But it may be answered that the Old Testament is no longer the authority it once was, and that the New Testament, or rather, the character of God as revealed in Christ, is our ideal. I have the highest reverence for the beautiful things Jesus is reported to have said. I rejoice that some of his words have made twenty centuries of the world's life fragrant I would sooner die this instant than feel that I am guilty of misrepresenting the facts, of taking a fact and twisting it into an argument for my party. If I have any happiness in life, if I have any self-respect, it is from this source,--that I am honest with the facts. Yet the teachings of Jesus condensed in his direct command not to resist evil is the very negation of morality. We had recently the yellow fever in New Orleans. What did we do? We organized against it, threw ourselves against it, resisted it. It is the only way physical evil can be destroyed. There was a time when if the cholera came to a city it was said that God had sent it, and it was useless to fight it. Today we don't care who sent it, we don't want it, and shall not have it. We shall resist it. Consider the disclosures of dishonest banking houses and insurance companies. What do we do? We drag the guilty into the light; we examine, we investigate, we expose, we punish, we do not say to these people, you have taken so much of our money, take also what is left. We resist evil. In politics, in commerce, in every department of life we find that in resistance alone is our salvation, and yet Jesus, the Oriental monk, believing the end of the world to be close at hand, would tie our hands, paralyze our will and give evil, physical or moral, a free field. If we do not resist evil we will soon be so incapacitated for effort, so emptied of energy and ambition that we will become the victim not only of every physical pest but also of every moral iniquity. "Resist not" is just what a priest would say to his people, and a king to his subjects. But "resist" is what the liberator would say to his fellowmen. But are there not examples of the highest morality in the Christian world? Yes, surely, and I am glad to admit it, but it is in spite of the Christian creed. It shows that,--listen to this,--theology is listened to only one day in the week, the other six days we listen to common sense. We are better than our beliefs, better than our creeds. The Asiatic theology which we call inspired has not succeeded in perverting Anglo-Saxon human nature. That is what it proves. What importance did Jesus attach to the moral life? Let us see. You know that when he was on the cross there were two thieves crucified with him. One of them reviled him, the other said to him "Lord, when thou comest into thy kingdom remember me," and Jesus said, "This day shall thou be with me in Paradise." Ah, indeed! What had this man done to deserve such sudden glorification?