FREETHOUGHT v. FETTERED THOUGHT.

 Mr. Charles Bright lectured on the above subject at the Theatre Royal, last evening, to a well-filled house.

Mr. Bright said that he meant by freethought, thought unfettered by fears of external authority — thought submitted to the guidance of reason and conscience. Few persons consciously abandoned their right of thought, yet the majority of mankind did not think freely because they dare not. Even those who claimed to enjoy freedom would look on heedlessly, and see their children taught to believe that the practice of freethought was to be shunned, not courted. People were afraid to doubt Buckle, the historian of civilization who declared that doubt, or scepticism, was the necessary precursor of all progress. But if freedom of thought were a good thing, every restriction placed upon it by legislation, public opinion, or education, must be an evil, and tho past history of the world abundantly proved this to be the case, for it was in reality but the record of one long struggle between those who had asserted their right to think and those who, possessed of power, had attempted to dictate thoughts to mankind. In this conflict the unseen but never unfelt spirit force, or mind, usually termed God, had played a remarkable part. In reality, it had been perpetually impelling men to think freely, to throw off the bondage of custom and superstition, leave the darkness of worn-out ideas, care less for learning how other men think or had thought, come forth into the air of heaven, interrogate nature face to face, and catch the inspiration of truth from the fountain-head. All systems of religion had originated with the open souls who had thus acted. But while the spirit force, the infinite mind, or by whatever name might be designated, that impulse towards advancement which even materialists recognised as operating in the race had been thus active in promoting freedom of thought, the images of God mankind had from time to time set up had been regarded as the fiercest denouncers of such freedom, the most powerful because least comprehensible combatants on behalf of dogmatism, fettered thought, and mental slavery. Having traced this conflict in the history of Christendom, and alluded to many social fetters on freethought, the lecturer proceeded to contend that among Protestants the main supporters of fettered thought or unalterable creeds, at this day, were those whom a modern writer designated as the weaker sexes — the women and clergy. There were, of course, grand exceptions, but as a rule both were trained to be servile worshippers of Fashion— fashion in dress, in thought, in creed, and in speech. Until women were emancipated from this thraldom, religion as a trade, a thing of form and dress, would be maintained to the detriment of true worship. There was some-thing, to his mind, sad and nauseous in men being trained from boyhood to do the praying for a lot of people, and direct them the way to Heaven, as though God lived in the centre of a maze— a sort of Fair Rosamond's bower, and needed a band of trained University men to act as ciceroni and Ushers of the Black Rod. If a man, be he trained or not, had anything to teach his fellows, in the name of truth let him speak out ; and if his voice were worth the listening to, people would come to hear without being beaten and driven thereto by the devil's bastinado. But to pick boys out of a family and set them apart as sucking priests, to cram into their brains a quantity of stuff called "theology," to examine them to see if they had enough of this stuff in them, to bind them over solemnly never to look further than they had been taught, and then to license them to pray, to mouth out praises and petitions to " Gawd,"— there was something in that repellent to reason, repulsive to taste, and utterly subversive of those finer feelings of natural worship which the true priest—the poet— indicated to all sincere souls and loving hearts.

Sydney Daily Telegraph (NSW ), Monday 10 November 1879, page 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/239283105