Part 7

"But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp "authority over the man, but to be in silence."

And for these kind, gentle and civilized remarks, the apostle Paul gives the following reasons:

"For Adam was first formed, then Eve."

"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman "being deceived was in the transgression."

Certainly women ought to feel under great obli- gation to the apostle Paul.

In the fifth chapter of the same epistle, Paul, advising Timothy as to what kind of people he should admit into his society or church, uses the following language:

"Let not a widow be taken into the number under "threescore years old, having been the wife of one "man."

"But the younger widows refuse, for when they "have begun to wax wanton against Christ, they will "marry."

This same Paul did not seem to think polygamy wrong, except in a bishop. He tells Timothy that:

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"A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one "wife."

He also lays down the rule that a deacon should be the husband of one wife, leaving us to infer that the other members might have as many as they could get.

In the second epistle to Timothy, Paul speaks of "grandmother Lois," who was referred to in such extravagant language by Mr. Talmage, and nothing is said touching her character in the least. All her virtues live in the imagination, and in the imagina- tion alone.

Paul, also, in his epistle to the Ephesians, says:

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus- "bands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the "head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the "church."

"Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, "so let the wives be to their own husbands, in "everything."

You will find, too, that in the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, Paul laments that all men are not bachelors like himself, and in the second verse of that chapter he gives the only reason for which he was willing that men and women should marry. He advised all the unmarried, and all widows, to remain

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as he was. In the ninth verse of this same chapter is a slander too vulgar for repetition,--an estimate of woman and of woman's love so low and vile, that every woman should hold the inspired author in infinite abhorrence.

Paul sums up the whole matter, however, by telling those who have wives or husbands, to stay with them--as necessary evils only to be tolerated--but sincerely regrets that anybody was ever married; and finally says that:

"They that have wives should be as though they "had none;" because, in his opinion:

"He that is unmarried careth for the things that "belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; "but he that is married careth for the things that are "of the world, how he may please his wife."

"There is this difference also," he tells us, "be- "tween a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman "careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be "holy both in body and in spirit; but she that is "married careth for the things of the world, how she " may please her husband."

Of course, it is contended that these things have tended to the elevation of woman.

The idea that it is better to love the Lord than to

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love your wife, or your husband, is infinitely absurd. Nobody ever did love the Lord,--nobody can--until he becomes acquainted with him.

Saint Paul also tells us that "Man is the image "and glory of God; but woman is the glory of "man;" and for the purpose of sustaining this posi- tion, says:

"For the man is not of the woman, but the woman "of the man; neither was the man created for the "woman, but the woman for the man."

Of course, we can all see that man could have gotten along well enough without woman, but woman, by no possibility, could have gotten along without man. And yet, this is called "inspired;" and this apostle Paul is supposed to have known more than all the people now upon the earth. No wonder Paul at last was constrained to say: "We are fools for "Christ's sake."

_Question_. How do you account for the present condition of woman in what is known as "the civilized "world," unless the Bible has bettered her condition?

_Answer_. We must remember that thousands of things enter into the problem of civilization. Soil, climate, and geographical position, united with count-

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less other influences, have resulted in the civilization of our time. If we want to find what the influence of the Bible has been, we must ascertain the condition of Europe when the Bible was considered as abso- lutely true, and when it wielded its greatest influence.

Christianity as a form of religion had actual posses- sion of Europe during the Middle Ages. At that time, it exerted its greatest power. Then it had the opportunity of breaking the shackles from the limbs of woman. Christianity found the Roman matron a free woman. Polygamy was never known in Rome; and although divorces were allowed by law, the Roman state had been founded for more than five hundred years before either a husband or a wife asked for a divorce. From the foundation of Chris- tianity,--I mean from the time it became the force in the Roman state,--woman, as such, went down in the scale of civilization. The sceptre was taken from her hands, and she became once more the slave and serf of man. The men also were made slaves, and woman has regained her liberty by the same means that man has regained his,--by wresting authority from the hands of the church. While the church had power, the wife and mother was not considered as good as the begging nun; the husband and father was far below the vermin-covered monk; homes were of no value compared with the cathedral; for God had to have a house, no matter how many of his children were wanderers. During all the years in which woman has struggled for equal liberty with man, she has been met with the Bible doctrine that she is the inferior of the man; that Adam was made first, and Eve afterwards; that man was not made for woman, but that woman was made for man.

I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he thinks of mother, wife and daughter. I also find that just in the proportion that he has lost confidence in the polygamy of Jehovah and in the advice and philosophy of Saint Paul, he believes in the rights and liberties of woman. As a matter of fact, men have risen from a perusal of the Bible, and murdered their wives. They have risen from reading its pages, and inflicted cruel and even mortal blows upon their children. Men have risen from reading the Bible and torn the flesh of others with red-hot pincers. They have laid down the sacred volume long enough to pour molten lead into the ears of others. They have stopped reading the sacred Scriptures for a sufficient time to

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incarcerate their fellow-men, to load them with chains, and then they have gone back to their reading, allowing their victims to die in darkness and despair. Men have stopped reading the Old Testament long enough to drive a stake into the ground and collect a few fagots and burn an honest man. Even ministers have denied themselves the privilege of reading the sacred book long enough to tell falsehoods about their fellow-men. There is no crime that Bible readers and Bible believers and Bible worshipers and Bible defenders have not committed. There is no meanness of which some Bible reader, believer, and defender, has not been guilty. Bible believers and Bible defenders have filled the world with calumnies and slanders. Bible believers and Bible defenders have not only whipped their wives, but they have murdered them; they have murdered their children. I do not say that reading the Bible will necessarily make men dishonest, but I do say, that reading the Bible will not prevent their committing crimes. I do not say that believing the Bible will necessarily make men commit burglary, but I do say that a belief in the Bible has caused men to persecute each other, to imprison each other, and to burn each other.

Only a little while ago, a British clergyman mur-

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dered his wife. Only a little while ago, an American Protestant clergyman whipped his boy to death be- cause the boy refused to say a prayer.

The Rev. Mr. Crowley not only believed the Bible, but was licensed to expound it. He had been "called" to the ministry, and upon his head had been laid the holy hands; and yet, he deliberately starved orphans, and while looking upon their sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, sung pious hymns and quoted with great unction: "Suffer little chil- "dren to come unto me."

As a matter of fact, in the last twenty years, more money has been stolen by Christian cashiers, Christian presidents, Christian directors, Christian trustees and Christian statesmen, than by all other convicts in all the penitentiaries in all the Christian world.

The assassin of Henry the Fourth was a Bible reader and a Bible believer. The instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew were believers in your sacred Scriptures. The men who invested their money in the slave-trade believed themselves filled with the Holy Ghost, and read with rapture the Psalms of David and the Sermon on the Mount. The murderers of Scotch Presbyterians were believers in Revelation, and the

134 Presbyterians, when they murdered others, were also believers. Nearly every man who expiates a crime upon the gallows is a believer in the Bible. For a thousand years, the daggers of assassination and the swords of war were blest by priests--by the believers in the sacred Scriptures. The assassin of President Garfield is a believer in the Bible, a hater of infidelity, a believer in personal inspiration, and he expects in a few weeks to join the winged and redeemed in heaven.

If a man would follow, to-day, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

FOURTH INTERVIEW.

_Son. There is no devil.

Mother. I know there is.

Son. How do you know?

Mother. Because they make pictures that look just like him.

Son. But, mother--

Mother. Don't "mother" me! You are trying to disgrace your parents._

_Question_. I want to ask you a few questions about Mr. Talmage's fourth sermon against you, entitled: "The Meanness of Infidelity," in which he compares you to Jehoiakim, who had the temerity to throw some of the writings of the weeping Jeremiah into the fire?

_Answer_. So far as I am concerned, I really re- gret that a second edition of Jeremiah's roll was gotten out. It would have been far better for us all, if it had been left in ashes. There was nothing but curses and prophecies of evil, in the sacred roll that

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Jehoiakim burned. The Bible tells us that Jehovah became exceedingly wroth because of the destruction of this roll, and pronounced a curse upon Jehoiakim and upon Palestine. I presume it was on account of the burning of that roll that the king of Babylon destroyed the chosen people of God. It was on account of that sacrilege that the Lord said of Jehoiakim: "He shall have none to sit upon the "throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast "out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the "frost." Any one can see how much a dead body would suffer under such circumstances. Imagine an infinitely wise, good and powerful God taking ven- geance on the corpse of a barbarian king! What joy there must have been in heaven as the angels watched the alternate melting and freezing of the dead body of Jehoiakim!

Jeremiah was probably the most accomplished croaker of all time. Nothing satisfied him. He was a prophetic pessimist,--an ancient Bourbon. He was only happy when predicting war, pestilence and famine. No wonder Jehoiakim despised him, and hated all he wrote.

One can easily see the character of Jeremiah from the following occurrence: When the Babylonians

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had succeeded in taking Jerusalem, and in sacking the city, Jeremiah was unfortunately taken prisoner; but Captain Nebuzaradan came to Jeremiah, and told him that he would let him go, because he had pro- phesied against his own country. He was regarded as a friend by the enemy.

There was, at that time, as now, the old fight between the church and the civil power. Whenever a king failed to do what the priests wanted, they immediately prophesied overthrow, disaster, and de- feat. Whenever the kings would hearken to their voice, and would see to it that the priests had plenty to eat and drink and wear, then they all declared that Jehovah would love that king, would let him live out all his days, and allow his son to reign in his stead. It was simply the old conflict that is still being waged, and it will be carried on until universal civil- ization does away with priestcraft and superstition.

The priests in the days of Jeremiah were the same as now. They sought to rule the State. They pre- tended that, at their request, Jehovah would withhold or send the rain; that the seasons were within their power; that they with bitter words could blight the fields and curse the land with want and death. They gloried then, as now, in the exhibition of God's wrath.

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In prosperity, the priests were forgotten. Success scorned them; Famine flattered them; Health laughed at them; Pestilence prayed to them; Disaster was their only friend.

These old prophets prophesied nothing but evil, and consequently, when anything bad happened, they claimed it as a fulfillment, and pointed with pride to the fact that they had, weeks or months, or years before, foretold something of that kind. They were really the originators of the phrase, "I told you so!"

There was a good old Methodist class-leader that lived down near a place called Liverpool, on the Illinois river. In the spring of 1861 the old man, telling his experience, among other things said, that he had lived there by the river for more than thirty years, and he did not believe that a year had passed that there were not hundreds of people during the hunting season shooting ducks on Sunday; that he had told his wife thousands of times that no good would come of it; that evil would come of it; "And "now, said the old man, raising his voice with the importance of the announcement, "war is upon us!"

_Question_. Do you wish, as Mr. Talmage says, to de- stroy the Bible--to have all the copies burned to ashes? What do you wish to have done with the Bible?

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_Answer_. I want the Bible treated exactly as we treat other books--preserve the good and throw away the foolish and the hurtful. I am fighting the doctrine of inspiration. As long as it is believed that the Bible is inspired, that book is the master--no mind is free. With that belief, intellectual liberty is impossible. With that belief, you can investigate only at the risk of losing your soul. The Catholics have a pope. Protestants laugh at them, and yet the pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever. It is only made better by those who believe in its inspira- tion giving better meanings to the words than their ancestors did. In this way it may be said that the Bible grows a little better.

Why should we have a book for a master? That which otherwise might be a blessing, remains a curse. If every copy of the Bible were destroyed, all that is good in that book would be reproduced in a single day. Leave every copy of the Bible as it is, and have every human being believe in its inspiration,

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and intellectual liberty would cease to exist. The whole race, from that moment, would go back to- ward the night of intellectual death.

The Bible would do more harm if more people really believed it, and acted in accordance with its teachings. Now and then a Freeman puts the knife to the heart of his child. Now and then an assassin relies upon some sacred passage; but, as a rule, few men believe the Bible to be absolutely true.

There are about fifteen hundred million people in the world. There are not two million who have read the Bible through. There are not two hundred million who ever saw the Bible. There are not five hundred million who ever heard that such a book exists.

Christianity is claimed to be a religion for all mankind. It was founded more than eighteen cen- turies ago; and yet, not one human being in three has ever heard of it. As a matter of fact, for more than fourteen centuries and-a-half after the crucifixion of Christ, this hemisphere was absolutely unknown. There was not a Christian in the world who knew there was such a continent as ours, and all the inhabitants of this, the New World, were deprived of the gospel for fourteen centuries and-a-half, and

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knew nothing of its blessings until they were in- formed by Spanish murderers and marauders. Even in the United States, Christianity is not keeping pace with the increase of population. When we take into consideration that it is aided by the momentum of eighteen centuries, is it not wonderful that it is not to-day holding its own? The reason of this is, that we are beginning to understand the Scriptures. We are beginningto see, and to see clearly, that they are simply of human origin, and that the Bible bears the marks of the barbarians who wrote it. The best educated among the clergy admit that we know but little as to the origin of the gospels; that we do not positively know the author of one of them; that it is really a matter of doubt as to who wrote the five books attributed to Moses. They admit now, that Isaiah was written by more than one person; that Solomon's Song was not written by that king; that Job is, in all probability, not a Jewish book; that Ecclesiastes must have been written by a Freethinker, and by one who had his doubts about the immortality of the soul. The best biblical students of the so- called orthodox world now admit that several stories were united to make the gospel of Saint Luke; that Hebrews is a selection from many fragments, and

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that no human being, not afflicted with delirium tremens, can understand the book of Revelation.

I am not the only one engaged in the work of destruction. Every Protestant who expresses a doubt as to the genuineness of a passage, is destroying the Bible. The gentlemen who have endeavored to treat hell as a question of syntax, and to prove that eternal punishment depends upon grammar, are helping to bring the Scriptures into contempt. Hundreds of years ago, the Catholics told the Protestant world that it was dangerous to give the Bible to the people. The Catholics were right; the Protestants were wrong. To read is to think. To think is to investi- gate. To investigate is, finally, to deny. That book should have been read only by priests. Every copy should have been under the lock and key of bishop, cardinal and pope. The common people should have received the Bible from the lips of the ministers. The world should have been kept in ignorance. In that way, and in that way only, could the pulpit have maintained its power. He who teaches a child the alphabet sows the seeds of heresy. I have lived to see the schoolhouse in many a village larger than the church. Every man who finds a fact, is the enemy of theology. Every man who expresses an

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honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage thinks that you laugh too much,--that you exhibit too much mirth, and that no one should smile at sacred things?

_Answer_. The church has always feared ridicule. The minister despises laughter. He who builds upon ignorance and awe, fears intelligence and mirth. The theologians always begin by saying: "Let us be "solemn." They know that credulity and awe are twins. They also know that while Reason is the pilot of the soul, Humor carries the lamp. Whoever has the sense of humor fully developed, cannot, by any possibility, be an orthodox theologian. He would be his own laughing stock. The most absurd stories, the most laughable miracles, read in a solemn, stately way, sound to the ears of ignorance and awe like truth. It has been the object of the church for eighteen hundred years to prevent laughter.

A smile is the dawn of a doubt.

Ministers are always talking about death, and coffins, and dust, and worms,--the cross in this life, and the fires of another. They have been the enemies of human happiness. They hate to hear

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even the laughter of children. There seems to have been a bond of sympathy between divinity and dyspepsia, between theology and indigestion. There is a certain pious hatred of pleasure, and those who have been "born again" are expected to despise "the transitory joys of this fleeting life." In this, they follow the example of their prophets, of whom they proudly say: "They never smiled."

Whoever laughs at a holy falsehood, is called a "scoffer." Whoever gives vent to his natural feel- ings is regarded as a "blasphemer," and whoever examines the Bible as he examines other books, and relies upon his reason to interpret it, is denounced as a "reprobate."

Let us respect the truth, let us laugh at miracles, and above all, let us be candid with each other.

'Question. Mr. Talmage charges that you have, in your lectures, satirized your early home; that you have described with bitterness the Sundays that were forced upon you in your youth; and that in various ways you have denounced your father as a "tyrant," or a "bigot," or a "fool"?

_Answer_. I have described the manner in which Sunday was kept when I was a boy. My father for

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many years regarded the Sabbath as a sacred day. We kept Sunday as most other Christians did. I think that my father made a mistake about that day. I have no doubt he was honest about it, and really believed that it was pleasing to God for him to keep the Sabbath as he did.

I think that Sunday should not be a day of gloom, of silence and despair, or a day in which to hear that the chances are largely in favor of your being eternally damned. That day, in my opinion, should be one of joy; a day to get acquainted with your wife and children; a day to visit the woods, or the sea, or the murmuring stream; a day to gather flowers, to visit the graves of your dead, to read old poems, old letters, old books; a day to rekindle the fires of friendship and love.

Mr. Talmage says that my father was a Christian, and he then proceeds to malign his memory. It seems to me that a living Christian should at least tell the truth about one who sleeps the silent sleep of death.

I have said nothing, in any of my lectures, about my father, or about my mother, or about any of my relatives. I have not the egotism to bring them forward. They have nothing to do with the subject

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in hand. That my father was mistaken upon the subject of religion, I have no doubt. He was a good, a brave and honest man. I loved him living, and I love him dead. I never said to him an unkind word, and in my heart there never was of him an unkind thought. He was grand enough to say to me, that I had the same right to my opinion that he had to his. He was great enough to tell me to read the Bible for myself, to be honest with myself, and if after reading it I concluded it was not the word of God, that it was my duty to say so.

My mother died when I was but a child; and from that day--the darkest of my life--her memory has been within my heart a sacred thing, and I have felt, through all these years, her kisses on my lips.