Predatory Christianity would not be far from the mark. Christianity is of the nature of a penal settlement where independent-minded persons are made to expiate the sin of thinking for themselves. There can be no real goodwill in any one who is not for justice and equality. No cause can command respect, or can claim a hearing from others which is not based on absolute fairness. Many well-meaning Christians never inquire whether the great cause they have at heart fulfils this condition. In the past this omission has been a lasting cause of alienation from their views. Between 1850 and 1860 there sat in St. Bride's Vestry, London, a group of Christian churchwardens who twice a year sent agents to seize property from my house in Fleet Street, because I refused to pay tithes. Yet there are people who tell us without tiring, of the depravity of the French revolutionists and atheists who laid, or proposed to lay hands upon Church property. Yet these Christian officers, acting under the eye of an opulent rector in the wealthiest capital in the world, seized clocks and bales of paper on the premises of heretics, in the name of the Church! Did not this disqualify the Church as ministers of consolation? The greatest consolation is justice. Is it not spiritual effrontery to despoil a man, then invite him to the communion table? In our day by predatory acts, they confiscate Nonconformist property to maintain Church schools. Can it be that heaven recognised agents engaged in petty larceny? Are they intrusted with the keys of heaven? May the priest be a thief? Can a man expect to be admitted at the Golden Gate with a burglar's passport in his hand? There exist penal laws against all who do not stand on the side of faith, which Nonconformists as well as Churchmen connive at, profit by, and maintain. Is not this destructive of their spiritual pretensions? Can they preach of holiness and truth without a blush? No higher criticism can condemn Christianity, as it is self condemned by resting on predatoriness. No person who does not stand on the Christian side can leave property for promoting his views, as a Christian can for promoting his. No Christian conscience is touched at this disadvantage imposed upon the independent thinker. No sermon is preached against it. No Christian petition is ever set up against it. Neither the Church conscience nor the Nonconformist conscience is stirred by the existence of this injustice. It would cease if they objected to it. But they do not object to it.
There are prelates, priests, clergymen, and Nonconformist ministers personally to be respected, who in human things I trust. But for their spiritual vocation, is it possible to have respect or trust? To tender consolation with one hand while they keep the other in my pocket is an act never absent from my mind. I belong to a Secular party who seek improvement by material means; but were there any body of Christians upon whom that party imposed legal disadvantages in its own interest, and kept them there by silence or connivance, Parliament would hear from me pretty frequently until the insulting privileges were annulled. Any pretension to having principles worthy of acceptance, or regard, or even respect, would be impertinence in us so long as we were unfair to others.
I caused to be brought into Parliament a Bill in which Sir Philip Manfield took the leading interest, entitled:—
Civil and Religious Liberty Extension.
A BILL
To secure the Extension of Civil and Religious Liberty.
(Prepared and brought in by
Mr. Manfield, Sir Henry Boscoe,
Sir Geo. B. Sitwell, Mr. Picton,
Mr. Illingworth, Mr. W. McLaren,
Mr. H. P. Cobb, Mr. Howell,
Mr. Chas. Feiiwick, Mr. Benn,
Mr. Storey, and Mr. Hunter.)
Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 7 November 1893.
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