The "vulgarising peddlers" (vulgarisirenden Hausirer) come in for a great deal of contempt at the hands of Engels. These were the popular materialists--"the blatant atheists," who, without scientific knowledge and gifted with mere oratory or a popular style of writing, used every advance of science as a weapon of attack upon the Creator and popular religion. Engels sneers at these as not being scientists at all, but mere tradesmen dealing in pseudo-scientific wares. He calls their occupation a trade, a business (Geschaeft). Of the same class was that host of secularist lecturers who at one time thronged the lecture platforms of the English-speaking countries and of whom Bradlaugh and Ingersoll were in every way the best representatives. These secularists have now ceased to exercise any influence, and the Freethought societies, at one time so numerous, have now practically disappeared. In accordance with the theories as set forth by Engels they were bound to disappear; their teachings had no real bearing upon social progress, they contributed nothing of any scientific value to modern thought, and as Engels carefully shows, the reading of history by these lecturers was vitiated by a lack of scientific grasp, and inability to take a rational view of the great principles of historical development. In the third part of this little book Engels deals with a very interesting question which still disturbs the minds of philosophers, and concerning which much discussion goes on even among the materialists; that is the question as to the effect of religion upon social progress. Feuerbach had made the statement that periods of social progress are marked by religious changes. He uses religion as a synonym for human love, forcing the meaning of the word religion from the Latin "religare," "to tie," in order to give it an etymological and derivative meaning in support of his statement, a controversial trick for which he is rebuked by Engels. The declaration that great historical revolutions are accompanied by religious changes is declared by Engels not to be true, except in a limited degree as regards the three great world-religions--Christianity, Mahommedanism and Buddhism. Engels declared that the change in religion simultaneous with economic and political revolution stopped short with the bourgeois revolt which was made without any appeal to religion whatsoever. It is evident that this is not entirely true, for in the English-speaking countries, at all events, not only the bourgeois but frequently also the proletarian movements attempt to justify themselves from Scripture. The teachings of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount are frequently called to the aid of the revolutionary party; Christian Socialists, in the English and American, not the continental sense of the term, as such are admitted to the International Congresses; and other evidences of the compatibility of religion with the proletarian movement can be traced.