The imagination of the bewildered bigot fears a mysterious phantom which acts on none of his senses; and he fears nothing so much as to have nothing to fear. If his religion was clear to human intellect, it would have no attractions for his ignorance; there must be obscurity, incredible prodigies, fables, sorceries, and terrors, to keep his perverted brain in perpetual dread and agitation. By such chimerical apparatus, the priest can reduce the mental faculties of man almost to annihilation, and hence it is that the great herd of human beings have hitherto been mere congregated masses of variously compounded folly, knavery, and credulity; where ignorance is prized and cherished as the sole medium through which clerical and secular oppressors can ride over the necks of the multitude;* while the spider's web of superstition confines their intellects as it were within the bounds of a nutshell. In this way are the whole nations of human beings educated under traditional and legendary lies and fables; yet so firmly does the false impressions instilled in childhood rivet them upon the mind, that myriads have died for them, as the highest service to their "God!" _This is a species of devotion which the theologues most willingly perform by deputy_. * "In every age, and in every country of the world, the religions that have been invented by impostors and priests, and sanctioned by rulers, have been put forth with no other intention than that of deceiving the people; whilst the distinguishing characteristic of all religious professors has been to profess one thing and mean another." Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole fabric of Christian priestcraft. In the present century, that light, guarded by the true emancipating Savior of the human race, the printing press,* is now becoming more widely diffused and clear, through the erudite minds of a Brougham, an Owen, a Hume, and many other advocates of education; but still the truths of Nature are so obscured by the dense fogs of priest-fostered ignorance, that no efficient political relief need be expected for Christendom, until the people reform themselves by abandoning the evils which cause their physical and mental intoxication; these are inebriating liquors, and grovelling superstition.