Page:The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.pdf/8

outcasts and martyrs, when the bad are no longer princes, and the good no longer hated. A Father who hears the cry of his children? we will believe it when we find that prayer turns aside pain, and grief, and death, when the cry of the mother saves the life of her child, the pleading of the wife gives her dead husband back living to her arms. Hitherto, as has been well said, instead of finding that faith of the size of a grain of mustard-seed will move mountains, we have never yet found faith of the size of a mountain move a grain of mustard-seed. I do not deny that it is pleasant to believe in the existence of a Being who is always at hand to remedy your mistakes, and to save you from the painful consequences of your own actions. But, unfortunately for the Bishop of Peterborough's argument, the goodness or badness of news does very materially depend upon its truth or its falsehood. Suppose a man, through folly or through crime, has become bankrupt; it would be very good news for him to be told that on waking up the next morning he would find his fortune as large as ever. But what is the use of the good news if it be not true? This is exactly what the gospel of Christianity does: it goes to the murderer whose life is forfeited, and it says to him: "Jesus has suffered for you, and you will be rewarded with happiness in heaven if you believe in him." No matter how foul the life, Christianity offers to wipe away all past offences, and stop the consequences of all past actions. Mark you, Christians do not live up to their creed in daily life; they do not set the murderer, who is fit company for saints in heaven, free to mingle with them again on earth; they cannot restore the squandered fortune to the spendthrift, or the lost health to the profligate and the drunkard. Facts are too strong for their creed; only in an imaginary world can they promise an imaginary happiness. Friends, against these fair promises of Christianity, Freethought has nothing to offer you. Sternly just, she decrees: laws disregarded strike the transgressor. If you are intemperate in drink or food, then shaking hands, enfeebled brain, ruined constitution, shall teach you that punishment invariably follows on transgression. If you lead impure lives, abusing the good powers given you by Nature, then disease and premature old age shall tell you that natural laws cannot be trifled with without suffering. Secularism, like Nature, is here stern and immutably severe. But if these things are so, is it not well to proclaim them, so that men, knowing