William Kingdon Clifford, one of the greatest men of this century, said:
"If there is one lesson that history forces upon us in every page, it is
this: Keep your children away from the priest, or he will make them the
enemies of mankind."
In every orthodox Sunday school children are taught to believe in
devils. Every little brain becomes a menagerie, filled with wild beasts
from hell. The imagination is polluted with the deformed, the monstrous
and malicious. To fill the minds of children with leering fiends--with
mocking devils--is one of the meanest and basest of crimes. In these
pious prisons--these divine dungeons--these Protestant and Catholic
inquisitions--children are tortured with these cruel lies. Here they
are taught that to really think is wicked; that to express your honest
thought is blasphemy; and that to live a free and joyous life, depending
on fact instead of faith, is the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Children thus taught--thus corrupted and deformed--become the enemies
of investigation--of progress. They are no longer true to themselves.
They have lost the veracity of the soul. In the language of Prof.
Clifford, "they are the enemies of the human race."
So I say to all fathers and mothers, keep your children away from
priests; away from orthodox Sunday schools; away from the slaves of
superstition.
They will teach them to believe in the Devil; in hell; in the prison
of God; in the eternal dungeon, where the souls of men are to suffer
forever. These frightful things are a part of Christianity. Take these
lies from the creed and the whole scheme falls into shapeless ruin. This
dogma of hell is the infinite of savagery--the dream of insane revenge.
It makes God a wild beast--an infinite hyena. It makes Christ as
merciless as the fangs of a viper. Save poor children from the pollution
of this horror. Protect them from this infinite lie.