experience which once befell me. In the second decade of this century
of enlightenment and progress, in our free American democracy, whose
constitution proclaims religious toleration, and forbids the
establishment by the state of any form of worship, I was made to serve
a sentence of eighteen hours in the state prison of Delaware for
playing a game of tennis on the Sabbath. I was duly arrested upon a
warrant, duly sentenced by a magistrate, duly clad in a prison
costume, duly set to work upon a stone-pile, duly locked up over night
in a steel-barred cell full of vermin--in a building housing some five
hundred wretches, black and white, thirty of them serving life-terms
under circumstances which never permitted them a breath of fresh air
nor a glimpse of the sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise court
to their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to speak to one
another, but ate their meals in dead silence, and walked back to their
cells with folded arms, and had their only occupation working for a
sweat-shop contractor; this on the outskirts of the pious city of
Wilmington, with no less than ninety-one churches! The writer was
informed that he would return to this institution regularly every week
unless he abandoned his godless habit of playing tennis on a private
club court on Sunday; he only escaped the painful punishment by making
the discovery that at the Wilmington Country Club it was the custom of
the leading officials of the city and state to play golf every Sunday,
and by threatening to employ detectives and have these mighty ones
arrested and sent to their own prison. Which shows again the
importance of understanding this relationship of Superstition and Big
Business!
* * * * *
#BOOK SIX#
#The Church of the Quacks#
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
And how one ought never to think of one's self,
And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking--
My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.
Clough.
* * * * *
#Tabula Rasa#
Nature has given us a virgin continent, a clean slate upon which to
write what we will. And what are we writing? What is our intellectual
life? I came to the far West, which I had been taught by novelists and
poets to think of as a place of freedom. I came, because I like
freedom; I am staying because I like the climate. I find that what
freedom means in the West is the ability of ignorant and fanatical
persons to start some new, fantastical quirk of scriptural
interpretation, to build a new cult around it, and earn a living out
of it.
My first contact with that sort of thing was when I went to the Battle
Creek Sanitarium to investigate hydrotherapy, and found myself in a
nest of Seventh-day Adventists. Three generations or so ago some odd
character hit upon the discovery that the Christian churches had let
the devil snare them into resting on the first day of the week,
whereas the Bible states distinctly that the Lord "rested on the
seventh day". So here is a million dollar establishment, with a
thousand or two patients and employees, and on Friday at sundown the
silence of death settles upon the place, and stays settled until
sundown of Saturday, when everything comes suddenly to life again, and
there is a little celebration, like Easter or New Year's, with what I
used to call "sterilized dancing"--the men pairing with men and the
women with women.
They are decent and kindly people, and you learn to put up with their
eccentricities; it is really convenient in some ways, because, as not
all the city shares their delusions, there are some stores open every
day of the week. But then you discover that the Sanitarium is training
"medical missionaries" to send to Africa, and is teaching these
supposed-to-be-scientists that evolution is a doctrine of the devil,
and not proven anyhow!
You get the shrewd little doctor who is running this establishment
alone in his office, and he will smile and admit that of course it is
not necessary to take all Bible phrases literally; but you know how it
is--there are different levels of intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know
how it is. You have an institution founded upon a certain dogma, and
run by means of that dogma, and it is hard to change without smashing
things. It is especially convenient when servants and nurses have a
religious upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the
patients. People will come from all over the country, and pay high
prices to stay in such a sanitarium; you can make vegetarians of them,
which you think more important than teaching abstract notions about
their being descended from monkeys. Also you can manufacture
vegetarian foods for them, and build up an enormous business--so
obtaining that Power which is the thing desired of men.
This is but one illustration of a sort of thing of which I could cite
a hundred. The city in which I live is headquarters of another sect,
the "Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene"; primitive Methodists,
Bible-worshippers not content with the King James version, but going
back to the Sinaitic MS. They have a "University", located in one of
the most beautiful spots that Nature ever made; an institution with
seventy-five students. A couple of years ago I happened to meet the
"president," who was a preacher with grease on the ample expanse of
his black broadcloth waistcoat, and a speech full of the commonest
grammatical errors, such as "you was" and "I seen". The past year
witnessed a split, and the founding of a brand new church and
"University"--because one of the preachers insisted upon preaching so
much that the students got no chance to study; also because he sent
home a rich man's daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her
fleshly nature.
And there is an even stranger phenomenon in the locality, taking you
back to the Libyan desert and the time of Thais. A lady friend of
mine, generously blessed with this world's goods, asks me have I seen
the hermit. "Hermit?" I say, and she replies, "Didn't you know there
was a hermit? He lives on a mountain, in a cave, and never has
anything to do with the world. He has no books; he contemplates
spiritually." I picture my friend with her large limousine, a rolling
palace full of ladies, drawing up at the door of this hermit's cave.
"He received you?" I ask. "Yes, he was quite polite." "And what was
your impression of him?" "Oh, how he stank!" I answer that this is the
odor of sanctity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I
have to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that there are
definite physiological phenomena incidental to the ecstatic life.
#The Book of Mormon#
Or let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the headquarters of a still
stranger cult.
On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord
delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth in a
"backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had "the
appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit
of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make
miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout
believers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates
were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the Angel thoughtfully
provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and Thummim, two magic stones
with which to read the records. They proved to deal with a mystery
which has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries--the fate
of the "lost ten tribes of Israel", who were now revealed to have been
the ancestors of the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a
new religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general;
so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N.Y., there
was formally launched the "Church of the Latter Day Saints." Smith
turned over to his followers his translation of the miraculous plates,
called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously genuine, for it read precisely
like the books which we already know are the revealed word of God.
But, on chance that this might not be sufficient, we were offered in
the preface two documents, the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", and the
"Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses". The latter being the shorter,
may be quoted:
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people,
unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the
translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of
which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold;
and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated,
we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings
there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work
and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with
words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us,
for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the
said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And
we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we
have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
Christian Whitmer
Jacob Whitmer
Peter Whitmer, Jr.
John Whitmer
Hiram Page
Joseph Smith, Sr.
Hyrum Smith
Saml. H. Smith
The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore out
the Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine origin; it
was persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted, and its followers
proceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, just as the
divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven from place to place, they
built at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful temple, according to plans revealed
in a vision, exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where
they have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers.
The United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected to
their practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as many
wives as they could support; the government confiscated the church's
property, and forced it to conceal the practice of polygamy, as is
done by elderly church members in other parts of the country. Recently
the head of the church, who bears the title of "Prophet, Seer and
Revelator", was persuaded to permit an examination of one of its
secret plates, the "Book of Abraham", by egyptologists, who found that
it was ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but containing
prayers to the sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to
the devout followers of Joseph--any more than it has made to devout
Catholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that the
Bible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and that the
four gospels date from the second and third centuries after Christ.
#Holy Rolling#
All over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of them
pathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely grotesque. Thus,
for example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the
"Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed himself up in scarlet
and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion
City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced
himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought
his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white
elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis
overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and
his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the
rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting
up, and suing one another in the law-courts.
Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jumpers", ghastly sects
which cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread like a plague
among the women of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The
"Holy Rollers", who call themselves the "Apostolic Church", have a
meeting place here in Pasadena, and any Sunday evening at nine o'clock
you may see the Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the
worshippers, causing moans and shrieks and convulsions; you may see a
woman holding her hands aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch,
making chattering sounds like an ape. This is called "talking in
tongues" and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come
back at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation,
men and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches;
and maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.
You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself into
these convulsions. Here is a paper called "Trust", which is "published
Monthly (D.V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training
School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The Pentecostal Baptism", and
tells the story of her experiences. She "camped on the Word of God,"
she declares.
I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the
mission told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay
there all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay
there all night." I went down, and there was plenty of "let
go" in me. I cried, and prayed all I knew, and got
wonderfully loosed....
Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God told
me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He
spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God
that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same in
me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said
to me, "That's mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord,
and if You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in
the sails."
That's the way I came through. One morning I was just
getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the
enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let
it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was
up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else
does the work, and it does not tire you.
And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: published monthly, or
as often as the Lord leads." The editor quotes the Bible, "Call upon
the name of the Lord," and explains that "Call means #call#." The word
appears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal persons--it
means working yourself into a frenzy of agitation; as the editor puts
it, "you must #lay# hold of the #horns# of the #altar#." He goes on to
exhort--the bold face being his:
Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few
minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every
word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more
liberty in calling. In a very little while you will be #dead
to the room, dead to the chair#, dead to everyone around
you, dead to all and tremendously alive to your desperate
need and emptyness; this conviction will grow as you
increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it maybe
you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged, it
maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a moment let your
mind rest on the condition of your person. Open your mouth
and God has promised to fill it. Ask persistently until the
very floor seems to sink beneath you and the fountains of
the deep, of your heart let loose. Like David, "pour out
your soul" like one would pour water out of a bucket. I have
seen hundreds get through right at this point. When
#self-thought, reticence, decorum, reserve, propriety and
dignity# had all been thrown to the four winds of heaven.
Self was then obliterated and consciousness of person gone.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you saith the
scripture, but you must draw near to Him first.
These enthusiasts derive their practices from the Shakers, a sect
which originated in England, but was driven by persecution to the New
World. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of True
Believers in Christ's Second Coming," and were founded by Ann Lee, who
variously termed herself the "Female Christ", the "Holy Comforter",
and the "God-anointed Woman". They might be termed the suffragettes of
religion, for they pray always to "Our Father and Mother, which are in
heaven." They were taught the convenient doctrine that their Founder
had "spiritual illumination", so that any evidence of the senses used
against her might deceive. She governed through terror, holding that
by her mental powers she could inflict torment upon any of her
followers. Fortunately she taught absolute celibacy, and so there are
now only about a thousand of her disciples.
Bible Prophecy
This far western country swarms with those fanatics who await the
return of Christ, and find in Bible chronology positive evidence that
he is coming on a specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture on
Socialism that some eager old lady does not come up to me and point
out how futile are my hopes, because the Millenium will come before
the Revolution. Several times I have come on an item in the
newspapers, telling of a group of people, sometimes whole villages,
selling their goods and going out into the fields to shout and sing
and pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His Angels in the
skies. I have in my hand a pamphlet entitled "Shekineh: The Glory of
God in Israel, Facts Mathematically Foretold, of the Soon Coming of
Our Blessed Lord." It is earnestly, yearningly written, in that spirit
of feeble-minded affectionateness which the Bible-sects seem to
encourage:
Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a wonderful
story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus is
soon coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next;
week perhaps our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may
not end till the close of the A.M. year, which will be March
20th, 1897. But let us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh,
my Christian friends, live near the Blessed Christ, and gain
eternal life through Jesus Our Lord!
In the public library I find another pamphlet, entitled "The Our
Race," which proves that the "lost ten tribes of Israel" are not the
American Indians, but the Irish! And here is a publication of the
"Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," declaring:
The great pyramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of
the ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage
under "a Draconis" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first
ascending passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand
Gallery symbolizes the Gospel Age. Its upper step symbolizes
the approaching period of tribulation and anarchy,
"Judgment" upon Christendom.
It is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California sunshine revising
this manuscript, when a decorous-looking young man approaches, having
a sack over his shoulder. "From the Bible-students," he says politely,
and hands me a little paper, "The Bible Students' Monthly: an
Independent, Unsectarian Religious Newspaper, Specially devoted to the
Forwarding of the Lay-men's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of
God and Good of Humanity." The leading article is headed "The Fall of
Babylon: Ancient Babylon a Type--Mystic Babylon the Antitype: Why
Christendom must Suffer--the Final Outcome." A note explains:
The following article is extracted from Pastor Russell's
posthumous volume entitled "The Finished Mystery," the 7th
in the series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published
subsequent to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction
of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern
times on ecclesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume,
which is called "his last legacy to the Christians on
earth," is found a thorough exposition of every verse in the
entire book of Revelation and also an elucidation of the
obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. The book contains 608 pages,
handsomely bound in embossed cloth.
Pastor Russell used to publish a two-column sermon in some
hundreds of Sunday newspapers, together with a presentment of his
features--solemn, stiff, white-whiskered, set off with a "choker" and
a black broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in America,
but if you have an impulse to despair for your country, remember that
it produced Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, as well as Pastor Russell and
the Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one passage from "The Finished
Mystery", in order that the reader may know what it means to "hold the
distinction of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern
times on ecclesiastical subjects." Pastor Russell does not approve of
the Methodists, and he quotes twelve verses of Revelation, line by
line and phrase by phrase, showing how the evil course and downfall of
the Wesleyan system were divinely foretold. Thus:
"But that they should be tormented five months."--In
symbolic time, 150 years--5x30=150. (Ezek. 4:6.) Wesley
became the first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9: 1.) When the
Methodist denomination, with all the others, was cast off
from favor in 1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by
preaching what Presbyterians describe as "Conscious misery,
eternal in duration" came to an end legally, and to a large
extent actually.--Rev. 9:10.
P.S. A few months pass, and while this book is going to press, "The
Finished Mystery" is suppressed by the government and several score
"Bible Students" are landed in jail for sedition.
#Koreshanity#
Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other ancient
writings with strange nomenclature and ritual and symbolism,
calculated to impress the unlettered; also our prophets have
imaginations of their own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and
symbolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus there is Dr.
Newo Newi New, who called himself "Archbishop of the Newthot Church,"
and gathered about him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco,
and was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or there is
"Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a
brand-new view of the universe and all things therein:
The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not
only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and
significance of names and titles commonly applied to the
Transcendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are
presided over by chiefs, chosen for their superior
development in wisdom and love. For our solar system to
cross one of these provinces requires about 3,000 years, and
between them are belts of high Etherian light which take
several years to pass over. The passage of each province is
a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are called
Dawns of Dan.
And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to Dr.
C.R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took the name of
Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from Joseph, the
Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center of the Son of
man", and went out on the streets of the city to preach that the earth
is a hollow sphere with the stars inside. The street urchins of the
pork-packing metropolis threw stones at him, and the irreverent
newspapers took up his adventures, with the result that followers
gathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Florida, with a
dignified magazine called "The Flaming Sword", and a collection of
propaganda volumes: "The Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan
Universology and the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and
Processes of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by
Lord Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing
of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this Chicago
revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth
which prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some
philological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the "cross of
Christ" is explained in a sense of the word more common among
horse-breeders than among theologians:
The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the
cross of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the
Lord God, in order to perpetuate his own being, descends
into the race of sensuality.
And again, when someone asks about meteors: