burying her cover her
face with tears. Do you tell me God can afford to damn that kind of a
woman? One such act of injustice would turn Heaven itself into Hell.
If there is any God, sitting above him in infinite serenity we have the
figure of justice. Even a God must do justice; even a God must worship
justice; and any form of superstition that destroys justice is
infamous! Just think of teaching that doctrine to little children! A
little child would go out into the garden, and there would be a little
tree laden with blossoms, and the little fellow would lean against it,
and there would be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging,
and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of
its mate--and singing and swinging, and the music in in happy waves
rippling out of the tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air
filled with perfume, and the great white clouds floating in the sky,
and the little boy would lean up against the tree and think about Hell
and the worm that never dies. Oh! the idea there can be any day too
good for a child to be happy in!

Well, after we got over the catechism, then came the sermon in the
afternoon, and it was exactly like the one in the forenoon, except the
other end to. Then we started for home--a solemn march--"not a soldier
discharged his farewell shot"--and when we got home, if we had been
really good boys, we used to be taken up to the cemetery to cheer us
up, and it always did cheer me, those sunken graves, those leaning
stones, those gloomy epitaphs covered with the moss of years always
cheered me. When I looked at them I said: "Well, this kind of thing
can't last always." Then we came back home, and we had books to read
which were very eloquent and amusing. We had Josephus, and the
"History of the Waldenses," and Fox's "Book of Martyrs," Baxter's
"Saint's Rest," and "Jenkyn on the Atonement." I used to read Jenkyn
with a good deal of pleasure, and I often thought that the atonement
would have to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a
man that would I write such a book for boys. Then I would look to see
how the sun was getting on, and sometimes I thought it had stuck from
pure cussedness. Then I would go back and try Jenkyn's again. Well,
but it had to go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the
horizon, off would go our hats and we would give three cheers for
liberty once again.

I tell you, don't make slaves of