a wild beast. They believed happiness was a crime;
they looked upon laughter as blasphemy, and they did all they could to
destroy every human feeling, and to fill the mind with the infinite
gloom of predestination and eternal damnation. They taught the doctrine
that God had a right to damn us because He made us. That is just the
reason that He has not a right to damn us. There is some dust.
Unconscious dust! What right has God to change that unconscious dust
into a human being, when He knows that human being will sin; and He
knows that human being will suffer eternal agony? Why not leave him in
the unconscious dust? What right has an infinite God to add to the sum
of human agony? Suppose I knew that I could change that piece of
furniture into a living, sentient human being, and I knew that that
being would suffer untold agony forever. If I did it, I would be a
fiend. I would leave that being in the unconscious dust. And yet we
are told that we must believe such a doctrine, or we are to be
eternally damned! It won't do.

In 1839 there was a division in this Church, and they had a lawsuit to
see which was the Church of God. And they tried it by a judge and
jury, and the jury decided that the new school was the Church of God,
and then they got a new trial, and the next jury decided that the old
school was the Church of God, and that settled it. That Church teaches
that infinite innocence was sacrificed for me! I don't want it! I
don't wish to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go
there because I ought to go there. I have said, and I say again, I
don't want to be a charity angel. I have no ambition to become a
winged pauper of the skies.

The other day a young gentleman, a Presbyterian, who had just been
converted, came to me and gave me a tract and he told me he was
perfectly happy. Ugh! Says I: "Do you think a great many people are
going to hell?" "Oh, yes." "And you are perfectly happy?" "Well, he
didn't know as he was quite." "Wouldn't you be happier if they were all
going to heaven?" "O, yes." "Well, then you are not perfectly
happy?" "No, he didn't think he was." Says I: "When you get to heaven,
then you would be perfectly happy?" "Oh, yes." "Now, when we are only
going to hell, you are not quite happy; but when we are in hell, and
you in heaven, then you will be perfectly happy?" You won't be as
decent when you get to be an angel as you are now, will you? "Well,"
he said, "