which are
symbols, but also in having great buildings set apart for the
worshipping of them.

The representatives of the god below the vault worship him in banks
under the leadership of a threefold ministry: presidents, cashiers and
bookkeepers.

The representatives of the god above the vault worship him in churches
under the leadership of a threefold ministry: bishops, priests and
deacons.

Speaking particularly of Christianity and America the trouble is not at
all with our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam divinities, but wholly with
what they symbolize, capitalism--the god of liars, robbers and
warriors.

What our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam should alike symbolize are the
classless divinities: (1) law, the king of the physical realm, and (2)
truth, the queen of the moral realm.

Law is what nature does. There is no other law, and this law is the god
of the physical realm. The gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations
of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, and all the rest) are
personifications, or symbols, of this god, or else they are
superstitions.

This representation is proved in practice to be true, on the one hand,
by the fact that no one needs to live with reference to any among those
gods, not even the god, Jesus; and, on the other hand, by the fact that
none who fail to live with reference to this god, law, lives at all.

Every act of nature, that is, every physical and psychical phenomenon
which enters into the constitution of the universe, is a word of the
revelation of this god, and there is no other revelation. All men must
constantly live with reference to it or else immediately die.

Truth is the interpretation of this law in the light of human
experience, reason and investigation with the view of making human life,
that of self and of all who come or can be brought within the range of
one's influence, as long and happy as possible.

Any one who desires and endeavors rightly to learn, interpret and live
this law to these ends is moral. In everything is he wholly good and in
nothing at all bad.

Religion is not anything good, except only as it is a synonym of such
morality, and this is equally true of politics.

War shortens much life and fills more with misery, hence it is utterly
immoral, and this is equally true of poverty and slavery.

In what I say here and in some other places about war being essentially
evil, the wars referred to are those by which the world has been cursed
th