“Such a performance as that, and I don’t know what else to call it, is degrading a religious service, and turning it into a falsehood, making a sham or mockery of what at such a solemn moment should be—most truthful and sacred. Everybody present at the time knew the service was a lying flattery, a religious farce. Is it any wonder that so many people lack sincerity, and lose faith not only in the church, its ministers, but in all things religious? The clergy go through their forms whether they are suitable for the occasion or not.” I suggested that perhaps his hymns might not always be appropriate. “Why not?” he asked. “They would not lie about God or the dead, but would be only for the living. Another thing. As this man to whom I referred was near death, they sent for the chaplain. He may have found a suitable prayer, or have said some good words, but what could he do for such a man in the awful hour of death? They say, ‘The man may repent,’ and then? Would he go to heaven? What kind of a heaven would be suitable for him? What society is he fitted to enjoy? What delight would he take in anything that is pure and holy? That is another of the false, baneful teachings of the Church, that the vilest of men may in a dying hour, by a few words of the priest, by partaking of the communion, by the anointing of oil, or the sprinkling of a few drops of so-called holy water, in an instant, be fitted to go into the presence of God and associate with angels and the pure and good. You might as well take a savage cannibal, or a wild Hottentot, suddenly into a London drawing room, among the refined and educated, and expect him to enjoy himself and be at ease, as to think of a vile, polluted man gaining admittance into Heaven, and to be happy should he get into it. Of what interest would God be to a soul in a future life, who had nothing to do with Him here? “With me it is not a question if I shall go to Heaven, but how shall I like it when I get there? Strip many people of all that is in them that pertains wholly to this life, and there would be little left that would be worth taking over into that other life. The whole church scheme is founded on the idea that Heaven is a kind of a pen, or a big sheep-fold, and that the keeper of the gate can be cajoled or bribed to let in anybody who is vouched for by some priest; that even those so vile as to pollute the earth by their presence, who can get past the keeper through the gate, or by any hook or crook get in, will at once bloom out into saints and angels.