I can to put another one in God's
name, so that we will worship a supreme human god, so that we will
worship mercy, justice, love and truth, and not have the idea that we
must sacrifice our brother upon the altar of fear to please some
imaginary phantom. See what Christianity has done for the world! It
has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand organ and Ireland to
exile. That is what religion has done. Take every country in the
whole world, and the country that has got the least religion is the
most prosperous, and the country that has got the most religion is in
the worst condition.

In the vast cemetery, called the past, are most of the religions of men
and there, too, are nearly all their gods.

The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and
cornice; over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the
trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms;
Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes,
his crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with
seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and
Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven
desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering
weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl
falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden
beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the
Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies
are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and
the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the
mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul,
Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice
halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer,
dashes mountains to the earth no more.

Broken are the circles and the cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen
upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss are
the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have
died out in the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and
none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained
cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her
white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but no
naiads bathe; the trees stil