osopher, in Parliaments where practical people assemble to
legislate after their necessarily imperfect fashion for the general weal.
It is said of Sir Godfrey Kneller that he was deeply shocked at hearing a
common labourer invoking imprecations on his own head. Some such feeling
must be entertained by the old-fashioned, scholarly sceptics at all times
met with in highly intellectual communities. Religion was a good thing
for the poor; it taught them to know their place, to be humble,
industrious, and not to murmur when deprived by human agency of the
rights to which all are born, or when by the same agency they were made
to bear innumerable wrongs. For such religion was intended; and for such
considerations it was right and proper that it should be accepted by
society--sanctioned by the law--its ministers rewarded and salaried by
the State. It was under the influence of some such feeling that Napoleon
the Great is reported to have said, if there were no God, it would be
necessary to invent one; and in a proportionate manner do the
philosophers feel alarm and indignation when the working man, for whom
such trouble has been taken,--for whom religion has, as it were, been
discovered,--for whom an Establishment, the most richly endowed with this
world's goods in Christendom, rejoices to call itself the poor man's
Church,--turns round, and, in his coarse, rough way, says, "Ladies and
gentlemen, I am much obliged to you. I see your little game. Pray don't
take any trouble on my account. Please to leave me to go to the bad in
my own way. Give me the right to the free inquiry you claim for
yourselves, and don't quarrel with me on account of its results." Really
it seems to me the Secularist has the best of it. I may regret his
conclusions. I cannot blame his independent spirit.

Of the men who talk in this way it may be said, at any rate as regards
the metropolis, Robert Dale Owen was the teacher and apostle. Owen was
the first to proclaim to the masses that there was no such thing as moral
responsibility; that a man's character was formed for him partly by
nature at his birth, and partly by the external influences to which he
was exposed. As man, there was for him no choice of right or wrong. Any
religion, and emphatically that of Christ, which proceeds upon the
supposition that man can lay hold of eternal life, can accept the offer
of God's mercy, can believe and live, is false and to be rejected with
disdain. O