imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic now
laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake of
abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
that torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satan
of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better
is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more