For a hundred years hell has been gradually growing cool, the flames have been slowly dying out, the brimstone is nearly exhausted, the fires have be… - Robert Green Ingersoll

The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.

Some people have insisted that this life is a kind of school for the production of self-denying men and women—that is, for the production of character. The statistics show that a large majority die under five years of age. What would we think of a schoolmaster who killed the most of his pupils the first day? If this doctrine is true, and if manhood cannot be produced in heaven, those who die in childhood are infinitely unfortunate.

^23. “But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. ^24. “And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.”^{— Deut. Vii.} If these words had proceeded from the mouth of a demon, if they had been spoken by some enraged and infinitely malicious fiend, I should not have been surprised. But these things are attributed to a God of infinite mercy.