kers, bitterness is
occasionally exhibited towards the well-to-do brethren who decline
what Dr. Bentley, in his Boyle Lectures, called 'the public odium and
resentment of the magistrate.'

Mr. Bradlaugh was a freethinker of the second class. His father was a
solicitor's clerk on a salary which never exceeded L2 2s. a week; his
mother had been a nursery-maid; and he himself was born in 1833 in
Bacchus Walk, Hoxton. At seven he went to a national school, but at
eleven his school education ended, and he became an office-boy. At
fourteen he was a wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal-merchant. His
parents were not much addicted to church-going, but Charles was from
the first a serious boy, and became at a somewhat early age a
Sunday-school teacher at St. Peter's, Hackney Road. The incumbent, in
order to prepare him for Confirmation, set him to work to extract the
Thirty-nine Articles out of the four Gospels. Unhappy task, worthy to
be described by the pen of the biographer of John Sterling. The
youthful wharfinger could not find the Articles in the Gospels, and
informed the Rev. J.G. Packer of the fact. His letter conveying this
intelligence is not forthcoming, and probably enough contained
offensive matter, for Mr. Packer seems at once to have denounced young
Bradlaugh as one engaged in atheistical inquiries, to have suspended
him from the Sunday-school, to have made it very disagreeable for him
at home and with his employer, and to have wound up by giving him
three days to change his views or to lose his place.

Mr. Packer has been well abused, but it has never been the fashion to
treat youthful atheists with much respect. When Coleridge confided to
the Rev. James Boyer that he (S.T. Coleridge) was inclined to atheism,
the reverend gentleman had him stripped and flogged. Mr. Packer,
however, does seem to have been too hasty, for Bradlaugh did not
formally abandon his beliefs until some months after his suspension.
He retired for a short season, and studied Hebrew under Mr. James
Savage, of Circus Street, Marylebone. He emerged an unbeliever, aged
sixteen. Expelled from his wharf, he sold coal on commission, but his
principal, if not his only customer, the wife of a baker, discovering
that he was an infidel, gave him no more orders, being afraid, so she
said, that her bread would smell of brimstone.

In 1850 Bradlaugh published his first pamphlet, _A Few Words on the
Christian Creed_, and dedicated it to the unhappy Mr. Pac