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. . . Religion is either dope or dynamite and it is a tragic fact that with 99 out of 100 it is a dope—the "opiate of the people."

. . . The social reforms in the nineteenth century were a mere stunt to give an illusion of progress.

. . . Religion gives its sanction to every warship launched.

. . . You cannot dissociate religion from religious institutions, because man is a social being, and therefore his religon always tends to be organised as an institution.

. . . After the Reformation the Bible instead of the Church was set up as the tyrant.

. . . When Christianity was a banned sect, its followers uphold freedom of worship. When they became the dominant sect, they changed their ideas.

—Miss D. Fowler.

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. . . It is true the Pilgrim Fathers, a religious people, founded modern America. It is true they were jolly fine people. But it was because of religious persecution they left America.

—D. M. Smith.

. . . The church has always been defeatist in its attitude to social problems.

. . . The church explained slavery and injustice as having been ordained by God as punishments for sin.

. . . In the East, religion is responsible for the two greatest obstacles to progress: ancestor worship and the caste system.

—R. Hurst.

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. . . Social progress is retarded by vested interests. The church itself is a vested interest.

. . . The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by a great religious revival. While men were on the breadline, the church was more concerned with the hereafter.

. . . Greece and Rome made their greatest progress when religion was at its lowest ebb.

. . . Religion developed out of superstition rather than supplanted it.

—P. Day.

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. . . By promises of future bliss, religion takes people's minds off present problems. For centuries Russia advanced scarcely a whit, mainly because of the power of the church.

. . . Napoleon re-established religious institutions because he saw they would assist him to maintain his tyranny.

—J. S. Rumbold.