d has no sincerity. That is
all it proves.

But you must remember that this gentleman who believes in this doctrine
is a Presbyterian, and why should a Presbyterian object? After a few
hundred years of burning he expects to enjoy the eternal auto da fe of
hell--an auto da fe that will be presided over by God and His angels,
and they will be expected to applaud. He is a Presbyterian; and what
is that? It is the worst religion of this earth. I admit that
thousands and millions of Presbyterians are good people, no man ever
being half so bad as his creed. I am not attacking them. I am
attacking their creed. I am attacking what this religion calls
"Tidings of great joy." And, according to that, hundreds of billions
and billions of years ago our fate was irrevocably and forever fixed,
and God in the secret counsels of His own inscrutable will, made up His
mind whom He would save and whom He would damn. When thinking of that
God I always think of the mistake of a Methodist preacher during the
war. He commenced the prayer--and never did one more appropriate for
the Presbyterian God or the Methodist go up--"O, Thou great and
unscrupulous God." This Presbyterian believes that billions of years
before that baby in the cradle--that little dimpled child, basking in
the light of a mother's smile--was born, God had made up His mind to
damn it; and when Talmage looks at one of those children who will
probably be damned he is cheerful about it; he enjoys it. That is
Presbyterianism--that God made man and damned him for His own glory. If
there is such a God, I hate Him with every drop of my blood; and if
there is a heaven it must be where He is not. Now think of that
doctrine! Only a little while ago there was a ship from Liverpool out
eighty days with its rudder washed away; for ten days nothing to
eat--nothing but the bare decks and hunger; and the captain took a
revolver in his hand and put it to his brain and said: "Some of us must
die for the others. And it might as well be I." One of his companions
grasped the pistol and said: "Captain, wait; wait one day more. We can
live another day." And the next morning the horizon was rich with a
sail, and they were saved. And yet if Presbyterianism is true; if that
man had put the bullet through his infinitely generous brain so that
his comrades could have eaten of his flesh and reached their homes and
felt about their necks the dimpled arms of children and the kisses of
wiv