ough all her
novels there runs a profound Secular spirit. Among her friends she
was well known to be a Positivist; and though her creed held forth no
promise of personal life beyond the grave, she found inspiration and
comfort in the thought that Humanity would advance after she was gone,
that though she died the race was practically immortal. Her mind was
thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit, and her writings give some
conception of the way in which the Evolution theory affected a mind,
fortified by culture and abundant common sense against the crudities of
enthusiasm. The doctrine of Evolution did not fill her with despair;
on the contrary, it justified and strengthened her ardent hopes for the
future of mankind.

Many other novelists betray a strong spirit of Freethought.

It pervades all George Meredith's later writings, and is still more
conspicuous in Mrs. Lynn Linton's "True History of Joshua Davidson" and
her powerful "Under which Lord?" the hero-husband of that story being
an Agnostic gentleman who founds a workmen's institute and delivers
Freethought lectures in it.

Almost all the young school of poets are Freethinkers. Browning, our
greatest, and Tennyson, our most popular, belong to a generation that
is past. Mr. Swinburne is at the head of the new school, and he is
a notorious heretic. He never sings more loftily, or with stronger
passion, or with finer thought, than when he arraigns and denounces
priestcraft and its superstitions before the bar of humanity and truth.

The reception of Mr. Thomsons poems and essays affords another sign of
the progress of Freethought. This gentleman for many years contributed
to secular journals under the initials of "B. V." He is a pronounced
Atheist, and makes no concealment of it in his poems. Yet, while a few
critics have expressed horror at his heresy, the majority have treated
it as extremely natural in an educated thoughtful man, and confined
themselves to the task of estimating the genius he has put into his
work.

I must now draw to a close. Freethought, I hold, is an omnipresent
active force in the English literature of to-day. It appears alike in
the greatest works of scholarship, in the writings of men of science,
in the songs of poets, in the productions of novelists, in the most
respectable magazines, and in the multitudinous daily press. It is
urgent and aggressive, and tolerates no restraint. It indicates the
progress we have made towards that