REVIEW.

notions upon us by law; he does well to IN the shape of a pamphlet, and for the denounce the tyranny of religion, and to price of a penny, has just been published by assume, that if god has honesty, humanity, France, of Newcastle Upon-Tyne, a speech or nobleness, he must spurn the paltry pre by Mr. Larkin, on the sabbath question, de- tences, crawling adulation, and inhuman livered to a set of those morbid, melancholy, practices his servants exhibit. So far he and selfish men called Christians. It appears does well. But how does Mr. Larkin know that at a meeting of the Central Exchange that god "will have no service but the serNews-room a motion was made to close it vice of the free," while he drags a whole on the Sunday. Mr. Larkin, in opposition family of his creatures, as in the case of Mr. to it, among other warm remarks, spoke as and Mrs. Adams and infant in Cheltenham, follows:-"I regard a motion of this kind as to a modern inquisition, because they did doubly offensive-offensive from the arrogant not "render the service of slaves ?" How pride of its pharisaism-offensive from the does he know that "god is insulted with lip insolent tone of its implied censure. I tell service, and mocked with knee homage," you, gentlemen, your censure is impertinence, while he permits his servants to drag me to and your interference with our occupations a loathsome dungeon because I did not on a Sunday is tyranny mingled with impu. offer the "service" of despicable hypocrisy P dence. You have no right to compel me, I once thought the god of the Christians who dissent from your views, to spend the was noble and generous, but Christian men Sunday according to your ideas of holiness, have lately taught me better. What does and your fashions of sabbatical observance. Mr. L. know more of god than lineal de Why cannot you be content with being holycendants from the apostles, or at least, selfyourselves (hear, hear) without forcing me to styled successors all filled with the holyadopt your legal and ceremonial affection of ghost? What does he know more than any sanctity? What right have you to take else? The fact is, nobody knows anything your pail of whitening and your whitening of him, and it is most unfortunate any oue brush and whitewash me into a spectre of ever attempted it. Every enormity is comholiness? (Laughter.) What right have mitted by those in power in the name of god. you to whitewash us into as nice and clean- Would it not be better to let all reasouing looking sepulchres of sanctity as yourselves? against the injustice and tyranny of reli I protest against your right to drive me into gion, rest on moral, independent, and nobler sanctimony-to compel me to wear a white ground than mere goddism? G. J. H. cravat, a black coat, and a long face. (Laughter.) Of what advantage would sucINTELLECTUAL LOCOMOTION. cess be to you, supposing that you could lic institutions and philosophical systems, succeed in shutting up the room on the Sunday? Would the exclusion of the mi-like railway carriages, should be well adapted nority make them one whit holier than beto run through the world. They should always be in advance of the plodding wagons of plodding men. The van is their Better for them proper place not the rear. to be couriers or scouts, than baggage wagtoo easily run over the ground. Hitherto ons. They cannot be too lightly built, nor they have been loaded with the lead of exploded errors, have sunk in every miry place, thrown out grappling irons round every post, and demanded the labour of after ages to disentangle and help them on. When shall we order these things better?

fore? (Hear, hear.) Supposing that whips,
and thongs, and scourges, were put into your
hands; that you drove us to church, and
compelled us to pray and warble forth hymns
and psalms; what else would this compelled
devotion be but to insult god with a lip ser-
vice, and mock him with a knee homage? In
addition to tyranny to man, you would be
guilty of impiety to god! God will accept
of no service but that which is willing; and
one heartfelt burst of prayer and penitence
at any moment is worth all the sabbaths and
all the sacrifices of all the scribes and phari
sees in the world. (Loud cheers.)
loathes the religion you would compel. He
turns with aversion from the adoration of
slaves. He will have no service but the
service of the free. (Cheers.) I stand forth
then on this occasion to raise my voice
boldy against this tyranny of religion. I
stand here to denounce this presumptuous
interference between man and his creator."

God

Mr. L. does well thus to lash men who, not content with damning us hereafter, do it also on earth, by forcing their miserable

Pub

A literal translation from the German of a

joiner's bill, for repairs in a church in Bo

hemia:

When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends, nor thy rich neighbours; call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind (Luke 14). Aye! catch 'em at it! A pretty rig! to see all the beggars in Lambeth sitting nose to nose with his grace of Canterbury, forsooth!

A Mexican chief, when bound to a stake, was asked by a Catholic priest, if he believed in the Christian religion; "No, do not," was the answer. "Don't you wish to go to heaven?" said the priest. "Are there any Christians there?" inquired the chief. "Oh, yes, the place is full of them," said the priest. "Then I had rather go to hell, than have any more of their company," was the reply.-The Mexican was right in his choice, I almost envy him his taste; for as the Christians have been such bad members of society in this world, we reasonably infer that they will be so in the next. When a Christian speaks to me of heaven, I say, what are people to have there, the question almost strikes them dumb, and then they quote the Jew Book, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which god hath prepared for those who love him." Rare answer this, Ezekiel's food, to wit! Rare answer this, to pay £20,000,000 J. C. F. per annum for!

RIDDLES FOR THE RELIGIOUS.
Continued from Oracle No. 25.

Of nature, too, what thinkest thou, was this thy Mr. Joshua Hobson, Leeds..

maker's scheme,

Five Friends..

Or, wanting rule from god woulds't fear, the weight A few Friends to Religious Freedom, Lei-
should kick the beam?

Seeing each thing within itself inherent law retains,
Why need a maker's law to say, part gone, the

less remains?"

050

cester

Proceeds of a Festival held at the Hall of

Science, Sheffield, July 5, 1842
Mr. Hodgkinson

..

Mr. H. Case, subscription card..

Were it not part of nature's law cohesives should A Friend, per Mr. Case cohere,

How had thy boasted world been made to last one short-lived year?

G. A.

NOTICE.-Copies of this work sent by post to any parts where they cannot be otherwise obtained, at the rate of THREE for FOURPENCE. Post-office stamps for one month or three, with directions, addressed to the Editor, No. 8, Holywell-street, Strand, London, will receive attention.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

J. M'CULLOCH, BRIGHTON.--Our warm and excellent friend is informed his communication, if possible, will not be over-looked. The number of determined friends in all parts of the country, the present prosecutions have awakened, promise well for human redemption. It would be easy to fill several Oracles, weekly, and not exhaust all the cheering sentiments that come to hand. I intend to study Ebenezer Elliott, to acquire condensation, to give the pith and marrow of all until other or enlarged means can be made available for their publication, which promises to be the case shortly.

G. J. H.

E. NICHOLLS, Prov. Sec. All persons having cards filled, or partly filled, are particularly requested to forward them immediately to the Secretary.

THE

EDINBURGH,

ORACLE OF RESON

Or, Philosophy Vindicated.

"FAITH'S EMPIRE IS THE WORLD; ITS MONARCH, GOD; ITS MINISTERS, THE PRIESTS;

No. 33.]

ITS SLAVES, THE PEOPLE."

EDITED FOR CHARLES SOUTHWELL, DURING HIS IMPRISONMENT,
BY G. JACOB HOLYOAKE.

[PRICE 1D.

of the magistrates, with the view of relieving them from the "imputation which the expression serious irregularities' had cast upon them."

He sought to justify his attempt by a sophistical reference to the 2nd and 3rd of Vic., the 3rd sec. of which act, he argued, gave the magistrates in petty sessions assembled no control over the constables in the discharge of their duties. Sir James Graham soon exposed this fallacy by asserting that his "observations more properly applied to the capture of Holyoake and the unnecessary harshness used in his conveyance from the magistrates' office." Mr. Berkeley made no attempt to deny anything, only to shift the blame to the constables. He also bore "his testimony to the high character for honor! UPRIGHTNESS!! and JUSTICE!!! which so eminently distinguished the three gentlemen who adjudicated in my case. These gentlemen were Messrs. Capper and Overbury and the Rev. Mr. Newall; whatever their character was, I am sure that now it is anything but enviable, and Mr. Berkeley will never succeed in wiping away the stigma their treatment of me has attached to it. I suppose it was honourable to send me to gaol because I did not, after lecturing on sincerity conclude with an act of hypocrisy; and after

I was in the House of Commous on Monday night, July 18, when Mr. Roebuck, the member for Bath, asked the secretary for the home department for the correspondence relative to the "improper committal of a person named Holyoake, in Cheltenham." Sir Jas. Graham owned that "serious irregularities had been committed by the Cheltenham magistrates, and he had expressed his opinion to them to that effect." But he declined to furnish the correspondence required, "as legal proceedings might arise out of what had occurred." Now if these magistrates could not without "serious irregularity" administer the law lying on the table before them, are they not much more likely to commit "serious ir-recommending truth round my period with regularities" with regard to the defence of lies. It was uprightness, peradventure, to god, whom I presume did not lie upon their receive evidence against me on the belief of tables, at least I did not see him if he did, the witnesses, and reject my bail because they nor was be observable anywhere else in the did not do more than believe concerning their office, unless the fiendism of Bubb and the property. It was justice in the Rev. Mr. bench were evidences of his presence. Then Newall to declare that they could have no why not produce the correspondence? When quibbling in court, while he was committing the servants of the public convert a court of me to gaol because I did not quibble and lie justice into an inquisition, and instruct po- too, in a lecture room. It was creditable in licemen to act the part of Spanish familiars them to tell me, as Capper did, that I was of cursed memory, to drag people secretly, unfit to be argued with, since I did not enand without warrant, in the dead of night to tertain the crotchety notion of god they held. loathsome dungeons, why should parliament, Such a speech half a century ago would have who boasts the freedom and virtues of the ended in my being torn into pieces; and had British constitution, refuse the public the the populace in the court been half as brutally means of correcting such atrocious proceed-bigotted as the bench, I should have been so ings? No answer can be given but that it is the genins of christianity so to act when a upine public opinion permits, and for certain state reasons its enormities must be winked at. On the Thursday night, the Hon. Mr. Craven Berkeley rose in the house on behalf

then. If these things, Mr. Craven Berkeley, constitute that conduct you call honourable, upright, and just, you must refer exclusively to the magistrates as Christians, for no con duct could be more disgraceful to them as men.

Eyen the magistrates at the petty sessions,

Messrs. Cooper and Jones, grossly misrepresented to Sir James Graham the facts of a memorial I addressed to him in Gloucester gaol. Thus no means have been left untried to prevent me obtaining justice in any way. I dispatched to Sir J. Graham corrections of the misrepresentations to him, and also a letter to the editor of the Cheltenham Free Press, and since its appearance the Examiner, a paper that with peculiar Christian kindness classed me with Francis, the regicide, has admitted that if my statements are true, "the magistrates greatly overstepped their duty." How finely contrasts with Bubb, boobies," and parliamentary panegyrists of Christian infamies, the decided, useful, and manly tone of the Odd Fellow :-

We believe that the persons who set blasphemy prosecutions going, receive a great deal too much of apology even from those most opposed to their tyrannical conduct. They pretend to be actuated by disinterested motives, and thus not only get assist ance, and sympathy, and cash, from the weak-minded of the believers, but also, from the public generally, receive that sort of respectful consideration which is awarded the conscientious performers of an action, however vile that action may in itself be considered. And we would like to put an end to this. We are ambitious to hold up prosecutors of blasphemy in their true colors, as malignantly stinging a man because he sympathises not with their religious feelings, and because he is striving so to alter other men that they will not sympathise with them either.* This is precisely as it should be, and persecutors ought be so understood and estimated. The following remarks from the pen of the editor, upon the words which gave rise to the present prosecution, breathe a healthy and refreshing moral tone, belonging rather to the days of Regulus and Epaminondas than to the nineteenth century.

ARGUMENT "A POSTERIORI,"

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. "The lord hath made all things for himself; even the wicked for the day of evil."-JEW BOOK. We are really surprised, not to say shocked, at the wickedness of the present age. Men are actually found to deny the existence of a personal intelligent deity. To ourselves there is no truth plainer, and we are inclined equally to condemn the lecturer, with two hundred feet of diagram to prove it, and his employers the Bishops of Chester and Norwich, with the Atheist himself. The very fact of their employing a man to prove it, shows that they themselves consider it a debateable point, and perhaps we should not be far wrong if we were to say that they doubt its truth; at any rate, they either want confidence in the power or will of god to prove his own existence. If god has not the power to prove his own existence, the employment of John Brindley to help him is excusable; if he lacks the will, then the work of honest John, being opposed to the will of god, is the work of the devil.

We should not ourselves have taken up the subject, so plain do we consider it, only that an oft-repeated lie is at last believed as true, and men have so long been told that it is a difficult question, that they seldom bring truth of the existence and providence of god common sense to the discussion. We say the is plain, even to doubt it is to us a mark of idiotcy! Look around society, view its complicated arrangements, try to comprehend them-we defy you! You may suppose, if you please, that it was at first simple, and that the blunders of men have brought it to its present anomalous position; you may reason to try to prove it, but you have no facts, and all is suppositious when you have done, You will perhaps tell us society is not happy, and point to the different sects and parties into which we are divided; you will show us nation at war with nation, and people quar relling with people, as if their nature were made for strife; you may point to the reign

We cannot refrain from saying, that under the peculiar circumstances, Mr. Holyoake (presuming his disbelief in a god to be sincere) could not have said other than he did say, and at the same time have continued honest. It is true, he was not asked, "Do you believe in a god?" but a question was put to him which assumed his belief in a god, and had he not testified at once his disbelief, he would have sanctioned the false assumption: and if not a liar, would have been at least the permitter of a lie; be tween which is no distinction recognised by an honourable man. In arguing thus, we would not expressing monarch, trembling for her life, unable to any sympathy whatever with Mr. Holyoake's athe ism, we are merely concerned to show that it was not Mr. Holyoake's right alone, but absolutely his DUTY, to say that he did not believe in a god." It was his duty, if it be the duty of man to be honest; he could not have spoken otherwise, unless he had "lied against his heart," and lied towards mankind. The odd fellows, with an organ breathing such lofty and noble sentiments, may consider themselves lucky fellows. A few lines in the spirit of the last extract are worth volumes of that cold and heartless expediency now so fashionable. A paper to which reference has often been made in this, of much higher pretensions to moralising the world than the Odd Fellow, does not, in twelve months pronounce so cheering a eulogy on unqualified truth as that conveyed in the quotation made. G.J.H.

* See Odd Fellow, July 23.

move abroad without fear of assassination, and to the condemned culprit about to be mur dered by the law for committing a murder against the law; to the rich rolling in luxury, pining in idleness, sloth, and disease, and to the poor toiling for dirty water, under the name of soup, and to all classes between, proving all miserable, and ask if we can, seeing all these anomalies, advocate the existence of a god? These are the very things to instance for the proof; for we know that "high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts;" how can we expect to understand the ways of god? If we could understand and appreciate what we call god's ways and doings it would amount to proof that there exists no being higher than man; it is

sufficient for us to know that "god hath pretend to say that Mr. Holyoake is responsible chosen the foolish things of the world to confor this, he could hardly blame us for thinking so, before we received his disclaimer."-N.A.Gazette. found the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; yea and things in common with other papers, made some reSOME few weeks since the editor of the above, which are not hath god chosen to bring to nought the things which are." We can unmarks upon Mr. H.'s arrest and imprison. derstand what we call goodness well enough, ment for blasphemy; and whilst he warmly because it is the way of man, and is consis deprecated the course pursued, expressed it tent, but we cannot understand what we term as his opinion that Mr. HoLYOAKE was as evil, because it is of god, and we know not its bigotted in his disbelief as his opponents were function. We have no wish to deny the exin their belief. To this Mr. H., in a letter to istence of evil, we know that society is wicked the editor, objects; and the above is extracted and miserable, and we know that its arrange-of Persecutions for opinions." from the Gazette, of July 16, under the head ments are complicated and anomalous; so twisted and twined, that the best of intellects cannot unravel the mystery, and this is our stronghold for the existence of deity; that it would require the ingenuity and forethought of a god to design, plan, execute, and keep in existence such a hell as we have upon earth! Man is ever striving to improve; all his as pirations are onward toward a higher destiny which he sees in prospect and wishes to fulfil; and this is not the feelings of one man alone, it belongs to the race, it is an attribute of the whole family. How could man produce what he cannot understand, and how prevent the realization of the very thing he is struggling to attain ? No! Who seeth not "that it is not of him that runneth, but god giveth the victory?" The power of a god alone could prevent us from possessing, and yet we deny bis existence. If there were no other proof, we should rest secure upon the fulfilment of prophecy, "I will laugh at your calamities and mock when your fear cometh;" who can deny the fulfilment of this promise; who, when they see men put out of the union bastile by the shoulders, when they apply for relief; and hear the jeer of the overseer-who does not recognise the vice-gerent of god, and appreciate his loud and soul-harrowing laugh; who that knows of hundreds petitioning, after their bridewell term has expired, to be allowed to remain, subject to all the rules of the prison, and they are thrust out; who does not recog. nise bad times as a judgment, and see that god mocks our fears? Can Atheists deny the existence of god after this? If so, let us have their strong reasons; if not, let the question rest for ever.

THE

W.

"NATIONAL ASSOCIATION GAZETTE" & MR. HOLYOAKE. It is possible that Mr. Holyoake, as an individual is above the narrowness of intellect which can see no truth but in its own conceptions, but the publication with which Mr. Holyoake is connected, and from which alone we formed our opinion, was, we must in candour say, conducted in the most scurrilous and one-sided spirit. Were we to listen to the opinions of this Oracle, we should believe that christianity had existed in vain, and that it was from its origin a system of the grossest falsehood, trickery, and deceit. Every epithet of abuse was cast upon Christians, and the source from which they derived their faith; and although we do not

formed his opinions of Mr. H. from certain The editor of the Gazette, it would appear, writings in the Oracle, about, I should presume, the time of the latter's arrest (see 0. 25, p 201); were it so, I am the bigot, and not G. J. H. Should I be correct in my surmise, one of two reasons would appear to have led to the charge upon Mr. H. instead of upon the writer whose initials were attached; either the supposition that the editor of the Oracle writes under different initials, which is saying but little for his honesty; or that he inserts only such opinions as square with his own, which is saying no more for his liberality. Neither supposition, however, would be correct. I do not for a moment expect the editor of the Gazette reads or sees the Oracle weekly, or he would have perceived the notice inserted more than once, that the initials to all the articles are the genuine ones of the writers, as far as the editor has any means of ascertaining. Whether the cap be longs to me or not, I care but little, it fits as though 'twere made purposely, and I am content to wear it for the present.

The Oracle is charged with being 66 conducted in the most scurrilous and one-sided

spirit!" What a liberal charge for a parti zan paper! Is not the Gazette the avowed and determined enemy of whig and tory; whilst the Oracle is the enemy of every species of villany, whether political or religious? Will the Gazette fill its columns with equal arguments for tory, whig, suffrage, and chartism? No! But the editor might say, our columns are open to the discussion of these questions with our opponents. And who informed the editor of the Gazette that ours were not equally open to fair disputants on the side of religion or goddism? The indi viduals connected with this paper are disbelievers in divinity under any form; either as Jehovah, Christ, Brahma, Veeshnu, or Mo. hammed, and are earnestly labouring to destroy the belief in others, from a conviction of its baneful effects upon society. How do they do this? By combating the strongest arguments used by believers, in a candid spirit, devoid of shuffling; and this they can challenge any one to disprove. To say the Oracle is one-sided is no good objection to it,