the
forehead of the convict just as cheerfully as a Mexican brands his
cattle; and when this man of intelligence and heart knows that
these poor people are simply the victims of society, the unfortunates
who stumble and over whose bodies rolls the Juggernaut--he knows
that there is, or at least appears to be, no power above or below
working for righteousness--that from the heavens is stretched no
protecting hand. And when a man of intelligence and heart in
England visits the workhouse, the last resting place of honest
labor; when he thinks that the young man, without any great
intelligence, but with a good constitution, starts in the morning
of his life for the workhouse, and that it is impossible for the
laboring man, one who simply has his muscle, to save anything; that
health is not able to lay anything by for the days of disease--when
the man of intelligence and heart sees all this, he is compelled
to say that the civilization of to-day, the religion of to-day,
the charity of to-day--no matter how much of good there may be
behind them or in them, are failures.

A few years ago people were satisfied when the minister said: "All
this will be made even in another world; a crust-eater here will
sit at the head of the banquet there, and the king here will beg
for the crumbs that fall from the table there." When this was
said, the poor man hoped and the king laughed. A few years ago
the church said to the slave: "You will be free in another world,
and your freedom will be made glorious by the perpetual spectacle
of your master in hell." But the people--that is, many of the
people--are no longer deceived by what once were considered fine
phrases. They have suffered so much that they no longer wish to
see others suffer and no longer think of the suffering of others
as a source of joy to themselves. The poor see that the eternal
starvation of kings and queens in another world will be no compensation
for what they have suffered there. The old religions appear vulgar
and the ideas of rewards and punishments are only such as would
satisfy a cannibal chief or one of his favorites.

_Question_. Do you think the Christian religion has made the world
better?

_Answer_. For many centuries there has been preached and taught
in an almost infinite number of ways a supernatural religion.
During all this time the world has been in the care of the Infinite,
and yet every imaginable vice has flourished, every imaginable pa