r attacks a superstition will
find that there is still one weapon left in the arsenal of
Jehovah--slander.

I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light of Asia," and I read
in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with her
mouth upon the dry stone of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at her
dry and empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and famishing
beast, and, throwing from himself the Yellowrobe of his order, and
stepping naked before this tigress, said: "Here is meat for you and
your cubs." In one moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot in
his flesh, and in another he was devoured. Such, during nearly all the
history of this world, has been the history of every man who has stood
in front of superstition.

Thomas Paine, as has been so eloquently said by the gentleman who
introduced me, was a friend of man, and whoever is a friend of man is
also a friend of God--if there is one. But God has had many friends
who were the enemies of their fellow-men. There is but one test by
which to measure any man who has lived. Did he leave this world better
than he found it? Did he leave in this world more liberty? Did he
leave in this world more goodness, more humanity, than when he was
born? That is the test. And whatever may have been the faults of
Thomas Paine, no American who appreciates liberty, no American who
believes in true democracy and pure republicanism, should ever breathe
one word against his name. Every American, with the divine mantle of
charity, should cover all his faults, and with a never-tiring tongue
should recount his virtues.

He was a common man. He did not belong to the aristocracy. Upon the
head of his father God had never poured the divine petroleum of
authority. He had not the misfortune to belong to the upper classes.
He had the fortune to be born among the poor and to feel against his
great heart the throb of the toiling and suffering masses. Neither was
it his misfortune to have been educated at Oxford. What little sense
he had was not squeezed out at Westminster. He got his education from
books. He got his education from contact with fellow-men, and he
thought, and a man is worth just what nature impresses upon him. A man
standing by the sea, or in a forest, or looking at a flower, or hearing
a poem, or looking in the eyes of the woman he loves, receives all that
he is capable of receiving--and if he is a great man the impression is
gr