The Atheist—­I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original you seek!

FURTHER FALLACIES.

In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism:  “While we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word ‘selfishness’ is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin.  In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either.  To-day, all of society has the precise motive of the old Robber-Barons.”

LET US LOOK DOWN BROADWAY

some Saturday forenoon.  Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with their din and their movement.  A horse comes along, walking on a hoof that is no longer a hoof.  What stops every team within two blocks for twenty minutes?  Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic, has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a mission of mercy through its brain.  How is it that the frightful objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer?  Why does he not get killed himself?  Because he is in the second largest aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,

“WELL DONE!”

It could not be done in Leadville!  It could not be done even in Chicago!  Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of the voice of duty!  Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying.  So there is, but society will get there in time.  Let not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair.  Inside of a thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation.  Society will then attend to it.  When a victim fell before Achilles or Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy.  The spear then went through his bowels.  The times demanded it.  They knew no mercy.  There is no mercy in the Iliad.  The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs.  To-day, in New York, or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general principles.  We have no sluggers who are not their superiors.  The atheist should know it, and does.  The world moves.

THERE MUST BE THOUGHTS