L. K. Washburn: "Paine knew that he was marked for death. What did he do? Did he try to escape? No! He sat down and wrote the 'Age of Reason.'"

Paine found the world cursed with two great evils, kingcraft and priestcraft, twin vultures that from the earliest ages have fed upon the vitals of humanity. In his "Common Sense" and "Rights of Man" kingcraft was dealt the deadliest blows that it has yet received. He had resolved to strike a blow at priestcraft before he died. Seeing imprisonment and death approaching he hurried to his task. The first part of his immortal work was finished six hours before the summons came.

The second part, it is generally believed, was written during his confinement in the Luxembourg. And here, undoubtedly, it was planned and at least a part of it composed. It was probably finished, and it was published, while he lived with James Monroe, after his release from prison. This, briefly, is the history of the conception and birth of this, the last and greatest of Paine's three great intellectual children.

"Just before his arrest he had finished the first part of the 'Age of Reason.'... While in prison he worked upon the second part."—International Encyclopedia.

Encyclopedia Americana: "It [first part] was published in London and in Paris in 1794. On the fall of Robespierre he was released, and in 1795 published at Paris the second part of the 'Age of Reason.'"

Dr. Francois Lanthenas: "I delivered to Merlin de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Paine, formerly our colleague.... I undertook its translation before the Revolution [Reign of Terror] against priests, and it was published in French about the same time."

People's Cyclopedia: "During his imprisonment he wrote the 'Age of Reason' (second part) against Atheism and against Christianity, and in favor of Deism."

"A second part, written during his ten months' imprisonment, which was published after his release, represents the Deism of the 18th century."—Encyclopedia Britannica.

McClintock and Strong's Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Cyclopedia: "The religion which Paine [in his 'Age of Reason'] proposed to substitute for Christianity was the belief in one God as revealed by science; in immortality as the continuance of conscious existence; in the natural equality of man; and in the obligation of justice and mercy to one's neighbor."

Rufus Rockwell Wilson: "Of all epoch-making books the one most persistently misrepresented and misunderstood."

W. M. van der Weyde: "The total knowledge possessed by many persons concerning Paine is that 'he was an Atheist'—which he was not."

Hon. William J. Gaynor: "What a strange thing it is that that extraordinary man was so long set down as an Atheist. Some people still think that he was an Atheist. And yet no man ever had a fuller belief in the existence of God, or a greater reliance upon him."

Washington Times: "It is not at all difficult to find out whether or not Thomas Paine was an Atheist. All one has to do to discover his opinion on the subject is to go to any bookstore or circulating library, ask for his best known work, the 'Age of Reason,' and read the first page:"'I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.'"

"He was, in fact, no more an Atheist than William Penn, Roger Williams or Ralph Waldo Emerson."—New York World.

In his "Age of Reason" the recognition of a Supreme Being is made more than two hundred times.

Rev. Daniel Freeman: "There has never been a believer in God if Thomas Paine was not a believer in God."

Rev. Charles Alfred Martin (Roman Catholic): "Thomas Paine while not a Christian, was not an Atheist. His biographers declare that he penned his most famous book to stem with its Deism the tide of Atheism which flooded France at the time of the Revolution."

Major J. Weed Cory: "Thomas Paine was not an Atheist. He wrote against Atheism, and Trinitarians will soon be appealing to his works to prove the existence of a God."

Henry C. Wright: "Thomas Paine had a clear idea of God. This Being embodied his highest conception of truth, love, wisdom, mercy, liberty and power."

"Paine was accursed as an Atheist and hunted and maligned by institutional religion for writing a book in defense of God."—W. M. van der Weyde.

Henry Rowley: "His 'Age of Reason' was written as much in defense of God as in opposition to the church. He could not believe that God was guilty of the cruelties and crimes which the writers of the Bible attributed to him."

"The 'Age of Reason' was the protest of a highly moral man against the doings of a deeply immoral God."

Lucy N. Colman: "Thomas Paine's God was justice."

Bishop Watson: "There is a philosophical sublimity in some of your ideas when speaking of the Creator of the universe."

The work of orthodox religious teachers, unwittingly to many, is confined chiefly to the propagation of fictions and the suppression of facts. The Christian who has been surprised to learn that Paine was not an Atheist, may be equally surprised to learn that his great compeers, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, were not Christians, but like him, Deists.

Washington, who has been claimed by the Episcopal church, was like Paine a Deist: His wife was a communicant of this church. During his eight years incumbency of the Presidency, and during the Revolution, and at other times when Mrs. Washington was with him in Philadelphia, he attended, but not regularly, the Episcopal churches of which Bishop White, father of the Episcopal church of America, and the Rev. Dr. Abercrombie were rectors. When Bishop White was asked if Washington had ever communed he replied: "Truth requires me to say that Gen. Washington never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister"—Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 196, 197. The Western Christian Advocate accepts this testimony as conclusive. It says: "Bishop White seems to have had more intimate relations with Washington than any clergyman of his time. His testimony outweighs any amount of influential argumentation on the question."

Dr. Abercrombie says: "On sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit services went out with the greater part of the congregation—always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other communicants."—Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v., p. 394.

Fearing the effect of Washington's example Dr. Abercrombie administered a mild reproof. Washington, he says, "never afterwards came on the morning of sacramental Sunday."—Ibid.

Regarding Washington's conduct in Virginia, the Rev. Beverly Tucker, D.D., of the Episcopal church, says: "The General was accustomed on Communion Sundays to leave the church with her [Nellie Custis, his step-granddaughter], sending back the carriage for Mrs. Washington."

The Rev. William Jackson, who was at a later, period, rector of this church, conducted an exhaustive search to discover if possible some evidence of Washington once having communed. His search was futile. He says: "I find no one who ever communed with him."

Early in the last century the Rev. E. D. Neill, a prominent clergyman of the Episcopal church, contributed to the Episcopal Recorder, the organ of the Episcopal church, an article on Washington's religion. Regarding Washington's church membership he says: "The President was not a communicant, notwithstanding all the pretty stories to the contrary, and after the close of the sermon on Sacramental Sundays, had fallen into the habit of retiring from the church while his wife remained and communed."

The foregoing testimony in disproof of the claim that Washington was a communicant, conclusive as it is, is not needed. His own testimony is sufficient. To Dr. Abercrombie he declared that "he had never been a communicant."—Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v., p. 394.

During the presidential campaign of 1880, the Christian Union, at that time the leading church paper of this country, made the frank admission that of the nineteen men who up to that time had held the office of President of the United States, not one, with the possible exception of Washington, had been a member of a Christian church. And Washington, as we have seen, cannot be made an exception.

"There is nothing to show that he [Washington] was ever a member of the church."—St. Louis Globe.

"He [Washington] belonged to no church."—Western Christian Advocate.

"In all the voluminous writings of General Washington, the Holy name of Jesus Christ is never once written."—Catholic World.

"In several thousand letters the name of Jesus Christ never appears, and it is notably absent from his last will."—General A. W. Greeley in Ladies' Home Journal for April, 1896.

"It has been confidently stated to me that he actually refused spiritual aid when it was proposed to send for a clergyman."—Robert Dale Owen.

The Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, president of Princeton College, signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of Congress, and chaplain to Congress during Washington's administration, says: "Like nearly all the founders of the Republic, he [Washington] was not a Christian, but a Deist." "He had no belief at all in the divine origin of the Bible."

During Jackson's administration the Rev. Dr. Wilson, a noted Presbyterian divine of Albany, preached a famous sermon on "The Religion of the Presidents," which was published and had a wide circulation. Dr. Wilson showed that of the seven men who up to that time had been elected president, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Jackson, not one had professed a belief in Christianity. In his search for evidence he visited the Washingtons' old pastor, Dr. Abercrombie. In answer to Dr. Wilson's inquiry concerning Washington's religious belief Dr. Abercrombie's emphatic answer was, "Sir, Washington was a Deist." As a result of his investigation Dr. Wilson says: "I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he [Washington] was a Deist and nothing more."

Everyone is familiar with the story of Washington's praying at Valley Forge. This is a pure fiction. Intelligent Christians reject it. The Rev. E. D. Neill, of the Episcopal church, whose father's uncle owned the building occupied by Washington at Valley Forge, says: "With the capacious and comfortable house at his disposal, it is hardly possible that the shy, silent, cautious Washington should leave such retirement and enter the leafless woods, in the vicinity of the winter encampment of an army and engage in audible prayer."—Episcopal Recorder.

Alluding to this subject, the Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, in a sermon, said: "The pictures that represent him on his knees in the winter forest at Valley Forge are silly caricatures."

Dr. Conway, who was employed to edit Washington's letters, and who is considered one of the best authorities on his domestic life, says: "Many clergymen visited him, but they were never invited to hold family prayers, and no grace was ever said at table."

Washington's library contained the Deistical works of Paine, Voltaire and other Freethinkers. When the French Freethinker Volney visited this country he was the guest of Washington.

"His services as a vestryman had no special significance from a religious standpoint. The political affairs of a Virginia county were then directed by the vestry, which, having the power to elect its own members, was an important instrument of the oligarchy of Virginia."—General A. W. Greeley in Ladies' Home Journal.

George Wilson, whose ancestors occupied the pew next to Washington's in Virginia, says.: "At that time the vestry was the county court, and in order to have a hand in managing the affairs of the county, in which his large property lay, regulating the levy of taxes, etc., Washington had to be a vestryman."

Jefferson was a more radical Freethinker than Paine, as the following passages from his writings will show. My quotations are from Randolph's edition of Jefferson's works, published in 1829.

In a letter to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr, while at school, Jefferson writes: "Read the Bible as you would Livy or Tacitus... Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God."—Jefferson's Works, Vol. ii, P. 217.

The God of the Old Testament, the God that Christians worship, Jefferson pronounces "a being of terrific character—cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust."—Works, vol. iv, p. 325.

In the Four Gospels, which Christians consider the most authentic and the most important books of the Bible, Jefferson discovers what he terms "a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications."—Ibid.

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers [Matthew, Mark, Luke and John], I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross, restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of others of his disciples."—Works, vol. iv. p. 320.

Jefferson made a compilation of the finer alleged sayings of Jesus which have been published and paraded as proof of Jefferson's acceptance of Christ. For the man Jesus, Jefferson, like Paine, Ingersoll and other Freethinkers, had the greatest admiration, but for the Christ Jesus of orthodox Christianity he had the greatest contempt.

"Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Corypheus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."—Vol. iv. p. 327.

"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one and one is three... But this constitutes the craft, the power and profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion and they would catch no more flies."—Ibid, p. 205.

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticisms of Plato materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order and introduce it to profit, power and preeminence."—Ibid, p. 242.

"The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs."—Ibid, p. 360.

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."—Ibid, p. 365.

"In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests and sometimes by a henpecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus in terms as amatory and carnal as their modesty would permit to a mere earthly lover."—Ibid, p. 358.

"Jefferson occupied his Sundays at Monticello in writing letters to Paine (they are unpublished I believe, but I have seen them) in favor of the probabilities that Christ and his Twelve Apostles were only personifications of the sun and the Twelve signs of the Zodiac."—Dr. Conway.

The correspondence of Jefferson and Paine would fill a volume. In these letters Jefferson unbosomed himself and gave expression to his most radical sentiments. Randolph's edition of Jefferson's works was published twenty years after Paine's death. By this time the Orthodox ghouls had about completed their work and these letters, although containing some of Jefferson's most mature thoughts and best writings, remained unpublished.

In a letter to Dr. Woods, Jefferson says: "I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies." "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."—Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

Writing to Jefferson on the 5th of May, 1817, John Adams, giving expression to the matured conviction of eighty-two years, says: "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." To this radical declaration Jefferson replied: "If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas in which no two of them agree, then your declaration on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the best of worlds, if there were no religion in it.'"—Works, vol. iv. p. 301.

Writing to John Adams just before his death Jefferson makes the following declaration of his belief: "I am a Materialist."

"A question has been raised as to Thomas Jefferson's religious views. There need be no question, for he has settled that himself. He was an Infidel, or, as he chose to term it, a Materialist. By his own account he was as heterodox as Colonel Inger-soll, and in some respects even more so."—Chicago Tribune.

Alluding to Jefferson's belief the Rev. Dr. Wilson in his sermon on "The Religion of the Presidents," previously quoted, says: "Whatever difference of opinion there may have been at the time [of his election], it is now rendered certain that he was a Deist.... Since his death, and the publication of Randolph, [Jefferson's Works], there remains not the shadow of doubt of his Infidel principles. If any man thinks there is, let him look at the book itself. I do not recommend the purchase of it to any man, for it is one of the most wicked and dangerous books extant."

"In religion he was a Freethinker; in morals pure and unspotted."—Benson J. Lossing, in his "Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence!'

"Surely, Christians, your cause must be growing desperate, when, to sustain it, you must needs claim for its support so bitter an enemy as Thomas Jefferson—a man who affirmed that he was a Materialist; a man who recognized in your religion only "our particular superstition," a superstition without "one redeeming feature;" a man who divided the Christian world into two classes—"hypocrites and fools;" a man who asserted that your Bible is a book abounding with "vulgar ignorance;" a man who termed your Father, Son, and Holy Ghost a "hocus-pocus phantasm;" a man who denounced your God as "cruel, vindictive, and unjust;" a man who intimated that your Savior was "a man of illegitimate birth;" a man who declared his disciples, including your oracle Paul, to be a "band of dupes and impostors and who characterized your modern priesthood, of all denominations, as cannibal priests" and an "abandoned confederacy" against public happiness."—The Fathers of Our Republic.

Franklin rejected Christianity when a boy and remained a Rationalist to the end of his life.

"Some volumes against deism fell into my hands. They were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lecture. It happened that they produced on me an effect precisely the reverse of what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appealed to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself. In a word I soon became a thorough Deist."—Franklin's Autobiography.

Writing to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, when he was eighty-four, he says: "I have with most of the Dissenters in England, doubts as to his [Christ's] divinity."

"By heaven we understand a state of happiness, infinite in degree and eternal in duration. I can do nothing to deserve such a reward.... I have not the vanity to think I deserve it, the folly to expect, or the ambition to desire it."—Franklin's Works, vol. vii., p. 75.

"I wish it [Christianity] were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon hearing and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."—Ibid.

"Nowadays we have scarcely a little parson that does not think it the duty of every man within his reach to sit under his petty ministration, and that whoever omits this offends God. To such I wish more humility."—Franklin's Works, vol. vii. pp. 76,77.

"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," affirmed Washington (treaty with Tripoli). "Keep the church and the state forever separate," said Grant (Des Moines speech). And yet, in spite of this declaration and this admonition religious liberty has been ignored and a practical union of church and state has been maintained—the exemption of ecclesiastical property from taxation, the employment of chaplains, appropriations for sectarian purposes, religious services, including the use of the Bible, in our public schools, the appointment of religious festivals, the judicial oath and the enforced observance of Sunday as a Sabbath. Concerning these and similar privileges of his time and of our time, Franklin says: "I think they were invented not so much to secure religion as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."—Franklin's Works, vol. viii., p. 506.

Theodore Parker, in his "Four Historic Americans," writes as follows concerning Franklin's belief: "If belief in the miraculous revelation of the Old Testament and the New is required to make a man religious, then Franklin had no religion at all. It would be an insult to say that he believed in the popular theology of his time, or of ours, for I find not a line from his pen indicating any such belief."

The eminent statesman John Hay, in an article on "Franklin in France," published after his death in the Century Magazine for January, 1906, ascribes much of Franklin's popularity in France to his espousal of Freethought. He says: "Franklin became the fashion of the season. For the court dabbled a little in liberal ideas. So powerful was the vast impulse of Freethought that then influenced the mind of France—that susceptible French mind, that always answers like the wind harp to the breath of every true human aspiration—that even the highest classes had caught the infection of liberalism." Among Franklin's most intimate companions in France Mr. Hay mentions Voltaire, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, and Condorcet, four of France's most radical Freethinkers.

Dr. Franklin and Dr. Priestley were intimate friends. After Franklin's death Dr. Priestley wrote: "It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers."—Priestley's Autobiography, p. 60.

This great man was himself denounced as an Infidel. He was a Unitarian, and was mobbed and driven from England on account of his heretical opinions and his sympathy with the French Revolution. Franklin's Infidelity must have been very pronounced to have provoked the censure of Dr. Priestley.

There has been published a religious tract, entitled "Don't Unchain the Tiger," which purports to be a letter from Franklin to Paine, advising him not to publish his "Age of Reason." The only thing needed to cause a rejection of this pious fiction is a knowledge of the fact that Franklin had been dead nearly four years when the first page of Paine's book was written. Besides, the opinions expressed in this book were the opinions of Franklin. Paine's biographer, Dr. Conway, says: "Paine's deism differed from Franklin's only in being more fervently religious." Franklin's biographer, James Parton, says: "It ['Age of Reason'] contains not a position which Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson and Theodore Parker would have dissented from."

The Rev. John Snyder, of St. Louis, says: "Paine shared the religious convictions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin." Concerning the belief of these and other noted men, the Rev. Dr. Swing, of Chicago, says: "Voltaire, Bolingbroke, Pitt, Burke, Washington, Lafayette, Jefferson, Paine and Franklin moved along in a wonderful unity of belief, both political and religious."

"Paine wrote the 'Age of Reason' in Paris some years after Franklin was dead.... The letter called the letter of Franklin to Paine bears no address or date or signature. It may not have been written by Franklin to anybody. The evangelists who cite this letter intend to convey the impression that the 'Tiger' means unbelief. The indication is that the writer had in his mind the beast of fanaticism and detraction. That tiger was let loose by the 'Age of Reason' against its author, and the animal and its whelps are still with us."—George E. Macdonald.

Another Franklin myth is that concerning Franklin's motion for prayers in the Convention that framed our Constitution. The Convention, it is claimed, had labored for weeks without accomplishing anything when, at Franklin's suggestion, its sessions were opened with prayer, after which its work was speedily performed. While Franklin's proposal was not inconsistent with his Deistic belief it was not adopted. There was not a prayer offered from the opening to the close of the Convention. Franklin himself says: "The Convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine were four of the greatest and noblest of men. All held substantially the same religious opinions. All were Deists. All rejected Christianity. Yet Washington, Jefferson and Franklin are held in grateful remembrance, while Paine has been reviled as no other man has been reviled. How do we account for this? Paine's mere rejection of Christianity does not account for it.

The "Age of Reason" was suppressed by the government in England. In America it could not be suppressed by law. The only way the clergy could suppress it here was to resort to slander, to cover its author's name with obloquy and make him appear so vile that no respectable bookseller would dare to sell it and no respectable reader dare to read it.

"In England it was easy for Paine's chief antagonist, the bishop of Llandaff [Watson] to rebuke Paine's strong language, when his lordship could sit serenely in the House of Peers with knowledge that his opponent was answered with handcuffs for every Englishman who sold his book. But in America slander had to take the place of handcuffs."—Dr. Conway.

Henry A. Beers: "His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of 'the young,' whose religious beliefs it might undermine."

James B. Elliott, of Philadelphia, says he well remembers the "time when it was impossible to obtain the 'Age of Reason' except under cover of the greatest secrecy and when he who was known to have read it was shunned as a dangerous person."

Hugh O. Pentecost: "Paine's offense was not that he was an Infidel, but that he made his meaning so clear that the common people could become Infidels, too."

"It is true that Paine was Republican and Deist, an enemy of kings and churches. But many men of great and undimmed honor held the same principles: Washington, Jefferson and Franklin and others of the 'Fathers' were Deists, and in England that creed was even fashionable in certain aristocratic quarters. Paine's real sin was not that he preached Deism in the land of Bolingbroke, Hume and Gibbon,... but that he succeeded for the first time in inoculating the people with his heresies."—The Nation, London.

"Mimnermus," an English writer, says: "There were critics of the Bible, it is true, before Paine's day, but they were mainly scholars whose works were not easily understood by ordinary folk. Paine himself, a man of genius, had sprung from the people, and he spoke their tongue and made their thoughts articulate."

"Paine held that the people at large had the right of access to all new ideas, and he wrote so as to reach the people. Hence, his book must be suppressed."—Prof. J. B. Bury, LL.D.

John S. Crosby: "The reason why his writings are excluded from our colleges is not on account of what he said about the prophets, but for fear that the realization of his ideas may diminish the profits."

"Recognizing the magic influence that a great name carries with it, the clergy have inscribed in the Christian roster the names of hundreds who were total disbelievers in their dogmas. As the venders of quack nostrums attach the forged certificates of distinguished individuals to their worthless drugs, to make them sell, so these theological venders present the manufactured endorsements of the great to make their nostrums popular. Washington, Jefferson and Franklin have all been denominated Christians, not because they were such, for they were not, but because of the influence that attaches to their names. Paine's opposition to priestcraft was too pronounced and too well known to claim him as an adherent of their faith, and so they have sought to destroy his influence by destroying his good name. Not only this, knowing the prejudice that has prevailed against Atheism, they have misrepresented his theological opinions and declared him an Atheist."—The Fathers of Our Republic.

"This injustice to him was perpetrated in defense of a system that does not care, because it does not dare to have its credentials and foundation critically examined; in other words, Paine has been maligned for more than a century by those interested in keeping veiled the image; he did what he could—and it was much—to uncover to the gaze of the world."—E. C. Walker.

William M. Salter, A. M.: "It is to the shame of religious prejudice in our country that he is not freely and gladly given his place alongside of Franklin and Washington."

"The rankest ingratitude the American people have ever exhibited has been that of the systematic attempt to blot the name of Paine from the memory of succeeding generations, and to allow no historical mention in the annals of the nation which he greatly and gloriously helped to found. But with the destruction of every error truth rises clear and bright. The time will come when his picture will be as familiar to school children as those of his great contemporaries, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin."—. J. B. Wilson.

Pretended reviewers of Paine, including the authors of many encyclopedic articles on Paine, writers who, for the most part, never read the "Age of Reason," characterize it as crude and superficial, declare its arguments to be weak and fallacious and its author to have had little or no influence in changing the religious opinions of his time. It is a sufficient answer to these critics to cite the fact that from thirty to forty elaborate replies from Christian writers followed it in rapid succession, each writer tacitly admitting that it needed answering and that all preceding efforts to answer it had been failures.

Paine's orthodox critics also affect to believe that his "Age of Reason" is no longer read, that it is an "out of print" book for which there is no demand. The fact is ever since the first London and Paris editions were published in 1794 there has been a constant and widespread demand for it.

Millions of copies have been printed and sold during this time, and today the demand for it is greater than ever before.

Dr. John W. Francis (referring to "Age of Reason"): "No work had the demand for readers comparable to that of Paine."

One bookseller of New York says that his sales of the "Age of Reason" now average more than five thousand copies a year. He is but one of many New York booksellers who sell Paine's book, while New York is but one of many cities where it has an extensive sale. A Chicago bookseller says that the "Age of Reason" is his best seller, that he sells thousands of them every year.

William Heaford (1913): "Two large editions of forty thousand copies each will be issued of this invaluable edition of Paine's great text book of Biblical exegesis [by Watts & Co., London]."

"There were sold in Burma [mostly to Buddhists] over ten thousand copies of the 'Age of Reason' last year."—U. Dhamaloka, President Buddhist Tract Society.

Arthur B. Moss: "During the past fifty years hundreds of thousands of copies of the 'Age of Reason' have been circulated in England and America alone.... The steady circulation of this work has done more than that of any other book to undermine the faith of Christians in all parts of the world."

H. Percy Ward (formerly an English clergyman): "Thomas Paine's 'Age of Reason' gave the first shock to my faith."

Wilson MacDonald: "I read the 'Age of Reason' when a boy, and I said, Paine is the hero for me."

Susan H. Wixon: "I read that book again and again, and always with increased interest. It set me to thinking more than any other bode I had ever read."

Sir Hiram Maxim: "It is indeed a very remarkable work. As a boy I read it with great care; as a man I have read it thoughtfully."

James D. Shaw: "Of all the books ever published, I doubt if any other has ever equaled the 'Age of Reason' in breaking from the human mind superstition's fetters."

"The effect of this pamphlet was vast."—London Times.

Edwin P. Whipple: "The most influential assailant of the orthodox faith was Thomas Paine."

Francis E. Abbot, Ph.D.: "His 'Age of Reason' was one of the greatest historic blows ever struck for freedom. Paine's name ought to be written in letters of gold in the roll of the world's heroes."

"It is still a living work, read by thousands, and carrying conviction wherever it finds an open mind."—James F. Morton, Jr.

Daniel Webster: "Mr. Girard got this provision of his will ('a school unfettered by religious tenets') from Paine's 'Age of Reason.'"

Paul Desjardines (referring to "Age of Reason"): "The book in which the modern conscience first dared, without indirection and without sarcasm, to set itself up as the judge of Christian tradition and laid the basis of a purified religion reduced to the only beliefs which appeared necessary as a foundation of fraternity among men."

Eugene M. Macdonald: "The 'Age of Reason' is irrefutable in its arguments, in its presentation of facts, in its analysis of the Bible, and absolutely convincing to fair-minded men in its conclusions. It was the forerunner of the Higher Criticism."

"During the past thirty years we have heard much of the Higher Criticism; hundreds of learned men throughout Christendom have been investigating the Bible.... These learned men, after working on the problem for many years, have come to the exact conclusions that Thomas Paine arrived at so many years ago."—Sir Hiram Maxim.

"Paine was a precursor of such men as Colenso, and Robertson Smith, and a large host of scholars besides."—Rev. O. B. Frothingham.

"It is a singular tribute to his sagacity and common sense that every material fact and conclusion stated by Paine in regard to the Bible has been sustained by the explorations and increased learning since his day."—T. B. Wakeman.

"Upon this theological treatise is founded all modern biblical criticism."—Elbert Hubbard.

Henry Frank: "There is nothing in the conclusions of the Higher Criticism that Paine did not anticipate."

"As to his anticipation of the Higher Criticism. that should be placed to his credit."—W. T. Stead.

Henry Yorke (with Paine in England and France): "There is not a verse in it [the Bible] that is not familiar to him."

J. P. Mendum: "As a critic and reviewer of the Bible his 'Age of Reason' is unanswerable."

Sir Leslie Stephen: "Paine's book announced a startling fact, against which all the flimsy collections of conclusive proofs were powerless. It amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied the instincts of cultivated scholars. When the defenders of the old orders tried to conjure with the old charms, the magic had gone out of them. In Paine's rough tones they recognized not the mere echo of coffee-house gossip, but the voice of deep popular passion. Once and forever, it was announced that, for the average mass of mankind, the old creed was dead."

Elbert Hubbard: "As Paine's book 'Common Sense,' broke the power of Great Britain in America, and the 'Rights of Man' gave free speech and a free press to England, so did the 'Age of Reason' give pause to the juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of Hosea Ballou who founded the Universalist church, and of Theodore Parker who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch. Channing, Ripley,' Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing, Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage, Crapsey, yes—even Emerson, and Thoreau, were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the way and made it possible, for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition."

Abraham Lincoln became and remained a disciple of Thomas Paine.

Chicago Herald (Feb., 1892): "In 1834, at New Salem, Ill., Lincoln read and circulated Vol-ney's 'Ruins' and Paine's 'Age of Reason,' giving to both books the sincere recommendation of his unqualified approval."

Col. Ward H. Lamon (biographer of Lincoln): "He [Lincoln] had made himself familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney—the 'Ruins' of the one, and the 'Age of Reason' of the other,... and then wrote a deliberate essay wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs."

"In this work he intended to demonstrate:

"'First, that the Bible was not God's revelation;

"'Secondly, that Jesus was not the Son of God.'"

(Lincoln's work was never published.)

"You insist on knowing something which you know I possess, and got as a secret, and that is, about Lincoln's little book on Infidelity. Mr. Lincoln did tell me that he did write a little book on Infidelity"—Col. James H. Matheny, Lincoln's political manager in Illinois.

James Ford Rhodes, LL.D.: "When Lincoln entered upon political life he became reticent regarding his religious opinions, for at the age of twenty-five, influenced by Thomas Paine,... he had written an extended essay against Christianity."

Hon. W. H. Herndon (law partner of Lincoln): "Paine became a part of Mr. Lincoln from 1834 to the end of his life."

"It was my good fortune to have had for some years an intimate acquaintance with Lincoln's partner for twenty-two years. Mr. Herndon was a man of academic education, and possessed a number of books that in that day would be considered a good library, and he told me that the books of his which fairly fascinated Lincoln were Volney's 'Ruins' and the works of Thomas Paine, especially the latter, of which he had memorized many pages."—Col. E. A. Stevens.

Hon. James Tuttle: "He [Lincoln] was one of the most ardent admirers of Thomas Paine I ever met. He was continually quoting from the 'Age of Reason.'"

It has been claimed that Lincoln changed his religious opinions after he became President. In a letter, written May 27, 1865, Col. John G. Nicolay, his private secretary, says: "Mr. Lincoln did not, to my knowledge, in any way, change his religious ideas, opinions, or beliefs, from the time he left Springfield till the day of his death."

Hon. Leonard Swett, who placed Lincoln in nomination for the Presidency, in answer to an inquiry from a friend, wrote as follows: "You ask me if Lincoln changed his religion towards the close of his life. I think not."

Next to Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's biographer, Colonel Lamon, has made the fullest and fairest presentation of Lincoln's religious opinions. He did not accept them but he was familiar with them and he was honest enough to present them. In Illinois he was the friend and confidant of Lincoln. When the time approached for Lincoln to take the Executive chair, and the journey from Springfield to Washington was deemed a dangerous one, to Colonel Lamon was intrusted the responsible duty of conducting him to the national capital. During the eventful years that followed he remained at the President's side, holding an important official position in the District of Columbia. When Lincoln was assassinated, at the great funeral pageant in Washington, he led the civic procession, and was, with Judge David Davis and Major General Hunter, selected to convey the remains to their final resting-place at Springfield. Regarding his friend's religious belief Colonel Lamon says: "Mr. Lincoln was never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ or the inspiration of the scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical Christians" (Life of Lincoln, p. 486). indefinite expressions about 'Divine Providence,' the 'Justice of God,' 'the favor of the Most High,' were easy and not inconsistent with his religious notions. In this accordingly he indulged freely; but never in all that time [1834 to his death] did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of men (Ibid, p. 502).

After Lincoln's death Mrs. Lincoln, herself a Christian, made the following statement: "Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the usual acceptation of those words" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 489).

Judge David Davis, his life-long friend and his executor, says: "He [Lincoln] had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term."

Lincoln did not believe in a personal God. His law partner, W. H. Herndon, relates the following in proof of this: In 1854 he asked me to erase the word God from a speech which I had written and read to him for criticism, because my language indicated a personal God, whereas he insisted that no such personality ever existed."—Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 445.

The Gettysburg address, as delivered by Lincoln, contained no mention of Deity. The phrase "under God" was inserted afterward, with Lincoln's consent, at the earnest solicitation of a friend. The recognition of God in the Emancipation Proclamation was inserted at the urgent request of Secretary Chase. The pious phrases to be found in his state papers are mostly the work of his cabinet ministers and secretaries.

Thirty years ago Judge James M. Nelson, a son of Thomas Pope Nelson, a distinguished statesman of Kentucky, and a great-grandson of Thomas Nelson, Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was intimately acquainted with Lincoln, both in Illinois and at Washington, published in the Louisville Times his "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln." Concerning Lincoln's religious belief Judge Nelson says:

"In religion Mr. Lincoln was of about the same belief as Colonel Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find he remained an unbeliever.... I asked him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published. 'Oh,' said he, 'that is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools!"

Col. Amos C. Babcock, for many years chairman of the Illinois State Republican Committee, and one of Lincoln's confidential agents during the war, in an article published in the Peoria Journal, says: "Lincoln was an Agnostic. During the war he sometimes talked religiously, but it was mere statecraft. He knew that everything depended upon his having the support of the religious people,... but he was for all that an utter disbeliever in the Christian religion."

In Springfield, where he lived, Lincoln's rejection of Christianity was known to every person and while he was very popular and greatly beloved by all who were not dominated by their religious prejudices, the bigots always opposed him. During the presidential campaign of 1860 his friends made a canvass of the voters of Springfield for the purpose of ascertaining how they were going to vote for president. The list was given to Lincoln. With Hon. Newton Bateman, state superintendent of public instruction, he went over it carefully, his principal desire being to know how the clergy were going to vote. When they had finished Lincoln said: "Here are twenty-three ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent' members of the churches, a very great majority of whom are against me."—Holland's Life of Lincoln, p. 236.

Why, it may be asked, was Lincoln's Infidelity not used against him everywhere in this campaign? Because the managers of both parties knew that Douglas, also, was a disbeliever in Christianity. An agitation of this question would have weakened the chances of both northern candidates while it would have strengthened the chances of Breckinridge, the southern candidate.

Lincoln did not believe in prayer. All the stories about his praying, without a single exception, are pure inventions. Let me cite an example. After Lincoln's death the Western Christian Advocate published the following story, a companion piece to Washington's prayer at Valley Forge: "On the day of the receipt of the capitulation of Lee, as we learn from a friend intimate with the late President Lincoln, the cabinet meeting was held an hour earlier than usual. Neither the President nor any member was able, for a time, to give utterance to his feelings. At the suggestion of Mr. Lincoln all dropped on their knees, and offered in silence and in tears their humble and heartfelt acknowledgment to the Almighty for the triumph he had granted to the national cause."

In reply to an inquiry respecting the authenticity of this story Hugh McCulloch, Lincoln's last secretary of the treasury, wrote as follows: "The description of what occurred at the Executive Mansion, when the intelligence was received of the surrender of the Confederate forces, which you quote from the Western Christian Advocate, is not only absolutely groundless, but absurd. After I became Secretary of the Treasury I was present at every Cabinet meeting, and I never saw Mr. Lincoln or any of his ministers upon his knees or in tears."

Our works of art are mostly mythological. And this is true of Christian art, as it is true of Christian theology. The Washington myth is now preserved in bronze, and the Lincoln myth will some day find expression on canvas.

Herndon says: "It is my opinion that no man ever heard Mr. Lincoln pray in the true evangelical sense of that word. His philosophy is against all human prayer as a means of reversing God's decrees."

The partnership of Lincoln and Herndon was formed in 1843. It was dissolved by the assassin's bullet in 1865. The love of these men for each other was like the love of Damon and Pythias. To the moral character of his illustrious partner Mr. Herndon pays this tribute: "The benevolence of his impulses., the seriousness of his convictions, and the nobility of his character, are evidences unimpeachable that his soul was ever filled with the exalted purity and the sublime faith of natural religion."

Lincoln's religion was the religion of Thomas Paine. "To do good is my religion," said Paine; "When I do good I feel good, and when I do bad I feel bad," said Lincoln.

For thirty years the church endeavored to crush Lincoln, but when, in spite of her malignant opposition, he achieved a glorious immortality, this same church, to hide the mediocrity of her devotees, attempts to steal his deathless name.

Six Historic Americans: "The Church claims all great men. But the truth is, the great men of all nations have, for the most part, rejected Christianity. Of these six historic Americans—the six greatest men that have lived on this continent [Paine, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant]—not one was a Christian. All were unbelievers.

"It is popularly supposed that Paine was a very irreligious man, while Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant were very religious. The reverse of this is more nearly true. Paine, although not a Christian, was a deeply religious man; while the others, though practicing the loftiest morals, cared little for religion."

("Six Historic Americans" contains more than five hundred pages of evidence in support of the fact that these six eminent men were all disbelievers in orthodox Christianity, including the testimony of one hundred witnesses, mostly friends and acquaintences, in proof of Lincoln's unbelief.)

"The 'Age of Reason' can now be estimated calmly. It was written from the viewpoint of a Quaker who did not believe in revealed religion, but who held that 'all religions are in their nature mild and benign' when not associated with political systems."—Encyclopedia Britannica.

"All national institutions of churches—whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish—appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit."—Age of Reason.

"Each of those churches show certain books which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the others of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all."—Ibid.

Paine's reason for rejecting the Bible is as logical as it is apparent. A plurality of so-called divine revelations cannot be harmonized with the attributes ascribed to. Deity. There are many Bibles. The world is divided into various religious systems. The adherents of each system have their sacred book, or Bible. Brahmins have the Vedas and Puranas, Buddhists the Tripitaka, Zoroastrians the Zend Avesta, Confucians the King, Mohammedans the Koran, and Christians the Holy Bible. The adherents of each claim that their book is a revelation from God—that the others are spurious. Now, if the Christian Bible were a revelation—if it were God's only revelation, as affirmed—would he allow these spurious books to be imposed upon mankind and delude the greater portion of his children?

A divine revelation intended for all mankind can be harmonized only with a universal acceptance of this revelation. God, it is affirmed, has made a revelation to the world. Those who receive and accept this revelation are saved; those who fail to receive and accept it are lost. This God, it is claimed, is all-powerful and all-just. If he is all-powerful he can give his children a revelation. If he is all-just he will give this revelation to all. He will not give it to a part of them and allow them to be saved and withhold it from the others and suffer them to be lost. Your house is on fire. Your children are asleep in their rooms. What is your duty? To arouse them and rescue them—to awaken all of them and save all of them. If you awaken and save only a part of them when it is in your power to save them all, you are a fiend. If you stand outside and blow a trumpet and say, "I have warned them, I have done my duty,", and they perish, you are still a fiend. If God does not give his revelation to all; if he does not disclose his divinity to all; in short, if he does not save all, he is the prince of fiends.

If all the world's inhabitants but one accepted the Bible and there was one who could not honestly accept it, its rejection by one human being would prove that it is not from an all-powerful and an all-just God; for an all-powerful God who failed to reach and convince even one of his children would not be an all-just God. Has the Bible been given to all the world? Do all accept it? Three-fourths of the human race reject it; millions have never heard of it.

"The word of God is the creation we behold."—Age of Reason.

"It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human languages, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

"Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation."—Ibid.

"The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the same towards each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."—Ibid.

"I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy."—Ibid.

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system."—Ibid.

"I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body."—Ibid.

It has been charged that Paine reviled Jesus in his book. He eulogized Jesus. ''Three noble and pathetic tributes to the Man of Nazareth are audible from the last century—those of Rousseau, Voltaire and Paine."—Dr. Conway.

"Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and amiable man. The morality that he preached was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar Systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.... But he preached also against the Jewish priests; and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood."—Age of Reason.

History repeats itself. What is alleged to have been the fate of Jesus was, in a measure, the fate of Thomas Paine. The penning of his honest thoughts on religion caused his good name to be consigned to everlasting infamy on earth and his soul doomed to endless misery in hell. The Jews who are said to have demanded the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary and the Catholics who burned Bruno at Rome are not more deserving of execration than are the Protestant assassins of Paine's character in England and America.

Referring to Paine's examination and analysis of the Bible and his criticisms of the church presented in the "Age of Reason," William Thurston Brown, in a lecture, said: "He brought to that, examination and analysis what almost no other mind in all the ages has brought: a mind absolutely free, a soul absolutely incorruptible, a character unstained by one act of compromise or treachery to friend or foe, a nature devoted, as few natures in all history have been, to the truth, and, more than all, a sense of the relation of moral and intellectual integrity to personal character and social well-being never surpassed and seldom equaled."

S. Kyd (counselor for Thomas Williams, imprisoned for publishing the "Age of Reason"): "I defy the prosecution to find in the 'Age of Reason' a single passage inconsistent with the most chaste, the most correct system of morals."

Prof. W. F. Jamieson: "I read from this famous book, the 'Age of Reason,' as pure sentiments as were ever penned by mortal man."

"When I was a boy I was often told that the writings of Thomas Paine 'were not fit for anybody to read.' My pastor said so, as did my Sunday school teachers and my parents. None of these had ever read them or knew anything about them....I believed them, and might still do so, had I not accidentally encountered a copy of the 'Age of Reason.' Upon reading it I found it to be as conventional as anything I had ever read in church or Sunday school, to say nothing of its more lofty reasoning."—Franklin Steiner.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says that "the 'Age of Reason' contains many passages of earnest and even lofty eloquence in favor of a pure morality."

"Its tone throughout is noble and reverent."—Rufus Rockwell.

Chapman Cohen: "Assuming Paine to be alive today, with his opinions unchanged, how much fault would he find with the teachings of many preachers? Very little I fancy. But does this mean, or would it mean, that Paine had become converted to Christianity? Not a bit of it. It would only mean that Christianity had become converted to Paine. In its most advanced form today, Christianity is little more than the eighteenth century Deism it so bitterly opposed, with a liberal dash of the word 'Christ.'"

"What has become of the Bible that Paine attacked? So far as the mere paper and type is concerned it is still here. But so tar as belief is concerned, it is Paine's Bible that is believed in by the majority of educated Christians."

Rev. Dr. E. L. Rexford: "If Paine were now living he would be looked upon by all enlightened clergymen and laymen as a very conservative critic of the Christian religion."

Rev. George Burman Foster (Gottingen and Chicago Universities): "What was radical in regard to the Bible in his day would be conservative today."

Rev. S. Fletcher Williams (England): "His principles were right, and today an increasing number of religious teachers and religious minded men stand only where he stood a century ago."

Dr. T. A. Bland: "The principles of the 'Age of Reason' are embodied in sermons—orthodox and radical—all over the country."

John Maddock:—

Rev. William Channing Gannett, D.D.: "What wonder Thomas Paine wrote his strong rank sarcasm! People should remember why he wrote it."

Moncure D. Conway, LL.D.: "It ['Age of Reason'] represents, as no elaborate treatise could, the agony and bloody sweat of a heart breaking in the presence of crucified Humanity. What dear heads, what noble hearts had that man seen laid low; what shrieks had he heard in the desolate homes of the Condorcets, the Brissots; what Canaanite and Midianite massacres had be seen before the altar of Brotherhood, erected by himself! And all because every human being had been taught from his cradle that there is something more sacred than humanity, and to which man should be sacrificed. Of all those massacred thinkers not one voice remains: they have gone silent: over their reeking guillotine sits the gloating Apollyon of Inhumanity. But here is one man, a prisoner, preparing for his long silence. He alone can speak for those slain between the throne and the altar. In these outbursts of laughter and tears, these outcries that think not of literary style, these appeals from surrounding chaos to the starry realm of order, from the tribune of vengeance to the sun shining for all, this passionate horror of cruelty in the powerful which will brave a heartless heaven or hell with its immortal indignation,—in all these the unfettered mind may hear the wail of enthralled Europe, sinking back choked with its blood, under the chain it tried to break. So long as a link remains of the same chain, binding reason or heart, Paine's 'Age of Reason' will live. It is not a mere book—it is a man's heart."

Edgar W. Howe: "The storm that arose over this book was never before equaled: it will never be equaled again."

Dr. Bond (A surgeon belonging to General O'Hara's staff): "Mr. Paine while hourly expecting to die, read to me parts of his 'Age of Reason'; and every night when I left him, to be separately locked up, and expected not to see him alive in the morning, he always expressed his firm belief in the principles of that book, and begged I would tell the world such were his dying opinions."

"The doctrines and sentiments which it contains may justly be regarded as the expressions of a dying man."—D. M. Bennett.

"When it [first part] appeared he was a prisoner; his life in Couthon's hands. He had personally nothing to gain by its publication—neither wife, child, nor relative to reap benefit by its sale. It was published as purely for the good of mankind as any work ever written."—Dr. Conway.

"While in prison he composed the second part, and as he expected every day to be guillotined it was penned in the very presence of death."—George W. Foote.

"Paine deserves whatever credit is due to absolute devotion to a creed believed by himself to be demonstrably true and beneficial. He showed undeniable courage, and is free from any suspicion of mercenary motives."—Sir Leslie Stephen.

Thomas Nixon and Captain Daniel Pelton: "All you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his house at the time it was expected he would die, we, intimate acquaintances of Thomas Paine, since the year 1776, went to his house—he was sitting up in a chair, and apparently in the full vigor and use of all his mental faculties. We interrogated him on his religious opinions, and if he had changed his mind or repented of anything he had said or written on that subject. He answered, 'Not at all.'"

Hon. Francis O. Smith, M. C.: "I have just parted with Hon. Richard M. Johnson, now a member of the House of Representatives [afterwards Vice-President of the United States], who told me that he visited Thomas Paine within the fortnight next preceding Paine's death; that he conversed with Paine and expressed a hope that he might recover; that Paine replied that he should shortly die, that he should never go out of his room again, and requested him to say to Mr. Jefferson that he had not changed his religious opinions in the slightest degree."

Walter Morton (with Paine when he died): "In his religious opinions he continued to the last as steadfast and tenacious as any sectarian to the definition of his own creed."

Dr. Philip Graves: "He [Amasa Woodsworth] told me that he nursed Thomas Paine in his last illness and closed his eyes when he was dead. I asked him if he recanted and called upon God to save him. He replied, 'No. He died as he had taught.'"

John Randel, Jr. (orthodox Christian): "The very worthy mechanic, Amasa Woodsworth, who saw Paine daily, told me there was no truth in such report."

Gilbert Vale, who interviewed Mr. Woodsworth, says: "As an act of kindness, Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his death; he frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last two nights of his life.... Mr. Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to his death."

The English writer, William Cobbett, a believer in Christianity, who lived for a time in this country, and who made a thorough investigation of the Paine calumnies, says: "Among other things said against this famous man is that he recanted before he died; and that in his last illness he discovered horrible fears of death.... It is a pure, unadulterated falsehood."

Cobbett, in 1819, announced his intention of publishing a biography of Paine. Soon after a pious fanatic of New York, named Collins, attempted to persuade him that Paine had recanted and begged him to state the fact in his book. He had induced a disreputable woman, Mary Hinsdale, an opium fiend, notorious for her lying propensities, to promise that she would tell Cobbett that she had visited Paine during his illness and that he had confessed to her his disbelief in the "Age of Reason" and expressed regret for having published it. Cobbett saw at once that the whole thing was a fraud. Collins, he says, "had a sodden face, a simper, and maneuvered his features precisely like the most perfidious wretch that I have known." However, he called on the woman. But her courage had forsaken her. Concerning the result of his visit he says: "She shuffled; she evaded; she equivocated; she warded off; she affected not to understand me." It was afterward proven that she had not conversed with Paine; that she had never seen him. But it did not need Cobbett's publication of the lie to secure its acceptance by the church. The occupant of nearly every orthodox pulpit was only too willing to publish it. This was the origin of the recantation calumny.

"Had Thomas Paine recanted, every citizen of New York would have heard of it within twenty-four hours. The news of it would have spread to the remotest confines of America and Europe as rapidly as the human agencies of that time could have transmitted it. It took ten years for this startling revelation to reach the ears of his sickbed attendants."—The Fathers of Our Republic.

Rev. Willet Hicks: "I was with him every day during the latter part of his sickness. He died as easy as any one I ever saw die, and I have seen many die."

"Paine died quietly and at peace."—Ellery Sedgwick.

"He died placidly and almost without a struggle."—Gilbert Vale.

"He spent the night in tranquility, and expired in the morning."—Madame Bonneville.

Noble L. Prentiss: "Paine's death-bed terrors were used in the pulpit for a long time. It is probable that they never existed. It is living not dying, that troubles most of us. When the inevitable hour comes; when the lights are being put out, the shutters closed, the end is peace."

Concerning Paine's recanting Colonel Ingersoll says: "He died surrounded by those who hated and despised him,—who endeavored to wring from the lips of death a recantation. But, dying as he was, his soul stood erect to the last moment. Nothing like a recantation could be wrung from the brave lips of Thomas Paine."

Col. John Fellows: "It [the recantation story] was considered by the friends of Mr. Paine generally to be too contemptible to controvert."

"Thomas Paine did not recant. But the church is recanting. On her death-bed tenet after tenet of the absurd and cruel creed which Paine opposed is being renounced by her. Time will witness the renunciation of her last dogma and her death. Then will the vindication of Thomas Paine and the 'Age of Reason' be complete."—The Fathers of Our Republic.