And what man who really thinks can help repeating the words of Ennius: "If there are gods they certainly pay no attention to the affairs of man."
Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander.
In spite of Church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart.
I was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only justice to say, that in all essential particulars it is precisely the same as every other religion.
Wherever brave blood has been shed, the sword of the Church has been wet. On every chain has been the sign of the cross. The altar and throne have leaned against and supported each other.
We have all been taught by the Church that nothing is so well calculated to excite the ire of the Deity as to express a doubt as to his existence, and that to deny it is an unpardonable sin.
Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what would have been the effect of implicit obedience.
We have no national religion, and no national God; but every citizen is allowed to have a religion and a God of his own, or to reject all religions and deny the existence of all gods.
Whatever may be the truth upon any subject has nothing to do with our right to investigate that subject, and express any opinion we may form. All that I ask, is the same right I freely accord to all others.
Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. In this sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph.
Think of reading the 109th Psalm to a heathen who has a Bible of his own in which is found this passage: "Blessed is the man and beloved of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid."
The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time.