In this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact
about institutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have
become the means of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of
necessity be taken as an attack upon that class; it will be
literally a crime--robbing the priests of their age-long
privileges. And of course they will oppose the robber--using
every weapon of terrorism, both of this world and the next. They
will require the submission, not merely of their own people, but
of their neighbors, and their jealousy of rival priestly castes
will be a cause of wars. The story of the early days of mankind
is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the name of ten
thousand butcher-gods.
Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how
the priests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish
called "the ark"; and how the people of one tribe violated this
fetish and wakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god.
And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked
into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty
thousand and three score and ten men; and the people lamented,
because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great
slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand
before this holy Lord God?
This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a
jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through
his ministers precise instructions for the most revolting
cruelties, the extermination of whole nations of men, women and
children, whose sole offense was that they did not pay tribute to
Jehovah's priests. Thus, for example, the chief of his prophets,
Moses, called the people together, and with all solemnity, and
with many warnings, handed down ten commandments graven upon
stone tablets; he went on to set forth how the people were to set
upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them these blood-thirsty
instructions:
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee,
the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the
Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the
Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when
the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite
them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor shew mercy unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with
them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images,
and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with
fire. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
The records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent
his chosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew
all the males, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth,
and commanded them to kill all the married women, and to take the
single women "for themselves". We are told that sixteen thousand
single women were spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty
and two!" In the Book of Joshua we read that he had an interview
with a supernatural personage called "the captain of the Lord's
host", and how this captain had given to him a magic spell which
would destroy the city of Jericho. The city should be accursed,
"even it and all that are therein, to the Lord"; every living
thing except one traitor-harlot was to be slaughtered, and all
the wealth of the city reserved to the priestly caste. This was
carried out to the letter, except that "Achan, the son of Carmi,
the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took
of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold and silver in
his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and everybody
knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes and
fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and
got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty
man should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."
And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah,
and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his
sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his
sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them
unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled
us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned
him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned
him with stones.
We have no means of knowing what was the character of the
unfortunate inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the
Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of
the victims of Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew
priests that they sacrificed their children to their gods; but
then, consider what we should believe about the Hebrew religion,
if we took the word of rival priestly castes! Consider, for
example, that in this twentieth century we saw an orthodox Jew
tried in a Russian court of law for having made a sacrifice of
Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews represent a
considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of Russia. We
know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture and
all of the scientific knowledge of Spain; that the Huguenots had
most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that
they were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes
of the Middle Ages.