"Does he read ancient history to them, or tell them about the manners and customs of distant countries ?"

"No."

"Well, what are his lessons about, then?"

"He tells them not to quarrel, or to lie, or to steal, or to murder."

'But, father, is he obliged to tell them that every week? I think it must be true what he tells God about their being despe rately wicked. You don't require to tell me every week that 1 must not steal and murder. What more does he teach them ?" "The chief thing he teaches them is about heaven." "A lesson in astronomy, is it?"

"Oh no. 29

"What then?"

"He tells them that they must believe the book he reads to them; and that they must pray just as he does; and that they must not dig or plough or amuse themselves on the first day of the week; and that they must always come to hear him preach." "What is the use of all that ?"

"He says, that if they do so, they will be taken to a good place called heaven; and that unless they do so, God will burn them in a great fiery lake."

"But how can that be-I never went to hear him preach, and God never burnt me ?"

"But he means after they are dead."

"After they are dead! Then it won't signify. They can't feel after they are dead, even though God does burn them."

"He says, they will feel."

"Ah! that is very strange! but what does God burn them for? to make them better?"

"Oh no, they say he burns them for ever; and you know there is no time after for ever for them to get better in."

"Do they say that this burning hurts them?"

Certainly; the book that men tell us God wrote says, there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; and that they shall cry out for a drop of water to cool their parched tongues, and God will not allow them any."

"But one thing I don't understand. What does God do all this for ?"

"The man in black says, because God is angry unless you come to hear him preach, and do what he bids you.'

"Does he say God is angry with me, and will burn me for ever, for that ?”`

"Yes."

"Does he think God is a very bad, wicked being?"

"No; a kind, merciful being; a loving Father, whose most distinguishing attribute is love; a benevolent Creator, whose tender mercies are over all his works ?"

"And the man in black preaches all this ?"

"Yes, every first day."

"And why don't the people get up and tell him that it is not

true?"

"You think it is not true ?"

"Think, father? one need not surely think long about it. If any person burns me when I do no harm, and without intending to make me better, and just because he is angry with me, of course he is a cruel, bad man; worse than the Roman emperor Nero, or any tyrant I ever read about. The people can't help seeing all this. Why don't they get up and say so to the man that preaches?"

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Many of them do not see it. They think the man in black knows more than they do, and that all he says is true, just because he says it. They call him a clergyman, and give him all he wants, and pay him great respect."

"But surely some of them see, that burning men and women without expecting to make them better, is not a merciful thing, or a good thing, and that none but a bad man or a bad God would do it."

"Yes, some see this; but they are afraid to tell the clergyman SO."

"Are they? Then let us stay here till first day. I am not afraid. I will tell him so."

My child, they will not allow you to speak in church."

Why not?"

Nobody but a clergyman may speak there."
Why ?"

"It is the custom."

"Is it not a bad custom?

to any one that sets me right.

set right?"

"No, he does not."

I am sure I'm very much obliged
Does not the clergyman like to be

"Then he must have been very ill brought up. Every good person likes to be set right when he's wrong. But I can go and speak to him at his house. I may speak there, may I not ?" "Yes, but it will be useless."

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"I can convince him, father, I am sure I can. You shall see." 'My child, you are inexperienced. You have seen little of the world. You do not know how clergymen are situated. Unless they say what they do say, and unless they prevent people from replying to them as you wish to do, and unless they can get men and women to believe all they say, the people will not give them a thousand or two thousand pounds a year."

"Well, father, they need not talk to God, if they become convinced it is useless. They may work at something else."

"They do not know how."

'They can learn. I'll show the man in black how to split rails and to plough."

"But it is easier to talk to God and to preach."

"And so clergymen tell the people what is not true, because that is the easiest way of getting money to live?"

"Some do so, because they do not see that it is not true; and some because they like two thousand pounds a year without working."

"Oh! father, how glad I am that I am not a clergyman!"

"You have reason to be so, my child. No man is in a more melancholy situation than he who can only get a living by being deceived or by being a deceiver."

"Are there many clergymen in this country ?" "Yes; more than twenty thousand."

"And do they all preach the same thing?"

"No; they almost all say that a good God will burn men and women after they are dead; but some say he will burn them for one thing, and some for another. Each congregation usually believes its own clergyman; and, what is a great pity, they often quarrel with those who believe some other clergyman, and think them bad people, and will scarcely speak to them or sit in the same room with them."

"How glad I am that I never lived in a country where there were twenty thousand clergymen!"

He whom Christians profess to venerate shall have said, that we may learn of children what is hidden from the self-styled wise and prudent. Truly, I think so. Did we but permit their minds to acquire their natural strength, ere we burdened their imagination with mysteries, or tortured their understandings with dogmas, their simple questions might alone suffice to open our eyes on a thousand follies and evils, which our own adult perceptions, warped by early prejudice and dulled by daily custom, either fail to detect at all, or have forgotten strictly to notice and justly to appreciate.

Among these follies and evils, I see not one more pregnant with mischief, not one more inimical to morality, not one more fatal alike to truth and to intellectual freedom, or more subversive of peace and good fellowship among men, than the institution of the clerical profession-the setting aside an order privileged to interpret the will of a God, and commissioned to turn men's thoughts from earth to heaven.

I have no religion; that is, my reason assents to the spiritual creed of no sect; I have not accustomed myself to personify a first cause I embody no superhuman spirits, angelic or infernal; I acknowledge the infallibility of no book, and the accuracy of no preternatural conceptions. If I dream of any thing unearthly, I keep my dreams to myself. And I think all men and women would enjoy more of habitual serenity and permanent happiness, if all theological imaginings were discarded.

But now, I pray your attention to the remark,-though I have no religion myself, and could wish others free from it, yet I think

a mild religion, in itself, comparatively innocent. Men and women may dream of what passes in the skies, if they dream quietly at home, without doing much harm. In their closets they may embody natural powers, and personify chemical agencies; and if the conception be unsustained, it may be inoffensive also. In their hours of contemplation, they may imagine a heavenly Father looking down, with eyes of love, on this world of his, caring for its inhabitants, scattering over it the blessings we enjoy, and tempering its ills and miseries. To their glowing imaginations the breeze of spring may be God's genial breath, the sun of summer his cheering influence, and the wealth of autumn his rich gift. They may quietly repose in the conviction of his guardianship, and lie down at night the securer in the belief that God's eye slumbers not, but wakes and watches over them. They may picture forth, in infinite space, a bright and beautiful paradise; a haven of rest from earthly tempests, and a place of re-union for departing friends; and in the hour of despondency and bereavement, when natural comforts are without value, and the ear is deaf to friendship's words of rational consolation, they may derive an exciting comfort from fancy's forthshadowings.

There is, to be sure, the reverse of the picture. There are fears as well as hopes, depression succeeding to excitement, demons contrasting with gods, a hell below to balance a heaven above.

But still, such a religion may be conceived to grow up in the heart, and leave untouched its affections and its virtues. It may be supposed to teach no intolerance, to foster little spiritual pride, and scarcely to produce separation among mankind. Men and women might repeat to each other their ghostly dreams as they would any others, to amuse a wayward fancy, or while away an· idle hour; and might learn to rest satisfied, even though others dreamed less often or less vividly than themselves.

But the PRIEST steps in; and the whole scene is changed. Religion is no longer a private, but a public matter. Dreaming is made a business of, and an excellent business, too. People may no longer dream or not dream as they please. The priest has to see to it that they do dream, and that they dream just so, and no otherwise, than as all good citizens should. There must be no such thing as a sound sleeper. All, unless they choose to be called unsound men, must have their visions once a week at any rate, and must make a public profession of them, for the good of others. If they are so perverse and refractory as not to dream when they are bid, and as they are bid, then the law is appealed to, or public opinion is suborned, to force or to frown the heretic into a regular, decent course of dreaming.

Then comes the season of test-oaths, and edicts of conformity and spiritual bedsteads. Men look round on each other with doubt and suspicion. The priest, with pencil dipped alternately in gaudy colours and in brimstone, sets about painting the stand

ard dream, the regular legitimate vision which all men must have; and then he sets it up, and tells his fellow-mortals, "These be your visions, oh Christians! that shall bring you out of the land of sin, and from the pit of damnation. Fall down, and dream them."

And if any man will not fall down, they set the mark of Cain on his forehead. They annoy him here; they abandon him to the devil hereafter.

Then is past the innocence of religion. The serpent is in imagination's garden. The deadly fruit of intolerance is eaten, and men are chased from out the fair Eden of peace and liberty, into a world of schisms, of heartburnings, and of violence.

The angel that guards, as with a flaming sword, that lost paradise, is the PRIEST.

I wish, from my soul, I could see this to be otherwise. Most gladly would I recognize in the clergy, as a body, the heralds of peace and good will among men. Joyfully would I believe, that the millions they drain from men's pockets, and the hours and days they abstract from earthly industry, are spent to some profit. But I cannot. Stubborn truth is there, and I cannot shut my ears to her voice.

Do you ask me what the proofs are, and where to be found, that substantiate my accusation? Where to be found? Wherever a temple is raised to an unknown God, or a hierophant installed therein to officiate. Where to be found? In every country under heaven: in America, in Europe, in distant India, in the blooming South Sea Islands, on the desert shore of Greenland; where the cross is raised, or the crescent glitters; where Juggernaut's car rolls over the prostrate devotee, or Siberia's conjuror chaunts his mystical incantation. In all countries, in all ages; far back to the earliest whispers of history, and down to the very hour in which I speak. Where to be found? Wherever a priest is or has been; for there have been quarrels, there have been heart-burnings, there have been persecutions, there has flowed human blood. Do ye know one institution of character so infernal, of machinations so mysteriously horrible, as the Inquisition? It was founded by priests. Have ye ever read of a human folly to match that folly of a hemisphere, the Crusades ? Its millions of victims were roused and sent forth to the slaughter-by priests. Look through history, from the time when Moses commanded the Midianite massacre-that hydra-barbarity whose single atrocity outweighs the accumulated iniquities of a modern world-look through history's tales of crime and blood, and mark how often the priest has assisted at each human sacrifice. Read of Socrates poisoned for atheism, and Aristotle banished for unbelief. Read of Jesus, admired and followed by the people, persecuted and slain by priests; of Galileo, compelled to belie his own noble discovery, and to swear that the earth stood still-by priests. Trace the history of the See of Rome, from its first aristocratic departure from primitive simplicity, throughout its hey-day of pride and