dea they could force men to think their
way, and do you know that idea is still prevalent even in this country?
Do you know they think they can make a man think their way if they say,
"We will not trade with that man; we won't vote for that man; we won't
hire him, if he is a lawyer; we will die before we take his medicine,
if he is a doctor, we won't invite him; we will socially ostracize him;
he must come to our church; he must think our way or he is not a
gentleman." There is much of that even in this blessed country--not
excepting the city of Albany itself.

Now in the old times of which I have spoken, they said, "We can make
all men think alike." All the mechanical ingenuity of this earth
cannot make two clocks run alike, and how are you going to make
millions of people of different quantities and qualities and amount of
brain, clad in this living robe of passionate flesh--how are you going
to make millions of them think alike? If the infinite God, if there is
one, who made us, wished us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful
of brains to one man, and a bushel to another? Why is it that we have
all degrees of humanity, from the idiot to the genius, if it was
intended that all should think alike? I say our fathers concluded they
would do this by force, and I used to read in books how they persecuted
mankind, and do you know I never appreciated it; I did not. I read it,
but it did not burn itself, as it were, into my very soul what infamies
had been committed in the name of religion, and I never fully
appreciated it until a little while ago I saw the iron arguments our
fathers used to use. I tell you the reason we are through that, is
because we have better brains than our fathers had. Since that day we
have become intellectually developed, and there is more real brain and
real good sense in the world today than in any other period of its
history, and that is the reason we have more liberty, that is the
reason we have more kindness. But I say I saw these iron arguments our
fathers used to use. I saw here the thumb-screw--two little innocent
looking pieces of iron, armed on the inner surface with protuberances
to prevent their slipping--and when some man denied the efficacy of
baptism, or maybe said, "I do not believe that the whale ever swallowed
a man to keep him from drowning," then they put these pieces of iron
upon his thumb, and there was a screw at each end, and then, in the
name of love and forgiven