I will take a noble life, and put it against the life of Jesus, the life of the Infidel Bruno against the life of your God Jesus. Bruno was born near Naples, and trained as a monk. Leaving his ministry, to teach people in their vulgar tongue, he was driven out of Italy. Going to Switzerland, bigotry was too strong, and he was driven thence. At Paris he debated with the doctors of the Sorbonne, until arguments failing them, they drove him away with threats of the faggot. From Paris he went to England, there debating at Oxford and Cambridge; thence to Germany; and thence back to Italy, where a prison awaited him, as a full refutation of his heresies, where he was confined in a dungeon for eleven years, where the rack was the answer to his arguments, and where he at last died, a gallant martyr at the stake. He died fearlessly confronting his enemies, having truly told them that they had more fear in condemning him to be burned alive, than he had in being condemned.

Jesus was God, and could not die; but if your Bible be true, his last words were a despairing cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Compare these two men in their lives and their deaths, and see which was the nobler and the braver. Jesus did not come to save the world. He said, I am sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. Jesus told his disciples not to go to the Gentiles, be forbade them even to visit the Samaritans, and it was not till after his resurrection that he said, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. I have spoken in language which you may think unfitting for such a theme. Do you believe the Bishop, that Jesus died to save all mankind? Do you believe the doctrine, that only those who have faith in Jesus can be saved? What is to become of those who have never heard his name? Do you believe that all the Chinese will be damned? If you believe this, what must you think of God? If you believe that the Chinese will be pardoned, because they cannot be expected to believe in Jesus of whom they have not heard, how can you be so wicked as to send them Bibles and missionaries, which may bring them to damnation? I plead here for what some call infidelity, for what some call heresy. I plead for the rights of humanity. I plead against a system which, to my mind, has greatly hindered the education of the world, and impeded its improvement; and if you tell me that my language is coarse and blasphemous, I will ask you in what language do your missionaries describe the Mohammedan and his Koran, the Brahmin and his Vedas? You call me an Infidel; what are you? You disbelieve all the religions of the world save one, I disbelieve that one also; my disbelief is but one degree greater than yours.

A Bishop comes now in the nave of the Cathedral, to answer modern Infidelity. Why does modern Infidelity exist? Why has Infidelity grown? It has grown because the Church has grown fat and the people lean. It has grown because Convocation quibbles over rites and formularies, instead of devising schemes for the redemption of mankind from ignorance; because the Church said nothing while back streets were built for the poor, and grand abbeys and cathedrals for the priest. The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer, while the Church pretends to regard as a blessing the poverty she carefully avoids. The Church pretends to have the authority to speak in the name of God, and the Bishop, on that last evening, prayed for my conversion. You see the effect of that prayer in these lectures. Clergymen threw down the gauntlet, and it has been taken up. We have been attacked, and we will compel the Church to afford us a hearing. You have now no right to say that we are too insignificant, after you have yourselves challenged us to the fray. You must not pretend that modern Infidelity is too blasphemous; you have undertaken to confute it by competent persons. I appeal to Christians of every sect for one thing only; I don’t ask you to give me your faith, but to remember that amid the hundreds of religions with innumerable antagonistic Churches and Chapels, that amid the multiplicity of error, you may be wrong. We do not pretend to be perfect thinkers, nor thinkers free from error; we claim only to be earnest thinkers, desiring to be set right where wrong. I deny the right of any Church to pretend to be the only true Church. I take the right to utter my thoughts. The Church of England is a rotten Church, a falling Church, a Church divided against itself, a Church with Colensos and Voyseys, as against Puseys and Mackonochies, a Church which by the admission of her own divines is illogical, which cannot defend her Thirty-nine Articles, nor her Athanasian Creed.

I have finished these lectures, and I ask those who intend to follow me to remember that Freethought has done something since the days of Spinoza, Carapanella, and Bruno. It is only since Freethinkers began to fight against the Church that there has been any real popular progress made by you Liberals. The Church has not helped you at all. It has by its bench of bishops hindered your reforms as long as it could, and maintained tithes and exactions and bad laws till humanity rebelled against the obstruction. Whether right or wrong, we have at least done something to make the world better worth living in. (Applause.)

Printed by Austin & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London E.C.

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