saved poor Joseph, yet I dare say
Potiphar's wife was a religious woman. The will of God sanctions many
crimes. It tells the Thug to kill travellers; it told the Inquisition to
torture and burn heretics; it told the Catholics and Protestants to rack
and slaughter witches; it told Christians and Mohammedans to fight each
other on hundreds of bloody battle-fields; it tells Christians now to
keep up laws against liberty of thought. There never was a time when
these things would not have been denounced by Secularism as crimes
against humanity.

Motives to morality do not come from religion. They come from our
social sympathies. Preach to a tiger and he will eat you. Differ from a
Torquemada and he will burn you. When one man wants another to help him,
he does not judge by the name of his sect, but by the glance of his eye
and the lines of his mouth. Some men are born philanthropists, others
are born criminals; between these are multitudes in whom good and bad
tendencies are variously mixed, and who may be made better or worse by
education and environment. The late Professor Clifford was an Atheist,
and one of the gentlest, kindest, and tenderest men that ever lived. Jay
Gould was a member of a Christian church and sometimes went round with
the plate. He left twenty millions of money, and not a penny to any
charity or good cause. Lick, the Freethinker, built and endowed the
great observatory which is one of the glories of America.

I do not propose to follow Mr. Blomfield in his excursion into ancient
history. I will only remark that if he thinks there was any lack
of "religion" in the worst days of the Pagan world he is very much
mistaken. Coming to more modern times, I decline to accept his present
of priests and popes who were "atheistic." Whatever they were is a
domestic question for the Christian Church. Nor need I discuss
Luther's "fresh vision of God." He was a great man, but a savage
controversialist, who called his opponents asses, swine, foxes, geese,
and fools; which, I suppose, is worthy of the tap-room of a _first-rate_
tavern. As to the "awful collapse" of "unbelieving France" I do not
know when it occurred. It was certainly not France that collapsed in the
Revolution. The monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Church collapsed; but
France inaugurated a new epoch of modern history.

With respect to prayer, on which Mr. Blomfield is very hazy, I would
like to discriminate between its "objective value" and its "su