a majority."

[Page 246.]

It is the pulpit and press, clerical robes and the pro- [1]
hibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of
the world,--all unmitigated systems of crime; and it
requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through
civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. [5]
It was the Southern pulpit and press that influenced the
people to wrench from man both human and divine rights,
in order to subserve the interests of wealth, religious caste,
civil and political power. And the pulpit had to be
purged of that sin by human gore,--when the love of [10]
Christ would have washed it divinely away in Christian
Science!

The cry of the colored slave has scarcely been heard
and hushed, when from another direction there comes
another sharp cry of oppression. Another form of inhumanity [15]
lifts its hydra head to forge anew the old fetters;
to shackle conscience, stop free speech, slander, vilify;
to invite its prey, then turn and refuse the victim a solitary
vindication in this most unprecedented warfare.

A conflict more terrible than the battle of Gettysburg [20]
awaits the crouching wrong that refused to yield its
prey the peace of a desert, when a voice was heard
crying in the wilderness,--the spiritual famine of 1866,
--"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths
straight." [25]

Shall religious intolerance, arrayed against the rights
of man, again deluge the earth in blood? The question
at issue with mankind is: Shall we have a spiritual Chris-
tianity and a spiritual healing, or a materialistic religion
and a _materia medica_? [30]

The advancing faith and hope of Christianity, the
earnest seeking after practical truth that shall cast out

[Page 247.]

error and heal the sick, wisely demand for man his God- [1]
given heritage, both human and divine rights; namely,
that his honest convictions and _proofs_ of advancing truth
be allowed due consideration, and treated not as pearls
trampled upon. [5]

Those familiar with my history are more tolerant; those
who know me, know that I found health in just what I
teach. I have professed Christianity a half-century; and
now I calmly challenge the world, upon fair investigation,
to furnish a single instance of departure in one of my [10]
works from the highest possible ethics.

The charges against my views are false, but natural,
since those bringing them do not understand my state-
ment of the Science I introdu