So there was a time when a Hindoo could have made the same argument. Certainly this argument could have been made by a Greek. It could have been repeated by a Roman. And yet Mr. Peters will not admit that the religion of Egypt was divine, or that the mythology of Greece was true, or that Jupiter was in fact a god. Is it not evident to all that if the churches in Europe had been institutions of learning; if the domes of cathedrals had been observatories; if priests had been teachers of the facts in nature, the world would have been far in advance of what it is to-day? Countries depend on something besides their religion for progress. Nations with a good soil can get along quite well with an exceedingly poor religion; and no religion yet has been good enough to give wealth or happiness to human beings where the climate and soil were bad and barren. Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labor of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver. Mr. Peters makes this exceedingly strange statement: "Every discovery in science, invention and art has been the work of Christian men. Infidels have contributed their share, but never one of them has reached the grandeur of originality." This, I think, so far as invention is concerned, can be answered with one name--John Ericsson, one of the profoundest agnostics I ever met. I am almost certain that Humboldt and Goethe were original. Darwin was certainly regarded as such. I do not wish to differ unnecessarily with Mr. Peters, but I have some doubts about Morse having been the inventor of the telegraph. Neither can I admit that Christianity abolished slavery. Many of the abolitionists in this country were infidels; many of them were Christians. But the church itself did not stand for liberty. The Quakers, I admit, were, as a rule, on the side of freedom. But the Christians of New England persecuted these Quakers, whipped them from town to town, lacerated their naked backs, and maimed their bodied, not only, but took their lives. Mr. Peters asks: "What name is there among the world's emancipators after which you cannot write the name 'Christian?'" Well, let me give him a few--Voltaire, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, Lincoln, Darwin. Mr. Peters asks: "Why is it that in Christian countries you find the greatest amount of physical and intellectual liberty, the greatest freedom of thought, speech, and action?" Is this true of all? How about Spain and Portugal? There is more infidelity in France than in Spain, and there is far more liberty in France than in Spain.