Most sects calling themselves Christian will at once reply that the happiness they promise is not of this world but of the next, and that he who looks for enjoyment here will forfeit it hereafter. Yet when the evidence for this daring statement is asked for, not an iota can be offered on which there is unanimous concurrence among the sects themselves. What they do offer, and what gives them their real control over men’s minds, may be summed up as follows: A belief in the Divine government of the world and the paternal care of God over each believer in Him; greater cheerfulness in the acceptance of the misfortunes of life as the wise and ultimately beneficent decisions of His will; an expectation of a life after death; the hope that sins will be forgiven; and the improvement in morals which follows these convictions. These are undoubtedly valuable aids to human happiness. The question is, what part of them belong to Religion and what to religions; in other words, will not the religious sentiment itself, freed from the shackles of dogmatic belief, yield to man all the happiness offered by sectarian doctrines, relieved of the misery to which they condemn him? When I think of the mental agony caused in millions of lives by the pictures of hell, of eternal damnation, of the last judgment, and of a cruel and merciless God, which most Christian teachers hold before their congregations, I long for the time predicted by that apostle of the new life, Giordano Bruno,――“When the gods shall lie in Orcus, and the dread of everlasting punishment shall vanish from the world.” Reason has no conflict with religion. Science is based on the assumption that the order of the Universe is one of intelligence, and of an intelligence identical with ours. All force is directed by reasoning energy, which means that it is purposive. Why seek further? Call it Energy or Force or God, the thought is the same. Whether that share which we possess in the energy of the All remains in personality after physical death, what dogma can prove? what science deny? Enough that in the beautiful words of the burial service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, we are justified in retaining “a reasonable and holy hope” that the victory of the grave is not eternal. Should it be so, what is the dread of it but a delusion of the imagination, which pictures non-existence as felt in non-existence?