Now let us come to this old law--this law that was asleep for a hundred years before this constitution was adopted--this law coiled like a snake beneath the foundations of the Government--this law, cowardly, dastardly--this law passed by wretches who were afraid: to discuss--this law passed by men who could not, and who knew they could not, defend their creed--and so they said: "Give us the sword of the State and we will cleave the heretic down." And this law was made to control the minority. When the Catholics were in power they visited that law upon their opponents. When the Episcopalians were in power, they tortured and burned the poor Catholic who had scoffed and who had denied the truth of their religion. Whoever was in power used that, and whoever was out of power cursed that--and yet, the moment he got in power he used it: The people became civilized--but that law was on the statute book. It simply remained. There it was, sound asleep--its lips drawn over its long and cruel teeth. Nobody savage enough to waken it. And it slept on, and New Jersey has flourished. Men have done well. You have had average health in this country. Nobody roused the statute until the defendant in this case went to Boonton, and there made a speech in which he gave his honest thought, and the people not having an argument handy, threw stones. Thereupon Mr. Reynolds, the defendant, published a pamphlet on Blasphemy and in it gave a photograph of the Boonton Christians. That is his offence. Now let us read this infamous statute:
"_If any person shall willfully blaspheme the holy name of God by denying, cursing, or contumeliously reproaching his being_"--
I want to say right here--many a man has cursed the God of another man. The Catholics have cursed the God of the Protestant. The Presbyterians have cursed the God of the Catholics--charged them with idolatry--cursed their images, laughed at their ceremonies. And these compliments have been interchanged between all the religions of the world. But I say here to-day that no man, unless a raving maniac, ever cursed the God in whom he believed. No man, no human being, has ever lived who cursed his own idea of God. He always curses the idea that somebody else entertains. No human being ever yet cursed what he believed to be infinite wisdom and infinite goodness--and you know it. Every man on this jury knows that. He feels that that must be an absolute certainty. Then what have they cursed? Some God they did not believe in--that is all. And has a man that right? I say, yes. He has a right to give his opinion of Jupiter, and there is nobody in Morristown who will deny him that right. But several thousands years ago it would have been very dangerous for him to have cursed Jupiter, and yet Jupiter is just as powerful now as he was then, but the Roman people are not powerful, and that is all there was to Jupiter--the Roman people.