Ingersoll's Lecture on "Orthodoxy"

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is utterly inconceivable that any man

believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny

it, because he who believes in that religion would believe that, by a

public denial, he would peril the eternal salvation of his soul. It is

conceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that millions

who don't believe in the Christian religion should openly say that they

did. In a country where religion is supposed to be in power--where it

has rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where

it at least is willing to purchase silence--it is easily conceivable

that millions pretend to believe what they do not. And yet I believe

it has been charged against myself, not only that I was insincere, but

that I took the side I am on for the sake of popularity; and the

audience tonight goes far toward justifying the accusation.

It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense audience that

orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world. It is a sick

man. It has been attacked with two diseases--softening of the brain

and ossification of the heart. It is a religion that no longer

satisfies the intelligence of this county; a religion that no longer

satisfies the brain; a religion against which the heart of every

civilized man and woman protests. It is a religion that gives hope

only to a few; a religion that puts a shadow upon the cradle; a

religion that wraps the coffin in darkness and fills the future of

mankind with flame and fear. It is a religion that I am going to do

what little I can while I live to destroy; and in its place I want

humanity, I want good-fellowship, I want a brain without a chain, I

want a religion that every good heart will cheerfully applaud.

We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of change.

There is perpetual death and there is perpetual birth. By the grave of

the old forever stands youth and joy; and, when an old religion dies, a

better one is born. When we find out that an assertion is a falsehood,

a shining truth takes its place, and we need not fear the destruction

of the false. The more false we destroy the more room there will be

for the true. There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in

the stars the fate of men and nations. The astrologer has faded from

the world, but the astronomer has taken his place. There was a time

when the poor alchemist, bent and wrinkled and old, over his crucible,

endeavored to find some secret by which he could change the baser

metals into purest gold. The alchemist is gone; the chemist took his

place; and, although he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he

finds something that covers the earth with wealth. There was a time

when the soothsayer and auger flourished, and after them came the

parson and the priest; and the parson and priest must go. The preacher

must go, and in his place must come the teacher--that real interpreter

of nature. We are done with the supernatural. We are through with the

miraculous and the wonderful. There was once a prophet who pretended

to read in the book of the future. His place was taken by the

philosopher, who reasons from cause to effect--a man who finds the

facts by which he is surrounded and endeavors to reason from these

premises, and to tell what in all probability will happen in the

future. The prophet is gone, the philosopher is here. There was a

time when man sought aid entirely from heaven--when he prayed to the

deaf sky. There was a time when the world depended upon the

supernaturalist. That time in Christendom has passed. We now depend

upon the naturalist--not upon the disciple of faith, but upon the

discoverer of facts--upon the demonstrator of truth. At last we are

beginning to build upon a solid foundation, and just as we progress the

supernatural must die.

Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this world, and in its

place we will have reason. In the place of the worship of something we

know not of, will be the religion of mutual love and assistance--the

great religion of reciprocity. Superstition must go. Science will

remain. The church, however, dies a little hard. The brain of the

world is not yet developed. There are intellectual diseases the same

as diseases of the body. Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict

mankind. Whenever the new comes, the old protests, and the old fights

for its place as long as it has a particle of power. And we are now

having the same warfare between superstition and science that there was

between the stagecoach and the locomotive. But the stage-coach had to

go. It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone. It went West.

In a little while it will be driven into the Pacific, with the last

Indian aboard. So we find that there is the same conflict between the

different sects and the different schools, not only of philosophy, but

of medicine. Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth

is liable to die. That is the order of nature. Words die. Every

language has a cemetery. Every now and then a word dies and a

tombstone is erected, and across it is written the word "obsolete."

New words are continually being born. There is a cradle in which a

word is rocked. A thought is molded to a sound, and the child-word is

born. And then comes a time when the word gets old, and wrinkled, and

expressionless, and is carried mournfully to the grave, and that is the

end of it. So in the schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I,

when the old alopathists reigned supreme. If there was anything the

matter with a man, they let out his blood. Called to the bedside, they

took him to the edge of eternity with medicine, and then practiced all

their art to bring him back to life. One can hardly imagine how

perfect a constitution it took a few years ago to stand the assault of

a doctor. And long after it was found to be a mistake, hundreds and

thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them,

in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet,

sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the

experiment to be made again.

So these schools, and these theories, and these religions die hard.

What else can they do? Like the paintings of the old masters, they are

kept alive because so much money has been invested in them. Think of

the amount of money that has been invested in superstition! Think of

the schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of

useless knowledge! Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it

is dangerous to think, and that they must never use their brains except

in an act of faith! Think of the millions and billions of dollars that

have been expended in churches, in temples and in cathedrals! Think of

the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the

ignorance of mankind! Think of those who grow rich on credulity and

who fatten on faith! Do you suppose they are going to die without a

struggle? They will die if they don't struggle. What are they to do?

From the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor clergyman that

has had all his common sense educated out of him, and is now to be

thrown out upon the cold and uncharitable world. His prayers are not

answered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are beginning to

criticize the pulpit. What is the man to do? If he suddenly change,

he is gone. If he preaches what he really believes, he will get notice

to quit. And yet if he and the congregation would come together and be

perfectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe anything of

it.

Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a

revival in a carriage late at night, and one said to the other; as they

rode along: "I am going to say something that will shock you, and I

beg of you never to tell it to anybody else. I am going to tell it to

you." "Well, What is it?" Says she: "I don't believe in the bible."

The other replied: "Neither do I." I have often thought how splendid

it would be if the ministers could but come together and say: "Now let

us be honest. Let us tell each other, honor bright--like Dr. Currie

did in the meeting here the other day--let us tell just what we

believe." They tell a story that in the old time a lot of people,

about twenty, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one fellow got up

before the fire, put his hands behind him, and says he: "Boys, let us

all tell our real names." If the ministers and the congregations would

only tell their real thoughts they would find that they are nearly as

bad as I am, and that they believe just about as little.

Now, I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox religion; and,

after having delivered a lecture, I would meet some good, religious

person, and he would say to me: "You don't tell it as we believe it."

"Well, but I tell it as you have it written in your creed." "Oh,

well," he says, "we don't mind that any more." "Well, why don't you

change it?" "Oh, well," he says, "we understand it." Possibly the

creed is in the best possible condition for them now. There is a tacit

understanding that they don't believe it. There is a tacit

understanding that they have got some way to get around it, that they

read between the lines; and if they should meet now to form a creed,

they might fail to agree; and the creed is now so that they can say as

they please, except in public. Whenever they do so in public, the

church, in self-defense, must try them; and I believe in trying every

minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he agrees to. I have not

the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to

preach infidelity from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money. When

he changes his views, he should step down and out like a man, and say:

"I don't believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it. You must

hire some bigger fool than I am."

But I find that I get the creed very nearly right. Today there was put

into my hands the new Congregational creed. I have just read it, and I

thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the

church has made any advance; to find whether it has been affected by

the light of science; to find whether the sun of knowledge has risen in

the heavens in vain; whether they are still the children of

intellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary for you

to believe something that you by no possibility, can understand, in

order to be a winged angel forever. Now, let us see what their creed

is. I will read a little of it. They commence by saying that they

"believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and of

earth, and of all things visible and invisible." I am perfectly

willing that He should make the invisible, if they want Him to. They

say, now, that there is this one personal God; that He is the maker of

the universe, and its ruler. I again ask the old question: of what

did He make it? If matter has not existed through eternity, then this

God made it. Of what did He make it? What did He use for the purpose?

There was nothing in the universe except this God. What had the God

been doing for the eternity He had been living? He had made

nothing--called nothing into existence; never had had an idea, because

it is impossible to have an idea unless there is something to excite an

idea. What had He been doing? Why doesn't the Congregational Church

tell us? How do they know about this infinite being? And if He is

infinite, how can they comprehend Him? What good is it to believe

something that you don't understand--that you never can understand? In

the old creeds they described this God as a being without body and

parts or passions. Think of that! Something without body and parts or

passions. I defy any man in the world to write a letter descriptive of

nothing. You can not conceive of a finer word-painting of a vacuum

than a something without body and parts or passions. And yet this God,

without passions, is angry at the wicked every day; this God, without

passions, is a jealous God, whose anger burneth to the lowest hell.

This God, without passions, loves the whole human race, and this God,

without passions, damns a large majority of the same. So, too, He is

the ruler of the world, and I find here that we find His providence in

the government of the nations. What nations? What evidence can you

find, if you are absolutely honest and not frightened, in the history

of nations, that this universe is presided over by an infinitely wise

and good God? How do you account for Russia? How do you account for

Siberia? How do you account for the fact that whole races of men toiled

beneath the master's lash for ages without recompense and without

reward? How do you account for the fact that babes were sold from the

arms of mothers--arms that had been reached toward God in supplication?

How do you account for it? How do you account for the existence of

martyrs? How do you account for the fact that this God allows people

to be burned simply for loving Him? How do you account for the fact

that justice doesn't always triumph? How do you account for the fact

that innocence is not a perfect shield? How do you account for the fact

that the world has been filled with pain, and grief, and tears? How do

you account for the fact that people have been swallowed by volcanoes,

swept from the earth by storms, dying by famine, if there is above us a

ruler who is infinitely good and infinitely powerful?

I don't say there is none. I don't know. As I have said before, this

is the only planet I was ever on. I live in one of the rural districts

of the universe. I know not about these things as much as the clergy.

And if they know no more about the other world than they do about this,

it is not worth mentioning. How do they answer all this? They say

that God "permits it." What would you say to me if I stood by and saw

a ruffian beat out the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect

power to prevent it? You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the

murderer. That is what you would say. Is it possible for this God to

prevent it? Then, if He doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good. But

they say He "permits it." What for? So we may have freedom of choice.

What for? So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are

bad. Didn't He know that when He made us? Did He not know exactly

just what He was making? Why should He make those whom He knew would

be criminals? If I should make a machine that would walk your streets

and commit murder, you would hang me. Why not? And if God made a man

whom He knew would commit murder, then God is guilty of that murder.

If God made a man, knowing he would beat his wife, that he would starve

his children, that he would strew on either side of his path of life

the wrecks of ruined homes, then, I say, the being who called that

wretch into existence is directly responsible. And yet we are to find

the providence of God in the history of nations. What little I have

read shows me that when man has been helped, man had to do it; when the

chains of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by man; when

something bad has been done in the government of mankind, it is easy to

trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility upon human beings. You

will not look to the sky; you need throw neither praise nor blame; you

can find the efficient causes nearer home--right here.

What is the next thing I find in this creed? "We believe that man was

made in the image of God, that he might know, love and obey God, and

enjoy Him for ever." I don't believe that anybody ever did love God,

because nobody ever knew anything about Him. We love each other. We

love something that we know. We love something that our experience

tells us is good and great, and good and beautiful. We cannot by any

possibility love the unknown. We can love truth, because truth adds to

human happiness. We can love justice, because it preserves human joy.

We can love charity. We can love every form of goodness that we know,

or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love the infinitely unknown.

And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body

and parts nor passions?

"That our first parents, by disobedience, fell under the condemnation

of God, and that all men are so alienated from God that there is no

salvation from the guilt and power of sin except through God's

redeeming power." Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the

world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If there is, strike

here (tapping his forehead) and you will hear an echo. Something is

for rent. Does any human being now believe that God made man of dust

and a woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the

middle of it? Wasn't there room outside of the garden to put His tree,

if He didn't want people to eat His apple? If I didn't want a man to

eat my fruit I would not put him in my orchard.

Does anybody now believe in the snake story? I pity any man or woman

who, in this nineteenth century, believes in that childish fable. Why

did they disobey? Why, they were tempted. Who by? The devil. Who

made the devil? What did He make him for? Why didn't He tell Adam and

Eve about this fellow? Why didn't he watch the devil instead of

watching Adam and Eve? Instead of turning them out, why didn't He keep

him from getting in? Why didn't He have His flood first and drown the

devil, before He made man and woman?

And yet people who call themselves intelligent--professors in colleges

and presidents of venerable institutions--teach children, and young men

who ought to be children, that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute,

historical fact! Well, I guess it will not be long until that will

fade from the imagination of men. I defy any man to think of a more

childish thing. This God waiting around there, knowing all the while

what would happen, made them on purpose so it would happen; and then

what does he do? Holds all of us responsible; and we were not there.

Here is a representative before the constituency had been born. Before

I am bound by a representative, I want a chance to vote for or against

him; and if I had been there, and known all the circumstances, I should

have voted against him. And yet, I am held responsible.

What did Adam do? I cannot see that it amounted to much anyway. A god

that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained

of the loss of an apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon

such a subject. Now, that absurdity gave birth to another--that, while

we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we

could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the

atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the

fall of man. Let us leave them both out; it reads a great deal better

with both of them out; it makes better sense.

Now, in consequence of that, everybody is alienated from God. How?

Why? Oh, we are all depraved, you know; we all want to do wrong. Well,

why? Is that because we are depraved? No. Why do we make so many

mistakes? Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost

infinite number of wrong ones; and as long as we are not perfect in our

intellects we must make mistakes. There is no darkness but ignorance;

and alienation, as they call it, from God, is simply a lack of

intellect upon our part. Why were we not given better brains? That

may account for the alienation. But the church teaches that every soul

that finds its way to the shore of this world is against God--naturally

hates God; that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a

chunk of depravity. Everybody against God! It is a libel upon the

human race; it is a libel upon all the men who have worked for wife and

child; it is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and labored,

wept and worked for children; it is a libel upon all the men who have

died for their country; it is a libel upon all who have fought for

human liberty; it is a libel upon the human race. Leave out the

history of the church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the

depravity of man left.

Everybody that comes is against God. Every soul, they think, is like

the wrecked Irishman. He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an

unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said

to him, "Have you a government here?" The man said, "We have."

"Well," said he, "I am agin it!" The church teaches us that that is

the attitude of every soul in the universe of God. Ought a god to take

any credit to himself for making depraved people? A god that cannot

make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest,

should retire from the business. And if a god has made us, knowing

that we would be totally depraved, why should we go to the same being

for repairs?

What is the next? "That all men are so alienated from God that there

is no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin except through

God's redeeming grace."

Reformation is not enough. If the man who steals becomes perfectly

honest, that is not enough; if the man who hates his fellow-man changes

and loves his fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through the

mysterious thing called the second birth; he must be born again. That

is not enough unless he has faith; he must believe something that he

does not understand. Reformation is not enough; there must be what they

call conversion. I deny it. According to the church, nothing so

excites the wrath of God--nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah

with revenge--as a man relying on his own good works. He must admit

that he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before

God will consent to save him. I saw a man the other day, and he said

to me, "I am a Unitarian Universalist; that is what I am." Said I,

"What do you mean by that?" "Well," said he, "here is what I mean:

the Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist

thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both."

What is the next thing in this great creed?

"We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the

records of God's revelation of Himself in the work of redemption; that

they are written by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit,

and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious

teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged."

This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that is, it is the

result of the high-joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for

churches; and there we have the statement that the bible was written

"by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit." What part of

the bible? All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testament

that was written by an infinitely good God? The being who wrote it did

not know the shape of the world He had made. The being who wrote it

knew nothing of human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if one

could love upon command. The same God upheld the institution of human

slavery; and the church says the bible that upholds that institution

was written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I

disagree with the Holy Ghost upon that institution.

The church tells us that men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost,

upheld the institution of polygamy--I deny it; that under the guidance

of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and

conquest--I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these

men wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife

if she happened to differ with him on the subject of religion--I deny

it. And yet that is the book now upheld in this creed of the

Congregational Church. If the devil had written upon the subject of

slavery, which side would he have taken? Let every minister answer,

honor bright. If you knew the devil had written a little work on human

slavery, in your judgment would he uphold slavery or denounce it?

Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it if he upheld

slavery? And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and you say

that it was written by an infinitely good, wise and beneficent God! If

the devil upheld polygamy would you be surprised? If the devil wanted

to kill somebody for differing with him would you be surprised? If the

devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be astonished? And yet,

you say, that is exactly what the God of us all did. If there be a

God, then that creed is blasphemy. That creed is a libel upon Him who

sits upon heaven's throne. I want--if there be a God--I want Him to

write in the book of his eternal remembrance that I denied these lies

for Him.

I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not worship a polygamous

Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a

husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought.

Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old testament, and told

the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on

religion, and that God afterward took upon Himself flesh and came to

Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed

Him--did it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had sown?

Did it ever occur to you that He fell a victim to His own tyranny, and

was destroyed by His own law! Of course I do not believe that any God

ever was the author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified,

or that any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you

that question.

Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of murder and

massacre; with all its foolish and cruel fables; with all its infamous

doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and

tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the

maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like

Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity

of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race.

And yet, I must say--I must admit--that the old testament is better

than the new. In the old testament, when God got a man dead, He let

him alone. When He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied. The

muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face. But in the

new testament the trouble commences just at death. In the new

testament God is to wreak His revenge forever and ever. It was

reserved for one who said, "Love your enemies," to tear asunder the

veil between time and eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men upon

the gulfs of eternal fire. The new testament is just as much worse than

the old, as hell is worse than sleep; just as much worse as infinite

cruelty is worse than annihilation; and yet, the new testament is

pointed to as a gospel of love and peace.

But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say.

"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom

of God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I do not deny it.

But what was the result? The Christian world has caused more war than

all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death

have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which

the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and

subdued--all these machines have been born in Christian brains. And

yet He came to bring peace, they say. But the testament says

otherwise: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And the sword

was brought. What are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is

there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any other? How many

millions of Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness,

loving their enemies? There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death,

and he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to

forgive his enemies before he died. He says, "I have not any." "What!

no enemies?" "Not one," said the dying man, "I killed the last one

three weeks ago."

How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy

their fellow-Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against

war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No;

it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of

peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows

and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then

Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to

God. Why? Because He has enabled a few of His children to kill some

others of His children. This is the religion of peace--the religion

that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000

pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the religion

of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in mail, all in the

name of universal forgiveness.

What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have

the nations been fighting about? What was the Thirty Years' War in

Europe for? What was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England

persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even

unto this day? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will

find a religious question. The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached

by His church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness;

and why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation.

They do not say, if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there;

they do not say, if you pay your debts and love your wife, and love

your children, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, and

your country, you will get there; that will do you no good; you have

got to believe a certain thing. Oh, yes, no matter how bad you are,

you can instantly be forgiven then; and no matter how good you are, if

you fail to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judgment

nothing is left but to damn you forever, and all the angels will shout

"Hallelujah!"

What do they teach today? Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only

one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and

heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to

be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to

any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that

if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme

unction; let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through

the church; and let the Protestant understand that when he has

committed that crime, the community will not pray him into heaven. Let

him go with his victim. The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes

to hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. And

if heaven grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life

to the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. I am

opposed to that kind of forgiveness. And yet that is the religion of

universal peace to everybody.

Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to?

"We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of Christ over

all the earth."

What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting

along now? How many people are being born a year? About fifty

millions. How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully? Five

or six thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is orthodox

Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as many

unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago. What

are you doing in the missionary World? How long is it since you

converted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send

missionaries, with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman

comes here, mob him, simply to show him the difference between the

practical and theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long

since you have had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there

never has been an intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first

missionary put his foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has

an intelligent Chinaman been converted since the first missionary

touched that shore. Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in

the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the

edge of the grave, and go and tell them stories how hungry the average

Chinaman is for a copy of the new testament, and paint the sad

condition of a gentleman in the interior of Africa, without the work of

Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. In my

judgment, it is a book that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared

from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble. About how long

is it before this kingdom is to be established?

What is the next thing here? They all also believe in the resurrection

of the dead, and in their confession of faith hereto attached I find

they also believe in the resurrection of the body. Does anybody

believe that, that has ever thought? Here is a man, for instance, that

weighs 200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; how much will

he weigh in the morning of the resurrection? Here is a cannibal, who

eats another man; and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your

body and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten the

missionary, and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies,

who will the atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an

action of replevin brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It

has been demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in

nature, and no destruction in nature. It has been demonstrated again

and again that the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other

beings; grown in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers,

been in the metals; in other words, there are atoms in each one of us

that have been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms

return to the earth, and again spring in vegetation, taken up in the

leaves of the trees, turned into wood. And yet we have a church, in

the nineteenth century, getting up this doctrine, presided over by

professors, by presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us

that they believe in the resurrection of the body.

They know better. There is not one so ignorant but what knows better.

And what is the next thing? "And in a final judgment." It will be a

set day. All of us will be there, and the thousands, and millions, and

billions, and trillions, and quadrillions that have died will be there.

It will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened and our

case will be called. Does anybody believe in that now that has got the

slightest sense?--one who knows enough to chew gum without a string?"

"The issues of which are everlasting punishment for the wicked and

everlasting life for the redeemed. "That is the doctrine today of the

Congregational church, and that is the doctrine that I oppose. That is

the doctrine that I defy and deny.

But I must hasten on. Now this comes to us after all the discussion

that has been, and we are told that this religion is finally to conquer

this world. This is the same religion that failed to successfully meet

the hordes of Mohammed. Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the

cross the fairest part of Europe. It was known that he was an

impostor. They knew he was because the people of Mecca said so, and

they knew that Christ was not because the people of Jerusalem said he

was. This impostor wrested from the disciples of Christ the fairest

part of Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and

infidelity in the minds of the Christian world. And the next was an

effort to rescue from the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ. That

commenced in the eleventh century and ended in 1291. Europe was almost

depopulated. For every man owed a debt, the debt was discharged if he

put a cross upon his breast and joined the Crusades. No matter what

crime he had committed the doors of the prison were open for him to

join the Crusades. And what was the result? They believed that God

would give them victory over the infidel, and they carried in front of

the first Crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both those animals

had been blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say

that those same animals are in the lead today in the orthodox world.

Until 1291 they endeavored to get that sepulchre, until finally the

hosts of Christ were driven back, baffled, beaten, and demoralized--a

poor, miserable religious rabble. They were driven back, and that fact

sowed the seeds of distrust in Christendom. You know at that time the

world believed in trial by battle--that God would take the side of

right--and there had been a trial by battle between the Cross and

Mohammed, and Mohammed had been victorious.

Well, what was the next? You know when Christianity came into power it

destroyed every statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon. It

defaced and obliterated every painting; it destroyed every beautiful

building; it destroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it

destroyed all the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy it could

find, and burned every library that it could reach with its torch. And

the result was the night of the middle ages fell upon the human race.

But by accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts

escaped the fury of religious zeal; a few statues had been buried; and

the result was, that these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of

which is our civilization of today. A few forms of beauty were dug

from the earth that had protected them, and now the civilized world is

filled with art, with painting, and with statuary, in spite of the rage

of the early church.

What is the next blow that that this church received? The discovery of

America. That is the next. The Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to

write the bible, did not know of the existence of this continent, never

dreamed of it; the result was that His bible never spoke of it. He did

not dream that the earth is round. He believed it was flat, although

He made it Himself, and at that time heaven was just up there beyond

the clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels

were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was that the

angels ascended and descended. It was to that heaven that Christ

ascended after His resurrection. It was up there where the New

Jerusalem was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth was

perdition; there was where the devils lived; there was where a pit was

dug for all unbelievers, and for men who had brains, and I say that for

this reason: That just in proportion that you have brains, just in that

proportion your chances for eternal joy are lessened, according to this

religion. And just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are

increased. They believe, under there that they discovered America. They

found that the earth is round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In

1519 that brave man set sail. The church told him: "The earth is flat,

my friend; don't go off. You will go off the edge." Magellan said: "I

have seen the shadow of the earth upon the moon, and I have more

confidence in the shadow even than I have in the church." The ship

went round. The earth was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand

above it and beneath it, and where was the heaven, and where was the

hell? Vanished forever! And they dwell now only in the religion of

superstition. We found there was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean

against; no place there for the gods and angels to live; no place there

to empty the waters of the deluge; no place there to which Christ could

have ascended; and the foundations of the New Jerusalem crumbled, and

the towers and domes fell and became simply space--space sown with an

infinite number of stars; not with New Jerusalems, but with

constellations.

Then man began to grow great, and with that you know came astronomy.

Now just see what they did in that. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In

1543 his great work. In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by

the pope, by the infallible Catholic church, and the church is about as

near right upon that subject as upon any other. The system of

Copernicus was denounced. And how long do you suppose the church

fought that? Let me tell you. It was revoked by Pius VII. in the year

of grace 1821. For 205 years after the death of Copernicus the church

insisted that that system was false, and that the old idea was true.

Astronomy is the first help that we ever received from heaven. Then

came Kepler in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of science from

the night that Kepler discovered his first law. That was the dawn of

the day of intelligence--his first law, that the planets do not move in

circles; his second law, that they described equal spaces in equal

times; his third law, that there was a direct relation between weight

and velocity. That man gave us a key to heaven. That man opened its

infinite book, and we now read it, and he did more good than all the

theologians that ever lived. I have not time to speak of the

others--of Galileo, of Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others

that I could mention.

The next thing that gave this church a blow was statistics. Away went

special providence. We found by taking statistics that we could tell

the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend

upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances,

laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts

were ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely

upon special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence

even in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity. We

found by statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average

committed; just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just

so many suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so many accidents on

an average; just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than

themselves; just so many murders of a particular kind; just the same

number of accidents; and I say tonight statistics utterly demolish the

idea of special providence. Only the other day a gentleman was telling

me of a case of special providence. He knew it. He had been the

subject of it. Yes, sir! A few years ago he was about to go on a ship

when he was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on

board. Yes! I said, "Do you think the fellows that were drowned

believed in special providence?" Think of the infinite egotism of such

a doctrine. Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with 500

passengers, and they go down to the bottom of the sea--fathers,

mothers, children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon the

shores of expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that didn't

happen to go! And he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in

his poor little withered behalf and let the rest all go. That is

special providence!

You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of

thanksgiving. We say to God, "Although You have afflicted all the

other countries, although You have sent war, and desolation, and famine

on everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been

kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It don't make a bit of

difference whether we have good times or not--not a bit; the

thanksgiving is always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a

governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to

tell how thankful the people were, how prosperous the State had been;

and there was a young fellow in the State who got out another

proclamation, saying: "Fearing that the Lord might be misled by

official correspondence," he went on to say that the governor's

proclamation was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous;

that the crops had been an almost entire failure; that nearly every

farm in the state was mortgaged; that if the Lord did not believe him,

all he asked was He would send some angel in whom he had confidence to

look the matter over for himself.

Of course I have not time to recount the enemies of the church. Every

fact is an enemy of superstition. Every fact is a heretic. Every

demonstration is an infidel. Everything that ever happened testified

against the supernatural. I have only spoken of a few of the blows

that shattered the shield and shivered the lance of superstition. Here

is another one--the doctrine of Charles Darwin. This century will be

called Darwin's century, one of the greatest men who ever touched this

globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the

religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin there (on the one

hand) and the name of every theologian that ever lived there (on the

other hand), and from that name has come more light to the world than

from all those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the

survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has

removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox

Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that

the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin

of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature;

that the bible is a book written by ignorance--by the instigation of

fear! Think of the man who replied to him. Only a few years ago there

was no parson too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and

the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He

was held up to the ridicule, the scorn, and the contempt of the

Christian world, and yet when he died England was proud to put his dust

with that of her noblest and her grandest.

Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and the doctrine of

evolution is now an accepted fact. His light has broken in on some of

the early clergy, and the greatest man who today occupies the pulpit is

a believer in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin--and that is Henry

Ward Beecher--a man of more brains than the entire clergy of that

entire church put together. And yet we are told in this little creed

that orthodox religion is about to conquer the world. It will be

driven to the wilds of Africa. It must go to some savage country; it

has lost its hold upon civilization, and I tell you it is unfortunate

to have a religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect of a

nation. It is unfortunate to have a religion against which every good

and noble heart protests. Let us have a good one or none. O! my pity

has been excited by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp and twist

the passages of scripture to fit some demonstration in science. These

pious evasions! These solemn pretenses! When they are caught in one

way they give a different meaning to the words and say the world was

not made in seven days. They say "good whiles"--epochs. And in this

same confession here of faith and creeds they believe the Lord's day is

holy--every seventh day. Suppose you lived near the north pole, where

the day is three months long. Then which day will you keep? Suppose

you could get to the north pole, you could prevent Sunday from ever

overtaking you. You could walk around the other way faster than the

world could revolve. How would you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever

invent any thing that can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just chase

Sunday clear around the globe. Is there anything that can be more

perfectly absurd than that a space of time can be holy! You might as

well talk about a pious vacuum. These pious evasions. I heard the

other night of an old man. He was not very well educated, you know,

and he got into the notion that he must have reading of the bible and

have family worship; and there was a bad boy in the family--a pretty

smart boy--and they were reading the bible by course, and in the

fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this passage: "Behold, brethren, I

show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be changed."

And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the "changed." So next night the

old man got on his specs and got down his bible and said: "Behold,

brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be

hanged." The old lady said, "Father, I don't think it reads that way."

He says, "Who is reading this?" "Yes, mother, it says be hanged, and,

more than that, I see the sense of it. Pride is the besetting sin of

the human heart, and if there is anything calculated to take the pride

out of a man it is hanging."

I keep going back to this book; I keep going back to the miracles, to

the prophecies, to the fables, and people ask me, if I take away the

bible, what are we going to do? How can we get along without the

revelation that no one understands? What are we going to do if we have

no bible to quarrel about? What are we to do without hell? What are

we going to do with our enemies? What are we going to do with the

people we love but don't like? They tell me that there never would have

been any civilization if it had not been for this bible. Um! The Jews

had a bible; the Romans had not. Which had the greater and the grander

government? Let us be honest. Which of those nations produced the

greatest poets, the greatest soldiers, the greatest orators, the

greatest statesmen, the greatest sculptors? Rome had no bible. God

cared nothing for the Roman Empire. He let the men come up by chance.

His time was taken up by the Jewish people. And yet Rome conquered the

world, and even conquered God's chosen people. The people that had the

bible were defeated by the people who had not. How was it possible for

Lucretius to get along without the bible? How did the great and

glorious of that empire? And what shall we say of Greece? No bible.

Compare Athens with Jerusalem. From Athens comes the beauty and

intellectual grace of the world. Compare the mythology of Greece with

the mythology of Judea. One covering the earth with beauty, and the

other filling heaven with hatred and injustice. The Hindoos had no

bible; they had been forsaken by the creator, and yet they became the

greatest metaphysicians of the world. Egypt had no bible. Compare

even Egypt with Judea. What are we to do without the bible? What

became of the Jews who had no bible; their temple was destroyed and

their city was taken; and, as I said before, they never found real

prosperity until their God deserted them. Do without the bible?

Now I come again to the new testament. There are a few things in

there, I give you my word, I cannot believe. I cannot--I cannot

believe in the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. I believe He was the

son of Joseph and Mary; that Joseph and Mary had been duly and legally

married; that He was the legitimate offspring of that marriage, and

nobody ever believed the contrary until He had been dead 150 years.

Neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke ever dreamed that He was of divine

origin. He did not say to either Matthew, Mark or Luke, or to any one

in their hearing, that He was the son of God, or that He was

miraculously conceived. He did not say it. The angel Gabriel, who,

they say, brought the news, never wrote a word upon the subject. His

mother never wrote a word upon the subject. His father never wrote a

word upon the subject. We are lacking in the matter of witnesses. I

would not believe it now! I cannot believe it then. I would not

believe people I know, much less would I believe people I don't know.

I say that at that time Matthew, Mark and Luke believed that He was the

son of Joseph and Mary. And why? They say He descended from the blood

of David, and in order to show that He was of the blood of David they

gave the genealogy of Joseph. And if Joseph was not his father, why

not give the genealogy of Pontius Pilate or Herod? Could they, by

giving the genealogy of Joseph, show that He was of the blood of David

if Joseph was in no way related to David; and yet that is the position

into which the Christian world is now driven. It says the son of

Joseph, and then interpolated the words "as was supposed." Why, then,

do they give a supposed genealogy. It will not do. And that is a

thing that cannot in any way, by any human testimony, be established;

and if it is important for us to know that He was the Son of God, I say

then that it devolves upon God to give us evidence. Let Him write it

across the face of the heavens, in every language of mankind. If it is

necessary for us to believe it, let it grow on every leaf next year.

No man should be damned for not believing unless the evidence is

overwhelming. And he ought not to be made to depend upon say-so. He

should have it directly for himself. A man says God told him so and

so, and he tells me, and I haven't anyone's word but that fellow's. He

may have been deceived. If God has a message for me He ought to tell

it to me, and not somebody that has been dead 4,000 or 5,000 years, and

in another language; God may have changed His mind on many things; He

has on slavery at least, and polygamy; and yet His church now wants to

go out here and destroy polygamy in Utah with a sword. Why don't they

send missionaries there with copies of the old testament? By reading

the lives of Abraham, and Isaac, and Lot, and a few other fellows that

ought to have been in the penitentiary, they can soften their hearts.

Now, there is another miracle I do not believe. I want to speak about

it as we would about any ordinary transaction in the world. In the

first place, I do not believe that any miracle was ever performed, and

if there was, you can't prove it. Why? Because it is altogether more

reasonable that the people lied about it than that it happened. And

why? Because, according to human experience, we know that people will

not always tell the truth, and we never saw a miracle, and we have got

to be governed by our experience, and if we go by our experience, it is

in favor that the thing never happened; that the man is mistaken. Now,

I want you to remember it. Here is a man that comes into Jerusalem,

and the first thing he does he cures the blind. He lets the light of

day visit the darkness of blindness. The eyes are opened and the whole

world is again pictured upon the brain. Another man is clothed with

leprosy. He touches him, and the disease falls from him, and he stands

pure, and clean, and whole. Another man is deformed, wrinkled, bent.

He touches him and throws upon him again the garment of youth. A man

is in his grave, and He says, "Come forth!" and he again walks in life,

feeling his heart throb and beat, and his blood going joyously through

his veins. They say that happened. I don't know. There is one

wonderful thing about the dead people that were raised--we don't hear

of them any more. What became of them? Why, if there was a man in

this town that had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him

tonight. I would say, "Where were you when you got the notice to come

back? What kind of country is it? What kind of opening there for a

young man? How did you like it?" But nobody ever paid the slightest

attention to them there. They didn't even excite interest when they

died the second time. Nobody said, "Why, that man isn't afraid. He has

been there." Not a word. They pass away quietly. You see I don't

believe it. There is something wrong somewhere about that business.

And then there is another trouble in my mind. Now, you know I may

suffer eternal punishment for all this.

Here is a man that does all these things, and thereupon they crucify

Him. Now, then, let us be honest. Suppose a man came into Chicago and

he should meet a funeral procession, and he should say, "Who is dead?"

and they should say, "The son of a widow; her only support," and he

should say to the procession, "Halt!" And to the undertaker, "Take out

that coffin, unscrew that lid." "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!"

And the latter should step from the coffin, and in one moment after

hold his mother in his arms. Suppose he should go to your cemetery and

should find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the

tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, "Who lies

buried here?" and she should reply, "My husband," and he should say, "I

say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead," and the husband should rise

and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife's, and the little

children with their arms around his neck. Suppose that it is so. Do

you think that the people of Chicago would kill him? Do you think any

one would wish to crucify him? Do you not rather believe that every

one who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon

their knees, and beg him and implore him to give back their dead? Do

you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of

death? Let me tell you tonight if there shall ever appear on this earth

the master, the monarch of death, all human knees will touch the earth;

he will not be crucified, he will not be touched. All the living who

fear death; all the living who have lost a loved one will stand and

cling to him. And yet we are told that this worker of miracles, this

worker of wonders, this man who could clothe the dead in the throbbing

flesh of life, was crucified by the Jewish people. It was never

dreamed that he did a miracle until 100 years after he was dead.

There is another miracle I do not believe, I cannot believe it, and

that is the resurrection. And why? If it was the fact, if the dead

got out of the grave, why did He not show himself to his enemies? Why

did He not again visit Pontius Pilate? Why did He not call upon

Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not make another triumphal entry

into Jerusalem? Why did He not again enter the temple and dispute with

the doctors? Why didn't He say to the multitude: "Here are the wounds

in My feet, and in My hands, and in My side. I am the one you

endeavored to kill, but Death is My slave." Why didn't He? Simply

because the thing never happened. I cannot believe it. But recollect,

it makes no difference with its teachings. They are exactly as good

whether He wrought miracles or not. Twice two are four; that needs no

miracle. Twice two are five--a miracle would not help that. Christ's

teachings are worth their effect upon the human race. It makes no

difference about miracle or about wonder, but you must remember in that

day every one believed in miracles. Nobody had any standing as a

teacher, a philosopher, a governor, or a king, about whom there was not

a something miraculous. The earth was then covered with the sons and

daughters of the gods and goddesses. That was believed in Greece, in

Rome, in Egypt, in Hindustan; everybody, nearly, believed in such

things.

Then there is another miracle that I cannot believe in, and that is the

ascension--the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ. Where was He going?

Since the telescope has been pointed at the stars, where was He going?

The New Jerusalem is not there. The abode of the gods is not there.

Where was He going? Which way did He go? That depends upon the time

of day that He left. If He left in the night He went exactly the

opposite way from what He would in the day. Who saw this miracle?

They say the disciples. Let us see what they say about it. Matthew

did not think it was worth mentioning. He doesn't speak of it at all.

On the contrary, he says that the last words of Christ were: "Lo, I am

with you always, even unto the end of the world." That is what he

says. Mark, he saw it. "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them

He was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." That

is all he has to say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed

human vision--about a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to

bursting; and yet we have one poor, little meagre verse. So, then,

after He had quit speaking, He was caught up and sat on the right hand

of God. How does he know He was on the right hand? Did he see Him

after He had sat down? Luke says: "And it came to pass while He

blessed them He was parted from them and was carried up into heaven."

But John does not mention it. He gives as His last words this address

to Peter: "Follow thou Me." Of course He did not say that as He

ascended. In the Acts we have another account. A conversation is

given not spoken of in any of the others, and we find there two men

clad in white apparel, who said: "Men of Galilee, why stand ye here

gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus that was taken up into heaven

shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go up into Heaven."

Matthew didn't see that; Mark forgot it; Luke didn't think it was worth

mentioning, and John didn't believe it; and yet upon that evidence we

are led to believe that the most miraculous of all miracles actually

occurred. I cannot believe it.

I may be mistaken; but the church is now trying to parry, and when they

come to the little miracles of the new testament all they say is:

"Christ didn't cast out devils; these men had fits." He cured fits.

Then I read in another place about the fits talking. Christ held a

dialogue with the fits, and the fits told Him his name, and the fits at

that time were in a crazy man. And the fits made a contract that they

would go out of the man provided they would be permitted to go into

swine. How can fits that attack a man take up a residence in swine?

The church must not give up the devil. He is the right bower. No

devil, no hell; no hell, no preacher; no fire, no insurance. I read

another miracle--that this devil took Christ and put him on the

pinnacle of a temple. Was that fits, too? Why is not the theological

world honest? Why do they not come up and admit what they know the

book means? They have not the courage. Now, their next doctrine is

the absolute necessity of belief. That depends upon this: Can a man

believe as he wants to? Can you? Can anybody? Does belief depend at

all upon the evidence? I think it does somewhat in some cases. How is

it that when a jury is sworn to try a case, hearing all the

evidence--hearing both sides, hearing the charge of the judge, hearing

the law, and upon their oaths, are equally divided, six for the

plaintiff and six for the defendant? It is because evidence does not

have the same effect upon all people. Why? Our brains are not

alike--not the same shape; we have not the same intelligence or the

same experience, the same sense. And yet I am held accountable for my

belief. I must believe in the Trinity--three times one is one, once

one is three--and my soul is to be eternally damned for failing to

guess an arithmetical conundrum. And that is the poison part of

Christianity--that salvation depends upon belief--that is the poison

part, and until that dogma is discarded religion will be nothing but

superstition. No man can control his belief. If I hear certain

evidence I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to hear it I may

never believe it. If it is adapted to my mind I may accept it; if it

is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the

only light I have from nature, and if there be a God, it is the only

torch that this God has given me by which to find my way through the

darkness and the night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for

that. I do not have to take the word of any other man, nor get upon my

knees before a book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and consult

the God--that is to say, my reason--and the oracle speaks to me, and I

obey the oracle. What should I obey? Another man's oracle? Shall I

take another man's word and not what he thinks, but what God said to

him?

I would not know a god if I should see one. I have said before, and I

say again, the brain thinks in spite of me, and I am not responsible

for my thought. No more can I control the beating of my heart, the

expansion and contraction of my lungs for a moment; no more can I stop

the blood that flows through the rivers of the veins. And yet I am

held responsible for my belief. Then why does not the God give me the

evidence? They say He has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do

not understand it as they do. Must I be false to my understanding?

They say: "When you come to die you will be sorry you did not." Will

I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I

be sorry I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact

that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? God cannot

forgive me for that. They say when He was in Jerusalem, He forgave His

murderers. Now He won't forgive an honest man for differing with Him

on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive

your enemies." I say, "All right, I do;" but he says, "I will damn

mine." God should be consistent. If He wants me to forgive my enemies,

He should forgive His. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me.

God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt Him. He certainly

ought to be as generous as He asks us to be. And I want no God to

forgive me unless I do forgive others. All I ask, if that be true, is

that this God should live according to His own doctrine. If I am to

forgive my enemies I ask Him to forgive His. That is justice, that is

right. Here are these millions today who say: "We are to be saved by

belief, by faith; but what are we to believe?"

In St. Louis last Sunday I read an interview with a Christian

minister--one who is now holding a revival. They call him the boy

preacher--a name that he has borne for fifty or sixty years. The

question was whether in these revivals, when they were trying to rescue

souls from eternal torture, they would allow colored people to occupy

seats with white people, and that revivalist, preaching the

unsearchable richness of Christ, said he would not allow the colored

people to sit with white people; they must go to the back of the

church. The same people go and sit right next to them in heaven, swap

harps with them, and yet this man, believing as he says he does, that

if he did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ he would eternally

perish, was not willing that the colored man should sit by a white man

while he heard the gospel of everlasting peace. He was not willing

that the colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, although

those white men might be totally depraved, and if they had justice done

them, according to his doctrine. would be eternally damned--and yet he

has the impudence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally

damned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine of religion,

the color line, has not my respect. I believe in the religion of

humanity, and it is far better to love our fellow-men than to love God,

because we can help them, and we cannot help Him. You had better do

what you can than to be always pretending to do what you cannot.

Now I come to the last part of the bible--this creed--and that is,

eternal punishment, and I have concluded; and I have said I will never

deliver a lecture that I do not give the full benefit of its name.

That part of the Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage

that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The man who now, in

the nineteenth century, preaches the doctrine of eternal punishment,

the doctrine of eternal hell, has lived in vain. Think of that

doctrine! The eternity of punishment! Why, I find in that same creed

that Christ is finally going to triumph in this world and establish His

kingdom; but if their doctrine is true, He will never triumph in the

other world. He will have billions in hell forever. In this world we

never will be perfectly civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow

upon the earth. As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls

of which a human being is immured, we are not a civilized people. We

will never be perfectly civilized until we do away with crime and

criminals. And yet, according to this Christian religion, God is to

have an eternal penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an

everlasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and He is going

to keep prisoners there, not for the purpose of reforming them--because

they are never going to get any better, only getting worse--just for

the purpose of punishing them. And what for? For something they did

in this world; born in ignorance, educated it may be in poverty, and

yet responsible through the countless ages of eternity. No man can

think of a greater horror; no man can think of a greater absurdity.

For the growth of that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was rain.

That doctrine came from the fanged mouths of wild beasts, and yet it is

the "glad tidings of great joy."

"God so loved the world" He is going to damn most everybody, and, if

this Christian religion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest,

and best who ever lived upon this earth, are suffering its torments

tonight. It don't appear to make much difference, however, with this

church. They go right on enjoying themselves as well as ever. If

their doctrine is true, Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest, and best

of men, who did so much to give us here a free government, is suffering

the tyranny of God tonight, while he endeavored to establish freedom

among men. If the churches were honest, their preachers would tell

their hearts, "Benjamin Franklin is in hell, and we warn any and all

the youth not to imitate Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson, the

author of the Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident

truths, has been damned these many years." That is what all the

ministers ought to have the courage to say. Talk as you believe. Stand

by your creed or change it. I want to impress it upon your mind,

because the thing I wish to do in this world is to put out the fires of

hell I want to keep at it just as long as there is one little coal red

in the bottomless pit. As long as the ashes are warm, I shall denounce

this infamous doctrine.

I want you to know that the men who founded this great and glorious

government are there. The most of the men who fought in the

Revolutionary War and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this

continent; have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God. The old

Revolutionary soldiers are in hell by the thousands. Let the preachers

have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 1812, and gave to

the United States the freedom of the seas, nearly all of them have been

damned since 1815--all that were killed. The greatest of heroes, they

are there. The greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who

have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you,

among the damned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, and

who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller,

and Lessing, who almost created the German language--all gone! All

suffering the wrath of God tonight, and every time an angel thinks of

one of those men he gives his harp an extra twang.

La Place, who read the heaven like an open book--he is there. Robert

Burns, the poet of human love--he is there because he wrote the "Prayer

of Holy Willie;" because he fastened upon the cross the Presbyterian

creed, and made a lingering crucifixion. And yet that man added to the

tenderness of human heart. Dickens, who put a shield of pity before the

flesh of childhood God is getting even with him. Our own Ralph Waldo

Emerson, although he had a thousand opportunities to hear Methodist

clergymen, scorned the means of grace, and the Holy Ghost is delighted

that he is in hell tonight.

Longfellow refined hundreds and thousands of homes, but he did not

believe in the miraculous origin of the Savior. No, sir; he doubted

the report of Gabriel. He loved his fellow-men; he did what he could

to free the slaves; he did what he could to make mankind happy; but God

was just waiting for him. He had His constable right there. Thomas

Paine, the author of the "Rights of Man," offering his life in both

hemispheres for the freedom of the human race, and one of the founders

of the Republic--it has often seemed to me that if we could get God's

attention long enough to point Him to the American flag, He would let

him out. Compte, the author of the "Positive Philosophy," who loved his

fellow-men to that degree that he made of humanity a God, who wrote his

great work in poverty, with his face covered with tears--they are

getting their revenge on him now. Voltaire, who abolished torture in

France; who did more for human liberty than any other man, living or

dead; who was the assassin of superstition, and whose dagger still

rusts in the heart of Catholicism--all the priests who have been

translated have their happiness increased by looking at Voltaire.

Glorious country where the principal occupation is watching the

miseries of the lost. Geordani Bruno, Benedict Spinoza, Diderot, the

encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowledge in a small compass

so that he could put the peasant on an equality with the prince

intellectually; the man who wished to sow all over the world the seeds

of knowledge; who loved to labor for mankind. While the priests wanted

to burn, he did all he could to put out the fire--he has been lost

long, long ago. His cry for water has, become so common that his voice

is now recognized through all the realms of hell, and they say to one

another, "That is Diderot." David Hume, the philosopher, he is there

with the rest.

Beethoven, the Shakespeare of music, he has been lost, and Wagner, the

master of melody, and who has made the air of this world rich forever,

he is there, and they have better music in hell than in heaven.

Shelley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged joy--he has

been damned for many, many years; and Shakespeare, the greatest of the

human race, who has done more to elevate mankind than all the priests

who ever lived and died--he is there; and all the founders of

Inquisitions, the builders of dungeons, the makers of chains, the

inventors of instruments of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders

of human flesh, stealers of babes and sellers of husbands, and wives,

and children, the drawers of the swords, of persecution, and they who

kept the horizon lurid with the fagot's flame for a thousand

years--they are in heaven tonight. Well, I wish heaven joy of such

company.

And that is the doctrine with which we are polluting the souls of

children. That is the doctrine that puts a fiend by their dying bed

and a prophesy of hell over every cradle. That is "glad tidings of

great joy." Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon

the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling in the world and paying particular

attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning

they saw a house floating down, and on its top a human being; and a few

men went out to the rescue in a little boat, and they found there a

mother, a woman, and they wanted to rescue her, and she said: "No, I

am going to stay where I am. I have three dead babes in this house."

Think of a love so limitless, stronger and deeper than despair and

death, and yet the Christian religion says that if that woman did not

happen to believe in their creed, God would send that mother's soul to

eternal fire. If there is another world, and if in heaven they wear

hats, when such a woman climbs up the opposite bank of the Jordan,

Christ should lift His to her.

That is the trouble I had with this Christian religion--its infinite

heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last

war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to

heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly

willing the men should go to hell, provided they could stay at home.

You see they are not honest in it; they do not believe it, or, as the

people say, "They don't sense it;" they have not religion enough to

conceive what it is they believe and what a terrific falsehood they

assert. And I beg of every one who hears me tonight, I beg, I implore,

I beseech you never give another dollar to build a church in which that

lie is preached. Never give another cent to send a missionary with his

mouth stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, they say,

the heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let them alone; what is the

use of sending them to hell by enlightening them. Let them alone. The

idea of going and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe he

will be damned, when the chances are ten to one that he won't believe

it. Don't tell him, and as quick as he gets to the other world and

finds it necessary to believe, he will say "yes." Give him a chance.

My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys human love,

and tells you and me that the love of your dear-ones is not necessary

in this world to make a heaven in the next. No matter about your wife,

your children, your brother, your sister--no matter about all the

affections of the human heart--when you get there you will be alone

with the angels. I don't know whether I would like the angels. I

don't know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by

the folks who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no

heaven without the love of this earth. That is the trouble with the

Christian religion; leave your father, leave your mother, leave your

wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I

will not. I will stay with the folks. I will not sacrifice on the

altar of a selfish fear all the grandest and noblest promptings of my

heart. You do away with human love, and what are we without it? What

would we be in another world, and what would we be here without it?

Can any one conceive of music without human love? Human love builds

every home--human love is the author of all the beauty in this world.

Love paints every picture, and chisels every statue; love, I tell you,

builds every fireside. What would heaven be without love? And yet

that is what we are promised--a heaven with your wife lost, your mother

lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be made happy by

falling in with some angel.

Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to get there? On the

efforts of another. You are to be perpetually a heavenly pauper, and

you will have to admit through all eternity that you never would have

got here if you hadn't got frightened. "I am here," you will say, "I

have these wings, I have this musical instrument, because I was

scared." What a glorious world; and then think of it! No reformation

in the next world--not the slightest. If you die in Arkansas that is

the end of you. At the end you will be told that being born in

Arkansas you had a fair chance. Think of telling a boy in the next

world, who lived and died in Delaware, that he had a fair show! Can

anything be more infamous? All on an equality--the rich and the poor,

those with parents loving them, those with every opportunity for

education, on an equality with the poor, the abject, and the

ignorant--and the little ray called life, this little moment with a

shadow and a tear, this little space between your mother's arms and the

grave, that balances an entire eternity. And God can do nothing for

you when you get there. A little Methodist preacher can do no more for

the soul here than its creator can when you get there. The soul goes

to heaven, where there is nothing but good society; no bad examples;

and they are all there, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet they can do

nothing for that poor unfortunate except to damn him. Is there any

sense in that? Why should this be a period of probation? It says in

the bible, I believe, "Now is the accepted time." When does that mean?

That means whenever the passage is pronounced. Now is the accepted

time. It will be the same tomorrow, won't it? And just as appropriate

then as today, and if appropriate at any time, appropriate through all

eternity. What I say is this: There is no world--there can be no

world--in which every human being will not have an opportunity of doing

right. That is my objection to this Christian religion, and if the

love of earth is not the love of heaven, if those who love us here are

to be separated there, then I want eternal sleep. Give me a good cold

grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah's wrath. Gabriel, don't blow!

Let me alone! If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet faces that

have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep on. Rather than that

the doctrine of endless punishment should be tried, I would like to see

the fabric of our civilization crumble and fall to unmeaning chaos and

to formless dust, where oblivion broods and where even memory forgets.

I would rather a Samson of some unprisoned force, released by chance,

should so wreck and strain the mighty world that man in stress and

strain of want and fear should shudderingly crawl back to savage and

barbaric night. I would rather that every planet would in its orbit

wheel a barren star rather than that the Christian religion should be

true.

I think it is better to love your children than to love God, a thousand

times better, because you can help them, and I am inclined to think

that God can get along without you. I believe in the religion of the

family. I believe that the roof-tree is sacred from the smallest fibre

held in the soft, moist clasp of the earth to the little blossom on the

topmost bough that gives its fragrance to the happy air. The family

where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire--the

fairest flower in all this world. And I tell you God cannot afford to

damn a man in the next world who has made a happy family in this. God

cannot afford to cast over the battlements of heaven the man who has

built a happy home here. God cannot afford to be unpitying to a human

heart capable of pity. God cannot clothe with fire the man who has

clothed the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal pain a man who

has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man.

If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep the company

of such a God.

They tell me the next terrible thing I do is to take away the hope of

immortality. I do not, I would not, I could not. Immortality was first

dreamed of by human love, and yet the church is going to take human

love out of immortality. We love it; therefore we wish to love. A

loved ones dies, and we wish to meet again, and from the affection of

the human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality. And

around that oak has climbed the poisonous vine, superstition.

Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops,

have taken all that hope, and they have had the impudence to stand by

the grave and prophesy a future of pain. They have erected their

toll-gates on the highway to the other world, and have collected money

from the poor people on the way, and they have collected it from their

fear. The church did not give us the idea of immortality; the bible

did not give us the idea of immortality. Let me tell you now that the

old testament tells you how you lost immortality; it does not say

another word about another world from the first mistake in Genesis to

the last curse in Malachi. There is not in the old testament one burial

service.

No man in the old testament stands by the bed and says, "I will meet

them again"--not one word. From the top of Sinai came no hope of

another world. And when we get to the new testament, what do we find

there? Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that world and the

resurrection of the dead. As though some would be counted unworthy to

obtain the resurrection of the dead. And, in another place: "Seek for

honor, glory, immortality." If you have got it, why seek for it? And

in another place: "God, who alone hath immortality;" and yet they

tell us that we get our ideas of immortality from the bible. I deny

it. If Christ was in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was

another life? Why didn't He tell us something about it? Why didn't He

turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of

another life? Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world

in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He was a man and didn't know.

I would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we

got our idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long before

Moses existed. We find it symbolized through all Egypt, through all

India. Wherever man has lived, his religion has made another world in

which to meet the lost. It is not born of the bible. The idea of

immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human

heart, beating with its countless waves against the rocks and sands of

fate and time. It was not born of the bible. It was born of the human

heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and

clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.

We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave the dead

with nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope.

Under the seven-hued arch let the dead sleep. "Ah, but you take the

consolation of religion." What consolation has religion for the widow

of the unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead?

What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting heart of

that woman? What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the aching

hearts of the little orphans as they kneel by the grave of that father,

if that father didn't happen to be an orthodox Christian? What

consolation have they? I find that when a Christian loses a friend the

tears spring from his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others.

Their tears are as bitter as ours. Why? The echo of the promises

spoken eighteen hundred years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods

upon the coffin so loud, the promises are so far away, and the dead are

so near. That is the reason. And they find no consolation there. I

say honestly we do not know; we cannot say. We cannot say whether

death is a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the spreading

of pinions too soar or the folding forever of wings; whether it is the

rising or the setting of sun, or an endless life that brings rapture

and love to every one--we do not know; we can not say.

There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eurydice had been

captured and taken to the infernal regions, and Orpheus went after her,

taking with him his harp and playing as he went; and when he came to

the infernal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down upon the

stone that he had been heaving up the side of the mountain so many

years, and which continually rolled back upon him. Ixion paused upon

his wheel of fire; Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the

daughters of the Danaidae left off trying to fill their sieves with

water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history of hell the

cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears; monsters relented and they

said, "Eurydice may go with you, but you must not look back." So he

again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he again reached

the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eurydice, and he looked

back and in a moment she was gone. This old fable gives to us the idea

of the perpetual effort to rescue truth from the churches of monsters.

Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some day Eurydice will reach

the blessed light, and at some time there will fade from the memory of

men the superstition of religion.