New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1897-12-08
"Did Christ or any of his apostles add

to the sum of useful knowledge? Did
they say one word in favor Of any sci
ence, of any art? Did they explain any
of the phenomena OF nature? Any OF
the facts that effect the life Of man?
Did they say anything in favor Of inves-
tigation-of study-of thought? Did
they teach the gospel Of self-reliance, of
industry, of honest effort?
"The saints didn't assist theil fellow
men. The fellowmen assisted them.
They did not labor for Others. They
were beggars, parasites, vermln. They
were insane. They took no thought for
the morrow. They mutilated their bod
les, SCARED their flesh, and destroyed
their minds for the sake of happiness in
another world. During the journey of
life they kept their eyes on the grave.
Their means made all the music they
wished to hear.
.What has the church done! For GEN.
turies it kept the earth fat. For cen
turies it made ALL the hosts of heaven
travel around this world. For centuries
it chung to sacred knowledge and fought
facts with the feroclty Of tiend. For
centuries it hated the useful. 1t was the
deadly enemy of medicine. Disease was
produced only by devils and could be
cured only by priests, decaying bones
and holy water. Doctors were the rivals
of priests. They diverted the revenues.
ssThe church made the wife slave
the property of the husband-and it
placed the husband as much above the
wife as Christ was above the husband.
It taught thai nun is purer, nobler
than mother. It induced millions of
pure and CONSCIENTIOUS girls to renounce
the joys of life to take the veil woven
of night and death, to wear the habili-
ments of the dead, and made them be-
lieve they were brides of Christ.
"Shall we thank nature? Does nature
know that we exist? We do not know.
But we do know that nature is going to
murder us all.
"Why should we thank nature? If we
thank God or nature for the sunshine
and rain, for health and happiness,
whom shall we curse for famine and
pestilence, for earthquake and cyclone,
for disease and death? If we cannot
thank nature-if we cannot kneel to a
guess, or PROSTATE ourselves before a
perhaps shall we thank?
"What have the worldly done? They
went into science, medicine, established
schools and taught men to think. They
have rescued us from the prisons Of fear,
and snatched our souls from the fangs
and claws Of superstihon's loathesome
crawling, flying beasts, have given us
the liberty to think and the courage to
| express our thoughts.
"Whom shall we thank? Standing
here at the close of the nineteenth CEN
fury amid the trophies of thought, the
triumphs of genius, here under the flag
of the great republic, knowing some
| thing of the history of man, I most
reverently thank the good men, the
good women of the past. I thank the
kind fathers, the loving mothers of the
savage days. I thank the father who
spoke the first gentle word, the mother
who first smiled upon her babe.
II thank the first true friend, the po-
cts, the artists, the philosophers, the
thinkers, the astronomers, the geolo.
gists, the ANTAGONISTS, the chemists, the
dramatists, the great novelists, the great
sculptors, the great painters, the states
men, the scientists"