h his grandmother or grandfather.

Think what it means, friends of progress, that these ecclesiastical
figures should be set up for the reverence of the populace, and that
every time mankind is to make an advance in power over Nature, the
pioneers of thought have to come with crow-bars and derricks and heave
these figures out of the way! And you think that conditions are
changed to-day? But consider syphilis and gonorrhea, about which we
know so much, and can do almost nothing; consider birth-control, which
we are sent to jail for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce
reforms for which the world is crying--and for which it must wait,
because of St. Paul! Realize that up to date it has proven impossible
to persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased
wife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole nation
was occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment of the church
of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible for an
unbeliever to hold a seat in Parliament; while up to the present day
men are tried for blasphemy and convicted under the decisions of Lord
Hale, to the effect that "it is a crime either to deny the truth of
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion or to hold them up
to contempt or ridicule." Said Mr. Justice Horridge, at the West
Riding Assizes, 1911: "A man is not free in any public place to use
common ridicule on subjects which are sacred."

The purpose, as outlined by the public prosecutor in London, is "to
preserve the standard of outward decency." And you will find that the
one essential to prosecution is always that the victim shall be
obscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke in a
drawing-room. I will record an utterance of one of the obscure victims
of the British "standard of outward decency", a teacher of mathematics
named Holyoake, who presumed to discuss in a public hall the
starvation of the working classes of the country. A preacher objected
that he had discussed "our duty to our neighbor" and neglected "our
duty to God"; whereupon the lecturer replied: "Our national Church and
general religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation,
about twenty million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I
appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to
have a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to put
deity upon half pay." And for that utterance the unfortunate tea