes, of which the Marquis of Townshend was editorial director, made the typical assertion:—
"It is a well-known fact that there is no criminal so fearless in doing evil, so hopelessly bad and beyond chance of recovery, as the Atheist criminal is. Atheism and ignorance commonly create the first step to crime. As Atheism grows in the minds of the lower classes, so crime increases."
The statement can only have come from a writer of a partially criminal type, since it states not merely a gross untruth, but one for which the writer cannot possibly have believed he had any evidence. So far from the fact being as he says, it is perfectly well established that there are almost no Atheist criminals. Readers can satisfy themselves on this head by reading the chapter on "Atheism in Prison" in the "Jottings from Jail" of the Rev. J. W. Horsley,[100] a writer not at all disposed to say any good of Atheism. But the folly of the statement cited will probably be recognised by most people on simply reflecting that crime was most abundant in the ages when Atheism was practically unknown; that it is common now in countries where there is no anti-religious propaganda whatever among the common people; that the professional brigands of Greece and Italy are faithful children of the Church; and that nearly every murderer executed in this country avows beforehand a confident assurance of being welcomed in Paradise. Only one Secularist, so far as the present writer is aware, has ever been convicted of murder; and he was no typical criminal, but a man congenitally liable to delirious fits of passion. When he knew of their approach he warned the people about him not to thwart him; and only in one of these fits, on intense provocation from a man who had wronged him, did he strike a deadly blow with a chance weapon. He expressly forbade petitions for commutation of his sentence, deliberately preferring to end a marred and maimed life.
Those who really suppose Atheism tends to promote crime know as little of the nature of criminals as of the logic of Atheism. The immense majority of criminals are unintelligent, and as such are immeasurably more likely to be superstitious than to be atheistic. A man of bad character may indeed be an Atheist in virtue of his reasoning powers; but the same powers will tend to withhold him from breach of the criminal law. The recent insinuations of the present Bishop of Manchester as to the effects of secular education in the colony of Victoria will impress no one who is conversant with criminal statistics;[101] and are repudiated by those qualified to speak in the colony itself. Of similar weight are the clerical assertions that the Anarchist mania in France is a result of the "godless" teaching of the public schools. It has been shown on the contrary that some of the most prominent Anarchist miscreants have had a careful clerical training; while the Anarchists themselves have never produced a criminal to compare with the priest Bruneau. The organised Libres-Penseurs of France have made a speciality of ethics, publishing more matter on that head than on any other.
It is not necessary to answer again, but it is edifying to cite, one of the many utterances in which Atheism has been held up to horror as tending to universal bloodshed. Such an utterance was this of Bishop Magee, delivered in his cathedral of Peterborough in June 1880, and thus specially made to bear on the claim of Bradlaugh to sit in Parliament:—
"A nation of Atheists must be a nation of revolutionists; their history must be a history of revolution marked by intervals of grinding, cruel, pitiless, and unreproved slaughter, because for weakness there would be no appeal to the supreme power against present tyranny."
In the rhetoric of religion, folly and frenzy are thus sometimes so mingled that together they make censure shade into derision, and derision into melancholy. Neither reason nor experience can hinder some men from putting the wildest figments in place of the plainest teachings of history. Dr Magee had before him the history of his own faith, which began in bitter and sanguinary schism, and within a few hundred years had raised deadly civil war throughout the civilised world; which has made more pretexts for war throughout its era than could possibly have arisen without it; and which in our own country was the inspiration of some of the worst strifes in our annals. He had before him the judgment of Bacon, unwillingly following on an unreasoned criticism, that "Atheism did never perturb states ...; but superstition hath been the confusion of many states." And the Bishop's rant, despicable in itself, was used to excite new Christian malice against a man who had again and again met the verbal violence of pro-revolutionaries with the strongest protests against revolutionary methods; who loved peace and hated war; and who had time and again resisted and denounced the unjust English wars to which the Bishop's Church had given its blessing. Thus is Atheism impugned by piety. At the very time when Dr Magee's rhetoric was being used to keep Bradlaugh out of Parliament, the National Secular Society was on his prompting petitioning strongly against the war waged by the English Government on the Boers in South Africa.[102]
The only form of the orthodox imputation which is even decently plausible is the suggestion that the loss of religious belief may leave some men more ready than before to venture on vice that is not legally punishable. This is no doubt theoretically possible; and in cases where boys have had such a religiously bad education that they know of no rational veto on misconduct, harm may sometimes arise on their finding that the religion taught them is incredible. But young men who reason so far are likely to reason further; and in any case a few plain considerations will serve to convince any candid mind that there is no causal connection between scepticism and vice; though it stands to reason that the habit of scepticism will promote the critical discussion on the institution of marriage. On the one hand, the sexual instinct has in all ages gone to the worst excess under the auspices of religions which expressly glorified asceticism; and the facts of the life of the ages of faith in Europe make it clear that, even on the orthodox definition of vice, there cannot possibly be more of it in the future than there has been in the past. On the other hand, the utilitarian arguments against vice, properly so called, are much better fitted to impress than the religious; and they leave no such loophole as the others inevitably do in respect of the Christian doctrine of pardon for sin, to say nothing of the iniquity of the Christian ethic which holds one and the same act ruinous in a woman and venial in a man. Of course, if the celibate life, and marriage without possibility of divorce, be made the standard of virtue, rationalism is likely to give piety plenty of occasion for outcry in matters of morals, as in matters of opinion.