convince people of its
truth--they are injurious. In the proportion that they teach
morality and justice, and practice kindness and charity--in that
proportion they are a benefit. Every church, therefore, is a mixed
problem--part good and part bad. In one direction it leads toward
and sheds light; in the other direction its influence is entirely
bad.

Now, I would like to civilize the churches, so that they will be
able to do good deeds without building bad creeds. In other words,
take out the superstitious and the miraculous, and leave the human
and the moral.

_Question_. Why do you not respond to the occasional clergyman
who replies to your lectures?

_Answer_. In the first place, no clergyman has ever replied to my
lectures. In the second place, no clergyman ever will reply to my
lectures. He does not answer my arguments--he attacks me; and the
replies that I have seen are not worth answering. They are far
below the dignity of the question under discussion. Most of them
are ill-mannered, as abusive as illogical, and as malicious as
weak. I cannot reply without feeling humiliated. I cannot use
their weapons, and my weapons they do not understand. I attack
Christianity because it is cruel, and they account for all my
actions by putting behind them base motives. They make it at once
a personal question. They imagine that epithets are good enough
arguments with which to answer an Infidel. A few years ago they
would have imprisoned me. A few years before that they would have
burned me. We have advanced. Now they only slander; and I
congratulate myself on the fact that even that is not believed.
Ministers do not believe each other about each other. The truth
has never yet been ascertained in any trial by a church. The longer
the trial lasts, the obscurer is the truth. They will not believe
each other, even on oath; and one of the most celebrated ministers
of this country has publicly announced that there is no use in
answering a lie started by his own church; that if he does answer
it--if he does kill it--forty more lies will come to the funeral.

In this connection we must remember that the priests of one religion
never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because
priests instinctively know priests? Now, when a Christian tells
a Buddhist some of the miracles of the Testament, the Buddhist
smiles. When a Buddhist tells a Christian the miracles performed
by Buddha, the Christian