Part 7

What would the church people think if the theatrical people should attempt to suppress the churches? What harm would it do to have an opera here tonight? It would elevate us more than to hear ten thousand sermons on the worm that never dies. There is more practical wisdom in one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all the sacred books ever written. What wrong would there be to see one of those grand plays on Sunday? There was a time when the church would not allow you to cook on Sunday. You had to eat your victuals cold. There was a time they thought the more miserable you feel the better God feels.

212. Why Should the Church be Merciful?

Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power. Why should the Church pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire?

213. The Church and the Infidel.

Cathedrals and domes, and chimes and chants--temples frescoed and groined and carved, and gilded with gold--altars and tapers, and paintings of virgin and babe--censer and chalice--chasuble, paten and alb--organs, and anthems and incense rising to the winged and blest--maniple, amice and stole--crosses and crosiers, tiaras and crowns--mitres and missals and masses--rosaries, relics and robes--martyrs and saints, and windows stained as with the blood of Christ--never, never for one moment awed the brave, proud spirit of the Infidel. He knew that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with Liberty--that priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at the cathedral he remembered the dungeon. The music of the organ was loud enough to drown the clank of fetters. He could not forget that the taper had lighted the fagot. He knew that the cross adorned the hilt of the sword, and so where others worshiped, he wept and scorned.

214. Back to Chaos

Suppose the Church could control the world today, we would go back to chaos and old night philosophy would be branded as infamous; science would again press its pale and thoughtful face against the prison bars, and round the limbs of liberty would climb the bigot's flame.

215. Infinite Impudence of the Church

Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a Church assuming to think for the human race? Who can imagine the infinite impudence of a Church that pretends to be the mouthpiece of God, and in his name threatens to inflict eternal punishment upon those who honestly reject its claims and scorn its pretensions? By what right does a man, or an organization of men, or a god, claim to hold a brain in bondage? When a fact can be demonstrated, force is unnecessary; when it cannot be demonstrated, an appeal to force is infamous. In the presence of the unknown all have an equal right to think.

216. Wanted!--A New Method

The world is covered with forts to protect Christians from Christians, and every sea is covered with iron monsters ready to blow Christian brains into eternal froth. Millions upon millions are annually expended in the effort to construct still more deadly and terrible engines of death. Industry is crippled, honest toil is robbed, and even beggary is taxed to defray the expenses of Christian warfare. There must be some other way to reform this world.

217. The Kirk of Scotland

The Church was ignorant, bloody, and relentless. In Scotland the "Kirk" was at the summit of its power. It was a full sister of the Spanish Inquisition. It waged war upon human nature. It was the enemy of happiness, the hater of joy, and the despiser of religious liberty. It taught parents to murder their children rather than to allow them to propagate error. If the mother held opinions of which the infamous "Kirk" disapproved, her children were taken from her arms, her babe from her very bosom, and she was not allowed to see them, or to write them a word. It would not allow shipwrecked sailors to be rescued from drowning on Sunday. It sought to annihilate pleasure, to pollute the heart by filling it with religious cruelty and gloom, and to change mankind into a vast horde of pious, heartless fiends. One of the most famous Scotch divines said: "The Kirk holds that religious toleration is not far from blasphemy."

218. The Church Looks Back

The Church is, and always has been, incapable of a forward movement. Religion always looks back. The Church has already reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand-organ, and Ireland to exile.

219. Diogenes

The Church used painting, music and architecture, simply to degrade mankind. But there are men that nothing can awe. There have been at all times brave spirits that dared even the gods. Some proud head has always been above the waves. In every age some Diogenes has sacrificed to all the gods. True genius never cowers, and there is always some Samson feeling for the pillars of authority.

220. The Church and War

It does seem as though the most zealous Christian must at times entertain some doubt as to the divine origin of his religion. For eighteen hundred years the doctrine has been preached. For more than a thousand years the Church had, to a great extent, the control of the civilized world, and what has been the result? Are the Christian nations patterns of charity and forbearance? On the contrary, their principal business is to destroy each other. More than five millions of Christians are trained, educated, and drilled to murder their fellow-christians. Every nation is groaning under a vast debt incurred in carrying on war against other Christians.

221. The Call to Preach

An old deacon, wishing to get rid of an unpopular preacher, advised him to give up the ministry and turn his attention to something else. The preacher replied that he could not conscientiously desert the pulpit, as he had had a "call" to the ministry. To which the deacon replied, "That may be so, but it's very unfortunate for you, that when God called you to preach, he forgot to call anybody to hear you."

222. Burning Servetus

The maker of the Presbyterian creed caused the fugitive Servetus to be arrested for blasphemy. He was tried. Calvin was his accuser. He was convicted and condemned to death by fire. On the morning of the fatal day, Calvin saw him, and Servetus, the victim, asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer. Servetus was bound to the stake, and the faggots were lighted. The wind carried the flames somewhat away from his body, so that he slowly roasted for hours. Vainly he implored a speedy death. At last the flames climbed round his form; through smoke and fire his murderers saw a white, heroic face. And there they watched until a man became a charred and shriveled mass. Liberty was banished from Geneva, and nothing but Presbyterianism was left.

223. Freedom for the Clergy

One of the first things I wish to do is to free the orthodox clergy. I am a great friend of theirs, and in spite of all they may say against me, I am going to do them a great and lasting service. Upon their necks are visible the marks of the collar, and upon their backs those of the lash. They are not allowed to read and think for themselves. They are taught like parrots, and the best are those who repeat, with the fewest mistakes, the sentences they have been taught. They sit like owls upon some dead limb of the tree of knowledge, and hoot the same old hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years.

224. The Pulpit Weakening

There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the pulpit, smote like a sword; but, the supply having greatly exceeded the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort.

225. Origin of the Priesthood

This was the origin of the priesthood. The priest pretended to stand between the wrath of the gods and the helplessness of man. He was man's attorney at the court of heaven. He carried to the invisible world a flag of truce, a protest and a request. He came back with a command, with authority and with power. Man fell upon his knees before his own servant, and the priest, taking advantage of the awe inspired by his supposed influence with the gods, made of his fellow-man a cringing hypocrite and slave.

226. The Clergy on Heaven

The clergy, however, balance all the real ills of this life with the expected joys of the next. We are assured that all is perfection in heaven--there the skies are cloudless--there all is serenity and peace. Here empires may be overthrown; dynasties may be extinguished in blood; millions of slaves may toil 'neath the fierce rays of the sun, and the cruel strokes of the lash; yet all is happiness in heaven. Pestilences may strew the earth with corpses of the loved; the survivors may bend above them in agony--yet the placid bosom of heaven is unruffled. Children may expire vainly asking for bread; babes may be devoured by serpents, while the gods sit smiling in the clouds.

227. The Parson, the Crane and the Fish

A devout clergyman sought every opportunity to impress upon the mind of his son the fact, that God takes care of all his creatures; that the falling sparrow attracts his attention, and that his loving-kindness is over all his works. Happening, one day, to see a crane wading in quest of food, the good man pointed out to his son the perfect adaptation of the crane to get his living in that manner. "See," said he, "how his legs are formed for wading! What a long slender bill he has! Observe how nicely he folds his feet when putting them in or drawing them out of the water! He does not cause the slightest ripple. He is thus enabled to approach the fish without giving them any notice of his arrival. My son," said he, "it is impossible to look at that bird without recognizing the design, as well as the goodness of God, in thus providing the means of subsistence." "Yes," replied the boy, "I think I see the goodness of God, at least so far as the crane is concerned; but, after all, father, don't you think the arrangement a little tough on the fish?"

228. Banish Me from Eden--But!

Give me the storm of tempest and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

229. The Pulpit's Cry of Fear

From every pulpit comes the same cry, born of the same fear: "Lest they eat and become as gods, knowing good and evil." For this reason, religion hates science, faith detests reason, theology is the sworn enemy of philosophy, and the church with its flaming sword still guards the hated tree, and like its supposed founder, curses to the lowest depths the brave thinkers who eat and become as gods.

230. Restive Clergymen

Some of the clergy have the independence to break away, and the intellect to maintain themselves as free men, but the most are compelled to submit to the dictation of the orthodox, and the dead. They are not employed to give their thoughts, but simply to repeat the ideas of others. They are not expected to give even the doubts that may suggest themselves, but are required to walk in the narrow, verdureless path trodden by the ignorance of the past. The forests and fields on either side are nothing to them.

231. The Parson Factory at Andover

They have in Massachusetts, at a place called Andover, a kind of minister-factory; and every professor in that factory takes an oath once in every five years--that is as long as an oath will last--that not only has he not during the last five years, but so help him God, he will not during the next five years intellectually advance; and probably there is no oath he could easier keep. Since the foundation of that institution there has not been one case of perjury. They believe the same creed they first taught when the foundation stone was laid, and now when they send out a minister they brand him as hardware from Sheffield and Birmingham. And every man who knows where he was educated knows his creed, knows every argument of his creed, every book that he reads, and just what he amounts to intellectually, and knows he will shrink and shrivel.

232. A Charge to Presbyteries

Go on, presbyteries and synods, go on! Thrust the heretics out of the Church--that is to say, throw away your brains,--put out your eyes. The infidels will thank you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past; read the 109th Psalm; gloat over the slaughter of mothers and babes; thank God for total depravity; shower your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is touched with that heresy called genius. Be true to your history. Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them all out. We want them all.

THE BIBLE

233. Nature the True Bible

The true Bible appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.

234. Inspiration

I will tell you what I mean by inspiration. I go and look at the sea, and the sea says something to me; it makes an impression upon my mind. That impression depends, first, upon my experience; secondly, upon my intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain, he has had a different experience, he has different memories and different hopes. The sea may speak to him of joy and to me of grief and sorrow. The sea cannot tell the same thing to two beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience. So, when I look upon a flower, or a star, or a painting, or a statue, the more I know about sculpture the more that statue speaks to me. The more I have had of human experience, the more I have read, the greater brain I have, the more the star says to me. In other words, nature says to me all that I am capable of understanding.

335. The 109th Psalm!

Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer in the 109th Psalm. Think of one infamous enough to answer it. Had this inspired psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments.

236. I Don't Believe the Bible

Now, I read the Bible, and I find that God so loved this world that he made up his mind to damn the most of us. I have read this book, and what shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I don't believe the Bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true, I know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--they don't tell their honest convictions about the Bible.

237. The Bible the Real Persecutor

The Bible was the real persecutor. The Bible burned heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties of men. How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?

238. Immoralities of the Bible

The believers in the Bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of God. These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit or humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. For one, I cannot afford to soil my pages with extracts from them; and all such portions of the Scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way by which they can extract honey from these flowers. Until these passages are expunged from the Old Testament, it is not a fit book to be read by either old or young. It contains pages that no minister in the United States would read to his congregation for any reward whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that no father would read to his child. There are narratives utterly unfit to be told; and the time will come when mankind will wonder that such a book was ever called inspired.

239. The Bible Stands in the Way

But as long as the Bible is considered as the work of God, it will be hard to make all men too good and pure to imitate it; and as long as it is imitated there will be vile and filthy books. The literature of our country will not be sweet and clean until the Bible ceases to be regarded as the production of a god.

240. The Bible False

In the days of Thomas Paine the Church believed and taught that every word in the Bible was absolutely true. Since his day it has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology, false in its history, and so far as the Old Testament is concerned, false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, scientific men who apprehend that the Bible is literally true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the Bible? The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The Church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of Thomas Paine.

241. The Man I Love

I love any man who gave me, or helped to give me, the liberty I enjoy to-night. I love every man who helped put our flag in heaven. I love every man who has lifted his voice in all the ages for liberty, for a chainless body, and a fetterless brain. I love every man who has given to every other human being every right that he claimed for himself. I love every man who thought more of principle than he did of position. I love the men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something for mankind.

242. Whale, Jonah and All

The best minds of the orthodox world, to-day, are endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and pay your pew-rent. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away.

243. Damned for Laughing at Samson

For my part, I would infinitely prefer to know all the results of scientific investigation, than to be inspired as Moses was. Supposing the Bible to be true; why is it any worse or more wicked for free thinkers to deny it, than for priests to deny the doctrine of Evolution, or the dynamic theory of heat? Why should we be damned for laughing at Samson and his foxes, while others, holding the Nebular Hypothesis in utter contempt, go straight to heaven?

244. The Man, Not the Book, Inspired

Now when I come to a book, for instance I read the writings of Shakespeare--Shakespeare, the greatest human being who ever existed upon this globe. What do I get out of him? All that I have sense enough to understand. I get my little cup full. Let another read him who knows nothing of the drama, who knows nothing of the impersonation of passion; what does he get from him? Very little. In other words, every man gets from a book, a flower, a star, or the sea, what he is able to get from his intellectual development and experience. Do you then believe that the Bible is a different book to every human being that receives it? I do. Can God, then, through the Bible, make the same revelation to two men? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is the man who inspires. Inspiration is in the man and not in the book.

245. The Bible a Chain

The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the Bible. That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy and fear.

246. Absurd and Foolish Fables

Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most incredible, wicked and foolish of all the fables contained in that repository of the impossible, called the Bible. To me it is a matter of amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent human being.

247. The Bible the Work of Man

Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes and facts, and reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and pressure of its time?" If there are mistakes in the Bible, certainly they were made by man. If there is anything contrary to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was never written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind.

248. Something to Admire, not Laugh at

It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind.

249. An Intellectual Deformity

The man who now regards the Old Testament as, in any sense, a sacred or inspired book, is, in my judgment, an intellectual and moral deformity. There is in it so much that is cruel, ignorant, and ferocious, that it is to me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to be the work of a most merciful Deity.

250. The Bible a Poor Product

Admitting that the Bible is the Book of God, is that his only good job? Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the Bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the Bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now, that Bible would not have been written.

251. The Bible the Battle Ground of Sects

Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war, and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, he must have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, he must be responsible for all.

252. The Bible Childish