sions, however adverse to the
old, that were based on solid evidence. I admit sorrowfully that all
Freethinkers do not learn this lesson, but I worked side by side with
Charles Bradlaugh, and the Freethought we strove to spread was
strong-headed and broad-hearted.

The antagonism which, as we shall see in a few moments, blazed out
against me from the commencement of my platform work, was based partly
on ignorance, was partly aroused by my direct attacks on Christianity,
and by the combative spirit I myself showed in those attacks, and very
largely by my extreme Radicalism in politics. I had against me all the
conventional beliefs and traditions of society in general, and I
attacked them, not with bated breath and abundant apologies, but
joyously and defiantly, with sheer delight in the intellectual strife.
I was fired, too, with passionate sympathy for the sufferings of the
poor, for the overburdened, overdriven masses of the people, not only
here but in every land, and wherever a blow was struck at Liberty or
Justice my pen or tongue brake silence. It was a perpetual carrying of
the fiery cross, and the comfortable did not thank me for shaking them
out of their soft repose.

The antagonism that grew out of ignorance regarded Atheism as implying
degraded morality and bestial life, and they assailed my conduct not
on evidence that it was evil, but on the presumption that an Atheist
must be immoral. Thus a Christian opponent at Leicester assailed me as
a teacher of free love, fathering on me views which were maintained in
a book that I had not read, but which, before I had ever seen the
_National Reformer_, had been reviewed in its columns--as it was
reviewed in other London papers--and had been commended for its clear
statement of the Malthusian position, but not for its contention as to
free love, a theory to which Mr. Bradlaugh was very strongly opposed.
Nor were the attacks confined to the ascription to me of theories
which I did not hold, but agents of the Christian Evidence Society, in
their street preaching, made the foulest accusations against me of
personal immorality. Remonstrances addressed to the Rev. Mr. Engstroem,
the secretary of the society, brought voluble protestations of
disavowal and disapproval; but as the peccant agents were continued in
their employment, the apologies were of small value. No accusation was
too coarse, no slander too baseless, for circulation by these men; and
for a long time these