the price of endless
pangs, the ascending smoke of torment, the wail going up to the sweet
heavens forever and ever and ever.

So, even if it were a choice between no belief at all and the old
beliefs, the darkness would be light to me; and I would embrace it with
joy rather than take the selfish felicity of those men who estimate it
as a part of their future occupation to be leaning over the battlements
of heaven and witnessing the torture of the damned. This, though
sounding so terrible to us now, is good old Christian doctrine, which
has often been avowed. Thank God we are outgrowing it.

These, then, for preliminary considerations.

Now let me raise the question as to what has been taken away. You
remember I said that I have taken nothing away, Unitarianism has taken
nothing away. But the advance of modern knowledge, the larger, clearer
revelation of God, has taken away no end of things. What are they?

Let me make two very brief statements right here. I am in the position,
this morning, of appearing to repeat myself; that is, I must go over a
good many points that I have made from this platform before. But please
understand that it is not on account of lapse of memory on my part. I
am doing it with a distinct end in view, which can only be attained by
these steps.

In the next place, my treatment has so much ground to cover that what I
say will appear somewhat in the nature of a catalogue; but I see no
other way in which to make the definite statement I wish to lay before
you. I am going to catalogue, first, a lot of the things that modern
knowledge has taken away. Then I am going to tell you some of the
things that modern knowledge is putting in place of what it has
removed.

In the first place, the old universe is taken away; that is, that
little tiny play-house affair, not so large as our solar system, which
in the first chapters of Genesis God is reported to have made as a
carpenter working from outside makes a house, inside of six days. That
little universe, that is, the story of creation as told in the early
chapters of Genesis, is absolutely gone. I shall tell you pretty soon
what has taken the place of it.

Secondly, the God of the Old Testament, the God of most of the creeds
has been taken away, that God who was jealous, who was partial, who was
angry; who built a little world, and called it good, and then inside of
a few days saw it slip out of his control into the hands of the devil,
either beca