t an impure, not a stained word in them all; but
he was not a Christian. He did not believe in the "tidings of great
joy." He didn't believe that God so loved the world that He intended
to damn most everybody. And now he has gone to his reward. And
Charles Darwin--a child of nature--one who knew more about his mother
than any other child she ever had. What is philosophy? It is to
account for phenomena by which we are surrounded--that is, to find the
hidden cord that unites everything. Charles Darwin threw more light
upon the problem of human existence than all the priests who ever lived
from Melchisedec to the last exhorter. He would have traversed this
globe on foot had it been possible to have found one new fact or to
have corrected one error that he had made. No nobler man has lived--no
man who has studied with more reverence (and by reverence I mean simply
one who lives and studies for the truth)--no man who studied with more
reverence than he. And yet, according to orthodox religion, Charles
Darwin is in hell. Consolation!

So, if Christianity be true, Shakespeare, the greatest man who ever
touched this planet, within whose brain were the fruits of all thought
past, the seeds of all to be--Shakespeare, who was an intellectual
ocean toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and
continents of thought received their dew and rain--that man who has
added more to the intelligence of the world than any other who ever
lived--that man, whose creations will live as long as man has
imagination, and who has given more happiness upon the stage and more
instruction than has flown from all the pulpits of this earth--that man
is in hell, too. And Harriet Martineau, who did as much for English
liberty as any man, brave and free--she is there. "George Eliot," the
greatest woman the English-speaking people ever produced--she is with
the rest. And this is called "Tidings of great joy."

Who are in heaven? How could there be much of a heaven without the men
I have mentioned--the great men that have endeavored to make the world
grander--such men as Voltaire, such men as Diderot, such men as the
encyclopedists, such men as Hume, such men as Bruno, such men as Thomas
Paine? If Christianity is true, that man who spent his life in
breaking chains is now wearing the chains of God; that man who wished
to break down the prison walls of tyranny is now in the prison of the
most merciful Christ. It will not do. I