"To counteract this terrible invisible influence of evil no power of equal potency is furnished. They say that God's holy spirit in conjunctive co-operation with the saints embodied (they mean, of course, the preachers and good church people) is seeking man's deliverance and salvation. They confess, however, that this agency is impotent when compared with the power wielded by the devil and his invisible cohorts. They make Jesus say substantially that the road that leads to heaven is narrow and circumscribed and few travel in it, while the road that leads to hell is broad and the many travel therein, 'many shall be called, but few chosen,' etc., etc. "If their system be true we are forced inevitably to conclude that when the creative energies residing in man have succeeded in producing a high order of intellection the devil straightway captures them, leaving heaven to be peopled without the presence of the great and godlike in mental power. It would seem prudent and wise that this should have been otherwise arranged in order to have rendered heaven reasonably and fairly intellectual. No wonder, therefore, that their highest conceptions of worship and gratitude consisted in keeping up around the throne of the Lord a continual musical concert, both vocal and instrumental. Such distinguished and illustrious souls as Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Clay, Lincoln, Garfield, Paine, Voltaire, and others, could not be induced to participate for all future time in such exercises, for their mental constitutions were too robust and great and their souls too much interested in other and more ennobling pursuits. This kind of heaven would not suit souls of such intellectual proportions, and the orthodox hell, if accompanied by suffering, would be preferable to them, because their associations, at least, would be intellectual, for the devil is said to be exceedingly wise, and all wise souls live and delight in kindred consociations." July 21, 1882: "According to the orthodox scheme, heaven, hell, and the devil, all go together, or, in other words, they are inseparably connected with and belong to the plan. Heaven would be the destination of all without a hell and _vice versa_. Heaven and hell are in antagonism, and there would be no strife but by and through the devil, and therefore his existence is a necessity to this end. God is too good to take part in this strife, and is either indifferent or too weak to avert it. Even when the war in heaven, according to Milton, was waged between the devil and the Lord, with relentless fury, he would take no direct and active part, but commissioned Michael his generalissimo. How could he now be expected to take an immediate and active part, even to save his own defenseless children. Earthly parents act quite differently when their offspring are in peril, and so do the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. I am talking ironically only to show the utter folly of the whole matter.