ho
are dear to you in this?

_Answer_. I have no particular desire to be destroyed. I am
willing to go to heaven if there be such a place, and enjoy myself
for ever and ever. It would give me infinite satisfaction to know
that all mankind are to be happy forever. Infidels love their
wives and children as well as Christians do theirs. I have never
said a word against heaven--never said a word against the idea of
immortality. On the contrary, I have said all I could truthfully
say in favor of the idea that we shall live again. I most sincerely
hope that there is another world, better than this, where all the
broken ties of love will be united. It is the other place I have
been fighting. Better that all of us should sleep the sleep of
death forever than that some should suffer pain forever. If in
order to have a heaven there must be a hell, then I say away with
them both. My doctrine puts the bow of hope over every grave; my
doctrine takes from every mother's heart the fear of hell. No good
man would enjoy himself in heaven with his friends in hell. No
good God could enjoy himself in heaven with millions of his poor,
helpless mistakes in hell. The orthodox idea of heaven--with God
an eternal inquisitor, a few heartless angels and some redeemed
orthodox, all enjoying themselves, while the vast multitude will
weep in the rayless gloom of God's eternal dungeon--is not calculated
to make man good or happy. I am doing what I can to civilize the
churches, humanize the preachers and get the fear of hell out of
the human heart. In this business I am meeting with great success.

--_Philadelphia Times_, September 25, 1885.

SOME LIVE TOPICS.

_Question_. Shall you attend the Albany Freethought Convention?

_Answer_. I have agreed to be present not only, but to address
the convention, on Sunday, the 13th of September. I am greatly
gratified to know that the interest in the question of intellectual
liberty is growing from year to year. Everywhere I go it seems to
be the topic of conversation. No matter upon what subject people
begin to talk, in a little while the discussion takes a religious
turn, and people who a few moments before had not the slightest
thought of saying a word about the churches, or about the Bible,
are giving their opinions in full. I hear discussions of this kind
in all the public conveyances, at the hotels, on the piazzas at
the seaside--and they are not discussions in which I take