ry one who hears me tonight, I beg, I implore,
I beseech you never give another dollar to build a church in which that
lie is preached. Never give another cent to send a missionary with his
mouth stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, they say,
the heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let them alone; what is the
use of sending them to hell by enlightening them. Let them alone. The
idea of going and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe he
will be damned, when the chances are ten to one that he won't believe
it. Don't tell him, and as quick as he gets to the other world and
finds it necessary to believe, he will say "yes." Give him a chance.

My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys human love,
and tells you and me that the love of your dear-ones is not necessary
in this world to make a heaven in the next. No matter about your wife,
your children, your brother, your sister--no matter about all the
affections of the human heart--when you get there you will be alone
with the angels. I don't know whether I would like the angels. I
don't know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by
the folks who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no
heaven without the love of this earth. That is the trouble with the
Christian religion; leave your father, leave your mother, leave your
wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I
will not. I will stay with the folks. I will not sacrifice on the
altar of a selfish fear all the grandest and noblest promptings of my
heart. You do away with human love, and what are we without it? What
would we be in another world, and what would we be here without it?
Can any one conceive of music without human love? Human love builds
every home--human love is the author of all the beauty in this world.
Love paints every picture, and chisels every statue; love, I tell you,
builds every fireside. What would heaven be without love? And yet
that is what we are promised--a heaven with your wife lost, your mother
lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be made happy by
falling in with some angel.

Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to get there? On the
efforts of another. You are to be perpetually a heavenly pauper, and
you will have to admit through all eternity that you never would have
got here if you hadn't got frightened. "I am here," you will say, "I
have these w