Part 2

But let us get a little closer to our subject: When the preachers state that morality is impossible without God, they really mean--without the Christian religion. As we intimated above, the Mohammedan God and the Christian God, not being the same, can not both be true. And it is not enough to believe in the Christian God, one must also believe in Christ, the Holy Ghost, the atonement, and so on. Hence, the Christian religion is the only power that can save the world, according to the preachers. Let us follow this thought and see where it will lead us to. If you have imagination try to bring the whole world before your mind's eye. Think of the millions upon millions of human beings dwelling upon its surface--of the five hundred millions of Buddhists, the two hundred millions of Moslems, the one hundred and fifty millions of Brahmans, and to these add the millions who follow Confucius, who profess Shintoism, Judaism, Jainism, and the millions who once followed Zoroaster, Zeus, Apollo, Mithra and Isis. Compare with this tremendous host the number of people who during the last two thousand years have called themselves Christians, and tell me if it would be inspiring to think that the Christians who are but a handful compared with this innumerable majority are the only people who can be moral? If the heathen, so called by Christians, can be as moral as ourselves, then Christianity can not claim to be the only divine faith, but if it is, as the preachers claim, the only power that can save, then think of the gloom and the despair which must be the portion of every sensitive soul who realizes the hopelessness of the situation! For thousands of years our humanity was denied the Christian religion, and even now, twenty centuries after the birth of Jesus, only a handful, compared with the earth's population, have accepted the only true religion. Is this inspiring?

If we were to paint the globe in two colors--black and white--allowing the black to represent the "heathen," and the white the Christian, we would see spread before our eyes a limitless sea of inky blackness, with a few white dots floating in it. Oh, how long will it take before this black earth of ours shall change its color? If we feel uncomfortable when we see an animal maltreated, how can we have the heart to subscribe to a doctrine that denies to the great majority of our human fellows, not only future bliss, but even the right to be moral? If instead of being a religion of love, Christianity were a religion of hate, could it be less generous? If instead of being the religion of the "meek and lowly" it were the religion of the proud and the haughty, could it have been more conceited? That people can enjoy a religion which blackens the face of all mankind outside its pale is a pitiful commentary on human nature.

But let us follow the lead of the preacher a little further. He says there can be no morality without God, which means, no morality without the Christian religion. But which Christian religion does he mean? The Catholics denounce protestantism as a perversion; the Protestants call Catholicism an imposture. Which, then, is the Christian religion without which there can be no morality? If the one is as Christian as the other, why then do they try to convert each other--why do the Catholics send missionaries to the Protestants? Evidently, it must be the protestant religion which is alone Christian, at least we in this country seem to think so. If true, then there is no morality possible without the protestant faith. Now see to what a small faith and to what a pale and sickly hope the preacher has brought us. Ah! he has led us into an alley--moldy, stuffy, and choking. The world is no longer in sight, the sun and stars have disappeared, the winds that sweep the face of the earth and the sky are heard no more. Yes, we are in an alley!

Now this protestant religion which is alone the hope of the world, what is it? A moment ago we asked, which is the Christian religion? We now ask, which is the protestant religion? Is it the church of England? Is it Lutheranism? Is it Methodism? Is it Presbyterianism? Is it Unitarianism? Is it the Baptist Church? Is it Christian Science? We believe we have mentioned enough to select from. It will not do to say that all these sects are equally Christian. Why, then, are they separated? Why do not the Baptists commune at the Lord's table with the Presbyterians, and why do the Episcopalians claim that they alone have the apostolic ordination? A Methodist preacher is not allowed to speak from an Episcopal altar--his ordination is not considered valid, and his church is only a sect in, the eyes of the church of England. Which of these, then, is the true protectant religion without which no morality is possible in this world or salvation in the next? The proposition that there can be no morality without God when analyzed, comes to this: There can be no morality without the protestant religion, and it is as yet uncertain which is the Protestant religion.

How educated people can find cheer and comfort in an alley and mistake its darkness for a horizon--how they can be happy in the belief that no one can be good or brave without believing as they do,--is beyond my comprehension. And when we remember that this Protestant religion did not exist before the sixteenth century--that it is only about three hundred years old, and that, if it is the only true religion, it waited a long time--until mankind had reached middle life--until the world had begun to turn gray--before it commenced to minister to its needs--we begin to realize that there is no thoroughfare to the alley to which the preacher has conducted us--for it is a _blind_ alley, and we feel creeping upon us the chill of death and despair!

Oh, let us turn back! Let us hasten out of this darkness! Let us return to the kisses of the sun and the wind, to the air and the light! To think that the whole world, past and present, has been, is, and will be irrevocably lost, unless it accepts our three hundred years old and much-divided religion! What gentle and refined mind can stand the strain? Who can walk straight under the weight of such crushing pessimism? Is it not fortunate that only one day in seven is devoted to church-going?

When I was a Presbyterian minister, one of the hymns we used to sing in church began with the words "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," and went on to speak of "India's Coral Strands" and "Africa's Sunny Fountains," ending with this sentiment.=

````"Where every prospect pleases

````And man alone is vile."=

Think of the essentially unmoral mind of the man who could write such a hymn, and of the callousness of the people who can sing it! Think of putting so false, so uncharitable, so conceited, so mean and small a thought into music, and singing it! If they wept over it, if they mourned over it, it would be less incongruous, but to sit in their pews and with the help of organ and piano to sing about the vileness of the earth's greater population seems to me in my haste, to lend considerable support to the doctrine of total depravity. The Christian will trade with the "heathen," he will travel into their country, he will trust them in business, but, on Sunday, when he is in church, when he is kneeling at the altar, in the house of his God, he calls them "vile." If the only way we can appreciate our own morality is by defaming the majority of humanity, how contemptible must our morality he? When we sing that all the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese and the rest of the non-Christian world are "vile,"--that there is no love, no devotion, no patriotism, no honesty, no friendship, no temperance, no philanthropy, no chastity, no truthfulness, no mercy and no honor, in these heathen lands--when we deny that in these parts of the world any virtue can exist, are we not bearing false witness against our neighbors?

To preach the brotherhood of man in one breath, and in the next, to call your brothers who do not believe in your creed "vile," has about it the unmistakable air of cant and hypocrisy. Is it any wonder that the "heathen" distrust the Christian nations of Europe and America?

A clergyman of Chicago, one of our leading, popular, successful, talented, and respected preachers--one who has had phenomenal success as a minister of the Gospel, and who addresses the largest Christian audiences in the country, speaking to the Young Men's Christian Association, declared that "this earth would have been a hell if Christ had not died on Golgotha." There must be something of the nature of a blight in a creed that can force from the lips of an educated and benevolent man such unlovely words. And there is. It is so self-centered, so intolerant, so exclusive, that in its eyes the whole world, except its own little corner, is nothing but "a hell." To intimate that the world which gave us our republic, the world which gave us our constitution--our jurisprudence, our law courts--the world which has crowded our galleries with works of imperishable beauty, and our libraries with immortal poetry, literature and philosophy--which has given to our universities their classical curriculum--which created Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Seneca, Cicero and the Antonines--a world whose ruins are more wonderful than anything we possess, whose dead are more immortal than our living--to suggest that this pre-Christian world as well as the non-Christian countries to-day, was "a hell," takes my breath away. I never imagined that this fearful Asiatic creed could smite or sting an otherwise wholesome soul into such a contortion. What is there in this Palestinian Jew whom our famous preacher worships as his god that can tempt a man to bear even false witness for his sake? Heavens! How can a man with the example of heroic Japan fresh and fragrant before him, think of this earth as a hell without his "shibboleth?" Victor Hugo says "It is a terrible thing to have been a priest once;" it is not less terrible to be an orthodox protestant preacher to-day. And why?

Because for the preacher there is something higher than the truth--his creed.

But the proposition that there can be no morality without God--that the earth would be a hell without Christ, in its final analysis means this: People will not be moral without the belief in a future life. It is the hope of future rewards which gives to the God idea its value. St. Paul himself admitted that if the Christians believed in Christ for this life only "they were of all men the most miserable." Were the clergy to tell their flocks this morning that although they felt sure of the existence of God, they had their doubts about another life, how many of them would return to worship on the following Sunday? Yes, it is the mingled hope and fear of the future which gives the belief in a God its importance. If there were no death--if men could live here forever, they would not much concern themselves about spirits and invisible beings. It is the idea that when we die we fall into the hands of God, the idea that it is a terrible thing, as the Bible says, to fall into the hands of the living God--it is this idea which lights the altars, bends the knee, and builds churches. To placate the deity that he may reward us in the future is, frankly, the object of all religious ceremonies. If this be true, then the proposition that without God there can be no morality amounts to this: Without future rewards and punishments no man will live a moral life.

This doctrine leads to the following conclusions: First, man is naturally immoral, and the only way he can be arrested in his career of vice and crime is to promise him future rewards if he will behave himself, and to menace him with hell fire if he will not. Secondly, the proposition implies that morality _per se_ is not desirable, that no one could be virtuous enough to desire virtue for its own sake, and that without great and eternal rewards morality would go a-begging. And this is religion! What then is atheism?

Why do people desire health? Certainly not for any postmortem rewards. The health of the body is cultivated for its own beautiful sake. Health is joy, it is power, it is beauty, it is strength. Are not these enough to make it sacred to all men? But if the health of the body does not need the prop of future rewards to commend itself to us, what good reason have we to think that morality, which is the health of the mind, is a wretched investment if there be no other life? Morality is temperance. How can our ideas about the unseen world change the nature of temperance so that instead of being a virtue it would become a stupid and irksome restraint? If it is good to be temperate in the pursuit of pleasure or wealth, or in the gratification of desire, why should our speculations about the hereafter alter our attitude toward the value of temperance and self-control in everything? God or no God, a future life or no future life, is not temperance better than intemperance? To ask why a man should practice temperance even if it be granted that it is better than intemperance is to go back to the terrible charge that man is by nature a monster, and that he will not behave well unless he is promised enormous returns in the shape of eternal rewards--palaces, mansions, crowns, thrones, in the next world.

Well, if the preachers are right it is a serious question whether so depraved a creature as man deserves to be saved at all. To have created so contemptible a creature was a great enough blunder, but think of perpetuating his race forever and ever!

Let us see how much truth there is in the preacher's estimate of human nature. Take the example of a father who is devoted to his little motherless girl. He lives for her, cares for her, protects her, and provides for her future that she may feel his blessing long after he has passed away. Will this father be less a father without the belief in future rewards? But to love and care for one's child is only natural morality, replies the clergyman. Of course it is. And that is why it is genuine, sweet, spontaneous, and untainted with expectations of a reward. It never enters his mind that he is going to be paid big wages for being good to his motherless child. He loved her, and that was heaven enough for him. It is artificial morality that pines for rewards and sickens and dies when the expected reward is questioned. If there is no future glory, who will abstain from meat on Friday, or sprinkle his children, or read the Bible or listen to sermons? But the natural virtues will spring up like flowers in the human soil. Men and women will love, will sacrifice, will perform heroic deeds of devotion, whatever may be their theories concerning the hereafter.

Let us take another case. Why is an employer of labor good to his men? Is it because he expects to be rewarded for it in the next life? Analyze his motives and you will find that if he treats his hands well it is because he believes it to be the best way to get along with them, to earn their good will, to keep his own self-respect, and to merit the approval of the community in which he lives. He is not going to change his conduct toward his employees, nor will the motives which now influence his conduct lose their force immediately after he finds out that there is nothing coming to him in the next world for being good and just to his workmen.

The theologians appear to labor under the impression that morality being irksome and undesirable, it would be an injustice not to reward the people who put up with it with a paradise of some kind. They think that the man who did not rob his neighbor, beat his wife and children, or get drunk, ought to be rewarded. Certainly he ought--if it is for a future reward that he does not do these things. If we have an influence at all we shall see that these people who have denied themselves the pleasure of cutting their neighbors' throats, or of leading an intemperate, dishonest and brutal life, shall receive their reward.

There is no doubt that some people are kept from doing wrong by the fear of a distant hell, and others are provoked to good works by the hope of a heavenly crown. But the mistake of the theologian consists in thinking that anybody actuated by such motives can be moral. A vicious dog is not made gentle by chaining him--he is only prevented from doing harm. It is true that to prevent a savage beast from hurting people is a service to humanity. It is also true that if by preaching the fear of hell the churches succeed in preventing vicious men from doing harm, they are benefactors. Fear, while not the highest motive, is nevertheless quite effective with some people. Of course, as far as my own preference goes, I would not preach the doctrine of everlasting hell even if I could be assured it was the only thing that could save mankind. I would not care to save mankind under those conditions.

There is nothing more immoral than the idea of unending torture. The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology. I can not think of a greater insult to the human conscience than to say that this fearful establishment with its everlasting stench in our nostrils is the parent of all virtue, and that if its fires were to be extinguished there would be an end to human morality.

"It is quite easy," I imagine the preacher saying, "to talk in this strain now, but wait until you are on your death-bed." But the frightful death-bed scenes we read of in religious literature are generally fictitious. When they are not impostures, a careful investigation will show that they are the effect of pulpit sensationalism. The dying thoughts of a sane and brave man or woman are as free from torture as the sleep which closes the tired eye-lids. What does a mother think of in her last moments? She thinks of her dear ones--her chil dren! whom she has to leave motherless in the world. How noble is human nature! And it is this nobility which makes theology jealous. The dying mother should be thinking of her God,--her soul, her creed--she should be trembling with fear, and be filled with consternation, instead of thinking lovingly and tearfully of her little ones! And when theology can not get horrible death bed scenes, she invents them. In _Theron Ware_, the deacons of the Methodist church say to their minister, "Give us more of the death-bed scenes of Voltaire and Thomas Paine." For a long time it was a part of the vocation of the theologians to postpone the attack upon an intellectual giant until he was dead or dying.

It is not true that when people come to die they confess that the preacher's hell and his heaven are real after all. The other day a negro shot his wife and babe fatally and ran away. When the neighbors arrived upon the scene of the tragedy, they found the dying mother with her arms around her infant trying to soothe its pains. She had torn a fragment of her bodice to stop with it the bleeding wound in the child's arm. Motherhood! Was she worrying about her own soul, about eternity, about God, about the devil, about heaven, about hell! Oh, no! She had one thought which puts all preaching to shame--to ease the pain of her dying child. She forgot she was dying herself. She forgot all about her future reward--but she did not forget her child. That is the way mothers die. No Christian can die a better death.

When preachers can speak to us of a God who can love like this negro mother,--or who in the words of the English poet, Wordsworth, will=

```"Never blend his pleasure or his pride

```With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"=

then, we shall worship him,--not for his heaven, nor from fear of his hell, but for his own blessed self.

Others may be able to tell whether or not there is another life. I can not. But whether or not there is a life beyond the grave, I know that spring will come every year, that the gentle rains will fall, the sunlight will woo and kiss all it meets, the harvests will wave, and the world will sleep and wake each day. In the same way I know that whatever the preachers may say about a godless morality, the charities, the devotions, the humanities, the friendships, and the loves, will spring up eternal in our daily lives, and beauty and glory shall never perish from human nature.

"Conscience is born of love," wrote Shakespeare. In the alembic of this glorious truth all the terrors of the Jewish-Christian religion dissolve into nothingness. A word from Shakespeare, and the nightmares of the past are no more. Love!--attachment, devotion, friendship, behold the cradle in which conscience was born! Fear is a tomb--it lives upon hell. Love is a cradle, nursing into being and maturity all that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful. Says Tennyson:=

``"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds

```At last he beat his music out.

``There lives more faith in honest doubt,

`Believe me, than in half the creeds."=

This _is_ music, and it descends over the babel of wrangling creeds, as the sunlight, after a long storm, over the spent and weary waves.

THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY

Believes

``That the greatest good in life is Truth.

``Without Truth--love, hope, charity ``and all other human virtues dark ``en. Truth is to life what the sun ``is to the world. We believe that ``the only Truth which can be trusted ``is that which can be tested.

End of Project Gutenberg's Morality Without God, by M. M. Mangasarian