ngs, emperors
and scientists, begging like Lazarus for a few crumbs of religious
comfort? Why are they so delighted to find an allusion to providence
in the message of Lincoln? Why are they so afraid that some one will
find out that Paley wrote an essay in favor of the Epicurean
philosophy, and that Sir Isaac Newton was once an infidel? Why are they
so anxious to show that Voltaire recanted, that Paine died palsied with
fear; that the Emperor Julian cried out, "Galilean, thou hast
conquered;" that Gibbon died a Catholic; that Agassiz had a little
confidence in Moses; that the old Napoleon was once complimentary
enough to say that he thought Christ greater than himself or Caesar;
that Washington was caught on his knees at Valley Forge; that blunt old
Ethan Allen told his child to believe the religion of her mother; that
Franklin said, "Don't unchain the tiger;" that Volney got frightened
in a storm at sea, and that Oakes Ames was a wholesale liar?

Is it because the foundation of their temple is crumbling, because the
walls are cracked, the pillars leaning, the great dome swaying to its
fall, and because science has written over the high altar its mene,
mene, tekel, upharsin, the old words destined to be the epitaph of all
religions?

Every assertion of individual independence has been a step towards
infidelity. Luther started toward Humboldt, Wesley toward Bradlaugh. To
really reform the church is to destroy it. Every new religion has a
little less superstition than the old, so that the religion of science
is but a question of time. I will not say the church has been an
unmitigated evil in all respects. Its history is infamous and
glorious. It has delighted in the production of extremes. It has
furnished murderers for its own martyrs. It has sometimes fed the
body, but has always starved the soul. It has been a charitable
highwayman, a generous pirate. It has produced some angels and a
multitude of devils. It has built more prisons than asylums. It made a
hundred orphans while it cared for one. In one hand it carried the
alms-dish, and in the other a sword. It has founded schools and endowed
universities for the purpose of destroying true learning. It filled
the world with hypocrites and zealots, and upon the cross of its own
Christ it crucified the individuality of man. It has sought to destroy
the independence of the soul, and put the world upon its knees. This
is its crime. The commission of this crim