But to regard these teachers as men, only, is to divest them also of all the magical powers which a fond credulity has ascribed to them. A teacher who seeks converts to his religion by curing a horse, as Zoroaster is supposed to have done, or by changing a stick into a serpent, as Moses claims he did, or water into wine, as Jesus is believed to have done, instead of saving the world, degrades it. We insult our teachers when we ascribe to them miraculous powers such as walking on the water, multiplying, loaves and raising the dead. All the wonders of the world cannot make what is bad, good, or what is false, true. A teacher who has a falsehood which he wishes to pass for the truth may resort to a miracle; but why should an honest soul undertake to win converts by unintelligible performances? If physical and mathematical truth can, unaided, command universal assent, why should there be "signs and wonders" to maintain moral or intellectual truths? Moreover, if a teacher has power to stop the sun, has he not the power to make people see the truth without a miracle? If he can raise the dead, can he not lift the human mind out of error without the aid of extraordinary phenomena? Resorting to miracles to convert people, proves, not the power, but the despair of the teacher. He who can command followers relying solely upon the truth of his teaching is, and remains forever, a greater moral and intellectual force than he who is driven to surprise and bewilder his hearers before he can convert them. * * To aim to convert a man by miracle is a profanation. --Emerson And now before we can make an estimate of the world's leading religions, we must try to arrive at some sort of an agreement as to what we would consider the greatest virtue, and what the greatest vice in religion. There will be no objection, on the part of my readers, to the statement that the most heinous of all vices in any religion is _cruelty_. There is not a crime or an error which is not made worse by cruelty--or softened by the absence of it. Cruelty is the most inexcusable, the most inhuman, the most unreasonable, the most degrading, and the most deadly of the vices that human nature is heir to. Cruelty is consummate wickedness. It is the passion of the bad because it is bad. It is doing evil from pleasure, Think, then, what a serious thing it is for a religion purporting to be "divine" to recommend the halter, the fire-brand and the sword, for instance, against all who do not subscribe to its dogmas. With such a religion in force, it will not be necessary to invent a devil, for man, himself, under its influence, must develop into a fiend of hate and cruelty, withering all he comes in contact with, as the frost blackens all it bites.