he world; He gave them a desert. He promised them
liberty, and made them slaves. He promised them power; He gave them
exile, and any one who reads the old testament is compelled to say that
nothing could add to their misery.

Let us be honest. How do you account for this religion? This world;
where did it come from? You hear every minister say that man is a
religious animal--that religion is natural. While man is an ignorant
animal man will be a theological animal, and no longer. Where did we
get this religion? The savage knew but little of nature, but thought
that everything happened in reference to him. He thought his sins
caused earthquakes, and that his virtues made the sunshine.

Nothing is so egotistical as ignorance. You know, and so do I, that if
no human being existed, the sun would shine, and that tempests would
now and then devastate the earth; violets would spread their velvet
bosoms to the sun, daisies would grow, roses would fill the air with
perfume, and now and then volcanoes would illuminate the horizon with
their lurid glare; the grass would grow, the waters would run, and so
far as nature is concerned, everything would be as joyous as though the
earth were filled with happy homes. We know the barbarian savage
thinks that all this was on his account. He thinks that there dwelt
two very powerful deities; that there was a good one, because he knows
good things happen to him; and that there was a bad one, because he
knows bad things happen to him. Behind the evil influence he puts a
devil, and behind the good, an intention of God; and then he imagines
both these beings are in opposition, and that, between them, they
struggle for the possession of his ignorant soul. He also thinks that
the place where the good deity lives is heaven, and that the place
where the other deity keeps himself is a place of torture and
punishment. And about that time other barbarians have chosen too keep
the ignorant ones in subjection by means of the doctrine of fear and
punishment.

There is no reforming power in fear. You can scare a man, maybe, so
bad that he won't do a thing, but you can't scare him so bad he won't
want to do it. There is no reforming power in punishment or brute
force; but our barbarians rather imagined that every being would punish
in accordance with his power, and his dignity, and that God would
subject them to torture in the same way as those who made Him angry.
They knew the king would