theology, and their usefulness almost destroyed. Just in proportion that they have gotten from ecclesiastical control, they have become a good. That college, to- day, which has the most religion has the least true learning; and that college which is the nearest free, does the most good. Colleges that pit Moses against modern geology, that undertake to overthrow the Copernican system by appealing to Joshua, have done, and are doing, very little good in this world. Suppose that in the first century Pagans had said to Christians: Where are your hospitals, where are your asylums, where are your works of charity, where are your colleges and universities? The Christians undoubtedly would have replied: We have not been in power. There are but few of us. We have been persecuted to that degree that it has been about as much as we could do to maintain ourselves. Reasonable Pagans would have regarded such an answer as perfectly satisfactory. Yet that question could have been asked of Christianity after it had held the reins of power for a thousand years, and Christians would have been compelled to say: We have no universities, we have no colleges, we have no real asylums. 174 The Christian now asks of the atheist: Where is your asylum, where is your hospital, where is your university? And the atheist answers: There have been but few atheists. The world is not yet suffi- ciently advanced to produce them. For hundreds and hundreds of years, the minds of men have been darkened by the superstitions of Christianity. Priests have thundered against human knowledge, have de- nounced human reason, and have done all within their power to prevent the real progress of mankind. You must also remember that Christianity has made more lunatics than it ever provided asylums for. Christianity has driven more men and women crazy than all other religions combined. Hundreds and thousands and millions have lost their reason in contemplating the monstrous falsehoods of Chris- tianity. Thousands of mothers, thinking of their sons in hell--thousands of fathers, believing their boys and girls in perdition, have lost their reason. So, let it be distinctly understood, that Christianity has made ten lunatics--twenty--one hundred-- where it has provided an asylum for one. Mr. Talmage also speaks of the hospitals. When we take into consideration the wars that have been waged on account of religion, the countless thou- 175 sands who have been maimed and wounded, through all the years, by wars produced by theology--then I say that Christianity has not built hospitals enough to take care of her own wounded--not enough to take care of one in a hundred. Where Christianity has bound up the wounds of one, it has pierced the bodies of a hundred others with sword and spear, with bayonet and ball. Where she has provided one bed in a hospital, she has laid away a hundred bodies in bloody graves.