antle of
mystery. The grossest absurdities have been declared to be
self-evident facts. The order of nature has been, as it were,
reversed, in order that the hypocritical few might govern the honest
many. The man who stood by the conclusion of his reason was denounced
as a scorner and hater of God and his holy church. From the
organization of the first church until this moment every member has
borne the marks of collar and chain, and whip. No man ever seriously
attempted to reform a church without being cast out and hunted down by
the hounds of hypocrisy. The highest crime against a creed is to
change it. Reformation is treason.

Thousands of young men are being educated at this moment by the various
churches. What for? In order that they may be prepared to investigate
the phenomena by which we are surrounded? No! The object, and the
only object, is that they may be prepared to defend a creed. That they
may learn the arguments of their respective churches and repeat them in
the dull ears of a thoughtless congregation. If one after being thus
trained at the expense of the Methodists turns Presbyterian or Baptist,
he is denounced as an ungrateful wretch. Honest investigation is
utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason that
if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you
think it wrong, the church will investigate you. The consequence of
this is that most of the theological literature is the result of
suppression, of fear, of tyranny, and hypocrisy.

Every orthodox writer necessarily said to himself, "If I write that, my
wife and children may want for bread, I will be covered with shame and
branded with infamy, but if I write this, I will gain position, power
and honor. My church rewards defenders and burns reformers." Under
these conditions, all your Scotts, Henrys and McKnights have written;
and weighed in these scales what are their commentaries worth? They
are not the ideas and decisions of honest judges, but the sophisms of
the paid attorneys of superstition. Who can tell what the world has
lost by this infamous system of suppression? How many grand thinkers
died with the mailed hand of superstition on their lips? How many
splendid ideas have perished in the cradle of the brain, strangled in
the poisonous coils of that python, the church!

For thousands of years a thinker was hunted down like an escaped
convict. To him, who had braved the church, eve