Cosmopolitan Musings.No. 80.

By AMOR



THREE of the anxiously looked for Long-York debates have now come off, and attracted each night large audiences. Both the Brisbane Courier and the Observer deprecated the holding of such discussions as tending to no earthly good. Such, as I have before ventured to assert, is not my opinion. I believe that the principle of laissez faire, which would seem to be that advocated by most journalists, is of all principles the one most fatal to the moral and intellectual progress of our race. Like Milton, I find myself continually crying out, "Let truth and error grapple ; whoever knew the first to be overthrown in a fair field ?' Now, I for one, believe that the millions at present under the thraldom of the creeds of Christendom are, de facto, the slaves of Error; and I further believe that the writer or speaker who endeavors, by all means in his power, to liberate them from that error is doing the bravest and noblest work that it is possible for a human being to perform. What first attracted my attention to the NORTHERN MINER was that, in its every issue, it both surprised and delighted me by its very unconventional outspokenness on points on which conventional newspapers are, for fear of offending, cravenly reticent.  E.G. :—" The professors of dogma have been the root and cause of all the wars and massacres, rapines and burnings, that have disgraced the world, for the last eighteen hundred years." The pulpit has in every age proved itself the sycophant of courts, the adulator of power, the ally of tyranny, the enemy of knowledge and pure progress, and the unrelenting and obstinate opponent of science." . . . "Erasmus once asked, Quid sit sacerdos?—what is a priest? and echo answered, Herdos—lucre. Quid sit sacerdotium ? —what is the priesthood? and echo answered, Otium—ease." The above extracts prove that the MINER, like the Sydney. Bulletin, is doing its best to liberate the minds of its readers from the debasing bondage of Sacerdotalism. And verily it has its reward. Only the other day I discovered a friend of mine eagerly copying some lines I years ago cut from the MINER, entitled "Questions for the Orthodox." They were by the late William Denton; and my friend was so impressed with those unanswerable questions, that, as he told me, he felt ashamed that there should be amongst his fellow men any who still believed in those absurd Biblical myths!

The subject of the first debate was—" Is Christian Theism more natural than Atheism or Agnosticism ?" As the defender of Theism, Mr. Long submitted (1) That matter is eternal; (2) That spirit is eternal; (3) That matter and spirit are both eternal. He brought forth the grand argument of design, and claimed logically "that, as there was system, there must be God." When reading this, my mind instantly reverted to what J. S. Mill in his essay on "Nature," says in regard to this "design" argument, which Mr. Long admits to be the most conclusive of all theistic theories. " If there are any marks at all of special design in creation," says Mill, "one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals." So also the author of "The Martyrdom of Man" says:—" The law of murder is the law of growth. Life is one long tragedy; creation is one great crime." Then, as Mr. Long presents his partisans with a God who thinks, wills, and acts, and is worthy of all worship, he must listen to what two of the world's greatest thinkers say of such a Being. Says J. S. Mill : "Though attributing omnipotence to the Creator, the received religion represents him for some inscrutable reason tolerating the perpetual counteraction of his purposes by the will of another Being, of opposite character, and of great though inferior power—the Devil. The only difference between popular Christianity and the religion of Ormuzd and Abriman is that the former pays its good Creator the bad compliment of having been the maker of the Devil, and of being at all times able to crush and annihilate him and his evil deeds—which, however, he does not do."  "The reputed author of the world," says Winwood Reade, " invented not only the good, but also the evil in the world ; he invented cruelty, he invented sin. If he invented sin, how can he be otherwise than sinful? If he invented cruelty, how can he be otherwise than cruel ? From this inexorable logic, we can only escape by giving up the theory of a personal Creator. Those who believe in a God of Love must close their eyes to the phenomena of life, or garble the universe to suit their theory." Dr. York, in refuting Mr. Long's theistic theory, used virtually the same arguments as Reade and Mill. " It (Theism), said York, "involved belief in eternal pain; it dragged God to man's level; it had caused unutterable misery and bloodshed; it claimed that God was all good and all powerful—although so much misery existed upon which he asked the question made famous by Ingersoll, 'Why didn't God kill the devil ?' "I don't know anything about God" humbly said the Agnostic York. On the other hand the Rev. Mr. Long, even as I am writing this (on Sun day) is pretending to his congregations that he does know all about that incomprehensible Power and what he did, and what he said ; and whom he will save, and whom (unless they "repent") he will damn.

One of Mr. Long's assertions must go unchallenged. He claims the late Charles Darwin as a Christian. Such an assertion was, to me, astounding, as I knew it to be untrue. In a letter to a German student—a letter which was refused admission into all the English newspapers, save the Spectator and Pall Mall Gazette, showing, as Charles Bright said, "what conspiracy of silence" is set up when any truly great man speaks out against the popular theology" — Charles Darwin writes :—" Sir,—I am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and have not time to answer your questions fully, even assuring they are capable of being answered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other, except in so far as the habit of scientific investigation makes a man cautious about accepting any proofs. As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With regard to a future life, every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities." Now, surely the foregoing is the language not of a Christian, but of an Atheist pure and simple. And yet, mirabile dictu, the remains of this great and greatly beloved atheist, whose "grave is the world," now rest in Westminster Abbey! "Twenty—even ten—years ago," says the World, "such a proposal would have been deemed a wild dream ; but science is aggressive now-a-days, and parsons are unable to stem the tide. Accordingly, nobody was astonished to find that the first person to propose that the author of the "Origin of Species " should sleep among dead men, few of whom were as great as he, and many of whom were unworthy to be named in the same breath with him, was Dean Bradley himself."


The Northern Miner 24 June 1886,