Let man rid himself of the pernicious idea that knowledge is a crime,
and then let only the man who is afraid to enter the world of thought go
back to his native paradise of ignorance and rest. Let him cling to his
old ideas. Humanity can do better without such a man, and humanity will
be better without him. The time is past when his type is needed, and let
us hope that it is nearly past when it can be found. He may have been
abreast of the time in 1840, but his grave was dug, his epitaph written,
in 1841. Science did not wait for him, and the world forgot his name!
Do you think the world has any farther use for the man who can gravely
tell those stories about Samson, for instance, as truth--as the word of
God? Do you think they do honor to the most attenuated intellect? Now
just stop and think of it. Just think of one thousand able-bodied men
(1,000 is a good many men) quietly standing around waiting for Sampson
to knock them on the head with a bone! And how does the durability of
that bone strike you?
If prowess with arms were estimated, I should say that was about the
most effective piece of generalship on record. If the gentleman who
conducted that neat little skirmish were living to-day there would not
be a question as to his eligibility for a third term, unit rule or no
unit rule. If we could provide our generals with a bone like that, we
might reduce the standing army sufficiently to reassure the most timid
congressman of the whole lot. It would not take more than four or five
generals and a captain to guard the whole frontier. Then we might keep
a private to keep the peace at the polls, and that would give us
sufficient force to readily murder several thousand people any morning
before breakfast, and I don't see how you could ask for anything better
than that. Two live men and one dead mule could raise a siege in a
quarter of an hour. Now, if there is anybody who wants to start "a
brilliant foreign policy," here is his chance. He could at the same time
make a record for economy, for it would be an enormous saving to this
country in arms and ammunition alone. For durability, cheapness, and
certainty not to miss fire there is simply no comparison at all.
It may be objected that our soldiers are not so strong as Samson; but
I am told by those who are intimately acquainted with mules, that they
have not deteriorated. They have simply transferred their superior
strength and durability from their jaw-bones to their heels--and they
engineer them themselves. So if our men can stand his voice and aim him
right, they won't have to wear long hair.
But seriously, if it is necessary to believe such stories as that in
order to go to heaven, don't you think the admission fee is a trifle
high? It is entirely beyond my means, and that is not one of the big
stories either.
The one that comes right after it is just as absurd. It is the second
scene of the same performance, and Samson only went out between acts for
a drink, and then he playfully walked off with a building about the size
of the capitol at Washington.
They say we must believe these tales or be damned; and that a woman has
not even a right to say, "I object." But it always did seem to me that
anybody who could believe them would not have brains enough to know
whether he was damned or not. They say we must not laugh at such very
solemn things as that. They also say that even if we don't believe them
ourselves we should show respect for those who do.
That is a very good theory, but I should like to know how any human
being with a sense of humor could sit and look solemn, and feel very
respectful, with that sort of chaff rattling down his back. It can't
be done unless he is scared. Fear will convince a man the quickest of
anything on earth. Even a shadow is provocative of solemnity if the
night is dark enough and the man is sufficiently scared.
Ignorance and Fear made the Garden of Eden, they created Jehovah, gave
Samson his wonderful strength, and Solomon his wisdom; they divided the
Red Sea, and raised Lazarus from the dead. It is not strange, therefore,
that they have compelled women to cling to the Church, and slaves to
cling to slavery. There were many black men in the South who voluntarily
went back and offered to remain in bondage. And that is one of the
strongest arguments against the institution of slavery--that it can so
far degrade its victims that they lose even the ambition to be free!*
* "It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for
slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray
their masters. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated
their slaves. But in truth these intense individual feelings
nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height as under the most
atrocious institutions. It is part of the irony of life,
that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which
human nature seems susceptible, are called forth in human
beings toward those who, having the power entirely to crush
their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that
power. How great a place in most men this sentiment fills,
even in religious devotion, it would be cruel to inquire. We
daily see how much their gratitude to Heaven appears to be
stimulated by the _contemplation of fellow-creatures to whom
God has not been so merciful as he has to themselves_."
--Mill.
The time is not far distant when a bondage of the intellect to the
Church will receive no more respectful consideration than a bondage
of the body to a master. This nineteenth century cannot much longer
be bound by the ignorance and intolerance of an age when might was the
highest law and force the only appeal. We need to recognize that the
broadest possible liberty is the greatest possible good; and that the
liberty to think is the highest good of all. So don't let people make
you afraid to think, or to laugh at nonsense wherever you see it.
Solomon saying it cannot make a silly thing wise, nor Moses doing it a
cruel thing kind. David cannot make brutality gentle, nor Paul injustice
just; and that the Bible sustains a wrong can never make it right.
Don't you know that if the leading men of the Old Testament were living
to-day, they would be known as liars, thieves, and murderers--some
indeed as monsters to whom even these terms would be base flattery.
Despoilers of those who had not injured them; infamous liars in the name
of God; murderers of men; butchers of children; debauchers of women;
if they were living in the nineteenth century they would be unanimously
elected to the gallows--that is if they escaped Judge Lynch long enough.
And yet they are held up to us, who have outgrown their morals, as
authorities on the subject of God's will to man, as Prophets, Saints,
Mediators!
Do you want your children taught to believe in the purity and honor
of such men? Do you want your children taught to worship a God who
sanctioned, commanded, and gloried (and usually participated) in their
worst crimes? Do you want them to believe that at any time, in any age,
a God was the director in the most heinous crimes, in the vilest
plots, in the most cruel, vulgar, cowardly acts of vice that were ever
recorded? Either he was or else Moses' word is not worth a copper, and
theology is the invention of ignorance. He did these hideous things
or the Bible is mistaken about it. There is to-day that kind of a God
somewhere in space waiting around to pounce on anybody who doesn't
admire him, or else the Church is founded upon the ignorance and fear of
its dupes, and teaches them what is not true.
They say it is wicked to inquire into the facts. I say it is wrong not
to. It seems to me that in a matter like this the most important thing
is to be honest all round, and that if the claims of the Church are true
no inquiry can injure them. They say, "Oh, well, drop all the bad part,
and only take the good. There is a great deal of good in it too." But if
I don't know what is good myself I won't go to Moses and that class of
men to find out. I'll go to somebody who has got a clean record. I won't
go to men who robbed and murdered in the name of God; I won't go to men
who bought and sold their fellow-men; I won't go to men who gave their
own daughters over to the hate and lust of others, even bargaining for
them with sons and brothers. Such men cannot tell me what is good.
Such men cannot make a religion for me to live by, or a God that I can
accept.
I am sometimes told that intelligent ministers nowadays do not believe
in the inspiration of the Bible, and do not teach it. Yet every minister
who, like the Rev. R. Heber Newton, dares to suggest mildly that even
the apple story is a fable, is silenced by his bishop or hounded down
for "heresy." And still they go right on telling little children that it
is the "word of God" and the only guide of life. For truth, better give
them AEsop's Fables or the Arabian Nights; for purity the Decameron or
Don Juan; for examples of justice the story of Blue-Beard or the life of
Henry the Eighth.
I wish you would read the Bible carefully _just as you would any other
book_, and see what you think of its morals. I am debarred from touching
the parts of it that are the greatest insult to purity and the most
infamous travesties of justice. I can only say to you, read it, and if
you are lovers of purity you will find that it teaches respect for a God
who taught the most degrading impurity and defended those who forced it
upon others. If you believe in the sacredness of human life, he gave the
largest license to murder. It does not matter that Moses said he
told him _to tell somebody else_ "Thou shalt not kill;"* for the same
gentleman remarked upon several other occasions that God told him not
only to kill, but to steal, to lie, to commit arson, to break pretty
much all the other commandments--and to be a professional tramp besides.
(I am told that he followed this latter occupation for forty years,
which I should think would give him the belt.) So you see we have the
same gentleman's word for all of it; and at times, I must confess, it
does not seem to me absolutely reliable authority. There is one thing
certain, if the returns are correct, and that is that Moses did not take
his own medicine in the little matter of keeping the commandments. They
were for his enemies and his slaves.
* See Lecture 3, "Theological Fictions."
If you love liberty remember that the Bible teaches slavery in every
form, not only the buying of slaves, but the stealing them into bondage.
How any man or woman who censured slavery in our Southern States
can permit their children to be taught that the Bible is a book of
authority, and think they are consistent, I cannot understand. Every
slave-whip had for its lash the Bible. Every slave-holder had its
teachings for his guide. Every slave-driver found his authority there.
When the sword of the North severed the thongs of the black man, it
destroyed the absolute control of the Bible in America; and gave a fatal
blow to Jehovah the God of oppression. Only in the South is it that the
Bible still holds its own. Freedom has outgrown it; and the young South
is reading it, for the first time, with an eraser!
If you respect your mother, if you wish your children to respect theirs,
you will find that the Bible teaches not only disrespect for her, but
abject slavery and the most oppressive degradation. If you love your
young sister, your beautiful pure daughter, remember that Jehovah taught
that, whenever men could do so, they were to abuse, ruin, degrade
them; and remember, further, that his "prophets"--_the men who made our
religion--did these things and gloried in the work_.
It is for this reason that I say it is right and peculiarly fitting that
women should object to his teaching. After you have read the 31st ch.
of Numbers, with its "thus saith the Lord," think then if you want to
follow such teachings. Decide then whether or not the words, the acts,
the commands, or the religion of such men is good enough for you. Think
then whether or not you want your daughters, your sons, to believe that
the Bible has one grain of authority, or is in any sense a "revelation
of the divine will."
Don't allow ministers to palm off platitudes on you for "revelation;"
and don't let them make you believe that anything that Moses or David or
Solomon said was the command of God to women. Neither one of those men
was fit to speak of a respectable woman. With the superior morals of our
time neither one of them would be considered fit to live outside of a
brothel.
And don't let them tell you what "Saint" Paul said either. What did he
know about women anyway? He was a brilliant but erratic old bachelor
who fought on whichever side he happened to find himself on. He could
accommodate himself to circumstances and accept the situation almost
as gracefully as that other biblical gentleman who quietly went to
housekeeping inside of a whale, and held the fort for three days.