ot himself forgive? Why should he
say "Pray for those that despise and persecute you," but if they refuse
to believe his doctrine he will burn them forever? I cannot believe it.
Here is a little child, residing in the purlieus of the city--some boy
who is taught that it is his duty to steal by his mother, who applauds
his success and pats him on the head and calls him a good boy--would it
be just to condemn him to an eternity of torture? Suppose there is a
God; let us bring to this question some common sense.

I care nothing about the doctrines of religions or creeds of the past.
Let us come to the bar of the nineteenth century and judge matter by
what we know, by what we think, by what we love. But they say to us,
"If you throw away the Bible what are we to depend on then?" But no two
persons in the world agree as to what the Bible is, what they are to
believe, or what they are not to believe. It is like a guidepost that
has been thrown down in some time of disaster, and has been put up the
wrong way. Nobody can accept its guidance, for nobody knows where it
would direct him. I say, "Tear down the useless guidepost," but they
answer, "Oh, do not do that or we will have nothing to go by." I would
say, "Old Church, you take that road and I will take this." Another
minister has said that the Bible is the great town-clock, at which we
all may set our watches. But I have said to a friend of that minister:
"Suppose we all should set our watches by that town-clock, there would
be many persons to tell you that in old times the long hand was the
hour hand, and besides, the clock hasn't been wound up for a long
time." I say let us wait till the sun rises and set our watches by
nature. For my part, I am willing to give up heaven to get rid of hell.
I had rather there should be no heaven than that any solitary soul
should be condemned to suffer forever and ever. But they tell me that
the Bible is the good book. Now, in the Old Testament there is not in
my judgment a single reference to another life. Is there a burial
service mentioned in it in which a word of hope is spoken at the grave
of the dead? The idea of eternal life was not born of any book. That
wave of hope and joy ebbs and flows, and will continue to ebb and flow
as long as love kisses the lips of death.

Let me tell you a tale of the Persian religion of a man who, having
done good for long years of his life, presented himself at the gates of
Paradise, but the gates r