These dear ministers, when they have poor congregations, thunder against trusts, syndicates, and corporations--against wealth, fashion and luxury. They tell about Dives and Lazarus, paint rich men in hell and beggars in heaven. If their congregations are rich they turn their guns in the other direction. They have no confidence in education--in the development of the brain. They appeal to hopes and fears. They ask no one to think--to investigate. They insist that all shall believe. Credulity is the greatest of virtues, and doubt the deadliest of sins. These men are the enemies of science--of intellectual progress. They ridicule and calumniate the great thinkers. They deny everything that conflicts with the "sacred Scriptures." They still believe in the astronomy of Joshua and the geology of Moses. They believe in the miracles of the past, and deny the demonstrations of the present. They are the foes of facts--the enemies of knowledge. A desire to be happy here, they regard as wicked and worldly--but a desire to be happy in another world, as virtuous and spiritual. Every orthodox church is founded on mistake and falsehood. Every good orthodox minister asserts what he does not know, and denies what he does know. What are the Orthodox Clergy Doing for the Good of Mankind? Absolutely nothing. What harm are they doing? On every hand they sow the seeds of superstition. They paralyze the minds, and pollute the imaginations of children. They fill their hearts with fear. By their teachings, thousands become insane. With them, hypocrisy is respectable and candor infamous. They enslave the minds of men. Under their teachings men waste and misdirect their energies, abandon the ends that can be accomplished, dedicate their lives to the impossible, worship the unknown, pray to the inconceivable, and become the trembling slaves of a monstrous myth born of ignorance and fashioned by the trembling hands of fear. Superstition is the serpent that crawls and hisses in every Eden and fastens its poisonous fangs in the hearts of men. It is the deadliest foe of the human race. Superstition is a beggar--a robber, a tyrant. Science is a benefactor. Superstition sheds blood. Science sheds light.