py. The thing
is impossible. Any religion that can make that possible is more to be
dreaded than war or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all
that is great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a
mockery and love a curse.

I once knew a case myself, where an eldest son who was an unbeliever
died. He had been a kind son and a good man. He had shielded his widowed
mother from every hardship. He had tried to lighten her pain and relieve
her loneliness. He had worked early and late to keep her comfortable and
happy. When he died she was heartbroken. It seemed to her more than
she could bear. As she sat and gazed at his dear face in a transport of
grief, the door opened and her preacher came in to bring her the comfort
of religion. He talked with her of her loss, and finally he said, "But
it would not be so hard for you to bear if he had been a Christian. If
he had accepted what was freely offered him you would one day see him
again. But he chose his path, he denied his Lord, and he is lost. And
now, dear madam, place your affections on your living son, who is,
thank God, saved." That was the comfort he brought her. That was the
consolation of his religion. I am telling you of an actual occurrence.
This is all a fact. Well, a few years later that dear old lady died in
her son's house, where she had gone on a visit. He broke her will--this
son who was saved--and brought in a bill against her estate for her
board and nursing while she was ill! Which one of those boys do you
think would be the best company for her in the next world?

It has always seemed to me that I would rather go to hell with a good
son than to heaven with a good Christian. I may be wrong, but with
my present light that is the way it looks to me; and for the sake of
humanity I am glad that it looks that way.

ACCIDENT INSURANCE.

A church member said to me some time ago that even though the Bible were
not "the word of God," even though it were not necessary to believe in
the creed in order to go to heaven, it could not do any harm to believe
it; and he thought it was "best to be on the safe side, for," said he,
"suppose after all it should happen to be true!"

So he carries a church-membership as a sort of accident insurance
policy.

I do not believe we have a right to work upon that basis. It is not
honest. I do not believe that any "suppose it should be" gives us the
right to teach "I know that it is." I do not