“I put nothing in the place of Almighty God or between Him and myself. I defy the authority of any to impose upon me what they are not willing that I should impose upon them. Why should a man attempt to bind my conscience when he is not willing to allow me to bind his? I refuse to accept pope or priest as having any authority to direct me in religious matters. God is as near to me as to them. If they can get power from Him so can I. If they can presume to use upon me what they assume to have received, why can I not act in the same way toward them? The pope assumes to direct me; why not I in turn direct him? He has his authority, so he says, from heaven; so might I say of mine. What then is the difference? Only this. He is a big pope, inheriting his power by tradition; I am but a little pope, just starting. In himself he is no greater or better a man than I am. He has only power and wealth acquired by other men. A man, as Buddha, Jesus, Muhamed, starts alone as the founder of a new religion. The movement continues until the followers of each are numbered by millions. A priest commences a schismatic, and as the years pass on, one thing after another is assumed, culminating in papal infallibility, and the pope is considered as a god upon earth. “Religious tyranny is worse than political tyranny. In the one the highest aspirations of the soul are fettered and enslaved, while by the other the body only is in subjugation. “Charlemagne converted an ecclesiastical fiction into a political fact. The sword compelled the people to acknowledge the pope as the vicegerent of God. The popes were the confederates of cruelty and crime. There was not an enormity so great in the political world but would be consecrated by the popes and priests, if it was for their interest to do so. History tells what this church has done for its own aggrandizement. The Roman has been more bold and defiant, as it had the political power, but the other sects, each in its own way, has sought to dominate the opinions of mankind. “But enough of this. The time must come when the world will worship only one God and do away with the idolatry of the bible, of Jesus, of Mary, of the innumerable saints, the adulation of rites, rituals, ceremonies, and make righteousness and holiness consist in obeying the laws of God, as written in the hearts of men, and in maintaining clean, upright lives. “We need a natural, not an artificial religion, one in harmony with the nature of God, not something manufactured by councils or religious tinkerers. I am well aware that most if not all the people in the churches would deny my right to have any opinion at all on these subjects except what they hold. I have known Christian ministers shocked at the suggestion of a doubt about any of the tenets of their faith, and yet I have heard these same men, well versed in Hinduism, attack it with such virulence and ridicule that the very heathen in front of them begged them for shame to desist.