I can not alter my will, or be other than what I am, and can not deserve either reward or punishment."[31] Before hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, a lecturer publicly denied the right of either God or man to invade his individuality, by taking vengeance upon him for any crime whatever.

Thousands, who are not yet Pantheists, are so far infected with the poison that they utterly deny any right of vindictive punishment to God or man.
But this is not all.

Again and again have we listened with astonishment to men, declaring that there was no moral law--no standard of right and wrong, but the will of the community.

Of course it was quite natural, after such a declaration, to assert that a wife who should remain with a husband of inferior intellectuality, or unsuitable emotions, was committing adultery; that private property is a legalized robbery; and that when a citizen becomes mentally or physically unfit for the business of life, he confers the highest obligation on society, and performs the highest duty to himself, by committing suicide, and thus returning to the great ocean of being! We might think that confusion of right and wrong could not be worse confounded than this; yet there is a blacker darkness still.

_The distinction between good and evil is absolutely denied._ The Hindoo Pantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and God can not offend against himself; there is no sin--it is all _maya_--delusion.