The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama": and what i

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The Profits of Religion

An Essay in Economic Interpretation

By

UPTON SINCLAIR

CONTENTS

NEW YORK

VANGUARD PRESS

VANGUARD PRINTINGS

First-January, 1927

Second-April, 1927

Third-June, 1928

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OFFERTORY

This book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of view--as a

Source of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have searched the

libraries through, and no one has done it before. If you read it, you

will see that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty-five years of

thought and a year of investigation. It contains the facts.

I publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the lowest

possible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return for one

thing which you may give me--the joy of speaking a true word and

getting it heard.

Note to fifth edition, 1926: "The Profits of Religion" was first

published early in 1917. The present edition represents a sale of over

60,000 copies, without counting a dozen translations. In this edition

a few errors have been corrected, but otherwise the book has not been

changed. The reader will understand that references to the World War

are of the date 1917, prior to America's entrance.

This book is the first of a series of volumes, an economic

interpretation of culture, which now includes "The Brass Check," "The

Goose-step," "The Goslings," and "Mammonart."

* * * * *

#CONTENTS#

#Introductory#

Bootstrap-lifting

Religion

#Book One: The Church of the Conquerors#

The Priestly Lie

The Great Fear

Salve Regina!

Fresh Meat

Priestly Empires

Prayer-wheels

The Butcher-Gods

The Holy Inquisition

Hell-fire

#Book Two: The Church of Good Society#

The Rain Makers

The Babylonian Fire-God

The Medicine-men

The Canonization of Incompetence

Gibson's Preservative

The Elders

Church History

Land and Livings

Graft in Tail

Bishops and Beer

Anglicanism and Alcohol

Dead Cats

"Suffer Little Children" The Court-circular

Horn-blowing

Trinity Corporation

Spiritual Interpretation

#Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls#

Charity

God's Armor

Thanksgivings

The Holy Roman Empire

Temporal Power

Knights of Slavery

Priests and Police

The Church Militant

The Church Triumphant

God in the Schools

The Menace

King Coal

The Unholy Alliance

Secret Service

Tax Exemption

Holy History

Das Centrum

#Book Four: The Church of the Slavers#

The Face of Caesar

Deutschland ueber Alles

Der Tag

King Cotton

Witches and Women

Moth and Rust

To Lyman Abbott

The Octopus

The Industrial Shelley

The Outlook for Graft

Clerical Camouflage

The Jungle

#Book Five: The Church of the Merchants#

The Head Merchant

"Herr Beeble" Holy Oil

Rhetorical Black-hanging

The Great American Fraud

Riches in Glory

Captivating Ideals

Spook Hunting

Running the Rapids

Birth Control

Sheep

#Book Six: The Church of the Quacks#

Tabula Rasa

The Book of Mormon

Holy Rolling

Bible Prophecy

Koreshanity

Mazdaznan

Black Magic

Mental Malpractice

Science and Wealth

New Nonsense

"Dollars Want Me!" Spiritual Financiering

The Graft of Grace

#Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution#

Christ and Caesar

Locusts and Wild Honey

Mother Earth

The Soap Box

The Church Machine

The Church Redeemed

The Desire of Nations

The Knowable

"Nature's Insurgent Son" The New Morality

Envoi

* * * * *

#INTRODUCTORY#

#Bootstrap-lifting#

Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader.

It is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are

gathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and distressing

positions, their fingers hooked in the straps of their boots. They are

engaged in lifting themselves; tugging and straining until they grow

red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their

foreheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are

fixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the

sky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and

then, amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and

triumph.

I approach one and say to him, "Friend, what is this you are doing?"

He answers, without pausing to glance at me, "I am performing

spiritual exercises. See how I rise?"

"But," I say, "you are not rising at all!"

Whereat he becomes instantly angry. "You are one of the scoffers!"

"But, friend," I protest, "don't you feel the earth under your feet?"

"You are a materialist!"

"But, friend, I can see--"

"You are without spiritual vision!"

And so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of a

sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the

prevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of the

human race. How is it possible that none of them should suspect the

futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I am

uncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting off the

ground, or about to get off the ground?

Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there among

the bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and slipping his

hands into their pockets. The position of the spiritual exercisers

greatly facilitates his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they

do not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not heed him;

he goes through their pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents

to a bag he carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him

for a while, and finally approach and ask, "What are you doing, sir?"

He answers, "I am picking pockets."

"Oh," I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. "But--I beg

pardon--are you a thief?"

"Oh, no," he answers, smilingly, "I am the agent of the Wholesale

Pickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity."

"I see," I reply. "And these people let you--"

"It is the law," he says. "It is also the gospel."

I turn, following his glance, and observe another person

approaching--a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes,

moving with slow dignity. Ha gazes about at the sweating and grunting

hordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of

benediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, "Blessed are the

Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." He moves on,

and after a bit stops and announces again, "Man doth not live by bread

alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets

and priests of Bootstrap-lifting."

Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the agent of

the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets him as a

friend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes

a generous share of the loot which he has collected. The majestic one

does not cringe, nor does he make any effort to hide what is going on.

On the contrary he cries aloud, "It is more blessed to give than to

receive!" And again he cries, "The laborer is worthy of his hire!" And

a third time he cries, yet more sternly, "Render unto Caesar the

things which are Caesar's!" And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long

enough to answer: "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to

keep this law!" Then they renew their straining and tugging.

I step up, and in timid tones begin, "Reverend sir, will you tell me

by what right you take this wealth?"

Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of

thunder, "Blasphemer!" And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from their

lifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a general call for

a policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall

silent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep my thoughts

to myself.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and

incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting

impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long

time ago--no man can recall how far back--the Wholesale Pickpockets

made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be

rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they

began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice.

Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see

an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests

of the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various

designs, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting.

I come to where a group of people are occupied in laying the

corner-stone of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am

informed it is the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I

stand watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will

do my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.

I go on to another building, which I am told is a library containing

volumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published under the

auspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless

vistas of shelves, also several thousand current magazines and papers.

I consult these--for my legs have given out in the effort to visit and

inspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that

hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or

revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all

the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and

liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.

There are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed

by Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters,

whose priests live by "livings"; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters,

whose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There

are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;

Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon

Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and

Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy Jumper,

Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army

bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varieties of "New

Thought" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist,

Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard

high-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two

bits apiece; the "uplift" and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and

Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes

at one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and

Kantian professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at

several thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean

Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the

art-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves

down to the Ape.

Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all

these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of

Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that

they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any

other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate

tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of

the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the

poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist

Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves.

But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting

walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity

that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their

role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at

self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets'

Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of

interference.

#Religion#

The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn the

sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I admit the

honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher

is that he shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him be

tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like Nietzsche; let him

stand upon a pillar and be devoured by worms like Simeon Stylites--on

these terms I grant to any dreamer the right to hold himself above

economic science.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about

himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny

his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its

weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be

harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the

formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic

self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to

the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to

say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual

heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty

and greed? What I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!

It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one

good and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or

it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or

it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word "Religion". In its

true sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses,

the impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the

desire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must

be religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing

force, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought

of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.

But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense,

because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man

"Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the "hunger and

thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in which this hunger

has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the

world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and

"revelations", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste

claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral

strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations

of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of

ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that

"Religion" in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the

natural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.

If by my jesting at "Bootstrap-lifting" I have wounded some dear

prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more persuasive

voice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the suffering of

others; I have devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the

suffering, to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by

any chance there be a way of escape for future generations. I have

found that the latter is the case; the suffering is needless, it can

with ease and certainty be banished from the earth. I know this with

the knowledge of science--in the same way that the navigator of a ship

knows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the compass to

which he must steer in order to reach the port.

Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the cults

of the unknown. The power which made us has given us a mind, and the

impulse to its use; let us see what can be done with it to rid the

earth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset

this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure you that I am

no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race

will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old

symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to

certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be

found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I

set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is not

from blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to put a new

and sounder structure in its place. Before we part company I shall

submit the blue print of that new home of the spirit.

* * * * *

#BOOK ONE#

#The Church of the Conquerors#

I saw the Conquerors riding by

With trampling feet of horse and men:

Empire on empire like the tide

Flooded the world and ebbed again;

A thousand banners caught the sun,

And cities smoked along the plain,

And laden down with silk and gold

And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.

Kemp.

* * * * *

#The Priestly Lie#

When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he

fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural

forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an

individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons,

dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and

Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies,

play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were

originally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient

man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the

mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual

intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero

who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and

night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the

phenomena, it was the science of early times.

Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the

lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner

of the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using

those means which would be effective in the quarrels of men--presents

of roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels

and women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission.

And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when

the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity

for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of

penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and

seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of

beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning

bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated

to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes

of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly

castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling,

would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special

powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the

oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would

proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with

him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as

his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in

receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes.

They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go

through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all

sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and

poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,

To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high and anthem clear,

As may with sweetness through mine ear

Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms, the

Priestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the world, each

with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its

complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its

thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true believers";

each damns all the others, with more or less heartiness--and each is a

mighty fortress of Graft.

There will be few readers of this book who have not been brought up

under the spell of some one of these systems of Supernaturalism; who

have not been taught to speak with respect of some particular priestly

order, to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek

respite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial spell. These

things are woven into our very fibre in childhood; they are sanctified

by memories of joys and griefs, they are confused with spiritual

struggles, they become part of all that is most vital in our lives.

The reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do

well to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects

than his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine without

fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's "Secret

Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled"--encyclopedias of the fantastic

inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured

soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells,

illuminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls

and masters--all of which it is permissible to refuse to support with

gifts. Let the reader then go to James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great

Religions", and realize how many billions of humans have lived and

died in the solemn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven

depended upon their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain

rites, all mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the

others and the followers of the others. So gradually the realization

will come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its

welfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to it.

#The Great Fear#

It was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor that

his ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his mental

suffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for Nature is a

grim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have yet been learned.

We have a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread being

diverted from its true function, a stimulus to a search for knowledge,

and made into a means of clamping down ignorance upon the mind of the

race. That this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized

Religion no candid student can deny.

The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or

modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it--and that

it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived. "The

fear of divine anger", says Prof. Jastrow, "runs as an undercurrent

through the entire religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria." In

the words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:

Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?

The plan of a god is full of mystery--who can understand it?

He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.

In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.

And that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the Hebrew

scriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews combined all

their fears into one Great Fear. "The fear of the Lord is the

beginning of wisdom," we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives;

and the Psalmist repeats it. "Dominion and fear are with Him," cries

Job. "How then can any man be just before God? Or how can he be clean

that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and

the stars are not pure in His sight: How much less man, that is a

worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?" He goes on, in his lyrical

rapture, "Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction hath no

covering.... The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His

rebuke. ... The thunder of His power who can understand?" That all

this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter

the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion

of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of

Priestcraft.

The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama": and what is the

denouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last word

about life? "Wherefore I abhor myself," says Job, "and repent in dust

and ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the

beginning that he "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,

and eschewed evil." But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and

"the fire of God" falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his

servants, and "a great wind from the wilderness" kills his sons and

daughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon

caused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but

mainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the

diet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease,

and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits

among the ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his

religious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors

himself, and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and

that no purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter,

unreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his

friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for

a whole templeful of priests--and then "the Lord gave Job twice as

much as he had before.... And after this Job lived an hundred and

forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four

generations."

You do not have to look very deeply into this "Wisdom-drama" to find

out whose wisdom it is. Confess your own ignorance and your own

impotence, abandon yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred Caste,

the Keepers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon and

respite--in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from a psalm of

the ancient Babylonians, which "heathen" chant is identical in spirit

and purpose with the utterances of Job:

The Sin that I have wrought, I know not;

The unclean that I have eaten, I know not;

The offense into which I have walked, I know not....

The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded me;

The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me;

A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow....

I sought for help, but no one took my hand;

I wept, but no one harkened to me....

The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them;

To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer;

O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my sacrifice;

O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me, accept my sacrifice!

#Salve Regina!#

And now let the reader leap three thousand years of human history, of

toil and triumph of the intellect of man; and instead of a Hebrew

manuscript or a Babylonian brick there confronts him a little

publication, printed on a modern rotary press in the capital of the

United States of America, bearing the date of October, 1914, and the

title "Salve Regina". In it we find "a beautiful prayer", composed by

the late cardinal Rampolla; we are told that "Pius X attached to it an

indulgence of 100 days, each time it is piously recited, applicable to

the souls in purgatory."

O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven,

where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your

servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses

and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most

beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy

holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real

Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin,

as co-Redemptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal

Father who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word,

etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts

and thanks the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and

merciful.... be pleased to accept this little homage of your

servant, and obtain for him also from your divine Son pardon

for his sins, Amen.

And then, looking more closely, we discover the purpose of this

"beautiful prayer", and of the neat little paper which prints it.

"Salve Regina" is raising funds for the "National Shrine of the

Immaculate Conception", a home for more priests, and Catholic ladies

who desire to collect for it may receive little books which they are

requested to return within three months. Pius X writes a letter of

warm endorsement, and sets an example by giving four hundred dollars

"out of his poverty"--or, to be more precise, out of the poverty of

the pitiful peasantry of Italy. There is included in the paper a form

of bequest for "devoted clients of Our Blessed Mother", and at the top

of the editorial page the most alluring of all baits for the loving

hearts of the flock--that the names of deceased relatives and friends

may be written in the collection books, and will be transferred to the

records of the Shrine, and these persons "will share in all its

spiritual benefits". In the days of Job it was with threats of boils

and poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained itself; but in the case

of this blackest of all Terrors, transplanted to our free Republic

from the heart of the Dark Ages, the wretched victims see before their

eyes the glare of flames, and hear the shrieks of their loved ones

writhing in torment through uncounted ages and eternities.

#Fresh Meat#

In the days when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, I sought

earnestly for evidence of a non-meat-eating race; but candor compelled

me to admit that man was like the monkey and the pig and the bear--he

was vegetarian when he could not help it. The advocates of the reform

insist that meat as a diet causes muddy brains and dulled nerves; but

you would certainly never suspect this from a study of history. What

you find in history is that all men crave meat, all struggle for it,

and the strongest and cleverest get it. Everywhere you find the

subject classes living in the midst of animals which they tend, but

whose flesh they rarely taste. Even in modern America, sweet land of

liberty, our millions of tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and

turkeys, and hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save

everything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the city. It would

not be too much to say of the cultural records of early man that they

all have to do, directly or indirectly, with the reserving of fresh

meat to the masters. In J.T. Trowbridge's cheerful tale of the

adventures of Captain Seaborn, we are told by the cannibal priest how

idol-worship has ameliorated the morals of the tribe--

For though some warriors of renown

Continue anthropophagous,

'Tis rare that human flesh goes down

The low-caste man's aesophagus!

I suspect that we should have to go back to the days of the cave-man

to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat,

and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise

self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would

bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god

might come in the night-time and partake of it. Certainly, at any

rate, there are few religions of record in which such devices do not

appear. The early laws of the Hebrews are more concerned with

delicatessen for the priests than with any other subject whatever.

Here, for example, is the way to make a Nazarite:

He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of

the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one

ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin

offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,

and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour

mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed

with oil, and their meat offerings.

And the law goes on to instruct the priests to take certain choice

parts and "wave them for a wave offering before the Lord: this is holy

for the priest." What was done with the other portions we are not

told; but earlier in this same "Book of Numbers" we find the general

law that

Every offering of all the holy things of the children of

Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And

every man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man

giveth to the priest, it shall be his.

In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests of

Ceylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them. Among

the Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four new robes

to the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the robes; if they

fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judgment-throne.

The devotees are instructed that "he who performs this rite succeeds

in both worlds, and obtains a firm footing in both worlds." Among the

Buddhists, the followers give alms to the monks, and are told

specifically what advantages will thereby accrue to them. In the

Aitareyo Brahmanam of the Rig-Veda we read

He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is

born from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates

in the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred

knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and

is absorbed into the deity.

Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma, or

juice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god. Among the

Episcopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that

of the grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what is left

of it, but is ordered "reverently to consume it." In as much as the

priest is the sole judge of how much good sherry wine he shall

consecrate previous to the ceremony, it is to be expected that the

priests of this cult should be lukewarm towards the prohibition

movement, and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament with

unfermented and uninteresting grape-juice.

#Priestly Empires#

In every human society of which we have record there has been one

class which has done the hard and exhausting work, the "hewers of wood

and drawers of water"; and there has been another, much smaller class

which has done the directing. To belong to this latter class is to

work also, but with the head instead of the hands; it is also to enjoy

the good things of life, to live in the best houses, to eat the best

food, to have choice of the most desirable women; it is to have

leisure to cultivate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire

graces and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape

fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded--in short, to have

Power. How to get this Power and to hold it has been the first object

of the thoughts of men from the beginning of time.

The most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is uncertain,

for any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed with it. It will

be found that empires based upon military force alone, however cruel

they may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so dangerous to

progress; it is only when resistance is paralyzed by the agency of

Superstition, that the race can be subjected to systems of

exploitation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The ancient

empires were all priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed

the will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of

the gods.

Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:

Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the

Aztecs....Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by

reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were

enabled to mould the young and plastic mind according to

their own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence

for religion and its ministers.

The historian goes on to indicate the economic harvest of this

teaching:

To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for the

maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented by

the policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under

the last Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent,

and covered every district of the empire.

And this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices, whereby

the priestly caste maintained the prestige of its divinities:

At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486,

the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the

purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly

two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and

seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the

shrine of this terrible deity.

The same system appears in Professor Jastrow's account of the

priesthood of Babylonia and Assyria:

The ultimate source of all law being the deity himself, the

original legal tribunal was the place where the image or

symbol of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or

omen, indicative of the will of the god. The power thus

lodged in the priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous.

They virtually held in their hands the life and death of the

people.

And of the business side of this vast religious system:

The temples were the natural depositories of the legal

archives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably

enormous proportions. Records were made of all decisions;

the facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses.

Business and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale

were in like manner drawn up in the presence of official

scribes, who were also priests. In this way all commercial

transactions received the written sanction of the religious

organization. The temples themselves--at least in the large

centres--entered into business relations with the populace.

In order to maintain the large household represented by such

an organization as that of the temple of Enlil of Nippur,

that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that of Marduk at Babylon, or

that of Shamash at Sippar, large holdings of land were

required which, cultivated by agents for the priests, or

farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of the

produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple

officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the

furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at

20%--to barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides

engaging labor for work of all kinds directly needed for the

temples. A large quantity of the business documents found in

the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs

of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples

in the large centres as among the most important business

institutions of the country. In financial or monetary

transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that

of national banks....

And so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor said

more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures

were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of

Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all

polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!"

#Prayer-wheels#

These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to find

them we have only to ask ourselves:

What countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race?

What countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or

industry?

For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam,

that "they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody,

while everybody prostrates himself before them. They are maintained at

the public expense." In the same way we read of the negroes of the

Caribbean islands that "their priests and priestesses exercise an

almost unlimited power." Miss Kingsley, in her "West African Studies",

tells us that if we desire to understand the institutions of this

district, we must study the native's religion.

For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it

influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as

the religion of the Europeans is at times. The African

cannot say, "Oh, that is all right from a religious point of

view, but one must be practical." To be practical, to get on

in the world, to live the day and night through, he must be

right in the religious point of view, namely, must be on

working terms with the great world of spirits around him.

The knowledge of this spirit world constitutes the religion

of the African, and his customs and ceremonies arise from

his idea of the best way to influence it.

Or consider Henry Savage Lander's account of Thibet:

In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims

make circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and

for days together, covering the entire distance lying flat

upon their bodies.... From the ceiling of the temple hang

hundreds of long strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the

temple, and becoming so many flying prayers when hung

up--for mechanical praying in every way is prominent in

Thibet.... Thus instead of having to learn by heart long and

varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the entire

prayer-book into a prayer-wheel,

and revolve it while repeating as fast as you can four words meaning,

"O God, the gem emerging from the lotus-flower." ... The attention of

the pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where

they may deposit whatever offerings they can spare, and it must be

said that their religious ideas are so strongly developed that they

will dispose of a considerable portion of their money in this

fashion.... The Lamas are very clever in many ways, and have a great

hold over the entire country. They are ninety per cent of them

unscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way and given to every sort of

vice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on the credulity

and ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain this ignorance, upon

which their luxurious life depends, that foreign influence of every

kind is strictly kept out of the country.

#The Butcher-Gods#

In this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact about

institutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have become the

means of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of necessity be

taken as an attack upon that class; it will be literally a

crime-robbing the priests of their age-long privileges. And of course

they will oppose the robber--using every weapon of terrorism, both of

this world and the next. They will require the submission, not merely

of their own people, but of their neighbors, and their jealousy of

rival priestly castes will be a cause of wars. The story of the early

days of mankind is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the

name of ten thousand butcher-gods.

Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how the

priests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish called

"the ark"; and how the people of one tribe violated this fetish and

wakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god. And he smote the men of

Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even

he smote of the people fifty thousand and three score and ten men; and

the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people

with a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able

to stand before this holy Lord God?

This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a

jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through his

ministers precise instructions for the most revolting cruelties, the

extermination of whole nations of men, women and children, whose sole

offense was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. Thus,

for example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called the people

together, and with all solemnity, and with many warnings, handed down

ten commandments graven upon stone tablets; he went on to set forth

how the people were to set upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them

these blood-thirsty instructions:

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither

thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations

before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the

Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the

Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and

mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver

them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy

them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy

unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall

destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut

down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord

thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto

himself, above all people that are upon the face of the

earth.

The records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent his

chosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew all the

males, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth, and commanded

them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for

themselves". We are told that sixteen thousand single women were

spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two!" In the Book

of Joshua we read that he had an interview with a supernatural

personage called "the captain of the Lord's host", and how this

captain had given to him a magic spell which would destroy the city of

Jericho. The city should be accursed, "even it and all that are

therein, to the Lord"; every living thing except one traitor-harlot

was to be slaughtered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the

priestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except that

"Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the

tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold

and silver in his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and

everybody knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes

and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and

got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty man

should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."

And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of

Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of

gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his

asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and

they brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said,

Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this

day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them

with fire, after they had stoned him with stones.

We have no means of knowing what was the character of the unfortunate

inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the Hittites and the

Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of the victims of

Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew priests that they

sacrificed their children to their gods; but then, consider what we

should believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the word of rival

priestly castes! Consider, for example, that in this twentieth century

we saw an orthodox Jew tried in a Russian court of law for having made

a sacrifice of Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews

represent a considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of

Russia. We know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture

and all of the scientific knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had

most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that they

were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes of the

Middle Ages.

#The Holy Inquisition#

Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval times, so

that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the fifteenth

century there was established in Europe the cult of a three-headed

god, whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They were

enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt; they sold to the

rich the license to commit every possible crime, and they held

the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the comparatively

intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia there arose a

great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against

the corruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power

by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they repudiated because no

promise to a heretic could have validity. They found him guilty

of having taught the hateful doctrine that a priest who committed

crimes could not give absolution for the crimes of others; and they

held an auto de fe--which means a "sentence of faith." As we read

in Lea's "History of the Inquisition":