from doing wrong by the fear of a distant hell, and others are provoked to good works by the hope of a heavenly crown. But the mistake of the theologian consists in thinking that anybody actuated by such motives can be moral. A vicious dog is not made gentle by chaining him—he is only prevented from doing harm. It is true that to prevent a savage beast from hurting people is a service to humanity. It is also true that if by preaching the fear of hell the churches succeed in preventing vicious men from doing harm, they are benefactors. Fear, while not the highest motive, is nevertheless quite effective with some people. Of course, as far as my own preference goes, I would not preach the doctrine of everlasting hell even if I could be assured it was the only thing that could save mankind. I would not care to save mankind under those conditions.

There is nothing more immoral than the idea of unending torture. The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology. I can not think of a greater insult to the human conscience than to say that this fearful establishment with its everlasting stench in our nostrils is the parent of all virtue, and that if its fires were to be extinguished there would be an end to human morality.

"It is quite easy," I imagine the preacher saying, "to talk in this strain now, but wait until you are on your death-bed." But the frightful death-bed scenes we read of in religious literature are generally fictitious. When they are not impostures, a careful investigation will show that they are the effect of pulpit sensationalism. The dying thoughts of a sane and brave man or woman are as free from torture as the sleep which closes the tired eye-lids. What does a mother think of in her last moments? She thinks of her dear ones—her chil dren! whom she has to leave motherless in the world. How noble is human nature! And it is this nobility which makes theology jealous. The dying mother should be thinking of her God,—her soul, her creed—she should be trembling with fear, and be filled with consternation, instead of thinking lovingly and tearfully of her little ones! And when theology can not get horrible death bed scenes, she invents them. In Theron Ware, the deacons of the Methodist church say to their minister, "Give us more of the death-bed scenes of Voltaire and Thomas Paine." For a long time it was a part of the vocation of the theologians to postpone the attack upon an intellectual giant until he was dead or dying.

It is not true that when people come to die they confess that the preacher's hell and his heaven are real after all. The other day a negro shot his wife and babe fatally and ran away. When the neighbors arrived upon the scene of the tragedy, they found the dying mother with her arms around her infant trying to soothe its pains. She had torn a fragment of her bodice to stop with it the bleeding wound in the child's arm. Motherhood! Was she worrying about her own soul, about eternity, about God, about the devil, about heaven, about hell! Oh, no! She had one thought which puts all preaching to shame—to ease the pain of her dying child. She forgot she was dying herself. She forgot all about her future reward—but she did not forget her child. That is the way mothers die. No Christian can die a better death.

When preachers can speak to us of a God who can love like this negro mother,—or who in the words of the English poet, Wordsworth, will

"Never blend his pleasure or his pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"

then, we shall worship him,—not for his heaven, nor from fear of his hell, but for his own blessed self.

Others may be able to tell whether or not there is another life. I can not. But whether or not there is a life beyond the grave, I know that spring will come every year, that the gentle rains will fall, the sunlight will woo and kiss all it meets, the harvests will wave, and the world will sleep and wake each day. In the same way I know that whatever the preachers may say about a godless morality, the charities, the devotions, the humanities, the friendships, and the loves, will spring up eternal in our daily lives, and beauty and glory shall never perish from human nature.

"Conscience is born of love," wrote Shakespeare. In the alembic of this glorious truth all the terrors of the Jewish-Christian religion dissolve into nothingness. A word from Shakespeare, and the nightmares of the past are no more. Love!—attachment, devotion, friendship, behold the cradle in which conscience was born! Fear is a tomb—it lives upon hell. Love is a cradle, nursing into being and maturity all that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful. Says Tennyson:

"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds."

This is music, and it descends over the babel of wrangling creeds, as the sunlight, after a long storm, over the spent and weary waves.

THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY

Believes

That the greatest good in life is Truth.

Without Truth—love, hope, charity

and all other human virtues dark

en. Truth is to life what the sun

is to the world. We believe that

the only Truth which can be trusted

is that which can be tested.