"Believing that the Christian religion was untrue, and believing that all supernatural religions were inimical to human progress, and foreseeing that a conflict between Socialism and religion was inevitable, I attacked the Christian religion. I am working for Socialism when I attack religion which is hindering it."

Again in his book, "God and My Neighbor," Blatchford utters the following blasphemies:

"I am an easiful old pagan, and I am not angry with you at all--you funny little champion of the Most High....

"This is the God of Heaven? This is the Father of Christ? This is the Creator of the Milky Way? No! He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is not clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare, a bad dream born in the savage minds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for blood....

"Is this unspeakable monster the Father of Christ? Is he the God who inspireth Buddha and Shakespeare and Beethoven and Darwin and Plato? No, not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and rape, in black revenge and in deadly malice, in slavery and polygamy, and the debasement of women, and in the pomps, vanities and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter--we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality."

This book, which teaches atheism from cover to cover, could be bought for a dollar a copy in 1912 at the National Office of the Socialist Party in Chicago, Ill. In the May, 1917, issue of the "International Socialist Review," "God and My Neighbor," by Blatchford, is thus advertised:

"Is the Bible true? This is the chief subject of debate today between Christians and Scientists the world over. Robert Blatchford says: 'Is the Bible a holy and inspired book and the Word of God to man, or is it an incongruous and contradictory collection of tribal tradition and ancient fables, written by men of genius and imaginations? Mr. Blatchford believes religions are not revealed, they are evolved.

"'We cannot accept as the God of Creation,' he writes, 'this savage idol, Jehovah, of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced him and are ashamed of him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because mankind have become too enlightened to tolerate Jehovah.'"

Ernest Bax, an Englishman, one of the greatest authorities in the world on Socialism, an author who, even in America, has been styled "the most accomplished writer on behalf of Socialism in this and perhaps in any country," in his book, "Religion of Socialism," thus testifies to the relation existing between Socialism and religion:

"In what sense Socialism is not religious will now be clear. It utterly despises the other world with all its stage properties--that is, the present objects of religion." ["Religion of Socialism," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 52 of 1891 edition.]

Who could imagine any more convincing testimony of the atheistic and anti-religious nature of the Socialist movement than the following words of the English Socialist, James Leathan, in "Socialism and Character":

"At the present moment I cannot remember a single instance of a person who is at one and the same time a really earnest and intelligent Socialist and an orthodox Christian. Those who do not openly attack the church and the fabric of Christianity, show but scant respect to either the one or the other in private.... And while all of us are thus indifferent to the church, many of us are frankly hostile to her. Marx, Lassalle and Engels among earlier Socialists; Morris, Bax, Hyndman, Guesde and Bebel among present-day Socialists--are all more or less avowed atheists; and what is true of the more notable men of the party is almost equally true of the rank and file the world over."

In 1910 a pamphlet entitled "Socialism and Religion" was issued by the Revolutionists of Great Britain. One quotation from it will amply suffice to show the utter contempt of the English[15] Socialist for religion: