The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men. They forged no chains, built no dungeons, erected no scaffolds--tore no flesh with red hot pincers--dislocated no joints on racks--crushed no bones in iron boots--extinguished no eyes--tore out no tongues and lighted no fagots. They did not pretend to be inspired--did not claim to be prophets or saints or to have been born again. They were only intelligent and honest men. They did not appeal to force or fear. They did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain, nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies. They did not wound--they healed. They did not kill--they lengthened life. They did not enslave--they broke the chains and made men free. They sowed the seeds of knowledge, and many millions have reaped, are reaping, and will reap the harvest of joy. I thank Humboldt and Helmholtz and Haeckel and Büchner. I thank Lamarck and Darwin--Darwin who revolutionized the thought of the intellectual world. I thank Huxley and Spencer. I thank the scientists one and all. I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear--the dethroners of savage gods--the extinguishers of hate's eternal fire--the heroes, the breakers of chains--the founders of free states--the makers of just laws--the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields--the heroes whose dungeons became shrines--the heroes whose blood made scaffolds sacred--the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the soldiers of freedom--the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled the world with light. With all my heart I thank them all. A LAY SERMON. * Delivered before the Congress of the American Secular Union, at Chickering Hall, New York, Nov. 14, 1885. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In the greatest tragedy that has ever been written by man--in the fourth scene of the third act--is the best prayer that I have ever read; and when I say "the greatest tragedy," everybody familiar with Shakespeare will know that I refer to "King Lear." After he has been on the heath, touched with insanity, coming suddenly to the place of shelter, he says: "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep." And this prayer is my text: "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your unhoused heads, your unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? Oh, I have ta'en Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just." That is one of the noblest prayers that ever fell from human lips. If nobody has too much, everybody will have enough!