By Eld. A. I. Maynard.
An infidel production was submitted to Benjamin Franklin manuscript; he
returned it to the author with a letter, from which the following
quotations are extracted: “I would advise you not to attempt unchaining
the Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other
person.... If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without
it?” He informs us that he was “an advocate of infidelity in his early
youth, a confirmed Deist.” He says his “arguments perverted some other
young persons, particularly Collins and Ralph, and when he recollected
that they both treated him exceedingly ill without the least remorse, and
also remembered the behavior of Keith, another ‘Freethinker,’ and his own
conduct toward Vernon and a Miss Reed, which at times gave him great
uneasiness, he was led to suspect that his theory, if true, was not very
useful.”
Youth and inexperience have been the secret of many young persons being
led astray, like Franklin, by infidel speculations; but age and
observation have convinced many of them that all infidel speculations are
empty and worthless. Look at the history of infidelity in France and
Scotland, and then look at liberalism in America, with Col. Ingersoll
leading the van. Can’t you see that its only tendency is to loosen the
restraints of morality and “unchain the Tiger?”
The inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes, have need of all
the motives of religion to lead them from vice, to support their virtue,
and retain them in its practice until it becomes habitual.
Unbeliever, if you read this article, and remember that you have prepared
one sentence to cut one cord that helps to hold the Tiger, _burn it_. Do
not unchain the animal. Would you substitute infidelity for Christianity,
for the religion of the Bible? Would you do that in this country? The
enemies of this religion confess that its code of morals is holy, just and
good, its doctrine is dignified and glorious; its tendency is to purity
and peace; “it is pure, peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full
of mercy and good fruits; without partiality, and without hypocrisy.”
Montesquieu, the publisher of the Persian letters and president of the
parliament of Bordeaux, says: “The Christian religion, which ordains that
men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation
blessed with the best political and civil laws, because these, next to
religion, are the greatest good that men can have.”
The Congress of 1776, speaking of religion, declared it was the “only
solid basis of public liberty and happiness.” General Washington said it
was “one of the great pillars of human happiness, and the firmest prop of
the duties of men and citizens.” What could we gain by exchanging it for
Deism, or Atheism, or Ingersollism? Infidelity proposes to break down the
altars of prayer, take away our Bibles and our days of worship, shut up
the doors against all our Sunday-schools and turn more than a million of
children into the streets, away from sweet song and moralizing influences,
and the pure morals of the gospel of Christ. This would bereave the living
of his rule of life, and rob the dying of the antidote of death.
Shall we “unchain the Tiger”—_unbelief_? What would it bring us in return?
Its doctrines are vague speculations, founded on neither data nor
evidence; some of its supporters believe in some kind of a God, while some
deny every God; some few believe in the immortality of the soul, while a
majority, with the French infidels, write over the gates of their
cemeteries, “Death is eternal sleep.”
In looking over the various infidel productions I think of the old saying,
“Be sure you are right, and then go ahead.” There is no certainty in their
speculations. They do not agree even in their so-called moral code, nor,
as yet, in their doctrinal speculations.
Lord Herbert and the Earl of Shaftesbury thought that the light of nature
would teach all men, without the aid of revelation, to observe the
morality of the Bible. Spinosa and Hobbes, one believing in a God, and the
other an Atheist, agreed that there was nothing that was either right or
wrong in its own nature; and also agreed “that every man had a right to
obtain, either by force or fraud, everything which either his reason or
his passions prompted him to believe was useful to himself—duties to the
State were his only duties.”
Blount, another Freethinker, supposed “that the moral law of nature
justified self-murder.” Lord Bolingbroke claimed that it enjoined
polygamy; and neither Blount nor Bolingbroke prohibited fornication, or
adultery, or incest, except between parents and children.
But the vagueness and uncertainty of the doctrinal speculations of
infidelity, and the looseness and immorality of its rules of life, are not
the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced
in the history of our world, has been evil, and _only_ evil. France, at
the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The
profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the
Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his
associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of
society. The people of France were taught by their literati that the Bible
was at war with their liberties; and that they could never expect to
overturn the throne till they had, first, broken down the “altar.” HERE
THE TIGER WAS UNCHAINED!
The lusts and passions of man were set free from the restraints of
Christianity, and the bloody history of that nation, in its devotion to
infidelity, should convince every man that infidelity only “_unchained the
tiger_”! It did France no good, _but much evil_. In this state of things
France needed revolution, as America did, and had she engaged in it, with
as pious reliance upon God, “and with the hearts of her people deeply
imbued with the morality of the Bible, the scion of liberty, carried in
the honored Lafayette from this country,” would have taken deep root, and
spread forth its branches; and ere this time the fairest portion of Europe
might have reposed under its shadow. But her principles poisoned her
morals, and her immorality disqualified her for freedom. After expending
an incredible amount of treasure, and sacrificing more than two million of
men, she consented to be ruled by a despot in hope of some protection from
her own people, and in hope of some security against the animal which she
had unchained.
With such facts before us, let us Americans decide, not merely as
Christians, but as “patriots and fathers,” whether we will cling to the
pure “Gospel of Jesus Christ,” given to us in the love of Heaven, and in
the blood of Jesus, rather than accept in its stead the empty, Godless,
Christless, good-for-nothing negative of God and Christ and Christianity.
The chief article in the unbeliever’s creed is in these words, “I believe
in all unbelief.”
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Will not our friends take interest enough in the JOURNAL to increase its
circulation. There is no reason why it should not be immediately doubled,
and thus placed upon a solid basis. It is our intention to make it a
thorough defense of the truth, so much so that all will relish it, and
remember it with delight.