Religion a Disease.

When one reads a religious journal, or even one which, like our own Boston "Herald," is only occasionally given to religiosity, he is pretty certain to be reminded of the sick-room, and Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences gets new proof. That the religious atmosphere is the atmosphere of the hospital, full of sickness and of nursing, is painfully revealed to him. Low, suppressed speech, solemn wailing, and forms prostate or bending; awe-struck, blind, believing, fearing, prospecting, entreating, coddling, soul-nourishing with sip of wine and crumb of bread; priests, deacons, and pews, - ah, well, the reminders are too many, - everything but health! And therefore it is, when an old error, a bad superstition is assailed, the truly religious editor cries out: "Oh, spare the blow; leave it, leave it; touch not a single folly; they have sheltered, protected, comforted; the world will never give them up. Never! never! ever!" All of which may be set down to mean: "The world is sick; the world is in a hospital; it can not bear strong food; from the light it shrinks. Leave it there, shrouded in the 'dim religious light;' leave it to the divine mercy, to the providence that tempers the wind to the shorn lambs."
But with all due respect to whom it may concern we say: - Not so; the world isn't sick, - it's frightened. It is stupid and dull, but not sick, and is sadly in need of exercise. It requires good sense, wholesome truth, and the general breath of Liberty. Don't be afraid; the world will not die. You can't kill it. It is full of grit, has plenty of courage, and can face all the Facts of this universe with entire equanimity.
Ah! thou poor, religious, skulking world, awake! arouse! arise! Take up thy bed, cast it away, and walk!