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ungallant people, look forward to the lord's day as one on which they 

 can display their new bonnets, procure food for another week's gossip, 

 or hold sweet communion with the unmarried curate all for Jesus. It 

 is unnecessary to say that this may not be true, and that a higher and 

 nobler motive may prompt the ardent zeal of the fair sex. 



Do not believe the parsons when they tell you that your souls are in 

 jeopardy for rejecting the Christian doctrines ; the truth is that their 

 incomes are in danger, not your souls. Take care not to follow their 

 evil advice that it is a blessed thing to have your quiver full, and that 

 the lord loves a cheerful giver. Have small families, being careful to 

 bring into the world only as many as you can decently provide for, so 

 as to give them a fair chance in the world ; and let your creditors and 

 your saving-banks, and not your lord, have your spare cash your lord 

 being but another name for your parson. When they tell you that you 

 must take no thought for the morrow, and must not lay up treasure on 

 earth, where moths and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through 

 and steal, give them the cold shoulder, insure your life in some sound 

 office, and leave the laws of the country in which you live to take care 

 of the thieves, and their reverences to look after the moths and rust. 



It will, no doubt, be urged that Christianity has done, and is doing a 

 great good in the world. This I emphatically deny. I readily admit 

 that some good has been effected in the name of Christianity, but deny 

 that the fall and redemption religion has been the cause. The same 

 amount of good would have resulted with any other religion, and much 

 more with no religion at all. All the good that has ever been effected 

 in the world has emanated from lofty individual minds ; but as chance 

 has had it, the majority of these men in the past have been Christians, 

 simply because that religion has prevailed in Europe for nearly two 

 thousand years. In the present day this is not the case ; and it is a 

 fact beyond contradiction that all the leaders of thought of our time 

 are men who have rejected the fables of the creation and fall as given 

 in Genesis, together with the consequent redemption scheme, as false 

 and vain. John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Tyndal, 

 Carpenter, Huxley, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 

 Renan, Victor Hugo, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, and in fact every other 

 modern leader of thought, have rejected the orthodox faith ; and yet 

 we look forward to the future with bright hope, expecting a steady 



