Is religion such a sham that it can best be subserved by falsehood and imposture? We think not. And if we should adopt the Jesuistic maxims, that “the end justifies the means” and that “pious intent hallows deceit,” it is simply impossible in this inquisitive scientific age to keep up a deception, however venerable for age and sacred from association. Knowledge is on the increase, and the people will not for ever wear bandages over their eyes, and, thus hoodwinked, swallow without question whatever is put into their mouths by the dispensers of theologic twaddle and priestly pap. Regarding Christianity as a special divine revelation recently made, it will not stand scientific and historic examination; but regarding it as of human origin, an evolution, a product of that age of pessimism which resulted from the disappointment of the Jews as to their national Messiah, and the disintegration and coming decadence and downfall of the Roman empire, coupled with the proclamation of the speedy destruction of the world itself, it is just what might have been expected—a religion of pessimism, of sorrow, of unworldliness, of evil forebodings. “When the devil got sick, the devil a monk would be.” When Charles IV. of Spain was discomfited by the misfortunes of war, he sought solace in embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary. Rancé had a domestic tragedy, and he founded the order of Trappist monks. Loyola would never have founded Jesuitism if he had not first been disfigured and crippled in a military siege. Dante was an exile when he wrote his _Inferno_, and John Calvin was a dyspeptic and suffered from rheumatism, gout, and stone when he wrote his _Institutes_. The most distinguished devotees to the religion of self-reproach have always been sufferers from headache and neuralgia, as “crippled foxes decry the vintage,” and grapes are always sour that are beyond reach. The germs of Christianity grew out of the decaying carcasses of the Jewish commonwealth and the Roman empire, and as the worship of sorrow and unnaturalness it is not promotive of the highest virtue and the best interests of human society. It is only when the distinctive asceticism is eliminated and its extreme pessimism is destroyed by a rational optimism that it becomes a real blessing to humanity. Every religion reflects the characteristics of the place and time of its birth, and the gloomy and melancholic temperaments of the dwellers by the Jordan, the Nile, and the Euphrates thoroughly permeated and impregnated the sects of those countries. Regarding Christianity as of human origin, we are at liberty to cast aside its lugubrious spirit, its impracticable unworldliness and unnaturalness, and with higher esteem, and a more genuine heartfelt appreciation, and a sincere acceptance and approval we are free to adopt and glorify its general humane spirit under the divine impulse of the universal Fatherhood of God.