ATHEISTS.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 October 1883, Page 12

ATHEISTS.

Prof. Tyndal, in alluding to Atheists, says : "It may comfort some to know that there are among us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say offensive, I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because Atheism and Materialism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, have any particular offensiveness to me. If I wished to find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engagements, whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any kind is subjectively unknown ; if I wanted a loving father, a faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and a just citizen, I would seek him in the band of Atheists to which i refer. I have known some of the most pronounced among them, not only in life, but in death ; seen them approaching, with open eyes, the inexorable goal, with no dread of a hangman's whip, with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended upon their latest deeds."