IF we cannot thank the orthodox churches--if we cannot thank the
unknown, the incomprehensible, the supernatural--if we cannot thank
Nature--if we can not kneel to a Guess, or prostrate ourselves before a
Perhaps--whom shall we thank?
Let us see what the worldly have done--what has been accomplished by
those not "called," not "set apart," not "inspired," not filled with the
Holy Ghost--by those who were neglected by all the Gods.
Passing over the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, their
poets, philosophers and metaphysicians--we will come to modern times.
In the 10th century after Christ the Saracens--governors of a vast
empire--"established colleges in Mongolia, Tartary, Persia, Mesopotamia,
Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Morocco, Fez and in Spain." The region owned
by the Saracens was greater than the Roman Empire. They had not only
colleges--but observatories. The sciences were taught. They introduced
the ten numerals--taught algebra and trigonometry--understood cubic
equations--knew the art of surveying--they made catalogues and maps
of the stars--gave the great stars the names they still bear--they
ascertained the size of the earth--determined the obliquity of the
ecliptic and fixed the length of the year. They calculated eclipses,
equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets and occultations of stars.
They constructed astronomical instruments. They made clocks of
various kinds and were the inventors of the pendulum. They originated
chemistry--discovered sulphuric and nitric acid and alcohol.
"They were the first to publish pharmacopoeias and dispensatories.
"In mechanics they determined the laws of falling bodies. They
understood the mechanical powers, and the attraction of gravitation.
"They taught hydrostatics and determined the specific gravities of
bodies.
"In optics they discovered that a ray of light did not proceed from the
eye to an object--but from the object to the eye."
"They were manufacturers of cotton, leather, paper and steel.
"They gave us the game of chess.
"They produced romances and novels and essays on many subjects.
"In their schools they taught the modern doctrines of evolution and
development." They anticipated Darwin and Spencer.
These people were not Christians. They were the followers, for the most
part, of an impostor--of a pretended prophet of a false God. And yet
while the true Christians, the men selected by the true God and filled
with the Holy Ghost were tearing out the tongues of heretics, these
wretches were irreverently tracing the orbits of the stars. While the
true believers were flaying philosophers and extinguishing the eyes of
thinkers, these godless followers of Mohammed were founding colleges,
collecting manuscripts, investigating the facts of nature and giving
their attention to science. Afterward the followers of Mohammed became
the enemies of science and hated facts as intensely and honestly as
Christians. Whoever has a revelation from God will defend it with all
his strength--will abhor reason and deny facts.
But it is well to know that we are indebted to the Moors--to the
followers of Mohammed--for having laid the foundations of modern
science. It is well to know that we are not indebted to the church, to
Christianity, for any useful fact.
It is well to know that the seeds of thought were sown in our minds by
the Greeks and Romans, and that our literature came from those seeds.
The great literature of our language is Pagan in its thought--Pagan
in its beauty--Pagan in its perfection. It is well to know that when
Mohammedans were the friends of science, Christians were its enemies.
How consoling it is to think that the friends of science--the men who
educated their fellows--are now in hell, and that the men who persecuted
and killed philosophers are now in heaven! Such is the justice of God.
The Christians of the Middle Ages, the men who were filled with the Holy
Ghost, knew all about the worlds beyond the grave, but nothing about
the world in which they lived. They thought the earth was flat--a little
dishing if anything--that it was about five thousand years old, and that
the stars were little sparkles made to beautify the night.
The fact is that Christianity was in existence for fifteen hundred years
before there was an astronomer in Christendom. No follower of Christ
knew the shape of the earth.
The earth was demonstrated to be a globe, not by a pope or cardinal--not
by a collection of clergymen--not by the "called" or the "set apart,"
but by a sailor. Magellan left Seville, Spain, August 10th, 1519, sailed
west and kept sailing west, and the ship reached Seville, the port it
left, on Sept. 7th, 1522.
The world had been circumnavigated. The earth was known to be round.
There had been a dispute between the Scriptures and a sailor. The fact
took the sailor's side.
In 1543 Copernicus published his book, "On the Revolutions of the
Heavenly Bodies."
He had some idea of the vastness of the stars--of the astronomical
spaces--of the insignificance of this world.
Toward the close of the sixteenth century, Bruno, one of the greatest
men this world has produced, gave his thoughts to his fellow-men. He
taught the plurality of worlds. He was a Pantheist, an Atheist, an
honest man. He called the Catholic Church the "Triumphant Beast." He
was imprisoned for many years, tried, convicted, and on the 16th day of
February, 1600, burned in Rome by men filled with the Holy Ghost,
burned on the spot where now his monument rises. Bruno, the noblest, the
greatest of all the martyrs. The only one who suffered death for what he
believed to be the truth. The only martyr who had no heaven to gain, no
hell to shun, no God to please. He was nobler than inspired men,
grander than prophets, greater and purer than apostles. Above all the
theologians of the world, above the makers of creeds, above the founders
of religions rose this serene, unselfish and intrepid man.
Yet Christians, followers of Christ, murdered this incomparable man.
These Christians were true to their creed. They believed that faith
would be rewarded with eternal joy, and doubt punished with eternal
pain. They were logical. They were pious and pitiless--devout and
devilish--meek and malicious--religious and revengeful--Christ-like and
cruel--loving with their mouths and hating with their hearts. And yet,
honest victims of ignorance and fear.
What have the wordly done?
In 1608, Lippersheim, a Hollander, so arranged lenses that objects were
exaggerated.
He invented the telescope.
He gave countless worlds to our eyes, and made us citizens of the
Universe.
In 1610, on the night of January 7th, Galileo demonstrated the truth of
the Copernican system, and in 1632, published his work on "The System of
the World."
What did the church do?
Galileo was arrested, imprisoned, forced to fall upon his knees, put his
hand on the Bible, and recant. For ten years he was kept in prison--for
ten years until released by the pity of death. Then the church--men
filled with the Holy Ghost--denied his body burial in consecrated
ground. It was feared that his dust might corrupt the bodies of those
who had persecuted him.
In 1609, Kepler published his book "Motions of the Planet Mars."
He, too, knew of the attraction of gravitation and that it acted in
proportion to mass and distance. Kepler announced his Three Laws. He
found and mathematically expressed the relation of distance, mass, and
motion. Nothing greater has been accomplished by the human mind.
Astronomy became a science and Christianity a superstition.
Then came Newton, Herscheland Laplace. The astronomy of Joshua and
Elijah faded from the minds of intelligent men, and Jehovah became an
ignorant tribal god.
Men began to see that the operations of Nature were not subject to
interference. That eclipses were not caused by the wrath of God--that
comets had nothing to do with the destruction of empires or the death
of kings, that the stars wheeled in their orbits without regard to the
actions of men. In the sacred East the dawn appeared.
What have the wordly done?
A few years ago a few men became wicked enough to use their senses. They
began to look and listen. They began to really see and then they began
to reason. They forgot heaven and hell long enough to take some interest
in this world. They began to examine soils and rocks. They noticed what
had been done by rivers and seas. They found out something about the
crust of the earth. They found that most of the rocks had been deposited
and stratified in the water--rocks 70,000 feet in thickness. They found
that the coal was once vegetable matter. They made the best calculations
they could of the time required to make the coal, and concluded that it
must have taken at least six or seven millions of years. They examined
the chalk cliffs, found that they were composed of the microscopic
shells of minute organisms, that is to say, the dust of these shells.
This dust settled over areas as large as Europe and in some places the
chalk is a mile in depth. This must have required many millions of
years.
Lyell, the highest authority on the subject, says that it must have
required, to cause the changes that we know, at least two hundred
million years. Think of these vast deposits caused by the slow falling
of infinitesimal atoms of impalpable dust through the silent depths of
ancient seas! Think of the microscopical forms of life, constructing
their minute houses of lime, giving life to others, leaving their
mansions beneath the waves, and so through countless generations
building the foundations of continents and islands.
Go back of all life that we now know--back of all the flying lizards,
the armored monsters, the hissing serpents, the winged and fanged
horrors--back to the Laurentian rocks--to the eozoon, the first of
living things that we have found--back of all mountains, seas and
rivers--back to the first incrustation of the molten world--back of wave
of fire and robe of flame--back to the time when all the substance of
the earth blazed in the glowing sun with all the stars that wheel about
the central fire.
Think of the days and nights that lie between!--think of the centuries,
the withered leaves of time, that strew the desert of the past!
Nature does not hurry. Time cannot be wasted--cannot be lost. The
future remains eternal and all the past is as though it had not been--as
though it were to be. The infinite knows neither loss nor gain.
We know something of the history of the world--something of the human
race; and we know that man has lived and struggled through want and war,
through pestilence and famine, through ignorance and crime, through fear
and hope, on the old earth for millions and millions of years.
At last we know that infallible popes, and countless priests and
clergymen, who had been "called," filled with the Holy Ghost, and
presidents of colleges, kings, emperors and executives of nations had
mistaken the blundering guesses of ignorant savages for the wisdom of an
infinite God.
At last we know that the story of creation, of the beginning of things,
as told in the "sacred book," is not only untrue, but utterly absurd and
idiotic. Now we know that the inspired writers did not know and that the
God who inspired them did not know.
We are no longer misled by myths and legends. We rely upon facts. The
world is our witness and the stars testify for us.
What have the worldly done?
They have investigated the religions of the world--have read the sacred
books, the prophecies, the commandments, the rules of conduct. They have
studied the symbols, the ceremonies, the prayers and sacrifices. And
they have shown that all religions are substantially the same--produced
by the same causes--that all rest on a misconception of the facts in
nature--that all are founded on ignorance and fear, on mistake and
mystery.
They have found that Christianity is like the rest--that it was not a
revelation, but a natural growth--that its gods and devils, its heavens
and hells, were borrowed--that its ceremonies and sacraments were
souvenirs of other religions--that no part of it came from heaven, but
that it was all made by savage man. They found that Jehovah was a tribal
god and that his ancestors had lived on the banks of the Euphrates, the
Tigris, the Ganges and the Nile, and these ancestors were traced back to
still more savage forms.
They found that all the sacred books were filled with inspired mistake
and sacred absurdity.
But, say the Christians, we have the only inspired book. We have the
Old Testament and the New. Where did you get the Old Testament? From the
Jews?--Yes.
Let me tell you about it.
After the Jews returned from Babylon, about 400 years before Christ,
Ezra commenced making the Bible. You will find an account of this in the
Bible.
We know that Genesis was written after the Captivity--because it was
from the Babylonians that the Jews got the story of the creation--of
Adam and Eve, of the Garden--of the serpent, and the tree of life--of
the flood--and from them they learned about the Sabbath.
You find nothing about that holy day in Judges, Joshua, Samuel, Kings
or Chronicles--nothing in Job, the Psalms, in Esther, Solomon's Song
or Ecclesiastes. Only in books written by Ezra after the return from
Babylon.
When Ezra finished the inspired book, he placed it in the temple. It was
written on the skins of beasts, and, so far as we know, there was but
one.
What became of this Bible?
Jerusalem was taken by Titus about 70 years after Christ. The temple was
destroyed and, at the request of Josephus, the Holy Bible was sent to
Vespasian the Emperor, at Rome.
And this Holy Bible has never been seen or heard of since. So much for
that.
Then there was a copy, or rather a translation, called the Septuagint.
How was that made?
It is said that Ptolemy Soter and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus obtained
a translation of the Jewish Bible. This translation was made by seventy
persons.
At that time the Jewish Bible did not contain Daniel, Ecclesiastes, but
few of the Psalms and only a part of Isaiah.
What became of this translation known as the Septuagint?
It was burned in the Bruchium Library forty-seven years before Christ.
Then there was another so-called copy of part of the Bible, known as the
Samaritan Roll of the Pentateuch.
But this is not considered of any value.
Have we a true copy of the Bible that was in the temple at
Jerusalem--the one sent to Vespasian?
Nobody knows.
Have we a true copy of the Septuagint?
Nobody knows.
What is the oldest manuscript of the Bible we have in Hebrew?
The oldest manuscript we have in Hebrew was written in the 10th century
after Christ. The oldest pretended copy we have of the Septuagint
written in Greek was made in the 5th century after Christ.
If the Bible was divinely inspired, if it was the actual word of God, we
have no authenticated copy. The original has been lost and we are left
in the darkness of Nature.
It is impossible for us to show that our Bible is correct. We have no
standard. Many of the books in our Bible contradict each other. Many
chapters appear to be incomplete and parts of different books are
written in the same words, showing that both could not have been
original. The 19th and 20th chapters of 2nd Kings and the 37th and
38th chapters of Isaiah are exactly the same. So is the 36th chapter of
Isaiah from the 2nd verse the same as the 18th chapter of 2nd Kings from
the 2nd verse.
So, it is perfectly apparent that there could have been no possible
propriety in inspiring the writers of Kings and the writers of
Chronicles. The books are substantially the same, differing in a
few mistakes--in a few falsehoods. The same is true of Leviticus and
Numbers. The books do not agree either in facts or philosophy. They
differ as the men differed who wrote them.
What have the worldly done?
They have investigated the phenomena of nature. They have invented ways
to use the forces of the world, the weight of falling water--of moving
air. They have changed water to steam, invented engines--the tireless
giants that work for man. They have made lightning a messenger and
slave. They invented movable type, taught us the art of printing and
made it possible to save and transmit the intellectual wealth of the
world. They connected continents with cables, cities and towns with
the telegraph--brought the world into one family--made intelligence
independent of distance. They taught us how to build homes, to obtain
food, to weave cloth. They covered the seas with iron ships and the
land with roads and steeds of steel. They gave us the tools of all the
trades--the implements of labor. They chiseled statues, painted pictures
and "witched the world" with form and color. They have found the cause
of and the cure for many maladies that afflict the flesh and minds of
men. They have given us the instruments of music and the great composers
and performers have changed the common air to tones and harmonies that
intoxicate, exalt and purify the soul.
They have rescued us from the prisons of fear, and snatched our souls
from the fangs and claws of superstition's loathsome, crawling, flying
beasts. They have given us the liberty to think and the courage to
express our thoughts. They have changed the frightened, the enslaved,
the kneeling, the prostrate into men and women--clothed them in their
right minds and made them truly free. They have uncrowned the phantoms,
wrested the scepters from the ghosts and given this world to the
children of men. They have driven from the heart the fiends of fear and
extinguished the flames of hell.
They have read a few leaves of the great volume--deciphered some of the
records written on stone by the tireless hands of time in the dim past.
They have told us something of what has been done by wind and wave, by
fire and frost, by life and death, the ceaseless workers, the pauseless
forces of the world.
They have enlarged the horizon of the known, changed the glittering
specks that shine above us to wheeling worlds, and filled all space with
countless suns.
They have found the qualities of substances, the nature of things--how
to analyze, separate and combine, and have enabled us to use the good
and avoid the hurtful.
They have given us mathematics in the higher forms, by means of which we
measure the astronomical spaces, the distances to stars, the velocity at
which the heavenly bodies move, their density and weight, and by which
the mariner navigates the waste and trackless seas. They have given us
all we have of knowledge, of literature and art. They have made life
worth living. They have filled the world with conveniences, comforts and
luxuries.
All this has been done by the worldly--by those, who were not "called"
or "set apart" or filled with the Holy Ghost or had the slightest claim
to "apostolic succession." The men who accomplished these things were
not "inspired." They had no revelation--no supernatural aid. They were
not clad in sacred vestments, and tiaras were not upon their brows. They
were not even ordained. They used their senses, observed and recorded
facts. They had confidence in reason. They were patient searchers for
the truth. They turned their attention to the affairs of this
world. They were not saints. They were sensible men. They worked for
themselves, for wife and child and for the benefit of all.
To these men we are indebted for all we are, for all we know, for all
we have. They were the creators of civilization--the founders of free
states--the saviors of liberty--the destroyers of superstition and the
great captains in the army of progress.