_Question_. I see that the clergy are still making all kinds of
charges against you and your doctrines.
_Answer_. Yes. Some of the charges are true and some of them are
not. I suppose that they intend to get in the vicinity of veracity,
and are probably stating my belief as it is honestly misunderstood
by them. I admit that I have said and that I still think that
Christianity is a blunder. But the question arises, What is
Christianity? I do not mean, when I say that Christianity is a
blunder, that the morality taught by Christians is a mistake.
Morality is not distinctively Christian, any more than it is
Mohammedan. Morality is human, it belongs to no ism, and does not
depend for a foundation upon the supernatural, or upon any book,
or upon any creed. Morality is itself a foundation. When I say
that Christianity is a blunder, I mean all those things distinctively
Christian are blunders. It is a blunder to say that an infinite
being lived in Palestine, learned the carpenter's trade, raised
the dead, cured the blind, and cast out devils, and that this God
was finally assassinated by the Jews. This is absurd. All these
statements are blunders, if not worse. I do not believe that Christ
ever claimed that he was of supernatural origin, or that he wrought
miracles, or that he would rise from the dead. If he did, he was
mistaken--honestly mistaken, perhaps, but still mistaken.
The morality inculcated by Mohammed is good. The immorality
inculcated by Mohammed is bad. If Mohammed was a prophet of God,
it does not make the morality he taught any better, neither does
it make the immorality any better or any worse.
By this time the whole world ought to know that morality does not
need to go into partnership with miracles. Morality is based upon
the experience of mankind. It does not have to learn of inspired
writers, or of gods, or of divine persons. It is a lesson that
the whole human race has been learning and learning from experience.
He who upholds, or believes in, or teaches, the miraculous, commits
a blunder.
Now, what is morality? Morality is the best thing to do under the
circumstances. Anything that tends to the happiness of mankind is
moral. Anything that tends to unhappiness is immoral. We apply
to the moral world rules and regulations as we do in the physical
world. The man who does justice, or tries to do so--who is honest
and kind and gives to others what he claims for himself, is a moral
man. All actions must be judged by their consequences. Where the
consequences are good, the actions are good. Where the consequences
are bad, the actions are bad; and all consequences are learned from
experience. After we have had a certain amount of experience, we
then reason from analogy. We apply our logic and say that a certain
course will bring destruction, another course will bring happiness.
There is nothing inspired about morality--nothing supernatural.
It is simply good, common sense, going hand in hand with kindness.
Morality is capable of being demonstrated. You do not have to take
the word of anybody; you can observe and examine for yourself.
Larceny is the enemy of industry, and industry is good; therefore
larceny is immoral. The family is the unit of good government;
anything that tends to destroy the family is immoral. Honesty is
the mother of confidence; it united, combines and solidifies society.
Dishonesty is disintegration; it destroys confidence; it brings
social chaos; it is therefore immoral.
I also admit that I regard the Mosaic account of the creation as
an absurdity--as a series of blunders. Probably Moses did the best
he could. He had never talked with Humboldt or Laplace. He knew
nothing of geology or astronomy. He had not the slightest suspicion
of Kepler's Three Laws. He never saw a copy of Newton's Principia.
Taking all these things into consideration, I think Moses did the
best he could.
The religious people say now that "days" did not mean days. Of
these "six days" they make a kind of telescope, which you can push
in or draw out at pleasure. If the geologists find that more time
was necessary they will stretch them out. Should it turn out that
the world is not quite as old as some think, they will push them
up. The "six days" can now be made to suit any period of time.
Nothing can be more childish, frivolous or contradictory.
Only a few years ago the Mosaic account was considered true, and
Moses was regarded as a scientific authority. Geology and astronomy
were measured by the Mosaic standard. The opposite is now true.
The church has changed; and instead of trying to prove that modern
astronomy and geology are false, because they do not agree with
Moses, it is now endeavoring to prove that the account by Moses is
true, because it agrees with modern astronomy and geology. In
other words, the standard has changed; the ancient is measured by
the modern, and where the literal statement in the Bible does not
agree with modern discoveries, they do not change the discoveries,
but give new meanings to the old account. We are not now endeavoring
to reconcile science with the Bible, but to reconcile the Bible
with science.
Nothing shows the extent of modern doubt more than the eagerness
with which Christians search for some new testimony. Luther answered
Copernicus with a passage of Scripture, and he answered him to the
satisfaction of orthodox ignorance.
The truth is that the Jews adopted the stories of Creation, the
Garden of Eden, Forbidden Fruit, and the Fall of Man. They were
told by older barbarians than they, and the Jews gave them to us.
I never said that the Bible is all bad. I have always admitted
that there are many good and splendid things in the Jewish Scriptures,
and many bad things. What I insist is that we should have the
courage and the common sense to accept the good, and throw away
the bad. Evil is not good because found in good company, and truth
is still truth, even when surrounded by falsehood.
_Question_. I see that you are frequently charged with disrespect
toward your parents--with lack of reverence for the opinions of
your father?
_Answer_. I think my father and mother upon several religious
questions were mistaken. In fact, I have no doubt that they were;
but I never felt under the slightest obligation to defend my father's
mistakes. No one can defend what he thinks is a mistake, without
being dishonest. That is a poor way to show respect for parents.
Every Protestant clergyman asks men and women who had Catholic
parents to desert the church in which they were raised. They have
no hesitation in saying to these people that their fathers and
mothers were mistaken, and that they were deceived by priests and
popes.
The probability is that we are all mistaken about almost everything;
but it is impossible for a man to be respectable enough to make a
mistake respectable. There is nothing remarkably holy in a blunder,
or praiseworthy in stubbing the toe of the mind against a mistake.
Is it possible that logic stands paralyzed in the presence of
paternal absurdity? Suppose a man has a bad father; is he bound
by the bad father's opinion, when he is satisfied that the opinion
is wrong? How good does a father have to be, in order to put his
son under obligation to defend his blunders? Suppose the father
thinks one way, and the mother the other; what are the children to
do? Suppose the father changes his opinion; what then? Suppose
the father thinks one way and the mother the other, and they both
die when the boy is young; and the boy is bound out; whose mistakes
is he then bound to follow? Our missionaries tell the barbarian
boy that his parents are mistaken, that they know nothing, and that
the wooden god is nothing but a senseless idol. They do not hesitate
to tell this boy that his mother believed lies, and hugged, it may
be to her dying heart, a miserable delusion. Why should a barbarian
boy cast reproach upon his parents?
I believe it was Christ who commanded his disciples to leave father
and mother; not only to leave them, but to desert them; and not
only to desert father and mother, but to desert wives and children.
It is also told of Christ that he said that he came to set fathers
against children and children against fathers. Strange that a
follower of his should object to a man differing in opinion from
his parents! The truth is, logic knows nothing of consanguinity;
facts have no relatives but other facts; and these facts do not
depend upon the character of the person who states them, or upon
the position of the discoverer. And this leads me to another branch
of the same subject.
The ministers are continually saying that certain great men--kings,
presidents, statesmen, millionaires--have believed in the inspiration
of the Bible. Only the other day, I read a sermon in which Carlyle
was quoted as having said that "the Bible is a noble book." That
all may be and yet the book not be inspired. But what is the simple
assertion of Thomas Carlyle worth? If the assertion is based upon
a reason, then it is worth simply the value of the reason, and the
reason is worth just as much without the assertion, but without
the reason the assertion is worthless. Thomas Carlyle thought,
and solemnly put the thought in print, that his father was a greater
man than Robert Burns. His opinion did Burns no harm, and his
father no good. Since reading his "Reminiscences," I have no great
opinion of his opinion. In some respects he was undoubtedly a
great man, in others a small one.
No man should give the opinion of another as authority and in place
of fact and reason, unless he is willing to take all the opinions
of that man. An opinion is worth the warp and woof of fact and
logic in it and no more. A man cannot add to the truthfulness of
truth. In the ordinary business of life, we give certain weight
to the opinion of specialists--to the opinion of doctors, lawyers,
scientists, and historians. Within the domain of the natural, we
take the opinions of our fellow-men; but we do not feel that we
are absolutely bound by these opinions. We have the right to re-
examine them, and if we find they are wrong we feel at liberty to
say so. A doctor is supposed to have studied medicine; to have
examined and explored the questions entering into his profession;
but we know that doctors are often mistaken. We also know that
there are many schools of medicine; that these schools disagree
with one another, and that the doctors of each school disagree with
one another. We also know that many patients die, and so far as
we know, these patients have not come back to tell us whether the
doctors killed them or not. The grave generally prevents a
demonstration. It is exactly the same with the clergy. They have
many schools of theology, all despising each other. Probably no
two members of the same church exactly agree. They cannot demonstrate
their propositions, because between the premise and the logical
conclusion or demonstration, stands the tomb. A gravestone marks
the end of theology. In some cases, the physician can, by a post-
mortem examination, find what killed the patient, but there is no
theological post-mortem. It is impossible, by cutting a body open,
to find where the soul has gone; or whether baptism, or the lack
of it, had the slightest effect upon final destiny. The church,
knowing that there are no facts beyond the coffin, relies upon
opinions, assertions and theories. For this reason it is always
asking alms of distinguished people. Some President wishes to be
re-elected, and thereupon speaks about the Bible as "the corner-
stone of American Liberty." This sentence is a mouth large enough
to swallow any church, and from that time forward the religious
people will be citing that remark of the politician to substantiate
the inspiration of the Scriptures.
The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by
distinguished people, is a mental snob. When we blindly follow
authority we are serfs. When our reason is convinced we are freemen.
It is rare to find a fully rounded and complete man. A man may be
a great doctor and a poor mechanic, a successful politician and a
poor metaphysician, a poor painter and a good poet.
The rarest thing in the world is a logician--that is to say, a man
who knows the value of a fact. It is hard to find mental proportion.
Theories may be established by names, but facts cannot be demonstrated
in that way. Very small people are sometimes right, and very great
people are sometimes wrong. Ministers are sometimes right.
In all the philosophies of the world there are undoubtedly
contradictions and absurdities. The mind of man is imperfect and
perfect results are impossible. A mirror, in order to reflect a
perfect picture, a perfect copy, must itself be perfect. The mind
is a little piece of intellectual glass the surface of which is
not true, not perfect. In consequence of this, every image is more
or less distorted. The less we know, the more we imagine that we
can know; but the more we know, the smaller seems the sum of
knowledge. The less we know, the more we expect, the more we hope
for, and the more seems within the range of probability. The less
we have, the more we want. There never was a banquet magnificent
enough to gratify the imagination of a beggar. The moment people
begin to reason about what they call the supernatural, they seem
to lose their minds. People seem to have lost their reason in
religious matters, very much as the dodo is said to have lost its
wings; they have been restricted to a little inspired island, and
by disuse their reason has been lost.
In the Jewish Scriptures you will find simply the literature of
the Jews. You will find there the tears and anguish of captivity,
patriotic fervor, national aspiration, proverbs for the conduct of
daily life, laws, regulations, customs, legends, philosophy and
folly. These books, of course, were not written by one man, but
by many authors. They do not agree, having been written in different
centuries, under different circumstances. I see that Mr. Beecher
has at last concluded that the Old Testament does not teach the
doctrine of immortality. He admits that from Mount Sinai came no
hope for the dead. It is very curious that we find in the Old
Testament no funeral service. No one stands by the dead and predicts
another life. In the Old Testament there is no promise of another
world. I have sometimes thought that while the Jews were slaves
in Egypt, the doctrine of immortality became hateful. They built
so many tombs; they carried so many burdens to commemorate the
dead; the saw a nation waste its wealth to adorn its graves, and
leave the living naked to embalm the dead, that they concluded the
doctrine was a curse and never should be taught.
_Question_. If the Jews did not believe in immortality, how do
you account for the allusions made to witches and wizards and things
of that nature?
_Answer_. When Saul visited the Witch of Endor, and she, by some
magic spell, called up Samuel, the prophet said: "Why hast thou
disquieted me, to call me up?" He did not say: Why have you called
me from another world? The idea expressed is: I was asleep, why
did you disturb that repose which should be eternal? The ancient
Jews believed in witches and wizards and familiar spirits; but they
did not seem to think that these spirits had once been men and
women. They spoke to them as belonging to another world, a world
to which man would never find his way. At that time it was supposed
that Jehovah and his angels lived in the sky, but that region was
not spoken of as the destined home of man. Jacob saw angels going
up and down the ladder, but not the spirits of those he had known.
There are two cases where it seems that men were good enough to be
adopted into the family of heaven. Enoch was translated, and Elijah
was taken up in a chariot of fire. As it is exceedingly cold at
the height of a few miles, it is easy to see why the chariot was
of fire, and the same fact explains another circumstance--the
dropping of the mantle. The Jews probably believed in the existence
of other beings--that is to say, in angels and gods and evil spirits
--and that they lived in other worlds--but there is no passage
showing that they believed in what we call the immortality of the
soul.
_Question_. Do you believe, or disbelieve, in the immortality of
the soul?
_Answer_. I neither assert nor deny; I simply admit that I do not
know. Upon that subject I am absolutely without evidence. This
is the only world that I was ever in. There may be spirits, but
I have never met them, and do not know that I would recognize a
spirit. I can form no conception of what is called spiritual life.
It may be that I am deficient in imagination, and that ministers
have no difficulty in conceiving of angels and disembodied souls.
I have not the slightest idea how a soul looks, what shape it is,
how it goes from one place to another, whether it walks or flies.
I cannot conceive of the immaterial having form; neither can I
conceive of anything existing without form, and yet the fact that
I cannot conceive of a thing does not prove that the thing does
not exist, but it does prove that I know nothing about it, and that
being so, I ought to admit my ignorance. I am satisfied of a good
many things that I do not know. I am satisfied that there is no
place of eternal torment. I am satisfied that that doctrine has
done more harm than all the religious ideas, other than that, have
done good. I do not want to take any hope from any human heart.
I have no objection to people believing in any good thing--no
objection to their expecting a crown of infinite joy for every
human being. Many people imagine that immortality must be an
infinite good; but, after all, there is something terrible in the
idea of endless life. Think of a river that never reaches the sea;
of a bird that never folds its wings; of a journey that never ends.
Most people find great pleasure in thinking about and in believing
in another world. There the prisoner expects to be free; the slave
to find liberty; the poor man expects wealth; the rich man happiness;
the peasant dreams of power, and the king of contentment. They
expect to find there what they lack here. I do not wish to destroy
these dreams. I am endeavoring to put out the everlasting fires.
A good, cool grave is infinitely better than the fiery furnace of
Jehovah's wrath. Eternal sleep is better than eternal pain. For
my part I would rather be annihilated than to be an angel, with
all the privileges of heaven, and yet have within my breast a heart
that could be happy while those who had loved me in this world were
in perdition.
I most sincerely hope that the future life will fulfill all splendid
dreams; but in the religion of the present day there is no joy.
Nothing is so devoid of comfort, when bending above our dead, as
the assertions of theology unsupported by a single fact. The
promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. From words
spoken eighteen centuries ago, the echoes are so weak, and the
sounds of the clods on the coffin are so loud. Above the grave
what can the honest minister say? If the dead were not a Christian,
what then? What comfort can the orthodox clergyman give to the
widow of an honest unbeliever? If Christianity is true, the other
world will be worse than this. There the many will be miserable,
only the few happy; there the miserable cannot better their condition;
the future has no star of hope, and in the east of eternity there
can never be a dawn.
_Question_. If you take away the idea of eternal punishment, how
do you propose to restrain men; in what way will you influence
conduct for good?
_Answer_. Well, the trouble with religion is that it postpones
punishment and reward to another world. Wrong is wrong, because
it breeds unhappiness. Right is right, because it tends to the
happiness of man. These facts are the basis of what I call the
religion of this world. When a man does wrong, the consequences
follow, and between the cause and effect, a Redeemer cannot step.
Forgiveness cannot form a breastwork between act and consequence.
There should be a religion of the body--a religion that will prevent
deformity, that will refuse to multiply insanity, that will not
propagate disease--a religion that is judged by its consequences in
this world. Orthodox Christianity has taught, and still teaches,
that in this world the difference between the good and the bad is
that the bad enjoy themselves, while the good carry the cross of
virtue with bleeding brows bound and pierced with the thorns of
honesty and kindness. All this, in my judgment, is immoral. The
man who does wrong carries a cross. There is no world, no star,
in which the result of wrong is real happiness. There is no world,
no star, in which the result of doing right is unhappiness. Virtue
and vice must be the same everywhere.
Vice must be vice everywhere, because its consequences are evil;
and virtue must be virtue everywhere, because its consequences are
good. There can be no such thing as forgiveness. These facts are
the only restraining influences possible--the innocent man cannot
suffer for the guilty and satisfy the law.
_Question_. How do you answer the argument, or the fact, that the
church is constantly increasing, and that there are now four hundred
millions of Christians?
_Answer_. That is what I call the argument of numbers. If that
argument is good now, it was always good. If Christians were at
any time in the minority, then, according to this argument,
Christianity was wrong. Every religion that has succeeded has
appealed to the argument of numbers. There was a time when Buddhism
was in a majority. Buddha not only had, but has more followers
then Christ. Success is not a demonstration. Mohammed was a
success, and a success from the commencement. Upon a thousand
fields he was victor. Of the scattered tribes of the desert, he
made a nation, and this nation took the fairest part of Europe from
the followers of the cross. In the history of the world, the
success of Mohammed is unparalleled, but this success does not
establish that he was the prophet of God.
Now, it is claimed that there are some four hundred millions of
Christians. To make that total I am counted as a Christian; I am
one of the fifty or sixty millions of Christians in the United
States--excluding Indians, not taxed. By this census report, we
are all going to heaven--we are all orthodox. At the last great
day we can refer with confidence to the ponderous volumes containing
the statistics of the United States. As a matter of fact, how many
Christians are there in the United States--how many believers in
the inspiration of the Scriptures--how many real followers of
Christ? I will not pretend to give the number, but I will venture
to say that there are not fifty millions. How many in England?
Where are the four hundred millions found? To make this immense
number, they have counted all the Heretics, all the Catholics, all
the Jews, Spiritualists, Universalists and Unitarians, all the
babes, all the idiotic and insane, all the Infidels, all the
scientists, all the unbelievers. As a matter of fact, they have
no right to count any except the orthodox members of the orthodox
churches. There may be more "members" now than formerly, and this
increase of members is due to a decrease of religion. Thousands
of members are only nominal Christians, wearing the old uniform
simply because they do not wish to be charged with desertion. The
church, too, is a kind of social institution, a club with a creed
instead of by-laws, and the creed is never defended unless attacked
by an outsider. No objection is made to the minister because he
is liberal, if he says nothing about it in his pulpit. A man like
Mr. Beecher draws a congregation, not because he is a Christian,
but because he is a genius; not because he is orthodox, but because
he has something to say. He is an intellectual athlete. He is
full of pathos and poetry. He has more description than divinity;
more charity than creed, and altogether more common sense than
theology. For these reasons thousands of people love to hear him.
On the other hand, there are many people who have a morbid desire
for the abnormal--for intellectual deformities--for thoughts that
have two heads. This accounts for the success of some of Mr.
Beecher's rivals.
Christians claim that success is a test of truth. Has any church
succeeded as well as the Catholic? Was the tragedy of the Garden
of Eden a success? Who succeeded there? The last best thought is
not a success, if you mean that only that is a success which has
succeeded, and if you mean by succeeding, that it has won the assent
of the majority. Besides there is no time fixed for the test. Is
that true which succeeds to-day, or next year, or in the next
century? Once the Copernican system was not a success. There is
no time fixed. The result is that we have to wait. A thing to
exist at all has to be, to a certain extent, a success. A thing
cannot even die without having been a success. It certainly
succeeded enough to have life. Presbyterians should remember,
while arguing the majority argument, and the success argument, that
there are far more Catholics than Protestants, and that the Catholics
can give a longer list of distinguished names.
My answer to all this, however, is that the history of the world
shows that ignorance has always been in the majority. There is
one right road; numberless paths that are wrong. Truth is one;
error is many. When a great truth has been discovered, one man
has pitted himself against the world. A few think; the many believe.
The few lead; the many follow. The light of the new day, as it
looks over the window sill of the east, falls at first on only one
forehead.
There is another thing. A great many people pass for Christians
who are not. Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were
returning from church in a carriage. They had listened to a good
orthodox sermon. One said to the other: "I am going to tell you
something--I am going to shock you--I do not believe in the Bible."
And the other replied: "Neither do I."
--_The News_, Detroit, Michigan, January 6, 1884.