Apply this illustration now to the Bible. Here are some people who have been told when they were young, that this book, which is placed in their hands, is a personal message to them from God. This makes the book, certainly, more precious than any jewel. God, the owner and disposer of everything, with his own hand has inscribed an epistle to them, and this is it! What joy! What a treasure! Now these people, not being students themselves, accepted implicitly what they were told by their teachers, just as the woman, not being an expert herself, took her jeweler's word about the value of the stone in her ring. In order not to offend this child-like faith in the Bible, word is sent out to everybody to hush. Hush! not a word! not a whisper!--Hush! hush! is the cry of all. To uphold this conspiracy of silence, arrangements are made to dictate what may and what may not be said in public. A preacher in praying or preaching might give away the secret,--he might inadvertently say something which may prick this pretty bubble of illusion. Hence, in the Catholic and Episcopal Churches, all the prayers are printed, and the preachers pray according to the book. Do you think the Church will let a man close his eyes and open his mouth and say whatever comes into his head? Indeed, not! He must pray by the book. In the protestant denominations there is the creed, to which you swear your allegiance before you can open your mouth in one of their churches, and the moment you are caught talking beyond what the creed allows, your ordination is taken from you and your mouth is shut. Dear me! all this regime is for the purpose of encouraging the conceit that man has been favored with a hand-written, personal message, from the Creator of the universe. If this were all, we, ourselves, would not take notice of it. But we, too, are compelled to join this conspiracy of silence and suppression, and to lie in the interests of the delicate believers whose faith cannot stand the least strain. Darwin must beware how he writes about the origin of species, or the descent of man. Some believer, hugging ecstatically his Bible to his bosom, might read his books and lose his blissful conceit. Do not think, do not invent, do not announce your truth, ye philosophers, scientists and reformers! without first consulting the prejudices of the "little ones" in the faith; for if you unsettle the faith of a single believer, it were better that you were weighted down into the sea by a millstone hanging about your necks. And you, whose love and genius give us our daily victory over disease and error,--whose thought is our daily bread and beauty,--you, too, must hush, you must become sterile, or be content to speak by rote, lest you should disturb the repose of the believer who has laid himself down to sleep. The theological babe must not be awakened. It will bawl and cry if aroused, and better than cause one of these babes to cry, let there be no intellectual life in the world!