appiness beyond this
life.

I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties
consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our
fellow-creatures happy.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the
Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the
Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church.

All national institutions of churches appear to me no other than human
inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power
and profit.

Each of those churches show certain books which they call "revelation,"
or the word of God. The Jews say that the word of God was given by God
to Moses face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by
divine inspiration; and the Turks say their word of God (the Koran) was
brought by an angel from heaven. Each of these churches accuses the
other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I
proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word
revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that
something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any
other person, it is revelation to that person only.

When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a
fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It
is a revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other;
consequently they are not obliged to believe it, for they have only the
word of the first person that it was made to him.

The world has been amused with the terms "revealed religion," and the
generality of priests apply this term to the books called the Old and
New Testament. There is no man that believes in revealed religion
stronger than I do; but it is not the reveries of the Old and New
Testament that I dignify with that sacred title. That which is a
revelation to me exists in something which no human mind can invent, no
human hand can counterfeit or alter.

The word of God is the Creation we behold; and this word of God
revealeth to man all that is necessary for him to know of his Creator.

Do we want to contemplate his