We deny that religion is the end or object of this life. When it is so considered it becomes destructive of happiness--the real end of life. It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men. It devours their substance, builds palaces for God, (who dwells not in temples made with hands), and allows his children to die in huts and hovels. It fills the earth with mourning, heaven with hatred, the present with fear, and all the future with despair. Virtue is a subordination of the passions to the intellect. It is to act in accordance with your highest convictions. It does not consist in believing, but in doing. This is the sublime truth that the Infidels in all ages have uttered. They have handed the torch from one to the other through all the years that have fled. Upon the altar of Reason they have kept the sacred fire, and through the long midnight of faith, they fed the divine flame. Infidelity is liberty; all religion is slavery. In every creed, man is the slave of God--woman is the slave of man, and the sweet children are the slaves of all. We do not want creeds; we want knowledge--we want happiness. And yet we are told by the Church that we have accomplished nothing; that we are simply destroyers; that we tear down without building again. Is it nothing to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect? Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the dark and silent cells, where the souls of men are chained to the floors of stone, to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly bright, to feel yourself grasped by the shrunken and unused hands, and hear yourself thanked by a strange and hollow voice? Is it nothing to conduct these souls gradually into the blessed light of day--to let them see again the happy fields, the sweet, green earth, and hear the everlasting music of the waves? Is it nothing to make men wipe the dust from their swollen knees, the tears from their blanched and furrowed cheeks? Is it a small thing to reave the heavens of an insatiate monster and write upon the eternal dome, glittering with stars, the grand word--Freedom? Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity--to unbind the martyr from the stake--break all the chains--put out the fires of civil war--stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science? Is it a small thing to make men truly free--to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power--the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of Fear?