following discussion.]

_Mr. Liberal_--The great objection to your religion, Mr. Orthodox, is
that it violates reason and conscience. To be more specific, let us
consider a few instances. There is your doctrine of eternal
punishment, in which you ascribe fiendish qualities to our dear
heavenly Father such as the most savage human being could not be
capable of. Then, take your doctrine of the Trinity, around which
most of your dogmas cluster, and we see at once that it violates the
simplest postulates of reason. I know that you will answer that these
are all mysteries which are to be accepted on faith. But it is
perfectly clear that there is no mystery about it. It is as clear as
daylight that three cannot be one. You talk about mysteries which we
must accept by faith, but all such talk is nonsense and ignores our
sacred reason. The idea of getting over all difficulties by declaring
them mysteries, and exhorting your opponents to leap over them by the
exercise of faith, is truly, as some one has said, "a touchstone for
whole classes of explanations based on no evidence." You orthodox
people are the cause of all the infidelity that is afloat in the
land. People come in contact with your irrational and ridiculous
claims, and, taking them as religion itself, they throw overboard the
whole business, the good with the bad. What we need is a pure and
simple religion that will satisfy man's reason and conscience as well
as his heart. And we do not have to go far for such a religion, for
we find it in the liberal faith which it is my privilege to
represent. Let us compare our grand, simple and rational beliefs with
your irrational, absurd and mysterious products of the Dark Ages, and
see what a contrast there is between them. Instead of your "Son is
God, Father is God, Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods,
but only one," we have the simple faith in one heavenly Father--all-