LET us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth
of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a
work for the civilization of the world as Diderot and Voltaire? Did all
the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as
David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests,
bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last
election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine?--as much for
science as Charles Darwin?
What would the world be if infidels had never been?
The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all
the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and
love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and
prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the
battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.
Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted their lives
to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been hissed at in
the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while men who defended
slavery, practiced polygamy, justified the stealing of babes from
the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor are
supposed to have passed smilingly from earth to the embraces of the
angels? Why should we think that the brave thinkers, the investigators,
the honest men, must have left the crumbling shore of time in dread
and fear, while the instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the
inventors and users of thumbscrews, of iron boots and racks; the burners
and tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the enslavers
of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers, and babes; the
founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the builders of
dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the slanderers of the
dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all died in the odor of
sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded upon the breasts of peace,
while the destroyers of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the
soldiers of liberty, the breakers of fetters, the creators of light,
died surrounded by the fierce fiends of God?