ed by hell-fire
advocates an infidel, atheist, dog!]

To do so sweet a thing as to love our neighbors as we love ourselves;
to strive to attain to as perfect a spirit as a Golden Rule would bring
us into; to make virtue lovely by living it, grandly and nobly and
patiently the outgrowth of a brotherhood not possible in this world
where men are living away from themselves, and trampling justice and
mercy and forgiveness under their feet!

Speaking of the different religions, of course they are represented by
the different churches; and the best hold of the churches, and the
surest way of giving totally depraved humanity a realizing sense of
their utterly lost condition, is to talk and preach hell with all its
horrible, terrible concomitants. True, the different priests advocate
the doctrine, only when they see that it is the only thing to rouse the
sinners from their lethargy; for where is the man who will not accept
the grace of Jesus Christ, if he becomes convinced that his state in
the hereafter is a terrible one! The ministers of the different
churches know full well which side of their bread is buttered. A
priest is a divinity among his people--a man around whom his
parishioners throw a glamour of sanctity, and one who can do no wrong;
albeit, his chief and growing characteristics are tyranny, arrogancy,
self-conceit, deception, bigotry and superstition! Tyrannical do I
call them? Most assuredly! Suppose, for example, the Methodist, or
Presbyterian church had the power to decide whether you, or I, or any
other man, should be a Methodist or Presbyterian, and we should decline
to follow the path pointed out to us, or either of us, what I solemnly
and candidly ask you, would be the result? Our fate would be more
terrible than their endless hell! The inquisition would rise again in
all its horrid blackness! Instruments of torture would darken our
vision on every hand! But, thank God--not that terrible being whom
Christians would have us believe is our Maker--this is a free
land--free as the air we breathe; and you and I can partake of the
orthodox waters of life freely, or we can let them alone! When I see a
man perched upon a pedestal called a "pulpit" a man who is one of
nature's noblemen, physically, and fully able to breast the storms of
life and earn his honest living--telling his hearers with perspiring
brow and all his might and main of the terrors of the seething cauldron
of hell, and how certain