Mr. Roberts will now speak for a quarter of an hour. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I only wish Mr. Bradlaugh would employ the opportunity he has during his option of questioning me for 15 minutes, to put to me that host of difficulties he says I did not answer, instead of wasting the time with uncertain and impracticable issues which do not really affect the question, though apparently to the point.
Positive evidences are far more profitable to consider than mere gaps and negations.
The positive argument is more powerful to sustain a proposition than an attempt to grapple with multitudinous details of an opposing character, which are capable, with deliberation and coolness, of being harmonised with the affirmative, but which, in the short time allowed to the disputants, and in the heat of discussion, are not capable of being treated in a satisfactory manner, if the main duty of marshalling the positive evidence is to be performed. He has not yet attempted to touch those evidences, and, to-night, for the second time, he has said that it is not his business to do so. He tries rather to inveigle me into the consideration of details which would conceal the general argument from view. Pursuing that policy, then, I recall your attention to the great and unimpeachable facts connected with the apostle Paul. I may mention, as a singular illustration of the truth of this remark, that the late Lord Lyttelton, in his early days, stood on Mr. Bradlaugh's ground in being a sceptic, and in connection with another gentleman, he undertook to prove the fallacy of the Scriptures by an analysis of the case of Paul.