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and. I admit that if you are free enough
to say you are an infidel, your evidence may in a court of justice
be rejected, and that so you may be robbed.[76] I admit we have not
wealth and power on our side--power which the Christian Church, through
eighteen centuries of extortion, has managed to get together. But I
tell you what we have. We have the pleasant consciousness that we
make the public conscience and public opinion step by step with each
thought we give out and each good deed we do. Our church is not a
narrow church, nor narrow chapel, nor Bible sect, but the wide church
of humanity, covered by no steeple, with texts preached from no pulpit,
but with each man as his own priest, working out his own salvation,
and that of his fellows too--not on his knees, but on his feet, with
clenched hand and nervous brain, fighting wrong and asserting right,
and striving to make humanity freer."

[Footnote 76: This was in 1862, before the Evidence Amendment Act,
1869, and Mr Bradlaugh's Oaths Act, 1888.]

On Monday and Wednesday, the 1st and 3rd of February 1864, Mr Bradlaugh
met Thomas Cooper, the sometime Freethinker, author of the "Purgatory
of Suicides," and now "Lecturer on Christianity," in debate. This
debate had been talked of for nearly eight years, but although Mr
Bradlaugh was eager for the fray Mr Cooper was more reluctant; he
affected to despise his junior for his lack of learning, and several
times publicly derided his "ignorance"; he himself was reputed a
scholar, and boasted a knowledge of fourteen languages. As it was, Mr
Cooper himself worded the subjects to be discussed, and refused to
meet my father under his _nom de guerre_ of "Iconoclast." On the first
evening Mr Cooper was to affirm "the Being of God as the Maker of the
Universe," and on the second "the Being of God as the Moral Governor
of the Universe." As the affirmer he had the advantage of leading the
discussion each night.

The wording of the question put Mr Bradlaugh in a peculiar position: he
was "to state the argument on the Negative side," and as any reasonable
person will, I think, clearly see, he could only do this by showing the
fallacy of the arguments used by the affirmer. He told his audience: "I
do not stand here to prove that there is no God. If I should undertake
to prove such a proposition I should deserve the ill words of the
oft-quoted Psalmist applied to those who say there is no God. I do not
say there is no God, but I am an Atheist without God. To me the word
'God' conveys no idea, and it is because the word 'God' to me never
expressed a clear and definite conception ... that I am Atheist....
The word 'God' does not, to my mind, express an eternal, infinite,
omnipotent, intelligent, personal conscious being, but is a word
without meaning and no effect other than it derives from the passions
and prejudices of those who use it."

This debate should have been of more than ordinary interest, both
disputants were lecturers and debaters of long standing, and as an
exponent of the evidences of Christianity Mr Thomas Cooper's reputation
was, I believe, considerable. And since he had himself once spoken from
the Freethought standpoint, he, more than another, should have been
prepared to grapple with the difficulties which lay between the Atheist
and a belief in God the Creator and Moral Governor of the Universe.
Having read his speeches, I am surprised at the poorness of his
arguments, and am driven to the conclusion that his reputation has been
considerably overstated--that is to say, his reputation as an expounder
of Christian doctrines: his language was sometimes absolutely childish;
of his merits as a poet I know nothing. "B. V." wrote some amusing
verses[77] descriptive of Mr Cooper's position as laid down by him in
his opening speech, and a writer in the _Christian Times_ for February
3rd related the impression produced on him by Mr Bradlaugh on the first
night:

[Footnote 77: See "Poems, Essays, and Fragments." (A. and H. B. Bonner)]

 "Let me do this gentleman justice. He was neither vulgar nor
 arrogantly egotistical. He has a loud, harsh voice. He is thoroughly
 earnest in address. His thoughts come to him with admirable
 orderliness. His logical faculty is strong, and his speaking faculty
 is something to be amazed at. He combines precision with volubility.
 He makes argument rhetorically climacteric. In retort, by-play, and
 insinuation, he evinces very considerable skill. He is an adept in the
 use of satire. His style is sharp, clear, incisive. In short, he is
 evidently a young man of somewhat remarkable abilities, who with his
 present opinions must do much mischief, but under a holier inspiration
 would do immense good. In saying this about him, I am but speaking
 honest truth. I have already said with what a prejudice against him
 I went to the hall. I am frank enough to confess that I found that
 prejudice to be to a great extent based on ignorance of the man. It
 has been the custom of many Christian organs to hold the teachers
 of Atheism up to scorn for ignorance, conceit, incapacity, and a
 wanton indulgence in gross and vulgar blasphemies. Often enough the
 representation has been only too faithful; but it would be simply an
 absurd and self-refuting falsehood to charge any of these things on Mr
 Bradlaugh, as far as his behaviour on Monday night would enable one to
 form an estimate of his character. He used sharp weapons, it is true,
 but he used them skilfully; he had a most repulsive task, granted,
 but he came up to it with a manly candour and went through it without
 resorting to a word, gesture, or glance that was indicative of the
 desire to be unnecessarily offensive."[78]

[Footnote 78: Despite the sharpness--to use no harsher term--of Mr
Cooper's words and manner towards him, my father bore no malice,
and showed himself quite ready to forgive and forget. A few months
later, hearing that Mr Cooper was in very straitened circumstances, he
expressed his desire to be allowed to join in the scheme for assisting
his old opponent, for he believed him "to have been a well-intentioned,
warm-hearted man, and one who, as a politician, has done good work."]

I have taken this somewhat lengthy extract from the article as giving
a frank avowal of a prejudgment of my father, unwarranted by the real
facts as realised by a Christian auditor. And yet it was in these
early years that Mr Bradlaugh is said to have been so "unnecessarily
offensive" by those who during the last few years of his life were
compelled to own that he was not so bad after all. These persons,
lacking the generous candour of the writer in the _Christian Times_ of
1864, endeavour to excuse their earlier injustice by saying that, if
not coarse and offensive now, he had been at one time, and his manners
had much improved. This quotation may serve, to those who still need
it, as a hostile contemporary witness in Mr Bradlaugh's favour.

On September 25th and 26th, 1865, Mr Bradlaugh had yet another deba

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