Our God was made by men, sculptured by savages who did the best they
could. They made our God somewhat like themselves, and gave to him their
passions, their ideas of right and wrong.
As man advanced he slowly changed his God--took a little ferocity from
his heart, and put the light of kindness in his eyes. As man progressed
he obtained a wider view, extended the intellectual horizon, and again
he changed his God, making him as nearly perfect as he could, and
yet this God was patterned after those who made him. As man became
civilized, as he became merciful, he began to love justice, and as his
mind expanded his ideal became purer, nobler, and so his God became more
merciful, more loving.
In our day Jehovah has been outgrown. He is no longer the perfect. Now
theologians talk, not about Jehovah, but about a God of love, call him
the Eternal Father and the perpetual friend and providence of man. But,
while they talk about this God of love, cyclones wreck and rend, the
earthquake devours, the flood destroys, the red bolt leaping from the
cloud still crashes the life out of men, and plague and fever still are
tireless reapers in the harvest fields of death.
They tell us now that all is good; that evil is but blessing
in disguise, that pain makes strong and virtuous men--makes
character--while pleasure enfeebles and degrades. If this be so, the
souls in hell should grow to greatness, while those in heaven should
shrink and shrivel.
But we know that good is good. We know that good is not evil, and that
evil is not good. We know that light is not darkness, and that darkness
is not light. But we do not feel that good and evil were planned and
caused by a supernatural God. We regard them both as necessities. We
neither thank nor curse. We know that some evil can be avoided and that
the good can be increased. We know that this can be done by increasing
knowledge, by developing the brain.
As Christians have changed their God, so they have accordingly changed
their Bible. The impossible and absurd, the cruel and the infamous, have
been mostly thrown aside, and thousands are now engaged in trying to
save the inspired word. Of course, the orthodox still cling to every
word, and still insist that every line is true. They are literalists.
To them the Bible means exactly what it says.
They want no explanation. They care nothing for commentators.
Contradictions cannot disturb their faith. They deny that any
contradictions exist. They loyally stand by the sacred text, and they
give it the narrowest possible interpretation. They are like the janitor
of an apartment house who refused to rent a flat to a gentleman because
he said he had children. "But," said the gentleman, "my children are
both married and live in Iowa." "That makes no difference," said the
janitor, "I am not allowed to rent a flat to any man who has children."
All the orthodox churches are obstructions on the highway of progress.
Every orthodox creed is a chain, a dungeon. Every believer in the
"inspired book" is a slave who drives reason from her throne, and in her
stead crowns fear.
Reason is the light, the sun, of the brain. It is the compass of the
mind, the ever-constant Northern Star, the mountain peak that lifts
itself above all clouds.