Of course Mr.Roosevelt, who is both intellectual and broad-minded, knows better than that today.

But it is astonishing how that ridiculous and unsuitable epithet--( a "trinity of lies" as one historian has styled it)--has stuck to a memory which I am sure is sacred to any angels who may be in heaven! "Atheist" is a word which could be applied to few men less suitably than to Paine.

From first to last, he preached the goodness of God, the power of God, the justice and mercy and infallibility of God; and he lived in a profound trust in and love for God, and a hopeful and courageous effort to carry out such principles of moral and national right-doing as he believed to be the will of his beloved Creator.
"If this," as one indignant enthusiast exclaimed, "is to be an Atheist, then Jesus Christ must have been an Atheist!" As incongruous as anything else, in the judgment of Paine, is the fact that he has, apparently, been adopted by the pacifists.

The pacifists and--Paine!--Paine who never in all his seventy years was out of a scrap! They could scarcely have chosen a less singularly unfit guiding star, for Paine was a confirmed fighter for anything and everything he held right.

And his militancy was not merely of action but of the soul, not only of policy or necessity but of spiritual conviction.
When even Washington was inclined to submit patiently a bit longer, it was Paine who lashed America into righteous war.