IT is utterly inconceivable that any man believing in the truth of the
Christian religion should publicly deny it, because he who believes in
that religion would believe that, by a public denial, he would peril the
eternal salvation of his soul. It is conceivable, and without any great
effort of the mind, that millions who do not believe in the Christian
religion should openly say that they did. In a country where religion
is supposed to be in power--where it has rewards for pretence, where it
pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it at least is willing to purchase
silence--it is easily conceivable that millions pretend to believe what
they do not. And yet I believe it has been charged against myself not
only that I was insincere, but that I took the side I am on for the sake
of popularity; and the audience to-night goes far toward justifying the
accusation.
Orthodox Religion Dying Out.
It gives me immense pleasure to say to this audience that orthodox
religion is dying out of the civilized world. It is a sick man. It has
been attacked with two diseases--softening of the brain and ossification
of the heart. It is a religion that no longer satisfies the intelligence
of this country; that no longer satisfies the brain; a religion against
which the heart of every civilized man and woman protests. It is a
religion that gives hope only to a few; that puts a shadow upon the
cradle; that wraps the coffin in darkness and fills the future of
mankind with flame and fear. It is a religion that I am going to do what
little I can while I live to destroy. In its place I want humanity,
I want good fellowship, I want intellectual liberty--free lips, the
discoveries and inventions of genius, the demonstrations of science--the
religion of art, music and poetry--of good houses, good clothes, good
wages--that is to say, the religion of this world.
Religious Deaths and Births.
We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of perpetual
change--a succession of coffins and cradles. There is perpetual death,
and there is perpetual birth. By the grave of the old, forever stand
youth and joy; and when an old religion dies, a better one is born. When
we find out that an assertion is a falsehood a shining truth takes its
place, and we need not fear the destruction of the false. The more false
we destroy the more room there will be for the true.
There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the stars the
fate of men and nations. The astrologer has faded from the world, but
the astronomer has taken his place. There was a time when the poor
alchemist, bent and wrinkled and old, over his crucible endeavored to
find some secret by which he could change the baser metals into purest
gold. The alchemist has gone; the chemist took his place; and, although
he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he finds something that
covers the earth with wealth. There was a time when the soothsayer and
augur flourished. After them came the parson and the priest; and the
parson and the priest must go. The preacher must go, and in his place
must come the teacher--the real interpreter of Nature. We are done with
the supernatural. We are through with the miraculous and the impossible.
There was once the prophet who pretended to read the book of the future.
His place has been taken by the philosopher, who reasons from cause to
effect--who finds the facts by which we are surrounded and endeavors
to reason from these premises and to tell what in all probability will
happen. The prophet has gone, the philosopher is here. There was a time
when man sought aid from heaven--when he prayed to the deaf sky. There
was a time when everything depended on the supernaturalist. That time in
Christendom is passing away. We now depend upon the naturalist--not upon
the believer in ancient falsehoods, but on the discoverer of facts--on
the demonstrater of truths. At last we are beginning to build on a
solid foundation, and as we progress, the supernatural dies. The leaders
of the intellectual world deny the existence of the supernatural. They
take from all superstition its foundation.
The Religion of Reciprocity.
Supernatural religion will fade from this world, and in its place we
shall have reason. In the place of the worship of something we know
not of, will be the religion of mutual love and assistance--the great
religion of reciprocity. Superstition must go. Science will remain. The
church dies hard. The brain of the world is not yet developed. There
are intellectual diseases as well as physical--there are pestilences and
plagues of the mind.
Whenever the new comes the old protests, and fights for its place as
long as it has a particle of power. We are now having the same warfare
between superstition and science that there was between the stage coach
and the locomotive. But the stage coach had to go. It had its day of
glory and power, but it is gone. It went West. In a little while it will
be driven into the Pacific. So we find that there is the same conflict
between the different sects and different schools not only of philosophy
but of medicine.
Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable
to die. That is the order of Nature. Words die. Every language has a
cemetery. Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone is erected, and
across it is written "obsolete." New words are continually being born.
There is a cradle in which a word is rocked. A thought is married to a
sound, and a child-word is born. And there comes a time when the word
gets old, and wrinkled, and expressionless, and is carried mournfully
to the grave. So in the schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I,
when the old allopathists, the bleeders and blisterers, reigned supreme.
If there was anything the matter with a man they let out his blood.
Called to the bedside, they took him on the point of a lancet to the
edge of eternity, and then practiced all their art to bring him back.
One can hardly imagine how perfect a constitution it took a few years
ago to stand the assault of a doctor. And long after the old practice
was found to be a mistake hundreds and thousands of the ancient
physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket a bottle
of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they could not
find some patient with faith enough to allow the experiment to be made
again.
So these schools, and these theories, and these religions die hard. What
else can they do? Like the paintings of the old masters, they are kept
alive because so much money has been invested in them. Think of the
amount of money that has been invested in superstition! Think of the
schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of useless
knowledge! Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it is
dangerous to think, and that they must never use their brains except
in the act of faith! Think of the millions and billions of dollars that
have been expended in churches, in temples, and in cathedrals! Think of
the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the
ignorance of mankind! Think of those who grow rich on credulity and
who fatten on faith! Do you suppose they are going to die without a
struggle? What are they to do? From the bottom of my heart I sympathize
with the poor clergyman that has had all his common sense educated out
of him, and is now to be thrown upon the cold and unbelieving world. His
prayers are not answered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are
beginning to criticise the pulpit. What is the man to do? If he suddenly
changes he is gone. If he preaches what he really believes he will get
notice to quit. And yet, if he and the congregation would come together
and be perfectly honest, they would all admit that they believe little
and know nothing.
Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a
revival, late at night, and one said to the other, as they rode along:
"I am going to say something that will shock you, and I beg of you never
to tell it to anybody else. I am going to tell it to you." "Well, what
is it?" Said she: "I do not believe the Bible." The other replied:
"Neither do I."
I have often thought how splendid it would be if the ministers could but
come together and say: "Now, let us be honest. Let us tell each other,
honor bright"--like Dr. Curry, of Chicago, did in the meeting the other
day--"just what we believe." They tell a story that in the old time a
lot of people, about twenty, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one
fellow got up before the fire, put his hands behind him, and said:
"Boys, let us all tell our real names." If the ministers and their
congregations would only tell their real thoughts they would find that
they are nearly as bad as I am, and that they believe as little.
Orthodoxy dies hard, and its defenders tell us that this fact shows that
it is of divine origin. Judaism dies hard. It has lived several thousand
years longer than Christianity. The religion of Mohammed dies hard.
Buddhism dies hard. Why do all these religions die hard? Because
intelligence increases slowly.
Let me whisper in the ear of the Protestant: Catholicism dies hard. What
does that prove? It proves that the people are ignorant and that the
priests are cunning.
Let me whisper in the ear of the Catholic: Protestantism dies hard. What
does that prove? It proves that the people are superstitious and the
preachers stupid.
Let me whisper in all your ears: Infidelity is not dying--it is
growing--it increases every day. And what does that prove? It
proves that the people are learning more and more--that they are
advancing--that the mind is getting free, and that the race is being
civilized.
The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.
The Blows That Have Shattered the Shield and Shivered the Lance of
Superstition.
Mohammed.
Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the cross the fairest part of
Europe. It was known that he was an impostor, and that fact sowed the
seeds of distrust and infidelity in the Christian world. Christians made
an effort to rescue from the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ.
That commenced in the eleventh century and ended at the close of the
thirteenth. Europe was almost depopulated. The fields were left waste,
the villages were deserted, nations were impoverished, every man who
owed a debt was discharged from payment if he put a cross upon his
breast and joined the Crusades. No matter what crime he had committed,
the doors of the prison were open for him to join the hosts of the
cross. They believed that God would give them victory, and they carried
in front of the first Crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both
those animals were blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I
may say that those same animals are in the lead to-day in the orthodox
world. Until the year 1291 they endeavored to gain possession of that
sepulchre, and finally the hosts of Christ were driven back, baffled and
beaten,--a poor, miserable, religious rabble. They were driven back, and
that fact sowed the seeds of distrust in Christendom. You know that at
that time the world believed in trial by battle--that God would take
the side of the right--and there had been a trial by battle between the
cross and the crescent, and Mohammed had been victorious. Was God at
that time governing the world? Was he endeavoring to spread his gospel?
The Destruction of Art.
You know that when Christianity came into power it destroyed every
statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon. It defaced and obliterated
every painting; it destroyed every beautiful building; it burned the
manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it destroyed all the history, all
the poetry, all the philosophy it could find, and reduced to ashes every
library that it could reach with its torch. And the result was, that the
night of the Middle Ages fell upon the human race. But by accident,
by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts escaped the fury of
religious zeal; and these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of
which is our civilization of to-day. A few statues had been buried; a
few forms of beauty were dug from the earth that had protected them, and
now the civilized world is filled with art, the walls are covered with
paintings, and the niches filled with statuary. A few manuscripts were
found and deciphered. The old languages were learned, and literature
was again born. A new day dawned upon mankind. Every effort at mental
improvement had been opposed by the church, and yet, the few things
saved from the general wreck--a few poems, a few works of the ancient
thinkers, a few forms wrought in stone, produced a new civilization
destined to overthrow and destroy the fabric of superstition.
The Discovery of America.
What was the next blow that this church received? The discovery of
America. The Holy Ghost who inspired men to write the Bible did not
know of the existence of this continent, never dreamed of the Western
Hemisphere. The Bible left out half the world. The Holy Ghost did not
know that the earth is round. He did not dream that the earth is round.
He believed it was flat, although he made it himself. At that time
heaven was just beyond the clouds. It was there the gods lived, there
the angels were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder
leaned when the angels went up and down. It was to that heaven that
Christ ascended after his resurrection. It was up there that the New
Jerusalem was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth was
perdition. There was where the devils lived; where a pit was dug for
all unbelievers, and for men who had brains. I say that for this reason:
Just in proportion that you have brains, your chances for eternal joy
are lessened, according to this religion. And just in proportion that
you lack brains your chances are increased. At last they found that the
earth is round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that brave
man set sail. The church told him: "The earth is flat, my friend; don't
go, you may fall off the edge." Magellan said: "I have seen the shadow
of the earth upon the moon, and I have more confidence in the shadow
than I have in the church." The ship went round. The earth was
circumnavigated. Science passed its hand above it and beneath it, and
where was the old heaven and where was the hell? Vanished forever! And
they dwell now only in the religion of superstition. We found there was
no place there for Jacob's ladder to lean against; no place there for
the gods and angels to live; no place to hold the waters of the deluge;
no place to which Christ could have ascended. The foundations of the
New Jerusalem crumbled. The towers and domes fell, and in their places
infinite space, sown with an infinite number of stars; not with New
Jerusalems, but with countless constellations.
Copernicus and Kepler.
Then man began to grow great, and with that came Astronomy, In 1473
Copernicus was born. In 1543 his great work appeared. In 1616 the system
of Copernicus was condemned by the pope, by the infallible Catholic
Church, and the church was about as near right upon that subject as upon
any other. The system of Copernicus was denounced. And how long do you
suppose the church fought that? Let me tell you. It was revoked by Pius
VII. in the year of grace 1821. For two hundred and seventy-eight years
after the death of Copernicus the church insisted that his system was
false, and that the old Bible astronomy was true. Astronomy is the first
help that we ever received from heaven. Then came Kepler in 1609, and
you may almost date the birth of science from the night that Kepler
discovered his first law. That was the break of the day. His first law,
that the planets do not move in circles but in ellipses; his second law,
that they describe equal spaces in equal times; his third law, that the
squares of their periodic times are proportional to the cubes of their
distances. That man gave us the key to the heavens. He opened the
infinite book, and in it read three lines.
I have not time to speak of Galileo, of Leonardo da Vinci, of Bruno, and
of hundreds of others who contributed to the intellectual wealth of the
world.
Special Providence.
The next thing that gave the church a blow was Statistics. We found by
taking statistics that we could tell the average length of human life;
that this human life did not depend upon infinite caprice; that it
depended upon conditions, circumstances, laws and facts, and that these
conditions, circumstances, and facts were during long periods of time
substantially the same. And now, the man who depends entirely upon
special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence even
in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity. We found by
statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average committed;
just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just so many
suicides, so many deaths by drowning, so many accidents on an average,
so many men marrying women, for instance, older than themselves; so many
murders of a particular kind; just the same number of mistakes; and
I say to-night, statistics utterly demolish the idea of special
providence.
Only the other day a gentleman was telling me of a case of special
providence. He knew it. He had been the subject of it. A few years ago
he was about to go on a ship when he was detained. He did not go, and
the ship was lost with all on board.
"Yes!" I said, "Do you think the people who were drowned believed in
special providence?" Think of the infinite egotism of such a doctrine.
Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with five hundred passengers
and they go down to the bottom of the sea--fathers, mothers, children,
and loving husbands and wives waiting upon the chores of expectation.
Here is one poor little wretch that did not happen to go! And he thinks
that God, the Infinite Being, interfered in his poor little withered
behalf and let the rest all go. That is special providence. Why does
special providence allow all the crimes? Why are the wife-beaters
protected, and why are the wives and children left defenceless if the
hand of God is over us all? Who protects the insane? Why does Providence
permit insanity? But the church cannot give up special providence. If
there is no such thing, then no prayers, no worship, no churches, no
priests. What would become of National Thanksgiving?
You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of
thanksgiving. We say to God, "Although you have afflicted all the other
countries, although you have sent war, and desolation, and famine on
everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been
kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It does not make a bit of
difference whether we have good times or not--the thanksgiving is always
exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a governor of Iowa got out
a proclamation of that kind. He went on to tell how thankful the people
were and how prosperous the State had been. There was a young fellow in
that State who got out another proclamation, saying that he feared the
Lord might be misled by official correspondence; that the governor's
proclamation was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous; that
the crops had been an almost utter failure; that nearly every farm in
the State was mortgaged, and that if the Lord did not believe him, all
he asked was that he would send some angel in whom he had confidence, to
look the matter over and report.
Charles Darwin.
This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest
men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena
of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles
Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived
on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world
than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the
survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species,
has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox
Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the
inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of
man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that
the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear.
Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no
person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more
ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held
up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and
yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her
noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual
world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken
in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies
the pulpit of one of the orthodox: churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a
believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than
all the clergy of that entire church put together.
And yet we are told in this little creed that orthodox religion is about
to conquer the world! It will be driven to the wilds of Africa. It must
go to some savage country; it has lost its hold upon civilization. It is
unfortunate to have a religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect
of a nation. It is unfortunate to have a religion against which every
good and noble heart protests. Let us have a good religion or none. My
pity has been excited by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp and
twist the passages of Scripture to fit the demonstrations of science. Of
course, I have not time to recount all the discoveries and events that
have assisted in the destruction of superstition. Every fact is an
enemy of the church. Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is
an infidel. Everything that ever really happened testifies against the
supernatural.
The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six
thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity
of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily
advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine
of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an
absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not "fall."
Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There
is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen.
Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is
a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the
result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.
The Creeds.
I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox religion. Often,
after having delivered a lecture, I have met some good, religious person
who has said to me:
"You do not tell it as we believe it."
"Well, but I tell it as you have it written in your creed."
"Oh, we don't mind the creed any more."
"Then, why do you not change it?"
"Oh, well, we understand it as it is, and if we tried to change it,
maybe we would not agree."
Possibly the creeds are in the best condition now. There is a tacit
understanding that they do not believe them, that there is a way to
get around them, and that they can read between the lines; that if they
should meet now to form new creeds they would fail to agree; and that
now they can say as they please, except in public. Whenever they do so
in public the church, in self-defence, must try them; and I believe in
trying every minister that does not preach the doctrine he agrees to.
I have not the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who
endeavors to preach infidelity from a Presbyterian pulpit and receives
Presbyterian money. When he changes his views he should step down and
out like a man, and say, "I do not believe your doctrine, and I will not
preach it. You must hire some other man." The Latest Creed.
But I find that I have correctly interpreted the creeds. There was put
into my hands the new Congregational creed. I have read it, and I will
call your attention to it to-night, to find whether that church has made
any advance; to find whether the sun of science has risen in the heavens
in vain; whether they are still the children of intellectual darkness;
whether they still consider it necessary for you to believe something
that you by no possibility can understand, in order to be a winged angel
forever. Now, let us see what their creed is. I will read a little of
it.