_Parson. You had belter join the church; it is
the safer way.
Sinner. I can't live up to your doctrines, and you
know it.
Parson. Well, you can come as near it in the
church as out; and forgiveness
will be easier if you join us.
Sinner. What do you mean by that?
Parson. I will tell you. If you join the church,
and happen to back-slide now and then, Christ will
say to his Father: "That man is a "friend of mine,
and you may charge his account to me."_
_Question_. What have you to say about the
fifth sermon of the Rev. Mr. Talmage in reply
to you?
_Answer_. The text from which he preached is:
"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"
I am compelled to answer these questions in the
negative. That is one reason why I am an infidel.
I do not believe that anybody can gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles. That is exactly my doctrine.
But the doctrine of the church is, that you can. The
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church says, that just at the last, no matter if you
have spent your whole life in raising thorns and thistles,
in planting and watering and hoeing and plowing
thorns and thistles--that just at the last, if you will
repent, between hoeing the last thistle and taking the
last breath, you can reach out the white and palsied
hand of death and gather from every thorn a cluster
of grapes and from every thistle an abundance of
figs. The church insists that in this way you can
gather enough grapes and figs to last you through all
eternity.
My doctrine is, that he who raises thorns must
harvest thorns. If you sow thorns, you must reap
thorns; and there is no way by which an innocent
being can have the thorns you raise thrust into his
brow, while you gather his grapes.
But Christianity goes even further than this. It
insists that a man can plant grapes and gather thorns.
Mr. Talmage insists that, no matter how good you
are, no matter how kind, no matter how much you
love your wife and children, no matter how many
self-denying acts you do, you will not be allowed to
eat of the grapes you raise; that God will step be-
tween you and the natural consequences of your
goodness, and not allow you to reap what you sow.
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Mr. Talmage insists, that if you have no faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, although you have been good
here, you will reap eternal pain as your harvest; that
the effect of honesty and kindness will not be peace
and joy, but agony and pain. So that the church
does insist not only that you can gather grapes from
thorns, but thorns from grapes.
I believe exactly the other way. If a man is a
good man here, dying will not change him, and he
will land on the shore of another world--if there is
one--the same good man that he was when he left
this; and I do not believe there is any God in this
universe who can afford to damn a good man. This
God will say to this man: You loved your wife,
your children, and your friends, and I love you.
You treated others with kindness; I will treat you
in the same way. But Mr. Talmage steps up to
his God, nudges his elbow, and says: Although he
was a very good man, he belonged to no church;
he was a blasphemer; he denied the whale story, and
after I explained that Jonah was only in the whale's
mouth, he still denied it; and thereupon Mr. Tal-
mage expects that his infinite God will fly in a
passion, and in a perfect rage will say: What! did
he deny that story? Let him be eternally damned!
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Not only this, but Mr. Talmage insists that a man
may have treated his wife like a wild beast; may have
trampled his child beneath the feet of his rage; may
have lived a life of dishonesty, of infamy, and yet,
having repented on his dying bed, having made his
peace with God through the intercession of his Son,
he will be welcomed in heaven with shouts of joy.
I deny it. I do not believe that angels can be so
quickly made from rascals. I have but little confi-
dence in repentance without restitution, and a hus-
band who has driven a wife to insanity and death by
his cruelty--afterward repenting and finding himself
in heaven, and missing his wife,--were he worthy to
be an angel, would wander through all the gulfs of
hell until he clasped her once again..
Now, the next question is, What must be done with
those who are sometimes good and sometimes bad?
That is my condition. If there is another world, I
expect to have the same opportunity of behaving
myself that I have here. If, when I get there, I fail
to act as I should, I expect to reap what I sow. If,
when I arrive at the New Jerusalem, I go into the
thorn business, I expect to harvest what I plant. If
I am wise enough to start a vineyard, I expect to
have grapes in the early fall. But if I do there as I
187
have done here--plant some grapes and some thorns,
and harvest them together--I expect to fare very
much as I have fared here. But I expect year by
year to grow wiser, to plant fewer thorns every
spring, and more grapes.
_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges that you have
taken the ground that the Bible is a cruel book, and
has produced cruel people?
_Answer_. Yes, I have taken that ground, and I
maintain it. The Bible was produced by cruel people,
and in its turn it has produced people like its authors.
The extermination of the Canaanites was cruel.
Most of the laws of Moses were bloodthirsty and
cruel. Hundreds of offences were punishable by
death, while now, in civilized countries, there are only
two crimes for which the punishment is capital. I
charge that Moses and Joshua and David and Samuel
and Solomon were cruel. I believe that to read and
believe the Old Testament naturally makes a man
careless of human life. That book has produced
hundreds of religious wars, and it has furnished the
battle-cries of bigotry for fifteen hundred years.
The Old Testament is filled with cruelty, but its
cruelty stops with this world, its malice ends with
188
death; whenever its victim has reached the grave,
revenge is satisfied. Not so with the New Testament.
It pursues its victim forever. After death, comes
hell; after the grave, the worm that never dies. So
that, as a matter of fact, the New Testament is in-
finitely more cruel than the Old.
Nothing has so tended to harden the human heart
as the doctrine of eternal punishment, and that
passage: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be
"saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned,"
has shed more blood than all the other so-called
"sacred books" of all this world.
I insist that the Bible is cruel. The Bible invented
instruments of torture. The Bible laid the foundations
of the Inquisition. The Bible furnished the fagots and
the martyrs. The Bible forged chains not only for the
hands, but for the brains of men. The Bible was at
the bottom of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Every man who has been persecuted for religion's
sake has been persecuted by the Bible. That sacred
book has been a beast of prey.
The truth is, Christians have been good in spite of
the Bible. The Bible has lived upon the reputations of
good men and good women,--men and women who
were good notwithstanding the brutality they found
189
upon the inspired page. Men have said: "My mother
"believed in the Bible; my mother was good; there-
"fore, the Bible is good," when probably the mother
never read a chapter in it.
The Bible produced the Church of Rome, and
Torquemada was a product of the Bible. Philip of
Spain and the Duke of Alva were produced by the
Bible. For thirty years Europe was one vast battle-
field, and the war was produced by the Bible. The re-
vocation of the Edict of Nantes was produced by the
sacred Scriptures. The instruments of torture--the
pincers, the thumb-screws, the racks, were produced
by the word of God. The Quakers of New England
were whipped and burned by the Bible--their children
were stolen by the Bible. The slave-ship had for its
sails the leaves of the Bible. Slavery was upheld in
the United States by the Bible. The Bible was the
auction-block. More than this, worse than this,
infinitely beyond the computation of imagination, the
despotisms of the old world all rested and still rest
upon the Bible. "The powers that be" were sup-
posed to have been "ordained of God;" and he who
rose against his king periled his soul.
In this connection, and in order to show the state
of society when the church had entire control of civil
190
and ecclesiastical affairs, it may be well enough to
read the following, taken from the _New York Sun_ of
March 21, 1882. From this little extract, it will be
easy in the imagination to re-organize the government
that then existed, and to see clearly the state of so-
ciety at that time. This can be done upon the same
principle that one scale tells of the entire fish, or one
bone of the complete animal:
"From records in the State archives of Hesse-
"Darmstadt, dating back to the thirteenth century,
"it appears that the public executioner's fee for boiling
"a criminal in oil was twenty-four florins; for decapi-
"tating with the sword, fifteen florins and-a-half; for
"quartering, the same; for breaking on the wheel,
"five florins, thirty kreuzers; for tearing a man to
"pieces, eighteen florins. Ten florins per head was
"his charge for hanging, and he burned delinquents
"alive at the rate of fourteen florins apiece. For ap-
"plying the 'Spanish boot' his fee was only two
"florins. Five florins were paid to him every time he
"subjected a refractory witness to the torture of the
"rack. The same amount was his due for 'branding
"'the sign of the gallows with a red-hot iron upon
"'the back, forehead, or cheek of a thief,' as well as
"for 'cutting off the nose and ears of a slanderer or
191
"'blasphemer.' Flogging with rods was a cheap
"punishment, its remuneration being fixed at three
"florins, thirty kreuzers."
The Bible has made men cruel. It is a cruel book.
And yet, amidst its thorns, amidst its thistles, amidst
its nettles and its swords and pikes, there are some
flowers, and these I wish, in common with all good
men, to save.
I do not believe that men have ever been made
merciful in war by reading the Old Testament. I do
not believe that men have ever been prompted to
break the chain of a slave by reading the Pentateuch.
The question is not whether Florence Nightingale and
Miss Dix were cruel. I have said nothing about
John Howard, nothing about Abbott Lawrence.
I say nothing about people in this connection. The
question is: Is the Bible a cruel book? not: Was
Miss Nightingale a cruel woman? There have been
thousands and thousands of loving, tender and char-
itable Mohammedans. Mohammedan mothers love
their children as well as Christian mothers can.
Mohammedans have died in defence of the Koran--
died for the honor of an impostor. There were
millions of charitable people in India--millions in
Egypt--and I am not sure that the world has ever
192
produced people who loved one another better than
the Egyptians.
I think there are many things in the Old Testament
calculated to make man cruel. Mr. Talmage asks:
"What has been the effect upon your children? As
"they have become more and more fond of the
"Scriptures have they become more and more fond
"of tearing off the wings of flies and pinning grass-
"hoppers and robbing birds' nests?"
I do not believe that reading the bible would make
them tender toward flies or grasshoppers. According
to that book, God used to punish animals for the
crimes of their owners. He drowned the animals in
a flood. He visited cattle with disease. He bruised
them to death with hailstones--killed them by the
thousand. Will the reading of these things make
children kind to animals? So, the whole system of
sacrifices in the Old Testament is calculated to harden
the heart. The butchery of oxen and lambs, the killing
of doves, the perpetual destruction of life, the con-
tinual shedding of blood--these things, if they have
any tendency, tend only to harden the heart of child-
hood.
The Bible does not stop simply with the killing of
animals. The Jews were commanded to kill their
193
neighbors--not only the men, but the women; not
only the women, but the babes. In accordance with
the command of God, the Jews killed not only their
neighbors, but their own brothers; and according to
this book, which is the foundation, as Mr. Talmage
believes, of all mercy, men were commanded to kill
their wives because they differed with them on the
subject of religion.
Nowhere in the world can be found laws more un-
just and cruel than in the Old Testament.
_Question_. Mr. Talmage wants you to tell where
the cruelty of the Bible crops out in the lives of Chris-
tians?
_Answer_. In the first place, millions of Christians
have been persecutors. Did they get the idea of
persecution from the Bible? Will not every honest
man admit that the early Christians, by reading the
Old Testament, became convinced that it was not
only their privilege, but their duty, to destroy heathen
nations? Did they not, by reading the same book,
come to the conclusion that it was their solemn duty
to extirpate heresy and heretics? According to the
New Testament, nobody could be saved unless he
believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The early Chris-
194
tians believed this dogma. They also believed that
they had a right to defend themselves and their
children from "heretics."
We all admit that a man has a right to defend his
children against the assaults of a would-be murderer,
and he has the right to carry this defence to the
extent of killing the assailant. If we have the right
to kill people who are simply trying to kill the bodies
of our children, of course we have the right to kill
them when they are endeavoring to assassinate, not
simply their bodies, but their souls. It was in this
way Christians reasoned. If the Testament is right,
their reasoning was correct. Whoever believes the
New Testament literally--whoever is satisfied that it
is absolutely the word of God, will become a perse-
cutor. All religious persecution has been, and is, in
exact harmony with the teachings of the Old and
New Testaments. Of course I mean with some of
the teachings. I admit that there are passages in
both the Old and New Testaments against persecu-
tion. These are passages quoted only in time of
peace. Others are repeated to feed the flames of
war.
I find, too, that reading the Bible and believing the
Bible do not prevent even ministers from telling false-
195
hoods about their opponents. I find that the Rev.
Mr. Talmage is willing even to slander the dead,--
that he is willing to stain the memory of a Christian,
and that he does not hesitate to give circulation
to what he knows to be untrue. Mr. Talmage
has himself, I believe, been the subject of a church
trial. How many of the Christian witnesses against
him, in his judgment, told the truth? Yet they were
all Bible readers and Bible believers. What effect, in
his judgment, did the reading of the Bible have upon
his enemies? Is he willing to admit that the testi-
mony of a Bible, reader and believer is true? Is he
willing to accept the testimony even of ministers?
--of his brother ministers? Did reading the Bible
make them bad people? Was it a belief in the Bible
that colored their testimony? Or, was it a belief in
the Bible that made Mr. Talmage deny the truth of
their statements?
_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges you with having
said that the Scriptures are a collection of polluted
writings?
_Answer_. I have never said such a thing. I have
said, and I still say, that there are passages in the
Bible unfit to be read--passages that never should
196
have been written--passages, whether inspired or
uninspired, that can by no possibility do any human
being any good. I have always admitted that there
are good passages in the Bible--many good, wise
and just laws--many things calculated to make men
better--many things calculated to make men worse.
I admit that the Bible is a mixture of good and bad,
of truth and falsehood, of history and fiction, of sense
and nonsense, of virtue and vice, of aspiration and
revenge, of liberty and tyranny.
I have never said anything against Solomon's
Song. I like it better than I do any book that pre-
cedes it, because it touches upon the human. In the
desert of murder, wars of extermination, polygamy,
concubinage and slavery, it is an oasis where the
trees grow, where the birds sing, and where human
love blossoms and fills the air with perfume. I do
not regard that book as obscene. There are many
things in it that are beautiful and tender, and it is
calculated to do good rather than harm.
Neither have I any objection to the book of Eccle-
siastes--except a few interpolations in it. That book
was written by a Freethinker, by a philosopher.
There is not the slightest mention of God in it, nor
of another state of existence. All portions in which
197
God is mentioned are interpolations. With some of
this book I agree heartily. I believe in the doctrine
of enjoying yourself, if you can, to-day. I think it
foolish to spend all your years in heaping up treas-
ures, not knowing but he who will spend them is to
be an idiot. I believe it is far better to be happy with
your wife and child now, than to be miserable here,
with angelic expectations in some other world.
Mr. Talmage is mistaken when he supposes that all
Bible believers have good homes, that all Bible readers
are kind in their families. As a matter of fact, nearly all
the wife-whippers of the United States are orthodox.
Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries are
believers. Scotland is one of the most orthodox
countries in the world, and one of the most intem-
perate. Hundreds and hundreds of women are
arrested every year in Glasgow for drunkenness.
Visit the Christian homes in the manufacturing dis-
tricts of England. Talk with the beaters of children
and whippers of wives, and you will find them be-
lievers. Go into what is known as the "Black
"Country," and you will have an idea of the Chris-
tian civilization of England.
Let me tell you something about the "Black
"Country." There women work in iron; there women
198
do the work of men. Let me give you an instance:
A commission was appointed by Parliament to ex-
amine into the condition of the women in the "Black
"Country," and a report was made. In that report
I read the following:
"A superintendent of a brickyard where women
"were engaged in carrying bricks from the yard to
"the kiln, said to one of the women:
"'Eliza, you don't appear to be very uppish this
"morning.'"
"'Neither would you be very uppish, sir,' she re-
"plied, 'if you had had a child last night.'"
This gives you an idea of the Christian civilization
of England.
England and Ireland produce most of the prize-
fighters. The scientific burglar is a product of Great
Britain. There is not the great difference that Mr.
Talmage supposes, between the morality of Pekin
and of New York. I doubt if there is a city in
the world with more crime according to the population
than New York, unless it be London, or it may be
Dublin, or Brooklyn, or possibly Glasgow, where
a man too pious to read a newspaper published on
Sunday, stole millions from the poor.