Are we never to deviate from the beliefs of our forefathers, be the evidence against those beliefs never so strong? How, then, shall knowledge increase or progress be possible? Presumptuous to deny what great men in the past believed? Then the world is flat, and the sun goes round the world, and polygamy is right, and Saturday is the Sabbath day, and all Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians, and pagans will be damned, and the abolition of witch-burning was a mistake, and Luther was presumptuous for resisting the authority of the Church of Rome, and Dr. Aked is presumptuous for differing from the Church of England. In such absurdities does the clerical mind entangle itself when it tries to think. Mr. Marson says that if he were a burglar he would spend some of the money he stole in paying lecturers to teach the doctrine that men ought not to be blamed for their actions. But if all men were trained upon our principles there _would not be any burglars_. However, let us see what Mr. Marson means. He means that if punishment and blame were abolished burglars and other wrongdoers might go scot free, and might rob, or kill, or cheat; and no one should say them nay. But Mr. Marson is a clergyman, and does not understand. It is a strange notion this, that if you do not blame a man you cannot interfere with him. We do not blame a lunatic: even a Christian does not blame a lunatic. But we do not allow a madman to go round with an axe and murder people. We do not hang a madman, nor punish him in any way. If a murderer is proved to be mad he is pardoned and--restrained. So, although we might not blame a thief, or a sweater, or a poisoner, it does not follow that we should allow him to go on stealing, or sweating, or murdering. We propose to defend society from the individual; but we propose to do more than that: we propose to do what the Christian does not attempt to do--we propose to defend the individual from society. The Christian method of dealing with the burglar is to neglect him in his childhood and his youth, to allow him to become a burglar, from sheer lack of opportunity to become anything else, and then to lecture him and send him to prison. But, my Christian friends, how do you find your system work? If you tell Bill Sykes he is a bad man, that the angels will not love him, that the fat successful sweater or idler will loathe and despise him, and if you send Bill to prison and hard labour for a term of years, will it always happen that William will repent and reform, and become a building society or a joint-stock bank himself? Or do you find that poor Bill hardens his heart, and hates you; and that he comes out of your shameful prison, and from your cowardly and savage whips and chains, and burgles and drinks again, and learns to carry a revolver? If we want to get rid of evil we must remove the _cause_ of evil. It is useless to punish the victim.