Bishop Watson: "There is a philosophical sublimity in some of your ideas
when speaking of the Creator of the universe."
The work of orthodox religious teachers, unwittingly to many, is
confined chiefly to the propagation of fictions and the suppression of
facts. The Christian who has been surprised to learn that Paine was not
an Atheist, may be equally surprised to learn that his great compeers,
Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, were not Christians, but like him,
Deists.
Washington, who has been claimed by the Episcopal church, was like Paine
a Deist: His wife was a communicant of this church. During his eight
years incumbency of the Presidency, and during the Revolution, and
at other times when Mrs. Washington was with him in Philadelphia, he
attended, but not regularly, the Episcopal churches of which Bishop
White, father of the Episcopal church of America, and the Rev. Dr.
Abercrombie were rectors. When Bishop White was asked if Washington had
ever communed he replied: "Truth requires me to say that Gen. Washington
never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial
minister"--_Memoir of Bishop White,_ pp. 196, 197. The _Western
Christian Advocate_ accepts this testimony as conclusive. It says:
"Bishop White seems to have had more intimate relations with Washington
than any clergyman of his time. His testimony outweighs any amount of
influential argumentation on the question."
Dr. Abercrombie says: "On sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington,
immediately after the desk and pulpit services went out with the greater
part of the congregation--always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other
communicants."--_Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit_, vol. v., p.
394.
Fearing the effect of Washington's example Dr. Abercrombie administered
a mild reproof. Washington, he says, "never afterwards came on the
morning of sacramental Sunday."--_Ibid_.
Regarding Washington's conduct in Virginia, the Rev. Beverly Tucker,
D.D., of the Episcopal church, says: "The General was accustomed on
Communion Sundays to leave the church with her [Nellie Custis, his
step-granddaughter], sending back the carriage for Mrs. Washington."
The Rev. William Jackson, who was at a later, period, rector of this
church, conducted an exhaustive search to discover if possible some
evidence of Washington once having communed. His search was futile. He
says: "I find no one who ever communed with him."
Early in the last century the Rev. E. D. Neill, a prominent clergyman of
the Episcopal church, contributed to the Episcopal _Recorder_, the organ
of the Episcopal church, an article on Washington's religion. Regarding
Washington's church membership he says: "The President was not a
communicant, notwithstanding all the pretty stories to the contrary, and
after the close of the sermon on Sacramental Sundays, had fallen into
the habit of retiring from the church while his wife remained and
communed."
The foregoing testimony in disproof of the claim that Washington was a
communicant, conclusive as it is, is not needed. His own testimony is
sufficient. To Dr. Abercrombie he declared that "_he had never been a
communicant._"--Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. v., p.
394.
During the presidential campaign of 1880, the Christian Union, at that
time the leading church paper of this country, made the frank admission
that of the nineteen men who up to that time had held the office of
President of the United States, not one, with the possible exception of
Washington, had been a member of a Christian church. And Washington, as
we have seen, cannot be made an exception.
"There is nothing to show that he [Washington] was ever a member of the
church."--_St. Louis Globe._
"He [Washington] belonged to no church."--_Western Christian Advocate._
"In all the voluminous writings of General Washington, the Holy name of
Jesus Christ is never once written."--_Catholic World_.
"In several thousand letters the name of Jesus Christ never appears,
and it is notably absent from his last will."--_General A. W. Greeley in
Ladies' Home Journal for April, 1896._
"It has been confidently stated to me that he actually refused spiritual
aid when it was proposed to send for a clergyman."--_Robert Dale Owen_.
The Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, president of Princeton College, signer of
the Declaration of Independence, member of Congress, and chaplain to
Congress during Washington's administration, says: "Like nearly all the
founders of the Republic, he [Washington] was not a Christian, but a
Deist." "He had no belief at all in the divine origin of the Bible."
During Jackson's administration the Rev. Dr. Wilson, a noted
Presbyterian divine of Albany, preached a famous sermon on "The Religion
of the Presidents," which was published and had a wide circulation. Dr.
Wilson showed that of the seven men who up to that time had been elected
president, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy
Adams, and Jackson, not one had professed a belief in Christianity.
In his search for evidence he visited the Washingtons' old pastor, Dr.
Abercrombie. In answer to Dr. Wilson's inquiry concerning Washington's
religious belief Dr. Abercrombie's emphatic answer was, "Sir, Washington
was a Deist." As a result of his investigation Dr. Wilson says: "I think
anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion
that he [Washington] was a Deist and nothing more."
Everyone is familiar with the story of Washington's praying at Valley
Forge. This is a pure fiction. Intelligent Christians reject it. The
Rev. E. D. Neill, of the Episcopal church, whose father's uncle owned
the building occupied by Washington at Valley Forge, says: "With the
capacious and comfortable house at his disposal, it is hardly possible
that the shy, silent, cautious Washington should leave such retirement
and enter the leafless woods, in the vicinity of the winter encampment
of an army and engage in audible prayer."--_Episcopal Recorder_.
Alluding to this subject, the Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, in a sermon,
said: "The pictures that represent him on his knees in the winter forest
at Valley Forge are silly caricatures."
Dr. Conway, who was employed to edit Washington's letters, and who is
considered one of the best authorities on his domestic life, says:
"Many clergymen visited him, but they were never invited to hold family
prayers, and no grace was ever said at table."
Washington's library contained the Deistical works of Paine, Voltaire
and other Freethinkers. When the French Freethinker Volney visited this
country he was the guest of Washington.
"His services as a vestryman had no special significance from a
religious standpoint. The political affairs of a Virginia county were
then directed by the vestry, which, having the power to elect its
own members, was an important instrument of the oligarchy of
Virginia."--_General A. W. Greeley in Ladies' Home Journal._
George Wilson, whose ancestors occupied the pew next to Washington's in
Virginia, says.: "At that time the vestry was the county court, and in
order to have a hand in managing the affairs of the county, in which his
large property lay, regulating the levy of taxes, etc., Washington had
to be a vestryman."
Jefferson was a more radical Freethinker than Paine, as the following
passages from his writings will show. My quotations are from Randolph's
edition of Jefferson's works, published in 1829.
In a letter to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr, while at school,
Jefferson writes: "Read the Bible as you would Livy or Tacitus... Fix
reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact,
every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a
God."--_Jefferson's Works, Vol. ii, P. 217._
The God of the Old Testament, the God that Christians worship,
Jefferson pronounces "a being of terrific character--cruel, vindictive,
capricious, and unjust."--_Works, vol. iv, p. 325._
In the Four Gospels, which Christians consider the most authentic and
the most important books of the Bible, Jefferson discovers what he
terms "a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of
superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications."--_Ibid._
"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his
biographers [Matthew, Mark, Luke and John], I find many passages of fine
imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence;
and others, again, of so much ignorance, of so much absurdity, so
much untruth and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such
contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate,
therefore, the gold from the dross, restore to him the former, and leave
the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of others of his
disciples."--_Works, vol. iv. p. 320._
Jefferson made a compilation of the finer alleged sayings of Jesus which
have been published and paraded as proof of Jefferson's acceptance of
Christ. For the man Jesus, Jefferson, like Paine, Ingersoll and other
Freethinkers, had the greatest admiration, but for the Christ Jesus of
orthodox Christianity he had the greatest contempt.
"Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Corypheus, and
first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."--_Vol. iv. p. 327._
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe
in the Platonic mysticism that three are one and one is three... But
this constitutes the craft, the power and profit of the priests. Sweep
away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion and they would catch
no more flies."--_Ibid, p. 205._
"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled
to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in
the mysticisms of Plato materials with which they might build up
an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit
everlasting controversy, give employment for their order and introduce
it to profit, power and preeminence."--_Ibid, p. 242._
"The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body
and three heads had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and
thousands of martyrs."--_Ibid, p. 360._
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme
Being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the
fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."--_Ibid, p.
365._
"In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women.
They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by
their priests and sometimes by a henpecked husband, they pour forth the
effusions of their love to Jesus in terms as amatory and carnal as their
modesty would permit to a mere earthly lover."--_Ibid, p. 358._
"Jefferson occupied his Sundays at Monticello in writing letters to
Paine (they are unpublished I believe, but I have seen them) in favor
of the probabilities that Christ and his Twelve Apostles were only
personifications of the sun and the Twelve signs of the Zodiac."--_Dr.
Conway._
The correspondence of Jefferson and Paine would fill a volume. In these
letters Jefferson unbosomed himself and gave expression to his most
radical sentiments. Randolph's edition of Jefferson's works was
published twenty years after Paine's death. By this time the Orthodox
ghouls had about completed their work and these letters, although
containing some of Jefferson's most mature thoughts and best writings,
remained unpublished.
In a letter to Dr. Woods, Jefferson says: "I have recently been
examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in
our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.
They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies." "Millions
of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of
Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we
have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect
of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half
hypocrites."--_Jefferson's Notes on Virginia._
Writing to Jefferson on the 5th of May, 1817, John Adams, giving
expression to the matured conviction of eighty-two years, says: "This
would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in
it." To this radical declaration Jefferson replied: "If by religion we
are to understand sectarian dogmas in which no two of them agree, then
your declaration on that hypothesis is just, 'that this would be the
best of worlds, if there were no religion in it.'"--_Works, vol. iv. p.
301._
Writing to John Adams just before his death Jefferson makes the
following declaration of his belief: "I am a Materialist."
"A question has been raised as to Thomas Jefferson's religious views.
There need be no question, for he has settled that himself. He was an
Infidel, or, as he chose to term it, a Materialist. By his own account
he was as heterodox as Colonel Inger-soll, and in some respects even
more so."--_Chicago Tribune._
Alluding to Jefferson's belief the Rev. Dr. Wilson in his sermon on
"The Religion of the Presidents," previously quoted, says: "Whatever
difference of opinion there may have been at the time [of his election],
it is now rendered certain that he was a Deist.... Since his death, and
the publication of Randolph, [Jefferson's Works], there remains not the
shadow of doubt of his Infidel principles. If any man thinks there is,
let him look at the book itself. I do not recommend the purchase of
it to any man, for it is one of the most wicked and dangerous books
extant."
"In religion he was a Freethinker; in morals pure and
unspotted."--_Benson J. Lossing, in his "Lives of the Signers of the
Declaration of Independence!'_
"Surely, Christians, your cause must be growing desperate, when, to
sustain it, you must needs claim for its support so bitter an enemy as
Thomas Jefferson--a man who affirmed that he was a Materialist; a man
who recognized in your religion only "our particular superstition,"
a superstition without "one redeeming feature;" a man who divided the
Christian world into two classes--"hypocrites and fools;" a man who
asserted that your Bible is a book abounding with "vulgar ignorance;"
a man who termed your Father, Son, and Holy Ghost a "hocus-pocus
phantasm;" a man who denounced your God as "cruel, vindictive, and
unjust;" a man who intimated that your Savior was "a man of illegitimate
birth;" a man who declared his disciples, including your oracle Paul,
to be a "band of dupes and impostors and who characterized your
modern priesthood, of all denominations, as cannibal priests" and an
"abandoned confederacy" against public happiness."--_The Fathers of Our
Republic._
Franklin rejected Christianity when a boy and remained a Rationalist to
the end of his life.
"Some volumes against deism fell into my hands. They were said to be the
substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lecture. It happened that they
produced on me an effect precisely the reverse of what was intended by
the writers; for the arguments of the deists, which were cited in order
to be refuted, appealed to me much more forcibly than the refutation
itself. In a word I soon became a thorough Deist."--_Franklin's
Autobiography._
Writing to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, when he was
eighty-four, he says: "I have with most of the Dissenters in England,
doubts as to his [Christ's] divinity."
"By heaven we understand a state of happiness, infinite in degree and
eternal in duration. I can do nothing to deserve such a reward.... I
have not the vanity to think I deserve it, the folly to expect, or the
ambition to desire it."--_Franklin's Works, vol. vii., p. 75._
"I wish it [Christianity] were more productive of good works than I have
generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity,
mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon hearing and
reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled
with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much
less capable of pleasing the Deity."--_Ibid._
"Nowadays we have scarcely a little parson that does not think it the
duty of every man within his reach to sit under his petty ministration,
and that whoever omits this offends God. To such I wish more
humility."--_Franklin's Works, vol. vii. pp. 76,77._
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the
Christian religion," affirmed Washington (treaty with Tripoli). "Keep
the church and the state forever separate," said Grant (Des Moines
speech). And yet, in spite of this declaration and this admonition
religious liberty has been ignored and a practical union of church and
state has been maintained--the exemption of ecclesiastical property
from taxation, the employment of chaplains, appropriations for sectarian
purposes, religious services, including the use of the Bible, in our
public schools, the appointment of religious festivals, the judicial
oath and the enforced observance of Sunday as a Sabbath. Concerning
these and similar privileges of his time and of our time, Franklin
says: "I think they were invented not so much to secure religion as the
emoluments of it. When a religion is good I conceive it will support
itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care
to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help
of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad
one."--_Franklin's Works, vol. viii., p. 506._
Theodore Parker, in his "Four Historic Americans," writes as follows
concerning Franklin's belief: "If belief in the miraculous revelation of
the Old Testament and the New is required to make a man religious, then
Franklin had no religion at all. It would be an insult to say that he
believed in the popular theology of his time, or of ours, for I find not
a line from his pen indicating any such belief."
The eminent statesman John Hay, in an article on "Franklin in France,"
published after his death in the _Century Magazine_ for January, 1906,
ascribes much of Franklin's popularity in France to his espousal of
Freethought. He says: "Franklin became the fashion of the season. For
the court dabbled a little in liberal ideas. So powerful was the vast
impulse of Freethought that then influenced the mind of France--that
susceptible French mind, that always answers like the wind harp to the
breath of every true human aspiration--that even the highest classes
had caught the infection of liberalism." Among Franklin's most intimate
companions in France Mr. Hay mentions Voltaire, D'Alembert, D'Holbach,
and Condorcet, four of France's most radical Freethinkers.
Dr. Franklin and Dr. Priestley were intimate friends. After Franklin's
death Dr. Priestley wrote: "It is much to be lamented that a man of
Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been
an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to
make others unbelievers."--_Priestley's Autobiography, p. 60._
This great man was himself denounced as an Infidel. He was a Unitarian,
and was mobbed and driven from England on account of his heretical
opinions and his sympathy with the French Revolution. Franklin's
Infidelity must have been very pronounced to have provoked the censure
of Dr. Priestley.
There has been published a religious tract, entitled "Don't Unchain the
Tiger," which purports to be a letter from Franklin to Paine, advising
him not to publish his "Age of Reason." The only thing needed to cause a
rejection of this pious fiction is a knowledge of the fact that Franklin
had been dead nearly four years when the first page of Paine's book was
written. Besides, the opinions expressed in this book were the opinions
of Franklin. Paine's biographer, Dr. Conway, says: "Paine's deism
differed from Franklin's only in being more fervently religious."
Franklin's biographer, James Parton, says: "It ['Age of Reason']
contains not a position which Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson and
Theodore Parker would have dissented from."
The Rev. John Snyder, of St. Louis, says: "Paine shared the religious
convictions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin."
Concerning the belief of these and other noted men, the Rev. Dr. Swing,
of Chicago, says: "Voltaire, Bolingbroke, Pitt, Burke, Washington,
Lafayette, Jefferson, Paine and Franklin moved along in a wonderful
unity of belief, both political and religious."
"Paine wrote the 'Age of Reason' in Paris some years after Franklin
was dead.... The letter called the letter of Franklin to Paine bears no
address or date or signature. It may not have been written by Franklin
to anybody. The evangelists who cite this letter intend to convey the
impression that the 'Tiger' means unbelief. The indication is that the
writer had in his mind the beast of fanaticism and detraction. That
tiger was let loose by the 'Age of Reason' against its author, and the
animal and its whelps are still with us."--_George E. Macdonald._
Another Franklin myth is that concerning Franklin's motion for prayers
in the Convention that framed our Constitution. The Convention, it is
claimed, had labored for weeks without accomplishing anything when, at
Franklin's suggestion, its sessions were opened with prayer, after
which its work was speedily performed. While Franklin's proposal was not
inconsistent with his Deistic belief it was not adopted. There was not a
prayer offered from the opening to the close of the Convention. Franklin
himself says: "The Convention, except three or four persons, thought
prayers unnecessary."
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine were four of the greatest and
noblest of men. All held substantially the same religious opinions. All
were Deists. All rejected Christianity. Yet Washington, Jefferson and
Franklin are held in grateful remembrance, while Paine has been reviled
as no other man has been reviled. How do we account for this? Paine's
mere rejection of Christianity does not account for it.
The "Age of Reason" was suppressed by the government in England. In
America it could not be suppressed by law. The only way the clergy could
suppress it here was to resort to slander, to cover its author's name
with obloquy and make him appear so vile that no respectable bookseller
would dare to sell it and no respectable reader dare to read it.
"In England it was easy for Paine's chief antagonist, the bishop of
Llandaff [Watson] to rebuke Paine's strong language, when his lordship
could sit serenely in the House of Peers with knowledge that his
opponent was answered with handcuffs for every Englishman who sold his
book. But in America slander had to take the place of handcuffs."--_Dr.
Conway._
Henry A. Beers: "His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits and
copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of 'the young,'
whose religious beliefs it might undermine."
James B. Elliott, of Philadelphia, says he well remembers the "time when
it was impossible to obtain the 'Age of Reason' except under cover
of the greatest secrecy and when he who was known to have read it was
shunned as a dangerous person."
Hugh O. Pentecost: "Paine's offense was not that he was an Infidel, but
that he made his meaning so clear that the common people could become
Infidels, too."
"It is true that Paine was Republican and Deist, an enemy of kings
and churches. But many men of great and undimmed honor held the same
principles: Washington, Jefferson and Franklin and others of the
'Fathers' were Deists, and in England that creed was even fashionable in
certain aristocratic quarters. Paine's real sin was not that he preached
Deism in the land of Bolingbroke, Hume and Gibbon,... but that he
succeeded for the first time in inoculating the people with his
heresies."--_The Nation, London._
"Mimnermus," an English writer, says: "There were critics of the Bible,
it is true, before Paine's day, but they were mainly scholars whose
works were not easily understood by ordinary folk. Paine himself, a man
of genius, had sprung from the people, and he spoke their tongue and
made their thoughts articulate."
"Paine held that the people at large had the right of access to all new
ideas, and he wrote so as to reach the people. Hence, his book must be
suppressed."--_Prof. J. B. Bury, LL.D._
John S. Crosby: "The reason why his writings are excluded from our
colleges is not on account of what he said about the _prophets_, but for
fear that the realization of his ideas may diminish the _profits_."
"Recognizing the magic influence that a great name carries with it, the
clergy have inscribed in the Christian roster the names of hundreds
who were total disbelievers in their dogmas. As the venders of quack
nostrums attach the forged certificates of distinguished individuals to
their worthless drugs, to make them sell, so these theological venders
present the manufactured endorsements of the great to make their
nostrums popular. Washington, Jefferson and Franklin have all been
denominated Christians, not because they were such, for they were not,
but because of the influence that attaches to their names. Paine's
opposition to priestcraft was too pronounced and too well known to claim
him as an adherent of their faith, and so they have sought to destroy
his influence by destroying his good name. Not only this, knowing the
prejudice that has prevailed against Atheism, they have misrepresented
his theological opinions and declared him an Atheist."--_The Fathers of
Our Republic._
"This injustice to him was perpetrated in defense of a system that
does not care, because it does not dare to have its credentials and
foundation critically examined; in other words, Paine has been maligned
for more than a century by those interested in keeping veiled the image;
he did what he could--and it was much--to uncover to the gaze of the
world."--_E. C. Walker._
William M. Salter, A. M.: "It is to the shame of religious prejudice in
our country that he is not freely and gladly given his place alongside
of Franklin and Washington."
"The rankest ingratitude the American people have ever exhibited has
been that of the systematic attempt to blot the name of Paine from the
memory of succeeding generations, and to allow no historical mention
in the annals of the nation which he greatly and gloriously helped to
found. But with the destruction of every error truth rises clear and
bright. The time will come when his picture will be as familiar to
school children as those of his great contemporaries, Washington,
Jefferson and Franklin."--. _J. B. Wilson._
Pretended reviewers of Paine, including the authors of many encyclopedic
articles on Paine, writers who, for the most part, never read the
"Age of Reason," characterize it as crude and superficial, declare its
arguments to be weak and fallacious and its author to have had little
or no influence in changing the religious opinions of his time. It is a
sufficient answer to these critics to cite the fact that from thirty
to forty elaborate replies from Christian writers followed it in rapid
succession, each writer tacitly admitting that it needed answering and
that all preceding efforts to answer it had been failures.
Paine's orthodox critics also affect to believe that his "Age of Reason"
is no longer read, that it is an "out of print" book for which there is
no demand. The fact is ever since the first London and Paris editions
were published in 1794 there has been a constant and widespread demand
for it.
Millions of copies have been printed and sold during this time, and
today the demand for it is greater than ever before.
Dr. John W. Francis (referring to "Age of Reason"): "No work had the
demand for readers comparable to that of Paine."
One bookseller of New York says that his sales of the "Age of Reason"
now average more than five thousand copies a year. He is but one of many
New York booksellers who sell Paine's book, while New York is but one
of many cities where it has an extensive sale. A Chicago bookseller says
that the "Age of Reason" is his best seller, that he sells thousands of
them every year.
William Heaford (1913): "Two large editions of forty thousand copies
each will be issued of this invaluable edition of Paine's great text
book of Biblical exegesis [by Watts & Co., London]."
"There were sold in Burma [mostly to Buddhists] over ten thousand copies
of the 'Age of Reason' last year."--_U. Dhamaloka, President Buddhist
Tract Society._
Arthur B. Moss: "During the past fifty years hundreds of thousands
of copies of the 'Age of Reason' have been circulated in England and
America alone.... The steady circulation of this work has done more than
that of any other book to undermine the faith of Christians in all parts
of the world."
H. Percy Ward (formerly an English clergyman): "Thomas Paine's 'Age of
Reason' gave the first shock to my faith."
Wilson MacDonald: "I read the 'Age of Reason' when a boy, and I said,
Paine is the hero for me."
Susan H. Wixon: "I read that book again and again, and always with
increased interest. It set me to thinking more than any other bode I had
ever read."
Sir Hiram Maxim: "It is indeed a very remarkable work. As a boy I read
it with great care; as a man I have read it thoughtfully."
James D. Shaw: "Of all the books ever published, I doubt if any other
has ever equaled the 'Age of Reason' in breaking from the human mind
superstition's fetters."
"The effect of this pamphlet was vast."--_London Times._
Edwin P. Whipple: "The most influential assailant of the orthodox faith
was Thomas Paine."
Francis E. Abbot, Ph.D.: "His 'Age of Reason' was one of the greatest
historic blows ever struck for freedom. Paine's name ought to be written
in letters of gold in the roll of the world's heroes."
"It is still a living work, read by thousands, and carrying conviction
wherever it finds an open mind."--_James F. Morton, Jr._
Daniel Webster: "Mr. Girard got this provision of his will ('a school
unfettered by religious tenets') from Paine's 'Age of Reason.'"
Paul Desjardines (referring to "Age of Reason"): "The book in which the
modern conscience first dared, without indirection and without sarcasm,
to set itself up as the judge of Christian tradition and laid the
basis of a purified religion reduced to the only beliefs which appeared
necessary as a foundation of fraternity among men."
Eugene M. Macdonald: "The 'Age of Reason' is irrefutable in its
arguments, in its presentation of facts, in its analysis of the Bible,
and absolutely convincing to fair-minded men in its conclusions. It was
the forerunner of the Higher Criticism."
"During the past thirty years we have heard much of the Higher
Criticism; hundreds of learned men throughout Christendom have been
investigating the Bible.... These learned men, after working on the
problem for many years, have come to the exact conclusions that Thomas
Paine arrived at so many years ago."--_Sir Hiram Maxim._
"Paine was a precursor of such men as Colenso, and Robertson Smith, and
a large host of scholars besides."--_Rev. O. B. Frothingham._
"It is a singular tribute to his sagacity and common sense that every
material fact and conclusion stated by Paine in regard to the Bible
has been sustained by the explorations and increased learning since his
day."--_T. B. Wakeman._
"Upon this theological treatise is founded all modern biblical
criticism."--Elbert Hubbard.
Henry Frank: "There is nothing in the conclusions of the Higher
Criticism that Paine did not anticipate."
"As to his anticipation of the Higher Criticism. that should be placed
to his credit."--_W. T. Stead._
Henry Yorke (with Paine in England and France): "There is not a verse in
it [the Bible] that is not familiar to him."
J. P. Mendum: "As a critic and reviewer of the Bible his 'Age of Reason'
is unanswerable."
Sir Leslie Stephen: "Paine's book announced a startling fact, against
which all the flimsy collections of conclusive proofs were powerless.
It amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied the
instincts of cultivated scholars. When the defenders of the old orders
tried to conjure with the old charms, the magic had gone out of them.
In Paine's rough tones they recognized not the mere echo of coffee-house
gossip, but the voice of deep popular passion. Once and forever, it
was announced that, for the average mass of mankind, the old creed was
dead."
Elbert Hubbard: "As Paine's book 'Common Sense,' broke the power of
Great Britain in America, and the 'Rights of Man' gave free speech and
a free press to England, so did the 'Age of Reason' give pause to the
juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of
Hosea Ballou who founded the Universalist church, and of Theodore
Parker who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch. Channing,
Ripley,' Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing,
Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage, Crapsey, yes--even Emerson, and
Thoreau, were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the
way and made it possible, for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of
reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition."
Abraham Lincoln became and remained a disciple of Thomas Paine.
Chicago Herald (Feb., 1892): "In 1834, at New Salem, Ill., Lincoln read
and circulated Vol-ney's 'Ruins' and Paine's 'Age of Reason,' giving to
both books the sincere recommendation of his unqualified approval."
Col. Ward H. Lamon (biographer of Lincoln): "He [Lincoln] had made
himself familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney--the 'Ruins'
of the one, and the 'Age of Reason' of the other,... and then wrote a
deliberate essay wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs."
"In this work he intended to demonstrate:
"'First, that the Bible was not God's revelation;
"'Secondly, that Jesus was not the Son of God.'"
(Lincoln's work was never published.)
"You insist on knowing something which you know I possess, and got as
a secret, and that is, about Lincoln's little book on Infidelity.
Mr. Lincoln did tell me that he _did write a little book on
Infidelity_"--_Col. James H. Matheny, Lincoln's political manager in
Illinois._
James Ford Rhodes, LL.D.: "When Lincoln entered upon political life
he became reticent regarding his religious opinions, for at the age of
twenty-five, influenced by Thomas Paine,... he had written an extended
essay against Christianity."
Hon. W. H. Herndon (law partner of Lincoln): "Paine became a part of Mr.
Lincoln from 1834 to the end of his life."
"It was my good fortune to have had for some years an intimate
acquaintance with Lincoln's partner for twenty-two years. Mr. Herndon
was a man of academic education, and possessed a number of books that
in that day would be considered a good library, and he told me that the
books of his which fairly fascinated Lincoln were Volney's 'Ruins'
and the works of Thomas Paine, especially the latter, of which he had
memorized many pages."--Col. E. A. Stevens.
Hon. James Tuttle: "He [Lincoln] was one of the most ardent admirers
of Thomas Paine I ever met. He was continually quoting from the 'Age of
Reason.'"
It has been claimed that Lincoln changed his religious opinions after
he became President. In a letter, written May 27, 1865, Col. John
G. Nicolay, his private secretary, says: "Mr. Lincoln did not, to my
knowledge, in any way, change his religious ideas, opinions, or beliefs,
from the time he left Springfield till the day of his death."
Hon. Leonard Swett, who placed Lincoln in nomination for the Presidency,
in answer to an inquiry from a friend, wrote as follows: "You ask me
if Lincoln changed his religion towards the close of his life. I think
not."
Next to Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's biographer, Colonel Lamon, has made the
fullest and fairest presentation of Lincoln's religious opinions. He did
not accept them but he was familiar with them and he was honest enough
to present them. In Illinois he was the friend and confidant of Lincoln.
When the time approached for Lincoln to take the Executive chair, and
the journey from Springfield to Washington was deemed a dangerous one,
to Colonel Lamon was intrusted the responsible duty of conducting him
to the national capital. During the eventful years that followed he
remained at the President's side, holding an important official position
in the District of Columbia. When Lincoln was assassinated, at the great
funeral pageant in Washington, he led the civic procession, and was,
with Judge David Davis and Major General Hunter, selected to convey
the remains to their final resting-place at Springfield. Regarding his
friend's religious belief Colonel Lamon says: "Mr. Lincoln was never a
member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ or
the inspiration of the scriptures in the sense understood by evangelical
Christians" (Life of Lincoln, p. 486). indefinite expressions about
'Divine Providence,' the 'Justice of God,' 'the favor of the Most High,'
were easy and not inconsistent with his religious notions. In this
accordingly he indulged freely; but never in all that time [1834 to
his death] did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which
remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the
Savior of men (Ibid, p. 502).
After Lincoln's death Mrs. Lincoln, herself a Christian, made the
following statement: "Mr. Lincoln had no hope, and no faith, in the
usual acceptation of those words" (Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. 489).
Judge David Davis, his life-long friend and his executor, says: "He
[Lincoln] had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term."
Lincoln did not believe in a personal God. His law partner, W. H.
Herndon, relates the following in proof of this: In 1854 he asked me to
erase the word _God_ from a speech which I had written and read to him
for criticism, because my language indicated a personal God, whereas
he insisted that no such personality ever existed."--_Lamon's Life of
Lincoln, p. 445._
The Gettysburg address, as delivered by Lincoln, contained no mention
of Deity. The phrase "under God" was inserted afterward, with Lincoln's
consent, at the earnest solicitation of a friend. The recognition of God
in the Emancipation Proclamation was inserted at the urgent request of
Secretary Chase. The pious phrases to be found in his state papers are
mostly the work of his cabinet ministers and secretaries.
Thirty years ago Judge James M. Nelson, a son of Thomas Pope Nelson,
a distinguished statesman of Kentucky, and a great-grandson of Thomas
Nelson, Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was
intimately acquainted with Lincoln, both in Illinois and at Washington,
published in the Louisville _Times_ his "Reminiscences of Abraham
Lincoln." Concerning Lincoln's religious belief Judge Nelson says:
"In religion Mr. Lincoln was of about the same belief as Colonel
Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went
to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far
as I have been able to find he remained an unbeliever.... I asked him
once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being
an unbeliever in what was published. 'Oh,' said he, '_that is some of
Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools!_"
Col. Amos C. Babcock, for many years chairman of the Illinois State
Republican Committee, and one of Lincoln's confidential agents during
the war, in an article published in the Peoria _Journal_, says: "Lincoln
was an Agnostic. During the war he sometimes talked religiously, but it
was mere statecraft. He knew that everything depended upon his having
the support of the religious people,... but he was for all that an utter
disbeliever in the Christian religion."
In Springfield, where he lived, Lincoln's rejection of Christianity was
known to every person and while he was very popular and greatly beloved
by all who were not dominated by their religious prejudices, the bigots
always opposed him. During the presidential campaign of 1860 his
friends made a canvass of the voters of Springfield for the purpose of
ascertaining how they were going to vote for president. The list was
given to Lincoln. With Hon. Newton Bateman, state superintendent of
public instruction, he went over it carefully, his principal desire
being to know how the clergy were going to vote. When they had
finished Lincoln said: "Here are twenty-three ministers, of different
denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a
great many prominent' members of the churches, a very great majority of
whom are against me."--_Holland's Life of Lincoln, p. 236._
Why, it may be asked, was Lincoln's Infidelity not used against him
everywhere in this campaign? Because the managers of both parties knew
that Douglas, also, was a disbeliever in Christianity. An agitation
of this question would have weakened the chances of both northern
candidates while it would have strengthened the chances of Breckinridge,
the southern candidate.
Lincoln did not believe in prayer. All the stories about his praying,
without a single exception, are pure inventions. Let me cite an example.
After Lincoln's death the _Western Christian Advocate_ published the
following story, a companion piece to Washington's prayer at Valley
Forge: "On the day of the receipt of the capitulation of Lee, as we
learn from a friend intimate with the late President Lincoln, the
cabinet meeting was held an hour earlier than usual. Neither the
President nor any member was able, for a time, to give utterance to his
feelings. At the suggestion of Mr. Lincoln all dropped on their
knees, and offered in silence and in tears their humble and heartfelt
acknowledgment to the Almighty for the triumph he had granted to the
national cause."
In reply to an inquiry respecting the authenticity of this story Hugh
McCulloch, Lincoln's last secretary of the treasury, wrote as follows:
"The description of what occurred at the Executive Mansion, when the
intelligence was received of the surrender of the Confederate forces,
which you quote from the _Western Christian Advocate_, is not only
absolutely groundless, but absurd. After I became Secretary of the
Treasury I was present at every Cabinet meeting, and I never saw Mr.
Lincoln or any of his ministers upon his knees or in tears."
Our works of art are mostly mythological. And this is true of Christian
art, as it is true of Christian theology. The Washington myth is now
preserved in bronze, and the Lincoln myth will some day find expression
on canvas.
Herndon says: "It is my opinion that no man ever heard Mr. Lincoln pray
in the true evangelical sense of that word. His philosophy is against
all human prayer as a means of reversing God's decrees."
The partnership of Lincoln and Herndon was formed in 1843. It was
dissolved by the assassin's bullet in 1865. The love of these men
for each other was like the love of Damon and Pythias. To the moral
character of his illustrious partner Mr. Herndon pays this tribute: "The
benevolence of his impulses., the seriousness of his convictions, and
the nobility of his character, are evidences unimpeachable that his soul
was ever filled with the exalted purity and the sublime faith of natural
religion."
Lincoln's religion was the religion of Thomas Paine. "To do good is my
religion," said Paine; "When I do good I feel good, and when I do bad I
feel bad," said Lincoln.
For thirty years the church endeavored to crush Lincoln, but when, in
spite of her malignant opposition, he achieved a glorious immortality,
this same church, to hide the mediocrity of her devotees, attempts to
steal his deathless name.
Six Historic Americans: "The Church claims all great men. But the truth
is, the great men of all nations have, for the most part, rejected
Christianity. Of these six historic Americans--the six greatest men that
have lived on this continent [Paine, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson,
Lincoln and Grant]--not one was a Christian. All were unbelievers.
"It is popularly supposed that Paine was a very irreligious man, while
Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant were very religious.
The reverse of this is more nearly true. Paine, although not a
Christian, was a deeply religious man; while the others, though
practicing the loftiest morals, cared little for religion."
("Six Historic Americans" contains more than five hundred pages of
evidence in support of the fact that these six eminent men were all
disbelievers in orthodox Christianity, including the testimony of one
hundred witnesses, mostly friends and acquaintences, in proof of
Lincoln's unbelief.)
"The 'Age of Reason' can now be estimated calmly. It was written from
the viewpoint of a Quaker who did not believe in revealed religion, but
who held that 'all religions are in their nature mild and benign' when
not associated with political systems."--_Encyclopedia Britannica._
"All national institutions of churches--whether Jewish, Christian or
Turkish--appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify
and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit."--_Age of Reason._
"Each of those churches show certain books which they call revelation,
or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God
to Moses face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by
divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God (the Koran)
was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses
the others of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them
all."--_Ibid._
Paine's reason for rejecting the Bible is as logical as it is apparent.
A plurality of so-called divine revelations cannot be harmonized with
the attributes ascribed to. Deity. There are many Bibles. The world is
divided into various religious systems. The adherents of each system
have their sacred book, or Bible. Brahmins have the Vedas and Puranas,
Buddhists the Tripitaka, Zoroastrians the Zend Avesta, Confucians the
King, Mohammedans the Koran, and Christians the Holy Bible. The
adherents of each claim that their book is a revelation from
God--that the others are spurious. Now, if the Christian Bible were
a revelation--if it were God's only revelation, as affirmed--would he
allow these spurious books to be imposed upon mankind and delude the
greater portion of his children?
A divine revelation intended for all mankind can be harmonized only with
a universal acceptance of this revelation. God, it is affirmed, has made
a revelation to the world. Those who receive and accept this revelation
are saved; those who fail to receive and accept it are lost. This God,
it is claimed, is all-powerful and all-just. If he is all-powerful he
can give his children a revelation. If he is all-just he will give this
revelation to all. He will not give it to a part of them and allow them
to be saved and withhold it from the others and suffer them to be lost.
Your house is on fire. Your children are asleep in their rooms. What
is your duty? To arouse them and rescue them--to awaken all of them and
save all of them. If you awaken and save only a part of them when it is
in your power to save them all, you are a fiend. If you stand outside
and blow a trumpet and say, "I have warned them, I have done my duty,",
and they perish, you are still a fiend. If God does not give his
revelation to all; if he does not disclose his divinity to all; in
short, if he does not save all, he is the prince of fiends.
If all the world's inhabitants but one accepted the Bible and there was
one who could not honestly accept it, its rejection by one human being
would prove that it is not from an all-powerful and an all-just God;
for an all-powerful God who failed to reach and convince even one of his
children would not be an all-just God. Has the Bible been given to all
the world? Do all accept it? Three-fourths of the human race reject it;
millions have never heard of it.
"The word of God is the creation we behold."--_Age of Reason_.
"It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a
word of God can unite. The creation speaketh a universal language,
independently of human speech or human languages, multiplied and various
as they be. It is an ever-existing original which every man can read.
It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it
cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the
will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself
from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and
to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary
for man to know of God.
"Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of
the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do
we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with
which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it
in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In
fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the
Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the
Creation."--_Ibid._
"The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and
beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures.
That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an
example calling upon all men to practice the same towards each other;
and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between
man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of
moral duty."--_Ibid._
"I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy
and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy."--Ibid.
"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of
a child cannot be a true system."--_Ibid._
"I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content
myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that
gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he
pleases, either with or without this body."--_Ibid_.
It has been charged that Paine reviled Jesus in his book. He eulogized
Jesus. ''Three noble and pathetic tributes to the Man of Nazareth
are audible from the last century--those of Rousseau, Voltaire and
Paine."--_Dr. Conway_.
"Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and
amiable man. The morality that he preached was of the most benevolent
kind; and though similar Systems of morality had been preached by
Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before;
by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been
exceeded by any.... But he preached also against the Jewish priests;
and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of
priesthood."--_Age of Reason_.
History repeats itself. What is alleged to have been the fate of Jesus
was, in a measure, the fate of Thomas Paine. The penning of his honest
thoughts on religion caused his good name to be consigned to everlasting
infamy on earth and his soul doomed to endless misery in hell. The Jews
who are said to have demanded the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary
and the Catholics who burned Bruno at Rome are not more deserving of
execration than are the Protestant assassins of Paine's character in
England and America.
Referring to Paine's examination and analysis of the Bible and his
criticisms of the church presented in the "Age of Reason," William
Thurston Brown, in a lecture, said: "He brought to that, examination and
analysis what almost no other mind in all the ages has brought: a mind
absolutely free, a soul absolutely incorruptible, a character unstained
by one act of compromise or treachery to friend or foe, a nature
devoted, as few natures in all history have been, to the truth, and,
more than all, a sense of the relation of moral and intellectual
integrity to personal character and social well-being never surpassed
and seldom equaled."
S. Kyd (counselor for Thomas Williams, imprisoned for publishing the
"Age of Reason"): "I defy the prosecution to find in the 'Age of Reason'
a single passage inconsistent with the most chaste, the most correct
system of morals."
Prof. W. F. Jamieson: "I read from this famous book, the 'Age of
Reason,' as pure sentiments as were ever penned by mortal man."
"When I was a boy I was often told that the writings of Thomas Paine
'were not fit for anybody to read.' My pastor said so, as did my Sunday
school teachers and my parents. None of these had ever read them or knew
anything about them....I believed them, and might still do so, had I not
accidentally encountered a copy of the 'Age of Reason.' Upon reading it
I found it to be as conventional as anything I had ever read in
church or Sunday school, to say nothing of its more lofty
reasoning."--_Franklin Steiner_.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says that "the 'Age of Reason' contains
many passages of earnest and even lofty eloquence in favor of a pure
morality."
"Its tone throughout is noble and reverent."--_Rufus Rockwell._
Chapman Cohen: "Assuming Paine to be alive today, with his opinions
unchanged, how much fault would he find with the teachings of many
preachers? Very little I fancy. But does this mean, or would it mean,
that Paine had become converted to Christianity? Not a bit of it. It
would only mean that Christianity had become converted to Paine. In
its most advanced form today, Christianity is little more than the
eighteenth century Deism it so bitterly opposed, with a liberal dash of
the word 'Christ.'"
"What has become of the Bible that Paine attacked? So far as the mere
paper and type is concerned it is still here. But so tar as belief is
concerned, it is Paine's Bible that is believed in by the majority of
educated Christians."
Rev. Dr. E. L. Rexford: "If Paine were now living he would be looked
upon by all enlightened clergymen and laymen as a very conservative
critic of the Christian religion."
Rev. George Burman Foster (Gottingen and Chicago Universities): "What
was radical in regard to the Bible in his day would be conservative
today."
Rev. S. Fletcher Williams (England): "His principles were right, and
today an increasing number of religious teachers and religious minded
men stand only where he stood a century ago."
Dr. T. A. Bland: "The principles of the 'Age of Reason' are embodied in
sermons--orthodox and radical--all over the country."