Part 10

Were there a tribe in Asia or Africa guilty of such ridiculous practices as are witnessed in the Roman Catholic church, missionaries would be sent out to them. It seems to us, that if people know no better than to believe that when the priest swallows a little lump of bread he is actually swallowing the body of a person who lived eighteen hundred years ago, whom they look upon as God, they are not intelligent enough to be ranked in the army of progress and civilization.

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No one is to blame for what no one knows.

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It is singular that people want to live another life when it is so hard to live this.

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A church that sets up a religious faith as more essential than purity, than kindness, charity or goodness, is a dangerous institution.

HUMAN CRUELTY

The mosquito inflicts his sting upon the place whence he draws his life. Not unlike this venomed insect is the person who, through malice, wounds the feelings of a human being. There seems to be in certain organizations the poison of hatred, and woe betide those on whom it falls. The heart that can take delight in saying cruel things, in raising unkind doubts or starting unpleasant thoughts, ought never to have had a human face to hide behind. Such an individual ought to crawl in its native shape that it might be crushed under the heel of scorn.

The only way to treat a human viper is to keep away from it, ignore its presence, and to shut the ears to its venomed hiss. We know of no more cruel occupation than wounding human hearts and human feelings.

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A great many men believe in providence until they get caught in a railroad accident.

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Treasures well used on earth will help the world more than treasures laid up in heaven.

INFIDELITY

When the minister wants to frighten his congregation he draws a picture of infidelity. The infidel has been used for years to scare weak-minded persons into accepting Christianity. Outwardly the infidel is painted like a man, but the world is warned not to trust to appearances, for the infidel is not what he looks to be; he is “a fiend in human shape;” he is “a moral monster,” and a mirror in which everything bad and vicious can see its face.

We do not wonder that a minister paints the infidel in black. He has hurt the minister’s business, and so must suffer for what he has done. But we do wonder that so large a part of the world is frightened at the word “infidelity.”

It is a fact that an infidel would never be known if he himself did not disclose his character. To conceal his infidelity he has only to keep still, to hide behind silence.

Infidelity is nothing more or less than intellectual fidelity, and an infidel is a man too honest to disguise his real thoughts and convictions. Had the infidel not been honest he would still be in the church, a hypocrite, to be sure, but this could not affect his religious status at all. Intellectual and moral uprightness is the distinguishing characteristic of modern infidelity. The modern infidel trusts his brain and his heart; he accepts as true what appeals to his reason, and makes known his convictions as though to conceal them were a vice or a crime.

The infidel gains nothing by avowing his convictions; on the contrary, he is condemned for making them known. The Christian presumes upon the right to damn infidels here and to teach that God will damn them hereafter. It is in the face of a fate, in many instances cruel, that a man acknowledges that his honest thoughts, his honest convictions place him in antagonism to the popular faith, and yet he is denounced, rather than praised, for his brave action.

Infidelity is the proof of an honest man. Hypocrisy cannot hide in its shadow. Every man in the Christian church may be a hypocrite, a knave, a pretender professing its faith, while laughing inwardly at its foolish superstitions, but every man who espouses infidelity must reveal his true character, must show exactly what he is.

A dishonest or hypocritical infidel is an impossibility. There is nothing to be gained, but much to be lost, by confessing one’s disbelief of the Christian dogmas. It is the man who prizes self-respect above the world’s approval who takes the fate of infidelity—be it what it may.

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Don’t put too much faith in the man who wants to know the distance to the nearest church before he has written his name in the hotel register.

ATHEISM

What is called atheism is not a light, flippant assertion, but a calm, thoughtful conclusion. It is a conviction which human experience and human reflection have generated. Atheism is not the irresponsible opinion of moral debauchery; it is the outcome of an intelligent consideration of Nature and life. The atheist has been honest with himself and with the world. He has made a careful survey of the universe, as far as he is able, and has canvassed the facts of life which have come within the range of his observation, and he has candidly declared the result of his study and freely related the reasons for his conclusions.

Atheism is the universe as science finds it and as interpreted by human understanding. It is an attempt to state the simple truth, to give a fair likeness of things, to photograph facts. Atheism is denial of nothing true, of nothing good, of nothing that can be proved. We see no good reason for abusing the atheist. His opinions don’t make him a bad citizen or a bad man. He is as moral as his Christian neighbor, and is as ready to help a fellow-being.

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In countries where atheism is a crime, hypocrisy is more honored than integrity.

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A great many who expect to hear the angels sing always get near the stage at a comic opera.

CHRISTIAN HAPPINESS

Christians are constantly telling “how happy their religion makes them,” how happy they feel “since they found Jesus.” We will take them at their word and believe that they are just as happy as they say they are. What has their religion done for them, what has Jesus done for them, that they should be so happy? They will answer that they have been saved, that their souls have been rescued from destruction. Without going into the question whether they need to be saved or whether their souls are in any danger of destruction, let us see what kind of happiness the Christian enjoys. The great song of Christians is: _My_ soul is saved. The Christian is happy on his own account alone; he rejoices in his own good fortune; he is pleased to think that he is out of it. The Christian’s happiness is a purely selfish feeling. In his exultation is no thought of another’s condition, of another’s lot.

If some are saved, others are lost, for all do not accept the Christian faith, all do not find Jesus. The Christian can be happy while others are miserable; he can rejoice while knowing that others are in peril; he can exult over his own salvation while seeing others going to destruction. This is a fiendish happiness, a devilish joy. For one to be happy while knowing that a brother or sister is lost shows a hard, selfish, cruel heart.

Think of the Christian mother being happy for having been rescued from her burning home in whose fatal flames her children all perished! Think of the Christian father filled with joy at his escape from the sinking ship in which his wife and babe sailed to the port of death! Think of a Christian man or woman exulting over their good fortune in not having a disease which took away those who were nearest and dearest! Such joy, such happiness, as this is not human, it is brutish.

The Christian is welcome to all the happiness his heartless religion affords him. I want none of it. Such a religion would drive me mad.

The loving heart is happiest in the joy of those it loves; it is happy in seeing others happy, but there could be no joy for it to be saved while those it loved were lost. Christianity is a heartless religion, a cruel faith, a selfish scheme, and it is for those who care more about being saved than saving others.

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The highest freedom is the freedom to say what we believe to be right.

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It was a childless woman who said: The happiest woman is she whose bosom pillows the sweet head of a child.

WHAT GOD KNOWS

We see in Christian papers a great deal about what God knows. How does any one know what God knows? It has been the habit, where man lacked any particular knowledge, of saying, “God knows.” But what is the good of God knowing anything if he keeps his knowledge to himself? If he will not tell what he knows, how is man improved or benefited by all the wisdom in the divine cranium? What is known by the inhabitants of Venus does the inhabitants of earth no good. But let us come down to facts. Is there any proof that God knows anything? Let men own up, and not try to deceive themselves or others any longer. What God knows nobody else knows.

There is no evidence that God knows what man does not, and it is bare assumption only to ascribe knowledge to deity. It is first necessary for man to know that there is a God, before endowing him with mental wealth or attributes. The Christian practice of saying that “God loves man,” and that “God cares for man” has no basis of facts to stand upon, and it is only pious conceit that indulges in such statements.

There is nothing in the universe but the universe itself; nothing in the universe that reveals a God. The earth does not, the sun does not, the moon does not, and not a planet or star reveals the existence of a God. All these reveal their own existence; so of a flower, of a tree, of a man. It is only divinity that can reveal the existence of divinity. Who has seen or heard this divinity? No one. Men have said, or men have made other men say, that they have seen God, heard God, and talked with God. But they lied. No human eye ever saw the divine form or features; no human ear ever heard the divine voice; no human being ever had any knowledge of a divine being.

It is a waste of words to talk about God and what he knows and what he does. No man knows that God does anything, that God knows anything, or that there is a God.

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Blessings on the man who first dared to doubt.

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The improvement in ways of travel and methods of labor has altered our reverence.

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Every kiss of love imprinted by a mother’s lips on the face of her babe gives the lie to the Christian doctrine of total depravity, and every gift which the heart of pity lays in the hand of misfortune brands this doctrine as false and a libel on our human nature.

THE MEANING OF THE WORD GOD

I do not deny that the word “God” has today a moral and religious meaning which is derived from his supposed beneficence, but this idea is not the one that I find at the bottom of the Christian faith. I object very seriously to the attempt, which is being made by certain interested parties, to represent the God of Christianity better than he is. This word loses its terror when we realize that it stands for an unknown quantity. It is the attempt to account for what we cannot understand; the effort to explain the universe. The word “God” is a definition of human ignorance. It represents what we do not know. This word does not stand for a person, an object, or a thing. It is an idea that we can have no idea of, a thought of what one cannot think. People who use the word “God” do not know what they are talking about. The word fits nothing that has yet been discovered. Theology is the science of what no one knows anything about. It does not belong to the family of knowledge. When the hands of theology are laid on a man’s head his brains are consecrated to do nothing. Every time a minister is made, a man is lost. Nothing disgraces American civilization more than the theology preached in Christian churches. It is worse than childish; it is old-womanish. The dark ages cast their shadows across the bright skies of the twentieth century, and the relics of that benighted time, the priests, are still walking the streets, like ghosts of bad deeds.

Every theology ends in a creed. A creed is the night-cap of religion. It is a sign that the intellect is asleep. When faith is in, sense is out. A man with a creed has bought the coffin for his mind. The rest of his life will be a funeral service for the dead. A creed is the grave of thought. When a person subscribes to certain articles of belief, he has no further use for his brains. It does not require any mental exercise to believe. Belief does not signify any process of intellectual assimilation or digestion. When a man joins a church, he makes his last will and testament. When reason abdicates in favor of credulity, crime becomes a saint, and folly a martyr. Too much faith makes a Pocasset tragedy. The foolishness of trying to make God intelligible to human understanding is shown in the creeds of Christendom. The dogma of the trinity ought not to pass to any further generation. It is not the “likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

WHAT HAS JESUS DONE FOR THE WORLD

A great deal is said about “what Jesus has done for the world.” We wish some of those people who repeat this statement would take ten or fifteen minutes and tell us just what Jesus _has_ done for the world. It would puzzle the most ardent admirer of the Galilean reformer to point out anything that Jesus ever did to help man in this life. There is too much of this thoughtless, senseless praise of Jesus. Not a Christian on this earth but what owes a thousand times more to his father and mother than he owes to Jesus, but who ever heard one acknowledge it? We could name hundreds of men who have lightened the labor of the world by their inventions. Did Jesus do anything of the kind? We can name hundreds of men who have made the homes of mankind brighter and more enjoyable by their genius and toil. Did Jesus do anything of the kind?

The imaginary service which this imaginary person did is of no consequence to the poor, to the workers, to the starvers. What the poor man wants is not a Savior for another world, but a helper for this world, and the person who lessens the poverty and misery of earth is worth a thousand times more to humanity than Jesus.

We are told that Jesus died for man. Well! What of it? Socrates died for man. Bruno died for man. Emmet died for man. John Brown died for the black man. Every day somebody is dying for man. Why emphasize the death of Jesus more than the death of another? The fact that Jesus died does not help you or me. He could have helped us far more by living, if he had lived wisely and well.

The great fact in regard to Jesus is this: He does not touch this age; its aspirations, its interests, its reforms, its work, its spirit. We are living contrary to Jesus, contrary to all he taught and did. He is left behind, outgrown, and, consequently, whatever he did is of no value to this age. His star is set. He has had his day. Instead of trying to bring about a kingdom of poverty, a millennium of idleness, the world is striving for a kingdom of plenty and a good time for everybody.

Everything connected with Jesus has been exaggerated. The man himself has been exaggerated, his words have been exaggerated, his performances have been exaggerated, and his importance has been exaggerated. He has been given a character that he is not entitled to, and his teachings have been clothed with a value which they do not possess. Jesus has been passed for more than he is worth. Let his name no longer bear the stamp of divinity. Let his deeds no longer be called miracles. The real Jesus of fact would be a very ordinary man.

THE AGNOSTIC’S POSITION

Some avowed Liberal writers are engaged in abusing the Agnostic. One looks upon him as a fool, while another considers him a hypocrite. One pities him for his ignorance, the other abuses him for confessing it. I side with the Agnostic. I sit down with the ignorant. I take my place in the class of “I-don’t-know.” The difference between people is this: Some don’t know, and some don’t know that they don’t know, and the rest won’t admit that they don’t know.

It seems to me that the Agnostic’s position is an honest one. He is asked the question; Is there a future life for man? What shall he answer? If he does not know whether there is not, why should he not say so? To say: I believe there is, is not an answer to the question. He must say, I know, or, I do not know. On this question are we not all Agnostics?

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The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.

ORTHODOXY

There is as much perfumery in petroleum as there is righteousness in orthodoxy. Its dead theology and make-believe piety have no value only to the priest. Orthodoxy survives only by right of possession. Turn it out of the churches and it would never re-enter them. The church to-day is a hospital for sick dogmas. Every Christian doctrine is a cripple; not one can walk or stand alone. Orthodoxy has put a false valuation on things. It calls a man good who goes to church, offers a prayer in public and accepts the Bible as the word of God; it calls a man bad who stays at home and enjoys himself with his family on Sunday, who eats without asking God to bless his food, and who does not expect to go to heaven on the vicarious railroad.

The thirty-nine articles of orthodoxy are only the ashes of the mind.

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Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence.

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A handsome bonnet covers a multitude of sins.

IDEAS OF JESUS

There is a vast difference between knowledge of the Bible and knowledge. A person may know all there is in the Bible, and not know but little. In fact, so much of the Bible is either pure fiction or doubtful history that one is not sure when he has got hold of what is reliable. Probably no person whose name appears in the Bible is less a historical figure than Jesus. As we see him in either gospel he is more the product of the artist than the work of the biographer. He is less a human being than the character of a drama.

Had Jesus been pictured as a man, who was born as men are born, who worked as men worked, who lived and died as men live and die, then there would be less divergence in the views entertained respecting him. To-day, the Jesus of Galilee is looked upon as either a God or a tramp; a divine Savior or an impostor; the perfect man or a lunatic.

The reason of this is that the gospels are found, as it were, photographs of all those characters labelled Jesus. A person with no fixed idea of what Jesus was, whether human or divine, whether a Christ or a madman, would be unable, after reading the gospels to come to any intelligent conclusion as to what he was. He certainly could not accept the statements of the authors and regard Jesus as a man.

We fail to understand how anyone can read the New Testament story of Jesus and not regard him as a myth. No being ever lived on earth and performed the miracles recorded in the gospels. That is just as sure as the light of the stars. Miracles are not evidence of divinity, but of falsehood. Where we read that a man was raised from the dead we know that somebody has written what is not true. How human beings, who are possessed of ordinary intelligence, can accept the accounts of miraculous events in the four gospels as records of actual facts surpasses our comprehension.

Those persons who see in the words of Jesus evidence of _his_ divine character, see in such words, when in the mouth of any other person, proof of insanity.

There are contradictory ideas of Jesus contained in the gospels. He is spoken of as a man, as a Christ, as a son of God, and as God himself. Now, he could not have been all these. Which was he? Was he God? Was he the son of God? Was he the Christ or King of the Jews? Was he the son of Mary and Joseph? Was he a man? Or was he neither?

Our opinion is that Jesus is a myth, that no such being as is painted in the New Testament ever lived. This seems to be the only rational idea of Jesus.

THE SILENCE OF JESUS

A Christian minister not long ago spoke upon the subject: “When the Bible is Silent.” He said a great many silly things about his subject, but not one sensible one. This preacher wishes us to believe that when the Bible is silent it is because we cannot hear. He said the silence of Jesus before Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, shows that Jesus knew they would not have understood his words if he had answered them. He further said that Jesus “treated each with whom he came in contact according to the spirit that was in him.”

Is it not more likely that Jesus knew he could not impose upon these men as he could upon his ignorant, superstitious followers, and hence dared not speak? Is not his silence a confession of his weakness? Had he been able to answer Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, think you he would not have done so? Of course he would. It is a little singular that the _most momentous questions ever put to Jesus were not answered by him_. The very things the people wished to know he did not reveal. Why not? Why, because he _could_ not.

Should we to-day pronounce a man wise and good who professed to possess knowledge that would benefit, if not save, the world, but who refused to impart that knowledge? We reckon not. We should either denounce him as the foe of man or else as a charlatan.

When Jesus was taken before the high priest, Caiaphas, and was asked about the charges against him, he “held his peace.”

When he was asked by Pilate. “What is truth?” Jesus was silent; and when Pilate again asked, “Whence art thou?” Jesus “gave him no answer.”

When Herod “questioned with him in many words,” “he answered him nothing.”

What are we to infer from this silence? What the minister wishes us to infer, or that Jesus saw that he was unable to maintain his claim and so sought refuge in silence?

The silence of Jesus condemns him. He was in duty bound to prove that he was the Christ, the Son of God, as he claimed to be, or else have impostor written on his forehead.

The world will some day grow large enough not to be fooled by a minister. When it does, Jesus will take his place where he belongs,—in the graveyard of the gods.

DOES THE CHURCH SAVE

The church pretends to save man from a hell hereafter, but does it do so? How are we to know whether it does or not? We cannot take its word for it. We want the proof. We do not want to pay for work unless the work is done. We do not want to believe in order to be saved, unless we are sure that the church can deliver the salvation it takes pay for. The world has taken the promise to save long enough. It has not seen a single soul that has been saved, nor does it know for a fact that a single soul has been saved.

Is it not time that the church showed that it can do what it claims to do? We want salvation demonstrated. Let the church produce a specimen of its work; let it exhibit a soul that it has saved, or let it publish the affidavit, duly subscribed and affirmed, of a soul that has escaped the fate of hell through the efficacy of faith in Jesus. Anything less than this is deception, is imposition, is false pretense. Either this should be done by the church or else it should go out of the salvation-business altogether.