You have been told by the clergy that his writings are immoral. I defy those who make this charge to point to one immoral sentence in all that he has written. They cannot; and I further affirm that they dare not permit you to examine his writings and ascertain for yourselves the truth or falsity of this assertion. You who have never read his works may believe that they contain much that is bad. You may imagine that a deadly serpent lurks within them. Let me assure you that there is nothing in them that can harm you. The highest moral tone pervades their pages. They are full of charity, they glow with patriotism, they are warm with love. Even yet, within their lids methinks I feel the beating of the generous heart of him who penned them, every throb marking an aspiration for the welfare of his fellow-men. But admitting, for the sake of argument, that his writings are immoral. Does not the world teem with immoral literature? Are there not hundreds of immoral writers even among the living? If so, why has all this wrath been concentrated upon Paine to the almost total exclusion of the rest? You have been told that he was an Infidel. Infidel to what? In the Christian sense of this term he was. But what peculiar significance do your informants attach to this fact? Are not three fourths of the world's inhabitants Infidels? Do not the greatest scholars of the age go far beyond him in Infidelity? Earth's wisest sons--those who have contributed most to the wealth of science, and literature, and statesmanship, have been these so-called Infidels. Yet Paine has been denounced as if he were the only Infidel that ever lived.