New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1877. FREE THOUGHT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 208, 30 March 1877, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1877. FREE THOUGHT.

What is free-thought? Until last Monday evening, knowing that thought is essentially free, and that no earthly power can enslave it, we were always puzzled as to the meaning attached to the words — free-thought — by the gentlemen who so ostentatiously give themselves out as Free Thinkers. But our difficulty has been removed. The * Evening Star ' of that evening, a paper to which we have been so often indebted for information (reliable and unreliable), contains a report of a lecture on " Free-Thought and Moral .Responsibility," in which the following definition of a free-thinker is given. A free-thinker, according to the lecturer, is one who is at liberty to investigate any subject that might be interesting to him, undeterred either by anathema or satire. Very well, we shall, of course, accept the definition of a free-thinker given by himself ; though we may remark in passing, that it would be both more logical and more in accordance with the radical meaning of words, to designate such a person a free-investigator. For the future, however, we shall understand a free-thinker to be one who is free, not in thought or in thinking, but one who is free to investigate, without let or hindrance from anathema or satire, every subject that interests him. Somehow or another we always had a shrewd suspicion that it was so ; that few men were less free in thought, and more the slaves of certain writers whom they foolishly think great, than those who boast themselves to be free-thinkers.

In fact, we have never seen auy evidence of free-thought, or even of free investigation, about them. On the contrary, it is quite plain to every well-read man, that these self-com-plaisant free-thinkers have never really investigated any subject whatever. They have, to be sure, read the works of great blasphemers, and rabid enemies of Christianity and the Catholic Church, but nowhere do they afford the slightest proof of the lea6t acquaintance with the works of genuine Christians and Catholics. Their tirades are a weakly flavored hash of the least telling, but most highly flavored assertions of ruthless enemies of Christianity, and of untruths a thousand times denied and a thousand times refuted. What sort of free investigation is that which attends exclusively to one side and one view of a question, and resolutely turns away from every other view. But this is precisely what is done at the present day by boastful free-thinkers. They claim a right to investigate everything ; a claim, by the way, which no one denies, though they ara for ever puling as if some serious opposition were ottered to their investigating anything and everything, and yet they really investigate nothing. ** lv our experience, the lectures and other productions of these boastful free-thinkers are made up of incoherent scraps of blasphemy and unsupported assertion, culled from the works of the enemies of Christianity of every age, thus illustrating the saying of the wise man, " There is nothing new under the sun." Here is a specimen of free investigation, taken from the above-mentioned report of the ' Evening Star.' "The Pope anathematised all those who professed to thiuk for themselves." Where has tie Pope done so, or when ? This palpable and wilful falsehood is not the result of free investigation, because free investigation would have taught the literary free-thinker who spoke these words, that the Pope never did such a thing ; but it is the result of one-sided reading, which is the enemy of all genuine investigation, and of shallow scholarship, of profound and unreasoning prejudice and bitter hate.

Neither Las free investigation discovered that "Jesus attacked alike the law-books, the Sabbath and holy days, the

circumcisions and observances which fettered the people." The fact is the man who spoke these words has either never iead the Gospels, or he has wilfully misrepresented our Divine Redeemer. It is shocking, too, to see the familiar, irreverent way in which he speaks of the Incarnate God and Ms teaching. In his eyes, the great St. Paul, the vessel of election miraculously selected to be the Apostle of the Gentiles,.contradicts the teaching of Christ, and is no better than a tyrant. The lecturer goes on to say, " There was a mighty struggle going on between ignorance and education, and the world would soon be called on to either open the avenues of ,know ledge wide as the heavens, or shut them to all inquirers ; but there was no doubt on which side the victory would be." We are not quite sure that we understand this sentence. We are not aware that any avenues of knowledge are closed to any one, except by free-thinkers to free-thinkers, who only think along one groove and investigate only one side. If this be the meaning, and there is no other that we can attach to the words, there certainly can be no doubt on which side the victory will be.

In this report there are other strange and, indeed, most dangerous sentences. For example, we are told in reference to moral responsibility, that the traditional hell and the devil were no longer needed to keep people in order, that these are bug-bears, and that man is only responsible to his own conscience. This is a very comforting doctriue, and will, no doubt, recommend itself at once to the criminal classes. If the belief in hell and the devil was not always powerful enough to persuade men to control their passions, we may be quite certain that the absence of this belief, even in the case of freethinkers, will not make them more honest, peaceful, truthful, in a word, more moral. Agnin, if a sense of responsibility to God, to society, and conscience, has not been always strong enough to keep men in the right path, there can be no doubt that scoffing at responsibility to God and society will be less powerful; and that a sense of responsibility to one's own conscience alone, accompanied by a conviction, if, indeed, such a conviction can really exist, that there is no hell, no judgment, no personal God — which is the creed of freethinkers — will, in the absence of the policeman, afford a poor protection to life, property, character, and the stability of society. The doctrine promulgated by free-thought lecturers is subversive of law and. order, destructive to the security of life and property, and an incentive to vice. The prince of dramatists, Shakspeabe, knew better than free-thought lecturers the power of the thought of hell and the devil, when entertained, to deter from crime, aud the little care some take to realise it, when he put into the mouth of Autolycus, the " snapper up of unconsidered trifles," the following prescription for a roguish life : "As for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it." Winter Tale, act 4, sc. 2. " The fool hath said in his heart," not in his intellect, "there is no God," that is, he spoke the desires of his wicked heart ; " but the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." How far then must they be from even the beginning of wisdom, who deny God aud repudiate all responsibility to Him, as is the boast of free-thinkers, who glory in teaching that man is only responsible to his owu conscience. Were such monstrous principles as these to meet with general acceptance, there would soon be an end, not only to all hope as to hereafter, but even to civil society itself, and this earth would become a pandemonium.