[The three above-named persons had made each other's acquaintance, and had engaged in discussions with each other on several occasions. They now seat themselves in a group on deck and enter upon the following discussion.] _Mr. Liberal_--The great objection to your religion, Mr. Orthodox, is that it violates reason and conscience. To be more specific, let us consider a few instances. There is your doctrine of eternal punishment, in which you ascribe fiendish qualities to our dear heavenly Father such as the most savage human being could not be capable of. Then, take your doctrine of the Trinity, around which most of your dogmas cluster, and we see at once that it violates the simplest postulates of reason. I know that you will answer that these are all mysteries which are to be accepted on faith. But it is perfectly clear that there is no mystery about it. It is as clear as daylight that three cannot be one. You talk about mysteries which we must accept by faith, but all such talk is nonsense and ignores our sacred reason. The idea of getting over all difficulties by declaring them mysteries, and exhorting your opponents to leap over them by the exercise of faith, is truly, as some one has said, "a touchstone for whole classes of explanations based on no evidence." You orthodox people are the cause of all the infidelity that is afloat in the land. People come in contact with your irrational and ridiculous claims, and, taking them as religion itself, they throw overboard the whole business, the good with the bad. What we need is a pure and simple religion that will satisfy man's reason and conscience as well as his heart. And we do not have to go far for such a religion, for we find it in the liberal faith which it is my privilege to represent. Let us compare our grand, simple and rational beliefs with your irrational, absurd and mysterious products of the Dark Ages, and see what a contrast there is between them. Instead of your "Son is God, Father is God, Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods, but only one," we have the simple faith in one heavenly Father--all-powerful, all-wise and all-good. No mystery about it. It would be absurd to suppose that such a God could punish his children to eternity, or that He would require the suffering of the innocent to enable him to forgive the guilty. Then, of course, we reject all the absurd dogmas clustering around your conception of the Trinity. The simple belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is enough for us. Instead of your endless punishment, we have the reasonable belief that the Father punishes simply to bring us good, so that our joy may be greater. This is all perfectly simple, and can be understood by the uneducated man as well as by the philosopher.