Produced by Freethought Archives, www.freethought.vze.com
Abridged by the Author from his
"APOLOGY FOR ATHEISM."
"Not one of you reflects that you ought to
know your Gods before you worship them."
1854.
Religion has an important bearing on all the relations and conditions oflife. The connexion between religious faith and political practice is,in truth, far closer than is generally thought. Public opinion has notyet ripened into a knowledge that religious error is the intangible butreal substratum of all political injustice. Though the 'Schoolmaster'has done much, there still remain among us, many honest and energeticassertors of 'the rights of man,' who have to learn that a people in thefetters of superstition cannot, secure political freedom. Thesereformers admit the vast influence of Mohammedanism on the politics ofConstantinople, and yet persist in acting as if Christianity had littleor nothing to do with the politics of England.
At a recent meeting of the Anti-State Church Association it was remarkedthat throw what we would into the political cauldron, out it came in anecclesiastical shape. If the newspaper report may be relied on, therewas much laughing among the hearers of those words, the deep meaning ofwhich, it may safely be affirmed, only a select few of them couldfathom.
Hostility to state churches by no means implies a knowledge of the closeand important connection between ecclesiastical and political questions.Men may appreciate the justice of voluntaryism in religion, and yet haverather cloudy conceptions with respect to the influence of opinions andthings ecclesiastical on the condition of nations. They may clearly seethat he who needs the priest, should disdain to saddle others with thecost of him, while blind to the fact that no people having faith in thesupernatural ever failed to mix up such faith with political affairs.Even leading members of the 'Fourth Estate' are constantly declaringtheir disinclination for religious criticism, and express particularanxiety to keep their journals free of everything 'strictlytheological.' Their notion is, that newspaper writers should endeavourto keep clear of so 'awful' a topic. And yet seldom does a day pass inwhich this self-imposed editorial rule is not violated—a factsignificant, as any fact can be of connection between religion andpolitics.
It is quite possible the editors of newspapers have weighty reasons fortheir repugnance to agitate the much vexed question of religion; but itseems they cannot help doing so. In a leading article of this days'Post, [Endnote 4:1] we are told—The stain and reproach of Romanismin Ireland is, that it is a political system, and a wicked politicalsystem, for it regards only the exercise of power, and neglects utterlythe duty of improvement. In journals supported by Romanists, and ofcourse devoted to the interests of their church, the very same charge ismade against English Protestantism. To denounce each other's 'holyapostolic religion' may be incompatible with the taste of 'gentlemen ofthe press,' but certainly they do it with a brisk and hearty vehemencethat inclines one to think it a 'labour of love.' What men d