Father in Heaven would be a glorious fact. But who
can believe it? "Our Father" is utterly careless of his children. The
celestial Rousseau sends all his offspring to the Foundling.

The late hard weather has thrown thousands of honest men out of
employment, and increased the death-rate alarmingly. Where is the wisdom
of this? Where is the goodness? The worst of men would alter it if they
could. But God, they say, can do it, and he does not. Yet they still
look up and say "Our Father." And the Father looks down with a face as
blenchless as the Sphinx's, gazing forthright across the desert sands.

What father would permit in his family the gross disparities we see in
human life? One gorges and another starves; one is bloated and another
is death's counterfeit; one is dressed in three-piled velvet and another
goes in looped and windowed rags; one is idle and another slaves; one
is sated with pleasure and another is numbed with pain; one lolls in a
palace and another shivers in a hovel. What human father would not be
ashamed to treat his children with such infamous partiality?

Look at the physical and moral filth, and the mental abasement, in our
great Christian cities, where new churches are constantly built for the
worship of God, where Bibles are circulated by the million, and where
hundreds of sleek gentlemen flourish on the spoils of philanthropy. Read
Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story of East-end life; read the lucubrations
of General Booth; listen to the ever-swelling wail over the poverty,
misery, and degradation of hosts of our people; and then say if it
is not high time to cease all this cant about Our Father which art in
Heaven.

Man has always been his own Savior. His instrument is science, his
wisdom is self-help. His redemption begins when he turns his eyes from
the delusive Heaven and plucks up his heart from the fear of Hell.
Despair vanishes before the steady gaze of instructed courage. Hope
springs as a flower in the path of endeavor.

WAIT TILL YOU DIE.

Pascal remarked that, whether Christianity were true or false, the
Christian was on the safe side; and Diderot replied that the priests and
apologists of Mohammedanism, or any other creed, could say the very same
thing with equal force. The argument, if it be an argument, implies the
possibility of error, and what applies to one religion applies to all.
The votaries of every creed may be mistaken if there is no absolute
certitude; or, if there sh