Part 10

A few years ago almost everything spoken against the grossest possible superstition was considered blasphemous. The altar hedged itself about with the sword; the Priest went in partnership with the King. In those days statutes were leveled against all human speech. Men were convicted of blasphemy because they believed in an actual personal God; because they insisted that God had body and parts. Men were convicted of blasphemy because they denied that God had form. They have been imprisoned for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and they have been torn in pieces for defending that doctrine. There are but few dogmas now believed by any Christian church that have not at some time been denounced as blasphemous.

When Henry VIII. put himself at the head of the Episcopal Church a creed was made, and in that creed there were five dogmas that must, of necessity, be believed. Anybody who denied any one, was to be punished--for the first offence, with fine, with imprisonment, or branding, and for the second offence, with death. Not one of these five dogmas is now a part of the creed of the Church of England.

So I could go on for days and weeks and months, showing that hundreds and hundreds of religious dogmas, to deny which was death, have been either changed or abandoned for others nearly as absurd as the old ones were. It may be, however, sufficient to say, that wherever the church has had power it has been a crime for any man to speak his honest thought. No church has ever been willing that any opponent should give a transcript of his mind. Every church in power has appealed to brute force, to the sword, for the purpose of sustaining its creed. Not one has had the courage to occupy the open field. The church has not been satisfied with calling Infidels and unbelievers blasphemers. Each church has accused nearly every other church of being a blasphemer. Every pioneer has been branded as a criminal. The Catholics called Martin Luther a blasphemer, and Martin Luther called Copernicus a blasphemer. Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. Some of the greatest men of the world, some of the best, have been put to death for the crime of blasphemy, that is to say, for the crime of endeavoring to benefit their fellow-men.

As long as the church has the power to close the lips of men, so long and no longer will superstition rule this world.

"Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ear of the few."

After every argument of the church has been answered, has been refuted, then the church cries, "blasphemy!"

Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.

Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.

Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.

Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.

And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.

In the olden time, in the days of savagery and superstition, when some poor man was struck by lightning, or when a blackened mark was left on the breast of a wife and mother, the poor savage supposed that some god, angered by something he had done, had taken his revenge. What else did the savage suppose? He believed that this god had the same feelings, with regard to the loyalty of his subjects, that an earthly chief had, or an earthly king had, with regard to the loyalty or treachery of members of his tribe, or citizens of his kingdom. So the savage said, when his country was visited by a calamity, when the flood swept the people away, or the storm scattered their poor houses in fragments: "We have allowed some Freethinker to live; some one is in our town or village who has not brought his gift to the priest, his incense to the altar; some man of our tribe or of our country does not respect our god." Then, for the purpose of appeasing the supposed god, for the purpose of again winning a smile from heaven, for the purpose of securing a little sunlight for their fields and homes, they drag the accused man from his home, from his wife and children, and with all the ceremonies of pious brutality, shed his blood. They did it in self-defence; they believed that they were saving their own lives and the lives of their children; they did it to appease their god. Most people are now beyond that point. Now when disease visits a community, the intelligent do not say the disease came because the people were wicked; when the cholera comes, it is not because of the Methodists, of the Catholics, of the Presbyterians, or of the Infidels. When the wind destroys a town in the far West, it is not because somebody there had spoken his honest thoughts. We are beginning to see that the wind blows and destroys without the slightest reference to man, without the slightest care whether it destroys the good or the bad, the irreligious or the religious. When the lightning leaps from the clouds it is just as likely to strike a good man as a bad man, and when the great serpents of flame climb around the houses of men, they burn just as gladly and just as joyously, the home of virtue, as they do the den and lair of vice.

Then the reason for all these laws has failed. The laws were made on account of a superstition. That superstition has faded from the minds of intelligent men, and, as a consequence, the laws based on the superstition ought to fail.

There is one splendid thing in nature, and that is that men and nations must reap the consequences of their acts--reap them in this world, if they live, and in another if there be one. The man who leaves this world a bad man, a malicious man, will probably be the same man when he reaches another realm, and the man who leaves this shore good, charitable and honest, will be good, charitable and honest, no matter on what star he lives again. The world is growing sensible upon these subjects, and as we grow sensible, we grow charitable.

Another reason has been given for these laws against blasphemy, the most absurd reason that can by any possibility be given. It is this: There should be laws against blasphemy, because the man who utters blasphemy endangers the public peace.

Is it possible that Christians will break the peace? Is it possible that they will violate the law? Is it probable that Christians will congregate together and make a mob, simply because a man has given an opinion against their religion? What is their religion? They say, "If a man smites you on one cheek, turn the other also." They say, "We must love our neighbors as we love ourselves." Is it possible then, that you can make a mob out of Christians,--that these men, who love even their enemies, will attack others, and will destroy life, in the name of universal love? And yet, Christians themselves say that there ought to be laws against blasphemy, for fear that Christians, who are controlled by universal love, will become so outraged, when they hear an honest man express an honest thought, that they will leap upon him and tear him in pieces.

What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy?

To live on the unpaid labor of other men--that is blasphemy.

To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body--that is blasphemy.

To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks upon the lips--that is blasphemy.

To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you believe to be a lie--that is blasphemy.

To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob--that is blasphemy.

To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant many--that is blasphemy.

To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men--that is blasphemy.

To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain--that is blasphemy.

To violate your conscience--that is blasphemy.

The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers.

The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer.

Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?

I have been giving you my real ideas. I have spoken freely, and yet the sun rose this morning, just the same as it always has. There is no particular change visible in the world, and I do not see but that we are all as happy to-day as though we had spent yesterday in making somebody else miserable. I denounced on yesterday the superstitions of the Christian world, and yet, last night I slept the sleep of peace. You will pardon me for saying again that I feel the greatest possible interest in the result of this trial, in the principle at stake. This is my only apology, my only excuse, for taking your time. For years I have felt that the great battle for human liberty, the battle that has covered thousands of fields with heroic dead, had finally been won. When I read the history of this world, of what has been endured, of what has been suffered, of the heroism and infinite courage of the intellectual and honest few, battling with the countless serfs and slaves of kings and priests, of tyranny, of hypocrisy, of ignorance and prejudice, of faith and fear, there was in my heart the hope that the great battle had been fought, and that the human race, in its march towards the dawn, had passed midnight, and that the "great balance weighed up morning." This hope, this feeling, gave me the greatest possible joy. When I thought of the many who had been burnt, of how often the sons of liberty had perished in ashes, of how many o! the noblest and greatest had stood upon scaffolds, and of the countless hearts, the grandest that ever throbbed in human breasts, that had been broken by the tyranny of church and state, of how many of the noble and loving had sighed themselves away in dungeons, the only consolation was that the last bastile had fallen, that the dungeons of the Inquisition had been torn down and that the scaffolds of the world could no longer be wet with heroic blood.

You know that sometimes, after a great battle has been fought, and one of the armies has been broken, and its fortifications carried, there are occasional stragglers beyond the great field, stragglers who know nothing of the fate of their army, know nothing of the victory, and for that reason, fight on. There are a few such stragglers in the State of New Jersey. They have never heard of the great victory. They do not know that in all civilized countries the hosts of superstition have been put to flight. They do not know that Freethinkers, Infidels, are to-day the leaders of the intellectual armies of the world.

One of the last trials of this character, tried in Great Britain,--and that is the country that our ancestors fought in the sacred name of liberty,--one of the last trials in that country, a country ruled by a state church, ruled by a woman who was born a queen, ruled by dukes and nobles and lords, children of ancient robbers--was in the year 1843. George Jacob Holyoake, one of the best of the human race, was imprisoned on a charge of Atheism, charged with having written a pamphlet and having made a speech in which he had denied the existence of the British God. The judge who tried him, who passed sentence upon him, went down to his grave with a stain upon his intellect and upon his honor. All the real intelligence of Great Britain rebelled against the outrage. There was a trial after that to which I will call your attention. Judge Coleridge, father of the present Chief Justice of England, presided at this trial. A poor man by the name of Thomas Pooley, a man who dug wells for a living, wrote on the gate of a priest, that, if people would burn their Bibles and scatter the ashes on the lands, the crops would be better, and that they would also save a good deal of money in tithes. He wrote several sentences of a kindred character. He was a curious man. He had an idea that the world was a living, breathing animal. He would not dig a well beyond a certain depth for fear he might inflict pain upon this animal, the earth. He was tried before Judge Coleridge, on that charge. An infinite God was about to be dethroned, because an honest well-digger had written his sentiments on the fence of a parson. He was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Afterward, many intelligent people asked for his pardon, on the ground that he was in danger of becoming insane. The judge refused to sign the petition. The pardon was refused. Long before his sentence expired, he became a raving maniac. He was removed to an asylum and there died. Some of the greatest men in England attacked that judge, among these, Mr. Buckle, author of "The History of Civilization in England," one of the greatest books in this world. Mr. Buckle denounced Judge Coleridge. He brought him before the bar of English opinion, and there was not a man in England, whose opinion was worth anything, who did not agree with Mr. Buckle, and did not with him, declare the conviction of Thomas Pooley to be an infamous outrage. What were the reasons given? This, among others: The law was dead; it had been asleep for many years; it was a law passed during the ignorance of the Middle Ages, and a law that came out of the dungeon of religious persecution; a law that was appealed to by bigots and by hypocrites, to punish, to imprison an honest man.

In many parts of this country, people have entertained the idea that New England was still filled with the spirit of Puritanism, filled with the descendants of those who killed Quakers in the name of universal benevolence, and traded Quaker children in the Barbadoes for rum, for the purpose of establishing the fact that God is an infinite father.

Yet, the last trial in Massachusetts on a charge like this, was when Abner Kneeland was indicted on a charge of Atheism. He was tried for having written this sentence: "The Universalists believe in a God which I do not." He was convicted and imprisoned. Chief Justice Shaw upheld the decision, and upheld it because he was afraid of public opinion; upheld it, although he must have known that the statute under which Kneeland was indicted was clearly and plainly in violation of the Constitution. No man can read the decision of Justice Shaw without being convinced that he was absolutely dominated, either by bigotry, or hypocrisy. One of the judges of that court, a noble man, wrote a dissenting opinion, and in that dissenting opinion is the argument of a civilized, of an enlightened jurist. No man can answer the dissenting opinion of Justice Morton. The case against Kneeland was tried more than fifty years ago, and there has been none since in the New England States; and this case, that we are now trying, is the first ever tried in New Jersey. The fact that it is the first, certifies to my interpretation of this statute, and it also certifies to the toleration and to the civilization of the people of this State. The statute is upon your books. You inherited it from your ignorant ancestors, and they inherited it from their savage ancestors. The people of New Jersey were heirs of the mistakes and of the atrocities of ancient England.

It is too late to enforce a law like this. Why has it been allowed to slumber? Who obtained this indictment? Were they actuated by good and noble motives? Had they the public weal at heart, or were they simply endeavoring to be revenged upon this defendant? Were they willing to disgrace the State, in order that they might punish him?

I have given you my definition of blasphemy, and now the question arises, what is worship? Who is a worshiper? What is prayer? What is real religion? Let me answer these questions.

Good, honest, faithful work, is worship. The man who ploughs the fields and fells the forests; the man who works in mines, the man who battles with the winds and waves out on the wide sea, controlling the commerce of the world; these men are worshipers. The man who goes into the forest, leading his wife by the hand, who builds him a cabin, who makes a home in the wilderness, who helps to people and civilize and cultivate a continent, is a worshiper.

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers; it is the only prayer that deserves an answer,--good, honest, noble work.

A woman whose husband has gone down to the gutter, gone down to degradation and filth; the woman who follows him and lifts him out of the mire and presses him to her noble heart, until he becomes a man once more, this woman is a worshiper. Her act is worship.

The poor man and the poor woman who work night and day, in order that they may give education to their children, so that they may have a better life than their father and mother had; the parents who deny themselves the comforts of life, that they may lay up something to help their children to a higher place--they are worshipers; and the children who, after they reap the benefit of this worship, become ashamed of their parents, are blasphemers.

The man who sits by the bed of his invalid wife,--a wife prematurely old and gray,--the husband who sits by her bed and holds, her thin, wan hand in his as lovingly, and kisses it as rapturously, as passionately, as when it was dimpled,--that is worship; that man is a worshiper; that is real religion.

Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.

Gentlemen, you can never make me believe--no statute can ever convince me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to express his thought. Neither can the whole world convince me that any man should be punished, either in this world or in the next, for being candid with his fellow-men. If you send men to the penitentiary for speaking their thoughts, for endeavoring to enlighten their fellows, then the penitentiary will become a place of honor, and the victim will step from it--not stained, not disgraced, but clad in robes of glory.

Let us take one more step.

What is holy, what is sacred? I reply that human happiness is holy, human rights are holy. The body and soul of man--these are sacred. The liberty of man is of far more importance than any book; the rights of man more sacred than any religion--than any Scriptures, whether inspired or not.

What we want is the truth, and does any one suppose that all of the truth is confined in one book--that the mysteries of the whole world are explained by one volume?

All that is--all that conveys information to man--all that has been produced by the past--all that now exists--should be considered by an intelligent man. All the known truths of this world--all the philosophy, all the poems, all the pictures, all the statues, all the entrancing music--the prattle of babes, the lullaby of mothers, the words of honest men, the trumpet calls to duty--all these make up the bible of the world--everything that is noble and true and free, you will find in this great book.

If we wish to be true to ourselves,--if we wish to benefit our fellow-men--if we wish to live honorable lives--we will give to every other human being every right that we claim for ourselves.

There is another thing that should be remembered by you. You are the judges of the law, as well as the judges of the facts. In a case like this, you are the final judges as to what the law is; and if you acquit, no court can reverse your verdict. To prevent the least misconception, let me state to you again what I claim:

First. I claim that the constitution of New Jersey declares that:

"_The liberty of speech shall not be abridged_." Second. That this statute, under which this indictment is found, is unconstitutional, because it does abridge the liberty of speech; it does exactly that which the constitution emphatically says shall not be done.

Third. I claim, also, that under this law--even if it be constitutional--the words charged in this indictment do not amount to blasphemy, read even in the light, or rather in the darkness, of this statute.

Do not, I pray you, forget this point. Do not forget, that, no matter what the Court may tell you about the law--how good it is, or how bad it is--no matter what the Court may instruct you on that subject--do not forget one thing, and that is: That the words charged in the indictment are the only words that you can take into consideration in this case. Remember that no matter what else may be in the pamphlet--no matter what pictures or cartoons there may be of the gentlemen in Boonton who mobbed this man in the name of universal liberty and love--do not forget that you have no right to take one word into account except the exact words set out in this indictment--that is to say, the words that I have read to you. Upon this point the Court will instruct you that you have nothing to do with any other line in that pamphlet; and I now claim, that should the Court instruct you that the statute is constitutional, still I insist that the words set out in this indictment do not amount to blasphemy.

There is still another point. This statute says: "Whoever shall _willfully_ speak against." Now, in this case, you must find that the defendant "willfully" did so and so--that is to say, that he made the statements attributed to him knowing that they were not true. If you believe that he was honest in what he said, then this statute does not touch him. Even under this statute, a man may give his honest opinion. Certainly, there is no law that charges a man with "willfully" being honest--"willfully" telling his real opinion--"willfully" giving to his fellow-men his thought.

Where a man is charged with larceny, the indictment must set out that he took the goods or the property with the intention to steal--with what the law calls the _animus furandi_. If he took the goods with the intention to steal, then he is a thief; but if he took the goods believing them to be his own, then he is guilty of no offence. So in this case, whatever was said by the defendant must have been "willfully" said. And I claim that if you believe that what the man said was honestly said, you cannot find him guilty under this statute.

One more point: This statute has been allowed to slumber so long, that no man had the right to awaken it. For more than one hundred years it has slept; and so far as New Jersey is concerned, it has been sound asleep since 1664. For the first time it is dug out of its grave. The breath of life is sought to be breathed into it, to the end that some people may wreak their vengeance on an honest man.

Is there any evidence--has there been any--to show that the defendant was not absolutely candid in the expression of his opinions? Is there one particle of evidence tending, to show that he is not a perfectly honest and sincere man? Did the prosecution have the courage to attack his reputation? No. The State has simply proved to you that he circulated that pamphlet--that is all.