1249. Since our missions are all intended to induce pagans and others

to think freely as respects the tenets in which they have been

educated, how can it be otherwise than proper for every person to think

without fear of denunciation upon the tenets of his ancestry. Are we

to deny ourselves the liberty of thought, which we claim for all who

differ from us as to their creeds?

1250. A sectarian who is a Christian only as to _observances_, and is

therefore really a _practical_ infidel, accuses a man of infidelity who

is _practically_ a Christian, so far as Christianity and virtue are

associated, because that man does not arrive at his morality by the

route which his denunciator points out, but never follows to any good

purpose.

1251. While missionaries, who _ought_ to know all that can be learned,

_do not agree among themselves_, wherefore do they attempt to instruct

the ignorant? How is the unlettered pagan to judge between the

Catholic, Calvinist, Unitarian, or Deist?

_Additional Remarks respecting the Observance of the Sabbath, so

called._

1252. It is believed that a great majority of the people of the

United States, while favourable to the observance of Sunday as a day

of worship, of innocent recreation, and of moral and intellectual

improvement, are adverse to the legal enforcement of restrictions

introduced into Christianity by puritanism. They do not consider the

_first_ day of the week as liable to the commandment given to the Jews

for the observance of _the seventh_ day; still less that the _innocent

recreation allowed to the Jews under that commandment_ is to be denied

to Christians on that day of rest. The commandment _forbids work_, but

does not _prohibit recreation_. That it was thus viewed by the Hebrews,

is asserted upon the authority of a learned Jew.

1253. It is conceived that the enforcement of any observance on

sectarian ground, is inconsistent with the freedom of conscience

guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

1254. If God intended the Sabbath to be kept so strictly, wherefore is

it not kept holy by him? why do not the rivers stop flowing, vegetables

growing, and the wind stop blowing on the day selected for the Sabbath,

especially if a sparrow does not fall without his cognizance.

1255. _Precepts may lead, but example will draw._ Aware of this, is it

conceivable that God would enjoin man to keep any day holy, and yet

fail to keep it holy himself? Regulating the blowing of the winds, as

well as the _falling of sparrows_, when creating a storm, would he not

be responsible for forcing the breach of the Sabbath upon the mariner?

1256. Ought the farmer to lose his crops in order to avoid working

on Sunday? The Romans took advantage of the Hebrew Sabbath to make

their advances upon Jerusalem, the tenets of the Jews restricting them

from resistance; yet there was no divine interference to shield this

chosen people against the heathen conqueror, or to assist them in the

observance of the commandment.

1257. The plea on which the commandment was founded is manifestly

groundless—_that an omnipotent God could be so weary as to require

rest_. But it has been suggested by enlightened Christians, that the

six days were periods of immense duration, and of course the seventh

day being like the rest could not be a day of twenty-four hours, like

the Jewish Sabbath so called, but, on the contrary, an era comprising

many ages.

_If Creatures be not so created as to love their Neighbours as

themselves, precepts can no more alter them in this respect, than

change the Colour of their Hair, or the Number of Cubits in their

Stature._

1258. In the spheres, agreeably to the communication received from

spirits, great importance is attached to the friendship, the affection,

and the ardent love, which may subsist between congenial minds or

souls; they seem to recognise love as something which cannot be felt

by all to all; so that while benevolence, charity, and sympathy may be

sentiments entertained to mankind generally, there are other sentiments

which require concentration, in order to have any efficacy. Of this

nature are parental, filial, and conjugal affection, as well as other

intimate friendships.

1259. Sympathy between the parent and child, between husband and wife,

and likewise occasionally between brothers and sisters, or such friends

as Pylades and Orestes, may be so strong as to induce the risk, if not

the loss of life, but this sympathy cannot be self-induced. Where,

from principle, a person may determine to make the sacrifice, not from

impulse, he cannot endow himself with the sensitiveness which would

make him feel for the sufferer as for himself. A being may admire such

a sentiment, and have an ambition to be so actuated, but that would

not create the sensibility to which its existence is due. It has been

alleged that Napoleon’s mother said of him, as I remember to have read

somewhere: “He wished to have a good heart.” The most that can be

done is to act as if we did love, and consequently sympathize, so as

to feel the pains and privations of another as if they were our own.

But it were inconsistent to entertain a love so powerful and peculiar,

and not give our time, thought, services, or attention to the object of

our affection. It were inconsistent so to love and keep at a distance,

and behave toward the object as if we were indifferent. But were the

sentiment to be felt universally, or even generally, there would be

such a cutting up of our time, service, or attention, that, as respects

any individual in particular, it would be nugatory, and might as well

not exist. There would likewise be such a multiplicity and perplexity

of yearnings that it would distract the heart, perhaps place it in a

less happy condition than if it were devoid of any affection whatever.

1260. Although temporal life may at times be sacrificed by one being

to save that of another, it is manifestly because the being who makes

the sacrifice is constituted so nobly as to endure less pain under

the circumstances in question in making than avoiding self-immolation.

But can any one who has not been so organized and educated as to make

such a sacrifice, be sufficiently changed by preaching, or monition, to

undergo self-immolation to save a fellow-creature?

1261. Is it reasonable to order, direct, or advise people to love,

especially on the part of any one who by his acknowledged omnipotency

could so constitute them as to sympathize to any required extent? I

admit, that it may be consistent to urge them to act toward others, as

far as possible, as if they were _loved_.[25]

1262. Should not the great object of cultivation be sympathy and

benevolence, which are general in their nature? We may deeply

sympathize with a sufferer, even with a brute, whom we do not love.

Benevolence should we not also cultivate, by endeavouring habitually to

take the most favourable view of those around us which our observation

and reason can permit? Does it not argue a want of discrimination to

treat love as a sentiment, to be entertained toward all other mortals

by mere volition? Is it reasonable that Christ, or any other teacher,

assuming to be missionaries of the Creator, should enjoin us to

love, when the capacity for that sentiment manifestly varies through

organization and education, derived from that Creator by various human

beings, as much nearly, as the opposite propensities of the wolf

and dog? Behold the difference between the elephant and rhinoceros:

the former capable of a canine fidelity and affection, the latter

irretrievably hostile; and again between a wild elephant and one tamed

by education.

1263. Were his organization and education dependent on himself, it

might be reasonable to say to a human being, Love your neighbour as

yourself, love your enemies; but how can that Deity who determines

man’s race and his parentage, and of course whether he be a savage

or a civilized man, whether a Thug or a _real_ Christian, if such a

thing can be,—how can that Deity require a being to do that which is

irreconcilable with his passions, opinions, and habits, derived from

nature and education, as well as the examples set by those around him?

1264. The inutility of precepts in controlling human passions, may be

seen in the history of Christendom, in which, as already urged, the

morals and conduct of mankind, with very few exceptions, have been

diametrically opposite to that of their divine Master, so called.

Who have been more aggressive than the great majority of professed

Christians? Who have been more actuated by cupidity? Yet these votaries

have been, for the most part, vociferous in their professions of

devotedness to Christ, making him the Son of God as well as their

teacher, and too often cruelly maltreating those who have denied his

divinity.

1265. Both on the part of the ancient Jews, or on that of modern

Christians, religion has been made an excuse or a plea for despoiling

unbelievers of their patrimony. In the contention respecting the right

to Oregon, the great question, on which judgment was to turn, was,

which of all of the Christian potentates claiming it, was the first to

lay his longing eyes upon the object of contention? It has been shown

that the massacre of whole nations involved no criminality, provided

they were pagans. David put to the sword the pagan communities, man,

woman, and child, during which time Jehovah was with him. The pagans

being mere vermin in the estimation of the Jewish deity, the wrongs

done to them were not cited as among David’s misdoings. No Nathan

came to call him to account for his flagitious conduct to them, or to

Achish, (1 Sam. xxvii. 8 to 12.)

1266. In his correspondence with the British minister, respecting

territorial rights granted to the English by the Mosquito king, Mr.

Clayton urged that the aborigines never had been admitted to have

any rights to their own lands, which could interfere with Christian

claimants.

_Attacks upon the authenticity of Scripture cannot endanger the

prevalent morality, which, while it is superior to that of the Old

Testament, indicates a recklessness of the precepts of Christ,

excepting so far as they make faith a counterpoise for sin._

1267. In the preceding pages, I have endeavoured to show that the

existing morality of Christendom does not owe its existence to

Christianity. My object has been to do away the apprehension that

this morality would be deprived of its foundation were Spiritualism

or any other innovation to be accredited which would be inconsistent

with revelation. But I hope I have shown that whatever merit may be

possessed by the existing state of morals, it cannot be ascribed to

any influence exercised by those precepts of Christ which are not only

neglected, but acted in diametric opposition to.

1268. Another cause of alarm has been that it would weaken that belief

in a future state of rewards and punishments which is so essential to

encourage virtue and repress vice. But it has been pointed out that

the authority of Moses is against the existence of a future state, not

merely negatively, but positively, so far as any authority is given to

him as inspired by God. For what stronger argument need there be that

there is no state of existence beyond the grave, than the fact that

the being who of all mankind solely had immediate converse with the

Deity, should not have learned from him the all-important fact? If, as

now held generally among Christians, an unbeliever in a future state

is culpable in the sight of God, as well as theirs, and disqualified

from testifying in courts of justice, can it be conceived that God

would have failed to communicate a knowledge of immortal existence to

his favourite lawgiver; or how could that lawgiver have been so devoid

of that desire for immortality as to have been satisfied to remain

ignorant?

1269. Materialists who have become converts to Spiritualism, all

represent themselves as having entertained a great anxiety to believe

in immortality prior to the blessed, cherished truth having been made

evident to their thirsting souls.

1270. Converts from Materialism to Spiritualism, who have shown

much zeal in the investigation of the subject, and eagerness in

believing in immortality as soon as evidence was obtained, were, by

certain sectarians, doomed to hell for their heresy. Yet this Hebrew

materialist, who made no use of his transcendent opportunities of

acquiring correct knowledge of futurity from the Deity, is made an

object of veneration, and the book which he wrote, while devoid of this

pre-eminently important information, is worshipped as an idol.

1271. His allegations that God authorized the Israelites to _borrow_

in order to _purloin_, or that he authorized the murder of the people

misled by Aaron to worship the golden calf, are manifestly as false

as blasphemous. Then why imagine that mankind can suffer by the

substitution of a belief in a future state associated with the purest

principles of morality, for the books of Moses, which sanction crimes

and discredit immortality?

1272. As respects any subsequent alleged inspirations to which

Pharisees, the papists of Judea, owed their _professed_ belief in a

future state, in the first place, we have the authority of Christ

for viewing them as hypocrites: externally, like whited sepulchres,

internally, as no less corrupt than dead men’s bones. Of course there

is reason, on this account, to doubt whether they acquired a sincere

belief in a future state from any part of Scripture. But evidently it

did not make them moral. Their immorality, on the contrary, was made

more hideous by the cloak of false religion. Nothing is more detestable

than to see religion in men’s mouths, with cupidity and unprincipled

ambition at their hearts. Yet this much may be said for the Pharisees,

that they had not _professed_ themselves _Christians_, and thus subject

to those precepts of Jesus which place the acquisition of wealth on

a level with felony as respects the accessibility to heaven. The

Pharisees of Christendom, even those who assumed to be exclusively the

depositories of revelation and sole expounders of God’s word, have been

_absolutely_ as wicked as the Pharisees, and _relatively_ more wicked

by the monstrous discordancy of their course with their professed

devotion to the ultra precepts of the alleged Son of their God.

1273. It has been shown, moreover, that although Christ occasionally

referred to hell, yet he gave inconsistent views of it, (738, 764.) At

one time it is fire, into which any one is to be doomed for alleging

his brother a fool, whether this allegation be true or not; at another,

it is utter _darkness_, with weeping and gnashing of teeth; and of

course there could be no fire. Then the disgusting description given by

Josephus is sanctioned, agreeably to which, like the Elysium and Erebus

of the heathen, both hell and heaven are subterranean localities, but

separated by a lake of unquenchable fire, across which Abraham and

Dives converse. At another time, heaven is above; he ascends to heaven

in sight of his apostles, yet the penitent thief is to be with him in

paradise, which, agreeably to Genesis and Josephus, is upon the earth

on the river Tigris, near the Persian Gulf. But wherever the Elysium

and Erebus of the gospel may be, all souls, according to it, are to

remain in their graves till the “_last_ day,” and then, like Samuel,

being called up from their tombs, are to be sorted into two squadrons,

of which one is to go to an _undescribed_ heaven, the other to the

“hell fire prepared for the devil and his angels from the beginning of

the world.” The injustice which would follow from a judgment of this

kind, by which two souls differing from each other only by a shade

would meet a fate so different that one would have to go to heaven,

the other to hell to remain eternally, is so manifest, that, like the

ultraism of the same record, it loses its effect altogether upon people

in general.

1274. It must be clear that the great mass of professed Christians

are very little restrained by their fears of such an eternity of

punishment. Had Christ any specific knowledge of the kingdom of heaven

to which he occasionally alluded, wherefore did he not convey that

knowledge to his disciples? But they seem to have learned no more from

Jesus than Moses did from Jehovah, and hence their querulous inquiry as

to what would be their reward. But the promise of judgeships, (743 to

745,) of worldly preeminence, was a satire upon them. It argues that

he considered them as worldly-minded. Had he known the world to be

looked upon by the apostles as beneath consideration in comparison with

immortal life, he would hardly have insulted them by the offer. But

their tone has a great deal too much of the Swiss in it. Had they been

so very dull, or Christ so reserved, that the idea was not conveyed to

them that in acting the part of pious, virtuous men, they would have

the reward promised to the righteous in the other world.

1275. Thank God, no spiritualist who reads with attention the

communications given in this work, will ever inquire as to the extent

of selfish reward which he is to enjoy! He would be impressed by his

general knowledge with the idea that the less any being is actuated

by selfish aspiration, the greater his capacity for happiness and his

pretensions to the means of felicity.

_The Doctrine of a peculiar Belief being necessary to Salvation,

and a counterpoise for Sin, a source of discord originally confined

to Judea, expanded with Christianity and Islamism; verifying

Christ’s allegation, that he came “as a Sword, not as a Messenger of

Peace.”—Superior Morality, and far more unquestionable Certainty of

the Communications from the Spirit World._

1276. It were in vain, I think, to find in the apple of discord, in

the mischiefs let loose from Pandora’s box, or any other figurative

exemplification, any idea adequate to convey my conception of the

mischief done to the world by introducing the dogma, that belief could

be the means of salvation; so that if God had so constituted or so

situated a people, that they could not believe what was communicated to

them by certain itinerant preachers, it should be worse for them in the

day of judgment than for Sodom and Gomorrah; two cities which God had

destroyed because he had not so organized them, and circumstanced them,

as to make them as virtuous as he, subsequently to their creation,

desired.

1277. Christ fully justified this opinion, when he alleged himself

to have come as a _sword, not as a messenger of peace_, and to set

father and son, mother and daughter, &c., at variance with each other,

making the people of a man’s own household his foes. It may be said

that he identified himself with piety and rectitude; so that it was

for the virtue of which he, as the Son or missionary of God, was the

representative, that he plead; but this pious devotion has much more of

self in it than people imagine. They identify God or Christ with the

welfare of their souls and bodies. It is through the hope of benefit to

these that they take such a deep interest in God.

1278. But is it not strange that the Christian religion should be

treated as a harbinger of peace and harmony, when, with its entrance

into the world, came the intolerance, before confined to Judea, and

when by its founder it is represented as a sword, to sever the dearest

ties by introducing the poisoning idea that belief could be a virtue or

a sin? It seems to have been the cause of a peculiar animosity which

has always accompanied its progress, if not its endurance, and which

set the example to Mohammed of attaching the same fanatical idea to

another basis, comporting with his individual aggrandizement, at the

expense of much human misery.

1279. The language of Christ held to his apostles, showing that he

considered them as thirsting for temporal honours, and his aspiration

for the _throne_ of his _glory_, situated, of course, in the same

mundane region, may warrant the surmise that his views did not differ

from those of Mohammed as to the ultimate object, however much he may

have found it necessary, under the Roman despotism, to fight with the

tongue instead of the sword.

1280. But how can this sentiment be justified in which he makes

devotion to himself irreconcilable with the holy ties between the

child and his parents, or the parents and their children? The God of

Spiritualism would view parental and filial love as the truest piety.

He asks only that love. He has not constituted us to have that sort of

love for him. Had he wished it, he would have made us so, as to be thus

actuated.

1281. “He that believeth in me shall have eternal life.” “Thy faith

hath made thee whole.” These allegations produced a change in the

world at large. That bigotry and animosity which led the Jews to

consider that all who did not agree with them in creed, were objects

of spoliation, massacre, rape, enslavement, were now extended to other

parts of the world.

1282. No doubt the success of this exclusive notion, on the part of

Christ, led to its adoption by Mohammed, and thus some hundred millions

have been actuated by this mischievous impression, which is now at work

on the Russian territory. It has been already suggested that this idea

always begets persecution to the extent of the power to exercise it.

While seeing the horrid consequences of this error in the persecution

of the French Calvinists, Calvin could not avoid the diabolic impulse

in the instance of Servetus. It cannot be necessary to recall to our

readers the many bloody persecutions and religious wars which have

disgraced Christendom far more than any other part of the globe, nor

to allude to the tyranny reciprocally employed by any sect having

complete ascendancy. Yet with these consequences before the mind—the

facts which I have adduced to prove that the morality of Christendom

is not due to Scripture—the tocsin is sounded wherever any effort is

made to get rid of the crimes and indecencies of the Old Testament, or

the error of making bigoted belief, under the name of faith, a primary

consideration on the part of the New Testament. People are taught that

every thing good is due to Scripture; that thence alone can we get any

correct notions of morality, any knowledge of a future state. The idea

is entertained that Christianity made a great change for the better as

soon as it prevailed, and that without it we should sink into a state

of demoralization.

1283. Consistently with my experience of the effect of a confident

belief in a future state of existence on my own mind, as already

suggested, I was always under the impression, prior to my conversion,

that those who believed in a future state must be happier; and if

that belief were not associated with mischievous error, that it

should not be assailed. The idea that what I considered as bigotry,

should be a counterpoise for sin, I did consider a mischievous error,

tending to substitute devotion for good works, and as I saw, too,

made nations selfish. The love of hoarding was very commonly coupled

with this selfishness, which operated at once to produce efforts to

lay up treasure on earth by close dealing, and in heaven by strict

sectarianism, bigotry, and intolerance. But, nevertheless, I was

restrained from any effort to cure these errors, from the conviction

that religion, unaccompanied by the expectation of a future state, can

never take hold of the human heart.

1284. In a dialogue between the spirit of Wm. Penn and that of Thos.

Paine, the former points out this error: “You strove to take from

your readers one of their greatest comforts under the afflictions of

mortal life.” _Foreseeing this_ would have prevented me from writing

the Age of Reason. Any set of skeptics who should only coincide in

disbelieving, could never adhere together nor make many converts. The

prospect of future life must be promised confidently, or there would be

few proselytes.

1285. But the spiritual manifestations, and the intellectual, the

heartfelt intercommunion with my relatives, friends, and the immortal,

great, and good Washington, now enable me to assert that there is not,

nor can be upon any record of the past, any evidence so complete,

as that presented to my senses, concurrently with a multitude of

observers. I now, therefore, feel myself warranted to speak out what my

reason justifies and my conscience dictates; and have not hesitated to

express the opinions which are spread out upon the pages immediately

preceding that which contains this exposition.

1286. With a view to show how much more happy was the state of

reciprocal sectarian feeling in the world before this idea of making

belief an object of vital importance, I will quote here, first a

passage from Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. i., and will

subjoin some pages from “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire;” following these up with quotations from Bishop Hopkins, of

Vermont:

_Quotation from Mosheim._

1287. “Each nation suffered its neighbours to follow their own method

of worship, to adore their own gods, to enjoy their own rites and

ceremonies, and discovered no displeasure at their diversity of

sentiments in religious matters. They all looked upon the world as one

great empire, divided into various provinces, over every one of which a

certain order of divinities presided, and that, therefore, none could

behold with contempt the gods of other nations, or force strangers to

pay homage to theirs.

1288. “The Romans exercised this toleration in the amplest manner.

As the sources from which all men’s ideas are derived are the same,

namely, from their senses, there being no other inlet to the mind

but thereby, there is nothing wonderful in the general prevalence of

a sameness of the ideas of human beings in all regions and all ages

of the world. The affections of fear, grief, pain, hope, pleasure,

gratitude, &c., are as common to man as his nature as a man, and could

not fail to produce a corresponding similarity in the objects of his

superstitious veneration. To have nothing in common with the already

established notions of mankind, to bear no features of resemblance to

their hallucinations and follies, to be nothing like them, to be to

nothing so unlike, should be the essential predications and _necessary_

credentials of the ‘wisdom which is from above.’

1289. “It has, however, been alleged by learned men, with convincing

arguments of probability, ‘that the principal deities of all the

Gentile nations resembled each other extremely, in their essential

characters; and if so, their receiving the same names could not

introduce much confusion into mythology, since they were probably

derived from one common source. If the _Thor_ of the ancient Celts

was the same in dignity, character, and attributes with the _Jupiter_

of the Greeks and Romans, where was the impropriety of giving him the

same name? _Dies Jovis_ is still the Latin form for our Thor’s day.

When the Greeks found in other countries deities that resembled their

own, they persuaded the worshippers of those foreign gods that their

deities were the same that were honoured in Greece, and were, indeed,

themselves convinced that this was the case. In consequence of this,

the Greeks gave the names of their gods to those of other nations, and

the Romans in this followed their example. Hence we find the names of

Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, &c. frequently mentioned in the more

recent monuments and inscriptions which have been found among the Gauls

and Germans, though the ancient inhabitants of those countries had

worshipped no gods under such denominations.”

_Quotation from Gibbon._

1290. “The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it

concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the

enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their

subjects. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman

world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the

philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally

useful. And thus toleration produced, not only mutual indulgence, but

even religious concord.

1291. “The superstition of the people was not imbittered by any

mixture of theological rancour; nor was it confined by the chains of

any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached

to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different

religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or

an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually

disposed him to multiply the articles of his belief, and to enlarge

the list of his protectors. The thin texture of the pagan mythology

was interwoven with various, but not discordant, materials. As soon as

it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had lived, or who had died,

for the benefit of their country, were exalted to a state of power and

immortality, it was universally confessed that they deserved, if not

the adoration, at least the reverence, of all mankind. The deities of

a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed, in peace, their

local and respected influence; nor could the Roman, who deprecated the

wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian who presented his offering

to the beneficent genius of the Nile. The visible powers of nature,

the planets, and the elements, were the same throughout the universe

The invisible governors of the moral world were inevitably cast in a

similar mould of fiction and allegory. Every virtue, and even vice,

acquired its divine representative; every art and profession its

patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages and countries, were

uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar votaries. A

republic of gods of such opposite tempers and interests required, in

every system, the moderating hand of a supreme magistrate, who, by the

progress of knowledge and flattery, was gradually invested with the

sublime perfections of an Eternal Parent, and an omnipotent Monarch.

Such was the mild spirit of antiquity, that the nations were less

attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious

worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the Barbarian, as they met before

their respective altars, easily persuaded themselves that under various

names, and with various ceremonies, they adored the same deities. The

elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful and almost regular form to

the polytheism of the ancient world.

1292. “The philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature

of man rather than from that of God. They meditated, however, on the

Divine Nature as a very curious and important speculation, and in

the profound inquiry they displayed the strength and weakness of the

human understanding. Of the four most celebrated schools, the Stoics

and the Platonists endeavoured to reconcile the jarring interests of

reason and piety. They have left us the most sublime proofs of the

existence and perfections of the first cause, but as it was impossible

for them to conceive the creation of matter, the workmen in the Stoic

philosophy was not sufficiently distinguished from the work, while, on

the contrary, the spiritual God of Plato and his disciples resembled

an idea rather than a substance. The opinions of the Academics and

Epicureans were of a less religious cast; but while the modest science

of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the

latter urged them to deny the providence of a Supreme Ruler. The

spirit of inquiry, prompted by emulation and supported by freedom, has

divided the public teachers of philosophy into a variety of contending

sects; but the ingenuous youth who, from every part, resorted to

Athens and the other seats of learning in the Roman empire, were alike

instructed in every school to reject and to despise the religion

of the multitude. How, indeed, was it possible that a philosopher

should accept, as divine truths, the idle tales of the poets, and the

incoherent traditions of antiquity, or that he should adore as gods

those imperfect beings whom he must have despised as men! Against such

unworthy adversaries Cicero condescended to employ the arms of reason

and eloquence, but the satire of Lucian was a much more adequate as

well as more efficacious weapon. We may be well assured that a writer

conversant with the world would never have ventured to expose the

gods of his country to public ridicule, had they not already been the

objects of secret contempt among the polished and enlightened orders of

society.

1293. “Notwithstanding the fashionable irreligion which prevailed

in the age of the Antonines, both the interest of the priests and

the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected. In their

writings and conversation, the philosophers of antiquity asserted the

independent dignity of reason, but they resigned their actions to

the commands of law and of custom. Viewing, with a smile of pity and

indulgence, the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised

the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of

the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of

superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the

sacerdotal robes. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to

wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was

indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose

to assume; and they approached with the same inward contempt, and the

same external reverence, the altars of the Lybian, the Olympian, or the

Capitoline Jupiter.

1294. “It is not easy to conceive from what motives a spirit of

persecution could induce itself into the Roman councils. The

magistrates could not be actuated by a blind though honest bigotry,

since the magistrates were themselves philosophers, and the schools

of Athens had given laws to the senate. They could not be impelled

by ambition or avarice, as the temporal and ecclesiastical powers

were united in the same hands. The pontiffs were chosen among the

most illustrious of the senators, and the office of Supreme Pontiff

was constantly exercised by the emperors themselves. They knew and

valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil

government. They encouraged the public festivals which humanize the

manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination, as a

convenient instrument of policy, and they respected as the firmest

bond of society the useful persuasion that, either in this or a future

life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging

gods? But while they acknowledged the general advantages of religion,

they were convinced that the various modes of worship contributed

alike to the same salutary purposes, and that, in every country, the

form of superstition which had received the sanction of time and

experience was the best adapted to the climate and to its inhabitants.

Avarice and taste very frequently despoiled the vanquished nations

of the elegant statues of their gods and the rich ornaments of their

temples, but in the exercise of the religion which they derived from

their ancestors, they uniformly experienced the indulgence, and even

protection, of the Roman conquerors. The province of Gaul seems, and

indeed only seems, an exception to this universal toleration. Under the

specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the Emperors Tiberius

and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids; but the

priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted in peaceful

obscurity till the final destruction of paganism.

1295. “Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled

with subjects and strangers from every part of the world, who all

introduced and enjoyed the favourite superstitions of their native

country. Every city in the empire was justified in maintaining the

purity of its ancient ceremonies; and the Roman senate, using the

common privilege, sometimes interposed to check this inundation of

foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition, of all the most contemptible

and abject, was frequently prohibited; the temples of Serapis and Isis

demolished, and their worshippers banished from Rome and Italy. But

the zeal of fanaticism prevailed over the cold and feeble efforts of

policy. The exiles returned, the proselytes multiplied, the temples

were restored with increasing splendour, and Isis and Serapis at length

assumed their place among the Roman deities. Nor was this indulgence

a departure from the old maxims of government. In the purest ages of

the commonwealth, Cybele and Æsculapius had been invited by solemn

embassies, and it was customary to tempt the protectors of besieged

cities by the promise of more distinguished honours than they possessed

in their native country. Rome gradually became the common temple of her

subjects, and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of

mankind.”

_For more than a thousand years the Grecian or Roman Catholic Clergy

were the sole depositories of the word of God, so called, and

Regulators of Religious morals; yet during that time the Clergy were

for the most part pre-eminent in vice, as compared with the rest of

the community; whence it is inferred that, like Pope Boniface, the

wicked Clergy in general were really unbelievers in the truth of the

Gospel. If the morals of the modern Clergy are better, it is neither

from the barbarous example furnished them in the Old Testament, nor

the ultra precepts of the Gospel; being too much enlightened to be

governed in practice by either._

1296. “ORIGEN complains of the neglect and inattention of his day,

through the increase of worldliness. Cyprian about the same time

mourns over the progress of degeneracy, and Eusebius, toward the close

of the third century, laments the corruption of the primitive morality

in strong terms of censure.

1297. “But yet superstition was rapidly advancing, and the complaints

of priestly corruption and general licentiousness were on the

increase. The election of Pope Damasus was the occasion of a public

riot, in which his partisans besieged the church where the friends

of the other candidate were assembled, broke down the doors, and

uncovered the roof; and in the shameful battle that ensued, one

hundred and thirty-seven persons were slain, of both sexes. The

splendour of the Roman bishops had grown so rapidly, that the heathen

historian Ammianus Marcellinus pronounced the episcopal style of

living to be superior to that of a king. Toward the close of the

fourth century, Chrysostom defended the new system of monkery, on the

ground that Christians had become so corrupt, especially in the large

cities. Jerome before him had bitterly complained of the prevailing

degeneracy, and became a monk in order to escape from it. St.

Augustine lamented that many Christians in his day (about A. D. 389)

were superstitious, that they adored the sepulchres and pictures of

the saints, and ate and drank to excess at funerals, under the excuse

that it was an act of religion.

1298. “The fifth century was not likely to improve the state of the

church, but on the contrary it witnessed a rapid deterioration. The

testimony of Salvian is set forth by Fleury, proving that among the

Roman Christians there was much heathen idolatry remaining; that

the greater part were only Christians in name, and worse than the

barbarians in life and conversation.

1299. In the sixth century, toward the close, we see Pope Gregory the

Great attributing all the public calamities to the ambition of the

bishops, who concealed the teeth of wolves under the face of sheep.

1300. “The seventh century. We begin to see the fruits of clerical

celibacy in the rule established by the council of Toledo, that the

illegitimate children of the clergy, from the bishop down to the

sub-deacon, should be slaves in the church where their fathers served.

It is to be presumed that this canon was intended to discourage

and amend the incontinence of the clergy, but the adoption of such

an extraordinary law proves plainly the prevalence of the evil. So

general had the worldliness of the clergy become, that in the latter

part of this century the most eminent bishops of France took great

part in political matters, and in time of war marched at the head of

their troops, like the lay barons.

1301. “One of the most important events of the eighth century was the

forgery of the Decretals, by which all the primitive bishops of Rome,

from Clement to Sylvester, were made to utter the most extravagant

doctrines concerning the power of the pope, the supremacy of Rome, and

the authority to judge the other bishops, while the pope himself could

be judged by none. Yet such was the ignorance of the times, that this

forgery was successful throughout the whole Latin Church, and remained

unquestioned for eight hundred years together. Another strong proof of

this prevailing ignorance is found in the course of the bishops at the

second council of Nice, where pretended miracles performed by images

were cited from false documents without any suspicion of mistake.

1302. “The parliament of Worms presented to the emperor a request from

all the people that the bishops should no longer go out at the head of

their troops, but should stay in their dioceses and assist the army

by their prayers; and Charlemagne willingly granted the petition.

But it is remarkable that this application came not from the clergy,

but from the laity; and it was so little regarded afterward, that

we shall find some warlike bishops even among the popes themselves.

This same emperor endeavoured with great zeal to purify the morals

of the clergy; and his reproofs of their worldliness, their avarice,

and their prostitution of sacred things for the sake of gain, are

remarkable monuments of his own good sense and of the corruption

which infested the church in the ninth century. After his death,

which occurred in A. D. 814, some churches invoked him as a saint,

notwithstanding he had four wives and five concubines.

1303. “The year 844 was signalized by the introduction of false relics

at Dijon in France, by which, nevertheless, several remarkable cures

were supposed to have been effected, until the fraud was discovered;

but the proceedings show that such impostures were common. In A. D.

850 a poor presbyter named Gotheschalk, who had adopted high views

on predestination, was not only deposed from the priesthood, but

afterward publicly whipped, as an incorrigible heretic, and cast into

prison, where he died after eighteen years’ confinement. Yet his

doctrine was defended by other bishops of high reputation, and his

punishment was denounced as cruel and unjust.

1304. “In A. D. 864, a violent outrage took place at Rome, in which

Gonthier, the Archbishop of Cologne, protesting against the judgment

of Pope Nicholas, told his brother Hildwin, who was a priest, to

place his protestation on the tomb of Saint Peter: that is, upon the

altar of the church. Accordingly, Hildwin entered into the church

with several followers, all armed, and as the keepers opposed him,

he repulsed them with blows, and killed one of them upon the spot.

He then accomplished his purpose, and retreated sword in hand. The

anecdote is only of importance as a proof of the spirit of the age.

The first instance of a partial interdict occurs in A. D. 871.

The ordeals of boiling water, cold water, and red-hot iron were

employed in this age, to determine questions of justice under the

auspices of the priests; and even kings employed them, with all

faith and confidence. The Duke of Naples had formed an alliance

with the Saracens, which the pope disproved; and as he refused to

break it on the order of the pontiff, he was excommunicated. The

Bishop Athanasius, who was the duke’s own brother, took him and put

out his eyes, sent him as prisoner to Rome, and caused himself to

be proclaimed Duke of Naples in his place. The pope approved this

conduct highly, and praised the bishop for loving God more than his

brother, and putting out the right eye which had offended, according

to Scripture. This pontiff was John VIII., and the time was A. D. 877.

_Reasons for not proceeding farther with Quotation of Details._

1305. It would occupy too much space, and make too wide a digression,

were I to proceed in quoting the details of the evidence showing the

state of morals in Christendom during the Middle Ages to have been much

below that which the heathen displayed during the period immediately

succeeding the advent of Christ, according to Mosheim and Gibbon. But

although the reader should not be enabled to form an opinion directly,

by a perusal of the details, fortunately I am enabled to submit that of

the right reverend prelate by whom they have been compiled.

1306. The fact deserves attention, that for more than a thousand

years, of all the upper classes of society the Christian clergy were

pre-eminently wicked, frequent complaints having been made against

them by the laity, notwithstanding the cruel persecution to which

complainants were liable. The popes were generally as prominent in

wickedness as high in official distinction. The summing up of Bishop

Hopkins, which I subjoin, fully confirms the impression which I have

endeavoured to convey:

1307. “I have now gone over the history of your church, with the

single aim of proving, from your own records, the rise, progress, and

terrible extent of its corruption, up to the close of the sixteenth

century. Here we see that for a period of seven centuries together

there had been a constant outcry for reformation; that the popes and

priesthood were the objects of continual complaint on the part of

the laity; that by their own acknowledgment, although the church was

never destitute of true Christians, yet holiness was the exception,

and iniquity the rule, since the great body of the clergy were steeped

in licentiousness, avarice, simony, cruelty, violence, falsehood, and

blood; that the University of Paris, one of your most famous nurseries

of theological education, was infested with an infidel philosophy, and

with habits of libertine sacrilege; that the boasts of absolute atheism

were heard from the lips of pontiffs and cardinals; that the reliance

of your church was in the terrors of the inquisition, in the rack, the

dungeon, and the stake; that war, and treachery, and assassination,

were patronized in the service of religion; that bishops, and

cardinals, and popes, were ready to lead their troops to battle; that

there were constant revolts and rebellions against the tyranny of the

priestly power; that there were many schisms in the papal kingdom, in

which two or three pretenders to infallibility cursed each other at the

same time, in the name of God and his apostles; and that every effort

to banish these horrible iniquities proved utterly abortive, until the

success of the Protestant reformation compelled them to respect public

opinion, by fear for their very being if they continued to brave it any

longer.”

1308. It is believed that there was no such wickedness among the

pagan priesthood as to have become a cause of complaint, although

far less power existed to silence accusation. Throughout Christendom

even monarchs were made to suffer severely for their remonstrances

against papal tyranny, and had to make concessions after having been

ill-treated. By way of exemplifying his disrespect for those precepts

of Christ which enjoin humility, meekness, and poorness of spirit as

the means of reaching heaven, Pope Celestin kicked the crown from

the head of the emperor, Henry VII., as this potentate knelt before

him. Could any sane man have done this while believing that Christ’s

allegations were to be verified, agreeably to which the “_poor in

spirit_” are to have heaven, the meek to inherit the earth? (See

Hopkins.)

1309. According to Taylor’s Diegesis, Constantine inquired of Sopater,

the pagan priest, if he could absolve him from his sins, among which

was that of scalding one of his wives to death, and executing unjustly

one of his sons. Sopater informed him that it went beyond his power to

obtain pardon for such sins. The Christian priests having agreed to

procure the desired absolution, is supposed to have been one of the

principal motives which induced Constantine to embrace Christianity.

Yet it was under this wicked despot that the Council of Nice was held,

which decided in favour of the divinity of Christ.

1310. It is difficult to imagine that persons who actually believed

in a future state of rewards and punishments, and who of course must

have been impressed with the comparative insignificance of any worldly

enjoyments, would, for any earthly objects, have acted so much in

a way to doom their souls to perpetual torture. It may therefore

be inferred that the clerical papists who acted so wickedly were

religious hypocrites, like the Jewish Pharisees. I am strongly under

the impression that the imperfection of the proof of the truth of

Scriptures, in the first place, and the inadequate and disgusting

representations respecting the future world which they present, has

always been productive of secret unbelief, and consequent recklessness

respecting the dictates of religion or morality.

1311. Of the manner in which the clergy of the present day reason

themselves into a belief, and expect to induce others to concur with

them, the parodied quotation from the clerical Goliah of my _would-be

guide to heaven_ is an exemplification. It is only by _frowning down

objections_, or _begging the question_, that they can get on. (1182.)

1312. Said one among the most amiable of my clerical friends to me,

when I adverted to the improbability that the Deity of this almost

infinite universe would select a few human animalcules in Judea as

his especial favourites: “Dr. Hare, you must not expect me to sit by

patiently, and see the pillars of my profession assailed.” I am sorry,

said I, if I have said any thing to give you pain. “How would you like

the pillars of your science to be attacked?” I would defend them, not

endeavour to silence the assailant! But all criticisms which lead to

the cure of errors only benefit a science founded on truth.

1313. The skepticism produced by reading the Bible is alleged, by

Archbishop Hughes, as the motive of his church for forbidding the

reading of it to the faithful. It was the reading of the Bible, when a

minor, which led to my unbelief in its authenticity. Bible societies

may, without intending it, do much to prepare the reasoning portion

of mankind for the adoption of a more moral, consistent, and rational

gospel.

1314. That one pope at least was a materialist, the following quotation

from Bishop Hopkins’s work will prove.

1315. “The year 1308 was marked by the resolution of Pope Clement V.

to take up his residence at Avignon. Two years afterward, he appointed

three cardinals to examine the witnesses against the former pope,

Boniface VIII., and Cardinal Cajetan; and the testimony taken on the

occasion proved them both to have been downright atheists. It was in

substance as follows:

1316. “Nicholas, a priest and canon of the cathedral, &c., on oath,

said, that being at Naples, under the pontificate of Celestin V., viz.

A. D. 1274, in the house of Marin Sichinulfe, where Cardinal Benedict

Cajetan dwelt, he entered the chamber of the cardinal in the suite of

the Bishop of Fricenti, and found there a clerk disputing with him,

in presence of several persons, upon the questions, which was the

best law or religion, that of the Christians, of the Jews, or of the

Saracens? and who those were that best observed their own? Then the

cardinal said, What are all these religions? They are the inventions

of men. We need not put ourselves to any trouble, except for this

world, since there is no other life but the present. He said also, on

the same occasion, that this world has had no beginning, and would not

have an end. Nicholas, Abbot of St. Benedict, &c., deposed to the same

fact, adding that the Cardinal Cajetan had said that the bread was not

changed in the sacrament of the altar, and that it was false that it

was the body of Jesus Christ; that there is no resurrection; that the

soul dies with the body; that this was his opinion and that of all

men of letters, but that the simple and ignorant thought otherwise.

The witness being asked if the cardinal did not thus speak jestingly,

replied that he said these things seriously and in good faith.

1317. “Manfred, a lay citizen of Lucca, said, that in the year 1300,

before Christmas, being in the chamber of Pope Boniface, in presence

of the ambassadors of Florence, of Boulogne, and of Lucca, and many

other persons, a man, who appeared to be the Pope’s chaplain, told

his holiness of the death of a certain knight who had been a wicked

man, and therefore it was necessary to pray for him, that Jesus Christ

might have pity on his soul. Upon which Boniface treated him as if he

were a fool; and after having spoken injuriously of Jesus Christ, he

added: This knight has already received all the good and evil he can

have, and there is no other life than this, nor any other paradise

or hell than what is in this world. The witness testified to another

discourse of Boniface, which modesty does not allow of our reporting;

and another witness recited a story about him still more impious than

the foregoing.

1318. “‘What remains of this information,’ says Fleury, ‘comprehends

the depositions of thirteen witnesses, all to a similar effect.

Another information which appeared the following year contained the

evidence of twenty-three witnesses to the same facts, with others

equally scandalous. But as the affair was never brought to judgment,

it is superfluous to enter into any further details.’

1319. “Now here is a very extraordinary and powerful evidence to prove

that at least one pope, and he a very distinguished one, Boniface

VIII., and one cardinal, of high reputation, were not only infidels

themselves, but claimed to be of the same class with ‘_all men of

letters_.’ That the testimony was satisfactory seems incontrovertible;

because the witnesses were thirty-six in number, unimpeached in

character, and thought sufficient by Philip the Fair, King of France,

and all his leading nobility. He proposed that Boniface should be

arraigned, though dead, for heresy, and that his bones should be

disinterred and burned, according to the modern fashion established by

the Roman Church. It may seem strange, however, that even if Boniface

and Cajetan had held such sentiments, they should have been so foolish

as to utter them in the presence of so many. To this two answers

may be given. First, that the influence of the philosophy which we

have already noted in the University of Paris was so prevalent, that

the clergy and the upper ranks of the laity were generally infected

with it, and religion was looked upon, by nearly all, as a thing of

policy, necessary to keep the vulgar in order, but only professed

by the higher classes, as it was in heathen Rome, ‘for the sake of

appearances.’ Unhappily, there are many proofs too strong to be

doubted that this infidel philosophy was rife among the priesthood;

and perhaps there is no other way of accounting for the manifest fact

that the church, like the state, was governed for so many ages by the

machinery of force and fear, as if there was no inward conscience to

appeal to, except among a few pious souls, here and there—enough to

perpetuate the church, according to the promise of Christ, but not

enough to affect the general sentiment.”

_Any religion, like that of Moses, which does not make Immortality a

primary consideration, must be chiefly confined to worldly objects,

and of course unworthy of consideration or respect._

1320. While the silence of the Pentateuch respecting immortality throws

the authority of the “word of God,” so called, against the endowment

of the human soul with that all-important attribute, the language of

the decalogue is inconsistent with the unity of the divine power. The

words, “_Thou shalt have no other gods before me_,” implies that there

were other gods who might be acknowledged; since if there were none

other, the proper words would be—Thou _canst_ have no other God but me,

or—There _is no other God_ but me.

1321. Again, when Jehovah alleges himself to be jealous, of whom could

he be jealous, if there was no other God to excite the sentiment of

jealousy? Can any one conceive God to be jealous of an idol, when

he must perceive that whatever worship may be bestowed on idols, is

actually intended for the true God? (1245, 1246.) Could Adam have been

jealous when there was no other man in existence to be jealous of?

1322. In the Introduction the ends to be answered by religion were

stated, (page 18.) Several of the foregoing pages have been designed

to show that Scripture does not fulfil these objects, being almost

silent as respects immortality, using doubtful language respecting the

unity of the divine power. Moreover, Jehovah is described as wrathful,

jealous, and vindictive; as sanctioning the massacre, spoliation, and

extirpation of neighbouring nations.[26] The fruits of the religion of

Moses were two sects, of whom one did not believe in a future state of

rewards and punishments; the other, although professing such a belief,

(according to the barbarous idea of Josephus,) were not as moral as

the unbelievers, (750, 1098.) Moreover, as respects the New Testament,

the precepts on which it laid the most stress, those against pecuniary

cupidity and resistance of wrong, have been not only neglected, but

acted upon inversely; so that rapacity and aggression have been the

predominant features of the conduct of Christians, unworthily so

called, toward each other, but especially toward those who have been

of a different religious belief. In one trait, however, the words of

Christ, already cited, have been fully carried out: “I come as a

sword.”[27]

1323. It may be seen from the passages quoted, that prior to the

promulgation of Christianity, people of various religious sects were

willing to live in harmony; but that after its promulgation there was

much discord, and that those who should have been especially influenced

by Christianity (the priesthood) were the foremost in vice!

1324. It is conceived that either on the one side the evidence of

Christianity could not have gone home to the soul of those who so

grossly violated its monitions, or that the rewards held out by it had

not been presented under an aspect sufficiently inviting to counteract

the fleeting allurements of this temporal world. It is conceived that

Scripture is from beginning to end, from the Pentateuch to the Gospel

of John, too worldly, as first exhibited in the promise of _lands_

to the Jews, and lastly of _judgeships_ to the apostles. The Old

Testament, of necessity, can treat of nothing but worldliness, since

there is throughout scarcely any reference to heaven; and some of the

Psalms would accord better with the curses of a devil, than with the

prayers of a sincere Christian. The cix. Psalm contains this language:

1325. “When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his

prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his

office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let

his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their

bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch

all that he hath, and let the strangers spoil his labour. Let there

be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour

his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the

generation following let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity

of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of

his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually,

that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. Because that

he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy

man, that he might even slay the broken in heart. As he loved cursing,

so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it

be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his

garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil unto

his bones. Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and

for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. Let this be the

reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak evil

against my soul.”

1326. Under these circumstances, wherefore should there be any alarm

for the consequences of replacing belief in Scripture by belief in

Spiritualism, if the evidence of this be, as we think, vastly more

reliable, and the morality far more consistent with that followed in

practice by great and good men of ancient and modern times.

1327. Moreover, the basis of probation, upon which the morality of

Scripture is built, is manifestly a _castle in the air_, since it

involves this contradiction, that an omnipotent, omniscient, and

prescient Deity, who can make his creatures what he wishes them to be,

and must know what they are, has to resort to trial to learn that which

he knows before the process is undertaken, as well as he can possibly

after its accomplishment. This demonstration alone overturns the whole

probationary superstructure existing in the minds of sectarians.

1328. Meanwhile, the communications which I have submitted involve the

idea of progression, and convey infinitely more knowledge of futurity

than the Old and New Testaments taken together.

_People profess Christianity more from a desire to do right, than they

do right in consequence of their professions._

1329. I am aware how much it is a part of the existing system of

education to imbue a confident faith in whatever tenets may be taught,

and how little it is possible, in consequence, to have any arguments

fairly considered which bear against the educational impressions. It

may be seen in the instance of the interesting lady to whom I owe the

kind letter, (1163,) how much more anxious such persons are to teach

than to listen. She had, as she supposed, listened to an exposition

of my views, of which the foundation had already been described in

a published letter, with an effort to compare the heaven and hell

of Scripture with those of Spiritualism; yet in all confidence of

victory, this excellent creature brings me a letter written by one

whom she considers to have a first-rate intellect, and who begins by

assuming what I most emphatically deny, and of which the argument is

just as good for Mohammedanism as for Christianity, provided the Koran

be assumed as the word of God in lieu of the Bible, and Mohammed as

the vicegerent of God instead of Christ. This may be considered as

the argument of an eminent Episcopalian in favour of the truth of

Christianity, while in those cited from Hughes and Breckinridge we

have the arguments of an eminent Romanist on one side, and an eminent

Calvinist on the other. The one objects to the basis of “_fallible_”

men as the rule of faith; the other, to any inference derived from

a gospel by “_fallible_” men. Breckinridge does not recollect that

there is nothing more fallible than the traditions, compilations, and

translations of fallible men, nor how skeptical all those who sustain

the truth of Scripture on this evidence, are of any other evidence of

the same kind which conflicts with Scripture.

1330. If the reader will look at the letters of Amasa Holcomb and my

replies, (690,) he will see an exemplification of the difficulty in

which many were placed, who had no other evidence of a future state

beside that afforded by Scripture. Let him apply to the human evidence

of antiquity no less skepticism than is now applied to the human

evidence of Spiritualists, and then estimate the weight of testimony in

favour of the Scriptures. Let him fairly consider the internal evidence

against Scripture, as briefly sketched in this work or elsewhere, and

then say whether he can conscientiously condemn Mr. Holcomb or myself

for conscientiously disbelieving Scripture.

1331. Let it be considered whether belief in Christianity is not at

the present time a consequence of morality, rather than its cause;

whether it is not, with ninety-nine in a hundred, the consequence of

early impressions, which have associated the Christian religion and

morals inseparably on the conscience; without, however, inducing in

any one of the individuals thus influenced any idea that the precepts

of Christ are to be carried out in practice. It would be manifestly

preposterous to look for this where the clergy, who were the teachers,

did not practically obey the precepts, but went ahead in the race of

iniquity, whichever way the current might lead, and almost everywhere

as desirous of wealth, and power, and worldly distinction as other men.

The imperfection of the evidence of scriptural truth, on which the

belief in it rests, or that false moral sense derived from education,

which makes the person affected just as tenacious of one creed as

of another, whether it be Judaic, Christian, or Mohammedan, causes

the faith thus arising to yield whenever the moral sense is impaired

on which it rests. Not being supported by reason, as soon as the

educational conscientiousness on which it was founded is blunted, any

faith built upon it forms no barrier. The individual perceives that

his opinions were not formed by himself, but imparted, and would have

been different, had he been born of different parents. Thus faith rests

upon morality, not morality upon faith; and when morality goes, faith

ceases to be a barrier. But meanwhile those who abandon morality,

find in their educational impressions one which is a salvo to them,

however sinful. They find that Christ died for those who believe in his

divinity or in his divine mission, and of course, that by closing their

ears and eyes to all evidence or argument impeaching Christianity, and

continuing to cherish the early impressions made by their teachers,

they may be redeemed from future punishment; whereas, as Dr. Berg

alleged in his debate with Barker, “_A sinner cannot be saved out of

Christ_.”

1332. But one consequence of this interested, bigoted belief is, that

animosity which, it was foretold by Christ, would cause such horrible

discord, and would make his advent equivalent to a severing of all

the dearest ties between relatives and friends, the superior and his

subordinates. As at this time any idea of a religion would be scouted

with indignation which should not make a future state of rewards and

punishments the primary object, it is inconceivable to me wherefore the

Old Testament should be an object of veneration to those whose thoughts

are _heavenward_. How could there be any thing but worldliness where

nothing but the things of the world were objects of desire—no heaven

beyond.

1333. From what has been urged, is it not manifest that, in the first

place, it is of great importance that the evidence of a future state

should be placed on a firmer footing than on recorded and translated

traditions, or on the decretals of a most profligate priesthood?

Would it not be one of the greatest imaginable blessings that those

who have not the consolation of believing in immortality, should have

that consolation, and those who already believe in a future state of

existence, should have a better knowledge of that state, than that

given by Josephus, sanctioned by Christ, even as collated by the pious

and learned clergyman, Dr. Harbaugh? (750.)

1334. If Christ had nothing but the vicinity of the fire prepared for

the devil and his angels, agreeably to Josephus, and his story of Dives

and Lazarus, or imaginary worldly appointments, or lying in the grave

till the _last day_,—if these are all the grounds that Christians have

had to build upon as respects future happiness, is it to be wondered

at that the priesthood of the Middle Ages, who best knew the defect of

gospel evidence, how little they themselves were to be trusted, and how

illusory was the promise made to the apostles of judgeships, (743,)

should, of all others in society, be the least restrained by fear of

future punishment?

_It is a calumny against human nature to represent men as wilfully

ignorant of the true religion._

1335. A prevalent calumny against human nature has been, that men

remain wilfully reckless as respects religious truth; or that they

remain in error designedly, and not because they mistake it for truth.

But it is notorious, that as respects the laws of man, those who make

it their business to violate them take great care to make themselves

acquainted with the laws which it is their object to break. None but

an idiot would expect the law to be less severe in proportion as he

should keep himself ignorant of its provisions. No banditti in the

Russian empire would expect the less to go to Siberia because they

should deny the reigning czar to be the sovereign. They would not

expect to escape his power by enthroning a _pretended_ czar, and paying

him honour. Such conduct would be too absurd, even for fools to pursue;

yet it is upon such erroneous views that three thousand Israelites were

surprised and assassinated for worshipping the golden calf; and that

eminent clergymen do not consider it as blasphemy against the paternal

God, described by Seneca (1224) to represent him as sanctioning this

horrible butchery.[28]

1336. The truth is, the selfishness of the worst men makes it quite as

much an object with them, as with good men, to know to what punishments

they may become liable, or what advantages they will be entitled to

hereafter. Self-interest makes every man anxious to know that which

deeply affects his future existence. Is there any one who would not

wish to learn whether his soul is to rot in the coffin with its fleshy

integuments, or to have another and eternal existence, happy or

wretched according to his deportment in this world?[29]

1337. Those who really wish to serve the cause of true religion,

and human welfare here and hereafter, should not expect that harsh

words or measures will promote these objects. If, from want of due

consideration, they uphold that which is repulsive to the human heart

and understanding, and turn a deaf ear to facts and reasoning, which

would produce a more beneficial issue, they will really be amenable to

the blame which they so unjustly lavish upon those whom they calumniate

as “_Infidels_,” while they themselves are really infidels to their

professed principles. The Bible itself made me an unbeliever in its

authenticity, and makes unbelievers of many who read it attentively and

fearlessly, after their reason is matured.

1338. Nothing could serve the cause of true religion and true morality

more than a belief in a future state of reward and punishment, without

having that book made an appendage to the instruction.

_To appreciate the Jewish representation of the Deity, a reader should

first form an idea of this planet and its inhabitants, comparatively

with the hundred millions of solar systems, and the inconceivable

extent of the space which encompasses them, which fall within the

domain of one common Deity._

1339. In order to form an idea of the Deity, we must consider the

extent of the universe over which he rules, and the magnificence and

multiplicity of the bodies which it comprises. Alpha Centauri, a star

of the Centaur, a constellation in the southern hemisphere, is the

nearest of the fixed stars; it nevertheless is nearly twenty thousand

million of miles from the earth. Light, flying at the rate of two

hundred thousand miles in a second, to come from that star, would take

three years and three months to reach the earth.

1340. A star in the constellation of the Swan, known as “61 Cygni,” is

another among the few whose distance is sufficiently small to allow it

to be measured. This is nearly three times as far as Alpha Centauri;

so that it would take light nine years to come from “61 Cygni” to the

earth. This star appears single to the naked eye, but, seen through a

telescope, appears like two stars, which according to Mitchell, are six

thousand millions of miles apart.

1341. But the stars which enter into the nebula of Orion are so

remote, that light, to come from one of them, would require ninety-two

thousand years. Suppose an imaginary right line to be extended from a

star in Orion so as to pass through the centre of this planet, and to

reach a star on the other side as remote as that first mentioned; of

course, the distance being doubled, it would require light twice the

time to perceive it, or one hundred and eighty-four thousand years.

Suppose a spherical space of which that line forms a diameter, or we

may suppose a larger sphere, including all the nebula visible by the

Rosse telescope. It is estimated that there are in all not less than

one hundred millions of stars visible with the aid of that magnificent

instrument, each of which is a sun with its planets; so that we have

reason to suppose that there are an hundred millions of solar systems.

Some of the suns are, like Sirius, estimated to give sixty-three times

as much light as our sun emits. Our planet is to Jupiter as one to

twelve hundred; to Saturn, as one to one thousand; to the sun, as

one to one million four hundred thousand. It is hardly to be seen by

the naked eye from Jupiter, and would be invisible to any human eye

situated upon any planet more remote than Jupiter. To the whole of the

sidereal creation, it is as a globule of water in the ocean, and the

inhabitants are as animalcules in that globule.

1342. Having thus prepared his mind with a proper conception of

the vastness of the attributes of the Deity, and the degree of the

comparative importance of the human race in the divine mind, as it

surveys the whole creation, let the reader take up the book of Genesis,

and compare the impressions which that alleged word of God would convey

with those which the preceding facts and considerations would induce.

It may be expedient that the reader, while under the sublime impression

of the majesty and magnificence of the Deity, as displayed in his

works, should consider what evidence there is of any entity having

the relation to him of a female; and if it be irrational to suppose

a commensurate being of the other sex, let the reader consider how

this Supreme Deity could have a son? The existence of a son requiring

both a father and mother, it may be well to think how a male without

a female god could have a son. He may take into view the opinions

of Newton, that God cannot be presumed to have organs. Doubtless it

will be perceived that this all-pervading, magnificent being cannot

require eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, a tongue to speak,

or a mouth to eat, legs with which to walk, or arms with which to

strike. Of course he will not consider him as having a person made of

those organs, as in the instance of his creature, man. He will agree

with Newton, that it were absurd to ascribe even one person to God,

and would be still more so to ascribe three persons. Again, if three

persons be essential to God, he being eternal, the three persons must

be eternal, and of course neither can bear the relation of a son to the

other; nor can the _coeval_ Holy Ghost proceed from two of the trio,

forming the third person, who, by the premises, existed _before_ he

came into his _subsequent_ existence, as alleged by the contradictory

conclusion. If the individuals composing the Godhead have any distinct

will or reason, the admission of the trinity amounts to polytheism;

and if they have not severally independent natures and reason, then

the association of the idea of three persons is useless. Is it not

idolatrous thus to associate with the Deity effete masses of spiritual

matter, under the name of _persons_, and worship the imaginary

monster thus created as the true God? Still more, is it not monstrous

to represent that those who cannot adore this imaginary idol, are

_wilfully_ incredulous?

1343. I have said that the account of the creation, given in the

Pentateuch, is inconsistent with geological facts. Much sophistry has

been employed to escape from this truth. Thus eminent geologists have

striven to reconcile the alleged creation of the world in six days,

to mean actually six eras, each of immense duration; yet Scripture

representing that the day succeeding those so employed, should be kept

holy as a Sabbath, and this being viewed in the Decalogue as a period

of twenty-four hours, precludes the assignment of any longer duration

to each of the six days, actually occupied by the Creator in performing

his great work.

1344. To enable the reader to judge how far the facts ascertained

by geological investigation, can be reconciled with the scriptural

account, I shall here quote them, as stated by Professor Hitchcock, in

his work entitled “Religion of Geology,” page 19. It should be known

to the reader that this author is among those who assume the Bible to

be the word of God upon the same grounds as the clergyman, (1182.)

1345. “Under these circumstances, all that I can do, is to state

definitely what I apprehend to be the established principles of the

science that have a bearing upon religious truth, and refer my hearers

to standard works on the subject for the proof that they are true. If

any will not take the trouble to examine the proofs, I trust they will

have candour and impartiality enough not to deny my positions.

1346. “The first important conclusion to which every careful observer

will come is, that the rocks of all sorts which compose the present

crust of the globe, so far as it has been explored, at least to the

depth of several miles, appear to have been the result of second

causes; that is, they are now in a different state from that in which

they were originally created.

1347. “It is, indeed, a favourite idea with some, that all the rocks

and their contents were created, just as we now meet them, in a moment

of time; that the supposed remains of animals and plants, which many

of them contain, and which occur in all states, from an animal or

plant little changed, to a complete conversion into stone, were never

real animals and plants, but only resemblances; and that the marks of

fusion and of the wearing of water, exhibited by the rocks, are not

to be taken as evidences that they have undergone such processes, but

only that it has pleased God to give them that appearance; and that, in

fact, it was as easy for God to create them just as they now are as in

any other form.

1348. “It is a presumption against such a supposition, that no men, who

have carefully examined rocks and organic remains, are its advocates.

Not that they doubt the power of God to produce such effects, but

they deny the probability that he has exerted it in this manner; for

throughout nature, wherever they have an opportunity to witness her

operations, they find that when substances appear to have undergone

changes, by means of secondary agencies, they have in fact undergone

them; and, therefore, the whole analogy of nature goes to prove that

the rocks have experienced great changes since their deposition. If

rocks are an exception to the rest of nature,—that is, if they are the

effect of miraculous agency,—there is no proof of it; and to admit it

without proof is to destroy all grounds of analogical reasoning in

natural operations; in other words, it is to remove the entire basis of

reasoning in physical science. Every reasonable man, therefore, who has

examined rocks, will admit that they have undergone important changes

since their original formation.

1349. “In the second place, the same general laws appear to have always

prevailed on the globe, and to have controlled the changes which have

taken place upon and within it. We come to no spot, in the history of

the rocks, in which a system different from that which now prevails

appears to have existed. Great peculiarities in the structure of

animals and plants do indeed occur, as well as changes on a scale of

magnitude unknown at present; but this was only a wise adaptation to

peculiar circumstances, and not an infringement of the general laws.

1350. “In the third place, the geological changes which the earth has

undergone, and is now undergoing, appear to have been the result of the

same agencies—viz. heat and water.

1351. “Fourthly. It is demonstrated that the present continents of the

globe, with perhaps the exception of some of their highest mountains,

have for a long period constituted the bottom of the ocean, and have

been subsequently either elevated into their present position, or the

waters have been drained off from their surface. This is probably the

most important principle in geology; and though regarded with much

skepticism by many, it is as satisfactorily proved as any principle of

physical science not resting on mathematical demonstration.

1352. “Fifthly. The internal parts of the earth are found to possess

a very high temperature; nor can it be doubted that at least oceans

of melted matter exist beneath the crust, and perhaps even all the

deep-seated interior is in a state of fusion.

1353. “Sixthly. The fossiliferous rocks, or such as contain animals

and plants, are not less than six or seven miles in perpendicular

thickness, and are composed of hundreds of alternating layers of

different kinds, all of which appear to have been deposited, just as

rocks are now forming, at the bottom of lakes and seas; and hence their

deposition must have occupied an immense period of time. Even if we

admit that this deposition went on in particular places much faster

than at present, a variety of facts forbid the supposition that this

was the general mode of their formation.

1354. “Seventhly. The remains of animals and plants found in the earth

are not mingled confusedly together, but are found arranged, for the

most part, in as much order as the drawers of a well-regulated cabinet.

In general, they appear to have lived and died on or near the spots

where they are now found; and as countless millions of these remains

are often found piled together, so as to form almost entire mountains,

the periods requisite for their formation must have been immensely

long, as was taught in the preceding proposition.

1355. “Eighthly. Still further confirmation of the same important

principle is found in the well-established fact, that there have been

upon the globe, previous to the existing races, not less than five

distinct periods of organized existence; that is, five great groups of

animals and plants, so completely independent that no species whatever

is found in more than one of them, have lived and successively passed

away before the creation of the races that now occupy the surface.

Other standard writers make the number of these periods of existence

as many as twelve. Comparative anatomy testifies that so unlike in

structure were these different groups, that they could not have

coexisted in the same climate and other external circumstances.

1356. “Ninthly. In the earliest times in which animals and plants

lived, the climate over the whole globe appears to have been as warm

as, or even warmer than, it is now between the tropics. And the slow

change from warmer to colder appears to have been the chief cause of

the successive destruction of the different races; and new ones were

created, better adapted to the altered condition of the globe; and

yet each group seems to have occupied the globe through a period of

great length; so that we have here another evidence of the vast cycles

of duration that must have rolled away even since the earth became a

habitable globe.

1357. “Tenthly. There is no small reason to suppose that the globe

underwent numerous changes previous to the time when animals were

placed upon it; that, in fact, the time was when the whole matter of

the earth was in a melted state, and not improbably also even in a

gaseous state. These points, indeed, are not as well established as the

others that have been mentioned; but, if admitted, they give to the

globe an incalculable antiquity.

1358. “Eleventhly. It appears that the present condition of the earth’s

crust and surface was of comparatively recent commencement; otherwise

the steep flanks of mountains would have ceased to crumble down, and

wide oceans would have been filled with alluvial deposits.

1359. “Twelfthly. Among the thirty thousand species of animals and

plants found in the rocks,[30] very few living species have been

detected; and even these few occur in the most recent rocks, while

in the secondary group, not less than six miles thick, not a single

species now on the globe has been discovered. Hence the present races

did not exist till after those in the secondary rocks had died. No

human remains have been found below those alluvial deposits which are

now forming by rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Hence geology infers that

man was one of the latest animals that was placed on the globe.

1360. “Thirteenthly. The surface of the earth has undergone an enormous

amount of erosion by the action of the ocean, the rivers, and the

atmosphere. The ocean has worn away the solid rock, in some parts of

the world, not less than ten thousand feet in depth, and rivers have

cut channels through the hardest strata, hundreds of feet deep and

several miles long; both of which effects demand periods inconceivably

long.

1361. “Fourteenthly. At a comparatively recent date, northern and

southern regions have been swept over and worn down by the joint action

of ice and water, the force in general having been directed toward the

equator. This is called the _drift_ period.

1362. “Fifteenthly. Since the drift period, the ocean has stood some

thousands of feet above its present level in many countries.

1363. “Sixteenthly. There is evidence, in regard to some parts of

the world, that the continents are now experiencing slow vertical

movements—some places sinking, and others rising. And hence a

presumption is derived that, in early times, such changes may have been

often repeated, and on a great scale.

1364. “Seventeenthly. Every successive change of importance on the

earth’s surface appears to have been an improvement of its condition,

adapting it to beings of a higher organization, and to man at last, the

most perfect of all.

1365. “Finally. The present races of animals and plants on the globe

are for the most part disposed in groups, occupying particular

districts, beyond whose limits the species peculiar to those provinces

usually droop and die. The same is true, to some extent, as to the

animals and plants found in the rocks; though the much greater

uniformity of climate that prevailed in early times permitted organized

beings to take a much wider range than at present; so that the

zoological and botanical districts were then probably much wider. But

the general conclusion, in respect to living and extinct animals is,

that there must have been several centres of creation, from which they

emigrated as far as their natures would allow them to range.

1366. “It would be easy to state more principles of geology of

considerable importance; but I have now named the principal ones that

bear upon the subject of religion. A brief statement of the leading

truths of theology, whether natural or revealed, which these principles

affect, and on which they cast light, will give an idea of the subjects

which I propose to discuss in these lectures.

1367. “The first point relates to the age of the world. For while it

has been the usual interpretation of the Mosaic account that the world

was brought into existence nearly at the same time with man and the

other existing animals, geology throws back its creation to a period

indefinitely but immeasurably remote. The question is, not whether

man has existed on the globe longer than the common interpretation

of Genesis requires,—for here geology and the Bible speak the same

language,—but whether the globe itself did not exist long before his

creation; that is, long before the six days’ work, so definitely

described in the Mosaic account? In other words, is not this a case

in which the discoveries of science enable us more accurately to

understand the Scriptures?

1368. “The introduction of death into the world, and the specific

character of that death described in Scripture as the consequence of

sin, are the next points where geology touches the subject of religion.

Here, too, the general interpretation of Scripture is at variance with

the facts of geology, which distinctly testify to the occurrence of

death among animals long before the existence of man. Shall geology

here, also, be permitted to modify our exposition of the Bible?

1369. “The subject of deluges, and especially that of Noah, will next

claim our attention. For though it is now generally agreed that geology

cannot detect traces of such a deluge as the Scriptures describe, yet

upon some other bearings of that subject it does cast light; and so

remarkable is the history of opinions concerning the Noachian deluge,

that it could not on that account alone be properly passed in silence.”

_Our actions dependent, under God, on organization, education, and the

extent to which we are tempted extraneously._

1370. “Are not the hairs of your head all numbered?—Which of you by

taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?” Luke xii. 7, 25.

1371. May it not be consistently inquired, who, without God’s

assistance, can make his passions less ardent? his counteracting reason

or conscientiousness more competent to restrain them? Who, prior to

his sublunary existence, had the option, whether he should be born

a Jew, a Gentile, or a Christian; whether in the Roman, Grecian,

Episcopalian, or dissenting churches; whether his progenitors should

be Chinese, Hindoos, Europeans, negroes, or savages? Who has, through

his own previous choice, been brought up, on the one hand, by ignorant

and vicious, or on the other, by virtuous and well-educated, parents?

Can any soul be alleged to be responsible for entering the body of

an infant begotten by idolaters, and thus subjected to the curse of

the commandment? Or can a soul be deemed to have any merit because

it came into the world as the progeny of parents orthodox in their

own estimation, and happy in the belief that while myriads are to

suffer to eternity in another world, for errors or crimes arising from

causes beyond their control, a few are to be made eternally happy,

notwithstanding their admitted sinfulness, by virtue of a bigoted

confidence in the pre-eminent ability of their parents, their priests,

or of themselves to learn tenets of which the great majority of mankind

are ignorant? Humility in profession is associated with a towering and

overbearing presumption in practice toward all who differ with them in

creed: hence an effort to instruct others at the expense of millions

spent in missions, while they have no better evidence of the accuracy

of their own knowledge than a fallible human conviction.

1372. If two persons, A. and B., were organized exactly alike, educated

precisely in the same way, and subjected to the same temptations

or incentives, would they not act alike? Would not their acting

differently prove that they were not alike in all respects?

1373. It may be said that they are free agents, being endowed with

free-will; but if they be perfectly alike and similarly situated,

(agreeably to the premises,) their free-will must be perfectly similar;

and if not, let it be allowed to be, through God’s will, perfectly

similar. Is it in their power to alter the nature of their will, any

more than “_the colour of their hair_.”

1374. If any other being act differently from these, does it not

follow that he is differently organized, educated, or situated from

them; and that the diversity in one or all of these respects must be

proportionable to the degree in which his actions and morals differ

from those of A. and B.

1375. But it may be inquired, where is the merit of virtue, or the

demerit of vice, if they be the consequences of causes over which we

have no control? The reply is, that virtue is an endowment due to the

will of Deity, just as the difference between the different races of

mankind and the various genera of animals, or between individuals of

the same species, must be due to that volition. An analogous idea of

the necessity of God’s help to virtue is insisted upon by some of our

most respectable and numerous Christian sects. It places virtue in man,

so far as it may exist, upon the same basis as in God. It has always

been held by all Christians that God can do no wrong; that vice is

inconsistent with his nature. The more, then, a man is by nature and

education incapable of being vicious, the greater his natural aptitude

for virtue, the more he approaches its most perfect exemplification.

1376. But how can the punishment of the wicked be justified under

this view of their case? I answer, that it can only be justified in

self-defence, for the reformation of the offender, or to prevent the

repetition of injury where no other means can be employed, just as

killing wild beasts, noxious insects, or our enemies in warfare is

justified.

1377. Punishment, unless with a view to prevention or reformation,

seems to me diabolic. It seems irreconcilable with the injunction to

return good for evil, that the Deity from whom it proceeds should

return evil for evil, _in excess_; that he should, for finite and

transient sins, award eternal punishment.

1378. The inference that omniscience and omnipotence could create

myriads of beings, foreseeing that they must be subjected to extreme

misery for an unlimited time, is irreconcilable with all goodness

and omniscience. But it may be demanded, does not the fear of future

punishment make mankind more virtuous? The man who avoids a felony

solely through fear of future punishment is not the less wicked; he is

only a more prudent, or a more cowardly villain. That piety to God and

philanthropy are virtues, is most evident; but then these incentives

must be disinterested. If Abraham could believe that shedding his

son’s blood upon the altar would gratify the Deity, in order to make

it a pious or virtuous act, it should have been unaccompanied by any

expectation of benefit to himself. He must have had a conception of

the Deity fully as bad as that of any heathen, to suppose that the

sacrifice would be agreeable to him.

1379. There is, moreover, much reason to infer that a man who could

pass his wife as his sister, and send her to a palace in order to

gain influence with a king, did not lose sight of himself when he

contemplated killing his son to propitiate the King of kings. But no

human testimony should induce us to credit such imputations against

Jehovah. Nothing is more probable than that priests should invent this

absurd fable, and nothing more improbable than that an omniscient

God, who could read Abraham’s inmost thoughts, should have found it

necessary to ask such a barbarous sacrifice, in order to determine the

extent and sincerity of that devotion of which he must have already

known the precise limits.

_On Probation._

1380. I have already made objections to the idea that we can be placed

in this world for the purpose of probation. I will here make use of

additional arguments in support of those objections. Spiritualism

assumes that we are placed here for progression. It has, in this

aspect, a self-evident ascendency over the scriptural doctrine.

1381. A finite being has need to subject his works to trial, in order

to learn whether they have the requisite perfection; but how can an

omnipotent and omniscient Deity be under any necessity of _trying_ his

works? In the first place, they must be precisely what he has designed;

in the next place, foreseeing the result of any experiment he may make,

he has no motive for the trial. Thus, before placing Adam and Eve in

Paradise, God must have known that Adam would be incompetent to resist

his wife, his wife the serpent, and that the apple would be eaten.

How useless then was the experiment! How can it be reconciled with

omniscience and omnipotence? The crime would not have taken place had

God made woman less inquisitive; her husband strong enough morally to

resist temptation and his wife’s seductive influence; or had not the

serpent or Satan, under the form of this reptile, been allowed to tempt

Eve. And yet in consequence of that act, not only the soul of the first

man, but that of all his posterity, are considered by orthodoxy as

having fallen, as being doomed to eternal punishment, unless by being

morally regenerated, principally by a blind belief in the allegation of

certain priests, who do not agree among themselves as to what we are to

believe.

1382. But what had souls unborn to do with the acts of Adam and Eve?

Is it conceivable that the soul of the child is begotten by the souls

of its parents, or to be inferred that it is a spiritual being,

created by God for the body, which the progenitors beget in their

corporeal capacity? (See Seneca’s opinion, 1230.) How could a dumb

snake, belonging to the class of reptiles, very low comparatively in

intellectual capacity, acquire power of speech and reason without a

special miracle on the part of God, either _directly_ or _indirectly_

through Satan, acting with the cognizance of his divine master. This

reptile, previously created without feet, because the devil merely

assumed his form, is doomed as a _punishment_ to crawl on his belly, in

the only way in which he could move consistently with his organization,

independently of the sentence!!! Would it be any greater punishment to

cause snakes to creep on their bellies than quadrupeds to go on their

feet? Since none of the genera of serpents are endowed with reason or

speech, how could they be responsible for the acts of an animal which,

being endowed with those attributes, would not belong to their order?

It must have been a peculiar reptile, in the form of a snake, created

for the special purpose of tempting Eve. If, with Milton, it be assumed

that it was Satan, in the form of a serpent, who tempted her? how could

serpents be responsible for the crime?

_World least moral when the Christian church had most sway.—Honour and

mercantile credit more trusted than religion.—Virtue due more to the

heart than to sectarianism.—Bigotry acts like an evil spirit._

1383. It will be perceived, that when the church had the world most

completely under its sway, there was the least morality; but as the

arts and sciences grew up, in despite of religious intolerance,

morality improved. Thus a system has been established, which while

violating, more especially the most emphatic monitions of Christ, tends

to enforce those rules of conduct which are necessary to the welfare

of society. But an auxiliary principle—honour—has come into operation,

which often restrains those who are not influenced by religion, nor by

pure morality. Honour, like the fear of hell, may make a man act more

nobly, or more honestly, without improving his religious principles or

his heart. Hence the saying, “_Honour among thieves_,” and likewise

among unprincipled gamblers.

1384. Mercantile honour, under the name of mercantile credit, is

another important substitute for real heartfelt integrity. The ill

consequences of a loss of worldly consideration, or of those advantages

which result from the ability to _borrow_, or to _postpone_ payment

with consent of the creditor, is a motive for punctual payment, when

a debt equally due, in honesty, would be neglected. This goes much

farther as an element of the prevailing morality in securing punctual

payment, than religion.

1385. That religion has actually very little to do with mercantile

morals, must be evident, _since it is never, on change, an object of

inquiry_. When men are about to trust large sums, they do not inquire

how often the other party goes to church, nor to what church he goes.

It has never been my lot to know any one whom I thought better for

his religion. I have known many whom I thought better through native

goodness of heart than they would have been if left to the influence of

their bigoted opinions alone. I heard a clergyman, distinguished for

his amiability and liberality in social intercourse, speak from the

pulpit of infidelity as “the work of the devil.”

1386. There are allegations of this kind made from the pulpit which

to me appear to be absolutely calumnious, though those who make them

do not conceive themselves to be calumniators. It is, in truth, their

false religion which speaks; they are possessed as if by an evil

spirit, yet the goodness of their hearts prevents them from realizing

any such calumnies in their personal intercourse with society. Dr. Berg

said it was not _he_ (Dr. Berg) that spoke when he used ill language to

Barker, but the Bible. There is a want of Christian moderation in the

language of Christ, and John the Baptist, and in some of the Psalms,

which seems inconsistent with Christ’s precepts. John, addressing the

Pharisees as “vipers fleeing from the wrath to come,” representing

them as poisonous reptiles, and God as _enraged_ against them. The

language of Christ respecting some of the same sect, to which allusion

has been made, is even more abusive.

1387. But among the calumnies to which I have alluded, are those which

represent the human heart as innately wicked, and only to be corrected

by religious regeneration. All the souls created since Adam ate the

apple, must be born anew, thus drawing a marked distinction between

those who have gone through this second birth, and such as myself, who

have not undergone this recuperative process. But what man of common

sense draws a line between those who are thought to have been born over

again, and those who have not? The great majority of those who call

themselves Christians, do not put any more trust in one who has gone

through this second birth, than in one who is not deemed to have been

thus regenerated.

_Progress of Literature and Science in Arabia under the Mohammedan

Pontiffs, called Caliphs._

1388. While the science and literature of the Roman Empire sank

under the influence of the Christian pontiff (pope) into ignorance,

superstition, and vice, the Arabians, under the influence of their

Mohammedan pontiffs, (caliphs,) arose from barbarism to a comparatively

superior state of intellectual acquirement, as the following

quotation, from “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” will

show:

1389. “After their civil and domestic wars, the subjects of the

Abbassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found leisure and

felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane science. This spirit was

first encouraged by the Caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge

of the Mohammedan law, had applied himself with success to the study

of astronomy, but when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh

of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,

and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at

Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the

volumes of Grecian science: at his command they were translated by

the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language; his subjects

were exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings; and

the successor of Mohammed assisted with pleasure and modesty at the

assemblies and disputations of the learned. ‘He was not ignorant,’

says Abulpharagius, ‘that _they_ are the elect of God, his best and

most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of

their rational faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turk

may glory in the industry of their hands, or the indulgence of their

brutal appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless

emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a bee-hive: these

fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness of the lions

and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments, they are much inferior to

the vigour of the grossest and most sordid quadrupeds. The teachers

of wisdom are the true luminaries and legislators of a world, which,

without their aid, would again sink in ignorance and barbarism.’ The

zeal and curiosity of Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes

of the line of Abbas: their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the

Ommiades of Spain, were the patrons of the learned, as well as the

commanders of the faithful: the same royal prerogative was claimed by

their independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused

the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara to Fez

and Cordova. The vizir of a sultan consecrated a sum of two hundred

thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a college at Bagdad,

which he endowed with an annual revenue of fifteen thousand dinars.

The fruits of instruction were communicated, perhaps at different

times, to six thousand disciples of every degree, from the son of the

noble to that of the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for

the indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors was

repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions of Arabic

literature were copied and collected by the curiosity of the studious

and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor refused the invitation

of the sultan of Bochara, because the carriage of his books would

have required four hundred camels. The royal library of the Fatimites

consisted of one hundred thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed

and splendidly bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice,

to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate,

if we can believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of

six hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in

the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent towns

of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than three

hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries were opened in

the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of Arabian learning

continued about five hundred years, till the great eruption of the

Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and most slothful period

of European annals; but since the sun of science has arisen in the

West, it should seem that the Oriental studies have languished and

declined.”

1390. I here close my remarks upon the Influence of Scripture on the

Morals of Christians. They have proceeded from a desire to promulgate

what I deem to be truth, and to expose the errors by which I conceive

it to be environed. It is inconsistent with my nature to state less

than the truth when treating on any subject. I shall be sorry for any

pain which I may give to those whose hearts are so associated with

their opinions, that whatever conflicts with the one is painful to

the other; yet I wish any persons so wounded to reflect how little

denunciation has been spared, not only as respects opinions, but as

respects motives, where “_infidels_,” unjustly so called, have been

held up to view. I have not assailed the _motives_ of any one; even as

respects _opinions_, I have withheld or modified sarcasms which, as I

think, might have been justly employed, or used without modification.