I care nothing about the doctrines or religions or creeds of the past. Let us come to the bar of the nineteenth century and judge the matter by what we know, by what we think, by what we love. But they say to us, "If you throw away the Bible what are we to depend on then?" But no two persons in the world agree as to what the Bible is, what they are to believe, or what they are not to believe. It is like a guide-post that has been thrown down in some time of disaster, and has been put up the wrong way. Nobody can accept its guidance, for nobody knows where it would direct him. I say, "Tear down the useless guide-post," but they answer, "Oh, do not do that or we will have nothing to go by." I would say, "Old Church, you take that road, and I will take this." Another minister has said that the Bible is the great town-clock, at which we may all set our watches. But I have said to a friend of that minister, "Suppose we all should set our watches by that town-clock, there would be many persons to tell you that in old times the long hand was the hour hand, and beside, the clock hasn't been wound up for a long time." I say, let us wait till the sun rises and set our watches by nature. For my part, I am willing to give up heaven to get rid of hell. I had rather there should be no heaven than that any solitary soul should be condemned to suffer for ever and ever. But they tell me that the Bible is the book of hope. Now, in the Old Testament there is not, in my judgment, a single reference to another life. Is there a burial-service mentioned in it in which a word of hope is spoken at the grave of the dead? The idea of eternal life was not born of any book. That wave of hope and joy ebbs and flows, and will continue to ebb and flow as long as love kisses the lips of death. Let me tell you a tale of the Persian religion--of a man who, having done good for long years of his life, presented himself at the gates of Paradise, but the gates remained closed against him. He went back and followed up his good works for seven years longer, and the gates of Paradise still remaining shut against him, he toiled in works of charity until at last they were opened unto him. Think of that, and send out your missionaries among those people. There is no religion but goodness, but justice, but charity. Religion is not theory--it is life. It is not intellectual conviction--it is divine humanity, and nothing else. There is another tale from the Hindoo of a man who refused to enter Paradise without a faithful dog, urging that ingratitude was the blackest of all sins. "And the god," he said, "admitted him, dog and all." Compare that religion with the orthodox tenets of the city of New York.