"_He would destroy them all were it not that he feared the wrath of the
enemy_."
That is in the bible--word for word. Then the defendant in astonishment
says:
"_The Almighty God afraid of his enemies!_"
That is what the bible says. What does it mean? If the bible is true,
God was afraid.
"_Can the mind conceive of more horrid blasphemy?_"
Is not that true? If God be infinitely good and wise and powerful, is
it possible he is afraid of anything? If the defendant had said that God
was afraid of his enemies, that might have been blasphemy--but this man
says the bible says that, and you are asked to say that it is blasphemy.
Now, up to this point there is no blasphemy, even if you were to enforce
this infamous statute--this savage law.
"_The Old Testament records for our instruction in morals the most foul
and bestial instances of fornication, incest, and polygamy, perpetrated
by God's own saints, and the New Testament indorses these lecherous
wretches as examples for all good Christians to follow_."
Now is it not a fact that the Old Testament does uphold polygamy?
Abraham would have gotten into trouble in New Jersey--no doubt of that.
Sarah could have obtained a divorce in this state,--no doubt of that.
What is the use of telling a falsehood about it? Let us tell the truth
about the patriarchs.
Everybody knows that the same is true of Moses. We have all heard of
Solomon--a gentleman with five or six hundred wives, and three or four
hundred other ladies with whom he was acquainted. This is simply what
the defendant says. Is there any blasphemy about that? It is only the
truth. If Solomon were living in the United States to-day, we would put
him in the penitentiary. You know that under the Edmunds' Mormon law
he would be locked up. If you should present a petition signed by his
eleven hundred wives, you could not get him out.
So it was with David. There are some splendid things about David, of
course. I admit that, and pay my tribute of respect to his courage--but
he happened to have ten or twelve wives too many, so he shut them up,
put them in a kind of penitentiary and kept them there till they died.
That would not be considered good conduct even in Morristown. You know
that. Is it any harm to speak of it? There are plenty of ministers here
to set it right--thousands of them all over the country, every one with
his chance to talk all day Sunday and nobody to say a word back. The pew
cannot reply to the pulpit, you know; it has just to sit there and
take it. If there is any harm in this, if it is not true, they ought to
answer it. But it is here, and the only answer is an indictment.
I say that Lot was a bad man. So I say of Abraham, and of Jacob. Did you
ever know of a more despicable fraud practiced by one brother on another
than Jacob practiced on Esau? My sympathies have always been with Esau.
He seemed to be a manly man. Is it blasphemy to say that you do not like
a hypocrite, a murderer, or a thief, because his name is in the bible?
How do you know what such men are mentioned for? May be they are
mentioned as examples, and you certainly ought not to be led away and
induced to imagine that a man with seven hundred wives is a pattern
of domestic propriety, one to be followed by yourself and your sons. I
might go on and mention the names of hundreds of others who committed
every conceivable crime, in the name of religion--who declared war, and
on the field of battle killed men, women and babes, even children yet
unborn, in the name of the most merciful God. The Bible is filled with
the names and crimes of these sacred savages, these inspired beasts. Any
man who says that a God of love commanded the commission of these crimes
is, to say the least of it, mistaken. If there be a God, then it is
blasphemous to charge him with the commission of crime. But let us read
further from this indictment: "The aforesaid printed document contains
other scandalous, infamous and blasphemous matters and things to
the tenor and effect following, that is to say,"--Then comes this
particularly blasphemous line: "_Now, reader, take time and calmly think
it over_." Gentlemen, there are many things I have read that I should
not have expressed in exactly the same language used by the defendant,
and many things that I am going to read I might not have said at all,
but the defendant had the right to say every word with which he is
charged in this indictment. He had the right to give his honest thought,
no matter whether any human being agreed with what he said or not, and
no matter whether any other man approved of the manner in which he said
these things. I defend his right to speak, whether I believe in what he
spoke or not, or in the propriety of saying what he did. I should defend
a man just as cheerfully who had spoken against my doctrine, as one who
had spoken against the popular superstitions of my time. It would
make no difference to me how unjust the attack was upon my belief--how
maliciously ingenious; and no matter how sacred the conviction that
was attacked, I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no
attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow,
or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the
argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement
stands.
The defendant in this case has attacked certain beliefs, thought by the
Christian world to be sacred. Yet, after all, nothing is sacred but the
truth, and by truth I mean what a man sincerely and honestly believes.
The defendant says:
"_Take time to calmly think it over: Was a Jewish girl the mother of
God, the mother of your God?_"
The defendant probably asked this question supposing that it must
be answered by all sensible people in the negative. If the Christian
religion is true, then a Jewish girl was the mother of Almighty God.
Personally, if the doctrine is true, I have no fault to find with the
statement that a Jewish maiden was the mother of God.--Millions believe
that this is true--I do not believe,--but who knows? If a God came from
the throne of the universe, came to this world and became the child of
a pure and loving woman, it would not lessen, in my eyes, the dignity or
the greatness of that God.
There is no more perfect picture on the earth, or within the imagination
of man, than a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms a child,
the fruit of love.
No matter how the statement is made, the fact remains the same. A Jewish
girl became the mother of God. If the bible is true, that is true, and
to repeat it, even according to your law, is not blasphemous, and to
doubt it, or to express the doubt, or to deny it, is not contrary to
your Constitution.
To this defendant it seemed improbable that God was ever born of woman,
was ever held in the lap of a mother; and because he cannot believe
this, he is charged with blasphemy. Could you pour contempt on
Shakespeare by saying that his mother was a woman,--by saying that he
was once a poor crying little helpless child? Of course he was; and
he afterwards became the greatest human being that ever touched the
earth,--the only man whose intellectual wings have reached from sky to
sky; and he was once a crying babe. What of it? Does that cast any scorn
or contempt upon him? Does this take any of the music from "Midsummer
Night's Dream"?--any of the passionate wealth from "Antony and
Cleopatra," any philosophy from "Macbeth," any intellectual grandeur
from "King Lear"? On the contrary, these great productions of the brain
show the growth of the dimpled babe, give every mother a splendid
dream and hope for her child, and cover every cradle with a sublime
possibility.
The defendant is also charged with having said that "_God cried and
screamed._"
Why not? If he was absolutely a child, he was like other children,--like
yours, like mine. I have seen the time, when absent from home, that I
would have given more to have heard my children cry, than to have heard
the finest orchestra that ever made the air burst into flower. What if
God did cry? It simply shows that his humanity was real and not assumed,
that it was a tragedy, real, and not a poor pretense. And the defendant
also says that if the orthodox religion be true, that the "_God of the
Universe kicked, and flung about his little arms, and made aimless
dashes into space with his little fists_."
Is there anything in this that is blasphemous? One of the best pictures
I ever saw of the Virgin and Child was painted by the Spaniard, Murillo.
Christ appears to be a truly natural, chubby, happy babe. Such a
picture takes nothing from the majesty, the beauty, or the glory of the
incarnation.
I think it is the best thing about the Catholic Church that it lifts
up for adoration and admiration, a mother,--that it pays what it calls
"Divine honors" to a woman. There is certainly goodness in that, and
where a Church has so few practices that are good, I am willing to point
this one out. It is the one redeeming feature about Catholicism that it
teaches the worship of a woman.
The defendant says more about the childhood of Christ. He goes so far as
to say, that
"_He was found staring foolishly at his own little toes._"
And why not? The bible says, that "he increased in wisdom and stature."
The defendant might have referred to something far more improbable. In
the same verse in which St. Luke says that Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature, will be found the assertion that he increased in favor with God
and man. The defendant might have asked how it was that the love of God
for God increased.
But the defendant has simply stated that the child Jesus grew, as other
children grow; that he acted like other children, and if he did, it is
more than probable that he did stare at his own toes. I have laughed
many a time to see little children astonished with the sight of their
feet. They seem to wonder what on earth puts the little toes in motion.
Certainly there is nothing blasphemous in supposing that the feet of
Christ amused him, precisely as the feet of other children have amused
them. There is nothing blasphemous about this; on the contrary, it is
beautiful. If I believed in the existence of God, the creator of this
world, the being who, with the hand of infinity, sowed the fields of
space with stars, as a farmer sows his grain, I should like to think
of him as a little dimpled babe, overflowing with joy, sitting upon the
knees of a loving mother. The ministers, themselves, might take a lesson
even from the man who is charged with blasphemy, and make an effort to
bring an infinite God a little nearer to the human heart.
The defendant also says, speaking of the infant Christ, "He was nursed
at Mary's breast."
Yes, and if the story be true, that is the tenderest fact in it. Nursed
at the breast of woman. No painting, no statue, no words can make a
deeper and a tenderer impression upon the heart of man than this: The
Infinite God, a babe, nursed at the holy breast of woman.
You see these things do not strike all people the same. To a man
that has been raised on the Orthodox desert, these things are
incomprehensible. He has been robbed of his humanity. He has no humor,
nothing but the stupid and the solemn. His fancy sits with folded wings.
Imagination, like the atmosphere of Spring, woes every seed of earth
to seek the blue of heaven, and whispers of bud and flower and fruit.
Imagination gathers from every field of thought and pours the wealth
of many lives into the lap of one. To the contracted, to the cast-iron
people who believe in heartless and inhuman creeds, the words of the
defendant seem blasphemous, and to them the thought that God was a
little child is monstrous.
They cannot bear to hear it said that he nursed at the breast of a
maiden, that he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, that he had the joys
and sorrows of other babes. I hope, gentlemen, that not only you,
but the attorneys for the prosecution, have read what is known as the
"Apocryphal New Testament," books that were once considered inspired,
once admitted to be genuine, and that once formed a part of our New
Testament. I hope you have read the books of Joseph and Mary, of the
Shepherd of Hermes, of the Infancy and of Mary, in which many of the
things done by the youthful Christ are described--books that were once
the delight of the Christian world; books that gave joy to children,
because in them they read that Christ made little birds of clay, that
would at his command stretch out their wings and fly with joy above his
head. If the defendant in this case had said anything like that, here
in the State of New Jersey, he would have been indicted; the Orthodox
Ministers would have shouted "blasphemy," and yet, these little stories
made the name of Christ dearer to children.
The Church of to-day lacks sympathy; the theologians are without
affection. After all, sympathy is genius. A man who really sympathizes
with another understands him. A man who sympathizes with a religion
instantly sees the good that is in it, and the man who sympathizes with
the right, sees the evil that a creed contains.
But the defendant, still speaking of the infant Christ, is charged with
having said,
"_God smiled when he was comfortable. He lay in a cradle and was rocked
to sleep_."
Yes, and there is no more beautiful picture than that Let some great
religious genius paint a picture of this kind--of a babe smiling with
content, rocked in the cradle by the mother who bends tenderly and
proudly above him. There could be no more beautiful, no more touching,
picture than this. What would I not give for a picture of Shakespeare as
a babe,--a picture that was a likeness,--rocked by his mother? I would
give more for this than for any painting that now enriches the walls of
the world.