Must we believe that God called some of his children the money of others? Can we believe that God made lashes upon the naked back, a legal tender for labor performed? Must we regard the auction block as an altar? Were blood hounds, apostles? Was the slave-pen a temple? Were the stealers and whippers of babes and women the justified children of God? 515. Will There Be an Eternal Auto da Fe? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal _auto da fe_? 516. Why Hate an Atheist? Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us? ORIENT PEARLS AS RANDOM STRUNG I do not believe that Christians are as bad as their creeds. The highest crime against a creed is to change it. Reformation is treason. A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate, soil, geographical position. The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light. No man ever seriously attempted to reform a Church without being cast out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy. After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make, is to give his individuality for what is called respectability. On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental freedom. Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb. There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought. No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of Church or State solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns. Although we live in what is called a free government,--and politically we are free,--there is but little religious liberty in America. According to orthodox logic, God having furnished us with imperfect minds, has a right to demand a perfect result. Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. When women reason, and babes sit in the lap of philosophy, the victory of reason over the shadowy host of darkness will be complete.