Part 16

An insurrection had broken out in one of his provinces. Troubled and perplexed, he was wandering through the halls of the palace when, suddenly, he stood face to face with the statue of Voltaire. That haughty smile, so natural to the face of the living Voltaire, had been transferred to his marble image; and now it seemed to mock the troubled emperor. He summoned one of his ministers and ordered him to remove the offensive work. The minister did so, placing it in an old lumber room of the palace. All went well with the emperor until one night the cry of "fire!" resounded in his ears. The palace was on fire. Rushing to the scene of the conflagration he chanced to pass through the very room to which the statue had been removed, and again he stood before the object of his hatred. The red glare of the flames added to the terrors of the scene, and, for a moment, Nicholas fancied himself translated to the dominions of Satan and standing before his throne. The flames were finally extinguished, the greater portion of the palace was saved, and with it the statue. But the remembrance of this terrible scene haunted him like an apparition all night long. He could not sleep. In the morning he summoned his minister and ordered him to destroy the work of art. Out of respect for the dead Catharine the order was unheeded. Years rolled by; the armies of England and France had invaded the Crimea and defeated with frightful slaughter the armies of the czar. Then flashed to St. Petersburg news of the bombardment of Sebastopol which ultimately fell. It was night, and, wild with anguish, Nicholas was again wandering through those desolate halls--lighted only by the weird moonbeams that came straggling through the palace windows--when, for the third time, he was confronted by the ghostly statue. Again he summoned his minister. But his iconoclastic spirit was broken. He no longer demanded the destruction of the statue, but simply begged his official to remove it to where he should never more behold it. The wily minister bethought him of a place never visited by his sovereign, and accordingly had it removed to the imperial library. Nicholas is no more; but the statue remains--a silent monarch in that realm of thought--an object, not of abhorrence and dread, but of admiration.

As the Russian bigot was haunted by the statue of Voltaire, so the bigots of our day and country are haunted by the memory of Paine. Theological insurrections are breaking out on every hand; the intellectual fires of the twentieth century are encircling and consuming the rude palace of Superstition; they hear the cannon of Science thundering before the walls of their Sebastopol. Terror-stricken, aimlessly and hopelessly they wander on, only to be confronted at every turn by the ghost of Thomas Paine. Unhappy beings, this will not forever last. Not always will the good name of Thomas Paine stand as a phantom to frighten bigots. Gently and lovingly his friends are removing it, passing it on from generation to generation, to a better and a grander age--to an age across whose threshold no bigot's foot shall ever pass. Then, when the Republic of the World has been established, and the Religion of Humanity has become the universal religion, all mankind will recognize the worth and revere the memory of him who wrote the political and religious creed of this glorious day:

--THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY, TO DO GOOD MY RELIGION.

THE END.