But now we have come to a stage where we can no longer be cool spectators. In what happens now we too must be part and parcel of the action; we too must hope, and toil, and struggle and suffer. We are no longer looking through the clear still atmosphere of the dead: around our forms the wheeling mists are circled, and before our eyes the haze lies thick--the haze of gold or the haze of gray. The dimness of the "yet to be" befogs our sight, and the rush of hope and fear blinds all our faculties. You who stand well upon the heights of love, of comfort, of happiness, heeding not the darkness and the sorrow beneath you, behold, with up-cast eyes, the great figures of God and Freedom wound about, showered with light. To you there is no menace in their darting eyes, there is no purpose in their full-drawn statures, there is no jarring in their clarion voices. No! for your senses are stupid in your luxury, your brains are dulled, too dulled to think, your ears are glutted with the ring of gold. In your vain and foolish hearts you dream that what you see there is a shadowy bridal; that there, at last, Religion and Science, Statecraft and Freedom, are meeting to embrace each other. Ah, go on, book-makers, press-writers, doctors and lawyers and preachers and teachers! Go on talking your incompatibilities; go on teaching your absurdities! Dream out your short-lived dream! At your feet, beneath the shadow of your capitols and domes, under the tuition of your few-facted, much-fictioned literature, from out your chaos of truth-flavored lies, from before your pulpits, your rostrums and your seats of learning, something is growing. Something that is looking _you_ in the eyes, that is analyzing your statements, that is revolving your institutions in its brain, that is crushing your sophistries in its merciless machinery as fine as grain is ground between the whitened mill-rollers. Freethought is looking at you, gentlemen!--more than that, it questions you, it puts you on the witness-stand, it cross-examines you. It says, "Do you believe in God?" and you answer, "Yes." "Do you believe him to be omnipotent, omniscient, and all-just?" "Certainly; less than this would not be God." "Then you believe he has the power to order all things as he wills, and being all-just he wills all things according to justice?" "Yes." "Then you believe him to be the impartially-loving father of all his created children?" "Yes." "And each one of those children has an equal right to life and liberty?" "Yes." Then look upon this earth beneath you, this earth of beings whose lives are of so poor account to you, and tell us, where _is_ God and _what_ is he doing? Everyone has a right to life! What mockery! When the control of the necessaries of life is given to the few by the State, and above the seal of the law the priest has set the seal of the Church! Verily, "You do take my life When you take that whereby I live." Is this your Divine Justice?