mount to less than nothing--that all these things tend only to
the degradation of mankind. It is hard, I know, to find an antidote
for a poison that was mingled with a mother's milk.

The laboring masses, so far as the Catholics are concerned, are
filled with awe and wonder and fear about the church. This fear
began to grow while they were being rocked in their cradles, and
they still imagine that the church has some mysterious power; that
it is in direct communication with some infinite personality that
could, if it desired, strike then dead, or damn their souls forever.
Persons who have no such belief, who care nothing for popes or
priests or churches or heavens or hells or devils or gods, have
very little idea of the power of fear.

The old dogmas filled the brain with strange monsters. The soul
of the orthodox Christian gropes and wanders and crawls in a kind
of dungeon, where the strained eyes see fearful shapes, and the
frightened flesh shrinks from the touch of serpents.

The good part of Christianity--that is to say, kindness, morality
--will never go down. The cruel part ought to go down. And by
the cruel part I mean the doctrine of eternal punishment--of allowing
the good to suffer for the bad--allowing innocence to pay the debt
of guilt. So the foolish part of Christianity--that is to say,
the miraculous--will go down. The absurd part must perish. But
there will be no war about it as there was in France. Nobody
believes enough in the foolish part of Christianity now to fight
for it. Nobody believes with intensity enough in miracles to
shoulder a musket. There is probably not a Christian in New York
willing to fight for any story, no matter if the story is so old
that it is covered with moss. No mentally brave and intelligent
man believes in miracles, and no intelligent man cares whether
there was a miracle or not, for the reason that every intelligent
man knows that the miraculous has no possible connection with the
moral. "Thou shalt not steal," is just as good a commandment if
it should turn out that the flood was a drouth. "Thou shalt not
murder," is a good and just and righteous law, and whether any
particular miracle was ever performed or not has nothing to do with
the case. There is no possible relation between these things.

I am on the side not only of the physically oppressed, but of the
mentally oppressed. I hate those who put lashes on the body, and
I despise those who put the