emained closed against him. He went back and
followed up his good works for seven years longer, and the gates of
Paradise still remaining shut against him, he toiled in works of
charity until at last they were opened unto him. Think of that,
pursued the lecturer, and send out your missionaries among those
people. There is no religion but goodness, but justice, but charity.
Religion is not theory; it is life. It is not intellectual conviction;
it is divine humanity, and nothing else. Colonel Ingersoll here told
another tale from the Hindoo, of a man who refused to enter Paradise
without a faithful dog, urging that ingratitude was the blackest of all
sins. "And the God," he said, "admitted him, dog and all." Compare that
religion with the orthodox tenets of the city of New York.

There is a prayer which every Brahmin prays, in which he declares that
he will never enter into a final state of bliss alone, but that
everywhere he will strive for universal redemption; that never will he
leave the world of sin and sorrow, but remain suffering and striving
and sorrowing after universal salvation. Compare that with the orthodox
idea, and send out your missionaries to the benighted Hindoos.

The doctrine of hell is infamous beyond all power to express. I wish
there were words mean enough to express my feelings of loathing on this
subject. What harm has it not done? What waste places has it not made?
It has planted misery and wretchedness in this world; it peoples the
future with selfish joys and lurid abysses of eternal flame. But we are
getting more sense every day. We begin to despise those monstrous
doctrines. If you want to better men and women, change their conditions
here. Don't promise them something somewhere else. One biscuit will do
more good than all the tracts that were ever peddled in the world. Give
them more whitewash, more light, more air. You have to change men
physically before you change them intellectually. I believe the time
will come when every criminal will be treated as we now treat the
diseased and sick, when every penitentiary will become a reformatory,
and that if criminals go to them with hatred in their bosoms, they will
leave them without feelings of revenge. Let me tell you the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice had been carried away by the god of
hell, and Orpheus, her lover, went in quest of her. He took with him
his lyre, and played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed.
Ixion forgo