Mr. George Jacob Holyoake is also one of their lecturers; and if he be not antagonistic, what is he? Of all irrepressible men Mr. Holyoake is undoubtedly the most so. You meet him everywhere. Not a social science meeting, nor a political gathering, nor a philosophical discussion exists within reach of London but he is present at it, to take part in its discussions as the exponent of the views, and feelings, and desires of the British working man. If London is demonstrative, as when a Garibaldi appears upon the stage, foremost of those who meet to do him honour is Mr. Holyoake. In the House of Commons he is similarly prominent. In the Speaker’s gallery or in the lobby you may see him all night long, here speaking to a member, there listening to one as if the care of all the country rested on his shoulders. I don’t fancy Mr. Holyoake is the great man he takes himself to be. I deny his right to be the exponent of the class of whom he condescends to be the ornament and shield. I admit his boundless activity, his wonderful talent for intrusion, the cleverness of his talk. I admit, too, the energy with which in the course of a now extended career he has travelled the land, with a view to convince his fellow-men that there is no future, that he who says there is but repeats the old worn-out fiction of the priests, and that it is for this world rather than the next that we must labour and strive. Undoubtedly for Mr. Holyoake some extenuation must be made. A man may well doubt the Christianity which instead of removing his religious doubts throws him into gaol for the crime of expressing them. Nevertheless, I may doubt, if not the sincerity,—for about that there can be no question—at any rate the truth and wisdom of his creed; and may, after all, prefer the light of the Gospel to that which he asks me to admire. I may admit that there have been quacks, and impostors, and charlatans in the religious world—that the Church has fearfully failed in its mission—that, armed with the sword of the State, it has been often a curse and a blight—but it does not follow that the truth, of which the Church should be the living organization, has no existence, that it has no mission in this world, that the Bible is to be trampled under foot, that the Saviour is to be abolished, and that for man, instead of the narrow path and the heavenly crown, nothing is left but that he should eat, and drink, and die. Such, however, I believe, is Mr. Holyoake’s Gospel. As to his utterances on Sunday when I heard him, they were of the poorest character possible. The subject was the common people; and after describing three or four classes of them, he finished with the inculcation of the by no means original idea—that they were not so bad as they seem, that we had to respect in them the humanity which, under favourable circumstances, might be developed into something better. I never heard Mr. Holyoake preach before, and I shall take care never to hear him again.