ty years ago I
should have been imprisoned and my wife and children would have been
torn away from me, and twenty-five years ago I could not have made a
living in the United States in my profession--the law. But I live now
and can see through it all, and all is light. I delivered another
lecture, on "Ghosts," in which I sought to show that man had been
controlled in the past by phantoms created by his own imagination; in
which the pencil of fear had drawn pictures for him on the canvass of
superstition, and that men had groveled in they dirt before their own
superstitious creations. I endeavored to show that man had received
nothing from these ghosts but hatred, blood, ignorance and unhappiness,
and that they had filled our world with woe and tears. This is what I
endeavored to show--no more. Now, every one has as much right to
differ with me as I with them, but it does not make the slightest
difference for the purpose of argument whether I am a good man or a
bad, whether I am ugly or handsome--although I would not object to
resting my case on that issue; the only thing to be considered and
discussed is, is what I have said true, or is it untrue?

"Now, I said that the bible came from the ghosts, and that they gave us
the doctrine of immortality of the soul, which I deny. Now, the
immortality of the soul, if there is such a thing, is a fact, and
therefore no book could make it. If I am immortal, I am; if not, no
book can make me so. The doctrine of immortality is based in the hope
of the human heart, and is not derived from any book or creed. It has
its origin in the ebb and flow of the human affections, and will
continue as long as affection, and is the rainbow in the sky of hope.
It does not depend on a book, on ghosts, superstition of any kind; it
is a flower of the human heart. I did say that these ghosts, or the
book, taught that human slavery was right, that most monstrous of all
crimes, that makes miserable the victim and debases the master, for a
slave can have all the virtues while the master can not. I did say
that it riveted the chains upon the oppressed, and that it counseled
the robbing of that most precious of all boons--Liberty. I add that
the book upheld all this, that it sustained and sanctified the
institution of human slavery. I did also assert that this same book,
which my critics claim was inspired by God, inculcated the doctrine of
witchcraft, for which people, through its teaching were