The highest crime against a creed is to change it. Reformation is
treason.
A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is an eagle parting the
clouds with tireless wing.
All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate,
soil, geographical position.
The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every
heretic has been, and is, a ray of light.
No man ever seriously attempted to reform a Church without being cast
out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy.
After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make, is to give
his individuality for what is called respectability.
On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental freedom.
Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really
valuable than the suppression of honest thought.
No man, worthy of the form he bears, will at the command of Church or
State solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns.
Although we live in what is called a free government,--and politically
we are free,--there is but little religious liberty in America.
According to orthodox logic, God having furnished us with imperfect
minds, has a right to demand a perfect result.
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give
up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
When women reason, and babes sit in the lap of philosophy, the victory
of reason over the shadowy host of darkness will be complete.
Of all the religions that have been produced by the egotism, the malice,
the ignorance and ambition of man, Presbyterianism is the most hideous.
And what man who really thinks can help repeating the words of Ennius:
"If there are gods they certainly pay no attention to the affairs of
man."
Events, like the pendulum of a clock have swung forward and backward,
but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing
grander.
In spite of Church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of
men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the
human heart.
I was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only
justice to say, that in all essential particulars it is precisely the
same as every other religion.
Wherever brave blood has been shed, the sword of the Church has been
wet. On every chain has been the sign of the cross. The altar and throne
have leaned against and supported each other.
We have all been taught by the Church that nothing is so well calculated
to excite the ire of the Deity as to express a doubt as to his
existence, and that to deny it is an unpardonable sin.
Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the
conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what
would have been the effect of implicit obedience.
We have no national religion, and no national God; but every citizen
is allowed to have a religion and a God of his own, or to reject all
religions and deny the existence of all gods.
Whatever may be the truth upon any subject has nothing to do with our
right to investigate that subject, and express any opinion we may form.
All that I ask, is the same right I freely accord to all others.
Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his
intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. In this
sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph.
Think of reading the 109th Psalm to a heathen who has a Bible of his own
in which is found this passage: "Blessed is the man and beloved of all
the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid."
The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority;
they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think
a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long
time.
We should all remember that to be like other people is to be unlike
ourselves, and that nothing can be more detestable in character than
servile imitation. The great trouble with imitation is, that we are apt
to ape those who are in reality far below us.
Suppose the Church had had absolute control of the human mind at any
time, would not the words liberty and progress have been blotted from
human speech? In defiance of advice, the world has advanced.
Over every fortress of tyranny has waved, and still waves, the banner of
the Church.
The Church has won no victories for the rights of man.
We have advanced in spite of religious zeal, ignorance, and opposition.
Luther labored to reform the Church--Voltaire, to reform men.
There have been, and still are, too many men who own themselves--too
much thought, too much knowledge for the Church to grasp again the
sword of power. The Church must abdicate. For the Eg-lon of superstition
Science has a message from Truth.
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality
enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions,--some one
who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said.
"The Church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the
moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the Church."
"On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and
success.