It has always been my opinion that many people who thought they had sinned against the Holy Ghost simply had dyspepsia. _If people should deceive in other matters as the priests, parsons and teachers do in religion, they would not escape arrest._ The destruction of religions and superstition means the upbuilding of charity and ethics.--_Ralph W. Chainey._ Superstition is nothing but a misplaced fear of some fancied supernatural phantasm of divinity. HOW CAN WE "TAKE" CHRIST? All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate, soil, geographical position, industry, invention, discovery, art and science. The Church has been the enemy of progress, for the reason that it has endeavored to prevent man from thinking for himself. To prevent thought is to prevent all advancement except in the direction of faith. --_Robert Ingersoll._ [Illustration] HOW CAN WE "TAKE" CHRIST? I receive many letters from various people telling me that Christ is mine if I will only take him. I am always amused at the solicitations of these people and feel as President Taft did when Peary "laid the Pole" at his feet. Taft replied he had no idea what he should do with it. I should not know what to do with Christ if I took him. What can they mean by taking Christ? The word Christ is used to designate a certain individual who died, if he ever lived, nearly two thousand years ago. Now to take this person we should have to take him from the earth where he was buried. I am at a loss to comprehend what Christians mean when they offer Christ to any one. What right has an individual today to offer another a person who has been dead two thousand years? I fail to see any sense in such an offer. Certain men and women go about the world asking people to come to Christ, to accept Christ. What do they mean--do they know? In my opinion the supreme dogma of Christianity is the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was a man, all that was related of his divine acts in the four Gospels is false. How would a person like the Nazarene peasant be accepted today were he to play the part of a god? Suppose a person who had lived in our neighborhood should come to us and say, "I am God, and I want you to help me save the world; quit your work and follow me." What would you think of him? Would any one pay the least attention to him, except to think he was insane and have him placed in an asylum for safety? The people who are preaching the divinity of Jesus know nothing about him except what they read in a book that was written by unknown authors. Jesus is the last hope of Christian theology. He is the only solution of the divine problem that Christianity has to offer. Is not the direction of the world's most rational thought away from the Christian notion of Jesus? In my opinion it is. * * * * *