striving for an upright life, let us build up character, let us encourage refinement, purity, good deeds, humane feelings, generous impulses, kindly thoughts, beneficent acts; in fine, let us reverse the position claimed for Christianity and declare that religion should be a life and not a dogma. What possible influence on the aims and aspirations of exalted character can be had by belief in the dogmas of predestination, sanctification, justification, effectual calling, baptism, the Trinity, the atonement, in the resurrection, the immaculate conception, or the "procession" of the Holy Ghost? Does it make any one happier or better to believe in the Westminster "Confession of Faith"-Chapter X.-which reads: "Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved others not elected cannot be saved"? In the place of theological religion we would substitute the religion of ethical culture; in place of superstition we would put rational thought; in place of the supernatural, the natural; in place of fear for the future, we would content ourselves with the joys of the present, and hope for their continuance. In place of the "fear of God," of the evil one, of endless torment, let us be attracted to a religion of confidence, of trust, of hope, of cheer and of love. For the futility of prayer, we would offer the labor of the hands and the exercise of the brain. In place' of useless and senseless church creeds let us interest ourselves in whatever may tend to benefit mankind. In place of the unlettered, ignorant, superstitious past, we would put the cultivated, intelligent, realistic present. In place of admitting the possibility of the truth of miracles, let us scrutinize the character of the evidence by which miracles are imposed upon the credulous. In place of recognizing authority as truth (as taught by Christianity,) let us rather regard truth as authority (as reason teaches.) In place of the Christian church, hemmed in by its restricted, ignorant and cruel beliefs, denying admission to the noblest and most intelligent of the race and rejecting the most beautiful and gladsome and useful lessons of life; we would, with Colonel Ingersoll, join the "great church that holds the world within its star-lit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grains of gold in every creed and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul." In place of the Christian religion, with its pretentious sanctuaries, its arrogant and pharisaical officials, its warlike teachings, its injustice, its cant, its want of truthfulness and its lessons of hate, may we be able to realize in the not distant future the grand and rational "Dream of Akbar," as portrayed by Tennyson— "I dream'd That stone by stone I rear'd a sacred fane, A Temple, neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church, To every breath from heaven; and Truth and Peace And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein." THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER. PROBABLY very few persons are aware of the danger to civil liberty now threatened in this country. Those who founded the government did so with a jealous eye to all religious encroachments upon the political liberties of the people. These founders of the Republic sought to profit by the fearful results of an alliance of the church with the state in other countries. They had read the bloody pages of religious history. They were warned by the intolerance, the persecutions, the tortures, the butcheries, which religious zeal and ecclesiastical bigotry had accomplished against those whose only crime was the claiming of natural liberty and the assertion of those rights to which they were entitled by a proper recognition of the principle of civil and religious freedom: the right to hold their honest opinions and to express their honest thoughts on matters of religion. There are not many Roman Catholics who take the patriotic view "that the state with us has no religion and that it cannot and ought not to recognize any church," and yet this is the liberal-minded utterance of Father Stafford of Baltimore. In violation of this principle, the statute books of every state in our Union abound with laws which are a virtual recognition of the Christian religion; and thus is the Christian Church imposed or forced upon the people of these states. Every state (California excepted) has its Sunday laws, with more or less severe penalties for their violation. In fourteen states the law relating to the taking of an oath is such that no conscientious agnostic can adopt it. In some states, like it is in Arkansas, "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold office in civil departments of the state nor be competent to testify as witness in any court." Who knows that there is such a "being" as God? The clergy of every denomination may be challenged to bring the slightest proof of what they know-not what they think, or suppose or guess, but what they actually know about the personality they call "God." In thirteen of the states are what are called "Blasphemy laws," which consist of expressing disbelief in God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, the Christian religion or the Bible; such disbelief being differently expressed in the laws of the different states. All such laws are in contravention of the Constitution of the United States, which provides that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to office and no law respecting an establishment of religion shall be made. They are likewise in contravention of the provisions. of nearly every one of the constitutions of the respective states. The substance of these provisions may be illustrated by the words of the Constitution of Colorado, viz.: "No person shall be denied any civil or political right, privileges or capacity on account of his opinions concerning religion." In face of the constitutional guarantees of the several states, to all citizens, that they are entitled to every right which any other citizen possesses; in our public schools, non-sectarians are taxed to support such schools, in which are heard the reading of sectarian books, the singing of sectarian hymns and the utterance of sectarian prayers; the tax-payer's money being spent for Bibles and for hymn and prayer books, in violation of the principle which refuses to tax those whose views on the question of religion in the public schools are ignored. What have these religious exercises to do, necessarily, with education, any more than they have to do with the teaching of carpentry, or of dancing, or of art. Children are sent to public schools to learn what is profitable and useful in this world and not to be instructed in the dogmas pertaining to some other world, of which they know absolutely nothing. There are also those (and millions of them) who are opposed to religious exercises in our congress, in our legislature, in our prisons, in the army and navy, and who are opposed to the paying from the public treasury of chaplains; such opponents denying the right of government to tax them for such purposes. Mr. Maguire, M. C., from California, voices the sentiment of every lover of justice in saying as he did in the House of Representatives, "There is an establishment of religion and there are repeated appropriations for the establishment and promotion of religion here, which we ought to stop." The Army Register furnishes some particulars regarding the pay of army and navy chaplains, which amounts annually to $84,600 for army chaplains; $60,000 for navy chaplains. It is estimated that during our four years of civil war the chaplains in the army cost the United States government six millions of dollars, and those of the navy two millions—or a total of $8,000,000. On February 21, 1896, Rev. C. J. Ochschlaeger, of Richmond, Va., was invited to act as chaplain of the House of Assembly, but declined, saying, "I do not believe in opening a promiscuous political body with prayer. It is an abuse of prayer, and an unnatural union of church and state. . . . The states, which the Assembly represents, has nothing to do with prayer.' Rev. Dr. Hawthorne of Atlanta, Ga., says, "In appointing men to these offices (chaplaincies) and paying them for their services with money taken from its own treasury, the state does more than protect the Christian religion. It patronizes it, and any government patronage of religion is a violation of the rights of conscience. While these abuses of civil government exist let no man speak of this country as a land of religious liberty." The constitution of many of the states provide (as does that of Illinois) that "No person shall be required to attend or support any ministry or place of worship against his consent," and yet by the practice of exempting church property from taxation, are not very many taxpayers required to support places of worship against their consent? It makes no difference whatever whether the legislators of the several states actually |