All these assertions of facts you may say are not facts; but if they be facts, you are bound to think rightly about them. You are bound to think right about them under penalties, but no more so than as to other facts. You are as much bound to think right as to the fact of a God as to any other fact. But men say, These facts are not so certain as the facts of physical science. We answer, They are more certain to us; they are to us facts as certain as the great lights of heaven. We cannot conceive the possibility of ourselves doubting them. We may say, Perhaps there is a God, and we have a right to say, The perhaps may become a certainty. If we think right, and you think wrong, you must suffer the consequences. If a man of science puts into your hand a book, and warns you of the danger of infection, and you say you don’t believe it, because you are sceptical about the teaching, he cannot compel you to believe it, but meantime you will suffer; the proof may come in sickness and in death, and you will not escape. And we say, not in anger and bitterness, not in hard denunciation of the wrath of God—God forbid that we should do it; but we speak in the same tone of warning, and not threatening, and we say, If you doubt, remember time is passing, and if you think wrong, there is danger of the judgment. We say, Take heed how you grope in the dark and stumble. We cannot alter the facts if they are facts, and they will affect your happiness. We say, There is in this nothing uncharitable, no violation of Freethought any more in religion than in science. We say that the consequences of thinking erroneously in religion may be as perilous as the consequences of thinking erroneously as to physical facts. It remains to be shown what are the facts of our religion. All that we say now is, that an error about the facts may be fraught with serious consequences, and we no more violate Freethought than when a physician warns you. Now, then, I trust we have disposed of those prejudices that lay upon the threshold of our inquiry, these prejudices against Christianity as being opposed to Freethought; for if Freethought means freedom as opposed to necessity, religion does not deny it; if Freethought means freedom as opposed to authority, religion does not create the distinction, it is just as easy to reconcile it with religion as with the state of society. If you mean by Freethought, freedom without responsibility as to consequences, there is no such thing either in society or in nature, and you have no right to expect it in religion. All that we say is, that we are not to expect freedom of thought without its responsibility. Christianity gives us glimpses of the means of escape from the operation of material laws in the mercies of the loving Father of the human family.