The disciples of Secularism should learn to value the right of Freethought as the palladium of their faith, as the basis of all other blessings—moral and material, as well as intellectual. They should learn to revere the memory of the martyrs of their faith, and recognize the importance of their services to the cause of modern civilization and its sacred principles; but they should also learn to recognize the magnitude of the remaining task. It is no trifle that the prevalent system of ethics and the temporal and eternal hopes of millions of our brethren are still based on a lie. It is no trifle that the health and happiness of millions of our fellow-men are still sacrificed on the altar of that untruth by the suppression of public recreations on the only day when a large plurality of our working-men find their only chance of leisure. It is no trifle that honest men are still branded as “Infidels,” “renegades,” and “scoffers,” for refusing to kneel in the temple of a nature-hating fanatic. The struggle against the spirits of darkness is by no means yet decided in Italy, where the arch-hierarch is spinning restless intrigues to regain the power which for ages made Europe a Gehenna of misery and despotism. Nor in Spain, where a swarm of clerical vampires is still sucking the life-blood of an impoverished nation. Nor in Austria and southern Germany, where the alliance of church and state remains a constant menace to the scant liberties of the people. Freethinkers need not underrate the influence of individual efforts to recognize the superior advantage of organized coöperation, so urgently needed for the reform of Sabbath laws, of press laws, and the educational system of the numerous colleges still intrusted to the control of the Jesuitical enemies of science. The strength-in-union principle should encourage the oft-debated projects for the establishment of Freethought colleges (as well as Freethought communities); but still more decisive results could be hoped from that union of the powers of knowledge and of moral courage which has never yet failed to insure the triumph of social reforms. We should cease to plead for favors where we can claim an indisputable right. We should cease to admit the right of mental prostitutes to enforce the penalties of social ostracism against the champions of science; but we, in our turn, should deserve the prestige of that championship by scorning the expedients of the moral cowardice which strains at gnats and connives at beams, attacking superstition in the harmless absurdities of its ceremonial institutions, and sparing the ruinous dogmas that have drenched the face of earth with the blood of her noblest children, and turned vast areas of garden-lands into hopeless deserts. The skeptics who scoff at the inconsistencies of a poor clergyman who tries in vain to reconcile the instincts of his better nature with the demands of an anti-natural creed, should themselves be consistent enough to repudiate