Religion has filled Great Britain with war. The history of the Catholics, of the Episcopalians, of Cromwell--all the burnings, the maimings, the brand- ings, the imprisonments, the confiscations, the civil wars, the bigotry, the crime--show conclusively that Great Britain has enjoyed to the full the blessings of "our most holy religion." Of course, Mr. Talmage claims the United States as a Christian country. The truth is, our country is not as Christian as it once was. When heretics were hanged in New England, when the laws of Virginia and Maryland provided that the tongue of any man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity should be bored with hot iron,, and that for the second offence he should suffer death, I admit that this country was 333 Christian. When we engaged in the slave trade, when our flag protected piracy and murder in every sea, there is not the slightest doubt that the United States was a Christian country. When we believed in slavery, and when we deliberately stole the labor of four millions of people; when we sold women and babes, and when the people of the North enacted a law by virtue of which every Northern man was bound to turn hound and pursue a human being who was endeavoring to regain his liberty, I admit that the United States was a Christian nation. I admit that all these things were upheld by the Bible --that the slave trader was justified by the Old Testa- ment, that the bloodhound was a kind of missionary in disguise, that the auction block was an altar, the slave pen a kind of church, and that the whipping- post was considered almost as sacred as the cross. At that time, our country was a Christian nation. I heard Frederick Douglass say that he lectured against slavery for twenty years before the doors of a single church were opened to him. In New England, hundreds of ministers were driven from their pulpits because they preached against the crime of human slavery. At that time, this country was a Christian nation. 334 Only a few years ago, any man speaking in favor of the rights of man, endeavoring to break a chain from a human limb, was in danger of being mobbed by the Christians of this country. I admit that Dela- ware is still a Christian State. I heard a story about that State the other day. About fifty years ago, an old Revolutionary soldier applied for a pension. He was asked his age, and he replied that he was fifty years old. He was told that if that was his age, he could not have been in the Revolutionary War, and consequently was not en- titled to any pension. He insisted, however, that he was only fifty years old. Again they told him that there must be some mistake. He was so wrinkled, so bowed, had so many marks of age, that he must certainly be more than fifty years old. "Well," said the old man, "if I must explain, I will: I lived forty "years in Delaware; but I never counted that time, "and I hope God won't."