pulled down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and
Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted over
a thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because he
believed he had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the
sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to
destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail;
gagging the mouth of the student--is that building up or tearing down?
When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world,
what was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church
had the power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his
head he was clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us--does it
square with our sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and
the scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their
feet--helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in
life,--destructive? Count your rights--political, religious, social,
intellectual--and tell me which of them was conquered for you by the
priest.

"He is irreverent," is still another hasty criticism I have heard
advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you something. But
first let us be impersonal. The epithets "irreverent," "blasphemer,"
"atheist," and "infidel," are flung at a man, not from pity, but from
envy. Not having the courage or the industry of our neighbor who works
like a busy bee in the world of men and books, searching with the sweat
of his brow for the real bread of life, wetting the open page before
him with his tears, pushing into the "wee" hours of the night his
quest, animated by the fairest of all loves, "the love of truth",--we
ease our own indolent conscience by calling him names. We pretend
that it is not because we are too lazy or too selfish to work as hard
or think as freely as he does, but because we do not want to be as