And even in the modified form of Protestant Christianity, that creed remains the rancorous enemy of Freethought. The doctrine of the Galilean Buddhist is essentially a doctrine of pessimism, of other-worldliness and Nature-hating renunciation of human reason and earthly prosperity, and therefore wholly irreconcilable with the promotion of progressive science and secular happiness. Philosophers have for centuries assembled their scholars undisturbed by the songs and dances of pagan festivals; the exponents of secular science have enjoyed the good-will of health-loving Hebrews and Mohammedans, and will find a modus vivendi with the Spiritualists and Theosophists of the future; but Secularism, “the Science of Happiness on Earth,” can never hope to conciliate the dogmatists of a creed that denies the value of life itself, and wages war against Nature as well as against the claims of natural science. D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT. Wherever Reason surrenders to Dogma, the exponents of that dogma will claim unreasonable prerogatives. Irresponsible dogmatists have never failed to pursue the interests of their creed at the expense of the interests of mankind. The lessons of Science could not be reconciled with the doctrines of Antinaturalism, and in the interest of that doctrine the spiritual taskmasters of medieval Europe suppressed Science by methods that have retarded the progress of mankind for thirteen hundred years. The suppression of Freethought enabled the enemies of Nature to complete their triumph by the suppression of social and political liberty; and for ages the church has been the faithful ally of Despotism. The priest-ridden rulers of the expiring Roman empire and the priest-ridden rabble of the Roman provinces assisted in the persecution of Freethought, and that crime against reason was avenged by the development of a system of spiritual tyranny which at last forced even princes to kiss the dust of Canossa and degraded the lot of peasants beneath that of savages and wild beasts. The war against natural science avenged itself in the neglect of agriculture, and the enormous spread of deserts, which the priests of the Galilean miracle-monger proposed to reclaim by prayer-meetings. The surrender of Freethought to faith sealed the fate of millions of heretics and “sorcerers,” who expiated an imaginary crime in the agonies of the stake. Not the abrogation of civil rights, not the intimidation of princes and commoners, but the eradication of Freethought, enabled the priests of an unnatural creed to enforce their hideous superstitions upon the prisoners of the numberless monasteries which for a series of centuries combined all the conditions for the systematic suppression of moral, intellectual, and personal freedom.