Page:Henry Derozio, the Eurasian, poet, teacher, and journalist. With appendices (IA henryderozioeura00edwarich).pdf/51

or that lawless lust and western vice entered into some, with the secularism and anti-theism of the Hindoo College, that Derozio taught "the non-existence of God," that he admitted it, and that he was "an atheistic and immoral poet," are all of them unproved assertions, and baseless calumnies, which Dr. George Smith, the Biographer of Duff, should have been at some pains to sift, before branding with infamy the memory of the dead. We venture to affirm that, whatever books and plays were read and studied by Derozio and his pupils, whatever topics were broached in discussion and in conversation, either in the class-room, the Academic Association, or in the friendly circle under his own roof-tree, the license of thought and the field of thinking were no greater and no more reprehensible than those over which must traverse the mind of every man who thinks out for himself the realities of nature, humanity and God. Anger, reprobation and foul names, heaped on seekers after truth are the standard weapons of more timid men; and in too many cases the consequence of their use is that minds naturally open to the reception of truth and a love of its pursuit, bear with them through life contempt of the well-meaning fanatics who would gauge the universe and measure out the love of God by the standard of their own narrow theological dogmatism.