Having treated this subject somewhat lengthily and critically in "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors," we shall devote but a brief space to its elucidation here. Nearly all religious nations have attached great importance to the act of repentance; but such an act does not repair the injury or wrong repented of.

The repentance of a murderer does not restore his murdered victim to life; nor does the repentance and tears of the incendiary rebuild the dwelling he has destroyed by fire. What, then, is its practical value?

We would ask, also, what moral value or merit can attach to an act of repentance when it is not claimed to be an act of the sinner, but "the power of God upon the soul"? (Luther.) It appears then, according to orthodox logic,—1. That God won't save the sinner unless he repents. 2. That he can't repent only as God moves him to do so. This places him in a bad predicament. Hence, when he does repent, it is an act of God. 3. And then God saves him because he makes him repent. Here is a jumble of logical incongruities and moral contradictions that can find no lodgment in a scientific mind. A few brief questions will set the doctrine of repentance in its true light.

4. Repentance consists in merely a revival of early impressions, that may be either right or wrong, true or false, and almost as likely to be one as the other.

5. Who ever knew a person to embrace more rational doctrines, or become more intelligent, or have a stronger taste for scientific pursuits, by repentance?

6. Is it not a fact that repentance usually causes a person to cling more tenaciously to the errors and superstitions in which he was educated?

7. Who ever knew a person by repenting, either in health or sickness, to condemn one wrong act which he had erroneously been taught to believe was right? If not, does it not prove that repentance always conforms to education, whether that education is right or wrong, and hence does nothing toward enlightening the convert or anybody else?

8. On the contrary, when a man repents with his mind full of religious errors, is it not evident that the act of repentance will have the effect to rivet these errors more strongly upon his mind, and thus effect a moral injury instead of a moral benefit?

9. If a man may abandon some of his immoral habits, which he has been taught to believe are wrong, by an act of repentance, are not the good effects to some extent counterbalanced by his clinging more strongly to his religious errors?

10. Who ever knew a person to abandon a false religion by repentance? Does a Hindoo or Mahomedan ever embrace Christianity by repenting?

11. Who ever knew a Roman Catholic to become a Protestant, or a Protestant a Catholic, by repentance? And yet orthodox Christians will cite the belief and testimony of a dying man as an evidence of the truth of their doctrines.

12. How can an act of repentance do any thing toward proving what is right and what is wrong in any case, when one person repents for doing what another repents for not doing? We have such cases recorded in history.

We have known a Campbellite to leave his dying testimony in favor of water baptism, and a Quaker to leave his dying testimony against it. Does one case prove it to be wrong, and the other right? If not, why do Christians cite such cases? What do they prove?

For a further illustration of this subject, see "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors."

DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.

If there is any class of people who need to repent for misspent time, and for leading false and foolish lives, it is the colporteurs who travel over the country distributing pious tracts, containing doleful accounts of death-bed repentance, which, whether right or wrong, prove nothing.

Such cases of repentance as are reported do not appertain to the moral conduct, but to the religious belief, of the sinner. It is the abandonment and condemnation of his past creeds, and not of his past conduct, which makes the tract so valuable. Such a case contains no moral instruction whatever.

If his early education was Mahomedan, his repentance will establish that religion again in his mind; but, if Mormonism was the religion of his childhood, he would again have full faith in that religion. What nonsense!

Who ever knew repentance to divorce or emancipate a man from all or any of the religious errors of his past life, and plant in his soul a better and more rational religion, or lead him to advocate any religion only that in which he had been educated?

Such repentance is worth nothing, and absolutely foolish. Let us assume that the numerous cases of death-bed repentance published in religious tracts are all true; and what would it prove? Why, simply this: that the converts had all been educated to believe in Christianity, and had gone back to that religion. Had Budhism or Mahomedanism been their early religion, they would have returned to that. It is merely old errors and old truths revived and re-established in the mind. But many facts afterwards gathered by honest investigation, appertaining to some of these cases, show that they have either been manufactured or greatly exaggerated. As for example, the case of Thomas Paine is proved to be without foundation. His close was calm and peaceful. Many times has it been declared, in the pulpit and elsewhere, that "Tom Paine repented, and died a miserable death." And yet we have the testimony of those Christian professors who were present with him almost constantly during his last illness, that he never manifested the least compunction of conscience, or the least disposition to condemn any thing he had said or written in opposition to Christianity or the Bible. Take, for example, the testimony of Willet Hicks, a reliable Quaker preacher. On being interrogated by a neighbor of the author of this work as to the truth of the statement that he repented, he replied, "I was with Paine every day during the latter part of his sickness, and can affirm that he did not express any regret for having written 'The Age of Reason,' as has been reported, nor for any thing he had said or written in opposition to the Bible, nor ask forgiveness of God. He died as easy as any one I ever saw die; and I have seen a great many die." And yet this Mr. Hicks was in hopes he would repent. Other similar testimony might be adduced; but this is sufficient. The story of Ethan Allen's daughter calling upon her father during her last illness, and asking him if he would recommend her to die in his religious belief, and his feeling so conscience-smitten by the question, that he exclaimed, "No: die in the belief of your mother!" (who was a Christian) has gone the rounds of the Christian pulpits. And yet we have the statement of his nephew, Col. Hitchcock, that he had no daughter to die during his lifetime.

There is not one word of truth in the report. These two cases furnish samples of the manner in which a dying cause will grasp at straws.

We will subjoin here the testimony of a clergyman, in proof that infidels are not more likely to die in a state of mental distress than Christians: The Rev. Theodore Clap, in his autobiography, says, "In all my experience I never saw an unbeliever die in fear. I have seen them expire without any hope or expectation of the future, but never in agitation from dread or misgiving as to what might befall them hereafter. We know that the idea is prevalent that this final event passes with some dreadful terror or agony of soul. It is imagined, that, in the infidel's case, the pangs of dissolution are greatly augmented by the upbraidings of a guilty conscience, and by the reluctance of the spirit to be torn from its mortal tenement, and hurried into the presence of an avenging Judge; but this is all a superstitious fancy. It is a superstitious fear, from a false education, that causes any one to die in fear."

The Rev. W. H. Spenser, of the First Parish Church (Massachusetts), says, "Some of the men most bitterly stigmatized as infidels have been among the most brilliant and useful minds the world has ever known, and, when dying and suffering from calumny and scorn, have only to wait for time to do them justice, and place them in history with the world's benefactors or saviors. There is not to be found on record one purely infidel man, in the sense now referred to, whose death-bed was attended by recantations and remorse." Thus testifies a clergyman.

We will now show from reliable authority that the most ardent faith in Christ and the Bible, and the most rigid and conscientious observance of their doctrines and precepts, do not guarantee permanent acquiescence or satisfaction, or protect the mind from the most violent mental perturbation in the hour of death. John Calvin stood in the first ranks of the Church militant in his time, and was considered by many the leading clergyman in Christendom. Hear what Martin Luther, his co-laborer, says with respect to his mortal exit: "He died forlorn and forsaken of God, blaspheming to the very end.... He died of scarlet fever, overrun and eaten up by ulcerous abscesses, the stench of which drove every person away. He gave up the ghost, despairing of salvation, and evoking devils from the abyss, and uttering oaths most horrible, and blasphemies most frightful." Then tell us no more about infidels recanting and dying unhappy, after reading this case. Yet all the cases and evidences cited above only tend to show that no forms of religious belief have any thing specially to do with the condition of mind in the hour of mortal dissolution, except so far as that belief has been invested with groundless, superstitious fears. Hence persons who distribute death-bed tracts are in rather small business. We like the answer of a liberal-minded man, who, when in his dying moments he was asked by a priest if he had made his peace with his God, replied, "We have never had any unfriendly words." We don't believe there can be a case found in all Christendom of an infidel repenting whose parents were unbelievers, so that he was not educated and biased in favor of any form of religious faith or belief.