“This is the era of another method, until in the revolution of time, the old system may again appear, as the affairs of men have their cycles and their seasons, as the spheres and all things in nature. In ancient times the religious believed in knocking unbelief on the head with battle axes. Now it is the use of offensive epithets, caricature, sarcasm, virulent attacks, denunciation, differing from the former methods, but with the same old spirit and the same purpose in view. “Yet, to be candid and reasonable, I am glad to admit that there has been great improvement. There is now a wide liberty and more generosity, simply because the world has grown wiser by experience, and the number of free thinkers, those people who think as they choose, have increased, and can show that they also have rights which the others are compelled to respect. “One thing I cannot abide. It is that any man, or set of men, should organize a church, patch up a creed, formulate some ordinances and make claims that they are right and all others are wrong. They have divine authority, they say, and so say they all, each batch of them. “But who are they? Men, all, every one of them, and all of them very fallible men, too. Can any one set of them have any superiority or right over all other men? “If Peter, who denied his master, and cursed, and a very fallible man he was, could found a church, why not each of the other apostles, or why not anybody, for that matter? If a Roman Church, why not an English Church, an American, an African, a Chinese, a Hottentot Church? No one could assert that the African Church might not be as acceptable to God as the African face, and there might be as much difference between these churches as in the color of the different peoples. So many get up schemes to assist Providence, as if He was incapable of conducting His own affairs. “Suppose a being from another world, or not to go so far, say a heathen, should begin the study of the different beliefs of the different churches and at the same time study the actions of those who profess belief in them. What would be his inevitable conclusion? “That Jesus was the Prince of Peace? And that all the people of these different creeds are his true followers? “No more, than that the sheep and tiger, the hare and the cat are of the same family. He might believe that the tiger and the lamb might be together, but the lamb would be inside the tiger, and that there would be peace among the churches only when all the others would be in the bowels of one. “There is a great deal made of that scripture phrase of the lion and the lamb lying down together, but each sect wishes to be the lion.