what He pleases--because He made us. If I could change this
lamp into a human being, that would not give me the right to torture
him, and if I did torture him and he cried out, "Why torturest thou
me?" and I replied, "Because I made you," he would be right in
replying, "You made me, therefore you are responsible for my
happiness." No God has a right to add to the sum of human misery. And
yet this minister believes an honest thought blasphemy. No doubt he is
perfectly honest. Otherwise he would have too much intellectual pride
to take the position he does. He says that the bible offers the only
restraint to the savage passions of man. In lands where there has been
no bible there have been mild and beneficent philosophers, like Buddha
and Confucius. Is it possible that the bible is the only restraint,
and yet the nations among whom these men lived have been as moral as
we? In Brooklyn and New York you have the bible, yet do you find that
the restraint is a great success? Is there a city on the globe which
lacks more in certain directions than some in Christendom, or even the
United States? What are the natural virtues of man? Honesty,
hospitality, mercy in the hour of victory, generosity--do we not find
these virtues among some savages? Do we find them among all
Christians? I am also told by these gentlemen that the time will come
when the infidel will be silenced by society. Why that time came long
ago. Society gave the hemlock to Socrates, society in Jerusalem cried
out for Barabbas and crucified Jesus. In every Christian country
society has endeavored to crush the infidel.

Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all
honest men. At one time Christianity succeeded in silencing the
infidel, and then came the dark ages, when all rule was ecclesiastical,
when the air was filled with devils and spooks, when birth was a
misfortune, life a prolonged misery of fear and torment, and death a
horrible nightmare. They crushed the infidels, Galileo, Kepler,
Copernicus, wherever a ray of light appeared in the ecclesiastical
darkness. But I want to tell this minister tonight, and all others
like him, that that day is passed. All the churches in the United
States can not even crush me. The day for that has gone, never to
return. If they think they can crush free thought in this country, let
them try it. What must this minister think of you and the citizens of
this republic when he says,