Page:The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.pdf/5

 gunpowder will explode, and bury a city in ruins. A man comes along, with clear, sharp eyes, noticing all around him; he sees the burning match, but cannot reach it to put it out; he hurries to warn the people of their danger; he shows them how to escape it. Is this man to blame for the danger of explosion, because he has discovered the danger, and not rather I, who am the cause of it? Is Science, then, to blame if the facts she reveals are sad, and not rather the cause of all those facts, he who, according to the Bishop of Peterborough, is the Author of Nature, he who foresaw all, designed all, over-rules all. If Nature is so evil, God, and not Science, is the one to be blamed.

But this is only according to the Bishop of Peterborough. We have no slur of this kind to cast on Nature. With many evils inherent in it, the scheme around us is slowly evolving the higher from the lower; mankind are growing gradually into a nobler type; increasing knowledge is enabling us to cope with Nature's rougher moods; nowhere is truer the axiom that "knowledge is power" than when we say that knowledge of Nature is power over Nature. While the Bishop of Peterborough is forced by his arraignment of Nature to deny either the power or the goodness of the God in whom he believes, we, who believe in no designer, award neither praise nor blame to any being for the order in which we find ourselves; the universe is, we are part of it; we can study it, improve it, beautify it, by means of powers inherent in itself; and therefore we meet the dangers in our path with courage, and mend its imperfections by our skill.

The facts around us not being dependent for their existence either upon our knowledge or upon our ignorance, I deny altogether that Science is to blame because much of her revelation to mankind is stern and sad. But there is a foe to Christianity in the battle-field of the world; there is a gospel, which is not Christian, which is being proclaimed to mankind; there is a banner, whose folds are just floating out upon the air of England, which is blazoned with a new heraldry for humanity. It is the gospel of Freethought, the banner of Secularism. This is the gospel which I assert as against the gospel of Christianity; this is the gospel whose superiority to the Christian gospel I am prepared to maintain. On behalf of this gospel I lift from the ground the challenge-gauntlet flung down by the Bishop of Peterborough, and I say that not only is it true, but it is also good news to