Science has shown that the bottomless pit did not even have a top. Columbus sailed over the Western edge of the flat Christian world on which all this Christian system depended, and found that the material Heaven and Hell were unfounded myths; but the preachers and priests still threaten _hell_ to the most ignorant and credulous, but they tell some of us that there is a _final judgment_. * * * * * In the old days, we used to hear a great deal about judgments. A certain honest, good-natured, old farmer in New Hampshire, who was a freethinker, but had a very pious wife, lost many cattle when the black tongue was an epidemic in the State. One day the hired man came in and told him the red oxen were dead. "Are they?" said the old man. "Well, they were 'breechy cusses.' Take off their hides and carry them down to Fletcher's. They will bring the cash." An hour or so later the man came back with the news that Lineback and his mate were both dead. "Are they?" said the old man. "Well, I took them of B---- to save a bad debt that I never expected to get. Take the hides down to Fletcher's. They will bring the cash." After the lapse of another hour the man came back to tell him that the nigh brindle was dead. "Is he?" said the old man. "Well, he was a very old ox. Take off his hide and send it down to Fletcher's. It is worth cash and will bring more than two of the others." Hereupon his wife reminded him that his loss was a judgment of Heaven upon him. "Is it?" said the old chap. "Well, if they will take the judgment in cattle, it is the easiest way I can pay it." But they know no more about final judgments than they did about the lake of fire and brimstone which commenced to drain off in Columbus' day. Science has vaporized the notion of a future judgment by the same method it has that of a past Creation. From the _facts_, it has learned _laws_. But credulity is always half-hearted with facts. It does not know enough of truth to love it. It is ever glowing over and setting up as a dogma the little it knows, or assumes to know, of the truth of former times. It has no faith in the newly discovered, because it knows nothing of it. Hence, age after age we see the spectacle of men who have not studied the science of their own day denouncing it in pulpit and councils; of men who have steeped themselves in the traditions of the past pronouncing shallow invectives against the demonstrations of (science) the present. * * * * *