he corpse, she was denied and
driven away in the name of charity. That is religion, and in the
velvet of their politeness there lurks the claws of the tiger. Just
give them the power and see how quick I would leave this part of the
country. They know I am going to be burned forever; they know I am
going to hell, but that don't satisfy them. They want to give me a
little foretaste here.

Prosecutions and executions like these were common in every Christian
country, and all of them based upon the belief that an intellectual
conviction is a crime. No wonder the church hated and traduced the
author of the "Age of Reason." England was filled with Puritan gloom
and Episcopal ceremony. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant
poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the
soiled and faded finery of the gods--had added to the story of Christ
the fables of mythology. He gave to the Protestant church the most
outrageously material ideas of the Deity. He turned all the angels
into soldiers--made heaven a battle-field, put Christ in uniform, and
described God as a militia-general. His works were considered by the
Protestants nearly as sacred as the Bible itself, and the imagination
of the people was thoroughly polluted by the horrible imagery, the
sublime absurdity of the blind Milton.

Heaven and hell were realities--the judgment-day was expected--books of
accounts would be opened. Every man would hear the charges against him
read. God was supposed to sit upon a golden throne, surrounded by the
tallest angels, with harps in their hands and crowns on their heads.
The goats would be thrust into eternal fire on the left, while the
orthodox sheep, on the right, were to gambol on sunny slopes forever
and ever. So all the priests were willing to save the sheep for half
the wool.

The nation was profoundly ignorant, and consequently extremely
religious, so far as belief was concerned. In Europe liberty was lying
chained up in the inquisition, her white bosom stained with blood. In
the new world the Puritans had been hanging and burning in the name of
God, and selling white Quaker children into slavery in the name of
Christ, who said, "Suffer little children to come unto Me."

Under such conditions progress was impossible. Some one had to lead
the way. The church is and always has been, incapable of a forward
movement. Religion always looks back. The church has already reduced
Spain to a