Chapter II: Part 2

The whole cry of Nature's law is onward and upward. Evolution is the word--there is no God about it. It is not alone the survival of the fittest--that is only a part of the process. It is the fittest of one generation becoming something better and higher for the next.

It is the fashion now to say that the struggle for existence becomes yearly more fierce, but that is not so. The truth is that those who struggle become with each survival fitter to struggle, and that for which they struggle is placed one step forward. Men used to want thousands and hundreds of thousands; now, they want millions and hundreds of millions. They used to want general knowledge; now, they are all specialists, and cry out that life is too short. Steam used to content them; now, electricity does not satisfy them, and they are grasping at the possibilities of the mighty currents of air caused by the revolutions of the earth itself.

The law of progress is not limited to the mind. The body shares in it. Men are stronger, larger, longer-lived than they have ever been. Even with the animals, finer, better breeds are constantly producing themselves under law.

This law of the survival of the fittest and the elevation of the type of the fittest pronounced against slavery, and a nation paid the penalty in blood, as Spain has, and other nations will pay it. It has pronounced against the subjection of women, and let those who stand in the way, beware, lest some ruin crush them as it falls!

The type of sympathy has become higher and tenderer. Sweet hands of mercy are now stretched down even to the brutes. Let those lovers of the past who can see no progress in the present, who would question this onward tendency, and the result of law, let them remember that they must run rapidly to keep from being overwhelmed by the _expansionists_.

Nature's law teaches us that like begets like. You plant a grain of wheat, and you reap wheat. You breed Morgan stock and the foal is of Morgan blood. The child is the offspring of certain parents, and it inherits their blood. If parents choose to unfit themselves to be healthy parents, who shall be blamed?

* * * * *

Shall gravitation cease as I go by? Teach children that no amount of so-called religion will compensate for rheumatism; that Christianity has nothing to do with morality; that "vicarious atonement" is a fraud, and a lie; that to be born well and strong is the highest birth; that to be honest and pay one's debts spells peace of mind; that the Bible is no more inspired than the dictionary; that _sin_ is a transgression of the laws of life, and that the blood of all the bulls and goats and lambs of ancient times, and the blood of Christ or any other man, never had, and never can have, the least effect in making a life what it would have been had it obeyed the laws of life. If you have marred your life, you must bear the consequences. If you have made a mistake, be more careful in the future. Let the thought that the past is irretrievable make you more careful in the present and for the future.

And, above all, teach children that prayer is idiotic. There may be one God or twenty. I do not know or care. I am not afraid, and no priest or parson can make me believe that my title to a future life, if there be one, is defective. And the great and good man Thomas Paine, who wrote the _Age of Reason_, and said, "The world is my country, and to do good my religion," is a good enough god for me. And the great Ingersoll, who said, "I belong to the great Church that holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul," is in my opinion an excellent god--as good as any that ever lived, from Confucius to Christ. A friend of mine said to me, "Ingersoll should have been a Christian." I replied, "The dog-collar of Christianity did not belong on his neck: he preached the truth; he preferred that to the Bible. I can not imagine the great Ingersoll preaching from II Kings xiv: 35."

_When I was a child I heard very little about Christmas and nothing
about Lent and Easter. I was taught to be honest and truthful and
to pay one hundred cents on a dollar. In my opinion there is no
Bible extant so good as Ingersoll's Complete Works._

A LETTER AND THE REJOINDER

Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of courage. Fear
believes--courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and
prays--courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats--courage
advances. Fear is barbarism--courage is civilization. Fear believes
in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion--courage
is science.

There are real crimes enough without creating artificial ones. All
progress in legislation has for centuries consisted in repealing
the laws of the ghosts.

--_Robert Ingersoll._

A LETTER AND THE REJOINDER

A LABOR OF FOLLY

_From the Portsmouth "Times"_

Our old friend, Marilla M. Ricker, of Dover, lifelong advocate of "woman's rights," zealous champion of "freethought," admirer of Bob Ingersoll, worshiper of Tom Paine, and collaborator of Elbert Hubbard, who fears neither God, man nor the Devil, because she does not believe particularly in any of them, is engaged in a labor of folly, in that she is fighting the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul.

In the prosecution of her warfare she has gone into print and issued a pamphlet in which she takes issue, primarily, with one Elder E. A. Kenyon upon his proposition of a universal consciousness that "if a man die he shall live again," and even goes so far as to assert that the majority of mankind believe in annihilation. Moreover, she pronounces the doctrine of personal immortality "a most selfish and harmful one," "pernicious in its results," and operating for the enslavement of mankind, filling the world with gloom and making of man a crawling coward.

We invite no controversy with Marilla, and will have none. We concede her right to believe anything, or nothing, to say what she thinks, write what she pleases, get it printed where she may, and circulate it as she can; but our advice to the dear sister is to "let up" on this contention, wherein she is out-Ingersolling Ingersoll. He did not believe in immortality, but he did not deny it. He claimed that he did not know, and that no man could know it to be a fact; but he never sought to blot out hope. And the truth is that but for this hope of immortal existence, entertained by the vast majority of the race, in all lands and ages, life would not be worth living, and men and women everywhere would lie down and perish in despair. It is this hope, or faith, or consciousness--however we may express it--of life beyond the grave, or the immortality of the soul, that inspires mankind to all that is noble and heroic in the great struggle for progress and development here. Without it there would be no incentive effort beyond that which impels the brute. Without it, in fact, man would be mere brute, and nothing else.

That the horrid doctrines of Calvinism were dinned into Mrs. Ricker's ears in childhood, and the fear of eternal torment held up before her, instead of the infinite love of a God of Mercy and Justice, may have impelled her to repudiate all idea of God or Justice, or life to come; but she ought to be intelligent enough to sift the error from the truth and cling to the latter. If not, she should at least be willing to allow others to do so. She may repudiate the old Calvinism, or even Christianity itself. She may become a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, an Agnostic or an out-and-out "heathen" if she will. She may accept annihilation as the universal fate of humanity; but she should be willing to allow mankind in general its indulgence in that one "Great Hope," which has illumined with immortal splendor the darkest passages of human life, and sustains the soul of man and woman in the severest trials and conflicts of earth.

THE REJOINDER

(_From the Portsmouth "Times"_)

I was amused when I read in the Portsmouth _Times_ an article from my friend Metcalf, entitled, A _Labor of Folly_. The genial Henry said I was a lifelong advocate of "woman's rights," which is true. And an admirer of Ingersoll. Could any one help admire that great and good man? And a worshiper of Thomas Paine. Worship is rather a strong word to apply to me, but I think the man who said, "The world is my country, and to do good my religion," and who did more than any other man to put the stars on our flag and to give that flag to the breeze, should be loved and respected.

He, the aforesaid Henry, said I collaborated with Elbert Hubbard. I am proud of that, whether it is true or not.

I consider Hubbard the most brilliant writer in this country.

Henry also said I feared neither God, man nor the Devil, because I did not believe particularly in any of them. If he would add an "o" to God and make it good, take the "d" from devil and make it evil, then I would have something tangible to write about besides man, in whom I believe.

Henry also said that I was engaged in a "labor of folly," fighting the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

I simply expressed my opinion on the subject. My friend Henry wrote me not long ago that there was no earthly need of a Freethought paper; that thought was as free as air always and everywhere. I take issue with him there, and I call his attention to the _Little Journey_ to the home of Copernicus--of January, Nineteen Hundred Five--by Elbert Hubbard. Copernicus was the founder of modern astronomy.

If Henry will read his life he can see what freethought meant at that time. I also call his attention to Giordano Bruno. He can see what happened to him and how free thought was at that time. Henry said I could write what I pleased, and get it printed where I could.

That was well added, for I could not in the year Nineteen Hundred Nine, in the city of Dover, New Hampshire, get my article on Immortality printed in the only paper in the city; so you see how freethought is up to date.

I certainly "take issue" with Henry, "That the hope or consciousness of life beyond the grave, or immortality of the soul, inspires mankind to all that is noble and heroic in the great struggle for progress and development here."

Robert Ingersoll did not believe in immortality, but he was a great, tender-hearted man, full of kindness, full of generous impulses. No man ever loved the true, the good and the beautiful more than he. He would take the case of a poor man into court without pay; he would give a young reporter an interview when he could sell every word he spoke for a dollar; he would present the proceeds of a lecture to some worthy object as though he were throwing a nickel to an organ-grinder; and when there was persecution he was on the side of the persecuted.

I do not believe in individual immortality, but I do the best I can, pay one hundred cents on the dollar, and I am not afraid to die. I know thousands who believe as I do.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed in the immortality of the soul--so do his followers. He also believed that sin was the cause of earthquakes, and the only way to stop them was to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't know much about seismology, but he certainly had faith, plus.

John Calvin founded the Presbyterian Church; he believed in the immortality of the soul. So do his followers; but Calvin was a murderer.

Henry, it is absurd to say that without hope of immortality we should be degraded to brutes; in my opinion it is not true. What we want is a religion that will pay debts; that will practise honesty in business life; that will treat employees with justice and consideration; that will render employers full and faithful work; that will keep bank-cashiers true, officeholders patriotic, and reliable citizens interested in the purity of politics (and the woman citizen will be)--such a religion is real, vital and effective. But a religion that embraces vicarious atonement, miraculous conception, regeneration by faith, baptism, individual immortality and other monkey business is, in my opinion, degrading, absurd and unworthy.

Henry, you say you want no controversy with me. I enjoy controversy, but if you are averse to it I'll stop and we will unite in singing one stanza of that Christian hymn:

King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives
With their many, many lady friends
And their many, many wives;
But when old age came o'er them
With its many, many qualms,
(It was said)
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.

But did they?

Where religion is afraid of liberty, liberty should be afraid of
religion.--_Lemuel K. Washburn._

So long as man believes that he has an immortal soul, he will fear
the future.

THE HOLY GHOST

For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men
and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great
ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between
Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor,
to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this
world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle,
to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have
said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!"

--_Robert Ingersoll._

THE HOLY GHOST

Of all the weird, fanciful and fabulous stories appertaining to the gods and other pious frauds, that concerning the Holy Ghost ranks them all! Now listen to what the Bible has to say about that mythical personage--alias, the Holy Ghost. You will see that scarcely any two references to it agree in assigning it the same character or attributes. (It reminds me of what an old lady said at a prayer-meeting: "Dear brothers and sisters, it seems to me that there are no two of a mind here tonight, nor hardly one!")

In John xiv: 26, the Holy Ghost is spoken of as a person or personal God. In Luke iii: 22, the Holy Ghost changes and assumes the form of a dove. In Matthew xiii: 16, the Holy Ghost becomes a spirit. In John i: 32, the Holy Ghost is presented as an inanimate senseless object. In I John v: 7, the Holy Ghost becomes a God--the third member of the Trinity. In Acts ii: 1, the Holy Ghost is averred to be a mighty rushing wind. In Acts x: 38, the Holy Ghost, we infer from its mode of application, is an ointment. In John xx: 22, the Holy Ghost is the breath, as we legitimately infer by its being breathed into the mouth of the recipient after the ancient Oriental custom. In Acts ii: 3, we learn the Holy Ghost "sat upon each of them." In Acts ii: 1, the Holy Ghost appears as cloven tongues of fire. In Luke ii: 26, the Holy Ghost is the author of a revelation or inspiration. In Mark i: 8, the Holy Ghost is a medium or element for baptism. In Acts xxviii: 25, the Holy Ghost appears with vocal organs and speaks. In Hebrews vi: 4, the Holy Ghost is dealt out or imparted by measure. In Luke iii: 22 the Holy Ghost appears with a tangible body. In Luke i: 5, we are taught that people are filled with the Holy Ghost. In Matthew xi: 15, the Holy Ghost falls upon the people as a ponderable substance. In Luke iv: 1, the Holy Ghost is a God within a God--Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost.

These are only a few quotations. There are many more, but we can all see what a multifarious personage, or rather _he_, _she_, or _it_ the Holy Ghost is.

* * * * *

I remember hearing much about the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. The sin against the Holy Ghost consisted in resisting its operations in the second birth--that is, the regeneration of the heart or soul by the Holy Ghost. And it was considered unpardonable simply because as the pardoning and cleansing process consisted in, or was at least always accompanied with, baptism by water, in which operation the Holy Ghost was the agent in effecting the "new birth," therefore, when the ministrations or operations of this indispensable agent were resisted or rejected, there was no channel, no means, no possible mode left for the sinner to find a renewed acceptance with God.

When a person sinned against the Father or the Son, he could find a door of forgiveness through the baptizing processes, spiritual or elementary, of the Holy Ghost. But an offense committed against this third limb of the Godhead had the effect of closing and barring the door so that there could be no forgiveness, either in this life or in that which is to come.

To sin against the Holy Ghost was to tear down the scaffold by which the door of Heaven was to be reached. This _sin_ against the Holy Ghost has caused thousands of the disciples of the Christian faith the most agonizing hours of alarm and despair.

It has always been my opinion that many people who thought they had sinned against the Holy Ghost simply had dyspepsia.

_If people should deceive in other matters as the priests, parsons
and teachers do in religion, they would not escape arrest._

The destruction of religions and superstition means the upbuilding
of charity and ethics.--_Ralph W. Chainey._

Superstition is nothing but a misplaced fear of some fancied
supernatural phantasm of divinity.

HOW CAN WE "TAKE" CHRIST?

All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce,
climate, soil, geographical position, industry, invention,
discovery, art and science. The Church has been the enemy of
progress, for the reason that it has endeavored to prevent man
from thinking for himself. To prevent thought is to prevent all
advancement except in the direction of faith.

--_Robert Ingersoll._

HOW CAN WE "TAKE" CHRIST?

I receive many letters from various people telling me that Christ is mine if I will only take him. I am always amused at the solicitations of these people and feel as President Taft did when Peary "laid the Pole" at his feet. Taft replied he had no idea what he should do with it. I should not know what to do with Christ if I took him.

What can they mean by taking Christ? The word Christ is used to designate a certain individual who died, if he ever lived, nearly two thousand years ago. Now to take this person we should have to take him from the earth where he was buried. I am at a loss to comprehend what Christians mean when they offer Christ to any one. What right has an individual today to offer another a person who has been dead two thousand years? I fail to see any sense in such an offer.

Certain men and women go about the world asking people to come to Christ, to accept Christ. What do they mean--do they know?

In my opinion the supreme dogma of Christianity is the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was a man, all that was related of his divine acts in the four Gospels is false. How would a person like the Nazarene peasant be accepted today were he to play the part of a god?

Suppose a person who had lived in our neighborhood should come to us and say, "I am God, and I want you to help me save the world; quit your work and follow me." What would you think of him? Would any one pay the least attention to him, except to think he was insane and have him placed in an asylum for safety?

The people who are preaching the divinity of Jesus know nothing about him except what they read in a book that was written by unknown authors. Jesus is the last hope of Christian theology. He is the only solution of the divine problem that Christianity has to offer. Is not the direction of the world's most rational thought away from the Christian notion of Jesus? In my opinion it is.

* * * * *

Let us look at the once famous stronghold of New England Orthodoxy, the Andover Theological Seminary, which was chartered on June Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Seven, and opened for instruction on September Twenty-eighth, Eighteen Hundred Eight. I think it was about seven years ago that it was transferred to Cambridge and became a part of Harvard University. At that time the school consisted of seven instructors, twelve students and a library of sixty-five thousand books, with an endowment of eight hundred fifty thousand dollars in productive funds and an annual income of thirty-five thousand dollars.

It has been said that the highways were scoured every Summer for students, and enticing scholarships held out, but to no avail. No students materialized.

Why is this? In my opinion it is the rising generation's dissatisfaction with traditional theology; they have outgrown it. Ingersoll said that once in five years the President of the Seminary summoned his professors before him to make oath that they had learned absolutely nothing during the preceding five years and would not learn anything for the next five years. And that promise was not subject to recall.

But even Andover couldn't remain in that condition. In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-six it announced its new system of "progressive orthodoxy." This created a division between the Old School and the New, and marked the beginning of the end of Andover; and after much litigation it consented to be "gathered in" by Harvard or "swallowed," or perhaps they would say "merged."

They have now a new building located upon land adjacent to that of Harvard University, and the last account from the "Great Seminary" was that they had twenty-four pupils. The library of the Seminary and that of the Harvard Divinity School have been combined and are housed together in Bartlett Hall.

* * * * *

The defenders of the Gospel of Christ don't seem to be increasing; on the contrary, there seems to be great depression in matters ecclesiastical these days, even in puritanical New England. It plainly shows that the young men of the present day are not anxious to wear the "Dog-Collar of Christianity," and as far as I've heard no Christian arose to remark that the morals of the "Reverend" Clarence Richeson were contaminated by reading the words of Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, Elbert Hubbard or Lemuel K. Washburn. The Reverend Clarence seemed to be a product of the Christian Bible, and talked to the last of his God and his Bible.

What is left of Christianity? Who wrote the Christian Bible? The smallest child in a Sunday School would answer the question by saying "God," but the most learned person on the globe would say, "I do not know." It is being admitted by thinking persons that answers to religious questions possess nothing more than a religious value. When a person is graduated from a Sunday School he is wiser than he will be after he has lived forty years, provided he learns anything by living.

"God" is a term used to express what man does not know, but it does not seem to me necessary to assign to the Bible divine authorship, as it can be accounted for on other grounds. It is certain that men and women have written books. It is not certain that there is a God and, if so, that he has written a book. If man could write the Bible, there seems to be no need for God to do so. It is a fact that no one knows who wrote a word of the Bible, and yet it will require many more years to kill the foolish superstition that God inspired certain men to write this book.

Nothing grows slower than truth, and nothing faster than superstition. Falsehood was never known to commit suicide. Unknown men wrote the Christian Bible, not an unknown God.

* * * * *

Not many years ago I saw that a teacher in the Holyoke (Massachusetts) High School was dismissed for saying that Jesus was one of a family of ten. Jesus is a word that paralyzes the mental faculties. As to the accuracy of the statement we have only the Gospels for authority. At any rate, if Matthew and Mark are reliable he had four brothers and sisters.

In Matthew xiii: 54 we read: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?"

Mark confirms Matthew about the size of Mary's family.

I tried to learn something concerning this case, but silence a yard wide lay all about it. I fancy the teacher was silenced in some way. Leastwise I could learn nothing.

It doesn't take much to silence a teacher, or it didn't fifty years ago, especially if she were dependent upon teaching for her bread and butter, which I was.

I, at one time, tried to substitute one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's books to be read in school in the morning instead of the Christian Bible. I was informed by one of the committee that the Bible must be read every morning and the Ten Commandments repeated. The next morning I selected the "truthful" and startling account of Jonah whilst he was sojourning at the Submarine Hotel. I at that time made up my mind that if I were ever financially independent I'd say what I thought concerning the Christian religion, and no one doubts that I've done so.

* * * * *

Jesus is the last hope of Christian theology. It can be but a few years at most when faith in Jesus as God will be the mark of intellectual stupidity. It seems to me that mankind will soon be sensible enough to dismiss this dogma to eternal oblivion.

It is the last relic of heathen mythology that clings to modern civilization. The Christian church is put to its utmost ingenuity to hide the absurdity in this dogma.

The dogma of the divinity of Jesus rests upon fictitious events, and hence its fate is sealed.

Many persons regard any one that calls Jesus a man as a blasphemer. There is a great amount of pious nonsense in the world, and there is more connected with Jesus than with any other character whom Christendom honors.

The reverence paid to Jesus by Christians is the homage of idolatry.

The first thing for people to do is to get rid of the silly notion that there is anything holy in the name of Jesus any more than in the name of Hercules, Bacchus or Adonis. All the gods of the past are myths to the present. Jesus stands in the way of the world's advancement. The path of civilization is over his grave. The mind has been fettered by worship of this myth. We want to get rid of the Christian superstition.

_Isn't it astonishing that many children should be taught about the
"resurrection" before they can spell cat?_

Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there
is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty
born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of
theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance.
Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master,
and of all tyrants the worst is a slave in power.

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain
thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to
insure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession.
He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers
and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people
who will be glorified and people who will be damned.

--_Robert Ingersoll._

COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

We need no myths, no miracles, no gods, no devils.--_Robert
Ingersoll._

The world is my country and to do good is my religion.--_Thomas
Paine._

The presence of a hypocrite is a sure indication that there is a
Bible and a prayer-book not very far away.

COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

It is difficult to sketch this many-sided man. He was full of pity and sympathy for the poor and unfortunate. He was great enough to applaud the good, and good enough to forgive the erring. He could charm a child with his speech, or sway thousands by his magic words. He was the supreme philosopher of commonsense.

He knew how to answer a fool, but he never forgot to be courteous to an opponent. He would take the case of a poor man into court without pay; he would give a young reporter an interview when he could sell every word he spoke for a dollar; he would present the proceeds of a lecture to some worthy object as though he were throwing a nickel to an organ-grinder; he would lead a reform with a dozen workers if he believed them in the right, just as if he had a million followers; and where there was persecution he was on the side of the persecuted. Ingersoll was the truest American that America ever bore.

He was the orator of her rivers and mountains, of her hills and dales, of her forests and flowers, of her struggles and victories, of her free institutions, of her Stars and Stripes--the orator of the home, of wife and child, of love and liberty. The head, heart and hand of Ingersoll were perfectly united and worked together. As he thought he acted; when he had anything to say, he said it aloud. He was not ashamed of his thoughts. He did not hide or go around the corner, or beat about the bush. He spoke honestly what he saw, what he thought, what he knew.

MARK TWAIN'S BEST THOUGHT

The entire New Testament is the work of Catholic
Churchmen.--_Lemuel K. Washburn._

God is not a fact; nothing that can be seen, heard or felt; nothing
that can be found out or in. God is a verbal content.

MARK TWAIN'S BEST THOUGHT

The best thing Mark Twain ever said was, "I should like to see the ballot in the hands of every woman." Freethinkers should also remember him with gratitude; he said enough from our point of view to warrant that. "Give me my glasses," were his last words. It will be but a short time before some pious evangelical hypocrite will add, "I want to read my Bible!" They are already writing about his "highest sphere of thought," namely, his religious thought.

I remember when a Presbyterian deacon said of him, "I would rather bury a daughter of mine than have her marry such a fellow." The church people are all anxious to avoid their own history concerning Mark Twain and many other people.

The Reverend Doctor Twitchell said at Mark's funeral that a simple soul had gone trustingly to the beyond. He didn't mention where the beyond was, and he prayed to the Christian God that courage in the faith of immortality be given to those who mourn.

Through all these Christian notices runs an undercurrent that Mark Twain was only secondarily a humorist. I knew him somewhat in the old days and have heard him lecture. He certainly laughed superstition from the minds of thousands, and the most of his books bear witness to his broad and liberal views.

The Reverend Doctor Van Dyke mixed much religious sophistry with his remarks at the funeral of Twain, but the reverend doctor is a theological acrobat.

He preached once on the Atonement, and said there are a thousand true doctrines of the Atonement, which is saying substantially that no doctrine specifically is true--for instance, the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, to which Van Dyke pledged loyalty when he was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He at that time ripped up the Westminster settlement, and reopened the whole question for discussion.

Any preacher who believes in the geology of Moses, the astronomy of Joshua, and the mathematics of the Trinity, must do an immense amount of "side-stepping."

_Christianity is only a bubble of superstition, and Jesus is
reduced to a toy god of the Sunday School._

AN IRRELIGIOUS DISCOURSE ON RELIGION

Religion is inherited fear.--_Lemuel K. Washburn._

In my opinion a steeple is no more to be excluded from taxation
than a smokestack.

Faith is the cross on which man crucifies his liberty.

AN IRRELIGIOUS DISCOURSE

We are living in the Twentieth Century of what is called the Christian Era, and we have not outgrown the superstitions of the First Century. And worse than this, we have not had the courage to abandon the fictions of the Book of Genesis for the truths of modern science. Just what the world is afraid of, that it fears to trust its senses, its reason, its knowledge, surpasses my understanding.

One of the first things that men and women should learn is, that there is nothing in the universe to be afraid of; that all the malignant deities are dead; that the ancient gods that presided over the destiny of earth and of earthly things have all fallen from the sky; that in the realm of Nature everything is natural, and that no man is pursued by a god of wrath and vengeance who would punish him for his unbelief. Every god that can not hear the truth without getting mad should be dethroned. Every priest who can not join in singing the songs of civilization should be warned to look out for the engine while the bell rings.

This world of ours is a world to be enjoyed, but it can not be enjoyed if we fear every manifestation of Nature and if we put a cruel god behind every cloud.

Let us live without fear, without superstition, without religion.

* * * * *

There is nothing above, beneath or around you that cares whether you are a Christian or an unbeliever. The real reason why a priest hates an unbeliever is that he can not get a dollar out of him. He damns those who know better than to swallow his say-sos. But it still remains a fact that an infidel can raise as many bushels of potatoes to the acre as can the Roman Catholic. The sun will not wrong an honest man. The stars will not punish a single human being for telling the truth. The sky will not persecute a person who gives his thoughts, his talents, his time, to finding ways to help mankind.

Everything that man believes in that can not be found, that can not be proved, that can not stand the test of commonsense: everything that contradicts Nature, that is opposed to established facts, that is contrary to the laws of the universe, must be given up.

We must have a new man: the man born of woman, not the man made by God; the man who has been growing better ever since his advent on earth, not the man who has been growing worse; the man who started with nothing and has conquered the earth, the sea and the air; not the man who began perfect and has not got halfway back; the man who made the telescope, the steam-engine, the power-loom, the telephone and the wireless telegraph; not the man who made the thumbscrew, the rack, the ducking-stool and the stocks; the man who has carried the torch of liberty to enlighten the world, not the man who has carried the crucifix to enslave mankind.

* * * * *

It is quite common to be told what Moses said or what Jesus said. Now, if all that these two Hebrew gentlemen (who in my opinion never lived) said, is preserved in the Bible, I appeal from what they said to those who know more. I assert that Moses said a lot of stuff that isn't so, and a lot more that never was so, and that all that Jesus is said to have said is practically worthless to the world today; that there is not in all of his utterances a single word that will help man to get a living, a single word that will aid man in his struggle for knowledge; that there is not a statement of a single scientific fact, or a plea for human liberty in all his language. He told his generation nothing that was not already known, except a mess of superstitious nonsense about angels and devils, heavens and hells. His so-called gospel of salvation was to follow him, and he landed on a cross.

The truth is this: the world has outgrown Moses and Jesus. It does not take commands from either. This age believes in work, not worship; in deeds, not prayers; in men, not monks; in liberty, not in pious obedience; in human rights, not in submission; in knowledge, not in revelation.

For hundreds of years man was bound by a religious faith, and the priest was his cruel master. He dared not doubt; he dared not rebel; he dared not dream of freedom; but there came a time when religious tyranny could no longer be borne. Then Mankind cried out to the Church: Give back man's brain to man; restore to him the mind you have robbed him of; take from his head and heart the paralyzing fear that makes him a coward and a slave, and leave to him the liberty with which Nature dowered him, that his mind may discover and preserve those mighty thoughts which make man brave, honest, free and happy.

That cry was heard far. It was heard by glad ears, and liberty sprang from the ground like the warriors from the fabled dragon-teeth of Cadmus. The war between liberty and tyranny, between fact and fable, between truth and falsehood, between man and priest, was on, and for centuries this war has raged, nor is it yet over. Freedom still lies bleeding, but victory for the right will sooner or later be won.

That victory will not be complete until every man will dare to say: Let come what will come, no man, be he priest, minister or judge, shall sit upon the throne of my mind, and decide for me what is right, true or good. I am my own master, my own teacher, my own guide. I will keep my reason free from control and will never surrender my own convictions to the dictates of another.

Nature has made every man commander of his own destiny.

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But we are yet victims of ecclesiastical villainy. The priest is still the worst enemy of mankind. His church is like that monster of fiction which lived on little children. In the name of the children I protest against the action of the Church in stealing their tender brains, in making them slaves of superstition before they are old enough to know to what they are doomed.

The age of consent to a religious faith should be determined by law, if necessary. Today any boy or girl may be the victim of a designing priest or clergyman, or of a designing religious system.

No person under eighteen years of age should be allowed to join a church or consent to a statement of faith. Mental purity should be guarded and protected as well as physical purity.

While the Church is powerful in numbers and while its religion is supported by wealth and fashion, the world is becoming more and more emancipated from its pernicious influence. The light that truth gives is still ahead of us, but _it is there_, and some day the world will grow warmer under its rays and men become better and kinder to one another.

A hundred years ago the God worshiped in orthodox churches went about drowning little boys and girls who went skating on Sundays. Those were the "good old days" when men and women had religion for breakfast, dinner and supper, and took it to bed with them. It takes a long time to get such a horrible religion out of the system.

Men and women still have a mean faith, a faith which can see others damned with satisfaction if they can only be saved. Nothing but a mean religion could make men and women as mean as that. I would rather starve than preach the doctrine of endless pain for a human being--or even for a dog. I believe that this world is hard and dark and cruel enough without borrowing suffering from another world to make darker and harder the road of life and add torture to the nights of pain and misery.

A church must be sunk pretty low when it lives on the fears and tears of mankind; but what lower depths of degradation does it sound when it can deliberately create fears and tears that it may live and thrive in its vile and cruel business! A human being without pity should be shunned and despised; but a human being who can fill the heart with terror should not be allowed in a civilized community.

The mind today wants to get out into the open, into the free daylight, wants to walk the earth, look at the stars and sky, feel the warmth of the sun and smell the odor of the ground; it has become tired of being shut up in a faith, in a creed, in a church; tired of being kept in the darkness of the past, in the tomb of dead thoughts, in the moldy caskets of unreal things, and in the dungeon of fear.

The mind is striving to break the chains of the priest and be free from the bonds of the Church.

You can not have men free where the priest demands and claims their obedience. The greatest menace to our national institutions is the power that controls men; that controls their thoughts, their actions and their destinies. Liberty can survive only where men are free: free to think, free to read, free to speak and free to act. The mind must not be bound by any vow of obedience. One man, no matter what his office, what his position, what his rank, has no right to compel another's obedience. This is the worst oppression on earth.

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What is needed in this country is more men who dare think and speak for themselves; who dare belong to no church; who dare work for the right as they see it, and speak the truth as they understand it; who dare live their own lives independent of fashion's demands or society's usages; who dare put liberty above conformity, and who dare defy customs, law and religion in their zeal to help their fellow-beings.

There is more than one liberty--more than the liberty to do right--that is partly won for every civilized being. There is another liberty that is dangerous and that persists even where civilization exists--the liberty to take another's liberty from him. This liberty is usually taken from another in the name of God and what is called holy; but there is nothing on earth so holy as liberty, and he who takes it from another robs him of the dearest right possessed by man. Binding a human being with the chains of faith before that being is old enough to judge whether the faith is reasonable or true is the assassination of freedom.

The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political but religious, and the preservation of our free institutions does not depend upon our army and navy, but upon the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical slavery. As Thomas Paine well said, "Spiritual freedom is the root of political liberty." You can not have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free.

There is too much faith in this country and too little sense. Men have given up about everything they possess to be saved; but it is more necessary, and more commendable in the workingmen of this nation, to save their dollars than to save their souls.

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A subject that needs to be investigated quite as much as, if not more than, the high cost of living is the high cost of worship. There may be some justice in the criticism of the price of meats. We must remember, however, that we do get something for our money when we buy meat, but let us not forget that we get absolutely nothing for the money spent for worship. Money given to the Church is lost to the world. It is not used to improve homes; to help the poor and needy; to alleviate suffering; to bring hope to the sick or to give a few comforts to old age. It goes into the pocket of ecclesiastical greed.

This country just at present is suffering from those twin curses of humanity--religion and Bull-Mooseism. The priest and Bull-Mooseism are the two worst trouble-makers in this country. To get rid of this precious pair of knaves would be to bring peace on earth and hasten the dawn.

I don't know which is the bigger knave, the priest or the Bull-Mooser, but I do know that the priest is engaged in the meaner business of the two.

When a man tries to sell me a mouse-trap to catch elephants, I am suspicious of his mental sanity; and when a man tells me that eternal happiness can be won by enlisting in his salvation army, I question his moral sanity. I know that religion is offered at cut rates, but there is no discount on morality. You can not have the reward of good behavior unless you behave. You may save your soul by saying, "I believe," but you have to _do_ something to save your body.

There is too much of this "believe-in-me" business. You don't want to believe in any one you know nothing about. The faith of a little child in its parents is beautiful, but the faith of a grown-up man in a priest is idiotic. Faith has ruined more than it has saved. With faith goes obedience, and he or she who obeys is lost.

There is no honest call today to believe, because there is opportunity to know. Faith is hatched in the nest of imposition. He who yields obedience is a fool, and he who demands it is a scoundrel.

In this age, as in the past, a lie made "holy" is allowed to assassinate the truth. Nothing is cursing this nation; nothing is cursing human life; nothing is cursing honest effort and brave striving so much as what is called holiness. It is holy to believe all you are told; holy to wear the robes of hypocrisy; holy to rob the poor in the name of God, and holy to put the poison of faith to the lips of a child. It is holy to repudiate Nature and make a lie of your body, your mind, your life. To purify the dwelling-place of man, it is necessary to drive from the earth everything that religion has made holy.

The only really sacred things were holy before a church was ever built, before there was a priest on the globe.

Human love and the home which human love built for its offspring were the first holy things which men and women knew, and it is this human love of ours which is holier than mosque, temple or church; holier than priestly robe or ecclesiastical rite; holier by far than all the holy things of faith.

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The Church has always lived by robbing the home; the priest has always lived on the wages of the toiler. The gods of religion have never done aught to lighten the heavy load on the shoulders of labor. The priest has said to mankind that his Lord left this consolation to the world: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest."

What the priest really means is this: Come unto me and I will do the rest; and by the time he has done it, there is nothing of manhood left.

The priest also teaches that his Lord and Master said, "Ask and ye shall receive," and adds, "The Lord will provide." How many poor wretches have believed those words; but their outstretched hands withered away day by day, and at last dropped empty by their sides. There they lay white and cold, holding not the bread they fondly expected, but holding the hand of death.

It may be pious and it may be beautiful to say, "The Lord will provide," but it is a lie just the same. When, the other day, the bodies of a mother and her two children were being carried to the grave with the words, "starved to death," written on their faces, but not written on their caskets, it was a sufficient refutation of the religious teaching that "The Lord will provide." It is the plain, unvarnished truth that the Lord will _not_ even provide the coffin for the poor victim of such a false, deceptive, religious faith.

In olden times it was customary for the Church to say, God's light lights the world. Not so today. God's light has gone out. It is man's light that lights the world and the Church too. Our enlightenment is human, not divine. No altar of religion burns with the fire of truth. Science carries the torch of knowledge: liberty is the way and truth is the goal.

* * * * *

On our earth gods no longer make their homes. It was not safe for them to live any more. Their sons may once have married the daughters of men, but they can not get a license to do so today. Parents will not stand for it.

So the gods have gone, bag and baggage. Where they have gone, no one knows. The skies give no sign that they are hiding up there. The telescope has found _seventy million stars, but not one god_.

It is time for the pulpit to stop repeating the old superstitions about God and about what he has done for man. He has never done any more for man than he is doing today; never spoken to man any more than he is speaking today; never revealed himself to anybody any more than he stands revealed to you and me and to every human being everywhere.

Every word that ever came from the mouth of God man put in his mouth, and every book revealed by God was written by man.

Half the work of man for the next one hundred years will be to kill the lies told about what God has done.

Whether there is in all the vast universe a higher and nobler being than man, I don't know. Whether there is in all the vast universe a better place for man to live than on this earth, I don't know. And no one knows any more about these matters than I do.

We have found out much that is not so; now we want to find out all we can that is so. And it is of no use to go to the Church to learn anything. The Church is only a place where falsehoods are kept in cold storage. The man who thinks and studies is the man who is helping the world most, not the man who preaches and prays. To find the truth one needs to get as far from the Church as possible.

Christians of all denominations have lots of pity for the man without a church. Let me assure these persons that the man without a church doesn't want one. As a rule, he is satisfied with what he has. He has a home, which is better than a church. If those persons who are pitying men and women for not having a church would, instead, pity the man without a home, and pity him enough to help him get one, they would show much better sense and manifest a truer sympathy with their fellow-beings.

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