You see this word "Science" means something that somebody knows; not something that somebody guesses, or wishes, or hopes, or believes, but something that somebody knows.

Of course there cannot be any scientific argument proving the existence of the devil. At the same time I admit, as the Rev. Mr. Kraeling says, and I thank him for his candor, that the Bible does prove the existence of the devil from Genesis to the. Apocalypse, and I do agree with him that the "revealed word" teaches the existence of a personal devil, and that all truly orthodox Christians believe that there is a personal devil, and the Rev. Mr. Kraeling proves this by the fall of man, and he proves that without this devil there could be no redemption for the evil spirits; so he brings forward the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. At the same time that Mr. Kraeling agrees with me as to what the Bible says, he insists that I bring no arguments, that I blaspheme, and then he drops into humor and says that if any further arguments are needed to prove the existence of the devil, that I furnish them.

How a man believing the creed of the orthodox Mr. Kraeling can have anything like a sense of humor is beyond even my imagination.

Now, I want to ask Mr. Kraeling a few questions, and I will ask him the same questions that I ask all orthodox people in my lecture on "Superstition."

Now, Mr. Kraeling believes that this world was created by a being of infinite wisdom, power and goodness, and that the world he created has been governed by him.

Now, let me ask the reverend gentleman a few plain questions, with the request that he answer them without mist or mystery. If you, Mr. Kraeling, had the power to make a world, would you make an exact copy of this? Would you make a man and woman, put them in a garden, knowing that they would be deceived, knowing that they would fall? Knowing that all the consequences believed in by orthodox Christians would follow from that fall? Would you do it? And would you make your world so as to provide for earthquakes and cyclones? Would you create the seeds of disease and scatter them in the air and water? Would you so arrange matters as to produce cancers? Would you provide for plague and pestilence? Would you so make your world that life should feed on life, that the quivering flesh should be torn by tooth and beak and claw? Would you?

Now, answer fairly. Do not quote Scripture; just answer, and be honest.

Would you make different races of men? Would you make them of different colors, and would you so make them that they would persecute and enslave each other? Would you so arrange matters that millions and millions should toil through many generations, paid only by the lash on the back? Would you have it so that millions and millions of babes would be sold from the breasts of mothers? Be honest, would you provide for religious persecution? For the invention and use of instruments of torture? Would you see to it that the rack was not forgotten, and that the fagot was not overlooked or unlighted? Would you make a world in which the wrong would triumph? Would you make a world in which innocence would not be a shield? Would you make a world where the best would be loaded with chains? Where the best would die in the darkness of dungeons? Where the best would make scaffolds sacred with their blood?

Would you make a world where hypocrisy and cunning and fraud should represent God, and where meanness would suck the blood of honest credulity?

Would you provide for the settlement of all difficulties by war? Would you so make your world that the weak would bear the burdens, so that woman would be a slave, so that children would be trampled upon as though they were poisonous reptiles? Would you fill the woods with wild beasts? Would you make a few volcanoes to overwhelm your children? Would you provide for earthquakes that would swallow them? Would you make them ignorant, savage, and fill their minds with all the phantoms of horror? Would you?