The skeptic Holbach, and several of his philosophical friends, directed the keenest shafts of their logic against the doctrine of eternal punishment, and never wearied of repeating that the belief in a merciless God naturally tends to fill the world with merciless bigots. “How insignificant,” they argued, “the occasional sufferings of a transient life on earth must appear to the converts of John Calvin, who held that about nine-tenths of the human race are foredoomed to an eternity of nameless and hopeless tortures. How absurd they must deem the complaints of a life-weary wretch, who, ten to one, will soon look back to the comparative bliss of that life as to the happiness of a lost Eden.” The Universalists are fond of enlarging on the moral of that theme, yet from a wider point of view their objections might be extended to the entire doctrine of other-worldliness, since Holbach’s argument might find its exact analogue in the dogma of post mortem compensation. “His soul will be the gainer,” thought the Crusader who had demonstrated the dangers of unbelief by smashing a Moorish skull, “and if he should die his spirit will enter the gates of the New Jerusalem.” “Oh, the ingratitude,” actually said a priest of the Spanish-American land robbers, “the ingratitude of the wretches who grudge us the territories of their base earthly kingdoms and forget that our gospel offers them a passport to the glorious kingdom of heaven!” “The ingratitude!” repeats the modern pharisee, “the base ingratitude of those factory children who grudge me the privileges of my position, and clamor for an increase of wages to gratify their worldly desires. Consumption? Hunger? Frost? should not the rich promises of the gospel compensate such temporal inconveniences, and have I not founded a Sabbath-school to save them from the lusts of their unregenerate souls?” Only a few months ago a Chinese philosopher acquainted us with the verdict of his countrymen on the “gospel of love” that sends its missionaries on ships loaded with brandy and opium, and escorted by armadas for the demolition of seaports that might refuse to admit the cargo of spirituous and spiritual poisons. Secularism, the religion of Nature, should teach our brethren that their highest physical and their highest moral welfare can be only conjointly attained, and that cramping misery stunts the soul, as well as the body of its victim. It should preach the solidarity of human interests which prevents the oppressor from enjoying the fruits of his inhumanity, and makes the curses of his dependents, nay, even the mute misery of his starving cattle, react on the happiness of a cruel master. It should expose the business methods of the humanitarians who propose to silence the clamors of their famished brethren with consecrated wafers and drafts on the bank of the New Jerusalem.