that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text. He knew that
the throne skulked behind the altar, and both behind a pretended
revelation of God. By this time he had found that it was of little use
to free the body and leave the mind in chains. He had explored the
foundations of despotism, and had found them infinitely rotten. He had
dug under the throne, and it occurred to him that he would take a look
behind the altar. The result of this investigation was given to the
world in the "Age of Reason." From the moment of its publication he
became infamous. He was calumniated beyond measure. To slander him
was to secure the thanks of the church. All his services were instantly
forgotten, disparaged, or denied. He was shunned as though he had been
a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him. He was regarded as a
moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of
the church were raised in horror. He was denounced as the most
despicable of men.

Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after
death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and
satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact
that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what
they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.

It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. It is amazing
that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not
accord to him, at least--honesty. Strange that in the general
denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his
devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. He
had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause of
progress. He had made it impossible to write the history of political
freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light,