Did they show us how to improve our condition in this world?
They informed us that Christ had two natures and two wills.
Did they give us even a hint as to any useful thing?
They gave us predestination, foreordination and just enough "free will"
to go to hell.
Did they discover or show us how to produce anything for food?
Did they produce anything to satisfy the hunger of man?
Instead of this they discovered that a peasant girl who lived in
Palestine, was the mother of God. This they proved by a book, and to
make the book evidence they called it inspired.
Did they tell us anything about chemistry--how to combine and separate
substances--how to subtract the hurtful--how to produce the useful?
They told us that bread, by making certain motions and mumbling certain
prayers, could be changed into the flesh of God, and that in the same
way wine could be changed to his blood. And this, notwithstanding the
fact that God never had any flesh or blood, but has always been a spirit
without body, parts or passions.
What has the church done?
It gave us the history of the world--of the stars, and the beginning of
all things. It taught the geology of Moses--the astronomy of Joshua
and Elijah. It taught the fall of man and the atonement--proved that a
Jewish peasant was God--established the existence of hell, purgatory and
heaven.
It pretended to have a revelation from God--the Scriptures, in which
could be found all knowledge--everything that man could need in the
journey of life. Nothing outside of the inspired book--except legends
and prayers--could be of any value. Books that contradicted the Bible
were hurtful, those that agreed with it--useless. Nothing was of
importance except faith, credulity--belief. The church said: "Let
philosophy alone, count your beads. Ask no questions, fall upon your
knees. Shut your eyes, and save your souls."
What has the church done?
For centuries it kept the earth flat, for centuries it made all the
hosts of heaven travel around this world--for centuries it clung to
"sacred" knowledge, and fought facts with the ferocity of a fiend. For
centuries it hated the useful. It was the deadly enemy of medicine.
Disease was produced by devils and could be cured only by priests,
decaying bones, and holy water. Doctors were the rivals of priests. They
diverted the revenues.
The church opposed the study of anatomy--was against the dissection of
the dead. Man had no right to cure disease--God would do that through
his priests.
Man had no right to prevent disease--diseases were sent by God as
judgments.
The church opposed inoculation--vaccination, and the use of chloroform
and ether. It was declared to be a sin, a crime for a woman to lessen
the pangs of motherhood. The church declared that woman must bear the
curse of the merciful Jehovah.
What has the church done?
It taught that the insane were inhabited by devils. Insanity was not a
disease. It was produced by demons. It could be cured by prayers--gifts,
amulets and charms. All these had to be paid for. This enriched the
church. These ideas were honestly entertained by Protestants as well as
Catholics--by Luther, Calvin, Knox and Wesley.
What has the church done?
It taught the awful doctrine of witchcraft. It filled the darkness with
demons--the air with devils, and the world with grief and shame. It
charged men, women and children with being in league with Satan to
injure their fellows. Old women were convicted for causing storms at
sea--for preventing rain and for bringing frost. Girls were convicted
for having changed themselves into wolves, snakes and toads. These
witches were burned for causing diseases--for selling their souls and
for souring beer. All these things were done with the aid of the Devil
who sought to persecute the faithful, the lambs of God. Satan sought in
many ways to scandalize the church. He sometimes assumed the appearance
of a priest and committed crimes.
On one occasion he personated a bishop--a bishop renowned for his
sanctity--allowed himself to be discovered and dragged from the room of
a beautiful widow. So perfectly did he counterfeit the features and form
of the bishop, that many who were well acquainted with the prelate,
were actually deceived, and the widow herself thought her lover was the
bishop. All this was done by the Devil to bring reproach upon holy men.
Hundreds of like instances could be given, as the war waged between
demons and priests was long and bitter.
These popes and priests--these clergymen, were not hypocrites. They
believed in the New Testament--in the teachings of Christ, and they knew
that the principal business of the Savior was casting out devils.
What has the church done?
It made the wife a slave--the property of the husband, and it placed
the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband. It
taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother. It induced millions of
pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life--to take the
veil woven of night and death, to wear the habiliments of the dead--made
them believe that they were the brides of Christ.
For my part, I would as soon be a widow as the bride of a man who had
been dead for eighteen hundred years.
The poor deluded girls imagined that they, in some mysterious way, were
in spiritual wedlock united with God. All worldly desires were
driven from their hearts. They filled their lives with fastings--with
prayers--with self-accusings. They forgot fathers and mothers and gave
their love to the invisible. They were the victims, the convicts of
superstition--prisoners in the penitentiaries of God. Conscientious,
good, sincere--insane.
These loving women gave their hearts to a phantom, their lives to a
dream.
A few years ago, at a revival, a fine buxom girl was "converted," "born
again." In her excitement she cried, "I'm married to Christ--I'm married
to Christ." In her delirium she threw her arms around the neck of an old
man and again cried, "I'm married to Christ." The old man, who happened
to be a kind of skeptic, gently removed her hands, saying at the same
time: "I don't know much about your husband, but I have great respect
for your father-in-law."
Priests, theologians, have taken advantage of women--of their
gentleness--their love of approbation. They have lived upon their hopes
and fears. Like vampires, they have sucked their blood. They have made
them responsible for the sins of the world. They have taught them the
slave virtues--meekness, humility--implicit obedience. They have
fed their minds with mistakes, mysteries and absurdities. They have
endeavored to weaken and shrivel their brains, until, to them, there
would be no possible connection between evidence and belief--between
fact and faith.
What has the church done?
It was the enemy of commerce--of business. It denounced the taking
of interest for money. Without taking interest for money, progress is
impossible. The steamships, the great factories, the railroads have all
been built with borrowed money, money on which interest was promised and
for the most part paid.
The church was opposed to fire insurance--to life insurance. It
denounced insurance in any form as gambling, as immoral. To insure your
life was to declare that you had no confidence in God--that you relied
on a corporation instead of divine providence. It was declared that God
would provide for your widow and your fatherless children.
To insure your life was to insult heaven.
What has the church done?
The church regarded epidemics as the messengers of the good God. The
"Black Death" was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some
and whose justice murdered the rest. To stop the scourge, they tried to
soften the heart of God by kneelings and prostrations--by processions
and prayers--by burning incense and by making vows. They did not try to
remove the cause. The cause was God. They did not ask for pure water,
but for holy water. Faith and filth lived or rather died together.
Religion and rags, piety and pollution kept company. Sanctity kept its
odor.
What has the church done?
It was the enemy of art and literature. It destroyed the marbles of
Greece and Rome. Beauty was Pagan. It destroyed so far as it could the
best literature of the world. It feared thought--but it preserved the
Scriptures, the ravings of insane saints, the falsehoods of the Fathers,
the bulls of popes, the accounts of miracles performed by shrines, by
dried blood and faded hair, by pieces of bones and wood, by rusty nails
and thorns, by handkerchiefs and rags, by water and beads and by a
finger of the Holy Ghost.
This was the literature of the church.
I admit that the priests were honest--as honest as ignorant. More could
not be said.
What has the church done?
Christianity claims, with great pride, that it established asylums for
the insane. Yes, it did. But the insane were treated as criminals. They
were regarded as the homes--as the tenement-houses of devils. They were
persecuted and tormented. They were chained and flogged, starved and
killed. The asylums were prisons, dungeons, the insane were victims and
the keepers were ignorant, conscientious, pious fiends. They were not
trying to help men, they were fighting devils--destroying demons. They
were not actuated by love--but by hate and fear.
What has the church done?
It founded schools where facts were denied, where science was denounced
and philosophy despised. Schools, where priests were made--where they
were taught to hate reason and to look upon doubts as the suggestions of
the Devil. Schools where the heart was hardened and the brain shriveled.
Schools in which lies were sacred and truths profane. Schools for the
more general diffusion of ignorance--schools to prevent thought--to
suppress knowledge. Schools for the purpose of enslaving the world.
Schools in which teachers knew less than pupils.
What has the church done?
It has used its influence with God to get rain and sunshine--to stop
flood and storm--to kill insects, rats, snakes and wild beasts--to stay
pestilence and famine--to delay frost and snow--to lengthen the lives of
kings and queens--to protect presidents--to give legislators wisdom--to
increase collections and subscriptions. In marriages it has made God the
party of the third part. It has sprinkled water on babes when they were
named. It has put oil on the dying and repeated prayers for the dead.
It has tried to protect the people from the malice of the Devil--from
ghosts and spooks, from witches and wizards and all the leering fiends
that seek to poison the souls of men. It has endeavored to protect the
sheep of God from the wolves of science--from the wild beasts of doubt
and investigation. It has tried to wean the lambs of the Lord from the
delights, the pleasures, the joys, of life. According to the philosophy
of the church, the virtuous weep and suffer, the vicious laugh and
thrive, the good carry a cross, and the wicked fly. But in the next life
this will be reversed. Then the good will be happy, and the bad will be
damned.
The church filled the world with faith and crime.
It polluted the fountains of joy. It gave us an ignorant, jealous,
revengeful and cruel God--sometimes merciful--sometimes ferocious. Now
just, now infamous--sometimes wise--generally foolish. It gave us
a Devil, cunning, malicious, almost the equal of God, not quite as
strong--but quicker--not as profound--but sharper.
It gave us angels with wings--cherubim and seraphim and a heaven with
harps and hallelujahs--with streets of gold and gates of pearl.
It gave us fiends and imps with wings like bats. It gave us ghosts
and goblins, spooks and sprites, and little devils that swarmed in the
bodies of men, and it gave us hell where the souls of men will roast in
eternal flames. Shall we thank the church? Shall we thank the orthodox
churches?
Shall we thank them for the hell they made here? Shall we thank them for
the hell of the future?