Nothing. Whole races were enslaved, and the cruel lash was put upon the naked back of toil. What did God do? Nothing. Children were sold from the arms of mothers. All the sweet humanities of life were trodden beneath the brutal foot of creed; and what did God do? Nothing. Human beings, his children, were tracked through swamps by bloodhounds; and what did God do? Nothing. Wild storms sweep over the earth and the shipwrecked go down in the billows; and what does God do? Nothing. There come plague and pestilence and famine. What does God do? Thousands and thousands perish. Little children die upon the withered breasts of mothers; and what does God do? Nothing.
What evidence has Dr. Thomas that the cries and tears of man have ever touched the heart of God? Let us be honest. I appeal to the history of the world; I appeal to the tears, and blood, and agony, and imprisonment, and death of hundreds and millions of the bravest and best. Have they ever touched the heart of the Infinite? Has the hand of help ever been reached from heaven? I do not know; but I do not believe it.
Dr. Thomas tells me that is orthodox Christianity. What right has he to tell what is orthodox Christianity? He is a heretic. He had too much brain to remain in the Methodist pulpit. He had a doubt—and a doubt is born of an idea. And his doctrine has been declared by his own church to be unorthodox. They have passed on his case and they have found him unconstitutional. What right has he to state what is orthodox? And here is what he says: "Christianity"—orthodox Christianity I suppose he means—"teaches, concerning the future world, that rewards and punishments are carried over from time to eternity; that the principles of the government of God are the same there as here; that character, and not profession determines destiny; and that Humboldt, and Dickens, and all others who have gone and shall go to that world shall receive their just rewards; that souls will always be in the place in which for the time, be it now or a million years hence, they are fitted. That is what Christianity teaches."
If it does, never will I have another word to say against Christianity. It never has taught it. Christianity—orthodox Christianity—teaches that when you draw your last breath you have lost the last opportunity for reformation. Christianity teaches that this little world is the eternal line between time and eternity, and if you do not get religion in this life, you will be eternally damned in the next. That is Christianity. They say: "Now is the accepted time." If you put it off until you die, that is too late; and the doctrine of the Christian world is that there is no opportunity for reformation in another world. The doctrine of orthodox Christianity is that you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ here in this life, and it will not do to believe on him in the next world. You must believe on him here and that if you fail here, God in his infinite wisdom will never give you another chance. That is orthodox Christianity; and according to orthodox Christianity, the greatest, the best and the sublimest of the world are now in hell. And why is it that they say it is not orthodox Christianity? I have made them ashamed of their doctrine. When I called to their attention the fact that such men as Darwin, such men as Emerson, Dickens, Longfellow, Laplace, Shakespeare, and Humboldt, were in hell, it struck them all at once that the company in heaven would not be very interesting with such men left out.
And now they begin to say: "We think the Lord will give those men another chance." I have succeeded in my mission beyond my most sanguine expectations. I have made orthodox ministers deny their creeds; I have made them ashamed of their doctrine—and that is glory enough. They will let me in, a few years after I am dead. I admit that the doctrine that God will treat us as we treat others—I admit that is taught by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; but it is not taught by the Orthodox church. I want that understood. I admit also that Dr. Thomas is not orthodox, and that he was driven out of the church because he thought God too good to damn men forever without giving them the slightest chance. Why, the Catholic Church is a thousand times better than your Protestant Church upon that question. The Catholic Church believes in purgatory—that is, a place where a fellow can get a chance to make a motion for a new trial.
Dr. Thomas, all I ask of you is to tell all that you think. Tell your congregation whether you believe the Bible was written by divine inspiration. Have the courage and the grandeur to tell your people whether, in your judgment, God ever upheld slavery.
Do not shrink. Do not shirk. Tell your people whether God ever upheld polygamy. Do not shrink. Tell them whether God was ever in favor of religious persecution. Stand right to it. Then tell your people whether you honestly believe that a good man can suffer for a bad one and the bad one get the credit. Be honor bright. Tell what you really think and there will not be as much difference between you and myself as you imagine.
The next gentleman, I believe, is the Rev. Dr. Lorimer. He comes to the rescue, and I have an idea of his mental capacity from the fact that he is a Baptist. He believes that the infinite God has a choice as to the manner in which a man or babe shall be dampened. This gentleman regards modern infidelity as "pitifully shallow" as to its intellectual conceptions and as to its philosophical views of the universe and of the problems regarding man's place in it and of his destiny. "Pitifully shallow!"
What is the modern conception of the universe? The modern conception is that the universe always has been and forever will be. The modern conception of the universe is that it embraces within its infinite arms all matter, all spirit, all forms of force, all that is, all that has been, all that can be. That is the modern conception of this universe. And this is called "pitiful."
What is the Christian conception? It is that all the matter in the universe is dead, inert, and that back of it is a Jewish Jehovah who made it, and who is now engaged in managing the affairs of this world. And they even go so far as to say that that Being made experiments in which he signally failed. That Being made man and woman and put them in a garden and allowed them to become totally depraved. That Being of infinite wisdom made hundreds and millions of people when he knew he would have to drown them. That Being peopled a planet like this with men, women and children, knowing that he would have to consign most of them to eternal fire. That is a pitiful conception of the universe. That is an infamous conception of the universe. Give me rather the conception of Spinoza, the conception of Humboldt, of Darwin, of Huxley, of Tyndall and of every other man who has thought. I love to think of the whole universe together as one eternal fact. I love to think that everything is alive; that crystallization is itself a step toward joy. I love to think that when a bud bursts into blossom it feels a thrill. I love to have the universe full of feeling and full of joy, and not full of simple dead, inert matter, managed by an old bachelor for all eternity.