ALL that I have said seems to be true--almost self-evident,--and you may
ask who it is that says slavery is better than liberty. Let me tell you.
All the popes and priests, all the orthodox churches and clergymen, say
that they have a revelation from God.
The Protestants say that it is the duty of every person to read, to
understand, and to believe this revelation--that a man should use his
reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation
from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be
tormented forever. They say:--"Read," and then add: "Believe, or be
damned."
"No matter how unreasonable the Bible may appear to you, you must
believe. No matter how impossible the miracles may seem, you must
believe. No matter how cruel the laws, your heart must approve them
all!"
This is what the church calls the liberty of thought. We read the Bible
under the scowl and threat of God. We read by the glare of hell. On one
side is the devil, with the instruments of torture in his hands. On the
other, God, ready to launch the infinite curse. And the church says to
the readers: "You are free to decide. God is good, and he gives you the
liberty to choose."
The popes and the priests say to the poor people: "You need not read
the Bible. You cannot understand it. That is the reason it is called a
revelation. We will read it for you, and you must believe what we say.
We carry the key of hell. Contradict us and you will become eternal
convicts in the prison of God."
This is the freedom of the Catholic Church.
And all these priests and clergymen insist that the Bible is superior
to human reason--that it is the duty of man to accept it--to believe it,
whether he really thinks it is true or not, and without the slightest
regard to evidence or reason.
It is his duty to cast out from the temple of his soul the goddess
Reason, and bow before the coiled serpent of Fear.
This is what the church calls virtue.
Under these conditions what can thought be worth? The brain, swept by
the sirocco of God's curse, becomes a desert.
But this is not all. To compel man to desert the standard of Reason,
the church does not entirely rely on the threat of eternal pain to be
endured in another world, but holds out the reward of everlasting joy.
To those who believe, it promises the endless ecstasies of heaven. If it
cannot frighten, it will bribe. It relies on fear and hope.
A religion, to command the respect of intelligent men, should rest on a
foundation of established facts. It should appeal, not to passion,
not to hope and fear, but to the judgment. It should ask that all the
faculties of the mind, all the senses, should assemble and take
counsel together, and that its claims be passed upon and tested without
prejudice, without fear, in the calm of perfect candor.
But the church cries: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
be saved." Without this belief there is no salvation. Salvation is the
reward for belief.
Belief is, and forever must be, the result of evidence. A promised
reward is not evidence. It sheds no intellectual light. It establishes
no fact, answers no objection, and dissipates no doubt.
Is it honest to offer a reward for belief?
The man who gives money to a judge or juror for a decision or verdict
is guilty of a crime. Why? Because he induces the judge, the juror, to
decide, not according to the law, to the facts, the right, but according
to the bribe.
The bribe is not evidence.
So, the promise of Christ to reward those who will believe is a bribe.
It is an attempt to make a promise take the place of evidence. He
who says that he believes, and does this for the sake of the reward,
corrupts his soul.
Suppose I should say that at the center of the earth there is a diamond
one hundred miles in diameter, and that I would give ten thousand
dollars to any man who would believe my statement. Could such a promise
be regarded as evidence?
Intelligent people would ask not for rewards, but reasons. Only
hypocrites would ask for the money.
Yet, according to the New Testament, Christ offered a reward to those
who would believe, and this promised reward was to take the place of
evidence. When Christ made this promise he forgot, ignored, or held in
contempt the rectitude of a brave, free and natural soul.
The declaration that salvation is the reward for belief is inconsistent
with mental freedom, and could have been made by no man who thought that
evidence sustained the slightest relation to belief.
Every sermon in which men have been told that they could save their
souls by believing, has been an injury. Such sermons dull the moral
sense and subvert the true conception of virtue and duty.
The true man, when asked to believe, asks for evidence. The true man,
who asks another to believe, offers evidence.
But this is not all.
In spite of the threat of eternal pain--of the promise of everlasting
joy, unbelievers increased, and the churches took another step.
The churches said to the unbelievers, the heretics: "Although our God
will punish you forever in another world--in his prison--the doors of
which open only to receive, we, unless you believe, will torment you
now."
And then the members of these churches, led by priests, popes, and
clergymen, sought out their unbelieving neighbors--chained them in
dungeons, stretched them on racks, crushed their bones, cut out their
tongues, extinguished their eyes, flayed them alive and consumed their
poor bodies in flames.
All this was done because these Christian savages believed in the dogma
of eternal pain. Because they believed that heaven was the reward
for belief. So believing, they were the enemies of free thought and
speech--they cared nothing for conscience, nothing for the veracity of
a soul,--nothing for the manhood of a man. In all ages most priests have
been heartless and relentless. They have calumniated and tortured. In
defeat they have crawled and whined. In victory they have killed. The
flower of pity never blossomed in their hearts and in their brain.
Justice never held aloft the scales. Now they are not as cruel. They
have lost their power, but they are still trying to accomplish the
impossible. They fill their pockets with "fool's gold" and think they
are rich. They stuff their minds with mistakes and think they are wise.
They console themselves with legends and myths, have faith in fiction
and forgery--give their hearts to ghosts and phantoms and seek the aid
of the non-existent.
They put a monster--a master--a tyrant in the sky, and seek to enslave
their fellow-men. They teach the cringing virtues of serfs. They abhor
the courage of manly men. They hate the man who thinks. They long for
revenge.
They warm their hands at the imaginary fires of hell.
I show them that hell does not exist and they denounce me for destroying
their consolation.
Horace Greeley, as the story goes, one cold day went into a country
store, took a seat by the stove, unbuttoned his coat and spread out his
hands.
In a few minutes, a little boy who clerked in the store said: "Mr.
Greeley, there aint no fire in that stove."
"You d----d little rascal," said Greeley, "What did you tell me for, I
was getting real warm."