Now, let us all agree that we will stand by each other splendidly, grandly; and when we come into convention let us pass resolutions that are broad, kind, and genial, because, if you are true Liberals, you will hold in a kind of tender pity the most outrageous superstitions in the world. I have said some things in my time that were not altogether charitable; but, after all, when I think it over, I see that men are as they are, because they are the result of every thing that has ever been.
Sometimes I think the clergy a necessary evil; but I say, let us be genial and kind, and let us know that every other person has the same right to be a Catholic or a Presbyterian, and gather consolation from the doctrine of reprobation, that he has the same right to be a Methodist or a Christian Disciple or a Baptist; the same right to believe these phantasies and follies and superstitions—[A voice—"And to burn heretics?"]
No—The same right that we have to believe that it is all superstition. But when that Catholic or Baptist or Methodist endeavors to put chains on the bodies or intellects of men, it is then the duty of every Liberal to prevent it at all hazards. If we can do any good in our day and generation, let us do it.
There is no office I want in this world. I will make up my mind as to the next when I get there, because my motto is—and with that motto I will close what I have to say—My motto is: One world at a time!
CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN SECULAR UNION.
Albany, N. Y., September 13, 1885.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: While I have never sought any place in any organization, and while I never intended to accept any place in any organization, yet as you have done me the honor to elect me president of the American Secular Union, I not only accept the place, but tender to you each and all my sincere thanks.
This is a position that a man cannot obtain by repressing his honest thought. Nearly all other positions he obtains in that way. But I am glad that the time has come when men can afford to preserve their manhood in this country. Maybe they cannot be elected to the Legislature, cannot become errand boys in Congress, cannot be placed as weather-vanes in the presidential chair, but the time has come when a man can express his honest thought and be treated like a gentleman in the United States. We have arrived at a point where priests do not govern, and have reached that stage of our journey where we, as Harriet Martineau expressed it, are "free rovers on the breezy common of the universe." Day by day we are getting rid of the aristocracy of the air. We have been the slaves of phantoms long enough, and a new day, a day of glory, has dawned upon this new world—this new world which is far beyond the old in the real freedom of thought.