that was not exactly it." Said I: "Suppose your mother were
in hell, would you be happy in heaven then?" "Well," he says, "I
suppose God would know the best place for mother." And I thought to
myself, then, if I was a woman, I would like to have five or six boys
like that.

It will not do. Heaven is where are those we love, and those who love
us. And I wish to go to no world unless I can be accompanied by those
who love me here. Talk about the consolations of this infamous
doctrine. The consolations of a doctrine that makes a father say, "I
can be happy with my daughter in hell"; that makes a mother say, "I can
be happy with my generous, brave boy in hell"; that makes a boy say, "I
can enjoy the glory of heaven with the woman who bore me, the woman who
would have died for me, in eternal agony." And they call that tidings
of great joy.

I have not time to speak of the Baptists,--that Jeremy Taylor said were
as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest pest and
nuisance on the earth. Nor of the Quakers, the best of all, and abused
by all. I can not forget that George Fox, in the year of grace 1640,
was put in the pillory and whipped from town to town, scarred, put in a
dungeon, beaten, trampled upon, and what for? Simply because he
preached the doctrine: "Thou shalt not resist evil with evil. Thou
shalt love thy enemies." Think what the Church must have been that day
to scar the flesh of that loving man! Just think of it! I say I have
not time to speak of all these sects. And of the varieties of
Presbyterians and Campbellites. The people who think they must dive in
order to go up. There are hundreds and hundreds of these sects, all
founded upon this creed that I read, differing simply in degree. Ah
but they say to me: "You are fighting something that is dead. Nobody
believes this, now." The preachers do not believe what they preach in
the pulpit. The people in the pews do not believe what they hear
preached. And they say to me: "You are fighting something that is
dead. This is all a form, we do not believe a solitary creed in it.
We sign it and swear that we believe it, but we don't. And none of us
do. And all the ministers they say in private, admit that they do not
believe it, not quite." I don't know whether this is so or not. I take
it that they believe what they preach. I take it that when they meet
and solemnly agree to a creed, I take it they are honest and solemnly
believe in