and governs it, and which nevertheless is entirely distinct and different in substance from the universe—then I am prepared to deny that any such existence can be."
And later in the same debate (on the following evening) he added:—
"I said last night that the Atheist does not say there is no God, so long as the word simply represents an indefinite quantity or quality—of you don't know what, you don't know where: but I object to the God of Christianity, and absolutely deny it. In all ages men have fashioned their Gods according to their want of knowledge—the more ignorant the people, the more numerous their deities, because the Gods represented their personifications of force. Men beheld phenomena beyond and independent of human ability, and they ascribed these phenomena to deities, the 'God' in each case representing their ignorance."
In a debate with the Rev. A. J. Harrison in the September of the same year Mr. Bradlaugh said:
"The position of the Atheist was that he did not affirm a universe, and outside it a God; but he said, 'By your knowledge of the conditions of existence, so you may shape, and so will be shaped, your thought and your conduct, and that thought and that conduct which tend to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and to the least injury of any—that thought and that conduct are moral, whatever your religious profession may be.' But that guide to morality was not got out of any system of Theism; it was purely Atheistic—that was, it was found outside God, without God."
In such pamphlets as "Is there a God?" and "A Plea for Atheism" Mr. Bradlaugh has also fully and clearly stated his position as an Atheist.
Having given my father's opinions in his own words as published at different periods of his earlier Freethought advocacy, I will now show his position during the last months of his life. In the National Reformer for November 9th, 1890—less than three months before his death—he printed a statement entitled "My Heresy now and Thirty-six Years Since", which I reproduce in its entirety. In October-November, 1889, he had been very ill, lying for some time between life and death. The unscrupulous made this an opportunity to put forward the suggestion that during his illness he had
