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The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism by Ernest Naville
page 106 of 262 (40%)

We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross
the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.

England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the
eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave
the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part
from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of
impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A
strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed
various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books
and respectable journals.[68] These efforts were crowned with success.
England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the
diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the
Lord's-day,[69] assumed[70] the characteristic marks of a Christian
nation. Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity,
placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic
civilization; but as Père Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other
people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71]
The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of
this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in
which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit
of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is
instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a
popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it
advocated. There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than
eighty thousand copies. A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a
statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly
atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty
thousand copies.[73]
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