sufficient to show that Joseph
Smith was an inspired prophet. All the courage and culture, all the
poetry and art of ancient Greece do not even tend to establish the
truth of any myth.

The testimony of the dying concerning some other world, or in regard to
the supernatural, cannot be any better than that of the living. In the
early days of Christian experience an intrepid faith was regarded as a
testimony in favor of the church. No doubt, in the arms of death, many
a one went back and died in the lay of the old faith. After awhile
Christians got to dying and clinging to their faith; and then it was
that Christians began to say: "No man can die serenely without clinging
to the cross." According to the theologians, God has always punished
the dying who did not happen to believe in Him. As long as men did
nothing except to render their fellowmen wretched, God maintained the
strictest neutrality, but when some honest man expressed a doubt as to
the Jewish scriptures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right God
by the wrong man, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon
this dying man, and from his body tore his wretched soul.

There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has
been paralyzed, or the innocent have been shielded by God. Thousands
of crimes are committed every day, and God has no time to prevent them.
He is too busy numbering hairs and matching sparrows; He is listening
for blasphemy; He is looking for persons who laugh at priests; He is
examining baptismal registers; He is watching professors in colleges
who begin to doubt the geology of Moses or the astronomy of Joshua.
All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable
serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast
discredit upon his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold
smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The Emperor
Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife and
oldest son.

Now and then, in the history of the world, there has been a man of
genius, a man of intellectual honesty. These men have denounced the
superstition of their day. They were honest enough to tell their
thoughts. Some of them died naturally in their beds, but it would not
do for the church to admit that they died peaceably; that would show
that religion was not necessary in the last moments. The first grave,
the first cathedral; the first corpse was the