he should
know that heaven has no ear to hear, and no hand to help. The present
is the necessary child of all the past. There has been no chance, and
there can be no interference.

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed,
man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover
them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is
done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind, if
the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all
must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won
by man, and by man alone.

Nature, so far as we can discern, without passion and without
intention, forms, transforms, and retransforms forever. She neither
weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and obliterates
him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial
and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, life and death,
smiles and tears are alike to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel.
She cannot be flattered by worship nor melted by tears. She does not
know even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between
poison in the fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Only
through man does nature take cognizance of the good, the true, and the
beautiful; and, so far as we know, man is the highest intelligence.

And yet man continues to believe that there is some power independent
of and superior to nature, and still endeavors, by form, ceremony,
supplication, hypocrisy, to obtain its aid. His best energies have
been wasted in the service of this phantom. The horrors of witchcraft
were all born of an ignorant belief in the existence of a totally
depraved being superior to nature, acting in perfect independence of
her laws; and all religious superstition has had for its basis a belief
in at least two beings, one good and the other bad, both of whom could
arbitrarily change the order of the universe. The history of religion
is simply the story of man's efforts in all ages to avoid one of these
powers and to pacify the other. Both powers have inspired little else
than abject fear. The cold, calculating sneer of the devil, and the
frown of God, were equally terrible. In any event, man's fate was to
be arbitrarily fixed forever by an unknown power superior to all law,
and to all fact. Until this belief is thrown aside, man must consider
himself the slave of