It will, no doubt, be urged that Christianity has done, and is doing a great good in the world. This I emphatically deny. I readily admit that some good has been effected in the name of Christianity, but deny that the fall and redemption religion has been the cause. The same amount of good would have resulted with any other religion, and much more with no religion at all. All the good that has ever been effected in the world has emanated from lofty individual minds; but as chance has had it, the majority of these men in the past have been Christians, simply because that religion has prevailed in Europe for nearly two thousand years. In the present day this is not the case; and it is a fact beyond contradiction that all the leaders of thought of our time are men who have rejected the fables of the creation and fall as given in Genesis, together with the consequent redemption scheme, as false and vain. John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Tyndal, Carpenter, Huxley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rénan, Victor Hugo, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, and in fact every other modern leader of thought, have rejected the orthodox faith; and yet we look forward to the future with bright hope, expecting a steady progress in man’s general welfare. Even when Christians themselves in days long gone by, attempted to introduce any useful reform, their church invariably persecuted them, as for instance Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno, Luther, etc.; and the only Christian priest who ever propounded any theory which was calculated to be a lasting boon to society was Malthus, who declared that over population was the great cause of all misery, and that until people were taught conjugal prudence it was useless to attempt to ameliorate their social condition. This friend of humanity was bitterly denounced by the church, and to this day his followers are held in contempt, notwithstanding that the Malthusian principles are now endorsed by the leading social scientists, and that it is as clear as the sun at noon day that within the short space of 45 years the present population of this country—now about 36,000,000—will have doubled itself. The people now cannot support themselves, so how they will manage when the population is 72,000,000 it is hard to say. What with over population and land monopoly the future has indeed some terrible social evils in store for us.