Julian Hall
from Abner Kneeland, an infidel who had been prosecuted for blasphemy.
It was not "the true spirit of Christianity" which abolished Slavery
in the United States, but "the true spirit of Humanity," which inspired
some Christians and more Freethinkers to vindicate the natural rights
of men of all colors. Even in the end, Slavery was not terminated by the
vote of the Churches; it was abolished by Lincoln as a strategic act in
the midst of a civil war, precisely as was predicted by Thomas Paine,
who not only hated Slavery while his Christian defamers lived by it,
but was more sagacious in his political forecast than all the orthodox
statesmen of his age.

"A movement headed by Clarkson and Wilberforce," says Mr. Henson,
"could be no other than Christian," But why? Were not the slave-owners
also Christians? Was not the strength of Freethinkers, from Jeremy
Bentham downwards, given to the abolition movement? Were not the
Freethinkers all on one side, while the Christians were divided? And why
did the abolition movement in England wait until new ideas had leavened
the public mind? Had it been purely Christian, would it not have
triumphed long before? The fact is there was plenty of Christianity
during the preceding thousand years, but the sceptical and humanitarian
work of the eighteenth century was necessary before there could be
any general revolt against injustice and oppression. No perversion of
history can alter the fact that, in the words of Professor Newman, "the
first public act against Slavery came from republican France, in the
madness of atheistic enthusiasm." Mr. Henson sees this clearly himself,
and therefore he pretends that all the best ideas of the French
Revolution were borrowed from Christianity. Shades of Voltaire and
Diderot, of Mirabeau and Danton, listen to this apologist of the faith
you despised! Voltaire's face is wreathed with ineffable irony, Diderot
contemplates the speaker as a new species for a psychological monograph,
Mirabeau flings back his leonine head with a swirl of the black mane and
a glare of the great eyes, and Danton roars a titanic laugh that shakes
the very roof of Hades.

Now let us turn to the old indigenous Slavery of Europe. Mr. Henson
appeals to "the witness of history," and he shall have it. He
undertakes to prove "That among the various causes which tended to
assuage the hardship and threaten the permanence of Slavery, the most
powerful, the most active, and most