There is a vast difference between the God of John Calvin and the God of Henry Ward Beecher, and a great difference between the God of Cardinal Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza and the God of Theodore Parker.
Question. Well, Colonel, is the world growing better or worse?
Answer. I think better in some respects and worse in others; but on the whole, better. I think that while events, like the pendulum of a clock, go backward and forward, man, like the hands, goes forward. I think there is more reason and less religion, more charity and less creed. I think the church is improving. Ministers are ashamed to preach the old doctrines with the old fervor. There was a time when the pulpit controlled the pews. It is so no longer. The pews know what they want, and if the minister does not furnish it they discharge him and employ another. He is no longer an autocrat; he must bring to the market what his customers are willing to buy.
Question. What are you going to do to be saved?
Answer. Well, I think I am safe, anyway. I suppose I have a right to rely on what Matthew says, that if I will forgive others God will forgive me. I suppose if there is another world I shall be treated very much as I treat others. I never expect to find perfect bliss anywhere; maybe I should tire of it if I should. What I have endeavored to do has been to put out the fires of an ignorant and cruel hell; to do what I could to destroy that dogma; to destroy the doctrine that makes the cradle as terrible as the coffin.
—The Denver Republican, Denver, Colorado, January 17, 1884.
THE OATH QUESTION.
Question. I suppose that your attention has been called to the excitement in England over the oath question, and you have probably wondered that so much should have been made of so little?