"a polyphyletic origin-that is, it was formulated by "a number of philosophers at different times and in "different places, quite independently of each other. "Otherwise it must be assumed that Jesus derived it "from some other Oriental source, from ancient "Semitic, Indian, Chinese, or especially Buddhistic "traditions, as has been proved in the case of most "of the other Christian doctrines" (Ibid., pp. 359-60).

"Superstition intensifies a man. It makes him "more of what he was before. An evil-natured "person who takes fright at hell-fire becomes the "most malevolent of human beings" (Winwood Reade, The Martrydom of Man, p. 357).

THE ART OF LYING

Ar a dinner of the Rationalist Press Association in 1911 I asserted that the missionaries are, and always have been, the greatest liars on the face of the earth, and that a good deal of our misconception regarding China and the nations of the East was due to missionary falsehood. I advocated the establishment of a militant Anti-missionary Society to combat the evil influence of the misguided missionaries. My remarks will be reproduced in the second part of this Scrap-Book, but it is necessary to say a few words here on the general subject of ecclesiastical prevarication. The version of Christian history and influence given by the foregoing authorities is so different from what is generally believed that there is clearly a good deal of blank untruthfulness in Christian works.

Carlyle, one of our greatest philosophers and one of the best informed men in the world, referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the Church that lies," and a more recent writer has christened the Church of England "the great lying Church," a name which is applied to the Roman Catholic Church in America.

If anyone wishes to ascertain to what extent the followers of this great Church will deviate from the truth, let him read a Roman Catholic history, written in the Middle Ages, or even a Roman Catholic History of Ireland written at the present time. To these pious writers truth is not at all a factor in the equation; truth is not good enough for history. The followers of this great religion demand

something much stronger, as will be seen by a few illustrations which I have given in this volume.

A good example of Roman Catholic lying in recent times will be found in the excellent work of Eugene Simon, and also in a book entitled Les Chinois Peints Par Eux-Mêmes, by the Attaché Militaire de Chine. at Paris.

The French Society of La Sainte Enfance have a missionary station in the interior of China, and in a report which they published some years ago they gave a heartrending account of how the Chinese at that place destroyed female babes by giving them to swine to eat. This report greatly offended the Chinese, and they remonstrated through their Paris Legation against the publication of such an outrageous falsehood; nevertheless, the next annual report contained the same story, and the Legation could do nothing to prevent the publication of this falsehood every year.

Eugene Simon, in his travels, visited the place where these events were supposed to have taken place, and saw the priest in charge. He asked him why it was that he persisted in publishing the swine story every year, when it had been denied over and over again and proved to be false. His reply was: "That petite histoire brings to us over a million francs a year; it is the best asset we have."

But it should not be supposed for a single moment that the Catholics are the only Christians that lie. When Dr. Torrey, an American evangelist, came to England a few years ago to save the souls of Englishmen that would otherwise have perished, it was found that it was quite impossible for him to tell the truth.

This will be gone into more fully in a later chapter on Infanticide.

He said things in his sermons which he knew to be absolute falsehoods regarding contemporary history in the United States; and, although the falsity of his assertions was pointed out to him over and over again, he still continued to lie. Finally, the saintly Mr. Stead took the matter up, and denounced him as a liar.

In almost every Protestant Church in England or America you will find that the young people are taught that Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Colonel Ingersoll all recanted, and expressed their great sorrow when they came to die. Although they passed away peacefully, the clergy refer to their deaths as being of a most horrible character, knowing all the time that the whole story is a falsehood. Even Mr. Roosevelt, when he was a much younger man, described Thomas Paine as a "filthy little atheist "three lies in three words.

On one occasion, when I was visiting the British Museum of Natural History, I saw a Church of England parson, accompanied by quite a number of children, stop before the statue of Darwin. The parson said: “ Darwin adhered to his theories during his lifetime, but when he was about to die he repented." The parson when he said this knew it was a lie. When Darwin's work, The Origin of Species, was first published, I read it with absorbing pleasure-in fact, I was completely infatuated with it. It appeared to me that this great man had proved all he set out to prove, and had left no possible loophole for attack. Professor Andrew White, the historian, in speaking of the advent of this famous book and of its effect upon the parsons, said: "It was like "running a ploughshare through an ant-hill; they "ran in every direction in a great state of excitement,

"not knowing what to do." However, in the end, as no argument was possible, they were forced to resort to lying and personal abuse, and these they exercised to the fullest extent of their powers. No one was able to attack the Origin of Species by fair argument. Later on clergymen of every sect relied altogether upon falsehood, and the same vicious practice obtains to-day. Ask a Catholic about the work, and he will say: "Oh, Science is bankrupt-everyone has dis"carded the Darwinian theory." The Protestants say: "Yes, there was a lot said about it in the early "seventies, but the whole thing has been abandoned; "nobody believes in it now-in fact, you never hear "it mentioned." The men who make these statements know very well that the Darwinian theory is accepted by the whole world of thinking men.

If anyone should wish to make a test in regard to Roman Catholic lying, let him ask a Catholic if his Church ever burnt anyone at the stake on account of religious belief, or the lack of it; or if it ever persecuted or killed people on account of a difference in religious belief. Ask him if his Church burnt Bruno at the stake and persecuted Galileo. He will deny it, in spite of the fact that scores of Roman Catholic clerics have written tons of literature to justify the burning of heretics and witches. Of late years the state of civilisation is such that people are shocked and horrified by the acts that were justified by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The persecution of Galileo is a thorn in their side, and not a few Roman Catholic priests have attempted to discover some way of evading it by untruth. But all systems of falsehood relating to Galileo have proved failures, and at least one Roman Catholic priest has since admitted this, advising his brethren