[* At the usual weekly meeting of the Baptist ministers at the
Publication Rooms yesterday, the Rev. Dr. B. F. Morse read an essay
on "Christianity vs. Materialism." His contention was that all
nature showed that design, not evolution, was its origin.
In his concluding remarks Dr. Morse said that he knew from
unquestionable authority, that Robert G. Ingersoll did not believe
what he uttered in his lectures, and that to get out of a financial
embarrassment he looked around for a money making scheme that could
be put into immediate execution. To lecture against Christianity
was the most rapid way of giving him the needed cash and, what was
quite as acceptable to him, at the same time, notoriety.]
This aquatic or web-footed theologian who expects to go to heaven
by diving is not worth answering. Nothing can be more idiotic than
to answer an argument by saying he who makes it does not believe
it. Belief has nothing to do with the cogency or worth of an
argument. There is another thing. This man, or rather this
minister, says that I attacked Christianity simply to make money.
Is it possible that, after preachers have had the field for eighteen
hundred years, the way to make money is to attack the clergy? Is
this intended as a slander against me or the ministers?
The trouble is that my arguments cannot be answered. All the
preachers in the world cannot prove that slavery is better than
liberty. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to
think. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to express
their thoughts. They cannot show that a decent God will punish a
decent man for making the best guess he can. This is all there is
about it.
--_The Herald_, New York, December 14, 1886.
INGERSOLL ON McGLYNN.
The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church in Dr. McGlynn's case is
consistent with the history and constitution of the Catholic Church
--perfectly consistent with its ends, its objects, and its means--
and just as perfectly inconsistent with intellectual liberty and
the real civilization of the human race.
When a man becomes a Catholic priest, he has been convinced that
he ought not to think for himself upon religious questions. He
has become convinced that the church is the only teacher--that he
has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that
moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome,
and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until
the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing
to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up
his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up
theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure
of turning a crank belonging to somebody below him.
Of course, the Catholic Church is supposed to be the only perfect
institution on earth. All others are not only imperfect, but
unnecessary. All others have been made either by man, or by the
Devil, or by a partnership, and consequently cannot be depended
upon for the civilization of man.
The Catholic Church gets its power directly from God, and is the
only institution now in the world founded by God. There was never
any other, so far as I know, except polygamy and slavery and a
crude kind of monarchy, and they have been, for the most part,
abolished.
The Catholic Church must be true to itself. It must claim everything,
and get what it can. It alone is infallible. It alone has all
the wisdom of this world. It alone has the right to exist. All
other interests are secondary. To be a Catholic is of the first
importance. Human liberty is nothing. Wealth, position, food,
clothing, reputation, happiness--all these are less than worthless
compared with what the Catholic Church promises to the man who will
throw all these away.
A priest must preach what his bishop tells him. A bishop must
preach what his archbishop tells him. The pope must preach what
he says God tells him.
Dr. McGlynn cannot make a compromise with the Catholic Church. It
never compromises when it is in the majority.
I do not mean by this that the Catholic Church is worse than any
other. All are alike in this regard. Every sect, no matter how
insignificant; every church, no matter how powerful, asks precisely
the same thing from every member--that is to say, a surrender of
intellectual freedom. The Catholic Church wants the same as the
Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Methodist--it wants the whole
earth. It is ambitious to be the one supreme power. It hopes to
see the world upon its knees, with all its tongues thrust out for
wafers. It has the arrogance of humility and the ferocity of
universal forgiveness. In this respect it resembles every other
sect. Every religion is a system of slavery.
Of course, the religionists say that they do not believe in
persecution; that they do not believe in burning and hanging and
whipping or loading with chains a man simply because he is an
Infidel. They are willing to leave all this with God, knowing that
a being of infinite goodness will inflict all these horrors and
tortures upon an honest man who differs with the church.
In case Dr. McGlynn is deprived of his priestly functions, it is
hard to say what effect it will have upon his church and the labor
party in the country.
So long as a man believes that a church has eternal joy in store
for him, so long as he believes that a church holds within its hand
the keys of heaven and hell, it will be hard to make him trade off
the hope of everlasting happiness for a few good clothes and a
little good food and higher wages here. He finally thinks that,
after all, he had better work for less and go a little hungry, and
be an angel forever.
I hope, however, that a good many people who have been supporting
the Catholic Church by giving tithes of the wages of weariness will
see, and clearly see, that Catholicism is not their friend; that
the church cannot and will not support them; that, on the contrary,
they must support the church. I hope they will see that all the
prayers have to be paid for, although not one has ever been answered.
I hope they will perceive that the church is on the side of wealth
and power, that the mitre is the friend of the crown, that the
altar is the sworn brother of the throne. I hope they will finally
know that the church cares infinitely more for the money of the
millionaire than for the souls of the poor.
Of course, there are thousands of individual exceptions. I am
speaking of the church as an institution, as a corporation--and
when I say the church, I include all churches. It is said of
corporations in general, that they have no soul, and it may truthfully
be said of the church that it has less than any other. It lives
on alms. It gives nothing for what it gets. It has no sympathy.
Beggars never weep over the misfortunes of other beggars.
Nothing could give me more pleasure than to see the Catholic Church
on the side of human freedom; nothing more pleasure than to see
the Catholics of the world--those who work and weep and toil--
sensible enough to know that all the money paid for superstition
is worse than lost. I wish they could see that the counting of
beads, and the saying of prayers and celebrating of masses, and
all the kneelings and censer-swingings and fastings and bell-ringing,
amount to less than nothing--that all these things tend only to
the degradation of mankind. It is hard, I know, to find an antidote
for a poison that was mingled with a mother's milk.
The laboring masses, so far as the Catholics are concerned, are
filled with awe and wonder and fear about the church. This fear
began to grow while they were being rocked in their cradles, and
they still imagine that the church has some mysterious power; that
it is in direct communication with some infinite personality that
could, if it desired, strike then dead, or damn their souls forever.
Persons who have no such belief, who care nothing for popes or
priests or churches or heavens or hells or devils or gods, have
very little idea of the power of fear.
The old dogmas filled the brain with strange monsters. The soul
of the orthodox Christian gropes and wanders and crawls in a kind
of dungeon, where the strained eyes see fearful shapes, and the
frightened flesh shrinks from the touch of serpents.
The good part of Christianity--that is to say, kindness, morality
--will never go down. The cruel part ought to go down. And by
the cruel part I mean the doctrine of eternal punishment--of allowing
the good to suffer for the bad--allowing innocence to pay the debt
of guilt. So the foolish part of Christianity--that is to say,
the miraculous--will go down. The absurd part must perish. But
there will be no war about it as there was in France. Nobody
believes enough in the foolish part of Christianity now to fight
for it. Nobody believes with intensity enough in miracles to
shoulder a musket. There is probably not a Christian in New York
willing to fight for any story, no matter if the story is so old
that it is covered with moss. No mentally brave and intelligent
man believes in miracles, and no intelligent man cares whether
there was a miracle or not, for the reason that every intelligent
man knows that the miraculous has no possible connection with the
moral. "Thou shalt not steal," is just as good a commandment if
it should turn out that the flood was a drouth. "Thou shalt not
murder," is a good and just and righteous law, and whether any
particular miracle was ever performed or not has nothing to do with
the case. There is no possible relation between these things.
I am on the side not only of the physically oppressed, but of the
mentally oppressed. I hate those who put lashes on the body, and
I despise those who put the soul in chains. In other words, I am
in favor of liberty. I do not wish that any man should be the
slave of his fellow-men, or that the human race should be the slaves
of any god, real or imaginary. Man has the right to think for
himself, to work for himself, to take care of himself, to get bread
for himself, to get a home for himself. He has a right to his own
opinion about God, and heaven and hell; the right to learn any art
or mystery or trade; the right to work for whom he will, for what
he will, and when he will.
The world belongs to the human race. There is to be no war in this
country on religious opinions, except a war of words--a conflict
of thoughts, of facts; and in that conflict the hosts of superstition
will go down. They may not be defeated to-day, or to-morrow, or
next year, or during this century, but they are growing weaker day
by day.
This priest, McGlynn, has the courage to stand up against the
propaganda. What would have been his fate a few years ago? What
would have happened to him in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy--in any
other country that was Catholic--only a few years ago? Yet he
stands here in New York, he refuses to obey God's vicegerent; he
freely gives his mind to an archbishop; he holds the holy Inquisition
in contempt. He has done a great thing. He is undoubtedly an
honest man. He never should have been a Catholic. He has no
business in that church. He has ideas of his own--theories, and
seems to be governed by principles. The Catholic Church is not
his place. If he remains, he must submit, he must kneel in the
humility of abjectness; he must receive on the back of his independence
the lashes of the church. If he remains, he must ask the forgiveness
of slaves for having been a man. If he refuses to submit, the
church will not have him. He will be driven to take his choice--
to remain a member, humiliated, shunned, or go out into the great,
free world a citizen of the Republic, with the rights, responsibilities,
and duties of an American citizen.
I believe that Dr. McGlynn is an honest man, and that he really
believes in the land theories of Mr. George. I have no confidence
in his theories, but I have confidence that he is actuated by the
best and noblest motives.
_Question_. Are you to go on the lecture platform again?
_Answer_. I expect to after a while. I am now waiting for the
church to catch up. I got so far ahead that I began almost to
sympathize with the clergy. They looked so helpless and talked in
such a weak, wandering, and wobbling kind of way that I felt as
though I had been cruel. From the papers I see that they are busy
trying to find out who the wife of Cain was. I see that the Rev.
Dr. Robinson, of New York, is now wrestling with that problem. He
begins to be in doubt whether Adam was the first man, whether Eve
was the first woman; suspects that there were other races, and that
Cain did not marry his sister, but somebody else's sister, and that
the somebody else was not Cain's brother. One can hardly over-
estimate the importance of these questions, they have such a direct
bearing on the progress of the world. If it should turn out that
Adam was the first man, or that he was not the first man, something
might happen--I am not prepared to say what, but it might.
It is a curious kind of a spectacle to see a few hundred people
paying a few thousand dollars a year for the purpose of hearing
these great problems discussed: "Was Adam the first man?" "Who
was Cain's wife?" "Has anyone seen a map of the land of Nod?"
"Where are the four rivers that ran murmuring through the groves
of Paradise?" "Who was the snake? How did he walk? What language
did he speak?" This turns a church into a kind of nursery, makes
a cradle of each pew, and gives to each member a rattle with which
he can amuse what he calls his mind.
The great theologians of Andover--the gentlemen who wear the brass
collars furnished by the dead founder--have been disputing among
themselves as to what is to become of the heathen who fortunately
died before meeting any missionary from that institution. One can
almost afford to be damned hereafter for the sake of avoiding the
dogmas of Andover here. Nothing more absurd and childish has ever
happened--not in the intellectual, but in the theological world.
There is no need of the Freethinkers saying anything at present.
The work is being done by the church members themselves. They are
beginning to ask questions of the clergy. They are getting tired
of the old ideas--tired of the consolations of eternal pain--tired
of hearing about hell--tired of hearing the Bible quoted or talked
about--tired of the scheme of redemption--tired of the Trinity, of
the plenary inspiration of the barbarous records of a barbarous
people--tired of the patriarchs and prophets--tired of Daniel and
the goats with three horns, and the image with the clay feet, and
the little stone that rolled down the hill--tired of the mud man
and the rib woman--tired of the flood of Noah, of the astronomy of
Joshua, the geology of Moses--tired of Kings and Chronicles and
Lamentations--tired of the lachrymose Jeremiah--tired of the
monstrous, the malicious, and the miraculous. In short, they are
beginning to think. They have bowed their necks to the yoke of
ignorance and fear and impudence and superstition, until they are
weary. They long to be free. They are tired of the services--
tired of the meaningless prayers--tired of hearing each other say,
"Hear us, good Lord"--tired of the texts, tired of the sermons,
tired of the lies about spontaneous combustion as a punishment for
blasphemy, tired of the bells, and they long to hear the doxology
of superstition. They long to have Common Sense lift its hands in
benediction and dismiss the congregation.
--_Brooklyn Citizen_, April, 1886.