"If it is said in reply that when hell was fashioned and established the Lord had in contemplation the creation of man, and that it was to be subsequently rendered useful as a place of punishment for disobedience, which implies that the Lord knew in advance of man's creation that he would be disobedient, then, oh, man, you are surely in the hands and under the power of a merciless demon, falsely called God. If this indeed is the true character of our Lord, then truly may his weak and helpless children bow their heads in sorrow and despair. "These teachers of false theology, these false interpreters of simple truth, these false prophets of a false conception, affirm that this appalling hell, offspring of a monster creative agency, is a fixed location somewhere, which they have the candor to say, they know not. "The theologians perceiving throughout the vast domain of universal nature two confronting opposites or extremes, and that there scheme must fall if hell were left alone to be the final destiny of the entire human family, erect another falsity and construct another place or harbor for the sojourners and pilgrims of earth, and consequently they say that the Lord has established somewhere in space a heaven, the location of which, although a locality, can not be ascertained. "The same questions, with equal propriety, might be propounded in reference to heaven and the same conclusions follow. Was it made for man or man for it? Was it made before or after man was made? Where is it situate; who go there and why do they go there, and for what purpose? If the theologians answer these pertinent questions in harmony with their creeds, they would make my friend John Calvin, who accompanied me here this morning and is now standing by my side, blush with shame. He now, as a noble spirit, pities the ignorance and credulity that characterized him in his religious frenzy when in the form, and the credulity and weakness of his followers." June 19, 1882: "The original conception of a literal local heaven and hell was a feeble monstrosity and far exceeding the intuitions and anticipations of its originators, it has assumed huge and alarming proportions. Originally it was treated either as a human created joke, or as a wild vagary of the imagination, and in both cases without even the shadow of a foundation in fact. But as time moved along it began to grow seriously in the minds of the morbidly curious and credulously constituted, and it found many earnest advocates and believers, and they were not altogether limited to the ignorant. Had this been the case it would have been harmless and short-lived. The poet in depicting the career of vice aptly illustrates the history of this conception: "'Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, As to be dreaded needs but to be seen. Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first pity, then endure, and then embrace.'"