taken out his watch publicly and challenged the
Almighty to strike him dead in five minutes if he really existed and
disapproved of atheism. The leader of the cavillers, with great heat,
repudiated this as a gross calumny, declaring that Bradlaugh had
repeatedly and indignantly contradicted it, and implying that the
atheist champion was far too pious a man to commit such a blasphemy.
This exquisite confusion of ideas roused my sense of comedy. It was
clear to me that the challenge attributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a
scientific experiment of a quite simple, straightforward, and proper
kind to ascertain whether the expression of atheistic opinions really
did involve any personal risk. It was certainly the method taught in the
Bible, Elijah having confuted the prophets of Baal in precisely that
way, with every circumstance of bitter mockery of their god when he
failed to send down fire from heaven. Accordingly I said that if the
question at issue were whether the penalty of questioning the theology
of Messrs Moody and Sankey was to be struck dead on the spot by an
incensed deity, nothing could effect a more convincing settlement of it
than the very obvious experiment attributed to Mr Bradlaugh, and that
consequently if he had not tried it, he ought to have tried it. The
omission, I added, was one which could easily be remedied there and
then, as I happened to share Mr Bradlaugh's views as to the absurdity of
the belief in these violent interferences with the order of nature by a
short-tempered and thin-skinned supernatural deity. Therefore--and at
that point I took out my watch.

The effect was electrical. Neither sceptics nor devotees were prepared
to abide the result of the experiment. In vain did I urge the pious to
trust in the accuracy of their deity's aim with a thunderbolt, and the
justice of his discrimination between the innocent and the guilty. In
vain did I appeal to the sceptics to accept the logical outcome of their
scepticism: it soon appeared that when thunderbolts were in question
there were no sceptics. Our host, seeing that his guests would vanish
precipitately if the impious challenge were uttered, leaving him alone
with a solitary infidel under sentence of extermination in five minutes,
interposed and forbade the experiment, pleading at the same time for
a change of subject. I of course complied, but could not refrain from
remarking that though the dreadful words had not been uttered, yet, as
the thou