ion was to furnish an unlimited amount of human agony, in eternal
progress, to gratify the infinite tyrant, and, at the same time,
please a few humble vassals whom terror alone had driven into his
service. You have taught mankind, all too successfully, to imitate
this superhuman monster, by the banishment, imprisonment, murder, or
torture, of all who did not accept your insane and heartless
teachings; and the bloody drama, which has been in full progress for
at least fifteen centuries without one interval of pity or remorse, is
coming to its end now, Oh theologians, simply because your power has
waned, and mankind have partially outgrown their superstitious
ignorance. Tennyson in his last poem has expressed the truth:

"'Love your enemy, bless your haters,' said the Greatest of the great,
Christian love among the churches looked the twin of heathen hate.
From the golden alms of blessing, man had coined himself a curse;
Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter,--which was crueler, which was worse?"

You are beginning, Oh theologians, to be ashamed of the history of
your tribe, and to doubt in your own hearts the horrid creeds you are
still teaching; and a few have even thrown them off entirely and
joined in the movement of emancipation,--even Andover is uneasy
beneath its old yoke. But the chief problem of progress is still to
get rid of your creeds, and return to that simple, universal religion,
of which Jesus was the most powerful teacher,--a religion that had no
church, no creed, no intolerance, and which dealt only in that
universal love to which all human souls respond when they receive it.

Yet never has this simple religion of Jesus appeared, nor any effort
towards its imperfect realization, without provoking orthodox
hostility; and never has science taken one bold step in advance to
understand the Bible of creation, or the Divine wisdom embodied in the
constitution of man, without finding all orthodox power arrayed
against each step of progress, and your orthodox anathemas ready for
each fearless seeker of the truth.

Never had astronomy, never had geology, never had phrenology, never
had anthropology, one smile from the organized theological guardians
of the ancient falsehood called orthodoxy. Neither had political
liberty any better treatment than mental liberty. Neither the white
man, the red man, nor the black man found friendship or protection
until very recently in any orthodox church, for the church was
i