SECULARISM AND THE CLERGY.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1
have read with interest your comments on my letter to the Guardian, and shall be glad if you will allow me to make a few remarks by way of explanation. My letter was written
hurriedly, and whilj under the influence of what I still think to have been very natural annoyance. A wasp is a contemptible insect, but it h capable of causing some momentary irritation. If I were to select a Rabbi leaving the synagogue for the pur- pose of thrusting on him (or palming off on him) an attack on the Jewish religion, I should lay myself open to the same charge which I bring against Mr. Bradlaugh's proselytising agent. In neither case could there be any prospect of making a convert, and the Jew, though he might well remark that courtesy and Christianity had nothing in common, would, nevertheless, be annoyed at such an exhibition of the spirit of petty persecution. I could not have been a steady reader of the Spectator for the last twenty years without having learnt to value—and, I hope, to practise—toleration.
Mr. Bradlaugh is at liberty to hold what opinions lie pleases, and to use any legitimate means for publishing them ; but, unless I am greatly mistaken, he is not content with this measure of liberty, nor willing to concede it much longer to me. If the misrepresentations of "Tract 1X." are a fair sample of what is to be found in other numbers of the series, one might be justified in saying that Mr. Bradlaugh is not very scrupulous as to the means be employs for gaining his end, and I should have almost failed in my duty, if I had not drawn the attention of my brethren to the course which he has adopted.
The matter is a grave one,—perhaps too grave for dis- cussion in your columns. But Secularism, we must remember, though it has developed new features, is not a heresy of which Mr. Bradlaugh is the author. It is but another name for that worldliness which has always been religion's bitterest foe, and with which the Church can only cope with success when she herself has no complicity with the enemy. " This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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