FOR many ages religion has been tried. For countless centuries man
has sought for help from heaven. To soften the heart of God, mothers
sacrificed their babes! but the God did not hear, did not see, and did
not help. Naked savages were devoured by beasts, bitten by serpents,
killed by flood and frost. They prayed for help, but their God was
deaf. They built temples and altars, employed priests and gave of their
substance, but the volcano destroyed and the famine came. For the sake
of God millions murdered their fellow-men, but the God was silent.
Millions of martyrs died for the honor of God, but the God was blind. He
did not see the flames, the scaffolds. He did not hear the prayers,
the groans. Thousands of priests in the name of God tortured their
fellow-men, stretched them on racks, crushed their feet in iron boots,
tore out their tongues, extinguished their eyes. The victims implored
the protection of God, but their god did not hear, did not see. He
was deaf and blind. He was willing that his enemies should torture his
friends.
Nations tried to destroy each other for the sake of God, and the banner
of the cross dripping with blood floated over a thousand fields--but the
god was silent. He neither knew nor cared. Pestilence covered the earth
with dead, the priests prayed, the altars were heaped with sacrifices,
but the god did not see, did not hear. The miseries of the world did
not lessen the joys of heaven. The clouds gave no rain, the famine came,
withered babes with pallid lips sought the breasts of dead mothers,
while starving fathers knelt and prayed, but the god did not hear.
Through many centuries millions were enslaved, babes were sold from
mothers, husbands from wives, backs were scarred with the lash. The
poor wretches lifted their clasped hands toward heaven and prayed for
justice, for liberty--but their god did not hear. He cared nothing for
the sufferings of slaves, nothing for the tears of wives and mothers,
nothing for the agony of men. He answered no prayers. He broke no
chains. He freed no slaves.
The miserable wretches appealed to the priests of God, but they were on
the other side. They defended the masters. The slaves had nothing to
give.
During all these years it was claimed by the theologians that their
God was governing the world, that he was infinitely powerful, wise and
good--and that the "powers" of the earth were "ordained" by him. During
all these years the church was the enemy of progress. It hated all
physicians and told the people to rely on prayer, amulets and relics.
It persecuted the astronomers and geologists, denounced them as infidels
and atheists, as enemies of the human race. It poisoned the fountains of
learning and insisted that teachers should distort the facts in nature
to the end that they might harmonize with the "inspired" book. During
all these years the church misdirected the energies of man, and when it
reached the zenith of its power, darkness fell upon the world.
In all nations and in all ages, religion has failed. The gods have never
interfered. Nature has produced and destroyed without mercy and without
hatred. She has cared no more for man than for the leaves of the forest,
no more for nations than for hills of ants, nothing for right or wrong,
for life or death, for pain or joy.
Man through his intelligence must protect himself. He gets no help from
any other world. The church has always claimed and still claims that
it is the only reforming power, that it makes men honest, virtuous
and merciful, that it prevents violence and war, and that without its
influence the race would return to barbarism.
Nothing can exceed the absurdity of these claims.
If we wish to improve the condition of mankind--if we wish for nobler
men and women we must develop the brain, we must encourage thought
and investigation. We must convince the world that credulity is
a vice,--that there is no virtue in believing without, or against
evidence, and that the really honest man is true to himself. We must
fill the world with intellectual light. We must applaud mental courage.
We must educate the children, rescue them from ignorance and crime.
School-houses are the real temples, and teachers are the true priests.
We must supply the wants of the mind, satisfy the hunger of the brain.
The people should be familiar with the great poets, with the tragedies
of AEschylus, the dramas of Shakespeare, with the poetry of Homer and
Virgil. Shakespeare should be taught in every school, found in every
house.
Through photography the whole world may become acquainted with the great
statues, the great paintings, the victories of art. In this way the mind
is enlarged, the sympathies quickened, the appreciation of the beautiful
intensified, the taste refined and the character ennobled.
The great novels should be read by all. All should be acquainted with
the men and women of fiction, with the ideal world. The imagination
should be developed, trained and strengthened. Superstition has degraded
art and literature. It gave us winged monsters, scenes from heaven and
hell, representations of gods and devils, sculptured the absurd and
painted the impossible in the name of Art. It gave us the dreams of the
insane, the lives of fanatical saints, accounts of miracles and wonders,
of cures wrought by the bones of the dead, descriptions of Paradise,
purgatory and the eternal dungeon, discourses on baptism, on changing
wine and wafers into the the blood and flesh of God, on the
forgiveness of sins by priests, on fore-ordination and accountability,
predestination and free will, on devils, ghosts and goblins, the
ministrations of guardian angels, the virtue of belief and the
wickedness of doubt. And this was called "sacred literature."
The church taught that those who believed, counted beads, mumbled
prayers, and gave their time or property for the support of the gospel
were the good and that all others were traveling the "broad road" to
eternal pain. According to the theologians, the best people, the
saints, were dead, and real beauty was to be found only in heaven. They
denounced the joys of life as husks and filthy rags, declared that the
world had been cursed, and that it brought forth thistles and thorns
because of the sins of man. They regarded the earth as a kind of dock,
running out into the sea of eternity,--on which the pious waited for the
ship on which they were to be transported to another world.
But the real poets and the real artists clung to this world, to this
life. They described and represented things that exist. They expressed
thoughts of the brain, emotions of the heart, the griefs and joys, the
hope and despair of men and women. They found strength and beauty
on every hand. They found their angels here. They were true to human
experience and they touched the brain and heart of the world. In
the tragedies and comedies of life, in the smiles and tears, in the
ecstasies of love, in the darkness of death, in the dawn of hope, they
found their materials for statue and song, for poem and painting. Poetry
and art are the children of this world, born and nourished here. They
are human. They have left the winged monsters of heaven, the malicious
deformities of hell, and have turned their attention to men and women,
to the things of this life.
There is a poem called "The Skylark," by Shelley, graceful as the
motions of flames. Another by Robert Burns, called "The Daisy,"
exquisite, perfect as the pearl of virtue in the beautiful breast of a
loving girl. Between this lark and this daisy, neither above nor below,
you will find all the poetry of the world. Eloquence, sublimity, poetry
and art must have the foundation of fact, of reality. Imaginary worlds
and beings are nothing to us.
At last the old creeds are becoming cruel and vulgar. We now have
imagination enough to put ourselves in the place of others. Believers
in hell, in eternal pain, like murderers, lack imagination. The murderer
has not imagination enough to see his victim dead. He does not see the
sightless and pathetic eyes. He does not see the widow's arms about the
corpse, her lips upon the dead. He does not hear the sobs of children.
He does not see the funeral. He does not hear the clods as they fall on
the coffin. He does not feel the hand of arrest, the scene of the trial
is not before him. He does not hear the awful verdict, the sentence of
the court, the last words. He does not see the scaffold, nor feel about
his throat the deadly noose.
Let us develop the brain, civilize the heart, and give wings to the
imagination.