I admit that there are many good and beautiful passages in the Old
and New Testament; that from the lips of Christ dropped many pearls of
kindness--of love. Every verse that is true and tender I treasure in my
heart. Every thought, behind which is the tear of pity, I appreciate and
love. But I cannot accept it all. Many utterances attributed to Christ
shock my brain and heart. They are absurd and cruel.
Take from the New Testament the infinite savagery, the shoreless
malevolence of eternal pain, the absurdity of salvation by faith, the
ignorant belief in the existence of devils, the immorality and cruelty
of the atonement, the doctrine of non-resistance that denies to virtue
the right of self-defence, and how glorious it would be to know that the
remainder is true! Compared with this knowledge, how everything else in
nature would shrink and shrivel! What ecstasy it would be to know that
God exists; that he is our father and that he loves and cares for the
children of men! To know that all the paths that human beings travel,
turn and wind as they may, lead to the gates of stainless peace! How the
heart would thrill and throb to know that Christ was the conqueror
of Death; that at his grave the all-devouring monster was baffled and
beaten forever; that from that moment the tomb became the door that
opens on eternal life! To know this would change all sorrow into
gladness. Poverty, failure, disaster, defeat, power, place and wealth
would become meaningless sounds. To take your babe upon your knee and
say: "Mine and mine forever!" What joy! To clasp the woman you love in
your arms and to know that she is yours and forever--yours though suns
darken and constellations vanish! This is enough: To know that the loved
and dead are not lost; that they still live and love and wait for you.
To know that Christ dispelled the darkness of death and filled the grave
with eternal light. To know this would be all that the heart could bear.
Beyond this joy cannot go. Beyond this there is no place for hope.
How beautiful, how enchanting, Death would be! How we would long to see
his fleshless skull! What rays of glory would stream from his sightless
sockets, and how the heart would long for the touch of his stilling
hand! The shroud would become a robe of glory, the funeral procession a
harvest home, and the grave would mark the end of sorrow, the beginning
of eternal joy.
And yet it were better far that all this should be false than that all
of the New Testament should be true.
It is far better to have no heaven than to have heaven and hell; better
to have no God than God and Devil; better to rest iii eternal sleep than
to be an angel and know that the ones you love are suffering eternal
pain; better to live a free and loving life--a life that ends forever at
the grave--than to be an immortal slave.
The master cannot be great enough to make slavery sweet. I have no
ambition to become a winged servant, a winged slave. Better eternal
sleep. But they say, "If you give up these superstitions, what have you
left?"
Let me now give you the declaration of a creed.