THE COLONIAL FREETHINKER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 238, 7 October 1880, Page 4

THE COLONIAL FREETHINKER.

The " Sydney Bulletin,' ' in an article ; on the bigotry of freethought, says:— r The colonial Freethinker, as he has made himself familiar to us, is a type of a certain class. Half educated, bu^ not unintelligent, he will almost always . be found untoned by any regular system , of instruction, having obtained what , mental pabulum he may have absorbed* in a precarious hand to mouth fashion. Kis^science is the gleaning of text books : and°pr imer9 > and is idea of fcbe Clj ris- ' tian code; if he has any, the result of the communicated lore of a well meaning but perhaps not too refined Sunday school-teacher. Perhaps, the only atable social institution of which he has had practical experience is that of the fam T ily, and how his reminiscences in that direction jar with his present inner consciousness he best can tell. His life will be found to have been a desultory, uneven course, unballasted by any of those guiding principles which go so far to imbue one with gentlemanly instincts, and which are the necessary concomitants of a regular system of

education. He lives by his wits or more properly, by absence of wit in others. The persistent vituperation of every revered tradition sanctified by the growth of age? , the ru<hleß3 violation of every hnllowed sentiment, and the vulgar blasphemy of every sacred doctrine form the precepts of his evangel. He professes a loity contempt for those who differ from him, and, ns experience tells us, when circumstances admit he displays all the rancour and prejudice of bigotry in its most repulsive form. Notoriety is his life, and hence he will be found obtruding his crude opinions on one's notice, irrespective of time or place, while he retires within the recesses of his own over-weening conceit when he can no longer find hearers. This is the type of the Colonial Freethinker. In the characteristics quoted he presents a fearful contrast to the cultured atheist of Europe, while he has about as much idea of the true spirit and permeating genius of . broad Christianity aa a rhinoceros might have. To improve on an old saying, true enough in its day, 'Of all cant, the worst and most distusting is the cant of Colonial freethought.' We do not apeak of the leaders, but of the bulk of their followers.