Part 6

I do not believe in the infallibility of any man, but I believe in the improvability of all men. Is man no longer heir to the virtues of life, that he must erect monuments of praise forever over the name of Jesus? I shall take the liberty to express my dissent from the common expressions of admiration for this man. I can not praise everything which he did, nor can I think that every word he uttered is a star of wisdom. He said some good things, but much of what he said is good for nothing. His theology will do for Sunday Schools, but it will not stand half a dozen questions by commonsense. His Hell is barbarous, his Heaven childish, and his ideas of humanity show but a superficial knowledge of human nature. His life can not be imitated with advantage to the race, and his notions of human existence are wholly inadequate to the complex, varied civilization of this age.

Let us see what he did. He paid no filial respect to his parents; he refused to acknowledge his mother and his brothers; he lived a roving, wandering life; he paid no heed to the laws of his country; he placed no value upon industry, and even went so far as to tell men and women that God would feed and clothe them; he helped himself to the property and possessions of other people without paying for them, and destroyed what belonged to others without offering an equivalent; he had no property, no home, not a place to lay his head; he hated the rulers, yet sought to establish a kingdom for himself; he failed to reach the throne he sought, and died upon the malefactor's cross.

Is this the man for the Twentieth Century to honor? Is this the man for men to follow in this age? Is this the man whose life all should strive to imitate?

The man who took the life of Jesus for a model would hate father and mother, brother and sister; he would have neither wife nor child; he would live from place to place; he would be a lawbreaker and an idler; he would live the life of a wanderer and die the death of a criminal.

Have I put a false color in this picture which I have painted? Have I misrepresented the life of Jesus? Read the four Gospels and see. I find this character sketched in the New Testament, and it is there called Jesus, and it is this character which we are adjured to imitate if we would be perfect.

To the man or woman who declares that the life of Jesus is the way to salvation, I have only this to say, "Why then do you not imitate it?"

Now, I wish to ask, "What kind of morals would such a man as we have sketched naturally teach?"

You will answer, "The morals he lived." At least, we find such morals taught in the New Testament.

My point here is: If the life of Jesus was an honest, faithful exponent of his moral teachings, then such a morality as he practised is not wanted today--and that such a morality is not wanted is shown by the fact that no one practises it.

I know that it is considered respectable and pious to profess great admiration for the doctrines taught by Jesus, and the world has paid them the outward compliment of profession, saying that the moral code of the New Testament was the despair of man; but it has never seriously set to work to reduce this code to practise, which proves that such profession is only a part of the universal accomplishment of fashionable hypocrisy.

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Do not understand me as saying that there is no moral precept contained in the Gospels which is worthy of being practised. I make no such declaration, and wish no such construction put upon my words. What I desire to enforce is this: That the morality of Jesus sprang from a philosophy which has passed away, and therefore, that it is, for the greater part, obsolete and worthless. That Jesus shared the general belief of his age that the world was soon to be destroyed, is shown by his estimate of earthly things; and that a morality founded upon such a belief should survive and outlast the faith which inspired it reveals a condition of things that is not flattering to our intellectual perception or to our moral sense.

The morals of the New Testament are founded upon a theory of the universe which is found now only in creeds--those epitaphs of religion. The most superficial observation is sufficient to enable us to perceive that theology can no longer be the basis of morality, and that the authority of the New Testament can not be accepted on this question.

There is nothing more firmly impressed upon the mind of man than the fact of the stability of the universe, notwithstanding an occasional earthquake; and the value of earthly things has a higher moral significance consequent upon the assurance of material existence.

Morality must have a physical basis; that is, the moral code which man can practise to his safety and his honor must not contradict human nature. The defeat of the New Testament morals is assured by their antagonism to the nature of man. The morals of Jesus were designed to fit man for what he called the "Kingdom of Heaven," but the only morality which is worth the name is that which fits man for living his life on earth.

Jesus constantly urged men to the performance of moral duties that they might be rewarded by their "Father in Heaven." Such a motive for good behavior is offensive to the rational mind, and moral commandments which are enforced with a Heaven and a Hell do not spring from an opinion of human nature which deserves our respect.

The most comprehensive criticism which one can make upon the morals of the New Testament is, that they are not practicable. Is the character of Christians fashioned by the power and influence of the words which Jesus left in the world? This question should be pressed to an answer, and honesty would answer it in a way which would shake every church-building in the land and tear the mask from the face of every Christian worshiper on the globe.

Jesus taught that men and women were to love him more than father or mother, son or daughter. Imagine human beings loving a man whom they know nothing about, and consequently can care nothing about, and who has no more claim to their affections than has the ghost in Hamlet, better than they love parent or child! Such morality as this is not fit for a Hottentot.

If any command is implanted in our nature and is a part of the bone and fiber of our very being, it is to love beyond all else those who have borne us and cared for us through infancy and childhood, and those whose existence depends upon us, and to whom we stand pledged by the holiest ties of our beings, to watch over and protect, to care for and love, to the last days of our lives. It is love of parent and child which is alike the supreme obligation and the supreme benefaction of our humanity. No being has walked this earth who had the moral right to demand a greater love than is due to father and mother, son and daughter; and if Jesus claimed such affection, his claim is an impertinence which we are bound to treat with indignation and scorn.

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For the Christian Church to make of the words of Jesus commands to the world is to deserve the severest condemnation. Jesus taught that men were not to make for themselves a home, not to cultivate those virtues which blossom into the family, and not to save the fruits of their toil to make old age with its tottering form and feeble limbs less liable to the hardships of the world, but he summed up all the duties of life in these words: "Sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me."

To obey such teaching as this would overturn every monument of prosperity upon the earth, blight every feeling of happiness that gladdens the heart of man, and convert the busy, working, loving world into one vast army of tramps, following a king without a kingdom, a leader without a purpose, a commander with nothing to give those who followed his command.

Jesus taught that we were not to resist evil; that is, that if a thief stole our watch and chain, we were bound to run after him and give him our purse also; that if a man took away our coat, we should wrong him if we did not send him the balance of the suit; that if a man struck us on one side of the face, we were to invite him to strike us on the other side also; that if, as it were, the armies of some foreign powers were to invade our land, and burn and destroy our cities and towns, pillage our homes and murder our families, we were in duty bound to look upon them as benefactors and thank them for their work of destruction, and ask them to come and do it again.

Such moral teaching as this would make a nation of cowards and slaves.

It is our duty to punish thieves and robbers, not to reward them; to resist wrong and injustice, not to submit to them like cravens; to protect our country from foes, even though we are obliged to shed their blood and our own in so doing.

Is there a Christian on the globe who pays the least heed to a single one of the moral commands of Jesus? You all know there is not.

I need not tell the Christian Church that the morality taught by Jesus is decaying when every church is its coffin, and every minister its grave-digger.

If you wish to see how much respect for the moral teachings of Jesus one of his professed followers has, just steal his coat, and if he gives you his cloak also, as he is commanded to do by his Lord and Master, please publish his name in the daily papers--for the benefit of others who wish to get a cloak.

We find among the express commands of Jesus this advice: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." The most liberal translation of this counsel can not make it anything but poor advice. Every material blessing of mankind has come from the savings of human labor, and the value of laying up treasures upon earth is more evident than that of laying up treasures in Heaven, whatever this saying may mean. When every Christian tries as hard to be poor as he tries now to get rich, we shall think that he has some regard for the moral teachings of Jesus.

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It must be apparent to all that what may be claimed as Christian morality is not only decaying, but that it ought to decay. There is no sense in it. Imagine a man telling people in the Twentieth Century to "take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," and endeavoring to prove that because the fowls of the air do not have to broil a beefsteak for their breakfast or make biscuit for tea, human beings will be fed whether they provide anything for their appetites or not.

Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father will feed us because we are better than the fowls of the air, and that he will clothe us because he clothes the grass of the field. Our earthly fathers seem to have done more in the way of providing food and clothing for us before we were able to take care of ourselves than any Heavenly Father. Others may put their trust in God for something to eat and drink and wear, if they wish to, but I prefer to give the matter a little thought myself.

Jesus concludes these admonitions by saying, "Take no thought for the morrow." This is bad counsel, and it shows the good sense of mankind that it has never been followed. The whole world lives in what one of our poets called, "The bright tomorrow of the mind."

We will refer to only one more of the peculiar moral injunctions of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, in the forty-fourth verse, we read, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

If we were to do as herein commanded, we should have an inverted morality which would place the crown of virtue upon the forehead of vice.

Let us see if the preacher of this doctrine practised it.

Did Jesus bless the Scribes and Pharisees when they refused to acknowledge his claim to be the Messiah? This is the blessing which he pronounced upon them: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" That is not a very sweet blessing!

And these men did not curse Jesus. They only did not agree with his opinions. Jesus, also, in his wrath against his enemies, calls them, in the seventeenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, "Ye fools and blind," forgetting, doubtless, that he had previously declared, when preaching on the Mount, "Whosoever shall say, 'Thou Fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire."

The moral teachings of Jesus were inspired by a false estimate of all earthly things. There is no doubt that Jesus believed the world was coming to an end in his generation. How to get into the Kingdom of Heaven was of more consequence than how to reform mankind, or improve the world, since the end of earthly things was near at hand. This appears to have been the thought of Jesus, and explains much of his language.

But today we do not believe that the earth has run its course, and that the end of all material things is near at hand. We are living without fear of failure on the part of the universe, and are giving our attention more to human wants than to divine commands.

_Not fear of offending God, but fear of wronging man, is the highest basis of morals._ We have reached a time when apologies are not respected, when repentance is looked upon as the mask of villainy, when the stature of life is most shorn of manliness by prancing in the garb of humility, when a brave facing of life's trials and demands counts for more than cowardly surrender in the name of God. In fact, we have come to say to the world of humanity, "Be moral, and you need not be religious." Work for man is coming to be a sufficient excuse for neglect of God.

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But we want no cheap moral duties held up for man to perform. It is serious business to live this life of ours and live it well, and it is hard work to do it. Morality sets us as high a task as we are able to perform, and a higher task than has yet been performed by most of mankind. The effort of this age is to expose the sham of what is called holiness, and make sacred the surroundings of human beings. We must throw off the past, and stand upon that sunlit height where we can feel that "somehow life is bigger after all than any painted angel, could we see the man that is within us."

This is the moral duty of the world: to respect the man that is within us. We ought to rear on the earth a range of moral Alps that would stand and command the admiration of the world as long as eye could see and heart could feel. We need a rational hope and a burning purpose in this century, something noble to live for and the courage of nobility to work and win it.

The improvement of the world is the only object of life worthy of man. Do and say nothing that will not improve mankind. Were this simple admonition heeded, we should have the key to the kingdom of the only heaven that man needs in our own pocket.

It is time for the reign of commonsense to begin on earth; time for men to elevate morality above religion; and time for us to say, "Millions for the world, not a cent for the Church." The battle between Freedom and Christianity has begun, and I believe that when it ends Christianity will be buried beneath the ruins of its own dogmas, there to remain forever. It possesses no spirit that can rise again from its ashes and mount on wings of flame to a higher life. When superstition dies, it dies to the root.

The Christian minister can not arrest the march of liberty by crying, "Infidelity!" and threatening with everlasting cremation all those who refuse to heed his words.

But let there be no base understanding of freedom. The new John the Baptist must not be a cowboy, saying, "The kingdom of highwaymen is at hand." As a person when in perfect bodily health knows not from any intimation from the respective parts that he has a stomach, a brain, or a heart, so a person when living in perfect freedom is unconscious of law, of creed, of custom. The healthy man physically is the free man physically; the healthy man mentally is the free man mentally; the healthy man morally is the free man morally; liberty of the individual is health of the individual, and a free man means a man who is true and obedient to all natural laws.

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There is a misunderstanding of freedom upon the one side, and a misrepresentation of it upon the other, that make it hazardous for one to employ the word. To connect this word with morality in the eyes of many is to confound the Madonna with Mary Magdalene. It is to start the ghost of Don Juan.

The conservatism of society has ever regarded liberty as the black flag of the moral marauder, the emblem of a piratical intention upon the casket of the world that contains the jewels of honor, justice, virtue and social order.

So persistently and malignantly has freedom been represented as a wrecker's light, kindled only to lure to destruction, that to represent it as worthy to be trusted is to arouse the spirit which pursued Voltaire to his grave with a lie, erected a shaft of calumny over the tomb of Paine, and which now, with the coward's weapon of slander, attacks the living who refuse to acknowledge that the voice of the Church is the voice of God.

But nevertheless we believe with Burns that:

Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit, Its virtues a' can tell, man; It raises man aboon the brute, It maks him ken himsel', man; Gif ance the peasant taste a bite, He's greater than a lord, man, And ni' the beggar shares a mite Of a' he can afford, man.

And so we exclaim in the words of one of our own true poets:

Always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.

You have all heard of the man who refused to open his eyes for a year, and who declared that during that time nothing could be seen on account of the darkness. But the endeavor to perpetuate old errors by keeping the eyes closed to the facts of science, the truths of philosophy, and the progress of the human race, has not been crowned with success. The further attempt to convert the world to what James Parton calls a "kitchen religion" is merely waste of power.

The preaching of Christianity is making "much ado about nothing." What we want is manhood and womanhood.

It is said by the Church that the man who lives for his family and brings all that he can win of what is fair and bright and glad to those he loves, may be a good man, but he is not a Christian, and therefore has no religion.

Give me then the man who is not a Christian, and who has no religion, for if the man who loves his wife and children, who gives to them the strength of his arm, the thought of his brain, the warmth of his heart, has not religion, the world is better off without it, for these are the highest and holiest things which man can do.

There is only one thing worth praying for: to be in the line of evolution.--_Elbert Hubbard._

Jesus as Savior of the world is a theological creation, and not a historical character.

SO HERE THEN ENDETH THAT GREAT AND GOOD BOOK "I DON'T KNOW--DO YOU?" WRITTEN BY MARILLA M. RICKER, AND PRINTED AND BOUND FOR HER BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY AND STATE OF NEW YORK, MCMXVI.

THOMAS PAINE

Born Jan 29, 1737.

Friend and adviser of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe, etc., etc.

Author of _Common Sense_, _The Crisis_, _Rights of Man_, and _The Age of Reason_;

Editor of _Pennsylvania Magazine_;

Enlisted in Continental Army; appointed Aide-de-Camp to General Nathaniel Greene;

Secretary of Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congress and Pennsylvania Assembly;

By his writings did more for the American cause in the Revolution than any other one person;

First proposed American Independence;

First suggested the Federal Union of States;

First proposed the abolition of Negro slavery;

First suggested protection for dumb animals;

First proposed arbitration and international peace;

First suggested justice to women;

First pointed out the reality of human brotherhood;

First pointed out the folly of hereditary succession and monarchical government;

First proposed old-age pensions;

First suggested international copyright;

First proposed the education of the children of the poor at public expense;

First suggested a great republic of all the nations of the world;

First proposed "the land for the people";

First suggested "the religion of humanity";

First proposed and first wrote the words, "United States of America";

Founder of the first Ethical Society;

Proposed the purchase of the Louisiana Territory;

Inventor of the iron bridge, the hollow candle--principle of the modern central-draft burner, etc., etc.

Died June 9, 1809.

=_This is history. But this great and good man was called "a filthy little atheist" by a hyphenated Dutch-American._=