Part 7

Every now and then a man dies and the world praises his name, and men die every day whose names we never hear.

Why is the one lifted up above the other?

In the case we have in mind it was because the man, when he died, left several millions of dollars to churches, to charities, and to public benefactions.

This age honors the accumulation of wealth. It puts its stamp of honor upon the man who gathers a large fortune into his hands. If this man at his death bequeathes all of his fortune, or a large portion of it, for what the world is pleased to call charitable purposes, he is called a good man, and his name is spoken with pride and praise.

Now, we believe in all the virtues that would make a man wealthy, but not in the vices: and we believe that a man may have all of these virtues and not have much money when he becomes old, or when he reaches the banks of the river of death. We want to praise the man that the world does not praise, the man who does not live or die for praise, and who does not care for it. We do not think that death’s philanthropy is as grand and beautiful as life’s philanthropy.

The man who lives to get money and to keep money, that at the last, when he can no longer keep it, he may bestow it where it will be a monument to his name, is not half so noble as the man who lives in such a way that he makes life easier for his fellow-beings, giving his little every week, here and there, and letting his gift fall quietly and out of sight of men. It is the truest philanthropy not to rob man, not to take money from the world and hold it until the stronger hand of death opens the strong hand of greed. This is man’s noblest way to live; to take only what can be used for profit or pleasure. To take more than this is to rob mankind.

What generosity is there in parting with money only when death makes the fingers let go? Men who carry their millions to the grave would carry them beyond it, if they could. When only death can conquer selfishness, its noblest bequest merits but little praise.

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There is no vicarious suffering for the one who has eaten too much.

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The nation that proclaims the right of free speech, but will not protect that right, has abandoned its principles.

OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS NATURE

The idea that Nature is to be worshipped, either as God, the unknown, or the incomprehensible, is being seriously questioned. We wish first to know what good such worship does. It cannot be of any benefit to Nature. Is it of any benefit to man? This is the only question to be answered.

Almost everybody is ready to say that man should not worship the sun, the moon, the stars, or any earthly thing; but a great many still think that man should worship the mysterious something of which everything is a manifestation. We have outgrown the worship of objects. We look upon the person who sees a God in any natural object as an idolater; as one whose mental vision is unillumined by any true idea of the universe. But there is a demand that man shall worship God, or the unknown force or power in Nature that is the source of all things.

We admit the unknown quantity of the universe; but we do not see the necessity of worshiping it. We do not see any good in praying to it, or in singing to it. Nature is all a mystery and all the mystery there is, but why do we need to keep saying so in prayer and praise when the silent fact is ever before our eyes? We do not need to go down on our knees to every mysterious thing, and stay there. Let us freely and frankly confess that Nature is incomprehensible, and then go about our business like men, and try to learn what will help ourselves and our fellow-beings.

REVERENCE FOR MOTHERHOOD

An author of some note, in an article published in a Protestant journal, while admitting that the “holy Catholic church” had been about as unholy an institution as could well exist, claimed that Romanism had its good points. Among them he instanced “its reverence for motherhood.” For proof of his assertion he pointed to the homage paid to the image of Mary and her child by the average Roman Catholic.

We admit the homage, but deny the reverence. To begin with, where is the reverence for motherhood among the Roman Catholic priests? Why, these men have not respect enough for woman to elevate her to the dignity and honor of motherhood. These men are married to the church, to Christ and not to women. Their sacred office would be lowered by taking a wife.

The holy vows of these priests are not half as holy as the marriage vow. A priest never had half as pure a thought as is born in the heart of a father. He never performed a rite half as consecrating as dancing a laughing child on his knee. These holy old bachelors have done all their religion would allow them to dishonor motherhood.

The pretence that woman as woman, as mother, as wife, as sister, or daughter, is particularly respected by Roman Catholics is simply absurd. To prove this we point to the homes of the Roman Catholics. We confess that the Romish church encourages motherhood, that Roman Catholics are urged to help increase the church membership, but we claim that nowhere is there less reverence of woman as woman, as mother, as wife, as sister, as daughter, than among the Roman Catholics.

Because a Catholic crosses himself before a wooden Madonna, or a plaster-paris image of the mother of Jesus, it is no proof of his reverence for motherhood. Not a bit. The Catholic reverences Mary as the mother of God; he pays her homage as a divine person; worships her, not as a mother, but as a superior being.

The man that has reverence for motherhood is the man who loves and tenderly cares for his own mother and the mother of his children, but the man who prostrates his mind before a carved figure of the “Virgin Mary” and pounds his wife and kicks his daughter into the street has reverence for nothing.

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Adam might have obeyed God, but he could not resist Eve.

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It looks easy to break off a bad habit that somebody else has got.

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE

The blind, foolish faith in the Bible is the cause of intellectual dishonesty, moral hypocrisy, and religious tergiversations without number. This faith makes the twentieth century kneel to a God that it would be ashamed to introduce among civilized beings.

We would no sooner go to Moses to learn about deity than we would go to Noah to learn how to build a steamship. We do not believe in getting divinity through a straw three thousand years long. If we must have a God, let us have one that has had the advantages of civilization. We might possibly give this Lord God of the Bible a quarter of mutton, as did Abel, or a peck of potatoes, as did Cain, if we were convinced that he was living anywhere in the universe, just to keep on the right side of him, but we would not care to be on an out-of-the-way road with him after dark unless we had a revolver with us. We know of no more villainous character in all literature; and for men and women, who pretend to love what is pure and good, who pretend to honor what is upright and just and who pretend to revere what is noble and true, to worship this God of Christianity, this God of Moses, this God of the Bible, is a sad commentary on human intelligence and human integrity.

We know that all theological discussions have been wretchedly barren of results; we know that theology has made no contribution to actual knowledge; we know that no one knows anything about any such being as God, and we also know that every God worshipped to-day by men and women is only an imaginary person or thing. No one knows what God is or where he is, and yet ministers speak about him just as though they had been to his house and taken tea with him.

Theology has received attention out of proportion to its achievements. It has done the cackling while science has laid the egg.

We do not like to hear men say: “God did this” and “God said this,” when he has never opened his lips to speak to man and never lifted his hand to help him. We call such language dishonest, and the time will come when the men who have made such use of the divine name will be condemned as impostors.

What this generation should do is to take the Lord God of the Israelites, that lies dead on the banks of time and bury him from human sight forever. Not another human being born on this earth should be allowed to read of his cruel deeds, and if Christian ministers were honest, and had the courage of their honesty, they would tell the world that the being called God in the Bible was no God, only an idol of a rude and barbarous age.

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A theologian is a person who uses the word “God” to hide his ignorance.

THE MEASURE OF SUFFERING

The little boy who asked his mother “if hell was worse than the toothache?” imagined that the limits of suffering were reached in his agony. Many of us have doubtless experienced pain that we thought marked the utmost of endurance. In the Christian dream of future punishment man is represented as burning eternally. Fire probably inflicts the intensest pain that the human body has ever suffered. Hell is fitly represented by fire.

Suffering takes various shapes. Pain comes in a thousand forms. But there is a limit to the endurance of pain. Unconsciousness comes to the relief of the mind when agony can no longer be borne. Hell, such as has been taught by Christianity, is not a logical conclusion. All suffering that we know anything about ends itself. The victim is released by exhaustion. Hell is impossible.

The finer suffering which is called remorse, which follows wrong-doing, gradually wears out. Its lash loses its sting. The sinner becomes callous to his act or finds a balm for his regret in the lapse of years. The finger of time erases the memory of every wrong, and soothes with its touch every pang. We can escape the fate of wrong-doing by doing better. Reform opens the door of every hell invented for man’s punishment. The man who does right, wherever he is, will have the reward of right-doing, the fate of right-doing.

It is this fact which makes the idea of endless pain for man’s deeds done on earth illogical. Man can turn around on the road of evil as well as on the road of good, and hence he can change his fate whenever he changes his life. The measure of human suffering makes it impossible for man to endure pain forever. He must either perish utterly as a sentient being or be driven by his punishment to better behavior.

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No man ever yet tore down his altar and found a God behind it.

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Trying to find God is a good deal like looking for money one has lost in a dream.

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We could believe in God if he shortened the road for the lame, led the blind or fed the starving.

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We are told that “all things are possible with God,” and yet God cannot boil an egg in cold water.

NATURE

Some people are afraid of the word Nature. They cross themselves when they hear it pronounced. It has a sound like “Old Nick” in their ears. To these pious souls the word Nature banishes God from the universe. This is looked upon by many as the highest offence of language. It has been the custom for several centuries to abuse Nature, to call it bad names, and associate it with depravity and everything evil. Theology has condemned the word, and the pulpit has touched it only with the tips of its fingers. To speak of Nature as anything good is regarded as throwing dirt in the eyes of God.

Nothing clings to the world like a superstition. Start a fear in the human breast, and it will make every heart quake before it can be driven out. Let a bad habit become fixed, and it will be as hard to dislodge it as it is to plant a good habit.

But men are getting over their fright somewhat. The natural is found to be the true, not the false; the right, not the wrong; the good, not the bad. Nature has been slandered, lied about. It was once thought necessary to assassinate this word in order to preserve the Orthodox religion. The necessity still remains, but orthodoxy is dying.

Nature is a large word. It means about all there is. If there is a God, he is natural.

CREEDS

This is the age of revision. Churches are all hurrying to catch up with the world. There is a desire to square ideas with facts, and shape beliefs with knowledge. Religion must suffer in this process. Something will be lost, but only what is bad, false and wrong. Creeds are out of date. They are behind the times. They are the dead leaves from the tree of knowledge, the dead branches on the tree of life. The world’s faith is in the living; in the bud, the blossom, the promise of things—not in the husk, the shell, in dead and useless things.

New creeds are to take the place of old ones. What people believe now, not what people believed hundreds or thousands of years ago, must be put into a profession of faith. For a man to profess what his father and mother believed is to make birth useless and existence valueless. We are to live to add to life, not to repeat it. Is theology the only thing that people put their trust in? A theological creed has to be accepted with the eyes shut. We want a creed of the heart, of the head, of the senses, of the whole man. There is no theology worth believing in. The creed of the church is a gravestone.

If we were to make a creed for the world of men to accept we would make it out of human hearts. We would go where a man had helped another; where a woman had sat beside the sick and suffering; where man had been crucified for being true; where he had been burned for being honest; where he had stood against the world protesting against its wrongs and proclaiming the right, and where he had fallen with a martyr’s crown upon his forehead; and we would write these into a creed, and have men say: I believe in men and women who have lived good lives, who have taken the unfortunate by the hand and lifted up the fallen, who have pardoned a woman’s fault, who have shown their love of truth by being true, and who have done right even when they were wronged for so doing.

The grandest life is the grandest creed; and, if man’s faith was faith in what has made the world better and brighter and happier, he would be better off than by believing in a God that is cruel, unjust and unkind, and in a heaven where the highest joy is found in laughing at those who are in hell.

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It has been discovered that the man who was lost in thought was not a church member.

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We do not say that another world is not worth a single thought, but rather that this world is worth all our thoughts, and needs them.

DON’T TRY TO STOP THE SUN SHINING

If there is one person on earth who is to be envied it is the happy, cheerful man or woman who always sees the bright side of life, the good side of a fellow-being, and the warm, sunny side of what belongs to earth. If there is a person to be pitied, it is the sour, gloomy man or woman, who sees only the dark side of life, the bad side of a fellow-being, and the cold, cloudy side of what belongs to earth. Everything bright, beautiful, fair, sweet, and good grows in the sunshine. We would not have a flower without the sun. Cheerfulness is to the human heart what the sunbeam is to the earth—the source of gladness.

We ought to cultivate happiness. We ought to have the home filled with what is beautiful. We ought to let the sun shine into our lives. People who are sour and moody look upon the smiling, happy person as foolish, and wonder what there is in life that one can find to enjoy. They want to tear the flower to pieces, stop the bird singing, trample upon the joy of the child, and hush the laugh of mirth. If you cannot enjoy life, don’t try to prevent others from doing so. Don’t throw a shadow on the human heart. Don’t try to stop the sun shining.

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Laying up treasures in heaven never kept a man out of the poor-house.

FOLLOW ME

Jesus said: “Follow me.” But we decline; we had rather not. We do not wish to follow a person until we know where he is going.

If by following Jesus is meant living as he lived, doing as he did, believing as he believed, teaching as he taught and dying as he died, we are not in it. We shall have to say: Thank you, we guess not. We prefer to go some other way.

We do not see any necessity of following anybody very far, if at all. This following business is played out. Those who profess to follow Jesus don’t do it in the daytime.

But we can go a little farther and say that we do not think Jesus was a man that a self-respecting person would like to follow. He does not inspire us with any particular admiration. The man who could let his lips forget to speak kindly of his mother cannot have our admiration. The man who came not to bring peace, but a sword, to the world cannot have our admiration. The man who said: “believe and be saved, believe not and be damned,” cannot have our admiration.

If we follow anybody, it is going to be a person that commands our respect, whose greatness and goodness compel our admiration, and who did not try to win men by tricks. We regard Jesus, as he is painted in the four gospels, as a character below the ideal of this age, a character that, to imitate, would dwarf the noblest man. If Jesus were alive it would be his duty to-day to follow others, rather than to command others to follow him.

CAN WE NEVER GET ALONG WITHOUT SERVANTS?

We recently overheard a remark which made us query if we cannot get along without servants? A lady was commenting on the character of the “help,” which one was obliged to employ to-day, and expressed the opinion that, if our public schools continued to fill the heads of children with the notion that one person was as good as another, it would not be long before it would be impossible to get help at all.

There seems to be an idea abroad in this land as well as in others, that a certain class of people are for the purpose of producing servants for another class of people, and that this servant-producing class has no right to give their children an education that is calculated to elevate them above the position of their parents. We are not in sympathy with this idea. If there is one person on this earth that is of less account than another it is the person who is helpless, who is dependent upon others for everything that makes life possible or endurable. We must confess that there are too many people in this country who are of this kind, who must have someone to do for them what they ought to do for themselves.

Why should one person be expected to wait upon another? Why should a man or woman look upon a fellow-being as fit only to be a servant? Is one born to serve and the other to be waited upon?

Such notions have no right on our democratic soil. In this country there must be no caste, no division of society into classes.

We rejoice that such a criticism of the character of the “help” employed in the houses of the rich as we overheard, is true, for it reveals a condition of things that may lead to what is much needed to-day, viz.: a simpler mode of living on the part of a great many of our American people. Is it necessary to live in such a way that a dozen or more servants are required in a home to keep it in order?

We believe the community in which all are independent and none are servants is the ideal one. Why should not this be the ambition of the race, to live in a manner that will leave others their independence and encourage in them the desire for a home? Our children all ought to be taught to work, and be made to work, and not be brought up with the notion that they have the right to expect others to wait upon them.

We do not wish to imply that one individual should not consider it his or her duty to help another or to work for another. What we desire to convey is this, that if people did more of their own work, and waited upon their own wants more, they would not only be doing what is best for themselves, but also what is best for the community in general. For men or women to be dependent upon servants and almost helpless without them, is not a condition to be proud of, but to be ashamed of. The man who cannot harness or drive his horse; the woman who cannot buy and cook a dinner for her family, has not been properly educated.

The home in which there are the fewest servants is the happiest home. The father that brings up his sons to work, to know how to earn a living; the mother who teaches her daughters to cook, to sew, to do housework, is doing them good, not harm. There are too many know-nothings and do-nothings in the world. It is honorable to be useful in this world, and it ought to be dishonorable to be useless. Let us work for the day when we can get along without servants; when life shall be so simple that each family can do its own work. The servant system is but little different from the slave system, and it ought to be abolished.

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The money man gives to get him into heaven is what he ought to use to improve the earth.

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The Unitarian walks with a cane, the Congregationalist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist go with crutches, the Episcopalian has to be pushed about in an invalid’s chair, while the Roman Catholic crawls on his hands and knees and is led around with a ring in his nose by a priest.

A HEAVENLY FATHER

It may pay some persons to talk about a heavenly father who cares for his earthly children, but we prefer to get money in a more honorable business. Honor bright, now, gentlemen of the pulpit, did you ever see anything that convinced you that there is a power in the universe outside of the human body, that cared a snap for men, that showed any more love for a child than for a crocodile? Tell the truth, and let us see how far apart we are on this question.