The first edition of this book was printed in 1881, since which time many thousands of copies have been scattered throughout the country; but in no case to our knowledge has anyone successfully denied the facts alleged against any "man of God" figuring in these pages. Its substantial accuracy is therefore assured. The only charge that can be maintained against it is its incompleteness. The publishers do not claim to have discovered more than a small percentage of clerical villainy. The churches endeavor to and do hide a great deal of the immorality of their ministers. The preachers, who govern the ecclesiastical tribunals, have a fellow feeling for one another. As a general thing, it is only when the clergy are brought before the secular courts that the public can learn the full facts. Comparatively few Catholic priests figure in this record, for the reason that that church is a close corporation which by political influence and by control of its members' tongues can conceal the crimes of its leaders. In all large cities of the country the Catholic church has a large and dangerous political influence, and its priests have every chance to go free of retribution for their vices and crimes. The judges are Catholics, or owe their positions to Catholic power; the court officers are Catholics; the policemen are Catholics. They all shield the "fathers" and withhold their names from publication. It is impossible, too, for the editor to read all the papers and gather all the cases which do see the light of publicity. And, we are sorry to say, some of the secular journals suppress the news. If the country could be scanned closely the indications are that a hundred times as many crimes could be found rightfully charged to the men who set themselves up as teachers of morals. For use in future editions we therefore urge all who read these pages to send us such accounts of these cases as may come to their notice, giving facts, dates, and localities, and, if clippings from newspapers are sent, name, date, and place of publication of paper. It has been objected by apologists for the system of religion in vogue in this country that clerical delinquencies prove nothing against the system. In this they are mistaken. Of course, if Christianity had a foundation of fact, these records would not prove that the fact is not there. What they do prove, however, is that the claim made for Christianity, that it makes men moral, is not true. For if the system is not sufficient to restrain its very teachers, how can we expect their pupils to profit by it? The point this book emphasizes, as an ex-Methodist minister, now a Rationalist, but always a moral man, forcibly puts it, is that religion in and of itself, is not a moral force; that it is not one with morality; that it may, and often does, exist without morality, and that morality gains nothing by being associated with it.