r with any man for not
believing in your God. God has no business there, and any man that is
in favor of putting him there is an enemy to the interests of American
institutions.

Now for the purpose of preventing the name of God being put in the
constitution, there's another little party has been started and these
are its doctrines: We want an absolute divorce between church and
state. We demand that church property should not be exempt from
taxation. If you are going to exempt anything, exempt the homesteads
of the poor. Don't exempt a rich corporation, and make men pay taxes
to support a religion in which they do not believe. But they say
churches do good. I don't know whether they do or not. Do you see
such a wonderful difference between a member of a church and the man
who does not believe in it? Do church members pay their debts any
better than any others? Do they treat their families any better? Did
you ever hear of any man coming into a town broke and inquire where the
deacon of a Presbyterian church lived? Has not the church opposed
every science from the first ray of light until now? Didn't they damn
into eternal flames the man who discovered the world was round? Didn't
they damn into eternal flames the man who discovered the movement of
the earth in its orbit? Didn't they persecute the astronomers? Didn't
they even try to put down life insurance by saying it was sinful to bet
on the time God has given you to live? Science built the Academy,
superstition the Inquisition. Science constructed the telescope,
religion the rack; science made us happy here, and says if there's
another life we'll all stand an equal chance there; religion made us
miserable here, and says a large majority will be eternally miserable
there. Should we, therefore, exempt it from taxation for any good it
has done?

The next thing we ask is a perfect divorce between church and school.
We say that every school should be secular, because its just to
everybody. If I was an Israelite I wouldn't want to be taxed to have
my children taught that his ancestors had murdered a supreme being.
Let us teach, not the doctrines of the past, but the discoveries of the
present; not the five points of Calvinism, but geology and geography.
Education is the lever to raise mankind, and superstition is the enemy
of intelligence.

We demand, next, that woman shall be put upon an equality with man.
Why not? Why shouldn't men be decent enough i