Part 35

Voltaire had fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art of flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and pretense, the army of faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who wished to gain the favors of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes he allowed himself to be annoyed by these scorpions; sometimes he attacked them. And, but for these attacks, long ago they would have been forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved these insects, these tarantulas, these scorpions.

It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever. This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the christian world. Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of antiquity, and had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.

If he had only adopted the creed of his time--if he had asserted that a God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions of human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his glorious justice--that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning and cruel Italian pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress and send honest wives to hell--if he had given to the nostrils of this God the odor of burning flesh--the incense of the fagot--if he had filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured--the music of the rack, he would now be known as St. Voltaire.

Instead of doing these things he willfully closed his eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed. He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same, the same mysteries--the same miracles--the same impostures--the same temples and ceremonies--the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes--the same promises and threats--the same pretense of goodness and forgiveness and the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion made enemies--philosophy, friends--and that above the rites of gods were the rights of man. These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever--an infidel--one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse. For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this theory--this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of God. The theologians have insisted that crimes against men were, and are, as nothing compared with crimes against God. That, while kings and priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the scriptures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore the wretched soul.

There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being committed ever day--men are at this moment lying in wait for their human prey--wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death--little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers--sweet girls are deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things--no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you don't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost.

Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has appeared. Such men have denounced the superstition of their day. They have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and died naturally in their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died peacefully. That would show that religion was essential at the last moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the bible, refuse to kiss the cross; contend that humanity was greater than Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after he had burned Servetus, or as peacefully as King David after advising with his last breath one son to assassinate another.

The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the same falsehood can be used by both. Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grew eloquent. When describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever their eyes glitter with delight. It is a festival. They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They devour the dead. It is a banquet. Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies. They see them in flames--in oceans of fire--in gulfs of pain--in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.

It is an auto da fe, presided over by God. But let us come back to Voltaire--to the dying philosopher. He was an old man of 84. He had been surrounded with the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of great wealth, the richest writer that the world had known. Among the literary men of the earth he stood first. He was an intellectual monarch--one who had built his own throne and had woven the purple of his own power. He was a man of genius. The Catholic God had allowed him the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery--of almost worship. He stood at the summit of his age. The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of Voltaire. Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey. Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Surplice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them to his uncle's sick chamber, who, being informed that they were there, said: "Ah, well, give them my compliments and my thanks." The abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The cure of Saint Surplice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side: "Let me die in peace." The cure seemingly considered his person soiled and his coif dishonored by the touch of a philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brushing and went out with the Abbe Gautier. He expired, says Wagnierre, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about a quarter past 11 at night, with the most perfect tranquility. A few moments before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet de chambee, who was watching by him, pressed it, and said: "Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last words. Like a peaceful river, with green and shaded banks, he flowed without a murmur into the waveless sea, where life is rest.

From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and tender; so natural and peaceful; from these words so utterly destitute of cant or dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing utterances have been drawn and made. From these materials, and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, have been constructed by priests and clergymen and their dupes all the shameless lies about the death of this great and wonderful man. A man, compared with whom all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, but dust and vermin. Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the such of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels had never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.

In those days the philosophers--that is to say, the thinkers--were not buried in holy ground. It was feared that their principles might contaminate the ashes of the just. And they also feared that on the morning of the resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip into heaven. Some were burned and their ashes scattered; and the bodies of some were thrown naked to beasts, and others buried in unholy earth. Voltaire knew the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful actress, denied burial. After all, we do feel an interest in what is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made arrangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more than 100 miles from Paris. Sunday evening, on the last day of May, 1778, the body of Voltaire, clad in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed to simulate life, was placed in a carriage; at its side a servant, whose business it was to keep it in position. To this carriage were attached six horses, so that people might think a great lord was going to his estates. Another carriage followed in which were a grand-nephew and two cousins of Voltaire. All night they traveled, and on the following day arrived at the courtyard of the abbey. The necessary papers were shown, the mass was performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found burial. A few moments afterward the prior who "for charity had given a little earth" received from his bishop a menacing letter forbidding the burial of Voltaire. It was too late. He could not then be removed, and he was allowed to remain in peace until 1791.

Voltaire was dead. The foundations of State and throne had been sapped. The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and with the actual priests. Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose fathers and mothers had been pavement for the rich, were rising towards the light and their shadowy faces were emerging from darkness. Labor and thought became friends. That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized. The monsters of the night and the angels of dawn--the first thinking of revenge and the others dreaming of equality, liberty and fraternity. For 400 years the Bastille had been the outward symbol of oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a perpetual threat. It was the last and often the first argument of king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments of torture, denied the existence of God. In 1789, on the 14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering, stormed and captured the Bastille. The battlecry was, "Vive le Voltaire!"

In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles from Paris. Buried by stealth he was to be removed by a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles; every village with its flags and arches in his honor; all the people anxious to honor the philosopher of France--the savior of Calas--the destroyer of superstition! On reaching Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. Antoine. Here it paused, and for one night upon the ruins of the Bastille rested the body of Voltaire--rested in triumph, in glory--rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rusting chain, and bar and useless bolt--above the dungeons dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives of men and hope had died in breaking hearts. The conqueror resting upon the conquered. Throned upon the Bastille, the fallen fortress of night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the dawn.

For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more the face of the dead.

While the vast multitude were trembling with love and awe, a priest was heard to cry, "God shall be avenged!"

The grave of Voltaire was violated. The cry of the priest, "God shall be avenged!" had borne its fruit. Priests, skulking in the shadows, with faces sinister as night-ghouls--in the name of the gospel, desecrated the gave. They carried away the body of Voltaire. The tomb was empty. God was avenged! The tomb was empty, but the world is filled with Voltaire's fame. Man has conquered!

What cardinal, what bishop, what priest raised his voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the oppressed--of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victim of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint from which emerges one ray of light? If there be another life, a day of judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world a man who abolished torture in his. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, He should not imprison there those who broke the chain of slavery here. He cannot afford to make eternal convicts of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Paine, of Voltaire.

Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully, as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings--that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves--just where to touch--hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing "Edipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies, the accomplishment of a thousand lives.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Myth and Miracles

Ladies and Gentlemen: What, after all, is the object of life? What is the highest possible aim? The highest aim is to accomplish the only good. Happiness is the only good of which man by any possibility can conceive. The object of life is to increase human joy, and that means intellectual and physical development. The question, then, is: Shall we rely upon superstition or upon growth? Is intellectual development the highway of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? Must we rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous investigation, thought, and intellectual development? For thousands of years men have been talking about religious freedom. I am now contending for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom--for the freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few years ago our poor ancestors tried to account for what they saw. Noticing the running river, the shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit in the river, a spirit in the star, and another in the flower. Something makes this river run, something makes this star shine, something paints the blossom of that flower. They were all spirits. That was the first religion of mankind--fetichism--and in everything that lived, everything that produced an effect upon them, they said: "This is a spirit that lives within." That is called the lowest phase of religious thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of religious thought. One by one these little spirits died. One by one nonentities took their places, and last of all we have one infinite fetich that takes the place of all others. Now, what makes the river run? We say the attraction of gravitation, and we know no more about that than we do about this fetich. What makes the tree grow? The principle of life--vital forces. These are simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees grow, why the flowers burst and bloom--nobody knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever will know.

There are two horizons that have never been passed by man--origin and destiny. All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that circle. All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference of the absolutely known. What next? The next thing that came in the world--the next man--was the mythmaker. He gave to these little spirits human passions; he clothed ghosts in flesh; he warmed that flesh with blood, and in that blood he put desire--motive. And the myths were born, and were only produced through the fact of the impressions that nature makes upon the brain of man. They were every one a natural production, and let me say here, tonight, that what men call monstrosities are only natural productions. Every religion has grown just as naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced. All the Christs, all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies, all the mingling of the beastly and human, were all produced by the impressions of nature upon the brain of man--by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn, the golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the change of seasons, the lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow--all these produced within the brain of man all myths, and they are all natural productions.

There have been certain myths universal among men. Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal--the golden age, which is absolutely the same thing. And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston will tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest. Fifty years ago all people were sociable--there was no stuck-up aristocracy then. Neighbors were neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it business. Go back fifty years and you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time when all were honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find another sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to his youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is true of the whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally, will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us. There are more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the world today than ever before.

The myth of the Elysian fields--universally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought it a vision of another land--a land without care or grief--a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of the sun. A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods. Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had left its cards on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing of the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He did not dream of it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the land will be. The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, and it would save him in turn from his enemies. He did so, and put it into different receptacles until it grew so large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was large enough to take care of itself. The fish told him that there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of animals of use to man, and he would come along with an ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to its horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the ark to a tree. When the waters receded, they came out and followed them down until they reached the plain. There were the same number--eight--in this ark as there were with Noah.

I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal. The virgin mother is the earth. I find also in countries the idea of a trinity. In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This idea prevailed in Central America among the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment almost universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that they naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment somewhere. Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was a sun god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a wonderful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same place, near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When the sun went down under the earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish, and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the field were eaten, it was the body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the blood of Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There is nothing original in christianity. Holy water! Another myth. The Hindoos imagined that the water had its source in the throne of God. The Egyptians thought the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian colonies, and they carried with them the water of the Nile, and when any one died the water was sprinkled on him. Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is the myth of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, and I presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The cross is another universal symbol. There was once an ancient people in Italy before the Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history does not even know the name of that nation. We find where they buried the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, hundreds of years before Christ, the cross, a symbol of a hope of another life. We find the cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we find them in Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our cross was built in the middle ages.

When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to the garden of Eden. He told him he would have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left it. He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let him pass the door. He moved his wings so that he could see in, and he saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among them Cain, the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, and told him to put them in his father's mouth when he was buried and to watch the effect. The result was that these trees grew up--one pine, one cedar, and on cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in the temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it into the pool of Bethesda. When the soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ they took this tree and made a cross of it. Helen, the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross. She found the two crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on. They could not tell which was which, so they called a sick woman who touched them, and when she touched the right one she was immediately made whole.

Such is myth and fable. The history of one religion is substantially the history of all religions. In embryo man lives all lives. The man of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows the history of all religions. The man of imagination, genius, having seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the mists rise, and the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking at a coat of mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions that produced it, and what it, in its turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled serfs, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life. The man of imagination has lived the life of all people, of all races. He has been a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager eloquence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He has seen Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood--was present when the great man drank hemlock and met the night of death tranquil as a star meets morning. He has followed the peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the sophists. He has watched Phidias, as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. He has lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knows the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He has heard great Memnon's morning song, has laid him down with the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts--the children born of long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. He has lived the life of savage men--has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate name of life or death has matched his thought against the instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative shade, rapt in Buddha's mighty thought, and he has dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. He has knelt with awe and dread at every prayer; has felt the consolation and the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has lived all lives, and through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The imagination hath a stage within the brain, whereon he sets all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life.

Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There is this difference between the miracle and the myth--a myth is an idealism of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is some difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference that there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury. Miracles are probably only in the far past or the very remote future. The present is the property of the natural. You say to a man: "The dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, that's reasonable." You say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says, "That is what I believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead this morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?" Miracles never convince at the time they were said to have been performed.

John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He was cast into prison. When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country." Afterward he returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he again departed from that country. There is no possible relation between the miraculous and the moral. The miracles of the middle ages are the children of superstition. In the middle ages men told everything but the truth, and believed everything but the facts. The middle ages--a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There is one thing about humanity. You see the faults of others, but not your own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and thinks it absurd. Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin and some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant shut his eyes when he prays? The idea is a souvenir of sun worship. It is the most natural worship in the world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The doctrine of eternal torment today has become absurd, low, groveling, ignorant, barbaric, savage, devilish and no gentleman would preach it.

Science, thou art the great magician! Thou alone performest the true miracles. Thou alone workest the real wonders. Fire is thy servant, lightning thy messenger. The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the circuits of the wind. Thou art the great philanthropist. Thou hast freed the slave and civilized the master. Thou hast taught man to chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces of nature--forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat--forces that never know fatigue, that shed no tears--forces that have no hearts to break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper and the loom--thou hast fed and clothed the world. Thou art the great physician. Thy touch hath given sight. Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health. "Thou hast given thy beloved sleep"--a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man--preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every virtue, and the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of morals--the origin and office of conscience--and hast revealed the nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast taught that love is justice in its highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, embraces with loving arms the human race. Thou hast slain the monsters of the past. Thou hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou hast read the records of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and flame--records that even priestcraft cannot change--and in thy wondrous scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars. Thou art the founder of the only true religion. Thou art the very Christ, the only savior of mankind!