But we do not deny salvation to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody who is good.

God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.

Nor are we about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of men held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in their classics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christian clergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of God, than bad Christians; which last may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians.

But the question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or by generalities; we must have specified individual heathen saints.

When, however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to be only fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of our States; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according to their accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they got there before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public.
Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stock specimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for the admiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century.