it by a white man
while he heard the gospel of everlasting peace. He was not willing
that the colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, although
those white men might be totally depraved, and if they had justice done
them, according to his doctrine. would be eternally damned--and yet he
has the impudence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally
damned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine of religion,
the color line, has not my respect. I believe in the religion of
humanity, and it is far better to love our fellow-men than to love God,
because we can help them, and we cannot help Him. You had better do
what you can than to be always pretending to do what you cannot.

Now I come to the last part of the bible--this creed--and that is,
eternal punishment, and I have concluded; and I have said I will never
deliver a lecture that I do not give the full benefit of its name.
That part of the Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage
that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The man who now, in
the nineteenth century, preaches the doctrine of eternal punishment,
the doctrine of eternal hell, has lived in vain. Think of that
doctrine! The eternity of punishment! Why, I find in that same creed
that Christ is finally going to triumph in this world and establish His
kingdom; but if their doctrine is true, He will never triumph in the
other world. He will have billions in hell forever. In this world we
never will be perfectly civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow
upon the earth. As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls
of which a human being is immured, we are not a civilized people. We
will never be perfectly civilized until we do away with crime and
criminals. And yet, according to this Christian religion, God is to
have an eternal penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an
everlasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and He is going
to keep prisoners there, not for the purpose of reforming them--because
they are never going to get any better, only getting worse--just for
the purpose of punishing them. And what for? For something they did
in this world; born in ignorance, educated it may be in poverty, and
yet responsible through the countless ages of eternity. No man can
think of a greater horror; no man can think of a greater absurdity.
For the growth of that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was rain.
That doctrine came f