ALL kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable
serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast
any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with
a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in
heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death
without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the
divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The
king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with
widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who
has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest
of his subjects, dies like a saint.
All the believing kings are in heaven--all the doubting philosophers in
perdition. All the persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those
who burned their brothers, sleep in consecrated ground. Libraries could
hardly contain the names of the Christian wretches who have filled the
world with violence and death in defence of book and creed, and yet
they all died the death of the righteous, and no priest, no minister,
describes the agony and fear, the remorse and horror with which their
guilty souls were filled in the last moments of their lives. These men
had never doubted--they had never thought--they accepted the creed as
they did the fashion of their clothes. They were not infidels, they
could not be--they had been baptized, they had not denied the divinity
of Christ, they had partaken of the "last supper." They respected
priests, they admitted that Christ had two natures and the same number
of wills; they admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded," and that,
according to the multiplication table of heaven, once one is three, and
three times one is one, and these things put pillows beneath their heads
and covered them with the drapery of peace.
They admitted that while kings and priests did nothing worse than to
make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and
burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest
neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul,
expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to the
wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God
leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering
flesh tore his wretched soul.
There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been
paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of
the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being
committed every day--men are at this moment lying in wait for their
human prey--wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and
death--little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled
eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers--sweet girls are
deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these
things--no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy
numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks
for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches
professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the
astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you
won't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking
God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been
stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged
in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God.
Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has
appeared. Such men have denounced the superstitions of their day. They
have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the
people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled
them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to
tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were
denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped
the fury of the fiends who love their enemies, and died naturally in
their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died
peacefully. That would show that religion was not essential at the last
moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would
not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the
Bible--refuse to kiss the cross--contend that Humanity was greater than
Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did, after pouring molten
lead into the ears of an honest man; or as calmly as Calvin after he had
burned Servetus; or as peacefully as King David after advising with his
last breath one son to assassinate another.
The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all
infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely
wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the
horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was
expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been
told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have
repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind
of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants.
Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the
same falsehood can be used by both.
Instead of doing these things, Voltaire wilfully closed his eyes to
the light of the gospel, examined the Bible for himself, advocated
intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant
faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed
to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the
indigent, and defended the oppressed.
He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same--the same
mysteries--the same miracles--the same imposture--the same temples and
ceremonies--the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes--the same
promises and threats--the same pretence of goodness and forgiveness and
the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion
made enemies--philosophy friends--and that above the rights of Gods were
the rights of man.
These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace.
If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example,
until none would be left to light the holy fires of the _auto da fe_. It
would not do for so great, so successful, an enemy of the church to
die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some
ghastly prayer of chattered horror uttered by lips covered with blood
and foam.
For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever--an
infidel--one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet
death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his
conscience with the serpents of remorse.
For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this
theory--this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of
God.
The theologians have insisted that crimes against man were, and are, as
nothing compared with crimes against God.
Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grow eloquent. When describing the
shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever, their eyes glitter with
delight.
It is a festival.
They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They
devour the dead.
It is a banquet.
Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the
souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies.
They see them in flames--in oceans of fire--in gulfs of pain--in abysses
of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.
It is an _auto da fe_, presided over by God.