Christianity and Secularism

Christianity and Secularism is George Sexton’s written debate with the secularist Charles Watts, printed in The Secular Review in 1880–81 and published as a book in 1882, arguing which of the two systems is better suited to meet the wants of mankind — a set-piece exchange that shows Sexton making his case against an able opponent from the movement he had left.

The letters alternate, twelve from each side, and Watts’s are printed entire. Sexton had given his reasons for renouncing infidelity elsewhere, in the sermons published as “Light in the Cloud”; here he answers a case he had once made himself, from the side of orthodox Christianity.

Because Sexton left no single tidy autobiography, this debate is among the fullest firsthand statements of his post-conversion position. It is valuable precisely as the testimony of an insider — a practiced secularist advocate turning his training on the platform to the defense of the faith, in his own words.

Our public-domain edition gives the complete debate, both sides, in a clean, readable modern format with clear type, and we link to a free source as well.

This edition is the written debate between George Sexton and Charles Watts, printed in The Secular Review and published in book form in 1882. The text follows the Toronto reprint.

HALF OF THIS BOOK ARGUES AGAINST CHRISTIANITY, and it does so ably. That is not an accident of the source and it is not something we have tried to soften. The book is twelve letters from each side, printed alternately, and Charles Watts was not a straw man: he was co-editor of the National Reformer with Charles Bradlaugh, a founder of the Secular Review, and one of the most effective platform speakers the secularist movement had. He remained a secularist until he died in 1906. His letters are here entire, in their place, with nothing trimmed.

We publish it because an argument you have only heard summarised by its opponents is an argument you have not heard. Sexton had been on Watts’s side of the platform — he was among the most scientifically credentialed of the Victorian secularist lecturers before he returned to orthodox Christianity — and he is answering a case he once made himself. A reader who wants to know whether the Christian answer holds is better served by reading the objection in the objector’s own words than by reading anyone’s account of it.

WHAT IS IN THE VOLUME AND NOT IN THIS EDITION. The Toronto binding carries two further works of Sexton’s behind the debate, each with its own title page: “Light in the Cloud: Two Sermons” and “Biblical Difficulties Dispelled”, followed by eleven pages of the publisher’s advertisements. They are separate books that happen to be bound with this one, and they are not part of the debate this edition sets out to give. They are in the free scan linked from the book’s page.

What has been repaired is damage done by the scanner, not by either author. Running heads and page numbers have been removed; words broken at a line ending have been rejoined, including the ones whose hyphen the scan lost entirely — “neces sary”, “autho rity”, “recog nition”; letters the scanner confused have been restored where the book’s own vocabulary settles the question. Both men’s spelling and punctuation stand, and so do the places where they misquote each other.

Prepared by T.S. Baker Books, 2026.