"In 1778 he wrote his sublime sentence about the 'Religion of Humanity.'"--_Dr. Conway_. "I have discovered that Paine not only wrote those words, 'the Religion of Humanity,'... but he was the real author by this discovery of all laws of social science which is called sociology, now the queen of the sciences.... If Paine was the real leader in that discovery he stands by the side of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Comte, Spencer and Ward, and the beneficent results and glory of this discovery, and its discoverer, are beyond the words of any mind at present to describe."--_Prof. T. B. Wakeman_. "That his Religion of Humanity took the deistical form was an evolutionary necessity."--_Dr. Conway_. "The prophet of the Religion of Humanity and the precursor of our modern Monism."--_Prof. Ernst Haeckel_. "How few there are who realize that Thomas Paine anticipated Spencer's thought [equal liberty] by many decades, that, more briefly and graphically, he formulated the only principle that can weave enduring order and peace into the fabric of society."--_Edwin C. Walker_. Leonard Abbott: "Paine's mind was germinal: in it were the seeds of all modern religious, economical, and political movements." William H. Maple: "The light of truth fell in such grand refulgence upon this man as to enable him to utter truisms enough to furnish texts for reformers for a thousand years to come." "The moral originality and courage of his teaching in every direction is astonishing."--_John M. Robertson_. Stephen Pearl Andrews: "The true chief-priest of humanity is the man who solves the greatest obstacles in the progress of mankind; and you must not be surprised if I rank Thomas Paine not only as a priest, but as perhaps the real chief-priest, or pontifex-maximus of his age." Joel Barlow: "The biographer of Thomas Paine should not forget his mathematical acquirements and his mechanical genius. His invention of the iron bridge, which led him to Europe in 1787, has procured him a great reputation in that branch of science in France and England." M. Chaptal: "They [plans for iron bridge over Seine] will be of the greatest utility to us when the new kind of construction goes to be executed for the first time.... You have rights of more than one kind to the gratitude of nations." International Encyclopedia: "In 1787 Paine went to France, where he exhibited his bridge to the Academy of Science in Paris. He also visited England, and was lionized in London by the party of Burke and Fox. He set up the model of his bridge in Addington Green, and huge crowds went to see it." "This [model of iron bridge] was publicly exhibited in Paris and London and attracted great crowds."--_Encyclopedia Britannica_.