Socialism," thus testifies to the relation existing between Socialism and religion:
"In what sense Socialism is not religious will now be clear. It utterly despises the other world with all its stage properties--that is, the present objects of religion." ["Religion of Socialism," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 52 of 1891 edition.]
Who could imagine any more convincing testimony of the atheistic and anti-religious nature of the Socialist movement than the following words of the English Socialist, James Leathan, in "Socialism and Character":
"At the present moment I cannot remember a single instance of a person who is at one and the same time a really earnest and intelligent Socialist and an orthodox Christian. Those who do not openly attack the church and the fabric of Christianity, show but scant respect to either the one or the other in private.... And while all of us are thus indifferent to the church, many of us are frankly hostile to her. Marx, Lassalle and Engels among earlier Socialists; Morris, Bax, Hyndman, Guesde and Bebel among present-day Socialists--are all more or less avowed atheists; and what is true of the more notable men of the party is almost equally true of the rank and file the world over."