served no purpose except to enslave mankind, and results mostly from the fact that acquiescence is easier than investigation. This argument pushed to its logical conclusion would prevent the advance of all people whose parents were not freethinkers.

¶ Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians or Freethinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have consented to wear the color of authority that we are followers.

ΑΝ

N infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly He ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep Him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of His children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politics could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God.

ALL laws for the purpose of making man worship God

are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires cf the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemymaking it a crime to give your honest ideas about the

Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men.

HE Sciences are not sectarian. People do not perse

TH

cute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother.

¶ It is what people do not know, that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace. ¶ Just as long as religion has control of the schools, Science will be an outcast. Let us free our institutions of learning. Let us dedicate them to the science of eternal truth. Let us tell every teacher to ascertain all the facts he can-to give us light, to follow Nature, no matter where she leads; to be infinitely true to himself and us; to feel that he is without a chain, except the obligation to be honest; that he is bound by no books, by no creed, neither by the sayings of the dead nor of the living; that he is asked to look with his own eyes, to reason for himself without fear, to investigate in every possible direction, and to bring us the fruit of all his work.

A

S we become civilized, more and more liberty will be accorded to these men, until finally ministers will give their best and highest thoughts. The congregations will finally get tired of hearing about the patriarchs and saints, the miracles and wonders, and will insist upon knowing something about the men and women of our day, and

the accomplishments and discoveries of our time. They will finally insist upon knowing how to escape the evils of this world, instead of the next. They will ask light upon the enigmas of this life. They will wish to know what we shall do with our criminals, instead of what God will do with His-how we shall do away with beggary and want -with crime and misery-with prostitution, disease and famine with tyranny in all its cruel forms-with prisons and scaffolds, and how we shall reward the honest workers, and fill the world with happy homes! These are the problems for the pulpits and congregations of an enlightened future. If Science can not finally answer these questions, it is a vain and worthless thing.

CAN

AN there be Methodist mathematics, Catholic astronomy, Presbyterian geology, Baptist biology or Episcopal botany? Why, then, should a sectarian college exist? Only that which somebody knows should be taught in our schools. We should not collect taxes to pay people for guessing. The common school is the bread of life for the people, and it should not be touched by the withering hand of superstition 90 30

Our country will never be filled with great institutions of learning until there is an absolute divorce between Church and School. As long as the mutilated records of a barbarous people are placed by priest and professor above the reason of mankind, we shall reap but little benefit from church and school.

¶ Instead of dismissing professors for finding something out, let us rather discharge those who do not. Let each teacher understand that investigation is not dangerous

to him; that his bread is safe, no matter how much truth he may discover; that his salary will not be reduced, just because he finds that the ancient Jews did not know the entire history of the world.

¶ The pulpit should not be a pillory. Congregations should allow the minister a little liberty. They should, at least, permit him to tell the truth.

It is my desire to free the schools. When a professor in a college finds a fact, he should make it known, even if it is inconsistent with something Moses said.

I

WANT to do what little I can to make my country

truly free, to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the prejudices born of ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind worship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the great and good are dead, that the living are totally depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs and groans are alone pleasing to God, that thought is dangerous, that intellectual courage is a crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is necessary to secure salvation, that to carry a cross in this world will give us a palm in the next, and that we must allow some priest to be the pilot of our souls.

¶ Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, every creed, and dogma for itself, the world can not be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions, differ, and yet grasp each other's hands

as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the Trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?

¶ Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness. We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them.

¶ If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of Heaven and Hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds

That which has happened in most countries has happened in ours. When a religion is founded, the educated, the powerful-that is to say, the priests and nobles-tell the ignorant and superstitious-that is to say, the people—