ile this examination was being made, the Christianity of our day
applauded, and when the learned men got through with the religion of
other countries, they turned their attention to our religion, and by
the same methods, by the same mode of reasoning and the same
arrangements that they used with the old religions they were
overturning the religion of our day. How is that? Because every
religion in this world is the work of man. Every book that was ever
written was written by man. Man existed before books. If otherwise,
we might reasonably admit that there was such a thing as a sacred bible.

I wish to call your attention to another thing. Man never had an
original idea, and he never will have one, except it be supplied to him
by his surroundings. Nature gave man every idea that he ever had in
the world; and nature will continue to give man his ideas so long as he
exists. No man can conceive of anything, the hint of which he has not
received from the surroundings. And there is nothing on this earth,
coming from any other sphere whatever.

As I have before said, man has produced every religion in the world.
Why is this? Because each generation sends forth the knowledge and
belief of the people at the time it was made, and in no book is there
any knowledge formed, except just at the time it was written.
Barbarians have produced barbarian religions, and always will produce
them. They have produced, and always will produce, ideas and belief in
harmony with their surroundings, and all the religions of the past were
produced by barbarians. We are making religions every day; that is to
say, we are constantly changing them, adapting them to our purposes,
and the religion of today is not the religion of a few months or a year
ago. Well, what changes these religions? Science does it, education
does it; the growing heart of man does it. Some men have nothing else
to do but produce religions; science is constantly changing them. If
we are cursed with such barbarian religions today--for our religions
are really barbarous--what will they be an hundred or a thousand years
hence?

But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox
Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of
their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight? What
will become of their endless hell--their doctrine of the future anguish
of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending
g