Do not imagine for a moment that I think people who disagree with me are bad people. I admit, and I cheerfully admit, that a very large proportion of mankind and a very large majority, a vast number, are reasonably honest. I believe that most Christians believe what they teach; that most ministers are endeavoring to make this world better. I do not pretend to be better than they are. It is an intellectual question. It is a question, first, of intellectual liberty, and after that, a question to be settled at the bar of human reason. I do not pretend to be better than the are. Probably I am a good deal worse than many of them, but that is not the question. The question is "Bad as I am, have I a right to think?" And I think I have, for two reasons. First, I can't help it. And secondly, I like it. The whole question is right at a point. If I have not a right to express my thoughts, who has? "Oh," they say, "we will allow you, we will not burn you." "All right; why won't you burn me?" "Because we think a decent man will allow others to think and express his thought." "Then the reason you do not persecute me for my thought is that you believe it would be infamous in you!" "Yes." "And yet you worship a God who will, all you declare, punish me forever." The next question then is: Can I commit a sin against God by thinking? If God did not intend I should think, why did He give me a "thinker." Now, then, we have got what they call the Christian system of religion, and thousands of people wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack that system. There are many good things about it, and I shall never attack anything that I believe to be good! I shall never fear to attack anything I honestly believe to be wrong. We have, I say, what they call the Christian religion, and, I find, just in proportion that nations have been religious, just in the proportion they have gone back to barbarism. I find that Spain, Portugal, Italy are the three worst nations in Europe; I find that the nation nearest infidel is the most prosperous France. And so I say there can be no danger in the exercise of absolute intellectual freedom. I find among ourselves the men who think at least as good as those who do not. We have, I say, a Christian system, and that is founded upon what they are pleased to call system the "New Testament." Who wrote the New Testament? I don't know. Who does know? Nobody!