National Secular Society's Tracts.—No. 11.

The Atheist's Creed.

We believe in one all-embracing universe, not made by hands nor gods; in one grand totality of existence, that was, and is, and (for aught that we can imagine to the contrary) ever shall be; in infinitely varied Nature, whereof all worlds and we are part.

But we believe especially in Man, her noblest offspring our common brother, our joy, and hope, and love, and trust. For as we know he has risen from the lowest forms of life, and from barbarism, so we do know and believe that he can rise, does rise, and will rise higher and higher in knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and happiness while brave and honest men, true lovers of their kind, lead onward; and so the heart-rending sum total of human misery shall be diminished year by year, and men shall happier, nobler be; in which sure and certain hope we work without ceasing, and are filled with earnest strength and joy, that no persecution, nor slander, nor suffering can take away. For man, our brother, suffered under superstition, and was dead and buried in dense ignorance; he descended to belief in hell, and to manifold other delusions, infamies, and miseries; but he has nevertheless ascended into civilisation, and will yet ascend in true manhood, just and fearless, wise and loving, to brotherly co-operation, world-wise, glad, and glorious.

We believe in nature's laws, sternly unforgiving to those who would ignore and break them, but kindly and full of blessing to those who study and obey. We believe in the holiness, the moral and physical healthiness of work and of play. We believe in the Communion of Man; the punishment of sins; the active immortality of all good actions, words, and thoughts, which are indeed "twice blessed," blessing "him that, gives and him that take." We believe most solemnly in duty as the ruling principle of life and conduct, and in love, honor, respect, and reverence, which we, for all men's sake, will make its additional reward and stimulus. We believe intensely in honesty and justice, and in the ceaseless pursuit of truth and wisdom, the ceaseless strife, with falsehood and folly. We believe in the education of all men in the purest and loftiest morality and emotion built on the rock of fact and reason, and not on mere drift-sands of barbarous tradition, not on legendary page 2 miracles fast becoming incredible to all thoughtful men. We believe in the substitution of naturalism for supernaturalism, i.e., in the careful replacement of belief by knowledge, of tradition by science, of faith by reason, of godly fear by human love, of blind superstition by intelligent morality, of idle prayer and unneeded worship by thoughtful study and earnest work for human beings, until religion, that mischievous and all-absorbing delusion, perverting and wasting untold human effort and ever bringing forth fiercely obstructive broods of blind unreasoning prejudice, hatred, cruelty, and crime, shall be as powerless to stay the progress of mankind as already are the closely allied beliefs in witchcraft, demonology, ghosts, trial by ordeal, astrology, magic, &c. We believe in the moral innocence of disbelieving a lie, and in the moral guilt of unenquiring credulity. We believe in right, though a hell of eternal torture were its penalty, and we know that wrong, injustice, cruelty, and fraud should be hated and rejected, though an omnipotence commanded, or an eternity of bliss rewarded.

We believe in schools and libraries, in savings' banks and lecture halls, in books and newspapers, in music and poetry, in temperance and cleanliness, both moral and physical, in industry, in good temper, in the cheerful and rational enjoyment of life's duties and pleasures, in happy homes as the ultimate goal of all human endeavors.

We believe in science, in brave, patient, toiling science, whose precious discoveries and teachings enable us to govern nature by obeying her. We accept the deep lessons of history; we believe in freedom of person, of trade, of speech, of pen, of thought; in self-government (beginning at home in each individual), in progress, personal, national, Universal; in arbitration as the only wise and just substitute for the crimes and horrors of war, and in the widest patriotism, knowing no distinction of race nor color.

W. P. Ball.