will put carpets upon your floors, pictures
upon your walls. My doctrine will put books upon your shelves, ideas
in your minds. My doctrine will rid the world of the abnormal monsters
born of the ignorance of superstition. My doctrine will give us
health, wealth, and happiness. That is what I want. That is what I
believe in. Give us intelligence. In a little while a man may find
that he cannot steal without robbing himself. He will find that he
cannot murder without assassinating his own joy. He will find that
every crime is a mistake. He will find that only that man carries the
cross who does wrong, and that the man who does right the cross turns
to wings upon his shoulders that will bear him upwards forever. He
will find that intelligent self-love embraces within its mighty arms
all the human race.

"Oh," but they say to me, "you take away immortality." I do not. If we
are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests
for it, nor to Bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.

As long as we love we will hope to live, and when the one dies that we
love, we will say: "Oh, that we could meet again!" And whether we do
or not, it will not be the work of theology. It will be a fact in
nature. I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope; but I
want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle, and sings a lullaby
to the dimpled darling, that she will not be compelled to believe that,
ninety-nine chances in a hundred, she is raising kindling-wood for
hell. One world at a time--that is my doctrine.

It is said in the Testament, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof" and I say, sufficient unto each world is the evil thereof. And
suppose, after all, that death does end all, next to eternal joy, next
to being forever with those we love and those who have loved us, next
to that is to be wrapt in the dreamless drapery of eternal peace.

Next to external life is eternal death. Upon the shadowy shore of
death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained
by the everlasting dark will never know again the touch of tears. Lips
that have been touched by eternal silence will never utter another word
of grief. Hearts of dust do not break; the dead do not weep. And I had
rather think of those I have loved, and those I have lost, as having
returned, as having become a part of the elemental wealth of the
world--I would rather think of them as unconscious