"Theology of the old stamp, so far from encouraging us to love nature, teaches us that it is under a curse. It teaches us to look upon the animal creation with shuddering disgust; upon the whole race of man, outside our narrow sect, as delivered over to the Devil; and upon the laws of nature at large as a temporary mechanism, in which we have been caught, but from which we are to anticipate a joyful deliverance. It is science, not theology, which has changed all this; it is the atheists, infidels, and rationalists, as they are kindly called, who have taught us to take fresh interest in our poor fellow denizens of the world, and not to despise them because Almighty Benevolence could not be expected to admit them to Heaven. To the same teaching we owe the recognition of the noble aspirations embodied in every form of religion, and the destruction of the ancient monopoly of divine influences."* * Leslie Stephens's Freetkinking and Plain Speaking. Those who, in storm and stress, bring truth into the world may not be able to complete its triumph, but it makes its own way, and finally conquers the understanding of mankind. Priestley, without fortune, with only the slender income of a Unitarian minister, created and kept up a chemical laboratory. There alone he discovered oxygen. Few regarded him, few applauded him; only a few Parisian philosophers thanked him. He had no disciples to spread his new truth. He was not even tolerated in the town which he endowed with the fame of his priceless discovery. His house was burnt by a Church-and-King mob; his instruments, books, and manuscripts destroyed; and he had to seek his fortune in a foreign land. Yet what has come out of his discovery? It has become part of the civilisation of the world, and mankind owe more to him than they yet understand. When a young man, he forsook the Calvinism in which he was reared. "I came," he said, "to embrace what is called heterodox views on every question."* He cared for this world as well as for another, and hence was distrusted by all "true believers." Though he had "spiritual hopes," he agreed that he should be called a materialist. We have now had (1895) a London Reform Sunday, more than two hundred and fifty (one list gave four hundred) preachers of all denominations taking for their unprecedented text, "The Duties and Responsibilities of Citizenship,"--a thing the most sanguine deemed incredible when suggested by me in 1854.** Within twenty years Dr. Felix Adler has founded noble Ethical Societies. Dr. Stanton Coit is extending them in Great Britain. They are Secularist societies in their nature. South Place Chapel now has taken the name of Ethical Society. Since the days of W. J. Fox, who first made it famous, it has been the only successor in London of the Moral Church opened by Thomas Holcroft. * See Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1888); article: Priestley.