GOBLET
GODWIN
to the Catholic Church. They had to be
content to give him the sacrament when
he was unconscious, and bury him with
Catholic rites. D. Oct. 13, 1882.
GOBLET, Rene, French statesman. B. Nov. 26, 1828. He was at first a lawyer of Amiens who worked with the anti clerical Liberals. At the fall of the Empire he was appointed General Pro curator at the Court of Appeal, Amiens, and he was returned to the National As sembly in 1871. He entered the Chambre in 1877, and became Under- Secretary of Justice in 1879, Minister of the Interior in 1882, Minister of Education in 1885, Premier in 1886, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1888. As Minister of Education in 1886 he excluded the clergy from the schools of France, and as a leader of the Eadical-Socialists in his later years he pressed for strong action against the Church. D. Sep. 13, 1905.
GOBLET D ALYIELLA, Count Eugene, Belgian anthropologist. B. Aug. 10, 1846. In early years he taught the history of religions at Brussels Uni versity, and was joint editor of the Bevue de Belgique. In 1875 he accompanied the Prince of Wales to India. He has been a member of the Academie Eoyale de Bruxelles since 1887, and of the Senate since 1892. Count d Alviella belongs to the Belgian Liberal party and is a Eation- alistic Theist. When he was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford in 1891 (Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Conception of God), the Balliol authorities refused the use of a room. Several other works of his have appeared in English. His chief work is Croyances, Rites, Institutions (3 vols., 1911). He is President of the Belgian Cremation Society, which is much detested by the Church.
GODFREY, W. S., writer. B. Nov. 11, 1855. Mr. Godfrey was a devout " Ply mouth Brother " until 1888, when he 293
changed the shade of his theology and
entered Spurgeon s Pastors College. From
1890 to 1895 he served as a Baptist
minister, and in the latter year he aban
doned Christianity. He occasionally lec
tured afterwards at South Place Chapel,
but was chiefly engaged in business. His
Agnosticism is expounded in his Theism
Found Wanting and some of the sonnets
in his At Odd Moments.
GODKIN, Edwin Lawrence, D.C.L., American writer. B. (Ireland) Oct. 2, 1831. Ed. Silcoates Congregationalist School and Queen s College, Belfast. Godkin was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, but his opinions were much modified at college by the writings of J. S. Mill. He went to London, and was correspondent of the Daily News during the Crimean War. In 1856 he passed to the United States, studied law, and was admitted to the New York Bar in 1858. But he adhered to journalism, founded and edited the New York Nation (1865-99), and edited the Evening Post (1883). Godkin was one of the most powerful and idealistic journalists of New York. In his journals and writings he sternly opposed corruption and urged humanitarian ideals. He was a Theist, but otherwise very uncertain about religion, and stood outside all the Churches (Life and Letters of E. L. Godkin, by E. Ogden, 1907, ii, 35-9). D. May 21, 1902.
GODWIN, Mary Wollstonecraft,
writer. B. Apr. 27, 1759. Being com pelled through her father s misconduct of his affairs to earn her living, Mary Woll stonecraft began teaching, and in 1788 she took to writing and translating. In 1790 she wrote an open letter to Burke on the French Eevolution, entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Man. Two years later she issued her famous Vindication of tJie Rights of Women. She lived in France 1792-96, and married Godwin in 1797; but she died after childbirth in the same year. Mary Godwin was a woman of 294
