 CHAPTER IV Ingresaul's Lecture on the Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child, Part II From the book The Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingresaul, Volume II. This is the second of two parts of Ingresaul's lecture on the liberty of man, woman, and child. Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy man. I don't see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty millions of dollars, or ten millions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. I should not think he could do it. Do you know I have known men who would trust their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not with their pocketbook? Not with a dollar. When I see a man of that kind I always think he knows which of these articles is the most valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar. Think of her having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two dollars, or for fifty cents. What did you do with that dollar I gave you last week? Think of having a wife that was afraid of you. What kind of children do you expect to have with a beggar and a coward for their mother? Oh, I tell you, if you have but a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, spend it like a king. Spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests. Just the way to spend it, I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. If it's got to go, let it go. Get the best you can for your family. Try to look as well as you can yourself. When you used to go courting, how nice you looked. Ah, your eye was bright, your step was light, and you just put on the very best look you could. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to suppose that a woman is going to love you always looking as bad as you can? Think of it. Any woman on earth will be true to you forever when you do your level best. Some people tell me you're doctrine about loving and wives and all that is splendid for the rich, but it won't do for the poor. I tell you tonight there is on the average more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich, and the meanest but with love in it is fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That's my doctrine. You can't be so poor but that you can help somebody. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to borrower and lender both. Don't tell me that you have got to be rich. We have all a false standard of greatness in the United States. We think here that a man to be great must be notorious, must be extremely wealthy, or his name must be between the lips of rumour. It is all nonsense. It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be powerful to be happy, and the happy man is the successful man. Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. Joy is wealth. A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, fit for a dead deity almost, and gazed into the great circle at the bottom of it, in the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble at last rest the ashes of that restless man. I looked over the balustrade, and I thought about the career of Napoleon. I could see him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge at Lodi. I saw him in Egypt fighting the battle of the pyramids. I saw him cross the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Austerlitz. I saw him with his army scattered and dispersed before the blast. I saw him at Leipzig when his army was defeated and he was taken captive. I saw him escape. I saw him land again upon French soil and retake an empire by the force of his own genius. I saw him captured once more and again at Saint Helena with his arms behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea, and I thought of the orphans and widows he had made. I thought of the tears that had been shed for his glory. I thought of the only woman who ever loved him who had been pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition, and as I looked at the sarcophagus I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing and ripening in the autumn sun. I would rather have been that peasant with my wife by my side and my children upon my knees twining their arms of affection about me. I would rather have been that poor French peasant and gone down at last to the eternal promiscuity of the dust followed by those who loved me. I would a thousand times rather have been that French peasant than that imperial personative of force and murder, and so I would ten thousand times. It is not necessary to be great, to be happy. It is not necessary to be rich, to be just and generous, and to have a heart filled with divine affection. No matter whether you are rich or poor, use your wife as though she were a splendid creation, and she will fill your life with perfume and joy, and do you know it is a splendid thing for me to think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the music of years, if you really love her, you will always see the face you loved and won. And a woman who really loves a man does not see that he grows older, he is not decrepit, he does not tremble, he is not old. She always sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in that way. I like to think of all passions. Love is eternal, and, as Shakespeare says, although time with his sickle can rob ruby lips and sparkling eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he cannot quite touch love that reaches even to the end of the tomb. And to love in that way, and then go down the hill of life together, as you go down here perhaps the laughter of grandchildren, the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless branches of age. I believe in the fireside, I believe in the democracy of home, I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty and equality with those we love. If women have been slaves, what shall I say of children? Of the little children in the alleys and sub-sellers, the little children who turn pale when they hear their father's footsteps, little children who run away when they only hear their names called by the lips of another, little children, the children of poverty, the children of crime, the children of brutality, wherever you are, flotsam and jetsam upon the wild mad sea of life, my heart goes out to you one and all. I tell you the children have the same rights that we have, and we ought to treat them as though they were human beings, and they should be reared by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and not by brutality. That is my idea of children. When your little child tells a lie, don't rush at him as though the world were about to go into bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will have liars for children. Do you know that? A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand, and weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course he lies. I thank mother nature that she has put ingenuity enough in the breast of a child when attacked by a brutal parent to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie. When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with him. Tell him you have told hundreds of them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way. You have tried it. Tell him, as the man did in Maine when his boy left home, John Honesty is the best policy. I have tried both. Just be honest with him. Imagine now you are about to whip a child of five years of age. What is the child to do? Suppose a man as much larger than you are, larger than a child five years old, should come at you with liberty pole in hand, and in a voice of thunder shout, Who broke the plate? There is not a solitary one of you who wouldn't swear you never saw it, or that it was cracked when you found it. Why not be honest with these children? Just imagine a man who deals in stocks, putting false rumors afloat. Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood for evading the truth when he makes half of his own living that way. Think of a minister punishing his child for not telling all he thinks. Just think of it. When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms. Let it feel your heart beat against its heart. Let the child know that you really and truly and sincerely love it. Yet some Christians, good Christians, when a child commits a fault, drive it from the door and say, never do you darken this house again. Think of that. And then these same people work down on their knees and ask God to take care of the child they have driven from home. I will never ask God to take care of my children unless I am doing my level best in that same direction. But I will tell you what I say to my children. Go where you will. Commit what crime you may. Fall to what depth of degradation you may. You can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, my heart to you. As long as I live, you shall have no more sincere friend. Do you know I have seen some people who acted as though they thought when the Saviour said, suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven, that he had a raw hide under his mantle and made that remark to get the children within striking distance? I don't believe in the government of the lash. If any one of you ever expect to whip your children again after you hear me, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger, and then the face of the little child with eyes swimming in tears, and the little chin dimpled with fear like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind, have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot find a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery when the maples are clad in bright colors, and little scarlet runners are coming like poems of regret from the sad heart of the earth, than to go out to the cemetery and sit down upon the grave and look at this photograph, and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is wrong. It is no way to raise children. Make your home happy, be honest with them, divide fairly with them in everything, give them a little liberty, and you cannot drive them out of the house. They will want to stay there. Make home pleasant, let them play any game they want to. Don't be so foolish as to say, you may roll balls on the ground, but you must not roll them on green cloth. You may knock them with a mallet, but you must not push them with a cue. You may play with little pieces of paper which have authors written on them, but you must not have kids. Think of it. You may go to a minstrel show where people blacken themselves up and degrade themselves and imitate humanity below themselves, but you must not go to the theatre and see the characters of immortal genius put upon the stage. Why? Well, I can't think of any reason in the world except minstrel is a word of two syllables, and theatre has three. Let children have some daylight at home if you want to keep them there, and don't commence at the cradle and yell, don't, don't, stop. That is nearly all that is said to a young one, from the cradle until he is twenty-one years old. And when he comes of age other people begin saying don't, and the church says don't, and the party that he belongs to says don't. Don't despise that way of going through this world. Let us have a little liberty, just a little bit. There is another thing. In old times, you know, they thought some days were too good for a child to enjoy himself in. When I was a boy, Sunday was considered altogether too good to be happy in, and Sunday used to commence then when the sun went down on Saturday night. That was to get good ready, a kind of running jump, and when the sun went down, a darkness ten thousand times deeper than that of night fell on that house. Nobody said a word there, nobody laughed, and the child that looked the sickest was regarded the most pious. You couldn't crack hickory-nuts, you couldn't chew gum, and if you laughed it was only another evidence of the total depravity of man. That was a solemn night, and the next morning everybody looked sad, mournful, dispeptic, and thousands of people think they have religion when they have only got dyspepsia. Thousands. But there is nothing in this world that would break up the old Orthodox churches as quick as some specific four dyspepsia, some sure cure. Then we went to church, and the minister was up in a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sounding board over him, and he commenced with firstly, and went on about twenty-thirdly, and then around by way of application, and then divided it off again once or twice, and after having put in about two hours he got to revelations. We were not allowed to have any fire, even if it was in the winter. It was thought to be outrageous to be comfortable while you are thanking the Lord, and the first church that ever had a stove put in it in New England was broken up on that account. Then we went anooning, and then came the catechism, the chief end of man. We went through that, and then this same sermon was preached commencing at the other end, and going back. After that was over we started for home, solemn and sad. Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot. Not a word was said, and when we got home, if we had been good boys they would take us up to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. It did cheer me. When I looked at those tombs the comforting reflection came to my mind that this kind of thing couldn't last always. Then we had some certain books that we read just by way of cheerfulness. There was Milner's History of the Wilderness, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and Jinkins on the Atonement. I used to read Jinkins on the Atonement, and I have often thought the Atonement would have to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man who would write a book like that for a boy to read. Well, you know the Sunday had to go at last, and the moment that the sun went down on Sunday night we were free. About four or five o'clock we would go to see how the sun was coming out. Sometimes it seemed to me that it was just stopping from pure cussetness, but finally it had to go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the horizon out would come our traps and we would give three cheers for liberty once more. In those times it was thought wrong for a child to laugh on Sunday. Think of that! A little child, a little boy, could go out in the garden, and there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and this little fellow would lean up against the tree, and there would be a bird singing and swinging and thinking about four little speckled eggs warmed by the breast of its mate, singing and swinging, the music coming rippling out of its throat, and the flowers blossoming in the air full of perfume, and the great white clouds floating in the sky, and that little boy would lean up against that trunk and think of hell. That's true! I have heard them preach when I sat in the pew, and my feet didn't come within eighteen inches of the floor about that hell. And they said, suppose that once in a million years a bird would come from some far distant planet and carry in its bill a grain of sand, the time would finally come when the last atom composing this earth would be carried away, and the old preacher said in order to impress upon the boys the length of time they would have to stay, it wouldn't be sun up in hell yet. Think of that to preach to children! I tell you my friends, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a little child will make it holier still, no day! And yet at that time the minds of children were polluted by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment, and I denounce it today as an infamous doctrine beyond the power of language to express. Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment for the children of men come from? It came from that wretch in the dugout. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir from the animals, and the doctrine of eternal punishment was born in the eyes of snakes when they hung in fearful coils watching their prey. It was a doctrine born of the howling and barking and growling of wild beasts. It was born in the grin of the hyenas and of the depraved chatter of the baboons, and I despise it with every drop of my blood. Tell me there is a god in the serene heaven that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief. There have been more men who died in their sins according to your orthodox religion than there are leaves on all the forests of this world ten thousand times over. Tell me they are in hell. Tell me they are to be punished for ever and ever. I denounce it as an infamous lie, and when the great ship containing the hope and aspiration of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death and disaster, I will go down with the ship. I don't want to paddle off in any orthodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, and if there is a god who will damn his children for ever, I had rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous deity. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine, and I'll tell you why. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the heart of children. It has been a pain and terror to every man that ever believed it. It has filled the good with horror and fear, but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. I tell you it is a bad doctrine. I read in the papers today what Henry Ward Beecher, whom I regard as the most intellectual preacher in the pulpit of the United States, I will read from the paper what he said yesterday, and you will see an abstract of it in the New York Times of today. He has had the courage, and he has had the magnificent manhood, to say, I say to you, and I swear to you by the wounds in the hands of Christ, I swear to you by the wounds in the body and feet of Christ, that this doctrine of eternal hell is a most infamous nightmare of theology. It never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, you minister, as you are, to stand at the portal of eternity, or the portal of the tomb, and fill the future with horror and with fear? You have no right to do it. I don't believe it, and neither do you. You would not sleep one night. Any man who believes it, who has got a decent heart in his bosom, will go insane. Yes, sir, a man that really believes that doctrine and does not go insane has got the conscience of a snake and the intellect of a hyena. Oh, I thank my stars that you do not believe it. You cannot believe it, and you never will believe it. Old Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, he is in heaven, I suppose, said, Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell? I tell you, yea, such will be their sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish their happiness. Think of these infamous doctrines that have been taught in the name of religion. Do not stuff these things into the minds of your children. Give them a chance. Let them read. Let them think. Do not treat your children like posts to be set in the orthodox road, but like trees that need light and sun and air. Be honest with them, be fair with them. In old times they used to make all children go to bed when they were not sleepy, and all of them got up when they were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when they are sleepy and get up when they are not, but they say that will do for the rich but not for the poor. Well if the poor have to wake their children early in the morning, it is as easy to wake them with a kiss as with a club. I believe in letting children commence at which end of the dinner they want to. Let them eat what they want. It is their business. They know what they want to eat, and if they have had their liberty from the first, they can beat any doctor in the world. All the improvement that has ever been made in medicine has been made by the recklessness of patients. Yes, sir, thousands and thousands of years the doctors wouldn't let a man have water in fever. Every now and then some fellow got reckless and said, I will die. I am so thirsty and drank two or three quarts of water and got well. And they kept that up until finally the doctor said, that is the best thing for a fever you can do. I have more confidence to agree with nature about these things than any of the conclusions of the schools. Just let your children have freedom and they will fall right into your ways and do just as you do. But you try to make them. And there is some magnificent splendid thing in the human heart that will not be driven. And you know it is the luckiest thing for this world that ever happened that people are so. What would we have been if the people in any age of the world had done just as the doctors told them? They would have been all dead. What would we have done if at any age of the world we had followed implicitly the direction of the church? We would have all been idiots, every one. It is a splendid thing that there is always some fellow who won't mind and will think for himself. And I believe in letting children think for themselves. I believe in having a family like a democracy. If there is anything splendid in this world it is a home of that kind. They used to tell us, let your victuals close your mouth. We used to eat as though it was a religious performance. I like to see the children about and everyone telling what he has seen and heard. I like to hear the clatter of the knives and spoons mingling with the laughter of their voices. I had rather hear it than any opera that has ever been put upon the boards. Let them have liberty. Let them have freedom. And I tell you your children will love you to death. Now I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I belong. I have two. My first excuse is that this is not a very good world to raise folks in anyway. It is not very well adapted to raising magnificent people. There's only a quarter of it land to start with. It is three times better fitted for raising fish than folks. And in that one quarter of land there is not a tenth part fit to raise people on. You can't raise people without a good climate. You have got to have the right kind of climate. And you have got to have certain elements in the soil or you can't raise good people. Do you know that there is only a little zigzag strip around the world within which have been produced all men of genius? The southern hemisphere has never produced a man of genius never and never will until civilization fighting the heat that way and the cold this widens this portion of the earth until it is capable of producing great men and great women. It is the same with men that it is with vegetation. You go into a garden and find their flowers growing. And as you go up the mountain the birch and the hemlock and the spruce are to be found. And as you go toward the top you find little stunted trees getting a miserable subsistence out of the crevices of the rocks. And you go on up and up and up until finally you find at the top little moss like freckles. You might as well try to raise flowers where those freckles grow as to raise great men and women where you haven't got the soil. I don't believe man ever came to any high station without woman. There's got to be some restraint, something to make you prudent, something to make you industrious. And in a country where you don't need any bed quilt but a cloud, revolution is the normal condition of the people. You've got to have the fireside. You've got to have the home. And there by the fireside will grow and bloom the fruits of the human race. I recollect a while ago I was in Washington when they were trying to annex Santo Domingo. They said, we want to take in Santo Domingo. Said I, we don't want it. Why, said they, it is the best climate the earth can produce. There is everything you want. Yes, said I, but it won't produce men. We don't want it. We have got soil enough now. Take 5,000 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents of colleges, and 5,000 solid businessmen and their families, and take them to Santo Domingo. And then you will see the effect of the climate. The second generation, you will see barefooted boys riding bareback on a mule with their hair sticking out at the top of their sombreros with a rooster under each arm going to a cock fight on Sunday. You have got to have the soil. You have got to have the climate. And you have got to have another thing. You have got to have the fireside. That is one excuse I have for us. The next excuse is that I think we came up from the lower animals. Else, how can you account for all this snake and hyena and jackal in man? Now, when I first heard that doctrine, I didn't like it. I felt sorry for people who had nothing but ancestors to be proud of. It touched my heart to think that they would have to go back to the Duke orangutan or the Duchess chimpanzee. I was sorry, and I hated to believe it. I don't know that it is truth now. I am not satisfied upon that question. I stand about eight to seven. I thought it over. I read about it. I read about these rudimentary bones and muscles. I didn't like that. I read that everybody had rudimentary muscles coming from the ear right down here, indicating, and the most intellectual people in the world have got them. I say, what are they? Rudimentary muscles? What kind of muscles? Muscles that your ancestors used to have fully developed. What for? To flap their ears with. Well, whether we ever had them or not, I know of lots of men who ought to have them yet. And finally I said, well, I guess we came up from the lower animals. I thought it all over the best I could. And I said, I guess we did. And after a while I began to like it. And I like it better now than I did before. Do you know that I would rather belong to a race that started with skullless vertebrae in the dim Laurentian seas, wiggling without knowing why they wiggled, swimming without knowing where they were going, but kept developing and getting a little further up, but a little further up all through the animal world. And finally striking this chap in the dugout and getting a little bigger, and this fellow calling that fellow a heretic, and that fellow calling the other an infidel, and so on. For in the history of the world, the man who has been ahead has always been called a heretic. Recollect this. I would rather come from a race that started from that skullless vertebrae and came up and up and up, and finally produced Shakespeare, who found the human intellect wallowing in a hut, and touched it with a wand of his genius, and it became a palestome and pinnacle. I would rather belong to a race that commenced then and produced Shakespeare, with the eternal hope of an infinite future for the children of progress leading from the far horizon, beckoning men forward, forward, and onward forever. I had rather belong to this race and commenced there with that hope than to have sprung from a perfect pair on which the Lord has lost money every day since. These are the excuses I have for my race. Now my friends, let me say another thing. I do not pretend to have floated even with the heights of thought. I do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss. All I pretend is to give simply my honest thought. Every creed that we have today has upon it the mark of whip and chain and faggot. I do not want it. Free labor will give us wealth, and has given us wealth, and why? Because a free brain goes into partnership with a free hand. That is why. And when a man works for his wife and children, the problem of liberty is how to do the most work in the shortest space of time, but the problem of slavery is how to do the least work in the longest space of time. Slavery is poverty. Liberty is wealth. It is the same in thought. Free thought will give us truth, and the man who is not in favor of free thought occupies the same relation to those he can govern that the slave holder occupied to his slaves exactly. Free thought will give us wealth. There has not been a generation of free thought yet. It will be time to write a creed when there have been a few generations of free-brained men and splendid women in this world. I don't know what the future may bring forth. I don't know what inventions are in the brain of the future. I don't know what garments may be woven with the years to come. But I do know, coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this bank and shoal of time a greater blessing, a grander glory, than liberty for man, woman, and child. Oh, liberty float not forever in the far horizon. Remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast and the poet and the philanthropist, but come and take up thine abode with the children of men, forever. End of Chapter 4. This concludes the lecture, Ingersoll's lecture on the Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child. Thank you for listening. Ingersoll's lecture on orthodoxy, Part 1 of 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Ingersoll's lecture on orthodoxy, from the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Greene Ingersoll, Volume 2. Ladies and gentlemen, it is utterly inconceivable that any man believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny it, because he who believes in that religion would believe that by a public denial he would peril the eternal salvation of his soul. It is conceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that millions who don't believe in the Christian religion should openly say that they did. In a country where religion is supposed to be in power, where it has rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it at least is willing to purchase silence, it is easily conceivable that millions pretend to believe what they do not. And yet I believe it has been charged against myself, not only that I was insincere, but that I took the side I am on for the sake of popularity, and the audience tonight goes far toward justifying the accusation. It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense audience that orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world. It is a sick man. It has been attacked with two diseases, softening of the brain and ossification of the heart. It is a religion that no longer satisfies the intelligence of this county, a religion that no longer satisfies the brain, a religion against which the heart of every civilized man and woman protests. It is a religion that gives hope only to a few, a religion that puts a shadow upon the cradle, a religion that wraps the coffin in darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame and fear. It is a religion that I am going to do what little I can while I live to destroy. And in its place I want humanity, I want good fellowship, I want a brain without a chain. I want a religion that every good heart will cheerfully applaud. We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of change. There is perpetual death and there is perpetual birth. By the grave of the old forever stands youth and joy. And when an old religion dies, a better one is born. When we find out that an assertion is a falsehood, a shining truth takes its place and we need not fear the destruction of the false. The more false we destroy, the more room there will be for the true. There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the stars the fate of men and nations. The astrologer has faded from the world, but the astronomer has taken his place. There was a time when the poor alchemist bent and wrinkled and old over his crucible, endeavored to find some secret by which he could change the baser metals into purest gold. The alchemist is gone, the chemist took his place. And although he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he finds something that covers the earth with wealth. There was a time when the soothsayer and auger flourished and after them came the parson and the priest. And the parson and the priest must go. The preacher must go and in his place must come the teacher, that real interpreter of nature. We are done with the supernatural. We are through with the miraculous and the wonderful. There was once a prophet who pretended to read in the book of the future. His place was taken by the philosopher, who reasons from cause to effect, a man who finds the facts by which he is surrounded and endeavours to reason from these premises and to tell what in all probability will happen in the future. The prophet is gone, the philosopher is here. There was a time when man sought aid entirely from heaven, when he prayed to the death sky. There was a time when the world depended upon the supernaturalist. That time in Christendom has passed. We now depend upon the naturalist. Not upon the disciple of faith, but upon the discoverer of facts, upon the demonstrator of truth. At last we are beginning to build upon a solid foundation and just as we progress the supernatural must die. Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this world and in its place we will have reason. In the place of the worship of something we know not of will be the religion of mutual love and assistance, the great religion of reciprocity. Superstition must go, science will remain. The church, however, dies a little hard. The brain of the world is not yet developed. There are intellectual diseases the same as diseases of the body. Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict mankind. However the new comes, the old protests, and the old fights for its place as long as it has a particle of power. And we are now having the same warfare between superstition and science that there was between the stagecoach and the locomotive. But the stagecoach had to go. It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone. It went west. Within a little while it will be driven into the Pacific with the last Indian aboard. Soon we find that there is the same conflict between the different sects and the different schools not only of philosophy but of medicine. Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable to die. That is the order of nature. Words die. Every language has a cemetery. Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone is erected and across it is written the word obsolete. New words are continually being born. There is a cradle in which a word is rocked. A thought is molded to a sound and the child word is born. And then comes a time when the word gets old and wrinkled and expressionless and is carried mournfully to the grave. And that is the end of it. So in the schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I, when the old allopathists reigned supreme. If there was anything to matter with a man they let out his blood. Call to the bedside. They took him to the edge of eternity with medicine and then practiced all their art to bring him back to life. One can hardly imagine how perfect a constitution it took a few years ago to stand the assault of a doctor. And long after it was found to be a mistake hundreds and thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them in one pocket a bottle of gelap and in the other a rusty lancet. Sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment to be made again. So these schools and these theories and these religions die hard. What else can they do, like the paintings of the old masters they are kept alive because so much money has been invested in them? Think of the amount of money that has been invested in superstition. Think of the schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of useless knowledge. Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it is dangerous to think and that they must never use their brains except in an act of faith. Think of the millions and billions of dollars that have been expended in churches, in temples and in cathedrals. Think of the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the ignorance of mankind. Think of those who grow rich on credulity and who fatten on faith. Do you suppose they are going to die without a struggle? They will die if they don't struggle. What are they to do? From the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor clergyman that has had all his common sense educated out of him and is now to be thrown out upon the cold and uncharitable world. His prayers are not answered. He gets no help from on high, and the pews are beginning to criticize the pulpit. What is the man to do? If he suddenly change, he is gone. If he preaches what he really believes, he will get noticed to quit. And yet if he and the congregation would come together and be perfectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe anything of it. Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a revival in a carriage late at night, and one said to the other as they rode along, I am going to say something that will shock you, and I beg of you never to tell it to anybody else. I am going to tell it to you. Well, what is it? Says she, I don't believe in the Bible. The other replied, neither do I. I have often thought how splendid it would be if the ministers could but come together and say, now let us be honest. Let us tell each other on a bright like Dr. Curry did in the meeting here the other day. Let us tell just what we believe. They tell a story that in the old time a lot of people, about 20, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one fellow got up before the fire, put his hands behind him, and says he, boys, let us all tell our real names. If the ministers and congregations would only tell their real thoughts, they would find that they are nearly as bad as I am, and that they believe just about as little. Now I have been talking a great deal about the Orthodox religion, and after having delivered a lecture I would meet some good religious person, and he would say to me, you don't tell it as we believe it. Well, but I tell it as you have written it in your creed. Oh, well, he says, we don't mind that any more. Well, why don't you change it? Oh, well, he says, we understand it. Possibly the creed is in the best possible condition for them now. There is a tacit understanding that they don't believe it. There is a tacit understanding that they have got some way to get around it, that they have read between the lines, and if they should meet now to form a creed, they might fail to agree. And the creed is now so that they can say as they please, except in public. Whenever they do so in public, the church in self-defense must try them, and I believe in trying every minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he agrees to. I have not the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to preach infidelity from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money. When he changes his views, he should step down and out like a man and say, I don't believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it. You must hire some bigger fool than I am. But I find that I get the creed very nearly right. Today there was put into my hands the new congregational creed. I have just read it, and I thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the church has made any advance, to find whether it has been affected by the light of science, to find whether the Son of Knowledge has risen in the heavens in vain, whether they are still the children of intellectual darkness, whether they still consider it necessary for you to believe something that you by no possibility can understand in order to be a winged angel forever. Now let us see what their creed is. I will read a little of it. They commence by saying that they believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and of earth, and of all things visible and invisible. I am perfectly willing that he should make the invisible, if they want him to. They say now that there is this one personal God, that he is the maker of the universe and its ruler. I again ask the old question of what did he make it? If matter has not existed through eternity, then this God made it. Of what did he make it? What did he use for the purpose? There was nothing in the universe except this God. What had the God been doing for the eternity he had been living? He had made nothing, called nothing into existence, never had had an idea, because it is impossible to have an idea unless there is something to excite an idea. What had he been doing? Why doesn't the Congregational Church tell us? How do they know about this infinite being? And if he is infinite, how can they comprehend him? What good is it to believe something that you don't understand, that you never can understand? In the old creeds they describe this God as a being without body and parts or passions. Think of that, something without body and parts or passions. I defy any man in the world to write a letter descriptive of nothing. You cannot conceive of a finer word painting of a vacuum than of something without body and parts or passion. And yet this God without passions is angry at the wicked every day. This God without passions is a jealous God whose anger burneth to the lowest hell. This God without passions loves the whole human race, and this God without passions damns a large majority of the same. So too he is the ruler of the world, and I find here that we find his providence in the government of the nations. What nations? What evidence can you find if you are absolutely honest and not frightened in the history of nations that this universe is presided over by an infinitely wise and good God? How do you account for Russia? How do you account for Siberia? How do you account for the fact that whole races of men toiled beneath the master's lash for ages without recompense and without reward? How do you account for the fact that babes were sold from the arms of mothers, arms that had been reached toward God in supplication? How do you account for it? How do you account for the existence of martyrs? How do you account for the fact that this God allows people to be burned simply for loving him? How do you account for the fact that justice doesn't always triumph? How do you account for the fact that innocence is not a perfect shield? How do you account for the fact that the world has been filled with pain and grief and tears? How do you account for the fact that people have been swallowed by volcanoes, swept from the earth by storms, dying by famine, if there is above us a ruler who is infinitely good and infinitely powerful? I don't say there is none. I don't know. As I have said before, this is the only planet I was ever on. I live in one of the rural districts of the universe. I know not about these things as much as the clergy, and if they know no more about the other world than they do about this, it is not worth mentioning. How do they answer all this? They say God permits it. What would you say to me if I stood by and saw a ruffian beat out the brains of a child when I had full and perfect power to prevent it? You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the murderer. That is what you would say. Is it possible for this God to prevent it? Then if he doesn't, he is a fiend. He is not good. But they say he permits it. What for? So we may have freedom of choice. What for? So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are bad? Didn't he know that when he made us? Did he not know exactly just what he was making? Why should he make those whom he knew would be criminals? If I should make a machine that would walk your streets and commit murder, you would hang me. Why not? And if God made a man whom he knew would commit murder, then God is guilty of that murder. If God made a man knowing he would beat his wife, that he would starve his children, that he would strew on either side of his path of life the wrecks of ruined homes, then I say the being who called that wretch into existence is directly responsible. And yet we are to find the providence of God in the history of nations. What little I have read shows me that when man has been helped, man had to do it. When the chains of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by man. When something bad has been done in the government of mankind, it is easy to trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility upon human beings. You will not look to the sky. You need throw neither praise nor blame. You can find the efficient causes nearer home, right here. What is the next thing I find in this creed? We believe that man was made in the image of God, that he might know, love, and obey God, and enjoy him forever. I don't believe that anybody ever did love God, because nobody ever knew anything about him. We love each other. We love something that we know. We love something that our experience tells us is good and great, and good and beautiful. We cannot, by any possibility, love the unknown. We can love truth, because truth adds to human happiness. We can love justice, because it preserves human joy. We can love charity. We can love every form of goodness that we know, or of which we can conceive. But we cannot love the infinitely unknown. And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body and parts nor passions? That our first parents by disobedience fell under the condemnation of God, and that all men are so alienated from God, that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of sin, except through God's redeeming power. Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If there is, strike here on their forehead, and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent. Does any human being now believe that God made man of dust, and a woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the middle of it? Wasn't there room outside of the garden to put his tree if he didn't want people to eat his apple? If I didn't want a man to eat my fruit, I would not put him in my orchard. Does anybody now believe in the snake story? I pity any man a woman who, in this 19th century, believes in that childish fable. Why did they disobey? Why, they were tempted. Who by the devil? Who made the devil? What did he make him for? Why didn't he tell Adam and Eve about this fellow? Why didn't he watch the devil instead of watching Adam and Eve? Instead of turning them out, why didn't he keep him from getting in? Why didn't he have his flood first and drown the devil before he made man and woman? And yet people who call themselves intelligent, professors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions, teach children and young men who ought to be children that the garden of Eden story is an absolute historical fact. Well, I guess it will not be long until that will fade from the imagination of men. I defy any man to think of a more childish thing. This God waiting around there, knowing all the while what would happen, made them on purpose so it would happen. And then what does he do? Holds all of us responsible, and we were not there. Here is a representative before the constituency had been born. Before I am bound by a representative, I want a chance to vote for or against him. And if I had been there and known all the circumstances, I should have voted against him. And yet I am held responsible. What did Adam do? I cannot see that it amounted to much anyway. A God that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such a subject. Now that absurdity gave birth to another, that while we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else, and the atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man. Let us leave them both out. It reads a great deal better with both of them out. It makes better sense. Now in consequence of that, everybody is alienated from God. How? Why? Oh, we are all depraved, you know. We all want to do wrong. Well, why? Is that because we are depraved? No. Why do we make so many mistakes? Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost infinite number of wrong ones. And as long as we are not perfect in our intellects, we must make mistakes. There is no darkness but ignorance, and alienation as they call it from God is simply a lack of intellect upon our part. Why will we not give in better brains? That may account for the alienation, but the church teaches that every soul that finds its way to the shore of this world is against God. Naturally, hates God that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a chunk of depravity. Everybody against God. It is a libel upon the human race. It is a libel upon all the men who have worked for wife and child. It is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and labored, wept and worked for children. It is a libel upon all the men who have died for their country. It is a libel upon all who have fought for human liberty. It is a libel upon the human race. Leave out the history of the church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the depravity of man left. Everybody that comes is against God. Every soul they think is like the wrecked Irishman. He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man and said to him, Have you a government here? The man said we have. Well said he, I am again it. The church teaches us that that is the attitude of every soul in the universe of God. Aught a God to take any credit to himself for making depraved people? A God that cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire from the business. And if a God has made us knowing that we would be totally depraved, why should we go to the same being for repairs? What is the next, that all men are so alienated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin, except through God's redeeming grace? Reformation is not enough. If the man who steals becomes perfectly honest, that is not enough. If the man who hates his fellow man changes and loves his fellow man, that is not enough. He must go through the mysterious thing called the second birth. He must be born again. That is not enough unless he has faith. He must believe something that he does not understand. Reformation is not enough. There must be what they call conversion. I deny it. According to the church nothing so excites the wrath of God, nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah with revenge as a man relying on his own good works. He must admit that he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it before God will consent to save him. I saw a man the other day and he said to me, I am a Unitarian Universalist, that is what I am. Said I, what do you mean by that? Well, said he, here is what I mean. The Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both. What is the next thing in this great creed? We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the records of God's revelation of himself in the work of redemption, that they are written by men under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged. This is the creed of the congregational church, that is it is the result of the high joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for churches. And there we have the statement that the Bible was written by men under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. What part of the Bible? All of it, all of it, and yet what is this Old Testament that was written by an infinitely good God? The being who wrote it did not know the shape of the world he had made. The being who wrote it knew nothing of human nature. He commands men to love him as if one could love upon command. The same God upheld the institution of human slavery, and the church says the Bible that upholds that institution was written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I disagree with the Holy Ghost upon that institution. The church tells us that men under the guidance of the Holy Ghost upheld the institution of polygamy. I deny it, that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest. I deny it, that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened to differ with him on the subject of religion. I deny it. And yet that is the book now upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church. If the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he have taken? Let every minister answer, Anna Bright. If you knew the devil had written a little work on human slavery, in your judgment would he uphold slavery or denounce it? Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery? And yet here you have a work upholding slavery and you say that it was written by an infinitely good, wise and beneficent God. If the devil upheld polygamy, would you be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill somebody for differing with him, would you be surprised? If the devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be astonished? And yet you say that is exactly what the God of us all did. If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy. That creed is a libel upon him who sits upon heaven's throne. I want, if there be a God, I want him to write in the book of his eternal remembrance that I denied these lies for him. I do not believe in a slaveholding God. I do not worship a polygamous Holy Ghost. I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought. Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the Old Testament and told the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on religion, and that God afterward took upon himself flesh and came to Jerusalem and taught a different religion and the Jews killed him? Did it ever occur to you that he reaped exactly what he had sown? Did it ever occur to you that he fell a victim to his own tyranny and was destroyed by his own law? Of course I do not believe that any God ever was the author of the Bible or that any God was ever crucified or that any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you that question. Take this Old Testament then with all its stories of murder and massacre, with all its foolish and cruel fables, with all its infamous doctrines, with its spirit of caste, with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God like Lear had divided heaven among his daughters and then, in the insanity of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race. And yet, I must say, I must admit that the Old Testament is better than the New. In the Old Testament, when God got a man dead, he left him alone. When he saw him quietly in his grave, he was satisfied. The muscles relaxed and a smile broke over the divine face. But in the New Testament, the trouble commences just at death. In the New Testament, God is to wreak his revenge forever and ever. It was reserved for one who said, Love your enemies, to tear asunder the veil between time and eternity, and fix the horrified gaze of men upon the gulfs of eternal fire. The New Testament is just as much worse than the Old, as Hell is worse than sleep. Just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than annihilation, and yet the New Testament is pointed to as a gospel of love and peace. But more of that hereafter, as the ministers say. We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of God the reign of truth and love of righteousness and peace. Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I do not deny it. But what was the result? The Christian world has caused more war than all the rest of the world besides. All the cunning instruments of death have been devised by Christians. All the wonderful machinery by which the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and subdued, all these machines have been born in Christian brains. And yet he came to bring peace, they say. But the Testament says otherwise. I came not to bring peace, but a sword. And the sword was brought. What are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any other? How many millions of Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their enemies? There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his enemies before he died. He says, I have not any. What, no enemies? Not one, said the dying man. I killed the last one three weeks ago. How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy their fellow Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No. It is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then Christians assemble in their churches and sing, Te Deum Laudamus to God. Why? Because he has enabled a few of his children to kill some others of his children. This is the religion of peace, the religion that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing two thousand pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the religion of peace that covers the sea with men of war clad in mail, all in the name of universal forgiveness. What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have the nations been fighting about? What was the thirty years war in Europe for? What was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even unto this day? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will find a religious question. The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by his church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness. And why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation. They do not say if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there. They do not say if you pay your debts and love your wife and love your children and are good to your friends and your neighbors and your country you will get there. That will do you no good. You have got to believe a certain thing. Oh yes, no matter how bad you are you can instantly be forgiven then. And no matter how good you are if you fail to believe that the moment you get to the day of judgment nothing is left but to damn you forever and all the angels will shout hallelujah. What do they teach today? Every murderer goes to heaven. There is only one step from the gallows to God. Only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that if he imbrews his hands in his brother's blood he can have no extreme unction. Let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through the church and let the Protestant understand that when he has committed that crime the community will not pray him into heaven. Let him go with his victim. The victim you know dying in his sins goes to hell and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. And if heaven grows dull and monotonous the murder can again give life to the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. I am opposed to that kind of forgiveness and yet that is the religion of universal peace to everybody. Now what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to? We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the kingdom of Christ over all the earth. What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting along now? How many people are being born a year about 50 millions? How many are you converting a year really truthfully? Five or six thousand? I think I have overestimated that number. Is Orthodox Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as many unbelievers in Orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago. What are you doing in the missionary world? How long is it since you converted a China man? A fine missionary religion to send missionaries with their Bibles and tracts to China. But if a China man comes here, mob him, simply to show him the difference between the practical and theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long since you have had a convert in India? In my judgment, never. There never has been an intelligent Hindu converted from the time the first missionary put his foot upon that soil and never in my judgment has an intelligent China man been converted since the first missionary touched that shore. Where are they? We hear nothing of them except in the reports. They get money from poor old ladies trembling on the edge of the grave and go and tell them stories how hungry the average China man is for a copy of the New Testament and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the interior of Africa without the work of Dr. McCosh longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. In my judgment it is a book that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble about how long is it before this kingdom is to be established. What is the next thing here? They all also believe in the resurrection of the dead and in their confession of faith here too attached, I find they also believe in the resurrection of the body. Does anybody believe that that has ever thought? Here is a man for instance that weighs two hundred pounds and gets sick and dies weighing a hundred and twenty. How much will he weigh in the morning of the resurrection? Here is a cannibal who eats another man, and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your body and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten the missionary and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies, who will the atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an action of replavin brought by the missionary against the cannibal. It has been demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in nature and no destruction in nature. It has been demonstrated again and again that the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other beings, grown in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, have been in the metals. In other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms return to the earth, and again spring and vegetation taken up in the leaves of the trees turned into wood. And yet we have a church in the nineteenth century getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by presidents of colleges, and by theologians who tell us that they believe in the resurrection of the body. They know better. There is not one so ignorant but what knows better. And what is the next thing? And in a final judgment, it will be a set day, all of us will be there, and the thousands and millions and billions and trillions and quadrillions that have died will be there. It will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened, and our case will be called. Does anybody believe in that now that has got the slightest sense? One who knows enough to chew gum without a string, the issues of which are everlasting punishment for the wicked and everlasting life for the redeemed. That is the doctrine today of the congregational church, and that is the doctrine that I oppose. That is the doctrine that I defy and deny. But I must hasten on. Now this comes to us after all the discussion that has been, and we are told that this religion is finally to conquer this world. This is the same religion that failed to successfully meet the hordes of Mohammed. Mohammed rested from the disciples of the cross the fairest part of Europe. It was known that he was an imposter. They knew he was because the people of Mecca said so, and they knew that Christ was not because the people of Jerusalem said he was. This imposter rested from the disciples of Christ the fairest part of Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and infidelity in the minds of the Christian world. And the next was an effort to rescue from the infidels the empty sepulcher of Christ. That commenced in the eleventh century and ended in 1291. Europe was almost depopulated. For every man owed a debt, the debt was discharged if he put a cross upon his breast and joined the crusades. No matter what crime he had committed, the doors of the prison were open for him to join the crusades. And what was the result? They believed that God would give them victory over the infidel, and they carried in front of the first crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both those animals had been blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say that those same animals are in the lead today in the Orthodox world. Until 1291 they endeavored to get that sepulcher, until finally the hosts of Christ were driven back, baffled beaten and demoralized, a poor, miserable religious rabble. They were driven back, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust in Christendom. You know at that time the world believed in trial by battle, that God would take the side of right. And there had been a trial by battle between the cross and Muhammad, and Muhammad had been victorious. Well, what was next? You know when Christianity came into power, it destroyed every statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon. It defaced and obliterated every painting. It destroyed every beautiful building. It destroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin. It destroyed all the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy it could find, and burned every library that it could reach with its torch. And the result was the night of the Middle Ages fell upon the human race. But by accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts escaped the fury of religious zeal. A few statues had been buried, and the result was that these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of which is our civilization of today. A few forms of beauty were dug from the earth that had protected them, and now the civilized world is filled with art, with painting, and with statuary, in spite of the rage of the early church. What is the next blow that this church received? The discovery of America, that is the next. The Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to write the Bible, did not know of the existence of this continent, never dreamed of it. The result was that his Bible never spoke of it. He did not dream that the earth is round. He believed it was flat, although he made it himself, and at that time heaven was just up there, beyond the clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was, that the angels ascended and descended. It was to that heaven that Christ ascended after his resurrection. It was up there where the New Jerusalem was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth was perdition. There was where the devils lived, there was where a pit was dug for all unbelievers, and for men who had brains. And I say that for this reason, that just in proportion that you have brains, just in that proportion your chances for eternal joy are lessened according to this religion. And just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are increased. They believe under there that they discovered America. They've found that the earth is round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that brave man said sale. The church told him the earth is flat, my friend. Don't go off. You will go off the edge. Magellan said I have seen the shadow of the earth upon the moon, and I have more confidence in the shadow even than I have in the church. The ship went round. The earth was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand above it and beneath it. And where was the heaven and where was the hell? Vanished forever. And they dwell now only in the religion of superstition. We found there was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean against, no place there for the gods and angels to live, no place there to empty the waters of the deluge, no place there to which Christ could have ascended, and the foundations of the New Jerusalem crumbled, and the towers and domes fell and became simply space. Space sown with an infinite number of stars, not with New Jerusalem's but with constellations. Then man began to grow great, and with that you know came astronomy. Now just see what they did in that. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In 1543 his great work. In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by the pope, by the infallible Catholic Church, and the Church is about as near right upon that subject as upon any other. The system of Copernicus was denounced. And how long do you suppose the Church fought that? Let me tell you, it was revoked by Pius VII in the year of grace 1821. For two hundred and five years after the death of Copernicus, the Church insisted that that system was false and that the old idea was true. Astronomy is the first help that we ever received from heaven. Then came Kepler in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of science from the night that Kepler discovered his first law. That was the dawn of the day of intelligence, his first law that the planets do not move in circles, his second law that they described equal spaces in equal times, his third law that there was a direct relation between weight and velocity. That man gave us a key to heaven, that man opened its infinite book, and we now read it, and he did more good than all of the theologians that ever lived. I have not time to speak of the others, of Galileo, of Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others that I could mention. The next thing that gave this church a blow was statistics. Away went special providence. We found, by taking statistics, that we could tell the average length of human life, that this human life did not depend upon infinite caprice, that it depended upon conditions, circumstances, laws, and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence even in one of these companies than he has in the whole trinity. We found by statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average committed, just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another, just so many suicides, so many deaths by drowning, just so many accidents on an average, just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than themselves, just so many murders of a particular kind, just the same number of accidents. And I say tonight, statistics utterly demolish the idea of special providence. Only the other day a gentleman was telling me of a case of special providence. He knew it. He had been the subject of it. Yes, sir. A few years ago he was about to go on a ship when he was detained. He didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on board. Yes, I said. Do you think the fellows that were drowned believed in special providence? Think of the infinite egotism of such a doctrine. Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with five hundred passengers and they go down to the bottom of the sea, fathers, mothers, children and loving husbands and wives waiting upon the shores of expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that didn't happen to go, and he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in his poor little withered behalf and let the rest all go. That is special providence. You know, we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of Thanksgiving. We say to God, although you have afflicted all the other countries, although you have sent war and desolation and famine on everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been kind to us, and we hope you will keep on. It don't make a bit of difference whether we have good times or not. Not a bit. The Thanksgiving is always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to tell how thankful the people were, how prosperous the state had been, and there was a young fellow in the state who got out another proclamation saying, fearing that the Lord might be misled by official correspondence, he went on to say that the governor's proclamation was entirely false, that the state was not prosperous, that the crops had been an almost entire failure, that nearly every farm in the state was mortgaged, that if the Lord did not believe him, all he asked was, he would send some angel in whom he had confidence to look the matter over for himself. End of part one.