"_And every person so offending shall, on conviction, be fined nor
exceeding two hundred dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor not exceeding
twelve months, or both_."
I want you to remember that this statute was passed in England hundreds
of years ago--just in that language. The punishment, however, has
been somewhat changed. In the good old days when the king sat on the
throne--in the good old days when the altar was the right-bower of
the throne--then, instead of saying: "Fined two hundred dollars and
imprisoned one year," it was: "All his goods shall be confiscated; his
tongue shall be bored with a hot iron, and upon his forehead he shall
be branded with the letter B; and for the second offence he shall suffer
death by burning." Those were the good old days when people maintained
the orthodox religion in all its purity and in all its ferocity.
The first question for you, gentlemen, to decide in this case is: Is
this statute constitutional? Is this statute in harmony with, the part
of the constitution of 1844 which says: "The liberty of speech shall not
be abridged"? That is for you to say. Is this law constitutional, or
is it simply an old statute that fell asleep, that was forgotten, that
people simply failed to repeal? I believe I can convince you, if you
will think a moment, that our fathers never intended to establish a
government like that. When they fought for what they believed to be
religious liberty--when they fought for what they believed to be liberty
of speech, they believed that all such statutes would be wiped from the
statute books of all the States.
Let me tell you another reason why I believe this. We have in this
country naturalization laws. People may come here irrespective of their
religion. They must simply swear allegiance to this country--they must
forswear allegiance to every other potentate, prince and power--but they
do not have to change their religion. A Hindoo may become a citizen of
the United States, and the Constitution of the United States, like the
constitution of New Jersey, guarantees religious liberty. That Hindoo
believes in a God--in a God that no Christian does believe in.
He believes in a sacred book that every Christian looks upon as a
collection of falsehoods. He believes, too, in a Savior--in Buddha. Now,
I ask you,--when that man comes here and becomes a citizen--when the
Constitution is about him, above him--has he the right to give his ideas
about his religion? Has he the right to say in New Jersey: "There is
no God except the Supreme Brahm--there is no Savior except Buddha, the
Illuminated, Buddha the Blest"? I say that he has that right--and you
have no right, because in addition to that he says, "You are mistaken;
your God is not God; your Bible is not true, and your religion is a
mistake," to abridge his liberty of speech. He has the right to say it,
and if he has the right to say it, I insist before this Court and before
this jury, that he has the right to give his reasons for saying it; and
in giving those reasons, in maintaining his side, he has the right, not
simply to appeal to history, not simply to the masonry of logic, but
he has the right to shoot the arrows of wit, and to use the smile of
ridicule. Anything that can be laughed out of this world ought not to
stay in it.
So the Persian--the believer in Zoroaster, in the spirits of Good and
Evil, and that the spirit of Evil will finally triumph forever--if that
is his religion--has the right to state it, and the right to give his
reasons for his belief. How infinitely preposterous for you, one of the
States of this Union, to invite a Persian or a Hindoo to come to your
shores. You do not ask him to renounce his God. You ask him to renounce
the Shah. Then when he becomes a citizen, having the rights of every
other citizen, he has the right to defend his religion and to denounce
yours.
There is another thing. What was the spirit of our Government at that
time? You must look at the leading men. Who were they? What were their
opinions? Were most of them as guilty of blasphemy as is the defendant
in this case? Thomas Jefferson--and there is, in my judgment, only one
name on the page of American history greater than his--only one name
for which I have a greater and tenderer reverence--and that is Abraham
Lincoln, because of all men who ever lived and had power, he was the
most merciful. And that is the way to test a man. How does he use power?
Does he want to crush his fellow citizens? Does he like to lock somebody
up in the penitentiary because he has the power of the moment? Does he
wish to use it as a despot, or as a philanthropist--like a devil,
or like a man? Thomas Jefferson entertained about the same views
entertained by the defendant in this case, and he was made President of
the United States. He was the author of the Declaration of Independence,
founder of the University of Virginia, writer of that clause in the
constitution of that State, that made all the citizens equal before the
law. And when I come to the very sentences here charged as blasphemy, I
will show you that these were the common sentiments of thousands of very
great, of very intellectual and admirable men.
I have no time, and it may be this is not the place and the occasion,
to call your attention to the infinite harm that has been done in almost
every religious nation by statutes such as this. Where that statute is,
liberty can not be; and if this statute is enforced by this jury and
by this Court, and if it is afterwards carried out, and if it could be
carried out in the States of this Union, there would be an end of all
intellectual progress. We would go back to the Dark Ages. Every man's
mind, upon these subjects at least, would become a stagnant pool,
covered with the scum of prejudice and meanness.
And wherever such laws have been enforced, have the people been friends?
Here we are to-day in this blessed air--here amid these happy fields.
Can we imagine, with these surroundings, that a man for having been
found with a crucifix in his poor little home, had been taken from his
wife and children and burned--burned by Protestants? You cannot conceive
of such a thing now. Neither can you conceive that there was a time when
Catholics found some poor Protestant contradicting one of the dogmas of
the church, and took that poor honest wretch--while his wife wept--while
his children clung to his hands--to the public square, drove a stake in
the ground, put a chain or two about him, lighted the fagots, and let
the wife whom he loved and his little children see the flames climb
around his limbs--you cannot imagine that any such infamy was ever
practiced. And yet I tell you that the same spirit made this detestable,
infamous, devilish statute.
You can hardly imagine that there was a time when the same kind of men
that made this law said to another man: "You say this world is round?"
"Yes, sir; I think it is, because I have seen its shadow on the moon."
"You have?"--Now, can you imagine a society, outside of hyenas and
boa-constrictors, that would take that man, put him in the penitentiary,
in a dungeon, turn the key upon him, and let his name be blotted from
the book of human life? Years afterward some explorer amid ruins finds
a few bones. The same spirit that did that, made this statute--the same
spirit that did that, went before the grand jury in this case--exactly.
Give the men that had this man indicted, the power, and I would not want
to live in that particular part of the country. I would not willingly
live with such men. I would go somewhere else, where the air is free,
where I could speak my sentiments to my wife, to my children, and to my
neighbors.
Now, this persecution differs only in degree from the infamies of the
olden times. What does it mean? It means that the State of New Jersey
has all the light it wants. And what does that mean? It means that the
State of New Jersey is absolutely infallible--that it has got its growth
and does not propose to grow any more. New Jersey knows enough, and it
will send teachers to the penitentiary.
It is hardly possible that this State has accomplished all that it is
ever going to accomplish. Religions are for a day. They are the clouds.
Humanity is the eternal blue. Religions are the waves of the sea. These
waves depend upon the force and direction of the wind--that is to say,
of passion; but Humanity is the great sea. And so our religions change
from day to day, and it is a blessed thing that they do. Why? Because we
grow, and we are getting a little more civilized every day,--and any
man that is not willing to let another man express his opinion, is not a
civilized man, and you know it. Any man that does not give to everybody
else the rights he claims for himself, is not in honest man.
Here is a man who says, "I am going to join the Methodist Church." What
right has he? Just the same right to join it that I have not to join
it--no more, no less. But if you are a Methodist and I am not, it simply
proves that you do not agree with me, and that I do not agree with
you--that is all. Another man is a Catholic. He was born a Catholic, or
is convinced that Catholicism is right. That is his business, and any
man that would persecute him on that account, is a poor barbarian--a
savage; any man that would abuse him on that account, is a barbarian--a
savage.
Then I take the next step. A man does not wish to belong to any church.
How are you going to judge him? Judge him by the way he treats his wife,
his children, his neighbors. Does he pay his debts? Does he tell the
truth? Does he help the poor? Has he got a heart that melts when he
hears grief's story? That is the way to judge him. I do not care what
he thinks about the bears, or the flood, about bibles or gods. When some
poor mother is found wandering in the street with a babe at her breast,
does he quote Scripture, or hunt for his pocket-book? That is the way
to judge. And suppose he does not believe in any bible whatever? If
Christianity is true, that is his misfortune, and everybody should pity
the poor wretch that is going down the hill. Why kick him? You will get
your revenge on him through all eternity--is not that enough?
So I say, let us judge each other by our actions, not by theories, not
by what we happen to believe--because that depends very much on where we
were born.
If you had been born in Turkey, you probably would have been a
Mohammedan. If I had been born among the Hindoos, I might have been a
Buddhist--I can't tell. If I had been raised in Scotland, on oatmeal, I
might have been a Covenanter--nobody knows. If I had lived in Ireland,
and seen my poor wife and children driven into the street, I think I
might have been a Home-ruler--no doubt of it. You see it depends on
where you were born--much depends on our surroundings.
Of course, there are men born in Turkey who are not Mohammedans, and
there are men born in this country who are not Christians--Methodists,
Unitarians, or Catholics, plenty of them, who are unbelievers--plenty of
them who deny the truth of the Scriptures--plenty of them who say:
"I know not whether there be a God or not." Well, it is a thousand times
better to say that honestly than to say dishonestly that you believe in
God.
If you want to know the opinion of your neighbor, you want his honest
opinion. You do not want to be deceived. You do not want to talk with a
hypocrite. You want to get straight at his honest mind--and then you are
going to judge him, not by what he says but by what he does. It is very
easy to sail along with the majority--easy to sail the way the boats are
going--easy to float with the stream; but when you come to swim against
the tide, with the men on the shore throwing rocks at you, you will get
a good deal of exercise in this world.
And do you know that we ought to feel under the greatest obligation to
men who have fought the prevailing notions of their day? There is not a
Presbyterian in Morristown that does not hold up for admiration the
man that carried the flag of the Presbyterians when they were in the
minority--not one. There is not a Methodist in this State who does not
admire John and Charles Wesley and Whitefield, who carried the banner
of that new and despised sect when it was in the minority. They glory
in them because they braved public opinion, because they dared to oppose
idiotic, barbarous and savage statutes like this. And there is not a
Universalist that does not worship dear old Hosea Ballou--I love him
myself--because he said to the Presbyterian minister: "You are going
around trying to keep people out of hell, and I am going around trying
to keep hell out of the people." Every Universalist admires him and
loves him because when despised and railed at and spit upon, he stood
firm, a patient witness for the eternal mercy of God. And there is not a
solitary Protestant who does not honor Martin Luther--who does not honor
the Covenanters in poor Scotland, and that poor girl who was tied out
on the sand of the sea by Episcopalians, and kept there till the rising
tide drowned her, and all she had to do to save her life was to say,
"God save the king," but she would not say it without the addition of
the words, "If it be God's will." No one, who is not a miserable,
contemptible wretch, can fail to stand in admiration before such
courage, such self-denial--such heroism. No matter what the attitude of
your body may be, your soul falls on its knees before such men and such
women.
Let us take another step. Where would we have been if authority had
always triumphed? Where would we have been if such statutes had always
been carried out? We have now a science called astronomy. That science
has done more to enlarge the horizon of human thought than all things
else. We now live in an infinite universe. We know that the sun is a
million times larger than our earth, and we know that there are other
great luminaries millions of times larger than our sun. We know that
there are planets so far away that light, traveling at the rate of
one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles a second, requires fifteen
thousand years to reach this grain of sand, this tear, we call the
earth--and we now know that all the fields of space are sown thick with
constellations. If that statute had been enforced, that science would
not now be the property of the human mind. That science is contrary to
the Bible, and for asserting the truth you become a criminal. For
what sum of money, for what amount of wealth, would the world have the
science of astronomy expunged from the brain of man? We learned the
story of the stars in spite of that statute.
The first men who said the world was round were scourged for scoffing at
the Scriptures. And even Martin Luther, speaking of one of the greatest
men that ever lived, said: "Does he think with his little lever to
overturn the Universe of God?" Martin Luther insisted that such men
ought to be trampled under foot. If that statute had been carried into
effect, Galileo would have been impossible. Kepler, the discoverer of
the three laws, would have died with the great secret locked in his
brain, and mankind would have been left ignorant, superstitious, and
besotted. And what else? If that statute had been carried out, the
world would have been deprived of the philosophy of Spinoza; of the
philosophy, of the literature, of the wit and wisdom, the justice and
mercy of Voltaire, the greatest Frenchman that ever drew the breath of
life--the man who by his mighty pen abolished torture in a nation, and
helped to civilize a world.
If that statute had been enforced, nearly all the books that enrich the
libraries of the world could not have been written. If that statute had
been enforced, Humboldt could not have delivered the lectures now known
as "The Cosmos." If that statute had been enforced, Charles Darwin would
not have been allowed to give to the world his discoveries that have
been of more benefit to mankind than all the sermons ever uttered. In
England they have placed his sacred dust in the great Abbey. If he had
lived in New Jersey, and this statute could have been enforced, he would
have lived one year at least in your penitentiary. Why? That man went
so far as not simply to deny the truth of your Bible, but absolutely
to deny the existence of your God. Was he a good man? Yes, one of the
noblest and greatest of men. Humboldt, the greatest German who ever
lived, was of the same opinion.
And so I might go on with the great men of to-day. Who are the men
who are leading the race upward and shedding light in the intellectual
world? They are the men declared by that statute to be criminals. Mr.
Spencer could not publish his books in the State of New Jersey. He would
be arrested, tried, and imprisoned; and yet that man has added to the
intellectual wealth of the world.
So with Huxley, so with Tyndall, so with Helmholtz--so with the greatest
thinkers and greatest writers of modern times.
You may not agree with these men--and what does that prove? It simply
proves that they do not agree with you--that is all. Who is to blame?
I do not know. They may be wrong, and you may be right; but if they had
the power, and put you in the penitentiary simply because you differed
with them, they would be savages; and if you have the power and imprison
men because they differ from you, why then, of course, you are savages.
No; I believe in intellectual hospitality. I love men that have a little
horizon to their minds--a little sky, a little scope. I hate anything
that is narrow and pinched and withered and mean and crawling, and that
is willing to live on dust. I believe in creating such an atmosphere
that things will burst into blossom. I believe in good will, good
health, good fellowship, good feeling--and if there is any God on the
earth, or in heaven, let us hope that he will be generous and grand. Do
you not see what the effect will be? I am not cursing you because you
are a Methodist, and not damning you because you are a Catholic, or
because you are an Infidel--a good man is more than all of these. The
grandest of all things is to be in the highest and noblest sense a man.
Now let us see the frightful things that this man, the defendant in this
case, has done. Let me read the charges against him as set out in this
indictment.
I shall insist that this statute does not cover any publication--that
it covers simply speech--not in writing, not in book or pamphlet. Let us
see:
"_This Bible describes God as so loving that he drowned the whole world
in his mad fury_."
Well, the great question about that is, is it true? Does the Bible
describe God as having drowned the whole world with the exception of
eight people? Does it, or does it not? I do not know whether there is
anybody in this county who has really read the Bible, but I believe the
story of the flood is there. It does say that God destroyed all flesh,
and that he did so because he was angry. He says so, himself, if the
Bible be true.
The defendant has simply repeated what is in the Bible. The Bible says
that God is loving, and says that he drowned the world, and that he was
angry. Is it blasphemy to quote from the "Sacred Scriptures"?
"_Because it was so much worse than he, knowing all things, ever
supposed it could be._"
Well, the Bible does say that he repented having made man. Now, is
there any blasphemy in saying that the Bible is true? That is the only
question. It is a fact that God, according to the Bible, did drown
nearly everybody. If God knows all things, he must have known at the
time he made them that he was going to drown them. Is it likely that
a being of infinite wisdom would deliberately do what he knew he must
undo? Is it blasphemy to ask that question? Have you a right to think
about it at all? If you have, you have the right to tell somebody what
you think--if not, you have no right to discuss it, no right to think
about it. All you have to do is to read it and believe it--to open your
mouth like a young robin, and swallow--worms or shingle nails--no matter
which.