does not believe in any religion, having
expressed a wish that somebody say a few words above his remains,
I see no reason why such a proceeding should be stopped, and, for
my part, I see no sacrilege in it. Why should the reputations of
the dead, and the feelings of those who live, be placed at the
mercy of the ministers? A man dies not having been a Christian,
and who, according to the Christian doctrine, is doomed to eternal
fire. How would an honest Christian minister console the widow
and the fatherless children? How would he dare to tell what he
claims to be truth in the presence of the living? The truth is,
the Christian minister in the presence of death abandons his
Christianity. He dare not say above the coffin, "the soul that
once inhabited this body is now in hell." He would be denounced
as a brutal savage. Now and then a minister at a funeral has been
brave enough and unmannerly enough to express his doctrine in all
its hideousness of hate. I was told that in Chicago, many years
ago, a young man, member of a volunteer fire company, was killed
by the falling of a wall, and at the very moment the wall struck
him he was uttering a curse. He was a brave and splendid man. An
orthodox minister said above his coffin, in the presence of his
mother and mourning friends, that he saw no hope for the soul of
that young man. The mother, who was also orthodox, refused to have
her boy buried with such a sermon--stopped the funeral, took the
corpse home, engaged a Universalist preacher, and, on the next day
having heard this man say that there was no place in the wide
universe of God without hope, and that her son would finally stand
among the redeemed, this mother laid her son away, put flowers upon
his grave, and was satisfied.

_Question_. What have you to say to the charge that you are
preaching the doctrine of despair and hopelessness, when they have
the comforting assurances of the Christian religion to offer?

_Answer_. All I have to say is this: If the Christian religion
is true, as commonly preached--and when I speak of Christianity,
I speak of the orthodox Christianity of the day--if that be true,
those whom I have loved the best are now in torment. Those to whom
I am most deeply indebted are now suffering the vengeance of God.
If this religion be true, the future is of no value to me. I care
nothing about heaven, unless the ones I love and have loved are
there. I know nothing about the angel