As Freethinkers, we boldly impeach the Christian plan of salvation as being essentially immoral in its tendency,--as offering a premium on vice and crime; and for doing this on previous occasions and designating it a "bankrupt scheme," the writer of this has been the subject of severe and indignant animadversion from his intimate Christian friends. Yet here is a Christian minister who takes substantially the same position as ourselves in reference to the plan of salvation as preached by Methodists and others, and denounces it as a "Spiritual Bankrupt Act." And I have made the above extracts from his pen to strengthen my position against Mr. Wendling, viz., that a belief in God and the Bible is _not_ essential to social and commercial morality, and the safety of the State. On this subject, Lord Bacon, himself a Christian, says:-- "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation: all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not. But superstition dismounts all these, and createth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men; therefore Atheism did never perturb States, for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further, and we see the limes inclined to Atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times; but superstition, that bone of contention of many States, bringeth in a new _primum mobile_ that ravishes all the spheres of government." There are thousands of Atheists in almost every civilized country, and how is it, if Atheism tends to crime, that you will seldom or never find one in prison for any crime? Buddhism, one of the most ancient religions, long ante-dating Christianity, is essentially Atheistic. It has had, and has now, hundreds of millions of followers, and for pure morality no system of religion has ever equalled it. Webster, the Christian lexicographer, admits that Buddhism was "characterized by admirable humanity and morality." The religion of Confucius--of him who taught the "golden rule" five centuries before Christianity appeared--was also Atheistic. Therefore, what we "most need" is, not a "conviction that there _is_ a personal God" (we have that already; all the murderers, thieves and defaulters believe that doctrine), but we need more of the "admirable morality" of Buddhism, and more of the practice of the "golden rule" of Confucius to "do not unto others what you would not they should do to you." As Emerson has said, "We want some good Paganism."