arrogance, and cruelty of those who love their enemies,
and who, when smitten on one cheek, turn the other. This word was born
of intellectual slavery in the feudal ages of thought. It was an
epithet used in the place of argument. From the commencement of the
Christian era, every art has been exhausted, and every conceivable
punishment inflicted to force all people to hold the same religious
opinions. This effort was born of the idea that a certain belief was
necessary to the salvation of the soul. Christ taught, and the church
still teaches, that unbelief is the blackest of crimes. God is
supposed to hate with an infinite and implacable hatred, every heretic
upon the earth, and the heretics who have died are supposed, at this
moment, to be suffering the agonies of the damned. The church
persecutes the living, and her God burns the dead.

It is claimed that God wrote a book called the bible, and it is
generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand.
As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people
were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in
the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to
differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to
give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these
men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with
each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were
rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people. They
infested every country, every city, town, hamlet, and family. They
appealed to the worst passions of the human heart. They sowed the
seeds of discord and hatred in every land. Brother denounced brother,
wives informed against their husbands, mothers accused their children,
dungeons were crowded with the innocent; the flesh of the good and true
rotted in the clasp of chains, the flames devoured the heroic, and in
the name of the most merciful God, his children were exterminated with
famine, sword and fire. Over the wild waves of battle rose and fell
the banner of Jesus Christ. For sixteen hundred years the robes of the
church were red with innocent blood. The ingenuity of Christians was
exhausted in devising punishment severe enough to be inflicted upon
other Christians who honestly and sincerely differed with them upon any
point whatever.

Give any orthodox church the power, and today