SECULARISM

is a philosophy of life, the gist of which consists in the advocacy of free thought. Secularists believe that the best means of arriving at the truth to place perfect confidence in the operations of human reason. They do not consider that faculty to be infallible, but they think that reason should only be corrected by reason, and that no restraint, penal, moral, or social, should be placed upon holding, expre ing, or acting up to an opinion intelligently formed, and sincerely held, however contrary that opinion maybe to those generally held. They regard scepticism (the questioning of traditional beliefs) as a moral duty, but their creed cannot be called sceptical, since they are not content to doubt, but when they find it impo ible to feel absolute conviction on any point, they confe their ignorance, and leave unproved. They believe in the doctrine of Utilitarianism. Secularism in England was the offshoot ot Robert Owen’s socialism, but its direct founder was George Holyoake of Birmingham, born in 1817. It was through him that affirmations were legalized in place of oaths, and his succe or, Charles Brad laugh, refused to take the parliamentary oath, and brought in an Oaths Bill in 1888.