can hardly express to you
today my contempt for such a doctrine; and if it be true, I make my
choice today, and I prefer hell.

Who is in heaven? John Calvin! John Knox! Jonathan Edwards!
Torquemada--the builders of dungeons, the men who have obstructed the
march of the human race. These are the men who are in heaven; and who
else? Those who never had brain enough to harbor a doubt. And they ask
me: How can you be wicked enough to attack the Christian religion?

"Oh," but they say, "God will never forgive you if you attack the
orthodox religion." Now, when I read the history of this world, and
when I think of the experience of my fellow-men, when I think of the
millions living in poverty, and when I know that in the very air we
breathe and in the sunlight that visits our homes there lurks an
assassin ready to take our lives, and even when we believe we are in
the fullness health and joy, they are undermining us with their
contagion--when I know that we are surrounded by all these evils, and
when I think of what man has suffered, I do not wonder if God can
forgive man, but I often ask myself, "Can man forgive God?"

There is another thing. Some of these ministers have talked about me,
and have made it their business to say unpleasant things. Among others
the Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn--a man of not much imagination, but
of most excellent judgment--charges that I am a "blasphemer." A
frightful charge! Terrible, if true! What is blasphemy? It is a sin,
as I understand, against God. Is God infinite? He is, so they say; He
is infinite; absolutely conditionless? Can I injure the conditionless?
No. Can I sin against anything that I cannot injure? No. That is a
perfectly plain proposition. I can injure my fellow-man, because he is
a conditioned being, and I can help to change those conditions. He
must have air; he must have food, he must have clothing; he must have
shelter; but God is conditionless, and I cannot by any possibility
affect Him. Consequently I cannot sin against Him. But I can sin
against my fellow-man, so that I ought to be a thousand times more
careful of doing injustice than of uttering blasphemy. There is no
blasphemy but injustice, and there is no worship except the practice of
justice. It is a thousand times more important that we should love our
fellow-men than that we should love God. It is better to love wife and
children than to love Jesus Christ, He is dead; they are alive.