ever made by him. This doctrine was a
sanctification of brute force and chance. Prisoners were made to grasp
hot irons, and if it burned them their guilt was established. Others
were tied hands and feet and cast into the sea, and if they sank, the
verdict of guilt was unanimous; if they did not sink then they said
water is such a pure element that it refuses to take a guilty person,
and consequently he is a witch or wizard. Why, in England, persons
accused of crime could appeal to the cross, and to a piece of
sacramental bread. If he could swallow this without choking he was
acquitted. And this practice was continued until the time of King
Edward, who was choked to death; after which it was discontinued.

Ghosts and their followers always took delight in torturing with
unusual pain any infraction of their laws, and generally death was the
penalty. Sometimes, when a man committed only murder, he was permitted
to flee to a place of refuge--murder being only a crime against
man--but for saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines, or for
worshiping wrong ghosts, or for failing to pray to the right one, or
for laughing at a priest, or for saying that wine was not blood, or
bread was not flesh, or for failing to regard rams' horns as artillery,
or for saying that a raven as a rule, was a poor landlord, death,
produced by all the ways that ingenuity or hatred could devise, was the
penalty suffered by these men. I tell you tonight law is a growth; law
is a science. Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Things
are not right because they are commanded; they are not wrong because
they are prohibited. They are prohibited because we believe them
wrong; they are commended because we believe them right. There are
real crimes enough without creating artificial ones. All progress in
legislation for a thousand years has consisted in repealing the laws of
the ghosts. The idea of right and wrong is born of man's capacity to
enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not inflict
injury upon his brother, if he could neither feel nor inflict
punishment, the idea of law, the idea of right, the idea of wrong,
never could have entered into his brain. If man could not suffer, if
he could not inflict suffering, the word conscience never would have
passed the lips of man. There is one good--happiness. There is one
sin--selfishness. All laws should be for the preservation of the one
and the destruction of