But, after all, there is no argument in names. A man is not necessarily great because he holds office or wears a crown or talks in a pulpit. Facts, reasons, are better than names. But it seems to me that nothing can be plainer than that the church is losing ground—that the people are discarding the creeds and that superstition has passed the zenith of its power.
Question. Dr. Banks says that Christ did not mention the Western Hemisphere because God does nothing for men that they can do for themselves. What have you to say?
Answer. Christ said nothing about the Western Hemisphere because he did not know that it existed. He did not know the shape of the earth. He was not a scientist—never even hinted at any science— never told anybody to investigate—to think. His idea was that this life should be spent in preparing for the next. For all the evils of this life, and the next, faith was his remedy.
I see from the report in the paper that Dr. Banks, after making the remarks about me preached a sermon on "Herod the Villain in the Drama of Christ." Who made Herod? Dr. Banks will answer that God made him. Did God know what Herod would do? Yes. Did he know that he would cause the children to be slaughtered in his vain efforts to kill the infant Christ? Yes. Dr. Banks will say that God is not responsible for Herod because he gave Herod freedom. Did God know how Herod would use his freedom? Did he know that he would become the villain in the drama of Christ? Yes. Who, then, is really responsible for the acts of Herod?
If I could change a stone into a human being, and if I could give this being freedom of will, and if I knew that if I made him he would murder a man, and if with that knowledge I made him, and he did commit a murder, who would be the real murderer?
Will Dr. Banks in his fifty-two sermons of next year show that his God is not responsible for the crimes of Herod?
No doubt Dr. Banks is a good man, and no doubt he thinks that liberty of thought leads to hell, and honestly believes that all doubt comes from the Devil. I do not blame him. He thinks as he must. He is a product of conditions.
He ought to be my friend because I am doing the best I can to civilize his congregation.
—The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, 1898.