Is there,--has there ever been another creed which makes salvation
dependent on belief,--thereby encouraging hypocrisy, and making honest
inquiry a crime?

To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he believes, and an
honest man to hell because he doubts, is that the virtue which is
going to save the world?

The claim that Jesus has saved the world is another myth.

A _pictorial_ Christ, then, has not done anything for humanity to
deserve the tremendous expenditure of time, energy, love, and
devotion, which has for two thousand years taxed the resources of
civilization.

The passing away of this imaginary savior will relieve the world of an
unproductive investment.

We conclude: Honesty, like charity, must begin at home. Unless we can
tell the truth in our churches we will never tell the truth in our
shops. Unless our teachers, the ministers of God, are honest, our
insurance companies and corporations will have to be watched. Permit
sham in your religious life, and the disease will spread to every
member of the social body. If you may keep religion in the dark, and
cry "hush," "hush," when people ask that it be brought out into the
light, why may not politics or business cultivate a similar partiality
for darkness? If the king cries, "rebel," when a citizen asks for
justice, it is because he has heard the priest cry, "infidel," when a
member of his church asked for evidence. Religious hypocrisy is the