pleasure of racking him
once again. That is the spirit, and it is a spirit born of the
doctrine that there is upon the throne of the universe a being who will
eternally damn his children, and they said: "If God is going to have
the supreme happiness of burning them forever, certainly he ought not
to begrudge to us the joy of burning them for an hour or two." That
was their doctrine, and when I read these things it seems to me that I
have suffered them myself. When I look upon those instruments I look
upon them as though I had suffered all these tortures myself. It seems
to me as though I had stood upon the shore an exile and looking with
tear-filled eyes toward home and native land. It seems as though my
nails had been plucked out and into bleeding flesh needles had been
thrust; as though my eyelids had been torn away and I had been set out
in the ardent rays of the sun; as though I had been set out upon the
sands of the sea and drowned by the inexorable tide; as though I had
been in the dungeon waiting for the coming footsteps of relief; as
though I had been upon the scaffold arid seen the glittering axe
falling upon me; and seen bending above me the white faces of hypocrite
priests; as though I had been taken from my wife and children to the
public square, where faggots had been piled around me and the flames
had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to blindness; as
though my ashes had been scattered by all the hands of hatred; and I
feel like saying, that while I live I will do what little I can to
preserve and augment the rights of men, women arid children; while I
live I will do a little something so that they who come after me shall
have the right to think and express that thought. The trouble is those
who oppose us pretend they are better than we are. They are more
mortal, they are kinder, they are more generous. I deny it. They are
not. And if they are the ones that are to be saved in another world,
and if those who simply think they are honest, and express that honest
thought, are to be damned, there will be but little originality, to say
the least of it, in heaven. They say they are better than we are--and
to show you how much better they are I have got at home copies of some
letters that passed between gentlemen high in the church several
hundred years ago, and the question was this: "Ought we to cut out the
tongues of blasphemers before we burn them?" And they finally decided
that they ough