Those who have read the foregoing articles on the Holy Coat exhibitions
at Treves and Argenteuil may think that enough space has been devoted
to such a ridiculous subject. It is possible, however, that the present
article will induce them to alter that opinion.
Hitherto we have treated this outburst of Christian superstition
with jocosity, but there is a serious aspect of it which must not be
neglected. Christianity has often made Freethinkers laugh, but not
unfrequently it has made them weep tears of blood. Absurdity is not
always a laughing matter. There was a comic side to the orthodox
persecution of Charles Bradlaugh--but it killed him. Bigotry and
superstition are fit subjects for jest and ridicule; when they gain
power, however, they are apt to substitute agony for laughter. Celsus
ridiculed Christianity in the second century; in the fourth his writings
were absolutely destroyed, and those who shared his opinions, and dared
to express them, were on the high road to the prison and the stake.
More recent events teach the same lesson. Thomas Paine treated
Christianity not only with trenchant argument, but also with brilliant
derision. For this he suffered ostracism and calumny, and for publishing
the _Age of Reason_ Richard Carlile, his wife, his sister, and his
shopmen rotted in English gaols. The _Freethinker_ derided Christian
absurdities, and its conductors were sent to herd with criminals in a
Christian prison. Nearly everyone thought, as Sir James Stephen declared
in a legal text-book, that the Blasphemy Laws were obsolete; but it was
proved by the inexorable logic of fact that laws are never obsolete
until they are repealed. While the Blasphemy Laws exist they are always
liable to enforcement. They are the standing menace of an absurd creed
to those who smile at it too ostentatiously.
Let us extend the same line of reflection to this Holy Coat business.
Contemptible as it is to the eye of reason, it excites the piety of
millions of persons who never reasoned on religion in the whole course
of their lives. Hundreds of thousands of men and women will visit
these sham relics of a Savior whose own existence is open to dispute.
Superstition will be stirred to its depths. The bestial instinct of
spiritual slavery inherited from ancient semi-human progenitors will be
intensely stimulated. The sacred function of priests will be heightened
and intensified. Nor must it be forgotten that the pecuniary offerings
of the pilgrims will fill the coffers of Holy Mother Church, who
promises heaven to her dupes and seizes wealth and power for herself on
earth.
Superstition is scotched, but not slain. It has life enough to be a
peril to civilisation. The faith which wrecked "the grandeur that was
Greece and the glory that was Rome"--the faith which buried the science,
art, philosophy and literature of antiquity under a monstrous heap of
brutal rubbish, out of which they were slowly and painfully excavated
after the lapse of a thousand years--this same faith is still a danger
to the highest welfare of mankind; to its reason, its conscience, its
sense of dignity, and its spirit of brotherhood; above all, to freedom
of thought, which is the sole guarantee of real and durable progress.
If we turn to Russia, we see at a single glance the fruits of
superstition and its twin-sister tyranny. The Czar is the head of the
Church and the head of the State; not like Queen Victoria, whose sacred
function is only indicated in Latin on our coinage, but in literal,
prosaic fact. By means of a swarm of ignorant, and often drunken
and immoral priests, the masses of the people are kept in wretched
subjection--hewers of wood and drawers of water, toilers for the huge
army of officials, aristocrats, and princes--and conscripts for the
army; while the best and noblest, in whom there still throbs the pulse
of freedom, blacken the highways to the mines of Siberia, where hell is
more than realised on earth, and the dreams of sour-blooded theologians
are outdone in misery and horror. *
Over the rest of Europe, even in France, the secular State is often as
insecure as the footsteps of travellers over thin crusts of volcanic
soil. Bismarck, the Titan, whose great work, with all its defects
and failings, may appeal from the clamorous passing hour to the quiet
verdict of history, only kept the Catholic Church and its Jesuits in
check for a generation. He could not impair its vitality nor diminish
its latent power. It is in Germany that the Coat of Christ is being
exhibited, with priests and professors joining hands at the brazen
ceremony of imposture; in Germany that myriads of pilgrims are wending
their way to the shrine of an idolatry as ignominious as anything that
Christianity ever supplanted.
Even in France the one great danger to the Republic is Christian
superstition. It is the Church, her priests and her devotees, that
furnish the real strength of every reactionary movement. That consummate
charlatan, General Boulanger, took to going to church and cultivating
orthodoxy when at the height of his aspiration for power. Happily he was
defeated by the men of light and leading. Happily, too, the ablest
and most trusted leaders of public life in France are on the side of
Freethought. It is this, more than anything else, that makes the
country of Voltaire the beacon of civilisation as well as the "martyr of
democracy."
Charles Bradlaugh, on a very solemn occasion, warned the Freethought
party that even in England their great fight would ultimately be with
the Catholic Church. He knew that superstition was scotched, but he
also knew it was far from slain. While Freethinkers are laughing at this
exhibition of old rags, called the Coat of Christ, they should pause for
a moment to consider the serious meaning of such a grotesque display of
superstition in the land of Goethe and Heine, and in the age of Darwin.
Let us jest round our camp-fires, but let us grip our sword-hilts as we
hear the cries, the jingle of weapons, and the tramp of men in the camp
of our enemy.