Having presented the evidences in support of the apparently untenable
assertion that, notwithstanding the numerous modes in which man has
manifested his devotional proclivities, the world has virtually had but
the one religion founded in the worship of personified nature, we are
necessitated to recognize the facts that the Christian Scriptures like
the sacred records of other forms of nature worship are, but a
collection of astronomical allegories; that the gospel story is truly
"the old, old story" which had been told of a thousand other Saviours
before it was applied to the Christian Messiah; that Jesus is but one
of the many names given to imaginary incarnations of the mythical
genius of the sun; and that the Disciples and Evangelists are but the
genii of the months and the seasons. Such being the facts, which cannot
be successfully refuted, we must believe that the Christian religion,
instead of being of Divine authenticity, as popularly claimed, is
purely and entirely of human origin, and that all its teachings
relative to a future state are but priestly inventions, concocted for
the purpose of enslaving the ignorant masses.
When we think of the thousand millions of dollars invested in church
properties, and estimate the cost of maintaining more than a hundred
thousand priests and ministers, in supporting foreign and domestic
missions and in publishing religious literature; besides the taxes
applied to the care of the religious insane, and realize the fact that
all of this vast sum of money is abstracted from the resources of the
people, we would not have to go outside of our own country to
appreciate the fact that religion is the burden of all burdens to
society; and when we contemplate the great disturbance to the social
relation, resulting from sectarian strife, and the almost universal
disposition of Christians to persecute and ostracize those who differ
with them in opinion, we can readily subscribe to the sentiment
accredited to one of our revolutionary sires, that "this would be a
good world to live in if there was no religion in it."
If the clergy had been laboring as faithfully to impress the observance
of ethical principles as they have to indoctrinate the people with the
superstitions of religion, we would not now be deploring the great
demoralization of society. It is a grave arraignment of the clericals
to charge them with being, indirectly, the cause of this lamentable
state of things; but it is a condition that might have been expected,
for, when entering the ministry, they engaged themselves, not so much
to teach ethics as to propagate faith in the doctrines of their
respective sects. Thus hampered they cannot do the good to society
their better natures might desire. Hence the only hope for improvement
is for the people to wholly ignore the dogmatic element of religion,
and refusing to longer support it, demand that moral training shall be
the grand essential of education. If this course were adopted and
persistently followed, it would be but a question of time when mankind
would come into being with such a benign heredity that crime would be
almost impossible.
Then, since religion inculcates a salvation that does not save, let us
rise superior to its false teachings and, accepting science as the true
saviour of mankind, find our whole duty in the code of natural
morality, the spirit of which is embodied in that comprehensive precept
known as the golden rule, which, being the outgrowth of the discovered
necessities of association, without which society could not exist, it
necessarily constituted man's sole rule and guide long before priest or
temple; and founded in the eternal principles of right, truth and
justice must remain as man's sole rule and guide when priest and church
are numbered among the things that were. Spirit of progress! speed the
day when all mankind, redeemed from the bondage of superstition, will
recognize the great truth that nature, governed by her own inherent
forces, is all that has been, all that is and all that shall be; and
that, ceasing to indulge in the vain hope of a blissful immortality in
a paradise beyond the stars, will make a real paradise of this old
earth of ours.
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[1](Editorial note: the original text erroneously attributed this
quote to Genesis 20:8-11; actually it is from Exodus 20:8-11.)