* This lecture is printed from notes found among Colonel
Ingersoll's papers, but was not revised by him for
publication.
I HAVE sometimes thought that it will not make great and splendid
character to rock children in the cradle of hypocrisy. I do not believe
that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you
tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they
must never express; that they must go through life with a pretence as a
shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they
will only keep still; and that above all is a God who despises one who
honestly expresses what he believes. For my part, I believe men will be
nearer honest in business, in politics, grander in art--in everything
that is good and grand and beautiful, if they are taught from the cradle
to the coffin to tell their honest opinion.
Neither do I believe thought to be dangerous.
It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation.
It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is.
There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances
beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real
opinions.
We have passed midnight in the great struggle between Fact and Faith,
between Science and Superstition. The brand of intellectual inferiority
is now upon the orthodox brain. There is nothing grander than to rescue
from the leprosy of slander the reputation of a good and generous man.
Nothing can be nearer just than to benefit our benefactors.
The Infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the next. The
destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. The old passes away,
and the new becomes old. There is in the intellectual world, as in the
material, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand
youth and joy.
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of
Infidels. Political rights have been preserved by traitors--the liberty
of the mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason--to dispute the
priest was blasphemy. The sword and cross were allies. They defended
each other. The throne and altar were twins--vultures from the same egg.
It was James I. who said: "No bishop, no king." He might have said: "No
cross, no crown."
The king owned the bodies, and the priest the souls, of men. One lived
on taxes, the other on alms. One was a robber, the other a beggar, and
each was both.
These robbers and beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the
priest made creeds. With bowed backs the people received the burdens of
the one, and with wonder's open mouth the dogmas of the other. If any
aspired to be free they were crushed by the king, and every priest was
a Herod who slaughtered the children of the brain. The king ruled by
force, the priest by fear, and both by both.
The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and he made me
king. He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me. Such
is the justice of God." And the priest said: "God made you ignorant and
vile. He made me holy and wise. If you do not obey me, God will punish
you here and torment you hereafter. Such is the mercy of God."
Infidels are intellectual discoverers. They sail the unknown seas and
find new isles and continents in the infinite realms of thought.
An Infidel is one who has found a new fact, who has an idea of his own,
and who in the mental sky has seen another star.
He is an intellectual capitalist, and for that reason excites the envy
and hatred of the theological pauper.
The Origin of god and Heaven, Of the Devil and Hell.
IN the estimation of good orthodox Christians I am a criminal, because
I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters,
husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from
a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and
scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of
innocent pleasure--a God made of sticks called creeds, and of old
clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take from the coffin its
horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge
kindled by an infinite fiend.
Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of
Hell?
Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal
meanness. To worship an eternal goaler hardens, debases, and pollutes
even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the
universe, no good being can be perfectly happy.
Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand and
tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell should be held
in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should
be hated, not loved--cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by
such a God must be below the lowest hell. I want no part in any heaven
in which the saved, the ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of
joy the cries and sobs of hell--in which happiness will forget misery,
where the tears of the lost only increase laughter and double bliss.
The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and
revenge. This idea testifies that our remote ancestors were the lowest
beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves, only from mouths filled
with cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear and hatred, only from the
conscience of hunger and lust, only from the lowest and most debased
could come this most cruel, heartless and bestial of all dogmas.
Our barbarian ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too
astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea
that everything happened with reference to them; that they caused storms
and earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind; that
on account of something they had done, or omitted to do, the lightning
of vengeance leaped from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that
at least two vast and powerful beings presided over this world; that
one was good and the other bad; that both of these beings wished to get
control of the souls of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal
foes; that both welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that both
demanded praise and worship; that one offered rewards in this world, and
the other in the next. The Devil has paid cash--God buys on credit.
Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature, because he imagined that phenomena
were produced to punish or to reward him. When his poor hut was torn and
broken by the wind, he thought it a punishment. When some town or city
was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined that the crimes of the
inhabitants had been avenged. When the land was filled with plenty, when
the seasons were kind, he thought that he had pleased the tyrant of the
skies.
It must be remembered that both gods and devils were supposed to be
presided over by the greatest God and the greatest Devil. The God could
give infinite rewards and could inflict infinite torments. The Devil
could assist man here; could give him wealth and place in this world, in
consideration of owning his soul hereafter. Each human soul was a prize
contended for by these deities. Of course this God and this Devil had
innumerable spirits at their command, to execute their decrees. The God
lived in heaven and the Devil in hell. Both were mon-archs and were
infinitely jealous of each other. The priests pretended to be the agents
and recruiting sergeants of this God, and they were duly authorized to
promise and threaten in his name; they had power to forgive and curse.
These priests sought to govern the world by force and fear. Believing
that men could be frightened into obedience, they magnified the tortures
and terrors of perdition. Believing also that man could in part be
influenced by the hope of reward, they magnified the joys of heaven. In
other words, they promised eternal joy and threatened everlasting pain.
Most of these priests, born of the ignorance of the time, believed what
they taught. They proved that God was good by sunlight and harvest, by
health and happiness; that he was angry, by disease and death. Man,
according to this doctrine, was led astray by the Devil, who delighted
only in evil. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that he loved
to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing made him
happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above all things
he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and that he regarded all
investigation as rebellion.
Now and then believers in these ideas, those who had gained great
reputation for learning and sanctity, or had enjoyed great power, wrote
books, and these books after a time were considered sacred. Most of them
were written to frighten mankind, and were filled with threatenings and
curses for unbelievers and promises for the faithful. The more frightful
the curses, the more extravagant the promises, the more sacred the books
were considered. All of the gods were cruel and vindictive, unforgiving
and relentless, and the devils were substantially the same.
It was also believed that certain things must be accepted as true, no
matter whether they were reasonable or not; that it was pleasing to God
to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the creed of
the majority. Each community felt it a duty to see that the enemies of
God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to live in peace was
to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil--every misfortune--was
accounted for by something the community had permitted or done. When
epidemics appeared, brought by ignorance and welcomed by filth, the
heretic was brought out and sacrificed to appease the vengeance of God.
From the knowledge they had--from their premises--they reasoned well.
They said, if God will inflict such frightful torments upon us here,
simply for allowing a few heretics to live, what will he do with the
heretics? Of course the heretics would be punished forever. They knew
how cruel was the barbarian king when he had the traitor in his power.
They had seen every horror that man could inflict on man. Of course a
God could do more than a king. He could punish forever. The fires he
would kindle never could be quenched. The torments he would inflict
would be eternal. They thought the amount of punishment would be
measured only by the power of God.
These ideas were not only prevalent in what are called barbarous times,
but they are received by the religious world of to-day.
No death could be conceived more horrible than that produced by flames.
To these flames they added eternity, and hell was produced. They
exhausted the idea of personal torture.
By putting intention behind what man called good, God was produced. By
putting intention behind what man called bad, the Devil was created.
Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils fade away.
If not a human being existed the sun would continue to shine, and
tempests now and then would devastate the world; the rain would fall in
pleasant showers, and the bow of promise would adorn the cloud; violets
would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, and the earthquake would
devour; birds would sing, and daisies bloom, and roses blush, and the
volcanoes would fill the heavens with their lurid glare; the procession
of the seasons would not be broken, and the stars would shine just as
serenely as though the world was filled with loving hearts and happy
homes. But in the olden time man thought otherwise. He imagined that
he was of great importance. Barbarians are always egotistic. They think
that the stars are watching them; that the sun shines on their account;
that the rain falls for them, and that gods and devils are really
troubling themselves about their poor and ignorant souls.
In those days men fought for their God as they did for their king. They
killed the enemies of both. For this their king would reward them
here, and their God hereafter. With them it was loyalty to destroy
the disloyal. They did not regard God as a vague "spirit," nor as an
"essence" without body or parts, but as a being, a person, an infinite
man, a king, the monarch of the universe, who had garments of glory for
believers and robes of flame for the heretic and infidel.
Do not imagine that this doctrine of hell belongs to Christianity alone.
Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a corner-stone. Upon this
burning foundation nearly all have built. Over the abyss of pain rose
the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was regarded as one of
trial. Here a God of infinite wisdom experimented with man. Between the
outstretched paws of the Infinite the mouse, man, was allowed to play.
Here man had the opportunity of hearing priests and kneeling in temples.
Here he could read and hear read the sacred books. Here he could have
the example of the pious and the counsels of the holy. Here he could
build churches and cathedrals. Here he could burn incense, fast, wear
haircloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to priests,
count beads, be miserable one day in seven, make creeds, construct
instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images, eat little
square pieces of bread, sprinkle water on the heads of babes, shut his
eyes and say words to the clouds, and slander and defame all who have
the courage to despise superstition, and the goodness to tell their
honest thoughts. After death, nothing could be done to make him better.
When he should come into the presence of God, nothing was left except
to damn him. Priests might convert him here, but God could do nothing
there,--all of which shows how much more a priest can do for a soul
than its creator; how much more potent is the example of your average
Christian than that of all the angels, and how much superior earth is to
heaven for the moral development of the soul. In heaven the Devil is
not allowed to enter. There all are pure and perfect, yet they cannot
influence a soul for good.
Only here, on the earth, where the Devil is constantly active, only
where his agents attack every soul, is there the slightest hope of moral
improvement.
Strange! that a world cursed by God, filled with temptations and thick
with fiends, should be the only place where hope exists, the only place
where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible! Strange!
that heaven, filled with angels and presided over by God, is the
only place where reformation is utterly impossible! Yet these are the
teachings of all the believers in the eternity of punishment.
Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves got a kind
of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The poor have damned
the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned imagined a hell for their
gaolers; the weak built this place for the strong; the arrogant for
their rivals; the vanquished for their victors; the priest for the
thinker, religion for reason, superstition for science.
All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty,
all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable,
grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word--Hell.
For the nourishment of this dogma cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain,
and fear was light.
Christians have placed upon the throne of the universe a God of eternal
hate. I cannot worship a being whose vengeance is boundless, whose
cruelty is shoreless, and whose malice is increased by the agonies he
inflicts.