of the British "standard of outward decency", a teacher of mathematics
named Holyoake, who presumed to discuss in a public hall the
starvation of the working classes of the country. A preacher objected
that he had discussed "our duty to our neighbor" and neglected "our
duty to God"; whereupon the lecturer replied: "Our national Church and
general religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation,
about twenty million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I
appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to
have a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to put
deity upon half pay." And for that utterance the unfortunate teacher
of mathematics served six months in the common Gaol at Gloucester!

While men were being tried for publishing the "Free-thinker", the
Premier of England was William Ewart Gladstone. And if you wish to
know what an established church can do by way of setting up dullness
in high places, get a volume of this "Grand Old Man's" writings on
theological and religious questions. Read his "Juventus Mundi", in the
course of which he establishes a mystic connection between the trident
of Neptune and the Christian Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that
the writer of Genesis was an inspired geologist! This writer of
Genesis points out in Nature "a grand, fourfold division, set forth in
an orderly succession of times: First, the water population; secondly,
the air population; thirdly, the land population of animals; fourthly,
the land population consummated in man." And it seems that this
division and sequence "is understood to have been so affirmed in our
time by natural science that it may be taken as a demonstrated
conclusion and established fact." Hence we must conclude of the writer
of Genesis that "his knowledge was divine"! Consider that this was
actually published in one of the leading British monthlies, and that
it was necessary for Professor Huxley to answer it, pointing out that