The first condition of a reconciliation between religion and the masses of mankind would be for religious men patiently to listen to the complaints that are made by the adversaries of Christianity, and to understand the position which honest and sensible freethinkers, such as Mr. Holyoake, take. Religious leaders are too little acquainted with the world at large; they avoid their antagonists like outcasts, and rarely, if ever, try to comprehend their arguments. In the same way, freethinkers as a rule despise clergymen as hypocrites who for the sake of a living sell their souls and preach doctrines which they cannot honestly believe. In order to arrive at a mutual understanding, it would be necessary first of all that both parties should discontinue ostracising one another and become mutually acquainted. They should lay aside for a while the weapons with which they are wont to combat one another in the public press and in tract literature; they should cease scolding and ridiculing one another and simply present their own case in terse terms. This Mr. Holyoake has done. His Confession of Faith is as concise as any book of the kind can be; and he, being the originator of Secularism and its standard-bearer, is the man who speaks with authority. For the sake of religion, therefore, and for promoting the mutual understanding of men of a different turn of mind, we present his book to the public and recommend its careful perusal especially to the clergy, who will learn from this book some of the most important reasons why Christianity has become unacceptable to a large class of truth-loving men, who alone for the sake of truth find it best to stay out of the church. The preface of a book is as a rule not deemed the right place to criticise an author, but such is the frankness and impartiality of Mr. Holyoake that he has kindly permitted the manager of The Open Court Publishing Co. to criticise his book freely and to state the disagreements that might obtain between publishers and author in the very preface of the book. There is no need of making an extensive use of this permission, as a few remarks will be sufficient to render clear the difference between Secularism and the views of The Open Court Publishing Co., which we briefly characterise as "the Religion of Science."