And then came the great test:
"Boys"--I can't get the tone, you know. And do you know that is how
the preachers get the bronchitis. You never heard of an auctioneer
getting the bronchitis, nor the second mate on a steamboat--never.
What gives it to the minister is talking solemnly when they don't feel
that way, and it has the same influence upon the organs of speech that
it would have upon the cords of the calves of your legs to walk on your
tip-toes, and so I call bronchitis "parsonitis." And if the ministers
would all tell exactly what they think they would all get well, but
keeping back a part of the truth is what gives them bronchitis.
Well the old man--the dear old minister--used to try and show us how
long we would be in Hell if we would only locate there. But to finish
the other. The grand test question was:
"Boys, if it was God's will that you should go to Hell, would you be
willing to go?"
And every little liar said:
"Yes, sir."
Then, in order to tell how long we would stay there, he used to say:
"Suppose once in a billion ages a bird should come from a far distant
clime and carry off in its bill one little grain of sand, the time
would finally come when the last grain of sand would be carried away.
Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Boys, by that time it would not be sun-up in Hell."
Where did that doctrine of Hell come from? I will tell you; from that
fellow in the dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir from
the wild beasts. Yes, I tell you he got it from the wild beasts, from
the glittering eye of the serpent, from the coiling, twisting snakes
with their fangs mouths; and it came from the bark, growl and howl of
wild beasts; it was born of a laugh of the hyena and got it from the
depraved chatter of malicious apes. And I despise it with every drop
of my blood and defy it. If there is any God in this universe who will
damn his children for an expression of an honest thought I wish to go
to Hell. I would rather go there than go to heaven and keep the
company of a God that would thus damn his children. Oh it is an
infamous doctrine to teach that to little children, to put a shadow in
the heart of a child to fill the insane asylums with that miserable,
infamous lie. I see now and then a little girl--a dear little darling,
with a face like the light, and eyes of joy, a human blossom, and I
think, "is it possible that little girl will ever grow up to be a
Presbyterian?" Is it possible, my goodness, that that flower will
finally believe in the five points of Calvinism or in the eternal
damnation of man? Is it possible that that little fairy will finally
believe that she could be happy in Heaven with her baby in Hell? Think
of it! Think of it! And that is the Christian religion!
We cry out against the Indian mother that throws her child into the
Ganges, to be devoured by the alligator or crocodile, but that is joy
in comparison with the Christian mother's hope, that she may be in
salvation while her brave boy is in Hell.
I tell you I want to kick the doctrine about Hell--I want to kick it
out every time I go by it. I want to get Americans in this country
placed so they will be ashamed to preach it. I want to get the
congregations so that they won't listen to it. We cannot divide the
world off into saints and sinners in that way. There is a little girl,
fair as a flower, and she grows up until she is twelve, thirteen, or
fourteen years old. Are you going to damn her in the fifteenth,
sixteenth or seventeenth year, when the arrow from Cupid's bow touches
her heart and she is glorified--are you going to damn her now? She
marries and loves, and holds in her arms a beautiful child? Are you
going to damn her now? When are you going to damn her? Because she has
listened to some Methodist minister and after all that flood of light
failed to believe? Are you going to damn her then? I tell you God can
not afford to damn such a woman.
A woman in the State of Indiana forty or fifty years ago who carded the
wool and made rolls and spun them, and made the cloth and cut out the
clothes for the children, and nursed them, and sat up with them nights
and--gave them medicine, and held them in her arms and wept over
them--cried for joy and wept for fear, and finally raised ten or eleven
good men and women with the ruddy glow of health upon their cheeks, and
she would have died for any one of them any moment of her life, and
finally she, bowed with age and bent with care and labor, dies, and at
the moment the magical touch of death is upon her face, she looks as
though she never had had a care, and her children burying her cover her
face with tears. Do you tell me God can afford to damn that kind of a
woman? One such act of injustice would turn Heaven itself into Hell.
If there is any God, sitting above him in infinite serenity we have the
figure of justice. Even a God must do justice; even a God must worship
justice; and any form of superstition that destroys justice is
infamous! Just think of teaching that doctrine to little children! A
little child would go out into the garden, and there would be a little
tree laden with blossoms, and the little fellow would lean against it,
and there would be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging,
and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of
its mate--and singing and swinging, and the music in in happy waves
rippling out of the tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air
filled with perfume, and the great white clouds floating in the sky,
and the little boy would lean up against the tree and think about Hell
and the worm that never dies. Oh! the idea there can be any day too
good for a child to be happy in!
Well, after we got over the catechism, then came the sermon in the
afternoon, and it was exactly like the one in the forenoon, except the
other end to. Then we started for home--a solemn march--"not a soldier
discharged his farewell shot"--and when we got home, if we had been
really good boys, we used to be taken up to the cemetery to cheer us
up, and it always did cheer me, those sunken graves, those leaning
stones, those gloomy epitaphs covered with the moss of years always
cheered me. When I looked at them I said: "Well, this kind of thing
can't last always." Then we came back home, and we had books to read
which were very eloquent and amusing. We had Josephus, and the
"History of the Waldenses," and Fox's "Book of Martyrs," Baxter's
"Saint's Rest," and "Jenkyn on the Atonement." I used to read Jenkyn
with a good deal of pleasure, and I often thought that the atonement
would have to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a
man that would I write such a book for boys. Then I would look to see
how the sun was getting on, and sometimes I thought it had stuck from
pure cussedness. Then I would go back and try Jenkyn's again. Well,
but it had to go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the
horizon, off would go our hats and we would give three cheers for
liberty once again.