Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History

Book

Open Original Text

e in clear, concise language, was
directly to the point, and was listened to with the utmost attention.
He drew the picture of the Deity who, reviewing his creation,
pronounced everything that he had made "very good" (Gen. i. 31); "yet
in a short period the same Deity looks round and declares that man
is so bad that he repented that he had made man on the earth, and it
grieved him at his heart [Gen. vi. 6]; and in consequence God, to
relieve himself from this source of grief, determined to destroy every
living thing, and he did destroy them by deluge, for it repented him
that he had made them, because man was so very wicked." He dwelt upon
this at some length; then passed on to the selection of Noah and his
family, "part of the old stock of mankind having personal acquaintance
with all pre-existing evil," to re-people the earth; and concluded
his first half-hour by asking where was the love, where the justice
towards the Amalek, against whom "the Lord hath sworn" to have war
"from generation to generation"? It was now the turn of the Rev. Brewin
Grant to reply to this terrible indictment against the Deity whose
professed servant he was; and it is interesting to mark the manner in
which he set about his task. He commenced by unburdening himself of
a few minor personalities against my father, and when a few of these
petty sneers--the only possible object of which could be to provoke ill
feeling--were off his mind, he indulged his overwhelming passion for
raising a laugh. For this he made an opportunity in dealing with the
causes which led to "the Flood," asking whether "Iconoclast imagines
that, because God knew of these sins before they were committed, he
should have drowned men before they were created." This, of course,
provoked the desired merriment, and, temporarily satisfied, Mr Grant
proceeded to his argument with acuteness and ability. Unfortunately,
his peculiar temperament would not allow him to keep this up for
very long; and while still in his first half-hour speech he drew a
comparison of God's repentance with that of a merchant who repents him
of engaging a certain clerk, and made the merchant say, "Wherein can
you find fault? Am I a Secularist that I should lie, or an infidel
committee-man that I should violate a ratified agreement?" "Iconoclast"
is once more taunted with blindness and ignorance; and "infidels" with
amusing "auditors in holes of progress;" and so the reverend (never
was a title more meaningless) gentleman's speech came to a conclusion.
It would have been small wonder if a young, hotly enthusiastic man
as my father then was, had been roused to angry retaliation, and so
turned aside from the real points in dispute; but he did not so soon
lose the coolness with which he had started. He made a few short
answers to the personalities, and proceeded at once to deal with the
arguments urged by Mr Grant; and, these disposed of, continued to
build up his own position. The greater part of Brewin Grant's next
speech was argumentative, but not all; he made an opportunity to tell
his antagonist that his strength lay "not in his logic, but in his
lungs;" that one of his objections was "too foolish," but he (Grant)
"condescended to notice it;" and further, that "no class of men with
which I am acquainted has had all honesty so thoroughly eaten out by
trickery and falsehood as the infidel class." The next quarter of an
hour fell to my father, who hardly noticed Mr Grant's gibes; but when
the latter made his speech, the final one of the evening, he still
interlarded it with innuendoes against the "infidel." The propositions
affirmed by Mr Grant on the succeeding nights were shortly as follows:
The Creation story consistent with itself and with science; the Deluge
story consistent with itself and physically possible; and finally,
"Iconoclast" as a commentator on the Bible, "deficient in learning,
logic, and fairness." But the story of the first night was merely
repeated on the later evenings; as feeling grew a little warmer,
or there was something more than usually offensive in Mr Grant's
personalities, Mr Bradlaugh was once or twice evidently roused to
anger; but after reading the debate I only wonder that he had the
patience to carry it through to the end.

I have dwelt upon this debate much longer, as I am well aware, than it
really deserves; but I have done so for two reasons: (1) That being
the first set debate, formally arranged and fairly reported, it should
have a special interest, inasmuch as we should expect it to show to a
certain extent the measure of Mr Bradlaugh's debating powers at the age
of twenty-six; and (2) because the idea has been so diligently spread
abroad, and possibly received with credence by those who were not
personally acquainted with either disputant, that Mr Bradlaugh found in
the Rev. Brewin Grant a powerful opponent. By my father's testimony,
Mr Grant was a man of ability; by his own--as shown by quotations I
have here given--he was an unscrupulous slanderer. He had a power,
it is true, and that power consisted in his willingness to weary and
disgust his antagonist and his audience (friends as well as foes) by
low jests and scandalous personalities. In the course of this debate he
scornfully told his audience that he was not speaking to them but to
the thousands outside: by those thousands, if perchance he has so many
readers, will he be judged and condemned.

In March 1859 a debate between Mr Bradlaugh and Mr John Bowes was
arranged at Northampton. My father describes Mr Bowes as "a rather
heavy but well-meaning old gentleman, utterly unfitted for platform
controversy." The _Northampton Herald_, which professed to give an
"outline" of this debate, announced that the "mighty champion" of the
Secularists was "a young man of the name of Bradlaugh, who endeavoured
to impose upon the credulity of the multitude by arrogating to himself
the high-sounding title of 'Iconoclast.'" Mr John Bowes the _Herald_
put forward as a "gentleman well known for his contests with the
Socialists and the Mormonites." The _Herald's_ outline-report was
reprinted in the _Investigator_, with a few additions in parentheses;
but a note is appended that it is very imperfect, and my father having
by this time fallen ill with rheumatic fever, he was unable to revise
it. There is just one passage in Mr Bradlaugh's opening speech which is
given fairly fully, and which it is desirable to repeat here, for in it
he lays down his position as an Atheist, a position to which he adhered
until his last hour.

"He did not deny that there was 'a God,' because to deny that which was
unknown was as absurd as to affirm it. As an Atheist he denied the God
of the Bible, of the Koran, of the Vedas, but he could not deny that of
which he had no knowledge."

This statement Mr Bradlaugh made, in varying words, over and over
again, and yet over and over again religious writers and speakers have
described, and probably they always will describe, the Atheist as "one
who denies Go

Previous Next