est to absolve us from sin, and then we know we are rid
of it, when he tells us so."

"But what assurance have you that the priest can do so?" asked the
Preceptress.

"Because it is his duty to do so."

"Education will root out more sin than all your creeds can," gravely
answered the Preceptress. "Educate your convicts and train them into
controlling and subduing their criminal tendencies by _their own will_,
and it will have more effect on their morals than all the prayers ever
uttered. Educate them up to that point where they can perceive for
themselves the happiness of moral lives, and then you may trust them to
temptation without fear. The ideas you have expressed about dogmas,
creeds and ceremonies are not new to us, though, as a nation, we do not
make a study of them. They are very, very ancient. They go back to the
first records of the traditionary history of man. And the farther you go
back the deeper you plunge into ignorance and superstition.

"The more ignorant the human mind, the more abject was its slavery to
religion. As history progresses toward a more diffuse education of the
masses, the forms, ceremonies and beliefs in religion are continually
changing to suit the advancement of intelligence; and when intelligence
becomes universal, they will be renounced altogether. What is true of
the history of one people will be true of the history of another.
Religions are not necessary to human progress. They are really clogs. My
ancestors had more trouble to extirpate these superstitious ideas from
the mind than they had in getting rid of disease and crime. There were
several reasons for this difficulty. Disease and crime were self-evident
evils, that the narrowest intelligence could perceive; but beliefs in
creeds and superstitions were perversions of judgment, resulting from a
lack of thorough mental training. As soon, however, as education of a
high order became universal, it began to disappear. No mind of
philosophical culture can adhere to such superstitions.

"Many ages the people made idols, and, decking them with rich ornaments,
placed them in magnificent temples specially built for them and the
rites by which they worshipped them. There have existed many variations
of this kind of idolatry that are marked by the progressive stages of
civilization. Some nations of remote antiquity were highly cultured in
art and literature, yet worshipped gods of their own manufacture, or
imaginary gods, for everythi