venture to make a short digression into the region of the matter, as
distinct from the manner of free speech. One or two changes of great
importance in the way in which men think about religion, bear directly
upon the conditions on which they may permit themselves and others to
speak about it.


The peculiar character of all the best kinds of dissent from the nominal
creed of the time, makes it rather less difficult for us to try to
reconcile unflinching honesty with a just and becoming regard for the
feelings of those who have claims upon our forbearance, than would have
been the case a hundred years ago. 'It is not now with a polite sneer,'
as a high ecclesiastical authority lately admitted, 'still less with a
rude buffet or coarse words, that Christianity is assailed.' Before
churchmen congratulate themselves too warmly on this improvement in the
nature of the attack, perhaps they ought to ask themselves how far it is
due to the change in the position of the defending party. The truth is
that the coarse and realistic criticism of which Voltaire was the
consummate master, has done its work. It has driven the defenders of the
old faith into the milder and more genial climate of non-natural
interpretations, and the historic sense, and a certain elastic
relativity of dogma. The old criticism was victorious, but after victory
it vanished. One reason of this was that the coarse and realistic forms
of belief had either vanished before it, or else they forsook their
ancient pretensions and clothed themselves in more modest robes. The
consequence of this, and of other causes which might be named, is that
the modern attack, while fully as serious and much more radical, has a
certain gravity, decorum, and worthiness of form. No one of any sense or
knowledge now thinks the Christian religion had its origin in
deliberate imposture. The modern freethinker does not attack it; he