Life pursuing life and in its turn pursued by death, presses to the snow
line of the possible, and every form of life, of instinct, thought and
action is fixed and determined by conditions, by countless antecedent
and co-existing facts. The present is the child, and the necessary
child, of all the past, and the mother of all the future.

Every human being longs to be happy, to satisfy the wants of the body
with food, with roof and raiment, and to feed the hunger of the mind,
according to his capacity, with love, wisdom, philosophy, art and song.

The wants of the savage are few; but with civilization the wants of the
body increase, the intellectual horizon widens and the brain demands
more and more.

The savage feels, but scarcely thinks. The passion of the savage is
uninfluenced by his thought, while the thought of the philosopher is
uninfluenced by passion. Children have wants and passions before they
are capable of reasoning. So, in the infancy of the race, wants and
passions dominate.

The savage was controlled by appearances, by impressions; he was
mentally weak, mentally indolent, and his mind pursued the path of least
resistance. Things were to him as they appeared to be. He was a natural
believer in the supernatural, and, finding himself beset by dangers and
evils, he sought in many ways the aid of unseen powers. His children
followed his example, and for many ages, in many lands, millions and
millions of human beings, many of them the kindest and the best, asked
for supernatural help. Countless altars and temples have been built,
and the supernatural has been worshiped with sacrifice and song, with
self-denial, ceremony, thankfulness and prayer.

During all these ages, the brain of man was being slowly and painfully
developed. Gradually mind came to the assistance of muscle, and thought
became the friend of labor. Man has advanced just in the proportion that
he has mingled thought with his work, just in the proportion that he has
succeeded in getting his head and hands into partnership. All this was
the result of experience.

Nature, generous and heartless, extravagant and miserly as she is, is
our mother and our only teacher, and she is also the deceiver of men.
Above her we cannot rise, below her we cannot fall. In her we find
the seed and soil of all that is good, of all that is evil. Nature
originates, nourishes, preserves and destroys.

Good deeds bear fruit, and in the fruit are seeds that in their turn
bear fruit and seeds. Great thoughts are never lost, and words of
kindness do not perish from the earth.

Every brain is a field where nature sows the seeds of thought, and the
crop depends upon the soil.

Every flower that gives its fragrance to the wandering air leaves
its influence on the soul of man. The wheel and swoop of the winged
creatures of the air suggest the flowing lines of subtle art. The
roar and murmur of the restless sea, the cataract's solemn chant, the
thunder's voice, the happy babble of the brook, the whispering leaves,
the thrilling notes of mating birds, the sighing winds, taught man to
pour his heart in song and gave a voice to grief and hope, to love and
death.

In all that is, in mountain range and billowed plain, in winding stream
and desert sand, in cloud and star, in snow and rain, in calm and storm,
in night and day, in woods and vales, in all the colors of divided
light, in all there is of growth and life, decay and death, in all that
flies and floats and swims, in all that moves, in all the forms and
qualities of things, man found the seeds and symbols of his thoughts;
and all that man has wrought becomes a part of nature's self, forming
the lives of those to be. The marbles of the Greeks, like strains of
music, suggest the perfect, and teach the melody of life. The great
poems, paintings, inventions, theories and philosophies, enlarge
and mould the mind of man. All that is is natural. All is naturally
produced. Beyond the horizon of the natural man cannot go.

Yet, for many ages, man in all directions has relied upon, and sincerely
believed in, the existence of the supernatural. He did not believe in
the uniformity of nature; he had no conception of cause and effect, of
the indestructibility of force.

In medicine he believed in charms, magic, amulets, and incantations. It
never occurred to the savage that diseases were natural.

In chemistry he sought for the elixir of life, for the philosopher's
stone, and for some way of changing the baser metals into gold.

In mechanics he searched for perpetual motion, believing that he, by
some curious combinations of levers, could produce, could create a
force.

In government, he found the source of authority in the will of the
supernatural.

For many centuries his only conception of morality was the idea of
obedience, not to facts as they exist in nature, but to the supposed
command of some being superior to nature. During all these years
religion consisted in the praise and worship of the invisible and
infinite, of some vast and incomprehensible power, that is to say, of
the supernatural.

By experience, by experiment, possibly by accident, man found that some
diseases could be cured by natural means; that he could be relieved in
many instances of pain by certain kinds of leaves or bark.

This was the beginning. Gradually his confidence increased in the
direction of the natural, and began to decrease in charms and amulets,
The war was waged for many centuries, but the natural gained the
victory. Now we know that all diseases are naturally produced, and that
all remedies, all curatives, act in accordance with the facts in nature.
Now we know that charms, magic, amulets and incantations are just
as useless in the practice of medicine as they would be in solving
a problem in mathematics. We now know that there are no supernatural
remedies.

In chemistry the war was long and bitter; but we now no longer seek
for the elixir of life, and no one is trying to find the philosopher's
stone. We are satisfied that there is nothing supernatural in all the
realm of chemistry. We know that substances are always true to their
natures; we know that just so many atoms of one substance will
unite with just so many of another. The miraculous has departed from
chemistry; in that science there is no magic, no caprice and no possible
use for the supernatural. We are satisfied that there can be no change,
that we can absolutely rely on the uniformity of nature; that the
attraction of gravitation will always remain the same; and we feel
that we know this as certainly as we know that the relation between the
diameter and circumference of a circle can never change.

We now know that in mechanics the natural is supreme. We know that man
can by no possibility create a force; that by no possibility can he
destroy a force. No mechanic dreams of depending upon or asking for
any supernatural aid. He knows that he works in accordance with certain
facts that no power can change.

So we in the United States believe that the authority to govern, the
authority to make and execute laws, comes from the consent of the
governed and not from any supernatural source. We do not believe that
the king occupied his throne because of the will of the supernatural.
Neither do we believe that others are subjects or serfs or slaves by
reason of any supernatural will.

So, our ideas of morality have changed, and millions now believe that
whatever produces happiness and well-being is in the highest sense
moral. Unreasoning obedience is not the foundation or the essence of
morality. That is the result of mental slavery. To act in accordance
with obligation perceived is to be free and noble. To simply obey is to
practice what might be called a slave virtue; but real morality is the
flower and fruit of liberty and wisdom.

There are very many who have reached the conclusion that the
supernatural has nothing to do with real religion. Religion does not
consist in believing without evidence or against evidence. It does not
consist in worshiping the unknown or in trying to do something for the
Infinite. Ceremonies, prayers and inspired books, miracles, special
providence, and divine interference all belong to the supernatural and
form no part of real religion.

Every science rests on the natural, on demonstrated facts. So, morality
and religion must find their foundations in the necessary nature of
things.

II. HOW CAN WE REFORM THE WORLD?

IGNORANCE being darkness, what we need is intellectual light. The most
important things to teach, as the basis of all progress, are that the
universe is natural; that man must be the providence of man; that, by
the development of the brain, we can avoid some of the dangers, some of
the evils, overcome some of the obstructions, and take advantage of some
of the facts and forces of nature; that, by invention and industry,
we can supply, to a reasonable degree, the wants of the body, and by
thought, study and effort, we can in part satisfy the hunger of the
mind.

Man should cease to expect any aid from any supernatural source. By this
time he should be satisfied that worship has not created wealth, and
that prosperity is not the child of prayer. He should know that the
supernatural has not succored the oppressed, clothed the naked, fed
the hungry, shielded the innocent, stayed the pestilence, or freed the
slave.

Being satisfied that the supernatural does not exist, man should turn
his entire attention to the affairs of this world, to the facts in
nature.

And, first of all, he should avoid waste--waste of energy, waste of
wealth. Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with
war, to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies
upon his strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is
wrong. Civilized men do not settle their differences by a resort to
arms. They submit the quarrel to arbitrators and courts. This is the
great difference between the savage and the civilized. Nations, however,
sustain the relations of savages to each other. There is no way of
settling their disputes. Each nation decides for itself, and each
nation endeavors to carry its decision into effect. This produces war.
Thousands of men at this moment are trying to invent more deadly weapons
to destroy their fellow-men. For eighteen hundred years peace has been
preached, and yet the civilized nations are the most warlike of the
world. There are in Europe to-day between eleven and twelve millions of
soldiers, ready to take the field, and the frontiers of every civilized
nation are protected by breastwork and fort. The sea is covered with
steel clad ships, filled with missiles of death.

The civilized world has impoverished itself, and the debt of
Christendom, mostly for war, is now nearly thirty thousand million
dollars. The interest on this vast sum has to be paid; it has to be paid
by labor, much of it by the poor, by those who are compelled to deny
themselves almost the necessities of life. This debt is growing year by
year. There must come a change, or Christendom will become bankrupt.

The interest on this debt amounts at least to nine hundred million
dollars a year; and the cost of supporting armies and navies, of
repairing ships, of manufacturing new engines of death, probably
amounts, including the interest on the debt, to at least six million
dollars a day. Allowing ten hours for a day, that is for a working day,
the waste of war is at least six hundred thousand dollars an hour, that
is to say, ten thousand dollars a minute.

Think of all this being paid for the purpose of killing and preparing to
kill our fellow-men. Think of the good that could be done with this vast
sum of money; the schools that could be built, the wants that could
be supplied. Think of the homes it would build, the children it would
clothe.

If we wish to do away with war, we must provide for the settlement of
national differences by an international court. This court should be
in perpetual session; its members should be selected by the various
governments to be affected by its decisions, and, at the command and
disposal of this court, the rest of Christendom being disarmed, there
should be a military force sufficient to carry its judgments into
effect. There should be no other excuse, no other business for an army
or a navy in the civilized world.

No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors and
cruelties of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through the
bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the
mutilated, the mangled!

III. ANOTHER WASTE.

LET us be perfectly candid with each other. We are seeking the truth,
trying to find what ought to be done to increase the well-being of man.
I must give you my honest thought. You have the right to demand it, and
I must maintain the integrity of my soul.

There is another direction in which the wealth and energies of man are
wasted. From the beginning of history until now man has been seeking the
aid of the supernatural. For many centuries the wealth of the world was
used to propitiate the unseen powers. In our own country, the property
dedicated to this purpose is worth at least one thousand million
dollars. The interest on this sum is fifty million dollars a year, and
the cost of employing persons, whose business it is to seek the aid
of the supernatural and to maintain the property, is certainly as much
more. So that the cost in our country is about two million dollars a
week, and, counting ten hours as a working day, this amounts to about
five hundred dollars a minute.

For this vast amount of money the returns are remarkably small. The good
accomplished does not appear to be great. There is no great diminution
in crime. The decrease of immorality and poverty is hardly perceptible.
In spite, however, of the apparent failure here, a vast sum of money
is expended every year to carry our ideas of the supernatural to other
races. Our churches, for the most part, are closed during the week,
being used only a part of one day in seven. No one wishes to destroy
churches or church organizations. The only desire is that they shall
accomplish substantial good for the world. In many of our small
towns--towns of three or four thousand people--will be found four
or five churches, sometimes more. These churches are founded upon
immaterial differences; a difference as to the mode of baptism; a
difference as to who shall be entitled to partake of the Lord's
supper; a difference of ceremony; of government; a difference about
fore-ordination; a difference about fate and free will. And it must be
admitted that all the arguments on all sides of these differences have
been presented countless millions of times. Upon these subjects nothing
new is produced or anticipated, and yet the discussion is maintained by
the repetition of the old arguments.

Now, it seems to me that it would be far better for the people of a
town, having a population of four or five thousand, to have one church,
and the edifice should be of use, not only on Sunday, but on every day
of the week. In this building should be the library of the town.
It should be the clubhouse of the people, where they could find the
principal newspapers and periodicals of the world. Its auditorium
should be like a theatre. Plays should be presented by home talent; an
orchestra formed, music cultivated. The people should meet there at any
time they desire. The women could carry their knitting and sewing; and
connected with it should be rooms for the playing of games, billiards,
cards, and chess. Everything should be made as agreeable as possible.
The citizens should take pride in this building. They should adorn
its niches with statues and its walls with pictures. It should be the
intellectual centre. They could employ a gentleman of ability, possibly
of genius, to address them on Sundays, on subjects that would be of real
interest, of real importance. They could say to this minister:

"We are engaged in business during the week; while we are working at our
trades and professions, we want you to study, and on Sunday tell us what
you have found out."

Let such a minister take for a series of sermons the history, the
philosophy, the art and the genius of the Greeks. Let him tell of the
wondrous metaphysics, myths and religions of India and Egypt. Let him
make his congregation conversant with the philosophies of the world,
with the great thinkers, the great poets, the great artists, the
great actors, the great orators, the great inventors, the captains of
industry, the soldiers of progress. Let them have a Sunday school in
which the children shall be made acquainted with the facts of nature;
with botany, entomology, something of geology and astronomy.

Let them be made familiar with the greatest of poems, the finest
paragraphs of literature, with stories of the heroic, the self-denying
and generous.

Now, it seems to me that such a congregation in a few years would become
the most intelligent people in the United States.

The truth is that people are tired of the old theories. They have lost
confidence in the miraculous, in the supernatural, and they have ceased
to take interest in "facts" that they do not quite believe.

     "There is no darkness but ignorance."
     There is no light but intelligence,

As often as we can exchange a mistake for a fact, a falsehood for a
truth, we advance. We add to the intellectual wealth of the world, and
in this way, and in this way alone, can be laid the foundation for the
future prosperity and civilization of the race.

I blame no one; I call in question the motives of no person; I admit
that the world has acted as it must.

But hope for the future depends upon the intelligence of the present.
Man must husband his resources. He must not waste his energies in
endeavoring to accomplish the impossible.

He must take advantage of the forces of nature. He must depend on
education, on what he can ascertain by the use of his senses, by
observation, by experiment and reason. He must break the chains of
prejudice and custom. He must be free to express his thoughts on all
questions. He must find the conditions of happiness and become wise
enough to live in accordance with them.

IV. HOW CAN WE LESSEN CRIME?

IN spite of all that has been done for the reformation of the world, in
spite of all the inventions, in spite of all the forces of nature that
are now the tireless slaves of man, in spite of all improvements in
agriculture, in mechanics, in every department of human labor, the world
is still cursed with poverty and with crime.

The prisons are full, the courts are crowded, the officers of the law
are busy, and there seems to be no material decrease in crime.

For many thousands of years man has endeavored to reform his fellow-men
by imprisonment, torture, mutilation and death, and yet the history
of the world shows that there has been and is no reforming power in
punishment. It is impossible to make the penalty great enough, horrible
enough to lessen crime.

Only a few years ago, in civilized countries, larceny and many offences
even below larceny, were punished by death; and yet the number of
thieves and criminals of all grades increased. Traitors were hanged and
quartered or drawn into fragments by horses; and yet treason flourished.

Most of these frightful laws have been repealed, and the repeal
certainly did not increase crime. In our own country we rely upon the
gallows, the penitentiary and the jail. When a murder is committed, the
man is hanged, shocked to death by electricity, or lynched, and in a few
minutes a new murderer is ready to suffer a like fate. Men steal; they
are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years, treated
like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of the term they are
discharged, having only enough money to return to the place from which
they were sent. They are thrown upon the world without means--without
friends--they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected and despised.
If they obtain a place, they are discharged as soon as it is found that
they were in prison. They do the best they can to retain the respect of
their fellow-men by denying their imprisonment and their identity. In
a little while, unable to gain a living by honest means, they resort
to crime, they again appear in court, and again are taken within the
dungeon walls. No reformation, no chance to reform, nothing to give them
bread while making new friends.

All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the pentitentiary as a
punishment, because we must remember that men do as they must. Nature
does not frequently produce the perfect. In the human race there is a
large percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with certain
appetites and passions and with a certain quality, quantity and shape of
brain, men will become thieves, forgers and counterfeiters. The question
is whether reformation is possible, whether a change can be produced
in the person by producing a change in the conditions. The criminal
is dangerous and society has the right to protect itself. The
criminal should be confined, and, if possible, should be reformed. A
pentitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. So,
prisoners should work, and they should be paid a reasonable sum for
their labor. The best men should have charge of prisons. They should be
philanthropists and philosophers; they should know something of
human nature. The prisoner, having been taught, we will say, for five
years--taught the underlying principles of conduct, of the naturalness
and harmony of virtue, of the discord of crime; having been convinced
that society has no hatred, that nobody wishes to punish, to degrade,
or to rob him; and being at the time of his discharge paid a reasonable
price for his labor; being allowed by law to change his name, so that
his identity will not be preserved, he could go out of the prison a
friend of the government. He would have the feeling that he had been
made a better man; that he had been treated with justice, with mercy,
and the money he carried with him would be a breastwork behind which he
could defy temptation, a breastwork that would support and take care of
him until he could find some means by which to support himself. And this
man, instead of making crime a business, would become a good, honorable
and useful-citizen.

As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again
and again at the bar; the same men hear again and again the verdict of
guilty and the sentence of the court, and the same men return again and
again to the prison cell. Murderers, those belonging to the dangerous
classes, those who are so formed by nature that they rush to the crimes
of desperation, should be imprisoned for life; or they should be put
upon some island, some place where they can be guarded, where it may
be that by proper effort they could support themselves; the men on
one island, the women on another. And to these islands should be sent
professional criminals, those who have deliberately adopted a life
of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves, the women upon one
island, the men upon another. Such people should not populate the earth.

Neither the diseases nor the deformities of the mind or body should be
perpetuated. Life at the fountain should not be polluted.

V. HOMES FOR ALL.

THE home is the unit of the nation. The more homes the broader the
foundation of the nation and the more secure.

Everything that is possible should be done to keep this from being
a nation of tenants. The men who cultivate the earth should own it.
Something has already been done in our country in that direction, and
probably in every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemption
has thus far done no harm to the creditor class. When we imprisoned
people for debt, debts were as insecure, to say the least, as now. By
the homestead laws, a home of a certain value or of a certain extent,
is exempt from forced levy or sale; and these laws have done great good.
Undoubtedly they have trebled the homes of the nation.

I wish to go a step further. I want, if possible, to get the people
out of the tenements, out of the gutters of degradation, to homes where
there can be privacy, where these people can feel that they are in
partnership with nature; that they have an interest in good government.
With the means we now have of transportation, there is no necessity for
poor people being huddled in festering masses in the vile, filthy and
loathsome parts of cities, where poverty breeds rags, and the rags breed
diseases. I would exempt a homestead of a reasonable value, say of
the value of two or three thousand dollars, not only from sale under
execution, but from sale for taxes of every description. These homes
should be absolutely exempt; they should belong to the family, so that
every mother should feel that the roof above her head was hers; that
her house was her castle, and that in its possession she could not be
disturbed, even by the nation. Under certain conditions I would allow
the sale of this homestead, and exempt the proceeds of the sale for a
certain time, during which they might be invested in another home; and
all this could be done to make a nation of householders, a nation of
land-owners, a nation of home-builders.

I would invoke the same power to preserve these homes, and to acquire
these homes, that I would invoke for acquiring lands for building
railways. Every State should fix the amount of land that could be owned
by an individual, not liable to be taken from him for the purpose of
giving a home to another, and when any man owned more acres than the law
allowed, and another should ask to purchase them, and he should refuse,
I would have the law so that the person wishing to purchase could file
his petition in court. The court would appoint commissioners, or a
jury would be called, to determine the value of the land the petitioner
wished for a home, and, upon the amount being paid, found by such
commission, or jury, the land should vest absolutely in the petitioner.

This right of eminent domain should be used not only for the benefit
of the person wishing a home, but for the benefit of all the people.
Nothing is more important to America than that the babes of America
should be born around the firesides of homes.

There is another question in which I take great interest, and it ought,
in my judgment, to be answered by the intelligence and kindness of our
century.

We all know that for many, many ages, men have been slaves, and we all
know that during all these years, women have, to some extent been the
slaves of slaves. It is of the utmost importance to the human race that
women, that mothers, should be free. Without doubt, the contract of
marriage is the most important and the most sacred that human beings can
make. Marriage is the most important of all institutions. Of course, the
ceremony of marriage is not the real marriage. It is only evidence
of the mutual flames that burn within. There can be no real marriage
without mutual love. So I believe in the ceremony of marriage, that it
should be public; that records should be kept. Besides, the ceremony
says to all the world that those who marry are in love with each other.

Then arises the question of divorce. Millions of people imagine that the
married are joined together by some supernatural power, and that they
should remain together, or at least married, during life. If all who
have been married were joined together by the supernatural, we must
admit that the supernatural is not infinitely wise.

After all, marriage is a contract, and the parties to the contract are
bound to keep its provisions; and neither should be released from such
a contract unless, in some way, the interests of society are involved.
I would have the law so that any husband could obtain a divorce when the
wife had persistently and flagrantly violated the contract; such divorce
to be granted on equitable terms. I would give the wife a divorce if she
requested it, if she wanted it.

And I would do this, not only for her sake, but for the sake of the
community, of the nation. All children should be children of love. All
that are born should be sincerely welcomed. The children of mothers
who dislike, or hate, or loathe the fathers, will fill the world with
insanity and crime. No woman should by law, or by public opinion,
be forced to live with a man whom she abhors. There is no danger of
demoralizing the world through divorce. Neither is there any danger of
destroying in the human heart that divine thing called love. As long as
the human race exists, men and women will love each other, and just so
long there will be true and perfect marriage. Slavery is not the soil or
rain of virtue.

I make a difference between granting divorce to a man and to a woman,
and for this reason: A woman dowers her husband with her youth and
beauty. He should not be allowed to desert her because she has grown
wrinkled and old. Her capital is gone; her prospects in life lessened;
while, on the contrary, he may be far better able to succeed than when
he married her. As a rule, the man can take care of himself, and as a
rule, the woman needs help. So, I would not allow him to cast her off
unless she had flagrantly violated the contract. But, for the sake of
the community, and especially for the sake of the babes, I would give
her a divorce for the asking.

There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a
generation of free women--of free mothers.

The tenderest word in our language is maternity. In this word is the
divine mingling of ecstasy and agony--of love and self-sacrifice. This
word is holy!

VI. THE LABOR QUESTION.

HERE has been for many years ceaseless discussion upon what is called
the labor question; the conflict between the workingman and the
capitalist. Many ways have been devised, some experiments have been
tried for the purpose of solving this question. Profit-sharing would
not work, because it is impossible to share profits with those who are
incapable of sharing losses. Communities have been formed, the object
being to pay the expenses and share the profits among all the persons
belonging to the society. For the most part these have failed.

Others have advocated arbitration. And, while it may be that the
employers could be bound by the decision of the arbitrators, there has
been no way discovered by which the employees could be held by such
decision. In other words, the question has not been solved.

For my own part, I see no final and satisfactory solution except
through the civilization of employers and employed. The question is so
complicated, the ramifications are so countless, that a solution by law,
or by force, seems at least improbable. Employers are supposed to
pay according to their profits. They may or may not. Profits may
be destroyed by competition. The employer is at the mercy of other
employers, and as much so as his employees are at his mercy. The
employers cannot govern prices; they cannot fix demand; they cannot
control supply; and at present, in the world of trade, the laws of
supply and demand, except when interfered with by conspiracy, are in
absolute control.

Will the time arrive, and can it arrive, except by developing the brain,
except by the aid of intellectual light, when the purchaser will wish to
give what a thing is worth, when the employer will be satisfied with a
reasonable profit, when the employer will be anxious to give the real
value for raw material; when he will be really anxious to pay the
laborer the full value of his labor? Will the employer ever become
civilized enough to know that the law of supply and demand should not
absolutely apply in the labor market of the world? Will he ever become
civilized enough not to take advantage of the necessities of the
poor, of the hunger and rags and want of poverty? Will he ever become
civilized enough to say: "I will pay the man who labors for me enough to
give him a reasonable support, enough for him to assist in taking care
of wife and children, enough for him to do this, and lay aside something
to feed and clothe him when old age comes; to lay aside something,
enough to give him house and hearth during the December of his life, so
that he can warm his worn and shriveled hands at the fire of home"?

Of course, capital can do nothing without the assistance of labor. All
there is of value in the world is the product of labor. The laboring man
pays all the expenses. No matter whether taxes are laid on luxuries or
on the necessaries of life, labor pays every cent.

So we must remember that, day by day, labor is becoming intelligent.
So, I believe the employer is gradually becoming civilized, gradually
becoming kinder; and many men who have made large fortunes from the
labor of their fellows have given of their millions to what they
regarded as objects of charity, or for the interests of education. This
is a kind of penance, because the men that have made this money from
the brain and muscle of their fellow-men have ever felt that it was not
quite their own. Many of these employers have sought to balance their
accounts by leaving something for universities, for the establishment
of libraries, drinking fountains, or to build monuments to departed
greatness. It would have been, I think, far better had they used this
money to better the condition of the men who really earned it.

So, I think that when we become civilized, great corporations will make
provision for men who have given their lives to their service. I think
the great railroads should pay pensions to their worn out employees.
They should take care of them in old age. They should not maim and
wear out their servants and then discharge them, and allow them to be
supported in poorhouses. These great companies should take care of the
men they maim; they should look out for the ones whose lives they have
used and whose labor has been the foundation of their prosperity. Upon
this question, public sentiment should be aroused to such a degree that
these corporations would be ashamed to use a human life and then throw
away the broken old man as they would cast aside a rotten tie.

It may be that the mechanics, the workingmen, will finally become
intelligent enough to really unite, to act in absolute concert. Could
this be accomplished, then a reasonable rate of compensation could be
fixed and enforced. Now such efforts are local, and the result up to
this time has been failure. But, if all could unite, they could obtain
what is reasonable, what is just, and they would have the sympathy of a
very large majority of their fellow-men, provided they were reasonable.

But, before they can act in this way, they must become really
intelligent, intelligent enough to know what is reasonable and honest
enough to ask for no more.

So much has already been accomplished for the workingman that I have
hope, and great hope, of the future. The hours of labor have been
shortened, and materially shortened, in many countries. There was a time
when men worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. Now, generally, a day's
work is not longer than ten hours, and the tendency is to still further
decrease the hours.

By comparing long periods of time, we more clearly perceive the advance
that has been made. In 1860, the average amount earned by the laboring
men, workmen, mechanics, per year, was about two hundred and eighty-five
dollars. It is now about five hundred dollars, and a dollar to-day will
purchase more of the necessaries of life, more food, clothing and fuel,
than it would in 1860. These facts are full of hope for the future.

All our sympathies should be with the men who work, who toil; for the
women who labor for themselves and children; because we know that labor
is the foundation of all, and that those who labor are the Caryatides
that support the structure and glittering dome of civilization and
progress.

VII. EDUCATE THE CHILDREN.

EVERY child should be taught to be self-supporting, and every one should
be taught to avoid being a burden on others, as they would shun death.

Every child should be taught that the useful are the honorable, and that
they who live on the labor of others are the enemies of society. Every
child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent
labor is the highest form of prayer.

Children should be taught to think, to investigate, to rely upon the
light of reason, of observation and experience; should be taught to
use all their senses; and they should be taught only that which in some
sense is really useful. They should be taught the use of tools, to use
their hands, to embody their thoughts in the construction of things.
Their lives should not be wasted in the acquisition of the useless, or
of the almost useless. Years should not be devoted to the acquisition of
dead languages, or to the study of history which, for the most part, is
a detailed account of things that never occurred. It is useless to fill
the mind with dates of great battles, with the births and deaths of
kings. They should be taught the philosophy of history, the growth of
nations, of philosophies, theories, and, above all, of the sciences.

So, they should be taught the importance, not only of financial, but of
mental honesty; to be absolutely sincere; to utter their real thoughts,
and to give their actual opinions; and, if parents want honest children,
they should be honest themselves. It may be that hypocrites transmit
their failing to their offspring. Men and women who pretend to agree
with the majority, who think one way and talk another, can hardly expect
their children to be absolutely sincere.

Nothing should be taught in any school that the teacher does not
know. Beliefs, superstitions, theories, should not be treated like
demonstrated facts. The child should be taught to investigate, not to
believe. Too much doubt is better than too much credulity. So, children
should be taught that it is their duty to think for themselves, to
understand, and, if possible, to know.

Real education is the hope of the future. The development of the brain,
the civilization of the heart, will drive want and crime from the world.
The schoolhouse is the real cathedral, and science the only possible
savior of the human race. Education, real education, is the friend of
honesty, of morality, of temperance.

We cannot rely upon legislative enactments to make people wise and good;
neither can we expect to make human beings manly and womanly by keeping
them out of temptation. Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the
forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is
dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong
enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it. All the
forces of civilization are in favor of morality and temperance. Little
can be accomplished by law, because law, for the most part, about
such things, is a destruction of personal liberty. Liberty cannot be
sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for
the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything else. Yet some
people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty
sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
The world had better go back to barbarism, to the dens, the caves and
lairs of savagery; better lose all art, all inventions, than to lose
liberty. Liberty is the breath of progress; it is the seed and soil, the
heat and rain of love and joy.

So, all should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy,
and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not
necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind
of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste
of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what
you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others.

Neither mendicants nor millionaires are the happiest of mankind. The man
at the bottom of the ladder hopes to rise; the man at the top fears to
fall. The one asks; the other refuses; and, by frequent refusal, the
heart becomes hard enough and the hand greedy enough to clutch and hold.

Few men have intelligence enough, real greatness enough, to own a
great fortune. As a rule, the fortune owns them. Their fortune is their
master, for whom they work and toil like slaves. The man who has a good
business and who can make a reasonable living and lay aside something
for the future, who can educate his children and can leave enough to
keep the wolf of want from the door of those he loves, ought to be the
happiest of men.

Now, society bows and kneels at the feet of wealth. Wealth gives power.
Wealth commands flattery and adulation. And so, millions of men give
all their energies, as well as their very souls, for the acquisition of
gold. And this will continue as long as society is ignorant enough and
hypocritical enough to hold in high esteem the man of wealth without the
slightest regard to the character of the man.

In judging of the rich, two things should be considered: How did they
get it, and what are they doing with it? Was it honestly acquired? Is
it being used for the benefit of mankind? When people become really
intelligent, when the brain is really developed, no human being will
give his life to the acquisition of what he does not need or what he
cannot intelligently use.

The time will come when the truly intelligent man cannot be happy,
cannot be satisfied, when millions of his fellow-men are hungry and
naked. The time will come when in every heart will be the perfume of
pity's sacred flower. The time will come when the world will be anxious
to ascertain the truth, to find out the conditions of happiness, and to
live in accordance with such conditions; and the time will come when
in the brain of every human being will be the climate of intellectual
hospitality.

Man will be civilized when the passions are dominated by the intellect,
when reason occupies the throne, and when the hot blood of passion no
longer rises in successful revolt.

To civilize the world, to hasten the coming of the Golden Dawn of the
Perfect Day, we must educate the children, we must commence at the
cradle, at the lap of the loving mother.

VIII. WE MUST WORK AND WAIT.

THE reforms that I have mentioned cannot be accomplished in a day,
possibly not for many centuries; and in the meantime there is much
crime, much poverty, much want, and consequently something must be done
now.

Let each human being, within the limits of the possible be
self-supporting; let every one take intelligent thought for the morrow;
and if a human being supports himself and acquires a surplus, let him
use a part of that surplus for the unfortunate; and let each one to the
extent of his ability help his fellow-men. Let him do what he can in the
circle of his own acquaintance to rescue the fallen, to help those
who are trying to help themselves, to give work to the idle. Let him
distribute kind words, words of wisdom, of cheerfulness and hope. In
other words, let every human being do all the good he can, and let him
bind up the wounds of his fellow-creatures, and at the same time put
forth every effort, to hasten the coming of a better day.

This, in my judgment, is real religion. To do all the good you can is to
be a saint in the highest and in the noblest sense. To do all the good
you can; this is to be really and truly spiritual. To relieve suffering,
to put the star of hope in the midnight of despair, this is true
holiness. This is the religion of science. The old creeds are too
narrow, they are not for the world in which we live. The old dogmas lack
breadth and tenderness; they are too cruel, too merciless, too savage.
We are growing grander and nobler.

The firmament inlaid with suns is the dome of the real cathedral. The
interpreters of nature are the true and only priests. In the great creed
are all the truths that lips have uttered, and in the real litany will
be found all the ecstasies and aspirations of the soul, all dreams
of joy, all hopes for nobler, fuller life. The real church, the real
edifice, is adorned and glorified with all that Art has done. In the
real choir is all the thrilling music of the world, and in the star-lit
aisles have been, and are, the grandest souls of every land and clime.

     "There is no darkness but ignorance."
     Let us flood the world with intellectual light.

A THANKSGIVING SERMON.

MANY ages ago our fathers were living in dens and caves. Their bodies,
their low foreheads, were covered with hair. They were eating berries,
roots, bark and vermin. They were fond of snakes and raw fish. They
discovered fire and, probably by accident, learned how to cause it by
friction. They found how to warm themselves--to fight the frost and
storm. They fashioned clubs and rude weapons of stone with which they
killed the larger beasts and now and then each other. Slowly, painfully,
almost imperceptibly they advanced. They crawled and stumbled, staggered
and struggled toward the light. To them the world was unknown. On every
hand was the mysterious, the sinister, the hurtful. The forests were
filled with monsters, and the darkness was crowded with ghosts, devils,
and fiendish gods.

These poor wretches were the slaves of fear, the sport of dreams.

Now and then, one rose a little above his fellows--used his senses--the
little reason that he had--found something new--some better way. Then
the people killed him and afterward knelt with reverence at his grave.
Then another thinker gave his thought--was murdered--another tomb became
sacred--another step was taken in advance. And so through countless
years of ignorance and cruelty--of thought and crime--of murder and
worship, of heroism, suffering, and self-denial, the race has reached
the heights where now we stand.

Looking back over the long and devious roads that lie between the
barbarism of the past and the civilization of to-day, thinking of the
centuries that rolled like waves between these distant shores, we
can form some idea of what our fathers suffered--of the mistakes they
made--some idea of their ignorance, their stupidity--and some idea of
their sense, their goodness, their heroism.

It is a long road from the savage to the scientist--from a den to
a mansion--from leaves to clothes--from a flickering rush to the
arc-light--from a hammer of stone to the modern mill--a long distance
from the pipe of Pan to the violin--to the orchestra--from a floating
log to the steamship--from a sickle to a reaper--from a flail to a
threshing machine---from a crooked stick to a plow--from a spinning
wheel to a spinning jenny--from a hand loom to a Jacquard--a Jacquard
that weaves fair forms and wondrous flowers beyond Arachne's utmost
dream--from a few hieroglyphics on the skins of beasts--on bricks
of clay--to a printing press, to a library--a long distance from the
messenger, traveling on foot, to the electric spark--from knives
and tools of stone to those of steel--a long distance from sand to
telescopes--from echo to the phonograph, the phonograph that buries in
indented lines and dots the sounds of living speech, and then gives
back to life the very words and voices of the dead--a long way from the
trumpet to the telephone, the telephone that transports speech as swift
as thought and drops the words, perfect as minted coins, in listening
ears--a long way from a fallen tree to the suspension bridge--from
the dried sinews of beasts to the cables of steel--from the oar to
the propeller--from the sling to the rifle--from the catapult to the
cannon--a long distance from revenge to law--from the club to the
Legislature--from slavery to freedom--from appearance to fact--from fear
to reason.

And yet the distance has been traveled by the human race. Countless
obstructions have been overcome--numberless enemies have been
conquered--thousands and thousands of victories have been won for the
right, and millions have lived, labored and died for their fellow-men.

For the blessings we enjoy--for the happiness that is ours, we ought to
be grateful. Our hearts should blossom with thankfulness.

Whom, what, should we thank?

Let us be honest--generous.

Should we thank the church?

Christianity has controlled Christendom for at least fifteen hundred
years.

During these centuries what have the orthodox churches accomplished, for
the good of man?

In this life man needs raiment and roof, food and fuel. He must be
protected from heat and cold, from snow and storm. He must take thought
for the morrow. In the summer of youth he must prepare for the winter of
age. He must know something of the causes of disease--of the conditions
of health. If possible he must conquer pain, increase happiness and
lengthen life. He must supply the wants of the body--and feed the hunger
of the mind.

What good has the church done?

Has it taught men to cultivate the earth? to build homes? to weave cloth
to cure or prevent disease? to build ships, to navigate the seas? to
conquer pain, or to lengthen life?

Did Christ or any of his apostles add to the sum of useful knowledge?
Did they say one word in favor of any science, of any art? Did they
teach their fellow-men how to make a living, how to overcome the
obstructions of nature, how to prevent sickness--how to protect
themselves from pain, from famine, from misery and rags?

Did they explain any of the phenomena of nature? any of the facts
that affect the life of man? Did they say anything in favor of
investigation--of study--of thought? Did they teach the gospel of
self-reliance, of industry--of honest effort? Can any farmer, mechanic,
or scientist find in the New Testament one useful fact? Is there
anything in the sacred book that can help the geologist, the astronomer,
the biologist, the physician, the inventor--the manufacturer of any
useful thing?

What has the church done?

From the very first it taught the vanity--the worthlessness of all
earthly things. It taught the wickedness of wealth, the blessedness of
poverty. It taught that the business of this life was to prepare
for death. It insisted that a certain belief was necessary to insure
salvation, and that all who failed to believe, or doubted in the least
would suffer eternal pain. According to the church the natural desires,
ambitions and passions of man were all wicked and depraved.

To love God, to practice self-denial, to overcome desire, to despise
wealth, to hate prosperity, to desert wife and children, to live on
roots and berries, to repeat prayers, to wear rags, to live in filth,
and drive love from the heart--these, for centuries, were the highest
and most perfect virtues, and those who practiced them were saints.

The saints did not assist their fellow-men. Their fellow-men
assisted them. They did not labor for others. They were
beggars--parasites--vermin. They were insane. They followed the
teachings of Christ. They took no thought for the morrow. They mutilated
their bodies--scarred their flesh and destroyed their minds for the
sake of happiness in another world. During the journey of life they
kept their eyes on the grave. They gathered no flowers by the way--they
walked in the dust of the road--avoided the green fields. Their moans
made all the music they wished to hear. The babble of brooks, the songs
of birds, the laughter of children, were nothing to them. Pleasure was
the child of sin, and the happy needed a change of heart. They
were sinless and miserable--but they had faith--they were pious and
wretched--but they were limping towards heaven.

What has the church done?

It has denounced pride and luxury--all things that adorn and enrich
life--all the pleasures of sense--the ecstasies of love--the happiness
of the hearth--the clasp and kiss of wife and child.

And the church has done this because it regarded this life as a period
of probation--a time to prepare--to become spiritual--to overcome
the natural--to fix the affections on the invisible--to become
passionless--to subdue the flesh--to congeal the blood--to fold the
wings of fancy--to become dead to the world--so that when you appeared
before God you would be the exact opposite of what he made you.

What has the church done?

It pretended to have a revelation from God. It knew the road to eternal
joy, the way to death. It preached salvation by faith, and declared that
only orthodox believers could become angels, and all doubters would be
damned. It knew this, and so knowing it became the enemy of discussion,
of investigation, of thought. Why investigate, why discuss, why think
when you know? It sought to enslave the world. It appealed to force.
It unsheathed the sword, lighted the fagot, forged the chain, built
the dungeon, erected the scaffold, invented and used the instruments
of torture. It branded, maimed and mutilated--it imprisoned and
tortured--it blinded and burned, hanged and crucified, and utterly
destroyed millions and millions of human beings. It touched every nerve
of the body--produced every pain that can be felt, every agony that can
be endured.

And it did all this to preserve what it called the truth--to destroy
heresy and doubt, and to save, if possible, the souls of a few. It was
honest. It was necessary to prevent the development of the brain--to
arrest all progress--and to do this the church used all its power. If
men were allowed to think and express their thoughts they would fill
their minds and the minds of others with doubts. If they were allowed to
think they would investigate, and then they might contradict the creed,
dispute the words of priests and defy the church. The priests cried to
the people: "It is for us to talk. It is for you to hear. Our duty is to
preach and yours is to believe."

What has the church done?

There have been thousands of councils and synods--thousands and
thousands of occasions when the clergy have met and discussed and
quarreled--when pope and cardinals, bishops and priests have added to
or explained their creeds--and denied the rights of others. What useful
truth did they discover? What fact did they find? Did they add to
the intellectual wealth of the world? Did they increase the sum of
knowledge?

I admit that they looked over a number of Jewish books and picked out
the ones that Jehovah wrote.

Did they find the medicinal virtue that dwells in any weed or flower?

I know that they decided that the Holy Ghost was not created--not
begotten--but that he proceeded.

Did they teach us the mysteries of the metals and how to purify the ores
in furnace flames?

They shouted: "Great is the mystery of Godliness."

Did they show us how to improve our condition in this world?

They informed us that Christ had two natures and two wills.

Did they give us even a hint as to any useful thing?

They gave us predestination, foreordination and just enough "free will"
to go to hell.

Did they discover or show us how to produce anything for food?

Did they produce anything to satisfy the hunger of man?

Instead of this they discovered that a peasant girl who lived in
Palestine, was the mother of God. This they proved by a book, and to
make the book evidence they called it inspired.

Did they tell us anything about chemistry--how to combine and separate
substances--how to subtract the hurtful--how to produce the useful?

They told us that bread, by making certain motions and mumbling certain
prayers, could be changed into the flesh of God, and that in the same
way wine could be changed to his blood. And this, notwithstanding the
fact that God never had any flesh or blood, but has always been a spirit
without body, parts or passions.

What has the church done?

It gave us the history of the world--of the stars, and the beginning of
all things. It taught the geology of Moses--the astronomy of Joshua
and Elijah. It taught the fall of man and the atonement--proved that a
Jewish peasant was God--established the existence of hell, purgatory and
heaven.

It pretended to have a revelation from God--the Scriptures, in which
could be found all knowledge--everything that man could need in the
journey of life. Nothing outside of the inspired book--except legends
and prayers--could be of any value. Books that contradicted the Bible
were hurtful, those that agreed with it--useless. Nothing was of
importance except faith, credulity--belief. The church said: "Let
philosophy alone, count your beads. Ask no questions, fall upon your
knees. Shut your eyes, and save your souls."

What has the church done?

For centuries it kept the earth flat, for centuries it made all the
hosts of heaven travel around this world--for centuries it clung to
"sacred" knowledge, and fought facts with the ferocity of a fiend. For
centuries it hated the useful. It was the deadly enemy of medicine.
Disease was produced by devils and could be cured only by priests,
decaying bones, and holy water. Doctors were the rivals of priests. They
diverted the revenues.

The church opposed the study of anatomy--was against the dissection of
the dead. Man had no right to cure disease--God would do that through
his priests.

Man had no right to prevent disease--diseases were sent by God as
judgments.

The church opposed inoculation--vaccination, and the use of chloroform
and ether. It was declared to be a sin, a crime for a woman to lessen
the pangs of motherhood. The church declared that woman must bear the
curse of the merciful Jehovah.

What has the church done?

It taught that the insane were inhabited by devils. Insanity was not a
disease. It was produced by demons. It could be cured by prayers--gifts,
amulets and charms. All these had to be paid for. This enriched the
church. These ideas were honestly entertained by Protestants as well as
Catholics--by Luther, Calvin, Knox and Wesley.

What has the church done?

It taught the awful doctrine of witchcraft. It filled the darkness with
demons--the air with devils, and the world with grief and shame. It
charged men, women and children with being in league with Satan to
injure their fellows. Old women were convicted for causing storms at
sea--for preventing rain and for bringing frost. Girls were convicted
for having changed themselves into wolves, snakes and toads. These
witches were burned for causing diseases--for selling their souls and
for souring beer. All these things were done with the aid of the Devil
who sought to persecute the faithful, the lambs of God. Satan sought in
many ways to scandalize the church. He sometimes assumed the appearance
of a priest and committed crimes.

On one occasion he personated a bishop--a bishop renowned for his
sanctity--allowed himself to be discovered and dragged from the room of
a beautiful widow. So perfectly did he counterfeit the features and form
of the bishop, that many who were well acquainted with the prelate,
were actually deceived, and the widow herself thought her lover was the
bishop. All this was done by the Devil to bring reproach upon holy men.

Hundreds of like instances could be given, as the war waged between
demons and priests was long and bitter.

These popes and priests--these clergymen, were not hypocrites. They
believed in the New Testament--in the teachings of Christ, and they knew
that the principal business of the Savior was casting out devils.

What has the church done?

It made the wife a slave--the property of the husband, and it placed
the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband. It
taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother. It induced millions of
pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life--to take the
veil woven of night and death, to wear the habiliments of the dead--made
them believe that they were the brides of Christ.

For my part, I would as soon be a widow as the bride of a man who had
been dead for eighteen hundred years.

The poor deluded girls imagined that they, in some mysterious way, were
in spiritual wedlock united with God. All worldly desires were
driven from their hearts. They filled their lives with fastings--with
prayers--with self-accusings. They forgot fathers and mothers and gave
their love to the invisible. They were the victims, the convicts of
superstition--prisoners in the penitentiaries of God. Conscientious,
good, sincere--insane.

These loving women gave their hearts to a phantom, their lives to a
dream.

A few years ago, at a revival, a fine buxom girl was "converted," "born
again." In her excitement she cried, "I'm married to Christ--I'm married
to Christ." In her delirium she threw her arms around the neck of an old
man and again cried, "I'm married to Christ." The old man, who happened
to be a kind of skeptic, gently removed her hands, saying at the same
time: "I don't know much about your husband, but I have great respect
for your father-in-law."

Priests, theologians, have taken advantage of women--of their
gentleness--their love of approbation. They have lived upon their hopes
and fears. Like vampires, they have sucked their blood. They have made
them responsible for the sins of the world. They have taught them the
slave virtues--meekness, humility--implicit obedience. They have
fed their minds with mistakes, mysteries and absurdities. They have
endeavored to weaken and shrivel their brains, until, to them, there
would be no possible connection between evidence and belief--between
fact and faith.

What has the church done?

It was the enemy of commerce--of business. It denounced the taking
of interest for money. Without taking interest for money, progress is
impossible. The steamships, the great factories, the railroads have all
been built with borrowed money, money on which interest was promised and
for the most part paid.

The church was opposed to fire insurance--to life insurance. It
denounced insurance in any form as gambling, as immoral. To insure your
life was to declare that you had no confidence in God--that you relied
on a corporation instead of divine providence. It was declared that God
would provide for your widow and your fatherless children.

To insure your life was to insult heaven.

What has the church done?

The church regarded epidemics as the messengers of the good God. The
"Black Death" was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some
and whose justice murdered the rest. To stop the scourge, they tried to
soften the heart of God by kneelings and prostrations--by processions
and prayers--by burning incense and by making vows. They did not try to
remove the cause. The cause was God. They did not ask for pure water,
but for holy water. Faith and filth lived or rather died together.
Religion and rags, piety and pollution kept company. Sanctity kept its
odor.

What has the church done?

It was the enemy of art and literature. It destroyed the marbles of
Greece and Rome. Beauty was Pagan. It destroyed so far as it could the
best literature of the world. It feared thought--but it preserved the
Scriptures, the ravings of insane saints, the falsehoods of the Fathers,
the bulls of popes, the accounts of miracles performed by shrines, by
dried blood and faded hair, by pieces of bones and wood, by rusty nails
and thorns, by handkerchiefs and rags, by water and beads and by a
finger of the Holy Ghost.

This was the literature of the church.

I admit that the priests were honest--as honest as ignorant. More could
not be said.

What has the church done?

Christianity claims, with great pride, that it established asylums for
the insane. Yes, it did. But the insane were treated as criminals. They
were regarded as the homes--as the tenement-houses of devils. They were
persecuted and tormented. They were chained and flogged, starved and
killed. The asylums were prisons, dungeons, the insane were victims and
the keepers were ignorant, conscientious, pious fiends. They were not
trying to help men, they were fighting devils--destroying demons. They
were not actuated by love--but by hate and fear.

What has the church done?

It founded schools where facts were denied, where science was denounced
and philosophy despised. Schools, where priests were made--where they
were taught to hate reason and to look upon doubts as the suggestions of
the Devil. Schools where the heart was hardened and the brain shriveled.
Schools in which lies were sacred and truths profane. Schools for the
more general diffusion of ignorance--schools to prevent thought--to
suppress knowledge. Schools for the purpose of enslaving the world.
Schools in which teachers knew less than pupils.

What has the church done?

It has used its influence with God to get rain and sunshine--to stop
flood and storm--to kill insects, rats, snakes and wild beasts--to stay
pestilence and famine--to delay frost and snow--to lengthen the lives of
kings and queens--to protect presidents--to give legislators wisdom--to
increase collections and subscriptions. In marriages it has made God the
party of the third part. It has sprinkled water on babes when they were
named. It has put oil on the dying and repeated prayers for the dead.
It has tried to protect the people from the malice of the Devil--from
ghosts and spooks, from witches and wizards and all the leering fiends
that seek to poison the souls of men. It has endeavored to protect the
sheep of God from the wolves of science--from the wild beasts of doubt
and investigation. It has tried to wean the lambs of the Lord from the
delights, the pleasures, the joys, of life. According to the philosophy
of the church, the virtuous weep and suffer, the vicious laugh and
thrive, the good carry a cross, and the wicked fly. But in the next life
this will be reversed. Then the good will be happy, and the bad will be
damned.

The church filled the world with faith and crime.

It polluted the fountains of joy. It gave us an ignorant, jealous,
revengeful and cruel God--sometimes merciful--sometimes ferocious. Now
just, now infamous--sometimes wise--generally foolish. It gave us
a Devil, cunning, malicious, almost the equal of God, not quite as
strong--but quicker--not as profound--but sharper.

It gave us angels with wings--cherubim and seraphim and a heaven with
harps and hallelujahs--with streets of gold and gates of pearl.

It gave us fiends and imps with wings like bats. It gave us ghosts
and goblins, spooks and sprites, and little devils that swarmed in the
bodies of men, and it gave us hell where the souls of men will roast in
eternal flames. Shall we thank the church? Shall we thank the orthodox
churches?

Shall we thank them for the hell they made here? Shall we thank them for
the hell of the future?

II.

WE must remember that the church was founded and has been protected by
God, that all the popes, and cardinals, all the bishops, priests and
monks, all the ministers and exhorters were selected and set apart--all
sanctified and enlightened by the infinite God--that the Holy Scriptures
were inspired by the same Being, and that all the orthodox creeds were
really made by him.

We know what these men--filled with the Holy Ghost--have done. We know
the part they have played. We know the souls they have saved and the
bodies they have destroyed. We know the consolation they have given and
the pain they have inflicted--the lies they have defended--the truths
they have denied. We know that they convinced millions that celibacy is
the greatest of all virtues--that women are perpetual temptations,
the enemies of true holiness--that monks and priests are nobler than
fathers, that nuns are purer than mothers. We know that they taught the
blessed absurdity of the Trinity--that God once worked at the trade
of a carpenter in Palestine. We know that they divided knowledge into
sacred and profane--taught that Revelation was sacred--that Reason was
blasphemous--that faith was holy and facts false. That the sin of Adam
and Eve brought disease and pain, vice and death into the world. We know
that they have taught the dogma of special providence--that all
events are ordered and regulated by God--that he crowns and uncrowns
kings--preserves and destroys--guards and kills--that it is the duty of
man to submit to the divine will, and that no matter how much evil
there may be--no matter how much suffering--how much pain and death, man
should pour out-his heart in thankfulness that it is no worse.

Let me be understood. I do not say and I do not think that the church
was dishonest, that the clergy were insincere. I admit that all
religions, all creeds, all priests, have been naturally produced. I
admit, and cheerfully admit, that the believers in the supernatural have
done some good--not because they believed in gods and devils--but in
spite of it.

I know that thousands and thousands of clergymen are honest,
self-denying and humane--that they are doing what they believe to be
their duty--doing what they can to induce men and women to live pure and
noble lives. This is not the result of their creeds--it is because they
are human.

What I say is that every honest teacher of the supernatural has been and
is an unconscious enemy of the human race.

What is the philosophy of the church--of those who believe in the
supernatural?

Back of all that is--back of all events--Christians put an infinite
Juggler who with a wish creates, preserves, destroys. The world is his
stage and mankind his puppets. He fills them with wants and desires,
with appetites and ambitions--with hopes and fears--with love and hate.
He touches the springs. He pulls the strings--baits the hooks, sets the
traps and digs the pits.

The play is a continuous performance.

He watches these puppets as they struggle and fail. Sees them outwit
each other and themselves--leads them to every crime, watches the
births and deaths--hears lullabies at cradles and the fall of
clods on coffins. He has no pity. He enjoys the tragedies--the
desperation--the despair--the suicides. He smiles at the murders, the
assassinations,--the seductions, the desertions--the abandoned babes of
shame. He sees the weak enslaved--mothers robbed of babes--the innocent
in dungeons--on scaffolds. He sees crime crowned and hypocrisy robed.

He withholds the rain and his puppets starve. He opens the earth and
they are devoured. He sends the flood and they are drowned. He empties
the volcano and they perish in fire. He sends the cyclone and they are
torn and mangled. With quick lightnings they are dashed to death.
He fills the air and water with the invisible enemies of life--the
messengers of pain, and watches the puppets as they breathe and
drink. He creates cancers to feed upon their flesh--their quivering
nerves--serpents, to fill their veins with venom,--beasts to crunch
their bones--to lap their blood.

Some of the poor puppets he makes insane--makes them struggle in the
darkness with imagined monsters with glaring eyes and dripping jaws, and
some are made without the flame of thought, to drool and drivel through
the darkened days. He sees all the agony, the injustice, the rags
of poverty, the withered hands of want--the motherless babes--the
deformed--the maimed--the leprous, knows the tears that flow--hears
the sobs and moans--sees the gleam of swords, hears the roar of the
guns--sees the fields reddened with blood--the white faces of the dead.
But he mocks when their fear cometh, and at their calamity he fills the
heavens with laughter. And the poor puppets who are left alive, fall on
their knees and thank the Juggler with all their hearts.

But after all, the gods have not supported the children of men, men have
supported the gods. They have built the temples. They have sacrificed
their babes, their lambs, their cattle. They have drenched the altars
with blood. They have given their silver, their gold, their gems. They
have fed and clothed their priests--but the gods have given nothing in
return. Hidden in the shadows they have answered no prayer--heard
no cry--given no sign--extended no hand--uttered no word. Unseen and
unheard they have sat on their thrones, deaf and dumb--paralyzed and
blind. In vain the steeples rise--in vain the prayers ascend.

And think what man has done to please the gods. He has renounced his
reason--extinguished the torch of his brain, he has believed without
evidence and against evidence. He has slandered and maligned himself.
He has fasted and starved. He has mutilated his body--scarred his
flesh--given his blood to vermin. He has persecuted, imprisoned and
destroyed his fellows. He has deserted wife and child. He has lived
alone in the desert. He has swung-censers and burned incense, counted
beads and sprinkled himself with holy water--shut his eyes, clasped his
hands--fallen upon his knees and groveled in the dust--but the gods have
been silent--silent as stones.

Have these cringings and crawlings--these cruelties and
absurdities--this faith and foolishness pleased the gods?

We do not know.

Has any disaster been averted--any blessing obtained? We do not know.

Shall we thank these gods?

Shall we thank the church's God?

Who and what is he?

They say that he is the creator and preserver of all that has been--of
all that is--of all that will be--that he is the father of angels and
devils, the architect of heaven and hell--that he made the earth--a
man and woman--that he made the serpent who tempted them, made his
own rival--gave victory to his enemy--that he repented of what he had
done--that he sent a flood and destroyed all of the children of men with
the exception of eight persons--that he tried to civilize the survivors
and their children--tried to do this with earthquakes and fiery serpents
--with pestilence and famine. But he failed. He intended to fail. Then
he was born into the world, preached for three years, and allowed some
savages to kill him. Then he rose from the dead and went back to heaven.

He knew that he would fail, knew that he would be killed. In fact he
arranged everything himself and brought everything to pass just as he
had predestined it an eternity before the world was. All who believe
these things will be saved and they who doubt or deny will be lost.

Has this God good sense?

Not always. He creates his own enemies and plots against himself.
Nothing lives, except in accordance with his will, and yet the devils do
not die.

What is the matter with this God? Well, sometimes he is
foolish--sometimes he is cruel and sometimes he is insane.

Does this God exist? Is there any intelligence back of Nature? Is there
any being anywhere among the stars who pities the suffering children of
men?

We do not know.

Shall we thank Nature?

Does Nature care for us more than for leaves, or grass, or flies?

Does Nature know that we exist? We do not know.

But we do know that Nature is going to murder us all.

Why should we thank Nature? If we thank God or Nature for the sunshine
and rain, for health and happiness, whom shall we curse for famine and
pestilence, for earthquake and cyclone--for disease and death?

III.

IF we cannot thank the orthodox churches--if we cannot thank the
unknown, the incomprehensible, the supernatural--if we cannot thank
Nature--if we can not kneel to a Guess, or prostrate ourselves before a
Perhaps--whom shall we thank?

Let us see what the worldly have done--what has been accomplished by
those not "called," not "set apart," not "inspired," not filled with the
Holy Ghost--by those who were neglected by all the Gods.

Passing over the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, their
poets, philosophers and metaphysicians--we will come to modern times.

In the 10th century after Christ the Saracens--governors of a vast
empire--"established colleges in Mongolia, Tartary, Persia, Mesopotamia,
Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Morocco, Fez and in Spain." The region owned
by the Saracens was greater than the Roman Empire. They had not only
colleges--but observatories. The sciences were taught. They introduced
the ten numerals--taught algebra and trigonometry--understood cubic
equations--knew the art of surveying--they made catalogues and maps
of the stars--gave the great stars the names they still bear--they
ascertained the size of the earth--determined the obliquity of the
ecliptic and fixed the length of the year. They calculated eclipses,
equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets and occultations of stars.
They constructed astronomical instruments. They made clocks of
various kinds and were the inventors of the pendulum. They originated
chemistry--discovered sulphuric and nitric acid and alcohol.

"They were the first to publish pharmacopoeias and dispensatories.

"In mechanics they determined the laws of falling bodies. They
understood the mechanical powers, and the attraction of gravitation.

"They taught hydrostatics and determined the specific gravities of
bodies.

"In optics they discovered that a ray of light did not proceed from the
eye to an object--but from the object to the eye."

"They were manufacturers of cotton, leather, paper and steel.

"They gave us the game of chess.

"They produced romances and novels and essays on many subjects.

"In their schools they taught the modern doctrines of evolution and
development." They anticipated Darwin and Spencer.

These people were not Christians. They were the followers, for the most
part, of an impostor--of a pretended prophet of a false God. And yet
while the true Christians, the men selected by the true God and filled
with the Holy Ghost were tearing out the tongues of heretics, these
wretches were irreverently tracing the orbits of the stars. While the
true believers were flaying philosophers and extinguishing the eyes of
thinkers, these godless followers of Mohammed were founding colleges,
collecting manuscripts, investigating the facts of nature and giving
their attention to science. Afterward the followers of Mohammed became
the enemies of science and hated facts as intensely and honestly as
Christians. Whoever has a revelation from God will defend it with all
his strength--will abhor reason and deny facts.

But it is well to know that we are indebted to the Moors--to the
followers of Mohammed--for having laid the foundations of modern
science. It is well to know that we are not indebted to the church, to
Christianity, for any useful fact.

It is well to know that the seeds of thought were sown in our minds by
the Greeks and Romans, and that our literature came from those seeds.
The great literature of our language is Pagan in its thought--Pagan
in its beauty--Pagan in its perfection. It is well to know that when
Mohammedans were the friends of science, Christians were its enemies.
How consoling it is to think that the friends of science--the men who
educated their fellows--are now in hell, and that the men who persecuted
and killed philosophers are now in heaven! Such is the justice of God.

The Christians of the Middle Ages, the men who were filled with the Holy
Ghost, knew all about the worlds beyond the grave, but nothing about
the world in which they lived. They thought the earth was flat--a little
dishing if anything--that it was about five thousand years old, and that
the stars were little sparkles made to beautify the night.

The fact is that Christianity was in existence for fifteen hundred years
before there was an astronomer in Christendom. No follower of Christ
knew the shape of the earth.

The earth was demonstrated to be a globe, not by a pope or cardinal--not
by a collection of clergymen--not by the "called" or the "set apart,"
but by a sailor. Magellan left Seville, Spain, August 10th, 1519, sailed
west and kept sailing west, and the ship reached Seville, the port it
left, on Sept. 7th, 1522.

The world had been circumnavigated. The earth was known to be round.
There had been a dispute between the Scriptures and a sailor. The fact
took the sailor's side.

In 1543 Copernicus published his book, "On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Bodies."

He had some idea of the vastness of the stars--of the astronomical
spaces--of the insignificance of this world.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century, Bruno, one of the greatest
men this world has produced, gave his thoughts to his fellow-men. He
taught the plurality of worlds. He was a Pantheist, an Atheist, an
honest man. He called the Catholic Church the "Triumphant Beast." He
was imprisoned for many years, tried, convicted, and on the 16th day of
February, 1600, burned in Rome by men filled with the Holy Ghost,
burned on the spot where now his monument rises. Bruno, the noblest, the
greatest of all the martyrs. The only one who suffered death for what he
believed to be the truth. The only martyr who had no heaven to gain, no
hell to shun, no God to please. He was nobler than inspired men,
grander than prophets, greater and purer than apostles. Above all the
theologians of the world, above the makers of creeds, above the founders
of religions rose this serene, unselfish and intrepid man.

Yet Christians, followers of Christ, murdered this incomparable man.
These Christians were true to their creed. They believed that faith
would be rewarded with eternal joy, and doubt punished with eternal
pain. They were logical. They were pious and pitiless--devout and
devilish--meek and malicious--religious and revengeful--Christ-like and
cruel--loving with their mouths and hating with their hearts. And yet,
honest victims of ignorance and fear.

What have the wordly done?

In 1608, Lippersheim, a Hollander, so arranged lenses that objects were
exaggerated.

He invented the telescope.

He gave countless worlds to our eyes, and made us citizens of the
Universe.

In 1610, on the night of January 7th, Galileo demonstrated the truth of
the Copernican system, and in 1632, published his work on "The System of
the World."

What did the church do?

Galileo was arrested, imprisoned, forced to fall upon his knees, put his
hand on the Bible, and recant. For ten years he was kept in prison--for
ten years until released by the pity of death. Then the church--men
filled with the Holy Ghost--denied his body burial in consecrated
ground. It was feared that his dust might corrupt the bodies of those
who had persecuted him.

In 1609, Kepler published his book "Motions of the Planet Mars."
He, too, knew of the attraction of gravitation and that it acted in
proportion to mass and distance. Kepler announced his Three Laws. He
found and mathematically expressed the relation of distance, mass, and
motion. Nothing greater has been accomplished by the human mind.

Astronomy became a science and Christianity a superstition.

Then came Newton, Herscheland Laplace. The astronomy of Joshua and
Elijah faded from the minds of intelligent men, and Jehovah became an
ignorant tribal god.

Men began to see that the operations of Nature were not subject to
interference. That eclipses were not caused by the wrath of God--that
comets had nothing to do with the destruction of empires or the death
of kings, that the stars wheeled in their orbits without regard to the
actions of men. In the sacred East the dawn appeared.

What have the wordly done?

A few years ago a few men became wicked enough to use their senses. They
began to look and listen. They began to really see and then they began
to reason. They forgot heaven and hell long enough to take some interest
in this world. They began to examine soils and rocks. They noticed what
had been done by rivers and seas. They found out something about the
crust of the earth. They found that most of the rocks had been deposited
and stratified in the water--rocks 70,000 feet in thickness. They found
that the coal was once vegetable matter. They made the best calculations
they could of the time required to make the coal, and concluded that it
must have taken at least six or seven millions of years. They examined
the chalk cliffs, found that they were composed of the microscopic
shells of minute organisms, that is to say, the dust of these shells.
This dust settled over areas as large as Europe and in some places the
chalk is a mile in depth. This must have required many millions of
years.

Lyell, the highest authority on the subject, says that it must have
required, to cause the changes that we know, at least two hundred
million years. Think of these vast deposits caused by the slow falling
of infinitesimal atoms of impalpable dust through the silent depths of
ancient seas! Think of the microscopical forms of life, constructing
their minute houses of lime, giving life to others, leaving their
mansions beneath the waves, and so through countless generations
building the foundations of continents and islands.

Go back of all life that we now know--back of all the flying lizards,
the armored monsters, the hissing serpents, the winged and fanged
horrors--back to the Laurentian rocks--to the eozoon, the first of
living things that we have found--back of all mountains, seas and
rivers--back to the first incrustation of the molten world--back of wave
of fire and robe of flame--back to the time when all the substance of
the earth blazed in the glowing sun with all the stars that wheel about
the central fire.

Think of the days and nights that lie between!--think of the centuries,
the withered leaves of time, that strew the desert of the past!

Nature does not hurry. Time cannot be wasted--cannot be lost. The
future remains eternal and all the past is as though it had not been--as
though it were to be. The infinite knows neither loss nor gain.

We know something of the history of the world--something of the human
race; and we know that man has lived and struggled through want and war,
through pestilence and famine, through ignorance and crime, through fear
and hope, on the old earth for millions and millions of years.

At last we know that infallible popes, and countless priests and
clergymen, who had been "called," filled with the Holy Ghost, and
presidents of colleges, kings, emperors and executives of nations had
mistaken the blundering guesses of ignorant savages for the wisdom of an
infinite God.

At last we know that the story of creation, of the beginning of things,
as told in the "sacred book," is not only untrue, but utterly absurd and
idiotic. Now we know that the inspired writers did not know and that the
God who inspired them did not know.

We are no longer misled by myths and legends. We rely upon facts. The
world is our witness and the stars testify for us.

What have the worldly done?

They have investigated the religions of the world--have read the sacred
books, the prophecies, the commandments, the rules of conduct. They have
studied the symbols, the ceremonies, the prayers and sacrifices. And
they have shown that all religions are substantially the same--produced
by the same causes--that all rest on a misconception of the facts in
nature--that all are founded on ignorance and fear, on mistake and
mystery.

They have found that Christianity is like the rest--that it was not a
revelation, but a natural growth--that its gods and devils, its heavens
and hells, were borrowed--that its ceremonies and sacraments were
souvenirs of other religions--that no part of it came from heaven, but
that it was all made by savage man. They found that Jehovah was a tribal
god and that his ancestors had lived on the banks of the Euphrates, the
Tigris, the Ganges and the Nile, and these ancestors were traced back to
still more savage forms.

They found that all the sacred books were filled with inspired mistake
and sacred absurdity.

But, say the Christians, we have the only inspired book. We have the
Old Testament and the New. Where did you get the Old Testament? From the
Jews?--Yes.

Let me tell you about it.

After the Jews returned from Babylon, about 400 years before Christ,
Ezra commenced making the Bible. You will find an account of this in the
Bible.

We know that Genesis was written after the Captivity--because it was
from the Babylonians that the Jews got the story of the creation--of
Adam and Eve, of the Garden--of the serpent, and the tree of life--of
the flood--and from them they learned about the Sabbath.

You find nothing about that holy day in Judges, Joshua, Samuel, Kings
or Chronicles--nothing in Job, the Psalms, in Esther, Solomon's Song
or Ecclesiastes. Only in books written by Ezra after the return from
Babylon.

When Ezra finished the inspired book, he placed it in the temple. It was
written on the skins of beasts, and, so far as we know, there was but
one.

What became of this Bible?

Jerusalem was taken by Titus about 70 years after Christ. The temple was
destroyed and, at the request of Josephus, the Holy Bible was sent to
Vespasian the Emperor, at Rome.

And this Holy Bible has never been seen or heard of since. So much for
that.

Then there was a copy, or rather a translation, called the Septuagint.

How was that made?

It is said that Ptolemy Soter and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus obtained
a translation of the Jewish Bible. This translation was made by seventy
persons.

At that time the Jewish Bible did not contain Daniel, Ecclesiastes, but
few of the Psalms and only a part of Isaiah.

What became of this translation known as the Septuagint?

It was burned in the Bruchium Library forty-seven years before Christ.

Then there was another so-called copy of part of the Bible, known as the
Samaritan Roll of the Pentateuch.

But this is not considered of any value.

Have we a true copy of the Bible that was in the temple at
Jerusalem--the one sent to Vespasian?

Nobody knows.

Have we a true copy of the Septuagint?

Nobody knows.

What is the oldest manuscript of the Bible we have in Hebrew?

The oldest manuscript we have in Hebrew was written in the 10th century
after Christ. The oldest pretended copy we have of the Septuagint
written in Greek was made in the 5th century after Christ.

If the Bible was divinely inspired, if it was the actual word of God, we
have no authenticated copy. The original has been lost and we are left
in the darkness of Nature.

It is impossible for us to show that our Bible is correct. We have no
standard. Many of the books in our Bible contradict each other. Many
chapters appear to be incomplete and parts of different books are
written in the same words, showing that both could not have been
original. The 19th and 20th chapters of 2nd Kings and the 37th and
38th chapters of Isaiah are exactly the same. So is the 36th chapter of
Isaiah from the 2nd verse the same as the 18th chapter of 2nd Kings from
the 2nd verse.

So, it is perfectly apparent that there could have been no possible
propriety in inspiring the writers of Kings and the writers of
Chronicles. The books are substantially the same, differing in a
few mistakes--in a few falsehoods. The same is true of Leviticus and
Numbers. The books do not agree either in facts or philosophy. They
differ as the men differed who wrote them.

What have the worldly done?

They have investigated the phenomena of nature. They have invented ways
to use the forces of the world, the weight of falling water--of moving
air. They have changed water to steam, invented engines--the tireless
giants that work for man. They have made lightning a messenger and
slave. They invented movable type, taught us the art of printing and
made it possible to save and transmit the intellectual wealth of the
world. They connected continents with cables, cities and towns with
the telegraph--brought the world into one family--made intelligence
independent of distance. They taught us how to build homes, to obtain
food, to weave cloth. They covered the seas with iron ships and the
land with roads and steeds of steel. They gave us the tools of all the
trades--the implements of labor. They chiseled statues, painted pictures
and "witched the world" with form and color. They have found the cause
of and the cure for many maladies that afflict the flesh and minds of
men. They have given us the instruments of music and the great composers
and performers have changed the common air to tones and harmonies that
intoxicate, exalt and purify the soul.

They have rescued us from the prisons of fear, and snatched our souls
from the fangs and claws of superstition's loathsome, crawling, flying
beasts. They have given us the liberty to think and the courage to
express our thoughts. They have changed the frightened, the enslaved,
the kneeling, the prostrate into men and women--clothed them in their
right minds and made them truly free. They have uncrowned the phantoms,
wrested the scepters from the ghosts and given this world to the
children of men. They have driven from the heart the fiends of fear and
extinguished the flames of hell.

They have read a few leaves of the great volume--deciphered some of the
records written on stone by the tireless hands of time in the dim past.
They have told us something of what has been done by wind and wave, by
fire and frost, by life and death, the ceaseless workers, the pauseless
forces of the world.

They have enlarged the horizon of the known, changed the glittering
specks that shine above us to wheeling worlds, and filled all space with
countless suns.

They have found the qualities of substances, the nature of things--how
to analyze, separate and combine, and have enabled us to use the good
and avoid the hurtful.

They have given us mathematics in the higher forms, by means of which we
measure the astronomical spaces, the distances to stars, the velocity at
which the heavenly bodies move, their density and weight, and by which
the mariner navigates the waste and trackless seas. They have given us
all we have of knowledge, of literature and art. They have made life
worth living. They have filled the world with conveniences, comforts and
luxuries.

All this has been done by the worldly--by those, who were not "called"
or "set apart" or filled with the Holy Ghost or had the slightest claim
to "apostolic succession." The men who accomplished these things were
not "inspired." They had no revelation--no supernatural aid. They were
not clad in sacred vestments, and tiaras were not upon their brows. They
were not even ordained. They used their senses, observed and recorded
facts. They had confidence in reason. They were patient searchers for
the truth. They turned their attention to the affairs of this
world. They were not saints. They were sensible men. They worked for
themselves, for wife and child and for the benefit of all.

To these men we are indebted for all we are, for all we know, for all
we have. They were the creators of civilization--the founders of free
states--the saviors of liberty--the destroyers of superstition and the
great captains in the army of progress.

IV.

WHOM shall we thank? Standing here at the close of the 19th
century--amid the trophies of thought--the triumphs of genius--here
under the flag of the Great Republic--knowing something of the history
of man--here on this day that has been set apart for thanksgiving, I
most reverently thank the good men, the good women of the past, I thank
the kind fathers, the loving mothers of the savage days. I thank the
father who spoke the first gentle word, the mother who first smiled upon
her babe. I thank the first true friend. I thank the savages who hunted
and fished that they and their babes might live. I thank those who
cultivated the ground and changed the forests into farms--those who
built rude homes and watched the faces of their happy children in the
glow of fireside flames--those who domesticated horses, cattle and
sheep--those who invented wheels and looms and taught us to spin and
weave--those who by cultivation changed wild grasses into wheat and
corn, changed bitter things to fruit, and worthless weeds to flowers,
that sowed within our souls the seeds of art. I thank the poets of the
dawn--the tellers of legends--the makers of myths--the singers of joy
and grief, of hope and love. I thank the artists who chiseled forms
in stone and wrought with light and shade the face of man. I thank the
philosophers, the thinkers, who taught us how to use our minds in
the great search for truth. I thank the astronomers who explored
the heavens, told us the secrets of the stars, the glories of the
constellations--the geologists who found the story of the world in
fossil forms, in memoranda kept in ancient rocks, in lines written by
waves, by frost and fire--the anatomists who sought in muscle, nerve and
bone for all the mysteries of life--the chemists who unraveled Nature's
work that they might learn her art--the physicians who have laid
the hand of science on the brow of pain, the hand whose magic touch
restores--the surgeons who have defeated Nature's self and forced her to
preserve the lives of those she labored to destroy.

I thank the discoverers of chloroform and ether, the two angels who give
to their beloved sleep, and wrap the throbbing brain in the soft robes
of dreams. I thank the great inventors--those who gave us movable type
and the press, by means of which great thoughts and all discovered facts
are made immortal--the inventors of engines, of the great ships, of the
railways, the cables and telegraphs. I thank the great mechanics, the
workers in iron and steel, in wood and stone. I thank the inventors and
makers of the numberless things of use and luxury.

I thank the industrious men, the loving mothers, the useful women. They
are the benefactors of our race.

The inventor of pins did a thousand times more good than all the popes
and cardinals, the bishops and priests--than all the clergymen and
parsons, exhorters and theologians that ever lived.

The inventor of matches did more for the comfort and convenience
of mankind than all the founders of religions and the makers of all
creeds--than all malicious monks and selfish saints.

I thank the honest men and women who have expressed their sincere
thoughts, who have been true to themselves and have preserved the
veracity of their souls.

I thank the thinkers of Greece and Rome, Zeno and Epicurus, Cicero and
Lucretius. I thank Bruno, the bravest, and Spinoza, the subtlest of men.

I thank Voltaire, whose thought lighted a flame in the brain of man,
unlocked the doors of superstition's cells and gave liberty to
many millions of his fellow-men. Voltaire--a name that sheds light.
Voltaire--a star that superstition's darkness cannot quench.

I thank the great poets--the dramatists. I thank Homer and Aeschylus,
and I thank Shakespeare above them all. I thank Burns for the
heart-throbs he changed into songs, for his lyrics of flame. I thank
Shelley for his Skylark, Keats for his Grecian Urn and Byron for his
Prisoner of Chillon. I thank the great novelists. I thank the great
sculptors. I thank the unknown man who moulded and chiseled the Venus de
Milo. I thank the great painters. I thank Rembrandt and Corot. I thank
all who have adorned, enriched and ennobled life--all who have created
the great, the noble, the heroic and artistic ideals.

I thank the statesmen who have preserved the rights of man. I thank
Paine whose genius sowed the seeds of independence in the hearts of '76.
I thank Jefferson whose mighty words for liberty have made the circuit
of the globe. I thank the founders, the defenders, the saviors of the
Republic. I thank Ericsson, the greatest mechanic of his century, for
the monitor. I thank Lincoln for the Proclamation. I thank Grant for his
victories and the vast host that fought for the right,--for the freedom
of man. I thank them all--the living and the dead.

I thank the great scientists--those who have reached the foundation,
the bed-rock--who have built upon facts--the great scientists, in whose
presence theologians look silly and feel malicious.

The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men. They
forged no chains, built no dungeons, erected no scaffolds--tore no flesh
with red hot pincers--dislocated no joints on racks--crushed no bones
in iron boots--extinguished no eyes--tore out no tongues and lighted
no fagots. They did not pretend to be inspired--did not claim to
be prophets or saints or to have been born again. They were only
intelligent and honest men. They did not appeal to force or fear. They
did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain,
nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an
idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies.

They did not wound--they healed. They did not kill--they lengthened
life. They did not enslave--they broke the chains and made men free.
They sowed the seeds of knowledge, and many millions have reaped, are
reaping, and will reap the harvest of joy.

I thank Humboldt and Helmholtz and Haeckel and Büchner. I thank Lamarck
and Darwin--Darwin who revolutionized the thought of the intellectual
world. I thank Huxley and Spencer. I thank the scientists one and all.

I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear--the dethroners
of savage gods--the extinguishers of hate's eternal fire--the heroes,
the breakers of chains--the founders of free states--the makers of just
laws--the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields--the heroes
whose dungeons became shrines--the heroes whose blood made scaffolds
sacred--the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the
soldiers of freedom--the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled
the world with light.

With all my heart I thank them all.

A LAY SERMON.

     * Delivered before the Congress of the American Secular
     Union, at Chickering Hall, New York, Nov. 14, 1885.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In the greatest tragedy that has ever been written
by man--in the fourth scene of the third act--is the best prayer that
I have ever read; and when I say "the greatest tragedy," everybody
familiar with Shakespeare will know that I refer to "King Lear." After
he has been on the heath, touched with insanity, coming suddenly to the
place of shelter, he says:

     "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep."

And this prayer is my text:

     "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
     That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
     How shall your unhoused heads, your unfed sides,
     Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
     From seasons such as these?

     Oh, I have ta'en
     Too little care of this.
     Take physic, pomp;
     Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
     That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
     And show the heavens more just."

That is one of the noblest prayers that ever fell from human lips. If
nobody has too much, everybody will have enough!

I propose to say a few words upon subjects that are near to us all, and
in which every human being ought to be interested--and if he is not, it
may be that his wife will be, it may be that his orphans will be; and I
would like to see this world, at last, so that a man could die and
not feel that he left his wife and children a prey to the greed, the
avarice, or the cruelties of mankind. There is something wrong in a
government where they who do the most have the least. There is something
wrong, when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving,
the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets. I cannot do
much, but I can at least sympathize with those who suffer. There is one
thing that we should remember at the start, and if I can only teach you
that, to-night--unless you know it already--I shall consider the few
words I may have to say a wonderful success.

I want you to remember that everybody is as he _must_ be. I want you to
get out of your minds the old nonsense of "free moral agency;" and then
you will have charity for the whole human race. When you know that they
are not responsible for their dispositions, any more than for their
height; not responsible for their acts, any more than for their dreams;
when you finally understand the philosophy that everything exists as
the result of an efficient cause, and that the lightest fancy that ever
fluttered its painted wings in the horizon of hope was as necessarily
produced as the planet that in its orbit wheels about the sun--when
you understand this, I believe you will have charity for all
mankind--including even yourself.

Wealth is not a crime; poverty is not a virtue--although the virtuous
have generally been poor. There is only one good, and that is human
happiness; and he only is a wise man who makes himself and others happy.

I have heard all my life about self-denial. There never was anything
more idiotic than that. No man who does right practices self-denial. To
do right is the bud and blossom and fruit of wisdom. To do right should
always be dictated by the highest possible selfishness and the most
perfect generosity. No man practices self-denial unless he does wrong.
To inflict an injury upon yourself is an act of self-denial. He who
denies justice to another denies it to himself. To plant seeds that will
forever bear the fruit of joy, is not an act of self-denial. So this
idea of doing good to others only for their sake is absurd. You want to
do it, not simply for their sake, but for your own; because a perfectly
civilized man can never be perfectly happy while there is one unhappy
being in this universe.

Let us take another step. The barbaric world was to be rewarded in some
other world for acting sensibly in this. They were promised rewards in
another world, if they would only have self-denial enough to be virtuous
in this. If they would forego the pleasures of larceny and murder; if
they would forego the thrill and bliss of meanness here, they would be
rewarded hereafter for that self-denial. I have exactly the opposite
idea. Do right, not to deny yourself, but because you love yourself and
because you love others. Be generous, because it is better for you. Be
just, because any other course is the suicide of the soul. Whoever does
wrong plagues himself, and when he reaps that harvest, he will find that
he was not practicing self-denial when he did right.

If you want to be happy yourself, if you are truly civilized, you want
others to be happy. Every man ought, to the extent of his ability,
to increase the happiness of mankind, for the reason that that will
increase his own. No one can be really prosperous unless those with whom
he lives share the sunshine and the joy.

The first thing a man wants to know and be sure of is when he has got
enough. Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule,
it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York
with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars.
Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money
will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his
friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob
his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own
it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making
more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one
is happier in a palace than in a cabin. I love to see a log house. It is
associated in my mind always with pure, unalloyed happiness. It is the
only house in the world that looks as though it had no mortgage on it.
It looks as if you could spend there long, tranquil autumn days; the
air filled with serenity; no trouble, no thoughts about notes, about
interest--nothing of the kind; just breathing free air, watching the
hollyhocks, listening to the birds and to the music of the spring that
comes like a poem from the earth.

It is an insanity to get more than you want. Imagine a man in this city,
an intelligent man, say with two or three millions of coats, eight
or ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, billions
of neckties, and imagine that man getting up at four o'clock in the
morning, in the rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all day
to get another necktie! Is not that exactly what the man of twenty or
thirty millions, or of five millions, does to-day? Wearing his life
out that somebody may say, "How rich he is!" What can he do with the
surplus? Nothing. Can he eat it? No. Make friends? No. Purchase flattery
and lies? Yes. Make all his poor relations hate him? Yes. And then, what
worry! Annoyed, nervous, tormented, until his poor little brain becomes
inflamed, and you see in the morning paper, "Died of apoplexy." This
man finally began to worry for fear he would not have enough neckties to
last him through.

So we ought to teach our children that great wealth is a curse. Great
wealth is the mother of crime. On the other hand are the abject poor.
And let me ask, to-night: Is the world forever to remain as it was when
Lear made his prayer? Is it ever to remain as it is now? I hope not.
Are there always to be millions whose lips are white with famine? Is the
withered palm to be always extended, imploring from the stony heart
of respectable charity, alms? Must every man who sits down to a decent
dinner always think of the starving? Must every one sitting by the
fireside think of some poor mother, with a child strained to her breast,
shivering in the storm? I hope not. Are the rich always to be divided
from the poor,--not only in fact, but in feeling? And that division
is growing more and more every day The gulf between Lazarus and Dives
widens year by year, only their positions are changed--Lazarus is in
hell, and he thinks Dives is in the bosom of Abraham.

And there is one thing that helps to widen this gulf. In nearly every
city of the United States you will find the fashionable part, and the
poor part. The poor know nothing of the fashionable part, except the
outside splendor; and as they go by the palaces, that poison plant
called envy, springs and grows in their poor hearts. The rich know
nothing of the poor, except the squalor and rags and wretchedness, and
what they read in the police records, and they say, "Thank God, we are
not like those people!" Their hearts are filled with scorn and contempt,
and the hearts of the others with envy and hatred. There must be some
way devised for the rich and poor to get acquainted. The poor do not
know how many well-dressed people sympathize with them, and the rich do
not know how many noble hearts beat beneath the rags. If we can ever
get the loving poor acquainted with the sympathizing rich, this question
will be nearly solved.

In a hundred other ways they are divided. If anything should
bring mankind together it ought to be a common belief. In Catholic
countries, that does have a softening influence upon the rich and upon
the poor. They believe the same. So in Mohammedan countries they can
kneel in the same mosque, and pray to the same God. But how is it with
us? The church is not free. There is no welcome in the velvet for the
velveteen. Poverty does not feel at home there, and the consequence
is, the rich and poor are kept apart, even by their religion. I am not
saying anything against religion. I am not on that question; but I would
think more of any religion, provided that even for one day in the week,
or for one hour in the year, it allowed wealth to clasp the hand
of poverty and to have, for one moment even, the thrill of genuine
friendship.

In the olden times, in barbaric life, it was a simple' thing to get a
living. A little hunting, a little fishing, pulling a little fruit, and
digging for roots--all simple; and they were nearly all on an equality,
and comparatively there were fewer failures. Living has at last
become complex. All the avenues are filled with men struggling for the
accomplishment of the same thing:

     "For emulation hath a thousand sons
     That one by one pursue: if you give way,
     Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
     Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
     And leave you hindmost;--
     Or, like a gallant horse, fallen in first rank,
     Lie there for pavement to the abject rear."

The struggle is so hard. And just exactly as we have risen in the scale
of being, the per cent, of failures has increased. It is so that all
men are not capable of getting a living. They have not cunning enough,
intellect enough, muscle enough--they are not strong enough. They are
too generous, or they are too negligent; and then some people seem to
have what is called "bad luck"--that is to say, when anything falls,
they are under it; when anything bad happens, it happens to them.

And now there is another trouble. Just as life becomes complex and as
everyone is trying to accomplish certain objects, all the ingenuity of
the brain is at work to get there by a shorter way, and, in consequence,
this has become an age of invention. Myriads of machines have been
invented--every one of them to save labor. If these machines helped the
laborer, what a blessing they would be!

But the laborer does not own the machine; the machine owns him. That is
the trouble. In the olden time, when I was a boy, even, you know how it
was in the little towns. There was a shoemaker--two of them--a tailor
or two, a blacksmith, a wheelwright. I remember just how the shops used
to look. I used to go to the blacksmith shop at night, get up on the
forge, and hear them talk about turning horse-shoes. Many a night have
I seen the sparks fly and heard the stories that were told. There was a
great deal of human nature in those days! Everybody was known. If times
got hard, the poor little shoemakers made a living mending, half-soling,
straightening up the heels. The same with the blacksmith; the same with
the tailor. They could get credit--they did not have to pay till the
next January, and if they could not pay then, they took another year,
and they were happy enough. Now one man is not a shoemaker. There is a
great building--several hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery,
three or four thousand people--not a single mechanic in the whole
building. One sews on straps, another greases the machines, cuts out
soles, waxes threads. And what is the result? When the machines stop,
three thousand men are out of employment. Credit goes. Then come want
and famine, and if they happen to have a little child die, it would
take them years to save enough of their earnings to pay the expense
of putting away that little sacred piece of flesh. And yet, by this
machinery we can produce enough to flood the world. By the inventions
in agricultural machinery the United States can feed all the mouths upon
the earth. There is not a thing that man uses that can not instantly be
over-produced to such an extent as to become almost worthless; and
yet, with all this production, with all this power to create, there are
millions and millions in abject want. Granaries bursting, and famine
looking into the doors of the poor! Millions of everything, and yet
millions wanting everything and having substantially nothing!

Now, there is something wrong there. We have got into that contest
between machines-and men, and if extravagance does not keep pace with
ingenuity, it is going to be the most terrible question that man has
ever settled. I tell you, to-night, that these things are worth thinking
about. Nothing that touches the future of our race, nothing that touches
the happiness of ourselves or our children, should be beneath our
notice. We should think of these things--must think of them--and we
should endeavor to see that justice is finally done between man and man.

My sympathies are with the poor. My sympathies are with the workingmen
of the United States. Understand me distinctly. I am not an Anarchist.
Anarchy is the reaction from tyranny. I am not a Socialist. I am not
a Communist. I am an Individualist. I do not believe in tyranny of
government, but I do believe in justice as between man and man.

What is the remedy? Or, what can we think of--for do not imagine that I
think I know. It is an immense, an almost infinite, question, and all
we can do is to guess. You have heard a great deal lately upon the land
subject. Let me say a word or two upon that. In the first place I do not
want to take, and I would not take, an inch of land from any human being
that belonged to him. If we ever take it, we must pay for it--condemn
it and take it--do not rob anybody. Whenever any man advocates justice,
and robbery as the means, I suspect him.

No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use. Everybody
knows that--I do not care whether he has thousands or millions. I have
owned a great deal of land, but I know just as well as I know I am
living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use it. And why?
Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? Don't
you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And
don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for
want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody.
I am just telling how it is. Now, the land belongs to the children of
Nature. Nature invites into this world every babe that is born. And
what would you think of me, for instance, to-night, if I had invited
you here--nobody had charged you anything, but you had been invited--and
when you got here you had found one man pretending to occupy a hundred
seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and thereupon you were
compelled to stand up--what would you think of the invitation? It seems
to me that every child of Nature is entitled to his share of the land,
and that he should not be compelled to beg the privilege to work the
soil, of a babe that happened to be born before him. And why do I say
this? Because it is not to our interest to have a few landlords and
millions of tenants.

The tenement house is the enemy of modesty, the enemy of virtue, the
enemy of patriotism.

Home is where the virtues grow. I would like to see the law so that
every home, to a small amount, should be free not only from sale for
debts, but should be absolutely free from taxation, so that every man
could have a home. Then we will have a nation of patriots.

Now, suppose that every man were to have all the land he is able to buy.
The Vanderbilts could buy to-day all the land that is in farms in the
State of Ohio--every foot of it. Would it be for the best interest of
that State to have a few landlords and four or five millions of serfs?
So, I am in favor of a law finally to be carried out--not by robbery,
but by compensation, under the right, as the lawyers call it, of eminent
domain--so that no person would be allowed to own more land than he
uses. I am not blaming these rich men for being rich. I pity the most of
them. I had rather be poor, with a little sympathy in my heart, than
to be rich as all the mines of earth and not have that little flower of
pity in my breast. I do not see how a man can have hundreds of millions
and pass every day people that have not enough to eat. I do not
understand it. I might be just the same way myself. There is something
in money that dries up the sources of affection, and the probability is,
it is this: the moment a man gets money, so many men are trying to get
it away from him that in a little while he regards the whole human race
as his enemy, and he generally thinks that they could be rich, too,
if they would only attend to business as he has. Understand, I am not
blaming these people. There is a good deal of human nature in us all.
You remember the story of the man who made a speech at a Socialist
meeting, and closed it by saying, "Thank God, I am no monopolist," but
as he sank to his seat said, "But I wish to the Lord I was!" We must
remember that these rich men are naturally produced. Do not blame them.
Blame the system!

Certain privileges have been granted to the few by the Government,
ostensibly for the benefit of the many; and whenever that grant is not
for the good of the many, it should be taken from the few--not by force,
not by robbery, but by estimating fairly the value of that property, and
paying to them its value; because everything should be done according to
law and order.

What remedy, then, is there? First, the great weapon in this country is
the ballot. Each voter is a sovereign. There the poorest is the equal
of the richest. His vote will count just as many as though the hand
that cast it controlled millions. The poor are in the majority in this
country. If there is any law that oppresses them, it is their fault.
They have followed the fife and drum of some party. They have been
misled by others. No man should go an inch with a party--no matter if
that party is half the world and has in it the greatest intellects of
the earth--unless that party is going his way. No honest man should
ever turn round to join anything. If it overtakes him, good. If he has
to hurry up a little to get to it, good. But do not go with anything
that is not going your way; no matter whether they call it Republican,
or Democrat, or Progressive Democracy--do not go with it unless it goes
your way.

The ballot is the power. The law should settle many of these questions
between capital and labor. But I expect the greatest good to come from
civilization, from the growth of a sense of justice; for I tell you
to-night, a civilized man will never want anything for less than it is
worth--a civilized man, when he sells a thing, will never want more than
it is worth--a really and truly civilized man, would rather be cheated
than to cheat. And yet, in the United States, good as we are, nearly
everybody wants to get everything for a little less than it is worth,
and the man that sells it to him wants to get a little more than it is
worth? and this breeds rascality on both sides. That ought to be done
away with. There is one step toward it that we will take: we will
finally say that human flesh, human labor, shall not depend entirely on
"supply and demand." That is infinitely cruel. Every man should give to
another according to his ability to give--and enough that he may make
his living and lay something by for the winter of old age.

Go to England. Civilized country they call it. It is not. It never was.
I am afraid it never will be. Go to London, the greatest city of this
world, where there is the most wealth--the greatest glittering piles of
gold. And yet, one out of every six in that city dies in a hospital,
a workhouse or a prison. Is that the best that we are ever to know? Is
that the last word that civilization has to say? Look at the women in
this town sewing for a living, making cloaks for less than forty-five
cents, that sell for $45! Right here--here, amid all the palaces,
amid the thousands of millions of property--here! Is that all that
civilization can do? Must a poor woman support herself, or her child, or
her children, by that kind of labor, and with such pay--and do we call
ourselves civilized?

Did you ever read that wonderful poem about the sewing woman? Let me
tell you the last verse:

     "Winds that have sainted her, tell ye the story
     Of the young life by the needle that bled,
     Making a bridge over death's soundless waters
     Out of a swaying, and soul-cutting thread--
     Over it going, all the world knowing
     That thousands have trod it, foot-bleeding, before:
     God protect all of us! God pity all of us,
     Should she look back from the opposite shore!"

I cannot call this civilization. There must be something nearer a fairer
division in this world.

You can never get it by strikes. Never. The first strike that is a great
success will be the last, because the people who believe in law and
order will put the strikers down. The strike is no remedy. Boycotting is
no remedy. Brute force is no remedy. These questions have to be settled
by reason, by candor, by intelligence, by kindness; and nothing is
permanently settled in this world that has not for its corner-stone
justice, and is not protected by the profound conviction of the human
mind.

This is no country for Anarchy, no country for Communism, no country for
the Socialist. Why? Because the political power is equally divided. What
other reason? Speech is free. What other? The press is untrammeled. And
that is all that the right should ever ask--a free press, free speech,
and the protection of person. That is enough. That is all I ask. In a
country like Russia, where every mouth is a bastile and every tongue a
convict, there may be some excuse. Where the noblest and the best are
driven to Siberia, there may be a reason for the Nihilist. In a country
where no man is allowed to petition for redress, there is a reason,
but not here. This--say what you will against it--this is the best
Government ever founded by the human race! Say what you will of parties,
say what you will of dishonesty, the holiest flag that ever kissed the
air is ours!

Only a few years ago morally we were a low people--before we abolished
slavery--but now, when there is no chain except that of custom, when
every man has an opportunity, this is the grandest Government of
the earth. There is hardly a man in the United States to-day, of any
importance, whose voice anybody cares to hear, who was not nursed at the
loving breast of poverty. Look at the children of the rich. My God, what
a punishment for being rich! So, whatever happens, let every man say
that this Government, and this form of government, shall stand.

"But," say some, "these workingmen are dangerous." I deny it. We are
all in their power. They run all the cars. Our lives are in their hands
almost every day. They are working in all our homes. They do the labor
of this world. We are all at their mercy, and yet they do not commit
more crimes, according to number, than the rich. Remember that. I am not
afraid of them. Neither am I afraid of the monopolists, because, under
our institutions, when they become hurtful to the general good, the
people will stand it just to a certain point, and then comes the
end--not in anger, not in hate, but from a love of liberty and justice.

Now, we have in this country another class. We call them "criminals."
Let me take another step:

     "'Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
     But to support him after."

Recollect what I said in the first place--that every man is as he must
be. Every crime is a necessary product. The seeds were all sown,
the land thoroughly plowed, the crop well attended to, and carefully
harvested. Every crime is born of necessity. If you want less crime,
you must change the conditions. Poverty makes crime. Want, rags, crusts,
failure, misfortune--all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally
he takes, and takes contrary to law, and becomes a criminal. And what
do you do with him? You punish him. Why not punish a man for having the
consumption? The time will come when you will see that that is just
as logical. What do you do with the criminal? You send him to the
penitentiary. Is he made better? Worse. The first thing you do is to try
to trample out his manhood, by putting an indignity upon him. You mark
him. You put him in stripes. At night you put him in darkness. His
feeling for revenge grows. You make a wild beast of him, and he comes
out of that place branded in body and soul, and then you won't let him
reform if he wants to. You put on airs above him, because he has been in
the penitentiary. The next time you look with scorn upon a convict, let
me beg of you to do one thing. Maybe you are not as bad as I am, but do
one thing: think of all the crimes you have wanted to commit; think of
all the crimes you would have committed if you had had the opportunity;
think of all the temptations to which you would have yielded had nobody
been looking; and then put your hand on your heart and say whether you
can justly look with contempt even upon a convict.

None but the noblest should inflict punishment, even on the basest.

Society has no right to punish any man in revenge--no right to punish
any man except for two objects--one, the prevention of crime; the other,
the reformation of the criminal. How can you reform him? Kindness is the
sunshine in which virtue grows. Let it be understood by these men that