Yet it is men of this stamp who have usually set the Blasphemy Laws in operation.

These infamous laws are allowed to slumber for years, until some contemptible wretch, to gratify his private malice or a baser passion, rouses them into vicious activity, and fastens their fangs on men whose characters are far superior to his own.

With this fact before them, it is strange that Christians should continue to regard these detestable laws as a bulwark of their faith, or in any way calculated to defend it against the inroads of "infidelity." Sir Henry Tyler may after all have been a tool in the hands of others, for the _St.Stephen's Review_ has admitted that the object of this prosecution was to cripple Mr.Bradlaugh in his parliamentary struggle, and we expected a prosecution long before it came, in consequence of some conversation on the subject overheard in the Tea Room of the House of Commons.

But this, if true, while it heightens his insignificance, in no wise lessens his infamy; and it certainly does not impair, but rather increases, the force of my strictures on the Blasphemy Laws.
Lord Coleridge, in the Court of Queen's Bench, on the occasion of Mr.
Bradlaugh's trial, sarcastically alluded to Sir Henry Tyler as "a person entirely unknown to me"-- a very polite way of saying, "What does such an obscure person mean by assuming the _role_ of Defender of the Faith ?" His lordship must also have had that individual in his mind when, on the occasion of my own trial with Mr.Ramsey in the same Court on April 25, 1883, he delivered himself of these sentiments in the course of his famous summing-up: "A difficult form of virtue is quietly and unostentatiously to obey what you believe to be God's will in your own lives.
It is not very easy to do that, and if you do it, you don't make much noise in the world.

It is very easy to turn upon somebody who differs from you, and in the guise of zeal for God's honor, to attack somebody who differs from you in point of opinion, but whose life may be very much more pleasing to God, whom you profess to honor, than your own.