Chapter 3

“It was the Quaker Paine who worked for our independence, and not the infidel Paine. He did nothing in the interests of our national liberty after he avowed his irreligious principles.” Neither was he the first to raise the voice in favor of national liberty. Ten years before he wrote his work entitled “Common Sense,” at the suggestion of Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush, which was in 1776, Patrick Henry’s voice was heard amid the assembled colonists in Virginia. He said: “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.—” Just then some one cried out, “Treason!” After a pause, Henry added,—“may profit by their example.” Years before Tom Paine came to America, even in 1748, it went to record that American legislatures were tending to independence. “They were charged with presumption in declaring their own rights and privileges.” Our independence was predicted near at hand from 1758 and onwards. In 1774, before Paine came from England, the word freedom was ringing out upon the air. “James Otis was hailing the dawn of a new empire” in 1765. In this year there were utterances of such sentiments as tended to evolve the declaration of 1776, and these were heard all over the land from Boston to Charleston, S. C. In 1773 “Samuel Adams insisted that the colonies should have a congress to frame a bill of rights, or to form an independent state, an American commonwealth.” The North Carolinians renounced their allegiance to the king of England in the Mecklenberg declaration, which was made in May, 1775. But Paine’s little book, suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush and Franklin, and called “Common Sense,” was published in 1776. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that “Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose pen has contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington.” In 1795 the _Aurora_ put out the following language, which seems to be that to which Hildreth alludes: “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington; if ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let the history of the federal government instruct mankind, that the mask of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.” This, gentle reader, was from the pen of the man whom Mr. Ingersoll would immortalize if he could.

William Carver addressed a private letter to Thomas Paine, dated Dec. 2, 1806, and published in the New York _Observer_ Nov. 1, 1877, in which we have the following revelations: “A respectable gentleman from New Rochelle called to see me a few days back, and said that every body was tired of you there and that no one would undertake to board and lodge you. I thought this was the case, as I found you at a tavern in a most miserable situation. You appeared as if you had not been shaved for a fortnight, and as to a shirt, it could not be said that you had one on, it was only the remains of one, and this likewise appeared not to have been off your back for a fortnight, and was nearly the color of tanned leather; and you had the most disagreeable smell possible, just like that of our poor beggars in England. Do you remember the pains I took to clean you? That I got a tub of warm water and soap, and washed you from head to foot, and this I had to do three times before I could get you clean? You say also that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me, but you should have said, ‘I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demijohn of brandy containing four gallons, and this did not serve me three weeks.’ This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold this as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times that you have boarded with me, the demijohn alone mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper? Now sir, I think I have drawn a complete portrait of your character, yet, to enter upon every minutia, would be to give a history of your life, and to develop the fallacious mask of hypocrisy and deception under which you have acted in your political, as well as moral, capacity of life.” So much for the apostate Quaker’s character after the close of the American revolution.

Mr. Lecky, an infidel, says, “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive of practice: amid all the sins and failing; amid all the priestcraft, the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the church, it has preserved IN THE CHARACTER OF ITS FOUNDER AN ENDURING PRINCIPLE OF REGENERATION.” If such be the fountain let the stream continue to flow.

SHALL WE UNCHAIN THE TIGER? OR, THE FRUITS OF INFIDELITY.

By Eld. A. I. Maynard.

An infidel production was submitted to Benjamin Franklin manuscript; he returned it to the author with a letter, from which the following quotations are extracted: “I would advise you not to attempt unchaining the Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.... If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?” He informs us that he was “an advocate of infidelity in his early youth, a confirmed Deist.” He says his “arguments perverted some other young persons, particularly Collins and Ralph, and when he recollected that they both treated him exceedingly ill without the least remorse, and also remembered the behavior of Keith, another ‘Freethinker,’ and his own conduct toward Vernon and a Miss Reed, which at times gave him great uneasiness, he was led to suspect that his theory, if true, was not very useful.”

Youth and inexperience have been the secret of many young persons being led astray, like Franklin, by infidel speculations; but age and observation have convinced many of them that all infidel speculations are empty and worthless. Look at the history of infidelity in France and Scotland, and then look at liberalism in America, with Col. Ingersoll leading the van. Can’t you see that its only tendency is to loosen the restraints of morality and “unchain the Tiger?”

The inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes, have need of all the motives of religion to lead them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in its practice until it becomes habitual.

Unbeliever, if you read this article, and remember that you have prepared one sentence to cut one cord that helps to hold the Tiger, _burn it_. Do not unchain the animal. Would you substitute infidelity for Christianity, for the religion of the Bible? Would you do that in this country? The enemies of this religion confess that its code of morals is holy, just and good, its doctrine is dignified and glorious; its tendency is to purity and peace; “it is pure, peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits; without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” Montesquieu, the publisher of the Persian letters and president of the parliament of Bordeaux, says: “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blessed with the best political and civil laws, because these, next to religion, are the greatest good that men can have.”

The Congress of 1776, speaking of religion, declared it was the “only solid basis of public liberty and happiness.” General Washington said it was “one of the great pillars of human happiness, and the firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens.” What could we gain by exchanging it for Deism, or Atheism, or Ingersollism? Infidelity proposes to break down the altars of prayer, take away our Bibles and our days of worship, shut up the doors against all our Sunday-schools and turn more than a million of children into the streets, away from sweet song and moralizing influences, and the pure morals of the gospel of Christ. This would bereave the living of his rule of life, and rob the dying of the antidote of death.

Shall we “unchain the Tiger”—_unbelief_? What would it bring us in return? Its doctrines are vague speculations, founded on neither data nor evidence; some of its supporters believe in some kind of a God, while some deny every God; some few believe in the immortality of the soul, while a majority, with the French infidels, write over the gates of their cemeteries, “Death is eternal sleep.”

In looking over the various infidel productions I think of the old saying, “Be sure you are right, and then go ahead.” There is no certainty in their speculations. They do not agree even in their so-called moral code, nor, as yet, in their doctrinal speculations.

Lord Herbert and the Earl of Shaftesbury thought that the light of nature would teach all men, without the aid of revelation, to observe the morality of the Bible. Spinosa and Hobbes, one believing in a God, and the other an Atheist, agreed that there was nothing that was either right or wrong in its own nature; and also agreed “that every man had a right to obtain, either by force or fraud, everything which either his reason or his passions prompted him to believe was useful to himself—duties to the State were his only duties.”

Blount, another Freethinker, supposed “that the moral law of nature justified self-murder.” Lord Bolingbroke claimed that it enjoined polygamy; and neither Blount nor Bolingbroke prohibited fornication, or adultery, or incest, except between parents and children.

But the vagueness and uncertainty of the doctrinal speculations of infidelity, and the looseness and immorality of its rules of life, are not the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and _only_ evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of society. The people of France were taught by their literati that the Bible was at war with their liberties; and that they could never expect to overturn the throne till they had, first, broken down the “altar.” HERE THE TIGER WAS UNCHAINED!

The lusts and passions of man were set free from the restraints of Christianity, and the bloody history of that nation, in its devotion to infidelity, should convince every man that infidelity only “_unchained the tiger_”! It did France no good, _but much evil_. In this state of things France needed revolution, as America did, and had she engaged in it, with as pious reliance upon God, “and with the hearts of her people deeply imbued with the morality of the Bible, the scion of liberty, carried in the honored Lafayette from this country,” would have taken deep root, and spread forth its branches; and ere this time the fairest portion of Europe might have reposed under its shadow. But her principles poisoned her morals, and her immorality disqualified her for freedom. After expending an incredible amount of treasure, and sacrificing more than two million of men, she consented to be ruled by a despot in hope of some protection from her own people, and in hope of some security against the animal which she had unchained.

With such facts before us, let us Americans decide, not merely as Christians, but as “patriots and fathers,” whether we will cling to the pure “Gospel of Jesus Christ,” given to us in the love of Heaven, and in the blood of Jesus, rather than accept in its stead the empty, Godless, Christless, good-for-nothing negative of God and Christ and Christianity. The chief article in the unbeliever’s creed is in these words, “I believe in all unbelief.”

Will not our friends take interest enough in the JOURNAL to increase its circulation. There is no reason why it should not be immediately doubled, and thus placed upon a solid basis. It is our intention to make it a thorough defense of the truth, so much so that all will relish it, and remember it with delight.

THE STRUGGLE.

“Passion riots; reason then contends, And on the conquest every bliss depends.”

There are two different periods in the history of the race; in the history of a nation; in the history of the church; in the history of moral institutions, and in the history of families. In one the intellect predominates, governs; in the other the emotional nature, or passion, rules. The fatal day in the history of a nation is the day in which, through party strife or otherwise, a nation of people becomes a seething mass of heated passion. Such a nation is like a vessel tossed upon the waves above the falls of some mighty river, liable to be buried in the whirlpool of destruction. Men who are governed by their emotional nature are most liable to disappointments, to troubles, and difficulties of every kind. Select all the miserable families in your community, tell me where they are, and I will show you every family in which passion reigns.

Troubles are generally legitimate children of passion. Who has not heard some one say, repentingly, “If I had taken a second, sober thought I would not have done it.” Intellect belongs to our higher nature, and emotion belongs to our lower. Intelligence is always at a discount where the emotional nature governs—it is subordinated to passion. When the intellect governs, the emotional is subjected to thought; when either one predominates, the other is brought under and enslaved. These are the two conflicting elements in man’s nature which are generally at war with each other, leading to different and antagonistic results. During the dark ages, which were ushered in through the repudiation of intelligence and the predominance of passion, the emotional reigned, and men were governed by their passions in religious as well as state affairs. The shadows of those ages still linger with some communities, and with many persons in almost all communities. Our fathers had a long and hard struggle in getting away from an emotional to an intellectual state, both in civil as well as religious affairs. To-day, if we consider this matter in connection with our people as a nation, we may safely say that we are in an intellectual period—mind predominates. This is an age of investigation. The time was, in the history of our fathers, when a man was fined fifty pounds of tobacco if he refused to have his innocent child christened. _See the_ “_old Blue Laws._” The time was when innocent persons were tried, condemned, and put to death for being, in the estimation of men, clothed with disgraceful ignorance, _witches_. Who has not heard of the “Salem witchcraft?”

The emotional nature of man, as a ruling sovereign, is losing its “legal-tender value” daily. The time was when it brought a premium in the most of the churches in our country. An aged father, who is now “across the river,” once said to me, “I was bewildered, and mentally lost for thirty years of my life.” I asked him for the facts. He, answering, said: “During all that period of time I was a church member, and, like some others, I was a quiet, still kind of a soul; I paid my honest debts; told the truth about my neighbors, and lived a moral life to the very best of my abilities. There were others of the same character. The preachers frequently called us Quakers—the Quakers were a very still people in those days. There were others who were reckless; would not always tell the truth, and would not always pay their honest debts, but they were, nevertheless, very noisy in the church, and the preacher always made most of those noisy fellows. Now,” said the aged father, “I never could understand that.” The old man lived to learn the secret, and changed his religious relations and began a new life in religion.

The scenes of the “Cane Ridge revival,” down in Kentucky, have not been repeated in all our country for more than twenty years, and it is probable that they never will be. There are many things in the past history of religion in our country that will never be repeated. Did you ever witness a panic in a large congregation of people? If you have, you may go with me to “Cane Ridge.” Before we start I wish to remind you of the fact that some of the most fearful panics known to men took place where, and when, there was no reason for them outside of existing ignorance. Fright or fear, coupled with ignorance, produced them. Now let us go to “Cane Ridge.” There we find the people in the emotional period in the history of religion. They are laboring under the conviction that Jehovah has concentrated all the powers of His Spirit at Cane Ridge—it is the common conviction. The people all over the country believe that God is there. The excitement runs high, and yet higher; it becomes contagious—a religious epidemic—the ruling element being the thought of the presence of the Divine Majesty, and the emotional nature of man the field of its operations. All the ignorance of a genuine panic is there. There were no well-informed unbelievers there to tear off the veil, nor better-informed Christians to remove it, not even so much as a Wesley to exonerate God by saying, “I am constrained to believe that it is the devil tearing them as they are coming to Christ.” No! There is one conviction at Cane Ridge—it is this: _Jehovah is here._ It was a wonderful panic—a wonderful time. Persons going on to the ground immediately fell down like dead men; got up with the jerks; barked like dogs. Women went backwards and forwards, making singular gestures; their heads were bobbing with the jerks, and their long hair cracking like whips. The scene was beyond description. The whole country flocked to the place, and all were confounded with amazement and astonishment.

If such operations were religion, our country has been without it for a long time. Then our old-fashioned camp-meetings—where are they? They are things of the past. I recollect leaving a camp-ground at a late hour of the night, just as the congregation divided up into groups, and the groups went out into the woods in different directions to engage in secret prayer. We heard them when we were three miles away—_strange secret prayer_! Do you know anything of that kind of secret prayer at the present time?

The common pulpit teaching of those times was wonderful(?), but it was the best they had. It was common for preachers to make war upon education. They often boasted of their ignorance. They claimed that education was not necessary to qualify a man for the pulpit. The best school teachers in our country received twelve and fifteen dollars per month for teaching, and boarded themselves. Teachers who now pay five dollars per week for board, can’t see how those old teachers got along upon such wages. In those times it was very common for teachers to get their board for seventy-five cents per week. The farmers claimed that it was unnecessary to educate their daughters, and only necessary to educate their sons sufficiently well to enable them to keep their accounts. Beyond this it was often claimed that an education was of no value—that it only made rascals. I recollect a very zealous old man who preached for the German Baptists; he is now “across the waves.” Once, in my presence, he disposed of a grammatical argument that was put against him, by saying, “It is the wisdom of the world, and it is sensual and devilish.” It was common forty years ago for preachers to say, “I don’t know what I shall say, but just as the Lord gives it to me I will hand it to you.” As a general thing those men knew no better, and the masses of the people knew no better. The people were living in an Emotional period, with the exception of a few brave thinkers, and they were governed by their emotions.

Prosperity grew with the growth of our country, and the standard of education was elevated. The free-school system took the place of the old-fashioned subscription schools, which were worth twelve dollars per month to the whole community, and the brave thinkers continued stirring up thought in religion, and giving the fathers and mothers trouble about this thing of confounding religion with passion, and our country is now fairly at sea in an Intellectual period. Religion is now a thing to be learned and lived—_to be done_. Those brave men who advocated an intelligent religion forty years ago, were denounced, from almost every pulpit in our country, as a set of “whitewashed infidels,” having no religion, and “without God in the world.”

But that day is past, and we are in a period in which mind generally predominates. The language of the emotional is seldom heard. In that period it was common to hear men ask: “How did you get religion?” “where did you get religion?” “where did you get religion?” “describe it;” “O I can’t, it is better felt than expressed.” Such language was in keeping with a very common idea which was held sacred in those days. It was this, the Lord made general provision for the salvation of men, but He makes a special application to the sinner. Of course, all to whom salvation was not especially applied, were, in the estimation of those people, _lost_. There are a few communities yet that are away back in the emotional period. There are men and women in every community who are yet governed by their emotional nature in matters of religion. Those persons have no use for an intelligent, argumentative preacher. They want a preacher who will say smoothe things; and there is now and then a preacher who has no strength outside of the emotional.

We have an emotional nature. I am glad that we have. I would not be an intellectual wooden-man if I could. But if you say, the Almighty Father intended that we should be intellectually subordinated to our emotional nature, and therefore governed by our passions, or feelings, I shall deny it. He never intended that we should be governed by our passions. To-day there are strong intellects in unbelief flooding our country with their literature. How shall they be met? Mr. Moody says, “Show them that you are full of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.” Very well. Can you do that without the truth? can you do that without word or wisdom? can you do it without “contending earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints?” In the days of Christ and His apostles the men who were full of the Holy Spirit had a mouth and wisdom which none of their adversaries were able to resist or gainsay. The antichrists of our day can not be met successfully without reason, without argument, without meeting the intellectual demands of the times.

There are intellectual men and women in almost every community throughout our country—men and women with whom intelligence governs—who want the whys and wherefores upon every subject. This class is on the increase at a rapid rate. It does no good to set ourselves against reason, and oppose the current of thought with our emotional nature. In that way we may succeed with those who are governed by their emotional nature, but the work, when it is done, is a work upon the passions, and will soon pass away, unless the intellect was at the same time enlisted. The men who stir the world with thought, and give intellectual cast to the age in which we live, are to be met with thought, met with reason, met with truths tried in the crucible.