Up in Northern Minnesota, less than fifty years ago, an old Baptist was preaching on the death of Moses on the Mount, and his not being permitted to go over into the Promised Land. The preacher said: "I have always felt sorry for Moses. It has seemed so hard to me that he could not go over with Caleb and Joshua, the only two of the host which he had led out of Egypt, and enjoy with his people the good country towards which they had been so long traveling. When as a boy I read that in the Bible for the first time, I sat down and cried for sympathy with him. But Moses had a hard time from the first. He was no sooner born than his life was threatened. His mother had to hide him to save it. After three months she could hide him no longer, and so she made an ark of bulrushes and set him afloat on the river. Indeed, it seemed as though the Lord had all he could do to raise Moses." But the people of this generation do not take the story of Moses so seriously. A bright young girl of ten, on being asked by her Sabbath School teacher, "Where did Pharaoh's daughter get Moses?" replied, with the accent on the _said_, "She _said_ she 'found him in the bulrushes.'" I attended a campmeeting in North Carolina. The exhortations and prayers would cause a graven image to smile audibly. One old Baptist preacher said he always felt so sorry to think that "Ingine corn" didn't grow in Palestine, because he would like to think that the little Jesus had a good time playing with cob-houses. But those preachers compare favorably with the Reverend George F. Hall, of Decatur, Illinois, and the Reverend Doctor John P. D. John, and the Reverend Doctor Frederick Bell, late of the Metropolitan Temple of San Francisco, California, who at various times challenged Robert G. Ingersoll to debate with them. It shows what ignorance, superstition and egotism combined can do. Darwin said the herding instinct in animals has its base in fear. Sheep and cattle go in droves, while a lion simply flocks with his mate. Those who wish to lead have always fostered fear, encouraging this tendency to herd, promising protection, and offering what they call knowledge in return for a luxurious living. In other words, the men who preach and pray, always want the people who _work_ to divide with them. They work on the line that fear will compel men to join churches. This joining instinct is a manifestation of weakness. By going with a gang they hope to get to Heaven. But the moment you eliminate the Devil from Christianity, there is nothing left. You can not have a revival, alias an epidemic, of religion, without the Devil. If there were no Devil, there would be nothing to pray about, and all these people who are gifted in prayer would be without a job.