promulgated.

Modern emancipated medicine has reduced the infant death rate by more than 50 per cent, and has been responsible for more than doubling the life span of man within the past century.

Just think of it! All of this within our own lifetime!

All of this and more since the day of American independence!

And listen to these words of Dr. Paul D. White, founder of the American Heart Association. He said:

"Those of us doctors who graduated from medical school thirty to forty years ago, look back now at the almost unbelievable ignorance about heart disease that then existed. More knowledge has come since then than had been acquired in all the centuries before." (Italics mine).

Man was taught in the past that the heart, like the voice, was the "gift of God," and it was too sacred for man to probe into its workings. What were the results? Millions died who could have been saved; millions lived as horrible cripples who could have lived a normal life if man in the past, had had the courage, that he has today, to seek relief from the terrors of disease.

Such is the amazing progress that has been made when man relies upon his own efforts to solve his problems, whether they concern his health, or his social or political affairs.

It was only within the past forty years that Dr. James B. Herrick properly diagnosed the cause of coronary thrombosis from which followed the amazing progress that has since been attained in combating this greatest of killers.

I, for one, wish to place upon the brow of Dr. Herrick my laurel leaf of thanks for his great accomplishment in medicine.

What wonders have been accomplished since the invention of the steam engine, the automobile, radio, television, electronic devises, and the thousand and one other discoveries and inventions too numerous to mention.

The educational benefit of the motion picture will far outstrip its entertainment value, and its use in nearly every department of learning makes it one of man's most valuable inventions.

Think of Benjamin Franklin's discovery of the relationship of electricity and lightning and the condemnation heaped upon him for his defiance of "The Prince of the Power of the Air."

And of the Wright brothers, and the dire penalty they were to suffer for "flying into the face of God."

Lightning, once feared as the wrathful manifestation of an angry God, was reproduced in the laboratory by that electrical wizard and atheist, Charles P. Steinmetz.

The telephone, wireless telegraphy, the steam engine, refrigeration, the washing and sewing machines, the mechanical weaving of cloth, and the myriad uses of electric and atomic power will make man the master of his destiny once he frees himself from the myth of a tyrant God.

Ingersoll best expressed man's inventions and their uses when he said that, "Science took the thunderbolt from the gods, and in the electric spark, freedom, with thought, with intelligence and with love, sweeps under all the waves of the sea; science, free thought, took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created the giant that turns, with tireless arms, the countless wheels of toil."

Deprive man of the use of his discoveries and inventions of the past century and he will think he has been returned to barbarism.

Look what Thomas A. Edison's invention of the electric light did for man—it lengthened his life, it gave more hours to the day, and increased his comforts beyond anything previously known or imagined, and added immeasurably to his joy of living.

Even Joshua's fictitious performance of stopping the sun and the moon fades into nothingness when compared with this sublime achievement.

Nor must we forget Edison's invention for reproducing the human voice—and please grant me a moment's indulgence to say that I had the great honor to know Thomas A. Edison, and Edison honored me by calling me his friend.

If printing has been hailed as one of the world's great inventions, what must we say of the phonograph? While printing preserves man's thoughts on paper, the phonograph preserves not only his thoughts but also his voice!

The song of the skylark is no longer "wasted upon the desert air."

Thomas A. Edison—the greatest of human benefactors—wrested from nature her most guarded secret—the mystery of the human voice.

He disproved, as it was once believed, that the human voice, like the heart, was the "gift of God." He demonstrated that the human voice was merely the natural mechanism of sound produced by air of the lungs passing over the "cords" of the throat and larynx in the same manner as are sounds produced by the strings of a musical instrument.

As a result of Edison's invention, man himself has already produced artificially every manifestation of the human voice!

If the voice was part of "God's plan," how do we account for its absence in the giraffe? This animal has no larynx and therefore no vocal cords, and as a consequence it cannot talk or make sounds with its throat!

The giraffe is proof of the lack of design in nature and the blindness of the forces of evolutionary life.

To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian and a veritable encyclopedia to record them.

And yet, there are still many diseases that plague man of which he has no knowledge. They eat and ravage his mind and body with excruciating pain and torture, and he is utterly helpless against them. He not only does not know their origin, but has not the slightest inkling of their nature or how to fortify himself against their attacks. He must sit, like a condemned criminal, in agonizing torture, waiting for blessed death.

If man, and the other forms of life upon this earth, are a mere by-product of an "over-all plan" of a "supreme intelligence," then I denounce such a scheme as tyrannical and barbaric.

Why should we be made to suffer such excruciating pains and penalties of life to satisfy that from which we derive no benefit, and where death negates all of our efforts; and which makes the purpose of life, our hopes and desires, our ambitions and aspirations, a cruel mockery?

O prayer, thy name is failure!

O God, thou art a cruel myth!

You will not find a single mention of these great humanitarian achievements in the so-called "Book of Books"; not a single reference about the nature and cure of disease; not a word regarding those inventions that have so mercifully lifted the burden of toil from the backs of labor.

And there is good reason for it.

The Biblical writers not only had no knowledge of these things, but they had a perverted concept of life and the universe. Their concept was that man was a victim of blood pollution and his only salvation was by a blood atonement.

I remember once seeing a small pamphlet entitled, "What the Bible Teaches about Morality." On opening the little booklet, it was discovered to be nothing but blank pages! Another such pamphlet might very appropriately be published entitled, "What the Bible Reveals about Disease, Medicine and Health," and blank pages should be used for all the Bible contains about these vital subjects.

On the contrary, these benefits have been denounced by the believers in the Bible, and by the representatives of the