entially the last day of the week), might
be applied to the Christian Sunday, the _dies solis_, the first day of
the week which the sun opens in glory, the day of devotion and joy. The
consequence of this fraud is that "Sabbath-breaking," or "the
desecration of the Sabbath," that is, the slightest occupation, whether
of business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly books, are on
Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely the ordinary man must believe
that if, as his spiritual guides impress upon him, he is only constant
in "a strict observance of the holy Sabbath," and is "a regular
attendant at Divine Service," that is, if he only invariably idles away
his time on Sundays, and doesn't fail to sit two hours in church to hear
the same litany for the thousandth time and mutter it in tune with the
others, he may reckon on indulgence in regard to those little
peccadilloes which he occasionally allows himself. Those devils in human
form, the slave owners and slave traders in the Free States of North
America (they should be called the Slave States) are, as a rule,
orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a grave sin to work on
Sundays; and having confidence in this, and their regular attendance at
church, they hope for eternal happiness. The demoralizing tendency of
religion is less problematical than its moral influence. How great and
how certain that moral influence must be to make amends for the
enormities which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedan
religions, have produced and spread over the earth! Think of the
fanaticism, the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that
sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients had no conception! think of the
crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inexcusable, its war
cry "_It is the will of God_," its object to gain possession of the
grave of one who preached love and sufferance! think of the cruel
expulsion and extermination of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think of
the orgies of blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the
bloody and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three continents, or
those of Christianity in America, whose inhabitants were for the most
part, and in Cuba entirely, exterminated. According to Las Cases,
Christianity murdered twelve millions in forty years, of course all _in
majorem Dei gloriam_, and for the propagation of the Gospel, and because
what wasn't Christian wasn't even looked upon as human! I have, it