Part 4
Why is this? In my opinion it is the rising generation's dissatisfaction with traditional theology; they have outgrown it. Ingersoll said that once in five years the President of the Seminary summoned his professors before him to make oath that they had learned absolutely nothing during the preceding five years and would not learn anything for the next five years. And that promise was not subject to recall.
But even Andover couldn't remain in that condition. In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six it announced its new system of "progressive orthodoxy." This created a division between the Old School and the New, and marked the beginning of the end of Andover; and after much litigation it consented to be "gathered in" by Harvard or "swallowed," or perhaps they would say "merged."
They have now a new building located upon land adjacent to that of Harvard University, and the last account from the "Great Seminary" was that they had twenty-four pupils. The library of the Seminary and that of the Harvard Divinity School have been combined and are housed together in Bartlett Hall.
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The defenders of the Gospel of Christ don't seem to be increasing; on the contrary, there seems to be great depression in matters ecclesiastical these days, even in puritanical New England. It plainly shows that the young men of the present day are not anxious to wear the "Dog-Collar of Christianity," and as far as I've heard no Christian arose to remark that the morals of the "Reverend" Clarence Richeson were contaminated by reading the words of Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, Elbert Hubbard or Lemuel K. Washburn. The Reverend Clarence seemed to be a product of the Christian Bible, and talked to the last of his God and his Bible.
What is left of Christianity? Who wrote the Christian Bible? The smallest child in a Sunday School would answer the question by saying "God," but the most learned person on the globe would say, "I do not know." It is being admitted by thinking persons that answers to religious questions possess nothing more than a religious value. When a person is graduated from a Sunday School he is wiser than he will be after he has lived forty years, provided he learns anything by living.
"God" is a term used to express what man does not know, but it does not seem to me necessary to assign to the Bible divine authorship, as it can be accounted for on other grounds. It is certain that men and women have written books. It is not certain that there is a God and, if so, that he has written a book. If man could write the Bible, there seems to be no need for God to do so. It is a fact that no one knows who wrote a word of the Bible, and yet it will require many more years to kill the foolish superstition that God inspired certain men to write this book.
Nothing grows slower than truth, and nothing faster than superstition. Falsehood was never known to commit suicide. Unknown men wrote the Christian Bible, not an unknown God.
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Not many years ago I saw that a teacher in the Holyoke (Massachusetts) High School was dismissed for saying that Jesus was one of a family of ten. Jesus is a word that paralyzes the mental faculties. As to the accuracy of the statement we have only the Gospels for authority. At any rate, if Matthew and Mark are reliable he had four brothers and sisters.
In Matthew xiii: 54 we read: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?"
Mark confirms Matthew about the size of Mary's family.
I tried to learn something concerning this case, but silence a yard wide lay all about it. I fancy the teacher was silenced in some way. Leastwise I could learn nothing.
It doesn't take much to silence a teacher, or it didn't fifty years ago, especially if she were dependent upon teaching for her bread and butter, which I was.
I, at one time, tried to substitute one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's books to be read in school in the morning instead of the Christian Bible. I was informed by one of the committee that the Bible must be read every morning and the Ten Commandments repeated. The next morning I selected the "truthful" and startling account of Jonah whilst he was sojourning at the Submarine Hotel. I at that time made up my mind that if I were ever financially independent I'd say what I thought concerning the Christian religion, and no one doubts that I've done so.
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Jesus is the last hope of Christian theology. It can be but a few years at most when faith in Jesus as God will be the mark of intellectual stupidity. It seems to me that mankind will soon be sensible enough to dismiss this dogma to eternal oblivion.
It is the last relic of heathen mythology that clings to modern civilization. The Christian church is put to its utmost ingenuity to hide the absurdity in this dogma.
The dogma of the divinity of Jesus rests upon fictitious events, and hence its fate is sealed.
Many persons regard any one that calls Jesus a man as a blasphemer. There is a great amount of pious nonsense in the world, and there is more connected with Jesus than with any other character whom Christendom honors.
The reverence paid to Jesus by Christians is the homage of idolatry.
The first thing for people to do is to get rid of the silly notion that there is anything holy in the name of Jesus any more than in the name of Hercules, Bacchus or Adonis. All the gods of the past are myths to the present. Jesus stands in the way of the world's advancement. The path of civilization is over his grave. The mind has been fettered by worship of this myth. We want to get rid of the Christian superstition.
_Isn't it astonishing that many children should be taught about the "resurrection" before they can spell cat?_
Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants the worst is a slave in power.
When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to insure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who will be damned.
--_Robert Ingersoll._
COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
We need no myths, no miracles, no gods, no devils.--_Robert Ingersoll._
The world is my country and to do good is my religion.--_Thomas Paine._
The presence of a hypocrite is a sure indication that there is a Bible and a prayer-book not very far away.
COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
It is difficult to sketch this many-sided man. He was full of pity and sympathy for the poor and unfortunate. He was great enough to applaud the good, and good enough to forgive the erring. He could charm a child with his speech, or sway thousands by his magic words. He was the supreme philosopher of commonsense.
He knew how to answer a fool, but he never forgot to be courteous to an opponent. He would take the case of a poor man into court without pay; he would give a young reporter an interview when he could sell every word he spoke for a dollar; he would present the proceeds of a lecture to some worthy object as though he were throwing a nickel to an organ-grinder; he would lead a reform with a dozen workers if he believed them in the right, just as if he had a million followers; and where there was persecution he was on the side of the persecuted. Ingersoll was the truest American that America ever bore.
He was the orator of her rivers and mountains, of her hills and dales, of her forests and flowers, of her struggles and victories, of her free institutions, of her Stars and Stripes--the orator of the home, of wife and child, of love and liberty. The head, heart and hand of Ingersoll were perfectly united and worked together. As he thought he acted; when he had anything to say, he said it aloud. He was not ashamed of his thoughts. He did not hide or go around the corner, or beat about the bush. He spoke honestly what he saw, what he thought, what he knew.
MARK TWAIN'S BEST THOUGHT
The entire New Testament is the work of Catholic Churchmen.--_Lemuel K. Washburn._
God is not a fact; nothing that can be seen, heard or felt; nothing that can be found out or in. God is a verbal content.
MARK TWAIN'S BEST THOUGHT
The best thing Mark Twain ever said was, "I should like to see the ballot in the hands of every woman." Freethinkers should also remember him with gratitude; he said enough from our point of view to warrant that. "Give me my glasses," were his last words. It will be but a short time before some pious evangelical hypocrite will add, "I want to read my Bible!" They are already writing about his "highest sphere of thought," namely, his religious thought.
I remember when a Presbyterian deacon said of him, "I would rather bury a daughter of mine than have her marry such a fellow." The church people are all anxious to avoid their own history concerning Mark Twain and many other people.
The Reverend Doctor Twitchell said at Mark's funeral that a simple soul had gone trustingly to the beyond. He didn't mention where the beyond was, and he prayed to the Christian God that courage in the faith of immortality be given to those who mourn.
Through all these Christian notices runs an undercurrent that Mark Twain was only secondarily a humorist. I knew him somewhat in the old days and have heard him lecture. He certainly laughed superstition from the minds of thousands, and the most of his books bear witness to his broad and liberal views.
The Reverend Doctor Van Dyke mixed much religious sophistry with his remarks at the funeral of Twain, but the reverend doctor is a theological acrobat.
He preached once on the Atonement, and said there are a thousand true doctrines of the Atonement, which is saying substantially that no doctrine specifically is true--for instance, the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, to which Van Dyke pledged loyalty when he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He at that time ripped up the Westminster settlement, and reopened the whole question for discussion.
Any preacher who believes in the geology of Moses, the astronomy of Joshua, and the mathematics of the Trinity, must do an immense amount of "side-stepping."
_Christianity is only a bubble of superstition, and Jesus is reduced to a toy god of the Sunday School._
AN IRRELIGIOUS DISCOURSE ON RELIGION
Religion is inherited fear.--_Lemuel K. Washburn._
In my opinion a steeple is no more to be excluded from taxation than a smokestack.
Faith is the cross on which man crucifies his liberty.
AN IRRELIGIOUS DISCOURSE
We are living in the Twentieth Century of what is called the Christian Era, and we have not outgrown the superstitions of the First Century. And worse than this, we have not had the courage to abandon the fictions of the Book of Genesis for the truths of modern science. Just what the world is afraid of, that it fears to trust its senses, its reason, its knowledge, surpasses my understanding.
One of the first things that men and women should learn is, that there is nothing in the universe to be afraid of; that all the malignant deities are dead; that the ancient gods that presided over the destiny of earth and of earthly things have all fallen from the sky; that in the realm of Nature everything is natural, and that no man is pursued by a god of wrath and vengeance who would punish him for his unbelief. Every god that can not hear the truth without getting mad should be dethroned. Every priest who can not join in singing the songs of civilization should be warned to look out for the engine while the bell rings.
This world of ours is a world to be enjoyed, but it can not be enjoyed if we fear every manifestation of Nature and if we put a cruel god behind every cloud.
Let us live without fear, without superstition, without religion.
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There is nothing above, beneath or around you that cares whether you are a Christian or an unbeliever. The real reason why a priest hates an unbeliever is that he can not get a dollar out of him. He damns those who know better than to swallow his say-sos. But it still remains a fact that an infidel can raise as many bushels of potatoes to the acre as can the Roman Catholic. The sun will not wrong an honest man. The stars will not punish a single human being for telling the truth. The sky will not persecute a person who gives his thoughts, his talents, his time, to finding ways to help mankind.
Everything that man believes in that can not be found, that can not be proved, that can not stand the test of commonsense: everything that contradicts Nature, that is opposed to established facts, that is contrary to the laws of the universe, must be given up.
We must have a new man: the man born of woman, not the man made by God; the man who has been growing better ever since his advent on earth, not the man who has been growing worse; the man who started with nothing and has conquered the earth, the sea and the air; not the man who began perfect and has not got halfway back; the man who made the telescope, the steam-engine, the power-loom, the telephone and the wireless telegraph; not the man who made the thumbscrew, the rack, the ducking-stool and the stocks; the man who has carried the torch of liberty to enlighten the world, not the man who has carried the crucifix to enslave mankind.
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It is quite common to be told what Moses said or what Jesus said. Now, if all that these two Hebrew gentlemen (who in my opinion never lived) said, is preserved in the Bible, I appeal from what they said to those who know more. I assert that Moses said a lot of stuff that isn't so, and a lot more that never was so, and that all that Jesus is said to have said is practically worthless to the world today; that there is not in all of his utterances a single word that will help man to get a living, a single word that will aid man in his struggle for knowledge; that there is not a statement of a single scientific fact, or a plea for human liberty in all his language. He told his generation nothing that was not already known, except a mess of superstitious nonsense about angels and devils, heavens and hells. His so-called gospel of salvation was to follow him, and he landed on a cross.
The truth is this: the world has outgrown Moses and Jesus. It does not take commands from either. This age believes in work, not worship; in deeds, not prayers; in men, not monks; in liberty, not in pious obedience; in human rights, not in submission; in knowledge, not in revelation.
For hundreds of years man was bound by a religious faith, and the priest was his cruel master. He dared not doubt; he dared not rebel; he dared not dream of freedom; but there came a time when religious tyranny could no longer be borne. Then Mankind cried out to the Church: Give back man's brain to man; restore to him the mind you have robbed him of; take from his head and heart the paralyzing fear that makes him a coward and a slave, and leave to him the liberty with which Nature dowered him, that his mind may discover and preserve those mighty thoughts which make man brave, honest, free and happy.
That cry was heard far. It was heard by glad ears, and liberty sprang from the ground like the warriors from the fabled dragon-teeth of Cadmus. The war between liberty and tyranny, between fact and fable, between truth and falsehood, between man and priest, was on, and for centuries this war has raged, nor is it yet over. Freedom still lies bleeding, but victory for the right will sooner or later be won.
That victory will not be complete until every man will dare to say: Let come what will come, no man, be he priest, minister or judge, shall sit upon the throne of my mind, and decide for me what is right, true or good. I am my own master, my own teacher, my own guide. I will keep my reason free from control and will never surrender my own convictions to the dictates of another.
Nature has made every man commander of his own destiny.
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But we are yet victims of ecclesiastical villainy. The priest is still the worst enemy of mankind. His church is like that monster of fiction which lived on little children. In the name of the children I protest against the action of the Church in stealing their tender brains, in making them slaves of superstition before they are old enough to know to what they are doomed.
The age of consent to a religious faith should be determined by law, if necessary. Today any boy or girl may be the victim of a designing priest or clergyman, or of a designing religious system.
No person under eighteen years of age should be allowed to join a church or consent to a statement of faith. Mental purity should be guarded and protected as well as physical purity.
While the Church is powerful in numbers and while its religion is supported by wealth and fashion, the world is becoming more and more emancipated from its pernicious influence. The light that truth gives is still ahead of us, but _it is there_, and some day the world will grow warmer under its rays and men become better and kinder to one another.
A hundred years ago the God worshiped in orthodox churches went about drowning little boys and girls who went skating on Sundays. Those were the "good old days" when men and women had religion for breakfast, dinner and supper, and took it to bed with them. It takes a long time to get such a horrible religion out of the system.
Men and women still have a mean faith, a faith which can see others damned with satisfaction if they can only be saved. Nothing but a mean religion could make men and women as mean as that. I would rather starve than preach the doctrine of endless pain for a human being--or even for a dog. I believe that this world is hard and dark and cruel enough without borrowing suffering from another world to make darker and harder the road of life and add torture to the nights of pain and misery.
A church must be sunk pretty low when it lives on the fears and tears of mankind; but what lower depths of degradation does it sound when it can deliberately create fears and tears that it may live and thrive in its vile and cruel business! A human being without pity should be shunned and despised; but a human being who can fill the heart with terror should not be allowed in a civilized community.
The mind today wants to get out into the open, into the free daylight, wants to walk the earth, look at the stars and sky, feel the warmth of the sun and smell the odor of the ground; it has become tired of being shut up in a faith, in a creed, in a church; tired of being kept in the darkness of the past, in the tomb of dead thoughts, in the moldy caskets of unreal things, and in the dungeon of fear.
The mind is striving to break the chains of the priest and be free from the bonds of the Church.
You can not have men free where the priest demands and claims their obedience. The greatest menace to our national institutions is the power that controls men; that controls their thoughts, their actions and their destinies. Liberty can survive only where men are free: free to think, free to read, free to speak and free to act. The mind must not be bound by any vow of obedience. One man, no matter what his office, what his position, what his rank, has no right to compel another's obedience. This is the worst oppression on earth.
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What is needed in this country is more men who dare think and speak for themselves; who dare belong to no church; who dare work for the right as they see it, and speak the truth as they understand it; who dare live their own lives independent of fashion's demands or society's usages; who dare put liberty above conformity, and who dare defy customs, law and religion in their zeal to help their fellow-beings.
There is more than one liberty--more than the liberty to do right--that is partly won for every civilized being. There is another liberty that is dangerous and that persists even where civilization exists--the liberty to take another's liberty from him. This liberty is usually taken from another in the name of God and what is called holy; but there is nothing on earth so holy as liberty, and he who takes it from another robs him of the dearest right possessed by man. Binding a human being with the chains of faith before that being is old enough to judge whether the faith is reasonable or true is the assassination of freedom.
The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political but religious, and the preservation of our free institutions does not depend upon our army and navy, but upon the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical slavery. As Thomas Paine well said, "Spiritual freedom is the root of political liberty." You can not have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free.
There is too much faith in this country and too little sense. Men have given up about everything they possess to be saved; but it is more necessary, and more commendable in the workingmen of this nation, to save their dollars than to save their souls.
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A subject that needs to be investigated quite as much as, if not more than, the high cost of living is the high cost of worship. There may be some justice in the criticism of the price of meats. We must remember, however, that we do get something for our money when we buy meat, but let us not forget that we get absolutely nothing for the money spent for worship. Money given to the Church is lost to the world. It is not used to improve homes; to help the poor and needy; to alleviate suffering; to bring hope to the sick or to give a few comforts to old age. It goes into the pocket of ecclesiastical greed.
This country just at present is suffering from those twin curses of humanity--religion and Bull-Mooseism. The priest and Bull-Mooseism are the two worst trouble-makers in this country. To get rid of this precious pair of knaves would be to bring peace on earth and hasten the dawn.
I don't know which is the bigger knave, the priest or the Bull-Mooser, but I do know that the priest is engaged in the meaner business of the two.
When a man tries to sell me a mouse-trap to catch elephants, I am suspicious of his mental sanity; and when a man tells me that eternal happiness can be won by enlisting in his salvation army, I question his moral sanity. I know that religion is offered at cut rates, but there is no discount on morality. You can not have the reward of good behavior unless you behave. You may save your soul by saying, "I believe," but you have to _do_ something to save your body.
There is too much of this "believe-in-me" business. You don't want to believe in any one you know nothing about. The faith of a little child in its parents is beautiful, but the faith of a grown-up man in a priest is idiotic. Faith has ruined more than it has saved. With faith goes obedience, and he or she who obeys is lost.
There is no honest call today to believe, because there is opportunity to know. Faith is hatched in the nest of imposition. He who yields obedience is a fool, and he who demands it is a scoundrel.