Chapter I: Part 1

Transcriber's Notes:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by
=equal signs=.

Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase.

Blank pages have been eliminated.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
original.

A few typographical errors have been corrected.

I DON'T KNOW, DO YOU?

BY

MARILLA M. RICKER

DONE INTO
A PRINTED BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS
AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN
EAST AURORA, NEW YORK
MCMXVI

Copyright, 1916
By
Marilla M. Ricker

You are what you think, and to believe in a Hell for other people
is literally to go to Hell yourself.--_Elbert Hubbard._

A religious man is a man scared.

FOREWORD

_There is in the city of Boston a memorial building to Thomas Paine. This Paine Memorial was finished and dedicated forty-two years ago. It is the finest monument to Thomas Paine on the earth._

_For twenty years Ralph Washburn Chainey has been the Manager of this building and the Treasurer of the Paine Memorial Corporation. Under his wise and prudent management the building was freed from debt, and today it is a monument to the energy and devotion of its Manager as much as to the genius and labors of Thomas Paine._

_Ralph Washburn Chainey is only forty-two, and as great an example of thrift as Ben Franklin was. Very early in life he acquired the habit of thrift--which is the basis of all virtues. He learned early that time was money and he is always at work. He is not only able to take care of himself, but he can and does take care of others. He is sufficient unto himself, and when one is right with himself he is right with all the world. I have known him intimately for more than a quarter of a century, and if he has faults I have yet to learn what they are._

_In appreciation, therefore, of his great service to the cause of Freethought, I dedicate this volume to_

RALPH WASHBURN CHAINEY

--_Marilla M. Ricker_.

_Dover, New Hampshire December, Nineteen Hundred Fifteen_

As man advances, as his intellect enlarges, as his knowledge
increases, as his ideals become nobler, the Bibles and creeds will
lose their authority, the miraculous will be classed with the
impossible, and the idea of special providence will be discarded.
Thousands of religions have perished, innumerable gods have died,
and why should the religion of our time be exempt from the common
fate?

--_Robert Ingersoll._

CONTENTS

FOREWORD 7

CREEDS AGAINST CIVILIZATION 11

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT SOME CHURCHES,
AND WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC 33

A LETTER AND THE REJOINDER 55

THE HOLY GHOST 65

HOW CAN WE "TAKE" CHRIST? 71

COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 81

MARK TWAIN'S BEST THOUGHT 85

AN IRRELIGIOUS DISCOURSE ON RELIGION 89

DECAY OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY 107

I know of no other book that so fully teaches the subjection and
degradation of woman as the Bible.

--_Elizabeth Cady Stanton._

That God had to come to earth to find a mother for his son reveals
the poverty of Heaven.

CREEDS AGAINST CIVILIZATION

Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a
true system.

--_Thomas Paine._

Hell is a place invented by priests and parsons for the sake of
being supported.

CREEDS AGAINST CIVILIZATION

One hundred fifty years ago, there was not a single white man in what is now Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. What is now the most flourishing part of the United States was then as little known as the country in the heart of Africa itself. It was not until Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six that Boone left his home in North Carolina to become the first settler in Kentucky; and the pioneers of Ohio did not settle that territory until twenty years later.

Canada belonged to France one hundred fifty-three years ago, and Washington was a modest Virginia Colonel, and the United States was the most loyal part of the British Empire, and scarcely a speck on the political horizon indicated the struggle that in a few years was to lay the foundation of the greatest republic in the world.

One hundred fifty years ago there were but four small newspapers in America; steam-engines had not been imagined; and locomotives and railroads, and telegraphs and postal cards, and friction-matches, and revolvers and percussion-caps, and breechloading-guns and Mauser rifles, and stoves and furnaces, and gas and electricity and rubber shoes, and Spaulding's glue, and sewing-machines and anthracite coal, and photographs, and kerosene-oil, free schools, and spring-beds and hair-mattresses, and lever-watches and greenbacks were unknown. The spinning-wheel was in almost every family, and clothing was spun and woven and made up in the family; and the printing-press was a cumbrous machine worked by hand.

Down to Eighteen Hundred Fourteen every paper in the world was printed one side at a time, on an ordinary hand-press; and a nail, or a brick, or a knife, or a pair of shears or scissors, or a razor, or a woven pair of stockings, or an ax or a hoe or a shovel, or a lock and key, or a plate of glass of any size, was not made in what is now the United States.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, there were only seventy-five post-offices in the country, and the whole extent of our post-routes was less than nineteen hundred miles; cheap postage was unheard of; so were envelopes; and had any one suggested the transmission of messages with lightning speed, he would have been thought insane. The microscope on the one hand and the telescope on the other were in their infancy as instruments of science; and geology and chemistry were almost unknown, to say nothing of the telephone and all the other various phones, and the X-rays, and hundreds of other new things.

In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-two there were only six stagecoaches running in all England, and these were a novelty. A man named John Crosset thought they were so dangerous an innovation that he wrote a pamphlet against them. "These coaches," he wrote, "make gentlemen come to London upon every small occasion which otherwise they would not do, except upon urgent necessity. The conveniency of the passage makes their wives come often up, who, rather than come such long journeys on horseback, would stay at home. Then when they come to town they must be in the 'wade' [probably that is where the word _swim_ comes in now], get fine clothes, go to plays, and treats, and by these means get such a habit of idleness and love of pleasure that they are uneasy ever after."

* * * * *

We can all see how much improvement there has been in all things but _creeds_. Improvements can come, and old things go, but _creeds_ go on forever! A creed implies something fixed and immovable. In other words, it means you have a "heel-rope on."

The word "creed" is from _credo_, "I believe." We have had a great deal of compulsion of belief, and a thousand years of almost absolute unanimity. Liberty was dead and the ages were dark. We call them the Middle Ages because they were the death between the life that was before and the life that came after. Then came a new birth of thought--a "Renaissance"--and after this, some reformation in the form of a Protestantism.

Since then, the Protestants have continued to protest, not only against the old, but against each other. And this is the best thing they have done. Thus liberty has been saved, for each would have coerced its fellow organization, as did their infamous mother, the Roman Catholic Church, before them. From "creed" comes "credulous" and "credulity." And they have filled the world with their kind. In the United States alone, there are about one hundred forty types. Each is a system of credulity pitted against a hundred and thirty-nine others. They all rest on authority. They all denounce investigation--unless it has for its end the support of their authority.

Hence, with the exception of two or three denominations, to become a professed Christian means to accept credulously and without question a system of belief about Nature and man and the world which you would deny in toto if you reasoned as you do about other things, and which you do practically deny by re-explaining and refining it into anything but what is stated. Down deep in your heart you do not, and never did, believe it in the same honest way in which you form your other opinions.

Think for a moment of the Christian idea of the world, its origin, its shape, place, importance, and its final end. Does any man or woman who has been through a common-school geography believe the ideas implied in the common Christian dogmas regarding the world? We must remember that the world taught in the geography is not the Christian world.

The world taught in the Christian dogmas is beneath the heavens--not a rolling sphere flying through space. It is flat, and the sun and stars pass over it daily. It is the chief object of God's creation on which to place man. It is God's footstool, and his throne is Heaven above. He created it just four thousand and four years before the Christian era began. Now we _all_ know that this is _not_ true; that there is no up nor down; that the earth is not the center; that it is _not_ flat; that the sun does not go round it; that it is a very insignificant little orb; that "up in Heaven" is an utterly meaningless expression; and that the world is not a creation, but an evolution.

And yet thousands of people credulously cling to creeds which embody the notions of barbarous or uncivilized ages.

Take the dogma of revelation. It tells us that the Bible is a revelation of the will and wisdom of an omniscient God; that it is a perfect and sufficient rule of faith and practise. What, in the name of humanity, causes people to make such statements today? It is like trying to light the house with a saucer of tallow in which a rag is immersed, instead of using gas or electricity.

Take an example of this Bible. In Deuteronomy xiv: 21, we read, "Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou mayest give it unto the sojourner that is within thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto a foreigner: for _thou_ art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God." In Matthew vii: 12, we read, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them."

Why do you talk about the infallibility, the inerrancy, or even the moral unity of a volume written by many hands at widely different times? Are such people so ignorant that they have not read the Book they are swearing by? Are they moral idiots and do not know the plainest right and wrong? Are they scoundrels and have some deceitful reason for urging such a book as an authority? Or are they the dupes of their own credulity, clinging without thought to the beliefs in which they have been reared? They are evidently not using commonsense in an honest way.

I often hear the Bible spoken of as a holy book, full of a holy spirit. I sometimes reply: "Have you read the conduct of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, and other ancient worthies, who were said to be men after the heart of the bloodthirsty and avenging Jehovah? How long would you keep out of prison if you took them for your models? Have you read the Thirty-fifth, Fifty-eighth, Sixty-ninth and One Hundred Ninth Psalms? If not, read them, and tell me what you think of them."

There never was any intrinsic reason for believing the Bible except that a designing priesthood said so, and stupid people trusted them.

Here, by common consent, people agree to be duped. Ages and ages ago, they began to make admissions that two and two might be six, or even sixteen, in religion. They had sense enough to say that two and two are four in other things. In Divine Revelation they shut their eyes to all mistakes and wilful lies. If people should deceive in other matters as the priests, parsons and teachers do in religion, they would not escape arrest.

Another central doctrine is that of the Atonement. This is derived from the moral character of the Jewish God; he governed the world of humanity on the principle of primitive society. Men were responsible to him in everything. Any infraction of his supposed laws rendered them subject to his vengeance. That is why the Jew thought that God sent a thunderstorm to punish him for eating pork.

What explanation besides credulity can be suggested for the continuation of this belief century after century? Preachers shout it from the pulpits, and Salvation Army people hawk it through the streets. Not one of them knows what he is talking about. Each learned it from some one who told him to say it. They all do it because it is a part of a system which they have inherited, but the reason for which they do not know, and have never allowed themselves to seek.

This cringing credulity keeps the masses from using their powers. They seem to believe that if they should lose these superstitions they would be lost.

* * * * *

And the dogma regarding Jesus is inextricably mixed up in Christian theology with that of the Atonement. One assumption bolsters the other. He is made to occupy the central place in this scheme of blood-redemption through that other highly rational fable of the immaculate conception. If Jesus was not immaculately conceived, then Matthew and Luke have deceived; then Jesus is not God; then he is a mere man; and if so, he is not the Redeemer. Man could not redeem himself according to the first premise of the scheme. Man has been and _is_ redeeming himself by learning Nature's laws and through them rising to a higher life ever since he reached the stage of humanity. Take the theory of the Resurrection. The account of it was written long after the assumed occurrence, and by credulous men with superstitious inclinations. Men and women of these days, understanding the laws of Nature, can not give assent to the crude beliefs which easily commanded the minds of ancient times.

Both Protestantism and Catholicism are systems built on essentially the same foundation. Remove any of these stones, and the systems will have to be rebuilt. If there is no special revelation, there is no special scheme of salvation. If there is no vengeful, blood-seeking God, there is no theological reconciliation. If there was no fall, there is no hopeless depravity. If there was no immaculate conception, there is no Redeemer in a special ecclesiastical sense. If there is no total depravity, there is no lost world. If there is no lost world, there is no yawning Hell. One and all, these fictions have their only ground for continuance in a _selfish_ and unreasoning priesthood and clergy, and a credulous people.

In the place of the "fall," science has put the "rise" of man. It finds the Garden of Eden to have been a jungle. It finds the mythical perfect Adam to have been a savage. It finds the Biblical "origin of evil" to have been a puerile legend. It finds that sin and evil are made by the seeing of higher states. It finds that there was no bad until the better was reached. It finds that it is the advancing good which makes the existing bad. It finds that among the worst of sinners are those who live in and propagate outworn doctrines upon their own and others' credulity.

In the olden times, God was made a king--the world was his kingdom. His powers, virtues and vices were simply those of earthly kings exaggerated. Jewish and Christian liturgies are full of expressions showing the attitude of slaves and serfs to a tyrant. Sin has been manufactured as heresy and disobedience to the so-called orthodox system instead of to the laws of Nature.

Science has shown that the bottomless pit did not even have a top. Columbus sailed over the Western edge of the flat Christian world on which all this Christian system depended, and found that the material Heaven and Hell were unfounded myths; but the preachers and priests still threaten _hell_ to the most ignorant and credulous, but they tell some of us that there is a _final judgment_.

* * * * *

In the old days, we used to hear a great deal about judgments. A certain honest, good-natured, old farmer in New Hampshire, who was a freethinker, but had a very pious wife, lost many cattle when the black tongue was an epidemic in the State.

One day the hired man came in and told him the red oxen were dead.

"Are they?" said the old man. "Well, they were 'breechy cusses.' Take off their hides and carry them down to Fletcher's. They will bring the cash."

An hour or so later the man came back with the news that Lineback and his mate were both dead.

"Are they?" said the old man. "Well, I took them of B---- to save a bad debt that I never expected to get. Take the hides down to Fletcher's. They will bring the cash."

After the lapse of another hour the man came back to tell him that the nigh brindle was dead.

"Is he?" said the old man. "Well, he was a very old ox. Take off his hide and send it down to Fletcher's. It is worth cash and will bring more than two of the others."

Hereupon his wife reminded him that his loss was a judgment of Heaven upon him.

"Is it?" said the old chap. "Well, if they will take the judgment in cattle, it is the easiest way I can pay it."

But they know no more about final judgments than they did about the lake of fire and brimstone which commenced to drain off in Columbus' day. Science has vaporized the notion of a future judgment by the same method it has that of a past Creation. From the _facts_, it has learned _laws_. But credulity is always half-hearted with facts. It does not know enough of truth to love it. It is ever glowing over and setting up as a dogma the little it knows, or assumes to know, of the truth of former times. It has no faith in the newly discovered, because it knows nothing of it.

Hence, age after age we see the spectacle of men who have not studied the science of their own day denouncing it in pulpit and councils; of men who have steeped themselves in the traditions of the past pronouncing shallow invectives against the demonstrations of (science) the present.

* * * * *

Many church people say immortality must be true, or the great majority would not believe in it. But do they? They do not talk or write as if they did. If language means anything, I think the majority believe in annihilation. Most people speak of the dead body of a man as though it were the man. They say, "He was buried at Greenwood," or, "She was cremated at Forest Hills." And we hear the "late" Mr. Smith left an immense fortune. If Mr. Smith still exists, why do they say the _late_ Mr. Smith? If people didn't believe that the soul and body are one, and that life ceases and mind expires when the body dies, why do they say, "They were"? What little the Church has learned has been by _main force_ so to speak.

A friend of mine many years ago was a college student. At that time they were all compelled to attend the college church. On one occasion he heard the preacher, who was also a college professor, make these statements:

_First_, that the _elect_ alone would be saved.

_Second_, that among those who by the world were called Christians, probably not more than one in a hundred belonged really and truly to the _elect_.

_Third_, that the others, by reason of their Christian privileges, would suffer more hereafter than the heathen, who had never heard the Gospel at all.

The young man made a note of these propositions, and on the strength of them drew up a petition to the Faculty soliciting exemption from further attendance at church, as only preparing for himself a more terrible future.

He said: "The congregation here amounts to six hundred persons, and nine of these are the college professors. Now if only one in a hundred is to be saved, it follows that three even of the professors must be damned, and I, being a mere student, could not expect to be saved in preference to a professor." Far, he said, be it from him to cherish so presumptuous a hope. Nothing remained for him, therefore, but perdition. In this melancholy state of affairs he was anxious to abstain from anything that might aggravate his future punishment; and as church attendance had been shown to have this influence on the _non-elect_, he trusted that the Faculty would for all time exempt him from it.

The result was he came very near being expelled from the college--simply by heeding their sermons. The professors of some colleges have learned something, and do not insist on the students attending church.

* * * * *

Ponder for a moment on the many dishonest ways churches have for raising money. Think of the amount of money they can raise at a church-fair--alias, a confidence-game.

A young man from Kentucky told me that he attended one at Chicago. First he went to the table where refreshments were sold. A beautiful siren with big black eyes and small white hands spread the edibles before him. When he arose from the table he handed her a five-dollar bill. She put it in a little box and forgot to give him any change. She smiled sweetly at him, and asked him if he would like to walk about the room and look at the fancy articles, all to be sold for the good of the church.

She took his arm and murmured, "We are not strangers; we both feel interested in the church."

"We soon came," said the young man in telling me the story, "to a silver tea-set that was to be 'raffled off.' Would I take a chance? Of course I did. Then came a cake with a valuable ring concealed in it. Would I take a chance in that? Of course I did.

"So things glided on until I concluded if I took many more chances, my chances for getting home would be slim. So I refused to tempt fortune any further, until the little black-eyed scoundrel took me on a new tack. Leaning heavily on my arm, and resting her cheek on my shoulder, she said, 'Please take a chance for me.'

"It is needless to add that I took the chance, and kept on taking chances for the beautiful and unprincipled wretch that had me in tow, until I had not a dollar left. Yes, I was penniless, and then it began to dawn on me that she was working me for the success of the church. There I was, bankrupt in money and self-respect. I had been robbed--yes, robbed, for where is the difference between a pair of pistols and a pair of black eyes in a robbery? You part with your money because you can not help it.

"I know that Society looks with lenient eyes upon church-fairs, but it is my opinion that all robbers will take sentence, and when that little Chicago robber receives her sentence, she will take her place by the side of Jack Sheppard!"

You see he still believes in Judgments. He is learning by main force.

A very pious woman whose father was a missionary, now living in Hawaii, wrote not long ago that professional men flocking to the Islands will be disappointed unless they are friends of old families; and the old families are descendants of missionaries who went there in the early days and took lands and everything else from the natives.

There seems to be nothing like being a descendant from a missionary family. These people, equally pious and provident, thought it a good scheme to cheat the sinful savages out of all their worldly possessions, in order that they might be taught humility and holiness through the chastening influence of poverty. So they robbed the unregenerate to the glory of God.

Who says it doesn't pay to save the heathen? Think of the ignorance and superstition of the majority of the preachers of the present day.

* * * * *

Up in Northern Minnesota, less than fifty years ago, an old Baptist was preaching on the death of Moses on the Mount, and his not being permitted to go over into the Promised Land. The preacher said:

"I have always felt sorry for Moses. It has seemed so hard to me that he could not go over with Caleb and Joshua, the only two of the host which he had led out of Egypt, and enjoy with his people the good country towards which they had been so long traveling. When as a boy I read that in the Bible for the first time, I sat down and cried for sympathy with him. But Moses had a hard time from the first. He was no sooner born than his life was threatened. His mother had to hide him to save it. After three months she could hide him no longer, and so she made an ark of bulrushes and set him afloat on the river. Indeed, it seemed as though the Lord had all he could do to raise Moses."

But the people of this generation do not take the story of Moses so seriously. A bright young girl of ten, on being asked by her Sabbath School teacher, "Where did Pharaoh's daughter get Moses?" replied, with the accent on the _said_, "She _said_ she 'found him in the bulrushes.'"

I attended a campmeeting in North Carolina. The exhortations and prayers would cause a graven image to smile audibly. One old Baptist preacher said he always felt so sorry to think that "Ingine corn" didn't grow in Palestine, because he would like to think that the little Jesus had a good time playing with cob-houses.

But those preachers compare favorably with the Reverend George F. Hall, of Decatur, Illinois, and the Reverend Doctor John P. D. John, and the Reverend Doctor Frederick Bell, late of the Metropolitan Temple of San Francisco, California, who at various times challenged Robert G. Ingersoll to debate with them. It shows what ignorance, superstition and egotism combined can do.

Darwin said the herding instinct in animals has its base in fear. Sheep and cattle go in droves, while a lion simply flocks with his mate. Those who wish to lead have always fostered fear, encouraging this tendency to herd, promising protection, and offering what they call knowledge in return for a luxurious living.

In other words, the men who preach and pray, always want the people who _work_ to divide with them. They work on the line that fear will compel men to join churches. This joining instinct is a manifestation of weakness. By going with a gang they hope to get to Heaven. But the moment you eliminate the Devil from Christianity, there is nothing left. You can not have a revival, alias an epidemic, of religion, without the Devil. If there were no Devil, there would be nothing to pray about, and all these people who are gifted in prayer would be without a job.

Think of the chaplains of the Army and Navy, in Congress and in the Legislatures being turned out to browse for themselves. Think of their being obliged to earn an honest living. They could not do it. I am amused when I think of the prayers that are exchanged in war times. One side will pray that the wrath of Heaven will descend on the other, and the other side will return the compliment with ten per cent interest.

I remember when I was a child of reading the prayer of a Hungarian officer. He said: "O Lord, I will not ask thee to help us, and I know that thou wilt not help the Austrians. But if thou wilt sit on yonder hill, thou shalt not be ashamed of thy children."

The famous Bishop Leslie prayed before a battle in Ireland, "O God, for our unworthiness we are not fit to claim thy help, but if we are bad, our enemies are worse, and if thou seest not meet to help us, we pray thee help them not, but stand thou neutral this day, and leave it to the arm of flesh."

All this dramatic power would be lost without the Devil. So it behooves the Christian churches to hold fast to the Devil. Get a good grip on his hoofs, horns and tail, for without him they would be relegated to "innocuous desuetude." He should be incorporated as the fourth person in the Orthodox Godhead, and respectfully addressed as "Holy Devil."

_There is no truth in the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, no sense
in it, no religion in it. It is the product of mythology and has no
claim upon this age._

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right
you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of
Nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a
traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.

As far as I am concerned, I wish to be out on the high seas. I wish
to take my chances with wind and wave and star. And I had rather
go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in any
orthodox harbor whatever.

--_Robert Ingersoll._

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT SOME CHURCHES AND WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC

The ignorance of the masses insures abundant contributions to the
clergy and to religion.--_Ralph W. Chainey._

The mother who teaches her child to pray makes a mistake.

WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC

The Millerites--or Second Adventists, as they now call themselves--are the first sect that I remember. They are a people of remarkable vigor: they have been at work for seventy years to bring this world to an end, and although they have been wrong in their arithmetic all these years, they rub out the slate and begin again.

And they prove everything by the Bible, as all other denominations do. The "time" has been set at least twenty times since I can remember. I recollect having awful palpitations in the kneepans upon one of the eventful days, and crawling under the barn so as not to be in the way. They used to congregate on the height of land near my father's, "to go up," and one man climbed upon an old shed, and fell and broke his hip; he fainted, and they thought he was dead. As soon as he had revived a little, they asked him if he had any requests to make before he died. He replied, "I want you to work in 'durn fool' somewhere on my tombstone." He recovered, and lived many years, but he was cured of Millerism.

A large share of the students of the Second Advent doctrine came into this world, not only naked, but without any brains, nor any place suitable to put any; and the first business they do is to wonder about their souls and talk about being "born again." They never seem to realize that to be well born is much more essential than to be "born again." I never knew immortality to be secured at the second birth.

I attended one of their meetings this year, and asked one of the sisters for their _creed_. She said, "Our creed is the whole Bible, from the first book of Genesis to the last word of the last chapter of Revelations."

I thought of what a boy said when the Baptist Elder came and took tea at his home, and asked a "blessing."

The boy said: "Is that the way you ask a blessing? My father doesn't ask it that way."

"How does he ask it?"

"Oh, he sat down to the table the other evening, and looked it all over, and said, 'My God, what a supper!'"

And I thought, "My God, what a creed!"

I was tempted to ask the Millerite sister what she thought of the discrepancy between the first and the second chapter of Genesis. In the first chapter Man and Woman were a simultaneous creation. In the second chapter, Woman was an afterthought. But I had the deep sagacity to hold my tongue, and leave her and her _creed_ in peace.

* * * * *

The second church that I remember anything about is the Free-Will Baptist. My mother was a devout member of that church. I have heard thousands of times, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the Kingdom of God." And man included woman--it always did, so far as pains and penalties were concerned.

I remember distinctly a sermon I heard on Hell. You younger people can not have the faintest idea of the terrific sermons that were preached in those days.

That sermon commenced in this wise:

"Now we will look into Hell and see what we can see. It is all red-hot like red-hot iron. Streams of burning pitch and sulphur run through it. The floor blazes up to the roof. Look at the walls--the enormous stones are red-hot. Sparks of fire are always falling down from them. Lift up your eyes to the roof of Hell. It is like a sheet of blazing fire. Hell is filled with a fog of fire. In Hell, torrents not of water, but of fire and brimstone, are rained down. You may have seen a house on fire, but you never saw a house made of fire. Hell is a house made of fire. The fire of Hell burns the devils, who are spirits, for it was prepared for them. But it will burn the body as well as the soul. Take a little spark out of Hell--less than the size of a pin-head--and throw it into the ocean, and it will not go out. In one moment it would dry up all the waters of the ocean, and set the whole world in a blaze! Listen to the terrific noise of Hell--to the horrible uproar of countless millions of tormented creatures, mad with the fury of Hell! Oh, the screams of fear, the groanings of horror, the yells of rage, the cries of pain, the shouts of agony, the shrieks of despair, from millions on millions. You hear them roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons! And above all, you hear the roaring of the thunder of God's anger, which shakes Hell to its foundations. Little children, if you go to Hell, there will be a devil at your side to strike you. How will you feel after you have been struck every minute for a hundred millions of years? Look into this inner room of Hell, and see a girl of about sixteen. She stands in the middle of a red-hot floor; her feet are bare; sleep can never come to her; she can never forget for one moment in all the eternity of years."

And so this description of Hell went on for nearly two hours. Do you wonder that I, a child of ten years, said to my father, who was a freethinker, infidel, atheist, or whatever else you please to call him: "I _hate_ my mother's church. I will _not_ go there again!"

* * * * *

The next church I became acquainted with was the Calvin Baptist Church. That church seemed to think that the most of us were born to be damned anyway!

The great Ingersoll had it right when he said it was the damned-if-you-do-and-the-damned-if-you-don't church.

The only difference between the Free-Will Baptists and the Calvin Baptists that I can see, is, that you are allowed to exercise your _will_. The Free-Will Baptists will damn you if you wish to be, and the Calvinists will damn you anyway!

The next church to which I was introduced was the Congregationalist, alias the Orthodox. Their creed is rather complex from a mathematical standpoint. They seem to think that three Gods are one God, and one God is three Gods.

I, having been taught that figures don't lie, couldn't understand it, until I thought of a boy who said to his teacher when she explained to him that figures didn't lie: "You should see my sisters at home, and then on the street. You will find that figures do lie."

* * * * *

I then went to Italy, and became conversant with the _outside_ doings of the Roman Catholic Church. I visited many of them, saw the beggars eating crusts at the doors, and the well-fed priests saying masses inside; saw the white hand of famine always extended, in bitter contrast to the magnificent cathedrals; saw well-dressed, intelligent-looking men and women going upstairs on their hands and knees, and saw hundreds of them kissing the toe of the bronze statue of Saint Peter; saw monks of every shade and description; and all begging for the Holy Catholic Church!

I attended a church festival at Rome at the Ara Cœli, where the most "Holy Bambino" is kept, a little wooden doll about two feet long. It is said to be the image of Jesus. It had a crown of gold on its head and was fairly ablaze with diamonds. It has great power to heal the sick. It is taken to visit patients in great style--that is, if the patients are rich. The Bambino is placed in a coach accompanied by priests in full dress. The Great Festival of the Bambino is celebrated annually. Military bands and the Soldiers of the Guard dance attendance. Saint Gennaro is held to be the guardian saint of Naples. The alleged miracle by which the blood of this holy person, contained in a glass tube, changes from a solid to a liquid state, is well known. Thousands go to see the miracle performed. When the priest first held up the sacred vial with its clotted contents we could hear all about us: "Holy Gennaro, save and protect us! Bless the City of Naples, and keep it free from plagues and earthquakes and other ills. Do this miracle so that we can see that thy power and thy favor are still with us." And so it went on for an hour or more, until the great throng was nearly hysterical.

At last the priest stepped forward, showing that the blood flowed freely in the tube, and then such a shout went up from the big crowd as one hears only in Southern climes.

* * * * *

I have never been introduced to the Church of England, alias, the Episcopalian, but I've always thought if a man had a good voice, and understood the mysteries of the corkscrew, he would make a good rector.

I became acquainted with a High-Church Episcopalian woman not long ago, and she showed me a prayer-rug and praying-costume imported from Paris. I told her that she looked like an angel in it, as she ought after going to all that expense and trouble; if she didn't, dressmakers might as well give it up and wait for Gabriel. The attitude of prayer threw the back breadths of the skirt into graceful prominence, and hence the necessity (which will be at once recognized by all the truly _pious_) of increased attention to the frills and embroidery required by the religious attitude of prayer.

An old farmer in Indiana said he was a "Piscopal."

"To what parish do you belong?"

"I don't know nothing about parishes."

"Who confirmed you?"

"Nobody."

"Then how do you belong to the Episcopalian Church?"

"Well, last Winter I went down to Arkansas visiting, and while I was there, I went to a church and it was called 'Piscopal,' and I heard them say that they had done the things they ought not to have done, and left undone the things they ought to have done, and I says to myself, 'That is my fix exactly,' and ever since then I've considered myself a 'Piscopal'!"

And I came to the conclusion that that is why the membership of that church is so large!

* * * * *

I know but little about the Methodists, but I do know that John Wesley, one of the founders of that church, believed in witchcraft, and was one of the latest of its supporters.

History tells us that Brother Wesley preached a sermon entitled, _The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes_. He said that earthquakes were caused by sin, and the only way to stop them was to believe in his theology and teachings, thus showing great knowledge of seismology; but people who bank on gullibility are usually safe. I know the Methodists make a great hullabaloo about their religion, and appear to think their God is deaf.

The Methodist Conference has refused to allow women to be delegates to the General Conference. The Methodist sisters should discipline the Church.

* * * * *

What I know about the Universalists I like. They seem to think that we are all in the same boat, and that one stands as good a chance as another, of which I approve. When I was a child, Sylvanus Cobb, at that time the great Universalist preacher, preached in the adjoining town. One Sunday, my father and I went to hear him. His sermon caused a great commotion, and the Baptist who preached that terrific sermon about Hell said to my mother, "There is a wicked man about here preaching that everybody is to be saved; but, Sister Young, let us hope for better things!"

* * * * *

I believe that the Unitarians, as a class, think for themselves. I approve of that, and the Evangelical Alliance disapproves of them. That is in their favor.

I taught school at Lee, New Hampshire, fifty years ago. One of the committee was a Unitarian, and one was a Quaker. I was tired of selecting suitable reading matter from that obscene old book, the Bible, and I suggested that we read from some other book, which we did for two mornings, when the Unitarian materialized at the schoolhouse, and with much suavity suggested that we read from the Bible every morning, and recite the Lord's Prayer; and I, teaching school for my bread and butter, bowed to the suggestion, and the next morning said: "Pupils, Mr. Smith prefers that we read from the Bible. Therefore, we will this morning read the startling and authentic account of Jonah whilst he was stopping at the submarine hotel." That is the most narrow-minded thing I ever knew about a Unitarian; but I always thought Mr. Smith voiced the opinion of the parents of the pupils rather than his own.

I am somewhat acquainted with the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, alias the Mormons. They are a prudent, industrious, painstaking people, and only about two per cent of them ever _did_ practise polygamy, and that is a very small proportion for any Christian church. Brigham Young never did have but seventeen wives, but Solomon had five hundred wives, and one thousand other lady friends, and David, whose honor and humility show greater in his psalms than in the history of his ordinary, every-day life, was, as the Bible says, a man after God's own heart.

I am sure that Brigham Young compared favorably with David. And if God interviewed Moses, why shouldn't he have interviewed Joe Smith?

There are more than one thousand religions. They are founded mostly on fraud. All their saviors had virgins for mothers, and gods for fathers.

The churches own more than thirteen billions of property, and they are _all_ too dishonest to pay honest taxes. Many of the churches couldn't be run three weeks without the women. They do all the work, for which they get no credit.

The churches claim all the distinguished people, especially after they are dead and hence can not deny their claims. They have many times claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a churchman. The Honorable H. C. Deming, of Connecticut, an old friend of Lincoln, said it is false. Lincoln belonged to no church, and at one time said, "I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine, which characterize their articles of belief, and confessions of faith." But still they claim him. Honest, very!

* * * * *

No institution in modern civilization is so tyrannical and so unjust to women as is the Christian church. The history of the Church does not contain a single suggestion for the equality of woman with man, and still the Church claims that woman owes her advancement to the Bible. She owes it much more to the dictionary.

History, both ancient and modern, tells us that the condition of women is most degraded in those countries where Church and State are in closest affiliation (such as, Spain, Italy, Russia and Ireland), and most advanced in nations where the power of ecclesiasticism is markedly on the wane. It has been proved that, whatever progress woman has made in any department of effort, she has accomplished independent of, and in opposition to, the so-called inspired and infallible Word of God; and that the Bible has been of more injury to her than has any other book ever written in the history of the world.

William Root Bliss, in his _Side Glimpses From the Colonial Meetinghouse_, tells us many startling truths concerning the Puritans, and reminds me of what Chauncey M. Depew said--that the _first_ thing the Puritans did, after they landed at Plymouth, was to fall on their knees, and the _second_ thing was to fall on the Aborigines.

The business of trading in slaves was not immoral by the estimate of public opinion in Colonial times. A deacon of the church in Newport esteemed the slave trade, with its rum accessories, as home missionary work. It is said that on the first Sunday after the arrival of his slaves he was accustomed to offer thanks that an overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessings of a Gospel dispensation.

At a Bridgewater town meeting of the year Sixteen Hundred Seventy-six, a vote was called to see what should be done with the money that was made from selling the Indians.

John Bacon of Barnstable directed in his will that his Indian slave Dinah be sold and the proceeds used "by my executors in buying Bibles." By men who sat in the Colonial meetinghouse, the first fugitive-slave law was formed. This law became a part of the Articles of Confederation between all the New England Colonies.

The affinity between _rum_ and the religion of Colonial times was exemplified in the license granted John Vyall to keep a house of entertainment in Boston. He must keep it near the meetinghouse of the Second Church, where he extended his invitation to thirsty sinners who were going to hear John Mayo or Increase Mather preach.

* * * * *

The importation of slaves began early. The first arrival at Boston was by the ship _Desire_, on February Twenty-sixth, Sixteen Hundred Thirty-seven, bringing negroes, tobacco and cotton from Barbados. She had sailed from Boston eleven months before, carrying Indian captives to the Bermudas to be sold as slaves, and thus she became noted as the first New England slave-ship.

In time, slaves were brought to Boston direct from Africa.

Advertisements of just-arrived negroes to be sold may be seen in the Boston _News Letter_ of the years Seventeen Hundred Twenty-six and Seventeen Hundred Twenty-seven. The pious Puritans did not hesitate to sell slaves on the auction-block. I find in the Boston _News Letter_ of September Nineteenth, Seventeen Hundred Fifteen, a notice of an auction-sale at Newport, Rhode Island, of several Indians, men and boys, and a very likely negro man. They were treated in all respects as merchandise, and were rated with horses and cattle.

Peter Faneuil, to whom Boston is indebted for its Cradle of Liberty, was deep in the business. In an inventory of the property of Parson Williams of Deerfield, in Seventeen Hundred Twenty-nine, his slaves were rated with his horses and cows. "Believe and be baptized" is all that was essential. I think many of them would have been improved by anchoring them out overnight.

A negro preacher whom I knew came to me when I was in Florida, and said: "What shall I preach about tomorrow? I'se done preached myself 'plumb out.' I'se worked on election sanctification and damnation predestination till I can't say another word to save my life."

I said, "Preach a sermon on 'Thou shalt not steal' for a text."

"Yes," he said, "that certainly _is_ a good text, but I am monstros 'fraid it will produce a coolness in my congregation!"

Doubtless it would produce a coolness in many a congregation today.

* * * * *

Now I want to talk a little about _law_ and its penalty. We want to consider the invariable laws of Nature. Let us look at it in the way in which we became acquainted with it--through experience.

To the child, law is an educator; he plays with fire and is burned. Law and its penalty have done their work. A burnt child dreads the fire. On that point his education is complete. He cuts himself with a knife; again the law works. Do not play with edged tools is the lesson. And so, whenever he comes in contact with external objects, he learns something very definite from them; and if he has any sense, he soon conforms to the order which he sees in force all around him. He does what he can to act in such a way as not to run counter to Nature's laws; or, at least, Nature teaches him to do so by repeated suffering when he acts otherwise. The law thus far is all in favor of life, and is teaching the child to preserve it. He must eat not to starve; he must be clothed not to freeze; he must not be burned, or cut, or crushed. In one word, he must take care of himself, and be careful of external objects, or he must be hurt.

But his education has another connection with law. If he has proper parents he learns that he can not lie, or steal, or do many other things without suffering a penalty. If he has no home education in this matter, the reform-school and the jail step in and take up the lesson.

And so the law teaches him that his actions must be of a certain quality, both with respect to external Nature and his fellowmen, or that he must pay a penalty.

Thus he comes to man's estate, and law has been to him an educator and a good one. He has learned that Nature's law means punishment every time it is violated, and that man's law, whatever it may attain to, _aims_ at the same object as Nature's law.

But neither his education nor his contact with law ends with his youth. Hitherto he has obeyed blindly for fear of the penalty. He now obeys intelligently, and connected with the penalty to be incurred by disobedience is the reward to be obtained through obedience. He finds that every act, every thought, of his brings him in direct contact with law. He can not elude it by standing still, for no man can stand still. He must go forward, or backward. This is an inexorable law; with progress, improvement; without progress, what? Rest? Repose? No! Deterioration. No man can stand still in this universe for a day without losing something. The man who means to do anything in life must go forward; if he falters, another goes ahead; and then he learns that the penalty of faltering is failure.

Nature works no special miracles in any one's favor. Nature works no miracles, anyway. The sun and the moon did _not_ stand still at Joshua's command!

No riches and influence can buy exemption from Nature.

Law says to the poor man who is dependent on his daily toil: "You have only yourself to rely upon. Take care of your health; be temperate, honest and industrious, for sickness, imprisonment, idleness, mean to you death."

It says to the rich man: "Inherited wealth has exempted you from _daily_ labor of body, but it has not earned for you rest. Go to work; do something, or your mind and body will be enfeebled; your sympathies will disappear; you will become dry as the summer's dust; you will sink into a nonentity."