s a crime against _them_. It strips off the
mystery that invests their craft, and shows them as they really are, a
horde of bandits who levy black mail on honest industry, and preach a
despot in heaven in order to maintain their own tyranny on earth.

The gospel of Freethought would destroy all priesthoods. Every man
should be his own priest. If a professional soul-doctor gives you wrong
advice and leads you to ruin, he will not be damned for you. He will see
you so first. We must take all responsibility, and we should also take
the power. Instead of putting our thinking out, as we put our washing,
let us do it at home. No man can do another's thinking for him. What is
thought in the originator is only acquiescence in the man who takes it
at secondhand.

If we do our own thinking in religion we shall do it in everything else.
We reject authority and act for ourselves. Spiritual and temporal power
are brought under the same rule. They must justify themselves or go. The
Freethinker is thus a politician and a social reformer. What a Christian
_may_ be he _must_ be. Freethinkers are naturally Radicals. They are
almost to a man on the side of justice, freedom and progress. The Tories
know this, and hence they seek to suppress us by the violence of unjust
law. They see that we are a growing danger to every kind of privilege, a
menace to all the idle classes who live in luxury on the sweat and labor
of others--the devouring drones who live on the working bees.

The gospel of Freethought teaches us to distinguish between the knowable
and the unknowable. We cannot fathom the infinite "mystery of the
universe" with our finite plummet, nor see aught behind the veil of
death. Here is our appointed province:

This world which is the world
Of all of us, and where in the end
We find our happiness or not at all.

Let us make the best of this world and take our chance of any other. If
there is a heaven, we dare say it will hold all honest men. If it will
not, those who go elsewhere will at least be in good company.

Our salvation is here and now. It is certain and not contingent. We need
not die before we realise it Ours is a gospel, and the only gospel, for
this side of the grave. The promises of theology cannot be made good
till after death; ours are all redeemable in this life.

We ask men to acknowledge realities and dismiss fictions. When you have
sifted all the learned sermons ever preached, you will find ver