Part 35

The trouble with this sermon, "Sowing and Reaping," is that he contradicts it. I believe that a man must reap what he sows, that every human being must bear the natural consequences of his acts. Actions are good or bad according to their consequences. That is my doctrine.

There is no forgiveness in nature. But Mr. Moody tells us that a man may sow thistles and gather figs, that having acted like a fiend tor seventy years, he can, between his last dose of medicine and his last breath, repent; that he can be washed clean by the blood of the lamb, and that myriads of angels will carry his soul to heaven--in other words, that this man will not reap what he sowed, but what Christ sowed, that this man's thistles will be changed to figs.

This doctrine, to my mind, is not only absurd, but dishonest and corrupting.

This is one of the absurdities in Mr. Moody's theology. The other is that a man can justly be damned for the sin of another.

Nothing can exceed the foolishness of these two ideas--first: "Man can be justly punished forever for the sin of Adam." Second: "Man can be justly rewarded with eternal joy for the goodness of Christ."

Yet the man who believes this, preaches a sermon in which he says that a man must reap what he sows. Orthodox Christians teach exactly the opposite. They teach that no matter what a man sows, no matter how wicked his life has been, that he can by repentance change the crop. That all his sins shall be forgotten and that only the goodness of Christ will be remembered.

Let us see how this works:

Mr. A. has lived a good and useful life, kept his contracts, paid his debts, educated his children, loved his wife and made his home a heaven, but he did not believe in the inspiration of Mr. Moody's Bible. He died and his soul was sent to hell. Mr. Moody says that as a man sows so shall he reap.

Mr. B. lived a useless and wicked life. By his cruelty he drove his wife to insanity, his children became vagrants and beggars, his home was a perfect hell, he committed many crimes, he was a thief, a burglar, a murderer. A few minutes before he was hanged he got religion and his soul went from the scaffold to heaven. And yet Mr. Moody says that as a man sows so shall he reap.

Mr. Moody ought to have a little philosophy--a little good sense.

So Mr. Moody says that only in this life can a man secure the reward of repentance.

Just before a man dies, God loves him--loves him as a mother loves her babe--but a moment after he dies, he sends his soul to hell. In the other world nothing can be done to reform him. The society of God and the angels can have no good effect. Nobody can be made better in heaven. This world is the only place where reform is possible. Here, surrounded by the wicked in the midst of temptations, in the darkness of ignorance, a human being may reform if he is fortunate enough to hear the words of some revival preacher, but when he goes before his maker--before the Trinity--he has no chance. God can do nothing for his soul except to send it to hell.

This shows that the power for good is confined to people in this world and that in the next world God can do nothing to reform his children. This is theology. This is what they call "Tidings of great joy."

Every orthodox creed is savage, ignorant and idiotic.

In the orthodox heaven there is no mercy, no pity. In the orthodox hell there is no hope, no reform. God is an eternal jailer, an everlasting turnkey.

And yet Christians now say that while there may be no fire in hell--no actual flames--yet the lost souls will feel forever the tortures of conscience.

What will conscience trouble the people in hell about? They tell us that they will remember their sins.

Well, what about the souls in heaven? They committed awful sins, they made their fellow-men unhappy. They took the lives of others--sent many to eternal torment. Will they have no conscience? Is hell the only place where souls regret the evil they have done? Have the angels no regret, no remorse, no conscience?

If this be so, heaven must be somewhat worse than hell.

In old times, if people wanted to know anything they asked the preacher. Now they do if they don't.

The Bible has, with intelligent men, lost its authority.

The miracles are now regarded by sensible people as the spawn of ignorance and credulity. On every hand people are looking for facts--for truth--and all religions are taking their places in the museum of myths.

Yes, the people are becoming civilized, and so they are putting out the fires of hell. They are ceasing to believe in a God who seeks eternal revenge.

The people are becoming sensible. They are asking for evidence. They care but little for the winged phantoms of the air--for the ghosts and devils and supposed gods. The people are anxious to be happy here and they want a little heaven in this life.

Theology is a curse. Science is a blessing. We do not need preachers, but teachers; not priests, but thinkers; not churches, but schools; not steeples, but observatories. We want knowledge.

Let us hope that Mr. Moody will read some really useful books.

SHOULD INFIDELS SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO SUNDAY SCHOOL?

SHOULD parents, who are Infidels, unbelievers or Atheists, send their children to Sunday schools and churches to give them the benefit of Christian education?

Parents who do not believe the Bible to be an inspired book should not teach their children that it is. They should be absolutely honest. Hypocrisy is not a virtue, and, as a rule, lies are less valuable than facts.

An unbeliever should not allow the mind of his child to be deformed, stunted and shriveled by superstition. He should not allow the child's imagination to be polluted. Nothing is more outrageous than to take advantage of the helplessness of childhood to sow in the brain the seeds of falsehoods, to imprison the soul in the dungeon of Fear, to teach dimpled infancy the infamous dogma of eternal pain--filling life with the glow and glare of hell.

No unbeliever should allow his child to be tortured in the orthodox inquisitions. He should defend the mind from attack as he would the body. He should recognize the rights of the soul. In the orthodox Sunday schools, children are taught that it is a duty to believe--that evidence is not essential--that faith is independent of facts and that religion is superior to reason. They are taught not to use their natural sense--not to tell what they really think--not to entertain a doubt--not to ask wicked questions, but to accept and believe what their teachers say. In this way the minds of the children are invaded, corrupted and conquered. Would an educated man send his child to a school in which Newton's statement in regard to the attraction of gravitation was denied--in which the law of falling bodies, as given by Galileo, was ridiculed--Kepler's three laws declared to be idiotic, and the rotary motion of the earth held to be utterly absurd?

Why then should an intelligent man allow his child to be taught the geology and astronomy of the Bible? Children should be taught to seek for the truth--to be honest, kind, generous, merciful and just. They should be taught to love liberty and to live to the ideal.

Why then should an unbeliever, an Infidel, send his child to an orthodox Sunday school where he is taught that he has no right to seek for the truth--no right to be mentally honest, and that he will be damned for an honest doubt--where he is taught that God was ferocious, revengeful, heartless as a wild beast--that he drowned millions of his children--that he ordered wars of extermination and told his soldiers to kill gray-haired and trembling age, mothers and children, and to assassinate with the sword of war the babes unborn?

Why should an unbeliever in the Bible send his child to an orthodox Sunday school where he is taught that God was in favor of slavery and told the Jews to buy of the heathen and that they should be their bondmen and bondwomen forever; where he is taught that God upheld polygamy and the degradation of women?

Why should an unbeliever, who believes in the uniformity of Nature, in the unbroken and unbreakable chain of cause and effect, allow his child to be taught that miracles have been performed; that men have gone bodily to heaven; that millions have been miraculously fed with manna and quails; that fire has refused to burn clothes and flesh of men; that iron has been made to float; that the earth and moon have been stopped and that the earth has not only been stopped, but made to turn the other way; that devils inhabit the bodies of men and women; that diseases have been cured with words, and that the dead, with a touch, have been made to live again?

The thoughtful man knows that there is not the slightest evidence that these miracles ever were performed. Why should he allow his children to be stuffed with these foolish and impossible falsehoods? Why should he give his lambs to the care and keeping of the wolves and hyenas of superstition?

Children should be taught only what somebody knows. Guesses should not be palmed off on them as demonstrated facts. If a Christian lived in Constantinople he would not send his children to the mosque to be taught that Mohammed was a prophet of God and that the Koran is an inspired book. Why? Because he does not believe in Mohammed or the Koran. That is reason enough. So, an Agnostic, living in New York, should not allow his children to be taught that the Bible is an inspired book. I use the word "Agnostic" because I prefer it to the word Atheist. As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists--that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know. What I insist upon is that children should not be poisoned--should not be taken advantage of--that they should be treated fairly, honestly--that they should be allowed to develop from the inside instead of being crammed from the outside--that they should be taught to reason, not to believe--to think, to investigate and to use their senses, their minds.

Would a Catholic send his children to a school to be taught that Catholicism is superstition and that Science is the only savior of mankind?

Why then should a free and sensible believer in Science, in the naturalness of the universe, send his child to a Catholic school?

Nothing could be more irrational, foolish and absurd.

My advice to all Agnostics is to keep their children from the orthodox Sunday schools, from the orthodox churches, from the poison of the pulpits.

Teach your children the facts you know. If you do not know, say so. Be as honest as you are ignorant. Do all you can to develop their minds, to the end that they may live useful and happy lives.

Strangle the serpent of superstition that crawls and hisses about the cradle. Keep your children from the augurs, the soothsayers, the medicine-men, the priests of the supernatural. Tell them that all religions have been made by folks and that all the "sacred books" were written by ignorant men.

Teach them that the world is natural. Teach them to be absolutely honest. Do not send them where they will contract diseases of the mind--the leprosy of the soul. Let us do all we can to make them intelligent.

WHAT WOULD YOU SUBSTITUTE FOR THE BIBLE AS A MORAL GUIDE?

* Written for The Boston Investigator.

YOU ask me what I would "substitute for the Bible as a moral guide.".

I know that many people regard the Bible as the only moral guide and believe that in that book only can be found the true and perfect standard of morality.

There are many good precepts, many wise sayings and many good regulations and laws in the Bible, and these are mingled with bad precepts, with foolish sayings, with absurd rules and cruel laws.

But we must remember that the Bible is a collection of many books written centuries apart, and that it in part represents the growth and tells in part the history of a people. We must also remember that the writers treat of many subjects. Many of these writers have nothing to say about right or wrong, about vice or virtue.

The book of Genesis has nothing about morality. There is not a line in it calculated to shed light on the path of conduct. No one can call that book a moral guide. It is made up of myth and miracle, of tradition and legend.

In Exodus we have an account of the manner in which Jehovah delivered the Jews from Egyptian bondage.

We now know that the Jews were never enslaved by the Egyptians; that the entire story is a fiction. We know this, because there is not found in Hebrew a word of Egyptian origin, and there is not found in the language of the Egyptians a word of Hebrew origin. This being so, we know that the Hebrews and Egyptians could not have lived together for hundreds of years.

Certainly Exodus was not written to teach morality. In that book you cannot find one word against human slavery. As a matter of fact, Jehovah was a believer in that institution.

The killing of cattle with disease and hail, the murder of the first-born, so that in every house was death, because the king refused to let the Hebrews go, certainly was not moral; it was fiendish. The writer of that book regarded all the people of Egypt, their children, their flocks and herds, as the property of Pharaoh, and these people and these cattle were killed, not because they had done anything wrong, but simply for the purpose of punishing the king. Is it possible to get any morality out of this history?

All the laws found in Exodus, including the Ten Commandments, so far as they are really good and sensible, were at that time in force among all the peoples of the world.

Murder is, and always was, a crime, and always will be, as long as a majority of people object to being murdered.

Industry always has been and always will be the enemy of larceny.

The nature of man is such that he admires the teller of truth and despises the liar. Among all tribes, among all people, truth-telling has been considered a virtue and false swearing or false speaking a vice.

The love of parents for children is natural, and this love is found among all the animals that live. So the love of children for parents is natural, and was not and cannot be created by law. Love does not spring from a sense of duty, nor does it bow in obedience to commands.

So men and women are not virtuous because of anything in books or creeds.

All the Ten Commandments that are good were old, were the result of experience. The commandments that were original with Jehovah were foolish.

The worship of "any other God" could not have been worse than the worship of Jehovah, and nothing could have been more absurd than the sacredness of the Sabbath.

If commandments had been given against slavery and polygamy, against wars of invasion and extermination, against religious persecution in all its forms, so that the world could be free, so that the brain might be developed and the heart civilized, then we might, with propriety, call such commandments a moral guide.

Before we can truthfully say that the Ten Commandments constitute a moral guide, we must add and subtract. We must throw away some, and write others in their places.

The commandments that have a known application here, in this world, and treat of human obligations are good, the others have no basis in fact, or experience.

Many of the regulations found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, are good. Many are absurd and cruel.

The entire ceremonial of worship is insane.

Most of the punishment for violations of laws are un-philosophic and brutal.... The fact is that the Pentateuch upholds nearly all crimes, and to call it a moral guide is as absurd as to say that it is merciful or true.

Nothing of a moral nature can be found in Joshua or Judges. These books are filled with crimes, with massacres and murders. They are about the same as the real history of the Apache Indians.

The story of Ruth is not particularly moral.

In first and second Samuel there is not one word calculated to develop the brain or conscience.

Jehovah murdered seventy thousand Jews because David took a census of the people. David, according to the account, was the guilty one, but only the innocent were killed.

In first and second Kings can be found nothing of ethical value. All the kings who refused to obey the priests were denounced, and all the crowned wretches who assisted the priests, were declared to be the favorites of Jehovah. In these books there cannot be found one word in favor of liberty.

There are some good Psalms, and there are some that are infamous. Most of these Psalms are selfish. Many of them, are passionate appeals for revenge.

The story of Job shocks the heart of every good man. In this book there is some poetry, some pathos, and some philosophy, but the story of this drama called Job, is heartless to the last degree. The children of Job are murdered to settle a little wager between God and the Devil. Afterward, Job having remained firm, other children are given in the place of the murdered ones. Nothing, however, is done for the children who were murdered.

The book of Esther is utterly absurd, and the only redeeming feature in the book is that the name of Jehovah is not mentioned.

I like the Song of Solomon because it tells of human love, and that is something I can understand. That book in my judgment, is worth all the ones that go before it, and is a far better moral guide.

There are some wise and merciful Proverbs. Some are selfish and some are flat and commonplace.

I like the book of Ecclesiastes because there you find some sense, some poetry, and some philosophy. Take away the interpolations and it is a good book.

Of course there is nothing in Nehemiah or Ezra to make men better, nothing in Jeremiah or Lamentations calculated to lessen vice, and only a few passages in Isaiah that can be used in a good cause.

In Ezekiel and Daniel we find only ravings of the insane.

In some of the minor prophets there is now and then a good verse, now and then an elevated thought.

You can, by selecting passages from different books, make a very good creed, and by selecting passages from different books, you can make a very bad creed.

The trouble is that the spirit of the Old Testament, its disposition, its temperament, is bad, selfish and cruel. The most fiendish things are commanded, commended and applauded.

The stories that are told of Joseph, of Elisha, of Daniel and Gideon, and of many others, are hideous; hellish.

On the whole, the Old Testament cannot be considered a moral guide.

Jehovah was not a moral God. He had all the vices, and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise.

At the same time, we must remember that the Old Testament is a natural production, that it was written by savages who were slowly crawling toward the light. We must give them credit for the noble things they said, and we must be charitable enough to excuse their faults and even their crimes.

I know that many Christians regard the Old Testament as the foundation and the New as the superstructure, and while many admit that there are faults and mistakes in the Old Testament, they insist that the New is the flower and perfect fruit.

I admit that there are many good things in the New Testament, and if we take from that book the dogmas of eternal pain, of infinite revenge, of the atonement, of human sacrifice, of the necessity of shedding blood; if we throw away the doctrine of non-resistance, of loving enemies, the idea that prosperity is the result of wickedness, that poverty is a preparation for Paradise, if we throw all these away and take the good, sensible passages, applicable to conduct, then we can make a fairly good moral guide,--narrow, but moral.

Of course, many important things would be left out. You would have nothing about human rights, nothing in favor of the family, nothing for education, nothing for investigation, for thought and reason, but still you would have a fairly good moral guide.

On the other hand, if you would take the foolish passages, the extreme ones, you could make a creed that would satisfy an insane asylum.

If you take the cruel passages, the verses that inculcate eternal hatred, verses that writhe and hiss like serpents, you can make a creed that would shock the heart of a hyena.

It may be that no book contains better passages than the New Testament, but certainly no book contains worse.

Below the blossom of love you find the thorn of hatred; on the lips that kiss, you find the poison of the cobra.

The Bible is not a moral guide.

Any man who follows faithfully all its teachings is an enemy of society and will probably end his days in a prison or an asylum.

What is morality?

In this world we need certain things. We have many wants. We are exposed to many dangers. We need food, fuel, raiment and shelter, and besides these wants, there is, what may be called, the hunger of the mind.

We are conditioned beings, and our happiness depends upon conditions. There are certain things that diminish, certain things that increase, well-being. There are certain things that destroy and there are others that preserve.

Happiness, including its highest forms, is after all the only good, and everything, the result of which is to produce or secure happiness, is good, that is to say, moral. Everything that destroys or diminishes well-being is bad, that is to say, immoral. In other words, all that is good is moral, and all that is bad is immoral.

What then is, or can be called, a moral guide? The shortest possible answer is one word: Intelligence.

We want the experience of mankind, the true history of the race. We want the history of intellectual development, of the growth of the ethical, of the idea of justice, of conscience, of charity, of self-denial. We want to know the paths and roads that have been traveled by the human mind.

These facts in general, these histories in outline, the results reached, the conclusions formed, the principles evolved, taken together, would form the best conceivable moral guide.

We cannot depend on what are called "inspired books," or the religions of the world. These religions are based on the supernatural, and according to them we are under obligation to worship and obey some supernatural being, or beings. All these religions are inconsistent with intellectual liberty. They are the enemies of thought, of investigation, of mental honesty. They destroy the manliness of man. They promise eternal rewards for belief, for credulity, for what they call faith.

This is not only absurd, but it is immoral.

These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god. To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or doubt miracles, is far worse than to deny known facts. Only the obedient, the credulous, the cringers, the kneelers, the meek, the unquestioning, the true believers, are regarded as moral, as virtuous. It is not enough to be honest, generous and useful; not enough to be governed by evidence, by facts. In addition to this, you must believe. These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue.

All "inspired books," teaching that what the supernatural commands is right, and right because commanded, and that what the supernatural prohibits is wrong, and wrong because prohibited, are absurdly unphilosophic.