And then I read Shakespeare, the plays, the sonnets, the poems--read all. I beheld a new heaven and a new earth; Shakespeare, who knew the brain and heart of man--the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the vices and the virtues of the human race; whose imagination read the tear-blurred records, the blood-stained pages of all the past, and saw falling athwart the outspread scroll the light of hope and love; Shakespeare, who sounded every depth--while on the loftiest peak there fell the shadow of his wings. I compared the Plays with the "inspired" books--Romeo and Juliet with the Song of Solomon, Lear with Job, and the Sonnets with the Psalms, and I found that Jehovah did not understand the art of speech. I compared Shakespeare's women--his perfect women--with the women of the Bible. I found that Jehovah was not a sculptor, not a painter--not an artist--that he lacked the power that changes clay to flesh--the art, the plastic touch, that moulds the perfect form--the breath that gives it free and joyous life--the genius that creates the faultless. The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems. VI. UP to this time I had read nothing against our blessed religion except what I had found in Burns, Byron and Shelley. By some accident I read Volney, who shows that all religions are, and have been, established in the same way--that all had their Christs, their apostles, miracles and sacred books, and then asked how it is possible to decide which is the true one. A question that is still waiting for an answer. I read Gibbon, the greatest of historians, who marshaled his facts as skillfully as Cæsar did his legions, and I learned that Christianity is only a name for Paganism--for the old religion, shorn of its beauty--that some absurdities had been exchanged for others--that some gods had been killed--a vast multitude of devils created, and that hell had been enlarged. And then I read the Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Let me tell you something about this sublime and slandered man. He came to this country just before the Revolution. He brought a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, at that time the greatest American. In Philadelphia, Paine was employed to write for the _Pennsylvania Magazine_. We know that he wrote at least five articles. The first was against slavery, the second against duelling, the third on the treatment of prisoners--showing that the object should be to reform, not to punish and degrade--the fourth on the rights of woman, and the fifth in favor of forming societies for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. From this you see that he suggested the great reforms of our century. The truth is that he labored all his life for the good of his fellow-men, and did as much to found the Great Republic as any man who ever stood beneath our flag.