Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire
with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes.
While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept
waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an
elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing
priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a
sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund
that the events of that day would confer on him immortal
glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were
recited. In vain he protested that he believed in
transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in
polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on
his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in
spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence
was then read in the name of the council, condemning him
both for his written errors and those which had been proven
by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and
incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the
Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to
be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular
court. Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned
him to recant while yet there was time. He turned to the
crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not
confess the errors which he never entertained, lest he
should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying
that they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in
his heresy. He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of
his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the
tonsure was to be disposed of, an absurd quarrel arose among
the bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a
razor or the tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors
won the day, and a cross was cut in his hair. Then on his
head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit in height,
adorned with painted devils and the inscription, "This is
the heresiarch."
The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which
he was conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave
Louis at their head, and a vast crowd, including many
nobles, prelates, and cardinals. The route followed was
circuitous, in order that he might be carried past the
episcopal palace, in front of which his books were burning,
whereat he smiled. Pity from man there was none to look for,
but he sought comfort on high, repeating to himself, "Christ
Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us!" and when
he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees and
prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess, and said that
he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle was
formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had
been providently empowered to take advantage of final
weakening, came forward, saying, "Dear sir and master, if
you will recant your unbelief and heresy, for which you must
suffer, I will willingly hear your confession; but if you
will not, you know right well that, according to canon law,
no one can administer the sacrament to a heretic." To this
Huss answered, "It is not necessary: I am not a mortal
sinner." His paper crown fell off and he smiled as his
guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of his keepers,
and when they were brought to him he thanked them for their
kindness, saying that they had been to him rather brothers
than jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in
German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he
did not hold, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake,
two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him,
and the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to
abjure. Even yet he could save himself, but only repeated
that he had been convicted by false witnesses on errors
never entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then
withdrew, and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss
was heard to exclaim, "Christ Jesus, Son of the living God,
have mercy upon me!" then a wind springing up and blowing
the flames and smoke into his face checked further
utterances, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to
move while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster.
The tragedy was over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from
its tormentors, and the bitterest enemies of the reformer
could not refuse to him the praise that no philosopher of
old had faced death with more composure than he had shown in
his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had
betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing
Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered
it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a
relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the same
view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into
the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up
and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the
spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay,
which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next
day thanks were returned to God in a solemn procession in
which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and
nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven
bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later
Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see
the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work
was done.
#Hell-Fire#
If such a scene could be witnessed in the world today, it would only
be in some remote and wholly savage place, such as the mountains of
Hayti, or the Solomon Islands. It could no longer happen in any
civilized country; the reason being, not any abatement of the
pretensions of the priesthood, but solely the power of science,
embodied in the physical arm of a secular State. The advance of that
arm the church has fought systematically, in every country, and at
every point. To quote Buckle: "A careful study of the history of
religious toleration will prove that in every Christian country where
it has been adopted, it has been forced upon the clergy by the
authority of the secular classes." The wolf of superstition has been
driven into its lair, but it has backed away snarling, and it still
crouches, watching for a chance to spring. The Church which burned
John Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for teaching that the earth
moves round the sun--that same church, in the name of the same
three-headed god, sent out Francesco Ferrer to the firing-squad; if it
does not do the same thing to the author of this book, it will be
solely because of the police. Not being allowed to burn me here, the
clergy will vent their holy indignation by sentencing me to eternal
burning in a future world which they have created, and which they run
to suit themselves.
It is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated, that
the measure of the civilization which any nation has attained is the
extent to which it has curtailed the power of institutionalized
religion. Those peoples which are wholly under the sway of the
priesthood, such as Thibetans and Koreans, Siamese and Caribbeans, are
peoples among whom the intellectual life does not exist. Farther in
advance are Hindoos and Turks, who are religious, but not exclusively.
Still farther on the way are Spaniards and Irish; here, for example,
is a flashlight of the Irish peasantry, given by one of their number,
Patrick MacGill:
The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who
always told the people if they did not pay their debts they
would burn for ever and ever in hell. "The fires of eternity
will make you sorry for the debts that you did not pay,"
said the priest. "What is eternity?" he would ask in a
solemn voice from the altar steps. "If a man tried to count
the sands on the sea-shore and took a million years to count
every single grain, how long would it take him to count them
all? A long time, you'll say. But that time is nothing to
eternity. Just think of it! Burning in hell while a man,
taking a million years to count a grain of sand, counts all
the sand on the sea-shore. And this because you did not pay
Farley McKeown his lawful debts, his lawful debts within the
letter of the law." That concluding phrase, "within the
letter of the law," struck terror into all who listened, and
no one, maybe not even the priest himself, knew what it
meant.
There is light in Ireland to-day, and hope for an Irish culture;
the thing to be noted is that it comes from two movements, one
for agricultural co-operation and the other for political
independence--both of them definitely and specifically non-religious.
This same thing has been true of the movements which have helped on
happier nations, such as the republics of France and America, which
have put an end to the power of the priestly caste to take property by
force, and to dominate the mind of the child without its parents'
consent.
This is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has apparently not
yet occurred to any legislature that the State may owe a duty to the
child to protect its mind from being poisoned, even though it has the
misfortune to be born of poisoned parents. It is still permitted that
parents should terrify their little ones with images of a personal
devil and a hell of eternal brimstone and sulphur; it is permitted to
found schools for the teaching of devil-doctrines; it is permitted to
organize gigantic campaigns and systematically to infect whole cities
full of men, women and children with hell-fire phobias. In the
American city where I write one may see gatherings of people sunk upon
their knees, even rolling on the ground in convulsions, moaning,
sobbing, screaming to be delivered from such torments. I open my
morning paper and read of the arrest of five men and seven women in
Los Angeles, members of a sect known as the "Church of the Living
God", upon a charge of having disturbed the peace of their neighbors.
The police officers testified that the accused claimed to be possessed
of the divine spirit, and that as signs of this possession they
"crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and barked like dogs." There
were "other acts, even more startling", about which the newspapers did
not go into details. And again, a week or two later, I read how a
woman has been heard screaming, and found tied to a bed-post, being
whipped by a man. She belonged to a religious sect which had found her
guilty of witchcraft. Another woman was about to shoot her, but this
woman's nerve failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed
a whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have
deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake had
been made--it was another woman who was the witch. And again in the
Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item, telling how
a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his pillow where his
head had lain a perfect reproduction of the head of Christ with its
crown of thorns. He called in his neighbors to witness the miracle,
and declared that while he was not superstitious, he knew that such a
thing could not have happened by chance, and he knew what it was
intended to signify--he would buy more Liberty Bonds and be more
ardent in his support of the war!
And this is the world in which our scientists and men of culture think
that the battle of the intellect is won, and that it is no longer
necessary to spend our energies in fighting "Religion!"
* * * * *
#BOOK TWO#
#The Church of Good Society#
Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert
By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt,
Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure,
And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure.
Within the House of Mammon the golden altar lifts
Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly incense drifts--
A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals,
To tell of hopes long-ended, to tell the death of souls.
Sterling.
* * * * *
#The Rain Makers#
I begin with the Church of Good Society, because it happens to be the
Church in which I was brought up. Heading this statement, some of my
readers suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my heart; yes, it
brings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I knew this
atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sunday those melodious and
hypnotizing incantations were chanted in my childish ears! I take up
the book of ritual, done in aristocratic black leather with gold
lettering, and the old worn volume brings me strange stirrings of
recollected awe. But I endeavor to repress these vestigial emotions
and to see the volume--not as a message from God to Good Society, but
as a landmark of man's age-long struggle against myth and dogma used
as a source of income and a shield to privilege.
In the beginning, of course, the priest and the magician ruled the
field. But today, as I examine this "Book of Common Prayer", I
discover that there is at least one spot out of which he has been
cleared entirely; there appears no prayer to planets to stand still,
or to comets to go away. The "Church of Good Society" has discovered
astronomy! But if any astronomer attributes this to his instruments
with their marvelous accuracy, let him at least stop to consider my
"economic interpretation" of the phenomenon--the fact that the
heavenly bodies affect the destinies of mankind so little that there
has not been sufficient emolument to justify the priest in holding on
to his job as astrologer.
But when you come to the field of meteorology, what a difference! Has
any utmost precision of barometer been able to drive the priest out of
his prerogatives as rainmaker? Not even in the most civilized of
countries; not in that most decorous and dignified of institutions,
the Protestant Episcopal Church of America! I study with care the
passage wherein the clergyman appears as controller of the fate of
crops. I note a chastened caution of phraseology; the church will not
repeat the experience of the sorcerer's apprentice, who set the demons
to bringing water, and then could not make them stop! The spell
invokes "moderate rain and showers"; and as an additional precaution
there is a counter-spell against "excessive rains and floods": the
weather-faucet being thus under exact control.
I turn the pages of this "Book of Common Prayer", and note the
remnants of magic which it contains. There are not many of the
emergencies of life with which the priest is not authorized to deal;
not many natural phenomena for which he may not claim the credit. And
in case anything should have been overlooked, there is a blanket order
upon Providence: "Graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft
or subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, be brought to
nought!" I am reminded of the idea which haunted my childhood, reading
fairy-stories about the hero who was allowed three wishes that would
come true. I could never understand why the hero did not settle the
matter once for all--by wishing that everything he wished might come
true!
Most of these incantations are harmless, and some are amiable; but now
and then you come upon one which is sinister in its implications. The
volume before me happens to be of the Church of England, which is even
more forthright in its confronting of the Great Magic. Many years ago
I remember talking with an English army officer, asking how he could
feel sure of his soldiers in case of labor strikes; did it never occur
to him that the men had relatives among the workers, and might some
time refuse to shoot them? His answer was that he was aware of it, the
military had worked out its technique with care. He would never think
of ordering his men to fire upon a mob in cold blood; he would first
start the spell of discipline to work, he would march them round the
block, and get them in the swing, get their blood moving to military
music; then, when he gave the order, in they would go. I have never
forgotten the gesture, the animation with which he illustrated their
going--I could hear the grunting of bayonets in the flesh of men. The
social system prevailing in England has made necessary the perfecting
of such military technique; also, you discover, English piety has made
necessary the providing of a religious sanction for it. After the job
has been done and the bayonets have been wiped clean, the company is
marched to church, and the officer kneels in his family pew, and the
privates kneel with the parlor-maids, and the clergyman raises his
hands to heaven and intones: "We bless thy Holy Name, that it hath
pleased Thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately
raised up among us!"
And sometimes the clergyman does more than bless the killers--he even
takes part in their bloody work. In the Home Office Records of the
British Government I read (vol. 40, page 17) how certain miners were on
strike against low wages and the "truck" system, and the Vicar of
Abergavenny put himself at the head of the yeomanry and the Greys. He
wrote the Home Office a lively account of his military operations. All
that remained was to apprehend certain of the strikers, "and then I
shall be able to return to my Clerical duties." Later he wrote of the
"sinister influences" which kept the miners from returning to their
work, and how he had put half a dozen of the most obstinate in prison.
#The Babylonian Fire-god#
So we come to the most important of the functions of the tribal god,
as an ally in war, an inspirer to martial valour. When in ancient
Babylonia you wished to overcome your enemies, you went to the shrine
of the Fire-god, and with awful rites the priest pronounced
incantations, which have been preserved on bricks and handed down for
the use of modern churches. "Pronounce in a whisper, and have a bronze
image therewith," commands the ancient text, and runs on for many
strophes in this fashion:
Let them die, but let me live!
Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
Let them perish, but let me increase!
Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!
O, fire-god, mighty, exalted among the gods,
Thou art the god, thou art my lord, etc.
This was in heathen Babylon, some three thousand years ago. Since
then, the world has moved on--
Three thousand years of war and peace and glory,
Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes,
Of mighty voices raised in song and story,
Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams--
And in one of the world's leading nations the people stand up and bare
their heads, and sing to their god to save their king and punish those
who oppose him--
O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies,
And make them fall; Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On him our hopes we fix, God save us all.
Recently, I understand, it has become the custom to omit this stanza
from the English national anthem; but it is clear that this is because
of its crudity of expression, not because of objection to the idea of
praying to a god to assist one nation and injure others; for the same
sentiment is expressed again and again in the most carefully edited of
prayer-books:
Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices.
Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies.
Strengthen him (the King) that he may vanquish and overcome all
his enemies.
There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God.
Prayers such as these are pronounced in every so-called civilized
nation today. Behind every battle-line in Europe you may see the
priests of the Babylonian Fire-god with their bronze images and their
ancient incantations; you may see magic spells being wrought, magic
standards sanctified, magic bread eaten and magic wine drunk, fetishes
blessed and hoodoos lifted, eternity ransacked to find means of
inciting soldiers to the mood where they will "go in". Throughout all
civilization, the phobias and manias of war have thrown the people
back into the toils of the priest, and that church which forced
Galileo to recant under threat of torture, and had Ferrer shot beneath
the walls of the fortress of Montjuich, is rejoicing in a "rebirth of
religion".
#The Medicine-men#
Andrew D. White tells us that
It was noted that in the 14th century, after the great
plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased
proportion of the landed and personal property of every
European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a
great ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests
of the ministers of God."
And so naturally the clergy hold on to their prerogative as banishers
of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the
upstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge
the people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and
Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed
work, "The Analysis of Religious Belief", quotes some missionaries to
the Fiji islanders, concerning the ideas of these benighted heathen on
the subject of a pestilence. It was the work of a "disease-maker", who
was burning images of the people with incantations; so they blew horns
to frighten this disease-maker from his spells. The missionaries
undertook to explain the true cause of the affliction--and thereby
revealed that they stood upon the same intellectual level as the
heathen they were supposed to instruct! It appeared that the natives
had been at war with their neighbors, and the missionaries had
commanded them to desist; they had refused to obey, and God had sent
the epidemic as punishment for savage presumption!
And on precisely this same Fijian level stands the "Book of Common
Prayer" of our most decorous and cultured of churches. I remember as a
little child lying on a bed of sickness, occasioned by the prevalence
in our home of the Southern custom of hot bread three times a day; and
there came an amiable clerical gentleman and recited the service
proper to such pastoral calls: "Take therefore in good part the
visitation of the Lord!" And again, when my mother was ill, I remember
how the clergyman read out in church a prayer for her, specifying all
sickness, "in mind, body or estate". I was thinking only of my mother,
and the meaning of these words passed over my childish head; I did not
realize that the elderly plutocrat in black broadcloth who knelt in
the pew in front of me was invoking the aid of the Almighty so that
his tenements might bring in their rentals promptly; so that his
little "flyer" in cotton might prove successful; so that the children
in his mills might work with greater speed.
Somebody asked Voltaire if you could kill a cow by incantations, and
he answered, "Yes, if you use a little strychnine with it." And that
would seem to be the attitude of the present-day Anglican
church-member; he calls in the best physician he knows, he makes sure
that his plumbing is sound, and after that he thinks it can do no harm
to let the Lord have a chance. It makes the women happy, and after
all, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the world. So
he repairs to the family pew, and recites over the venerable prayers,
and contributes his mite to the maintenance of an institution which,
fourteen Sundays every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the
Athanasian Creed:
Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
that he hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do
keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.
For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be explained that
the "Catholick faith" here referred to is not the Roman Catholic, but
that of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of
America. This creed of the ancient Alexandrian lays down the truth
with grim and menacing precision--forty-four paragraphs of
metaphysical minutiae, closing with the final doom: "This is the
Catholick faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be
saved."