Page:Witchcraft In Christian Countries.pdf/3

Rh unchangeable God changed his mind on the subject? Has he torn the terrible little verse in Exodus out of his infallible book? Did he who made men and women originally suppose that he had made some wizards and witches, and has he since found out his mistake? No. Surrounded by the iron ring of an infallible God and an infallible Book, the Christian cannot alter his tenets. The verse is still in the Bible, and God has given no indication that he has changed his mind and is ashamed of having written it. Then how is it that witches are not burnt to-day, with the ministers of the "blessed Gospel," as was their wont, standing round the flames to do their duty to their God by not suffering a witch to live? I will tell you why. The pulsations of the great heart of Humanity have burst asunder the accursed fetters of the supernatural creeds. Man is in the ascendant, Deity in the decline; Heaven is becoming a more and more vague phantasmagoria, and Earth a more and more glorious reality. We now think less of white wings and manna on the other side of the grave, and more of broadcloth and roast-beef on this. We burn more coals and we burn no witches; our ships are on every sea, but we drag no wizards through the waters; our steam-engines whistle all round the globe, but we have no engines of torture; we have more schools and fewer convents; we have no racks and thumbscrews, but we have newspapers and the electric telegraph. We have no priest who can effectively gag the mouth of the heretic; and, for an enslaved and ignorant populace sitting in the old dim church with the Bible chained to the pulpit and the hearer's soul chained to the priest, we have now halls like this; and, for the priest, you have now men who have dedicated the best energies of their lives to the task of bringing down with a crash the old and tottering theologic fabric, every stone of which is reddened with the blood of persecution, or blackened with the smoke from the burning of witches and heretics. You have for the monk and the presbyter men like me, and men stronger and more eloquent than I, who, regardless of their interests and themselves, agitate with tongue and pen for political equality and mental liberty. This is why every Christian pulpit in the world is whining about the spread of "Infidelity." The newspaper is Infidelity, the steam