rayer; has felt the consolation and the shuddering
fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked and worshiped all the gods;
enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has lived
all lives, and through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and
the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed
naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The
imagination hath a stage within the brain, whereon he sets all scenes
that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where
his players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the
careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life.

Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There
is this difference between the miracle and the myth--a myth is an
idealism of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is
some difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference
that there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury.
Miracles are probably only in the far past or the very remote future.
The present is the property of the natural. You say to a man: "The
dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, that's reasonable."
You say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says,
"That is what I believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead
this morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?" Miracles
never convince at the time they were said to have been performed.

John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He was cast into
prison. When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country."
Afterward he returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he
again departed from that country. There is no possible relation
between the miraculous and the moral. The miracles of the middle ages
are the children of superstition. In the middle ages men told
everything but the truth, and believed everything but the facts. The
middle ages--a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There is
one thing about humanity. You see the faults of others, but not your
own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and
thinks it absurd. Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin
and some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant shut his eyes
when he prays? The idea is a souvenir of sun worship. It is the most
natural worship in the world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The
doctrine of eternal t