“A young man—and generally they are below the average in natural ability—goes to a school where he is taught some particular belief, how to preach it, defend it; then he is set apart, ordained by the laying on of hands of men little wiser and better than himself, and he goes forth to uphold or disseminate his creed with the voice of an infallible trumpet. By what right does he assume to have the ability or the authority to know all about the purposes of God or dominate over his fellow men? “I grant his right to bray like an ass if he chooses, but I deny his power to anathematize me for not believing his bray to be the roar of a lion. Many a time have I sat in church and heard a beardless stripling of a youth, just from school, make his statements about Providence with an air of authority as if he had just been appointed prime minister to the Almighty. What did he know more than his audience? Much less than most of them. Take an old priest or clergyman. Who is he? Only a man as I am. What is he? Only a student as I am. Where has he been that I have not gone? What advantages has he had more than I? None. Is God nearer to him than to me? I trust not. We are the same in every way, men. Yet when he takes his place in the pulpit he assumes that he knows everything, and presumes that I know nothing; preaches to me, dictates to me and denounces me for not agreeing with him and accepting all his talk, his sublimated drivel as God’s truth. Charles Kingsley, a most sensible priest, says, ‘Youths who hide their crass ignorance and dullness under the cloak of church infallibility, and having neither tact, manners, learning, humanity or any other dignity whereon to stand, talk loudly _pour pis aller_ about the dignity of the priesthood.’ “The churches assume to be invested by God with power to regulate our belief without taking upon themselves any responsibility for our miscarriage; they teach that the spiritual direction and salvation of a man’s soul is wholly in the power of somebody else than himself. “The priest declares that the bible says so, and therefore it must be true. Who made the bible? Men, such as we are, and therefore of no final authority. He says the church teaches so and so. But who made the church? Men. So on all through the gamut. We start with man and man made things. We never get away from men and never rise any higher than men can go.