beckoning from
the horizon of the future to every great and splendid man that the
pulpit has to put up with the leavings--ravelings, selvage.

These preachers say, "How can any man be wicked and infamous enough to
attack our religion and take from the world the solace of orthodox
Christianity?" What is that solace? Let us be honest. What is it? If
the Christian religion be true, the grandest, greatest, noblest of the
world are now in hell, and the narrowest and meanest are now in heaven.
Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science, the most learned man of the most
learned nation, with a mind grand enough to grasp not simply this
globe, but this constellation--a man who shed light upon the whole
earth--a man who honored human nature, and who won all his victories on
the field of thought--that man, pure and upright, noble beyond
description, if Christianity be true, is in hell this moment. That is
what they call "solace"--"tidings of great joy." LaPlace, who read the
heavens like an open book, who enlarged the horizon of human thought,
is there too. Beethoven, Master of melody and harmony, who added to the
joy of human life, and who has borne upon the wings of harmony and
melody millions of spirits to the height of joy, with his heart still
filled with melody--he is in hell today. Robert Burns, poet of love
and liberty, and from his heart, like a spring gurgling and running
down the highways, his poems have filled the world with music. They
have added luster to human love. That man who, in four lines, gave all
the philosophy of life--

To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife
Is the true pathos and
Sublime Of human life

--he is there with the rest.

Charles Dickens, whose genius will be a perpetual shield, saving
thousands and millions of children from blows, who did more to make us
tender with children than any other writer that ever touched a pen--he
is there with the rest, according to our Christian religion. A little
while ago there died in this country a philosopher--Ralph Waldo
Emerson--a man of the loftiest ideal, a perfect model of integrity,
whose mind was like a placid lake and reflected truths like stars. If
the Christian religion be true, he is in perdition today. And yet he
sowed the seeds of thought, and raised the whole world intellectually.
And Longfellow, whose poems, tender as the dawn, have gone into
millions of homes, no