III.

"Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do, in

order to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and religious

folly." Kant.

"Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do, in

order to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and religious

folly." Kant.

SEVERAL months ago, The North American Review asked me to write an

article, saying that it would be published if some one would furnish a

reply. I wrote the article that appeared in the August number, and by

me it was entitled "Is All of the Bible Inspired?" Not until the

article was written did I know who was expected to answer. I make this

explanation for the purpose of dissipating the impression that Mr. Black

had been challenged by me. To have struck his shield with my lance might

have given birth to the impression that I was somewhat doubtful as to

the correctness of my position. I naturally expected an answer from some

professional theologian, and was surprised to find that a reply had been

written by a "policeman," who imagined that he had answered my arguments

by simply telling me that my statements were false. It is somewhat

unfortunate that in a discussion like this any one should resort to the

slightest personal detraction. The theme is great enough to engage the

highest faculties of the human mind, and in the investigation of such a

subject vituperation is singularly and vulgarly out of place. Arguments

cannot be answered with insults. It is unfortunate that the intellectual

arena should be entered by a "policeman," who has more confidence in

concussion than discussion. Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often

mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and

important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm.

Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic.

Epithets are the arguments of malice. Candor is the courage of the soul.

Leaving the objectionable portions of Mr. Black's reply, feeling that so

grand a subject should not be blown and tainted with malicious words, I

proceed to answer as best I may the arguments he has urged.

I am made to say that "the universe is natural"; that "it came into

being of its own accord"; that "it made its own laws at the start, and

afterward improved itself considerably by spontaneous evolution."

I did say that "the universe is natural," but I did not say that "it

came into being of its own accord"; neither did I say that "it made its

own laws and afterward improved itself." The universe, according to my

idea, is, always was, and forever will be. It did not "come into being,"

it is the one eternal being,--the only thing that ever did, does, or can

exist. It did not "make its own laws." We know nothing of what we

call the laws of nature except as we gather the idea of law from the

uniformity of phenomena springing from like conditions. To make myself

clear: Water always runs down-hill. The theist says that this happens

because there is behind the phenomenon an active law. As a matter

of fact, law is this side of the phenomenon. Law does not cause the

phenomenon, but the phenomenon causes the idea of law in our minds; and

this idea is produced from the fact that under like circumstances the

same phenomenon always happens. Mr. Black probably thinks that the

difference in the weight of rocks and clouds was created by law; that

parallel lines fail to unite only because it is illegal that diameter

and circumference could have been so made that it would be a greater

distance across than around a circle; that a straight line could enclose

a triangle if not prevented by law, and that a little legislation could

make it possible for two bodies to occupy the same space at the same

time. It seems to me that law cannot be the cause of phenomena, but is

an effect produced in our minds by their succession and resemblance.

To put a God back of the universe, compels us to admit that there was a

time when nothing existed except this God; that this God had lived from

eternity in an infinite vacuum, and in absolute idleness. The mind of

every thoughtful man is forced to one of these two conclusions:

either that the universe is self-existent, or that it was created by a

self-existent being. To my mind, there are far more difficulties in the

second hypothesis than in the first.

Of course, upon a question like this, nothing can be absolutely known.

We live on an atom called Earth, and what we know of the infinite is

almost infinitely limited; but, little as we know, all have an equal

right to give their honest thought. Life is a shadowy, strange,

and winding road on which we travel for a little way--a few short

steps---just from the cradle, with its lullaby of love, to the low and

quiet way-side inn, where all at last must sleep, and where the only

salutation is--Good-night.

I know as little as any one else about the "plan" of the universe; and

as to the "design," I know just as little. It will not do to say that

the universe was designed, and therefore there must be a designer. There

must first be proof that it was "designed." It will not do to say that

the universe has a "plan," and then assert that there must have been an

infinite maker. The idea that a design must have a beginning and that a

designer need not, is a simple expression of human ignorance. We find

a watch, and we say: "So curious and wonderful a thing must have had a

maker." We find the watch-maker, and we say: "So curious and wonderful

a thing as man must have had a maker." We find God, and we then say: "He

is so wonderful that he must _not_ have had a maker." In other words,

all things a little wonderful must have been created, but it is possible

for something to be so wonderful that it always existed. One would

suppose that just as the wonder increased the necessity for a creator

increased, because it is the wonder of the thing that suggests the idea

of creation. Is it possible that a designer exists from all eternity

without design? Was there no design in having an infinite designer? For

me, it is hard to see the plan or design in earthquakes and pestilences.

It is somewhat difficult to discern the design or the benevolence in so

making the world that billions of animals live only on the agonies of

others. The justice of God is not visible to me in the history of this

world. When I think of the suffering and death, of the poverty and

crime, of the cruelty and malice, of the heartlessness of this "design"

and "plan," where beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering

flesh of weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is the

result of infinite wisdom, benevolence, and justice.

Most Christians have seen and recognized this difficulty, and have

endeavored to avoid it by giving God an opportunity in another world

to rectify the seeming mistakes of this. Mr. Black, however, avoids the

entire question by saying: "We have neither jurisdiction nor capacity to

rejudge the justice of God." In other words, we have no right to think

upon this subject, no right to examine the questions most vitally

affecting human kind. We are simply to accept the ignorant statements of

barbarian dead. This question cannot be settled by saying that "it would

be a mere waste of time and space to enumerate the proofs which show

that the Universe was created by a preexistent and self-conscious

Being." The time and space should have been "wasted," and the proofs

should have been enumerated. These "proofs" are what the wisest and

greatest are trying to find. Logic is not satisfied with assertion.

It cares nothing for the opinions of the "great,"--nothing for the

prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the

dead. In the world of Science, a fact is a legal tender. Assertions and

miracles are base and spurious coins. We have the right to rejudge the

justice even of a god. No one should throw away his reason--the fruit

of all experience. It is the intellectual capital of the soul, the only

light, the only guide, and without it the brain becomes the palace of an

idiot king, attended by a retinue of thieves and hypocrites.

Of course it is admitted that most of the Ten Commandments are wise and

just. In passing, it may be well enough to say, that the commandment,

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of

anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or

that is in the water under the earth," was the absolute death of Art,

and that not until after the destruction of Jerusalem was there a Hebrew

painter or sculptor. Surely a commandment is not inspired that drives

from the earth the living canvas and the breathing stone--leaves all

walls bare and all the niches desolate. In the tenth commandment we find

woman placed on an exact equality with other property, which, to say the

least of it, has never tended to the amelioration of her condition.

A very curious thing about these commandments is that their supposed

author violated nearly every one. From Sinai, according to the account,

he said: "Thou shalt not kill," and yet he ordered the murder of

millions; "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and yet he gave captured

maidens to gratify the lust of captors; "Thou shalt not steal," and yet

he gave to Jewish marauders the flocks and herds of others; "Thou shalt

not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his wife," and yet he allowed his

chosen people to destroy the homes of neighbors and to steal their

wives; "Honor thy father and thy mother," and yet this same God had

thousands of fathers butchered, and with the sword of war killed

children yet unborn; "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy

neighbor," and yet he sent abroad "lying spirits" to deceive his own

prophets, and in a hundred ways paid tribute to deceit. So far as we

know, Jehovah kept only one of these commandments--he worshiped no other

god.

The religious intolerance of the Old Testament is justified upon the

ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance," that

"idolatry was an act of overt treason," and that "to worship the gods

of the hostile heathen was deserting to the public enemy, and giving him

aid and comfort." According to Mr. Black, we should all have liberty of

conscience except when directly governed by God. In that country where

God is king, liberty cannot exist. In this position, I admit that he

is upheld and fortified by the "sacred" text. Within the Old Testament

there is no such thing as religious toleration. Within that volume can

be found no mercy for an unbeliever. For all who think for themselves,

there are threatenings, curses, and anathemas. Think of an infinite

being who is so cruel, so unjust, that he will not allow one of his own

children the liberty of thought! Think of an infinite God acting as the

direct governor of a people, and yet not able to command their love!

Think of the author of all mercy imbruing his hands in the blood of

helpless men, women, and children, simply because he did not furnish

them with intelligence enough to understand his law! An earthly father

who cannot govern by affection is not fit to be a father; what,

then, shall we say of an infinite being who resorts to violence, to

pestilence, to disease, and famine, in the vain effort to obtain even

the respect of a savage? Read this passage, red from the heart of

cruelty:

"_If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or

the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice

thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which thou hast

not known, thou nor thy fathers,... thou shalt not consent unto him, nor

hearken unto him, neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou

spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him;

thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards

the hand of all the people; and thou shalt stone him with stones, that

he die_."

This is the religious liberty of the Bible. If you had lived in

Palestine, and if the wife of your bosom, dearer to you than your

own soul, had said: "I like the religion of India better than that of

Palestine," it would have been your duty to kill her.

"Your eye must not pity her, your hand must be first upon her, and

afterwards the hand of all the people." If she had said: "Let us worship

the sun--the sun that clothes the earth in garments of green--the

sun, the great fireside of the world--the sun that covers the hills and

valleys with flowers--that gave me your face, and made it possible for

me to look into the eyes of my babe--let us worship the sun," it was

your duty to kill her. You must throw the first stone, and when against

her bosom--a bosom filled with love for you--you had thrown the jagged

and cruel rock, and had seen the red stream of her life oozing from

the dumb lips of death, you could then look up and receive the

congratulations of the God whose commandment you had obeyed. Is it

possible that a being of infinite mercy ordered a husband to kill his

wife for the crime of having expressed an opinion on the subject of

religion? Has there been found upon the records of the savage world

anything more perfectly fiendish than this commandment of Jehovah? This

is justified on the ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political

allegiance, and idolatry an act of overt treason." We can understand

how a human king stands in need of the service of his people. We can

understand how the desertion of any of his soldiers weakens his army;

but were the king infinite in power, his strength would still remain the

same, and under no conceivable circumstances could the enemy triumph.

I insist that, if there is an infinitely good and wise God, he beholds

with pity the misfortunes of his children. I insist that such a God

would know the mists, the clouds, the darkness enveloping the human

mind. He would know how few stars are visible in the intellectual sky.

His pity, not his wrath, would be excited by the efforts of his

blind children, groping in the night to find the cause of things, and

endeavoring, through their tears, to see some dawn of hope. Filled with

awe by their surroundings, by fear of the unknown, he would know that

when, kneeling, they poured out their gratitude to some unseen power,

even to a visible idol, it was, in fact, intended for him. An infinitely

good being, had he the power, would answer the reasonable prayer of an

honest savage, even when addressed to wood and stone.

The atrocities of the Old Testament, the threatenings, maledictions, and

curses of the "inspired book," are defended on the ground that the Jews

had a right to treat their enemies as their enemies treated them; and

in this connection is this remarkable statement: "In your treatment

of hostile barbarians you not only may lawfully, you must necessarily,

adopt their mode of warfare. If they come to conquer you, they may be

conquered by you; if they give no quarter, they are entitled to none; if

the death of your whole population be their purpose, you may defeat it

by exterminating theirs."

For a man who is a "Christian policeman," and has taken upon himself to

defend the Christian religion; for one who follows the Master who said

that when smitten on one cheek you must turn the other, and who again

and again enforced the idea that you must overcome evil with good, it is

hardly consistent to declare that a civilized nation must of necessity

adopt the warfare of savages. Is it possible that in fighting, for

instance, the Indians of America, if they scalp our soldiers we should

scalp theirs? If they ravish, murder, and mutilate our wives, must we

treat theirs in the same manner? If they kill the babes in our cradles,

must we brain theirs? If they take our captives, bind them to the trees,

and if their squaws fill their quivering flesh with sharpened fagots and

set them on fire, that they may die clothed with flame, must our wives,

our mothers, and our daughters follow the fiendish example? Is this the

conclusion of the most enlightened Christianity? Will the pulpits of the

United States adopt the arguments of this "policeman"? Is this the last

and most beautiful blossom of the Sermon on the Mount? Is this the echo

of "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do"?

Mr. Black justifies the wars of extermination and conquest because the

American people fought for the integrity of their own country; fought to

do away with the infamous institution of slavery; fought to preserve the

jewels of liberty and justice for themselves and for their children.

Is it possible that his mind is so clouded by political and religious

prejudice, by the recollections of an unfortunate administration,

that he sees no difference between a war of extermination and one of

self-preservation? that he sees no choice between the murder of helpless

age, of weeping women and of sleeping babes, and the defence of liberty

and nationality?

The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war of extermination. They

did not seek to enslave their fellow-men. They did not murder trembling

age. They did not sheathe their swords in women's breasts. They gave

the old men bread, and let the mothers rock their babes in peace.

They fought to save the world's great hope--to free a race and put the

humblest hut beneath the canopy of liberty and law.

Claiming neither praise nor dispraise for the part taken by me in the

Civil war, for the purposes of this argument, it is sufficient to say

that I am perfectly willing that my record, poor and barren as it is,

should be compared with his.

Never for an instant did I suppose that any respectable American citizen

could be found willing at this day to defend the institution of slavery;

and never was I more astonished than when I found Mr. Black denying that

civilized countries passionately assert that slavery is and always was

a hideous crime. I was amazed when he declared that "the doctrine that

slavery is a crime under all circumstances and at all times was first

started by the adherents of a political faction in this country less

than forty years ago." He tells us that "they denounced God and Christ

for not agreeing with them," but that "they did not constitute the

civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be told, a very

respectable portion of it. Politically they were successful; I need not

say by what means, or with what effect upon the morals of the country."

Slavery held both branches of Congress, filled the chair of the

Executive, sat upon the Supreme Bench, had in its hands all rewards, all

offices; knelt in the pew, occupied the pulpit, stole human beings in

the name of God, robbed the trundle-bed for love of Christ; incited

mobs, led ignorance, ruled colleges, sat in the chairs of professors,

dominated the public press, closed the lips of free speech, and

polluted with its leprous hand every source and spring of power. The

abolitionists attacked this monster. They were the bravest, grandest

men of their country and their century. Denounced by thieves, hated

by hypocrites, mobbed by cowards, slandered by priests, shunned by

politicians, abhorred by the seekers of office,--these men "of whom the

world was not worthy," in spite of all opposition, in spite of poverty

and want, conquered innumerable obstacles, never faltering for one

moment, never dismayed--accepting defeat with a smile born of infinite

hope--knowing that they were right--insisted and persisted until every

chain was broken, until slave-pens became schoolhouses, and three

millions of slaves became free men, women, and children. They did not

measure with "the golden metewand of God," but with "the elastic cord of

human feeling." They were men the latchets of whose shoes no believer

in human slavery was ever worthy to unloose. And yet we are told by

this modern defender of the slavery of Jehovah that they were not even

respectable; and this slander is justified because the writer is assured

"that the infallible God proceeded upon good grounds when he authorized

slavery in Judea."

Not satisfied with having slavery in this world, Mr. Black assures us

that it will last through all eternity, and that forever and forever

inferiors must be subordinated to superiors. Who is the superior man?

According to Mr. Black, he is superior who lives upon the unpaid labor

of the inferior. With me, the superior man is the one who uses his

superiority in bettering the condition of the inferior. The superior man

is strength for the weak, eyes for the blind, brains for the simple;

he is the one who helps carry the burden that nature has put upon the

inferior. Any man who helps another to gain and retain his liberty is

superior to any infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea. For my

part, I would rather be the slave than the master. It is better to be

robbed than to be a robber. I had rather be stolen from than to be a

thief.

According to Mr. Black, there will be slavery in heaven, and fast by

the throne of God will be the auction-block, and the streets of the New

Jerusalem will be adorned with the whipping post, while the music of

the harp will be supplemented by the crack of the driver's whip. If some

good Republican would catch Mr. Black, "incorporate him into his family,

tame him, teach him to think, and give him a knowledge of the true

principles of human liberty and government, he would confer upon him a

most beneficent boon."

Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the joint product of the

kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite. It degrades labor and

corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, to sell wives, to steal

babes, to breed bloodhounds, to debauch your own soul--this is slavery.

This is what Jehovah "authorized in Judea." This is what Mr. Black

believes in still. He "measures with the golden metewand of God." I

abhor slavery. With me, liberty is not merely a means--it is an end.

Without that word, all other words are empty sounds.

Mr. Black is too late with his protest against the freedom of his

fellow-man. Liberty is making the tour of the world. Russia has

emancipated her serfs; the slave trade is prosecuted only by thieves and

pirates; Spain feels upon her cheek the burning blush of shame; Brazil

with proud and happy eyes is looking for the dawn of freedom's day; the

people of the South rejoice that slavery is no more, and every good and

honest man (excepting Mr. Black), of every land and clime, hopes that

the limbs of men will never feel again the weary weight of chains.

We are informed by Mr. Black that polygamy is neither commanded nor

prohibited in the Old Testament--that it is only "discouraged." It seems

to me that a little legislation on that subject might have tended to its

"discouragement." But where is the legislation? In the moral code, which

Mr. Black assures us "consists of certain immutable rules to govern the

conduct of all men at all times and at all places in their private and

personal relations with others," not one word is found on the subject of

polygamy. There is nothing "discouraging" in the Ten Commandments, nor

in the records of any conversation Jehovah is claimed to have had with

Moses upon Sinai. The life of Abraham, the story of Jacob and Laban,

the duty of a brother to be the husband of the widow of his deceased

brother, the life of David, taken in connection with the practice of

one who is claimed to have been the wisest of men--all these things are

probably relied on to show that polygamy was at least "discouraged."

Certainly, Jehovah had time to instruct Moses as to the infamy of

polygamy. He could have spared a few moments from a description of the

patterns of tongs and basins, for a subject so important as this. A

few words in favor of the one wife and the one husband--in favor of the

virtuous and loving home--might have taken the place of instructions

as to cutting the garments of priests and fashioning candlesticks and

ouches of gold. If he had left out simply the order that rams' skins

should be dyed red, and in its place had said, "A man shall have but one

wife, and the wife but one husband," how much better would it have been.

All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express the filth

of polygamy. It makes man a beast, and woman a slave. It destroys the

fireside and makes virtue an outcast. It takes us back to the barbarism

of animals, and leaves the heart a den in which crawl and hiss the slimy

serpents of most loathsome lust. And yet Mr. Black insists that we owe

to the Bible the present elevation of woman. Where will he find in the

Old Testament the rights of wife, and mother, and daughter defined?

Even in the New Testament she is told to "learn in silence, with all

subjection;" that she "is not suffered to teach, nor to usurp any

authority over the man, but to be in silence." She is told that "the

head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the

head of Christ is God." In other words, there is the same difference

between the wife and husband that there is between the husband and

Christ.

The reasons given for this infamous doctrine are that "Adam was first

formed, and then Eve;" that "Adam was not deceived," but that "the woman

being deceived, was in the transgression." These childish reasons are

the only ones given by the inspired writers. We are also told that "a

man, indeed, ought to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and

glory of God;" but that "the woman is the glory of the man," and this is

justified from the fact, and the remarkable fact, set forth in the very

next verse--that "the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the

man." And the same gallant apostle says: "Neither was the man created

for the woman, but the woman for the man;" "Wives, submit yourselves

unto your husbands as unto the Lord; for the husband is the head of the

wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of

the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the

wives be subject to their own husbands in everything." These are the

passages that have liberated woman!

According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and had to be

purified, for the crime of having borne sons and daughters. If in this

world there is a figure of perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her

thrilled and happy arms her child. The doctrine that woman is the slave,

or serf, of man--whether it comes from heaven or from hell, from God or

a demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem or from the very

Sodom of perdition--is savagery, pure and simple.

In no country in the world had women less liberty than in the Holy Land,

and no monarch held in less esteem the rights of wives and mothers than

Jehovah of the Jews. The position of woman was far better in Egypt than

in Palestine. Before the pyramids were built, the sacred songs of Isis

were sung by women, and women with pure hands had offered sacrifices to

the gods. Before Moses was born, women had sat upon the Egyptian throne.

Upon ancient tombs the husband and wife are represented as seated in

the same chair. In Persia women were priests, and in some of the oldest

civilizations "they were reverenced on earth, and worshiped afterward

as goddesses in heaven." At the advent of Christianity, in all pagan

countries women officiated at the sacred altars. They guarded the

eternal fire. They kept the sacred books. From their lips came the

oracles of fate. Under the domination of the Christian Church, woman

became the merest slave for at least a thousand years. It was claimed

that through woman the race had fallen, and that her loving kiss had

poisoned all the springs of life. Christian priests asserted that but

for her crime the world would have been an Eden still. The ancient

fathers exhausted their eloquence in the denunciation of woman, and

repeated again and again the slander of St. Paul. The condition of woman

has improved just in proportion that man has lost confidence in the

inspiration of the Bible.

For the purpose of defending the character of his infallible God, Mr.

Black is forced to defend religious intolerance, wars of extermination,

human slavery, and _almost_ polygamy. He admits that God established

slavery; that he commanded his chosen people to buy the children of the

heathen; that heathen fathers and mothers did right to sell their girls

and boys; that God ordered the Jews to wage wars of extermination and

conquest; that it was right to kill the old and young; that God forged

manacles for the human brain; that he commanded husbands to murder their

wives for suggesting the worship of the sun or moon; and that every

cruel, savage passage in the Old Testament was inspired by him. Such is

a "policeman's" view of God.

Will Mr. Black have the kindness to state a few of his objections to the

devil?

Mr. Black should have answered my arguments, instead of calling me

"blasphemous" and "scurrilous." In the discussion of these questions

I have nothing to do with the reputation of my opponent. His character

throws no light on the subject, and is to me a matter of perfect

indifference. Neither will it do for one who enters the lists as the

champion of revealed religion to say that "we have no right to rejudge

the justice of God."

Such a statement is a white flag. The warrior eludes the combat when he

cries out that it is a "metaphysical question." He deserts the field and

throws down his arms when he admits that "no revelation has lifted the

veil between time and eternity." Again I ask, why were the Jewish people

as wicked, cruel, and ignorant with a revelation from God, as other

nations were without? Why were the worshipers of false deities as brave,

as kind, and generous as those who knew the only true and living God?

How do you explain the fact that while Jehovah was waging wars of

extermination, establishing slavery, and persecuting for opinion's sake,

heathen philosophers were teaching that all men are brothers, equally

entitled to liberty and life? You insist that Jehovah believed in

slavery and yet punished the Egyptians for enslaving the Jews. Was your

God once an abolitionist? Did he at that time "denounce Christ for not

agreeing with him"? If slavery was a crime in Egypt, was it a virtue

in Palestine? Did God treat the Canaanites better than Pharaoh did

the Jews? Was it right for Jehovah to kill the children of the people

because of Pharaoh's sin? Should the peasant be punished for the king's

crime? Do you not know that the worst thing that can be said of Nero,

Caligula, and Commodus is that they resembled the Jehovah of the Jews?

Will you tell me why God failed to give his Bible to the whole world?

Why did he not give the Scriptures to the Hindu, the Greek, and Roman?

Why did he fail to enlighten the worshipers of "Mammon" and Moloch, of

Belial and Baal, of Bacchus and Venus? After all, was not Bacchus as

good as Jehovah? Is it not better to drink wine than to shed blood?

Was there anything in the worship of Venus worse than giving captured

maidens to satisfy the victor's lust? Did "Mammon" or Moloch do anything

more infamous than to establish slavery? Did they order their soldiers

to kill men, women, and children, and to save alive nothing that had

breath? Do not answer these questions by saying that "no veil has been

lifted between time and eternity," and that "we have no right to rejudge

the justice of God."

If Jehovah was in fact God, he knew the end from the beginning. He knew

that his Bible would be a breastwork behind which tyranny and hypocrisy

would crouch; that it would be quoted by tyrants; that it would be the

defence of robbers, called kings, and of hypocrites called priests. He

knew that he had taught the Jewish people but little of importance. He

knew that he found them free and left them captives. He knew that he

had never fulfilled the promises made to them. He knew that while other

nations had advanced in art and science, his chosen people were savage

still. He promised them the world, and gave them a desert. He promised

them liberty, and he made them slaves. He promised them victory, and he

gave them defeat. He said they should be kings, and he made them

serfs. He promised them universal empire, and gave them exile. When one

finishes the Old Testament, he is compelled to say: Nothing can add to

to the misery of a nation whose king is Jehovah!

And here I take occasion to thank Mr. Black for having admitted that

Jehovah gave no commandment against the practice of polygamy, that he

established slavery, waged wars of extermination, and persecuted for

opinion's sake even unto death. Most theologians endeavor to putty,

patch, and paint the wretched record of inspired crime, but Mr. Black

has been bold enough and honest enough to admit the truth. In this age

of fact and demonstration it is refreshing to find a man who believes

so thoroughly in the monstrous and miraculous, the impossible and

immoral--who still clings lovingly to the legends of the bib and

rattle--who through the bitter experiences of a wicked world has kept

the credulity of the cradle, and finds comfort and joy in thinking about

the Garden of Eden, the subtle serpent, the flood, and Babel's tower,

stopped by the jargon of a thousand tongues--who reads with happy eyes

the story of the burning brimstone storm that fell upon the cities

of the plain, and smilingly explains the transformation of the

retrospective Mrs. Lot--who laughs at Egypt's plagues and Pharaoh's

whelmed and drowning hosts--eats manna with the wandering Jews, warms

himself at the burning bush, sees Korah's company by the hungry earth

devoured, claps his wrinkled hands with glee above the heathens'

butchered babes, and longingly looks back to the patriarchal days of

concubines and slaves. How touching when the learned and wise crawl back

in cribs and ask to hear the rhymes and fables once again! How charming

in these hard and scientific times to see old age in Superstition's lap,

with eager lips upon her withered breast!

Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is in exact

harmony with the New Testament, and that the two are "connected

together;" and "that if one is true the other cannot be false."

If this is so, then he must admit that if one is false the other

cannot be true; and it hardly seems possible to me that there is a

right-minded, sane man, except Mr. Black, who now believes that a God of

infinite kindness and justice ever commanded one nation to exterminate

another; ever ordered his soldiers to destroy men, women, and babes;

ever established the institution of human slavery; ever regarded the

auction-block as an altar, or a bloodhound as an apostle.

Mr. Black contends (after having answered my indictment against the Old

Testament by admitting the allegations to be true) that the rapidity

with which Christianity spread "proves the supernatural origin of the

Gospel, or that it was propagated by the direct aid of the Divine Being

himself."

Let us see. In his efforts to show that the "infallible God established

slavery in Judea," he takes occasion to say that "the doctrine that

slavery is a crime under all circumstances was first started by the

adherents of a political faction in this, country less than forty years

ago;" that "they denounced God and Christ for not agreeing with them;"

but that "they did not constitute the civilized world; nor were they,

if the truth must be told, a very respectable portion of it." Let it be

remembered that this was only forty years ago; and yet, according to Mr.

Black, a few disreputable men changed the ideas of nearly fifty millions

of people, changed the Constitution of the United States, liberated

a race from slavery, clothed three millions of people with political

rights, took possession of the Government, managed its affairs for more

than twenty years, and have compelled the admiration of the civilized

world. Is it Mr. Black's idea that this happened by chance? If not, then

according to him, there are but two ways to account for it; either the

rapidity with which Republicanism spread proves its supernatural origin,

"or else its propagation was provided for and carried on by the direct

aid of the Divine Being himself." Between these two, Mr. Black may make

his choice. He will at once see that the rapid rise and spread of any

doctrine does not even tend to show that it was divinely revealed.

This argument is applicable to all religions. Mohammedans can use it as

well as Christians. Mohammed was a poor man, a driver of camels. He was

without education, without influence, and without wealth, and yet in a

few years he consolidated thousands of tribes, and made millions of

men confess that there is "one God, and Mohammed is his prophet."

His success was a thousand times greater during his life than that

of Christ. He was not crucified; he was a conqueror. "Of all men, he

exercised the greatest influence upon the human race." Never in the

world's history did a religion spread with the rapidity of his. It burst

like a storm over the fairest portions of the globe. If Mr. Black is

right in his position that rapidity is secured only by the direct aid of

the Divine Being, then Mohammed was most certainly the prophet of God.

As to wars of extermination and slavery, Mohammed agreed with Mr. Black,

and upon polygamy, with Jehovah. As to religious toleration, he was

great enough to say that "men holding to any form of faith might be

saved, provided they were virtuous." In this, he was far in advance both

of Jehovah and Mr. Black.

It will not do to take the ground that the rapid rise and spread of a

religion demonstrates its divine character. Years before Gautama

died, his religion was established, and his disciples were numbered by

millions. His doctrines were not enforced by the sword, but by an

appeal to the hopes, the fears, and the reason of mankind; and more than

one-third of the human race are to-day the followers of Gautama. His

religion has outlived all that existed in his time; and according to Dr.

Draper, "there is no other country in the world except India that

has the religion to-day it had at the birth of Jesus Christ." Gautama

believed in the equality of all men; abhorred the spirit of caste, and

proclaimed justice, mercy, and education for all.

Imagine a Mohammedan answering an infidel; would he not use the

argument of Mr Black, simply substituting Mohammed for Christ, just as

effectually as it has been used against me? There was a time when India

was the foremost nation of the world. Would not your argument, Mr.

Black, have been just as good in the mouth of a Brahmin then, as it is

in yours now? Egypt, the mysterious mother of mankind, with her pyramids

built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, was once the first in

all the earth, and gave to us our Trinity, and our symbol of the cross.

Could not a priest of Isis and Osiris have used your arguments to prove

that his religion was divine, and could he not have closed by saying:

"From the facts established by this evidence it follows irresistibly

that our religion came to us from God"? Do you not see that your

argument proves too much, and that it is equally applicable to all the

religions of the world?

Again, it is urged that "the acceptance of Christianity by a large

portion of the generation contemporary with its founder and his

apostles was, under the circumstances, an adjudication as solemn and

authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce." If this is true,

then "the acceptance of Buddhism by a large portion of the generation

contemporary with its founder was an adjudication as solemn and

authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce." The same could

be said of Mohammedanism, and, in fact, of every religion that has

ever benefited or cursed this world. This argument, when reduced to its

simplest form, is this: All that succeeds is inspired.

The old argument that if Christianity is a human fabrication its authors

must have been either good men or bad men, takes it for granted that

there are but two classes of persons--the good and the bad. There is at

least one other class--_the mistaken_, and both of the other classes may

belong to this. Thousands of most excellent people have been deceived,

and the history of the world is filled with instances where men have

honestly supposed that they had received communications from angels and

gods.

In thousands of instances these pretended communications contained the

purest and highest thoughts, together with the most important truths;

yet it will not do to say that these accounts are true; neither can they

be proved by saying that the men who claimed to be inspired were good.

What we must say is, that being good men, they were mistaken; and it is

the charitable mantle of a mistake that I throw over Mr. Black, when

I find him defending the institution of slavery. He seems to think it

utterly incredible that any "combination of knaves, however base, would

fraudulently concoct a religious system to denounce themselves, and to

invoke the curse of God upon their own conduct." How did religions

other than Christianity and Judaism arise? Were they all "concocted by

a combination of knaves"? The religion of Gautama is filled with most

beautiful and tender thoughts, with most excellent laws, and hundreds of

sentences urging mankind to deeds of love and self-denial. Was Gautama

inspired?

Does not Mr. Black know that thousands of people charged with witchcraft

actually confessed in open court their guilt? Does he not know that

they admitted that they had spoken face to face with Satan, and had sold

their souls for gold and power? Does he not know that these admissions

were made in the presence and expectation of death? Does he not know

that hundreds of judges, some of them as great as the late lamented

Gibson, believed in the existence of an impossible crime?

We are told that "there is no good reason to doubt that the statements

of the Evangelists, as we have them now, are genuine." The fact is, no

one knows who made the "statements of the Evangelists."

There are three important manuscripts upon which the Christian world

relies. "The first appeared in the catalogue of the Vatican, in 1475.

This contains the Old Testament. Of the New, it contains the four

gospels,--the Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, nine of the Pauline

Epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as far as the fourteenth verse

of the ninth chapter,"--and nothing more. This is known as the Codex

Vatican. "The second, the Alexandrine, was presented to King Charles

the First, in 1628. It contains the Old and New Testaments, with

some exceptions; passages are wanting in Matthew, in John, and in II.

Corinthians. It also contains the Epistle of Clemens Romanus, a letter

of Athanasius, and the treatise of Eusebius on the Psalms." The last

is the Sinaitic Codex, discovered about 1850, at the Convent of St.

Catherine's, on Mount Sinai. "It contains the Old and New Testaments,

and in addition the entire Epistle of Barnabas, and a portion of the

Shepherd of Hermas--two books which, up to the beginning of the fourth

century, were looked upon by many as Scripture." In this manuscript,

or codex, the gospel of St. Mark concludes with the eighth verse of the

sixteenth chapter, leaving out the frightful passage: "Go ye into all

the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth

and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be

damned."

In matters of the utmost importance these manuscripts disagree, but even

if they all agreed it would not furnish the slightest evidence of

their truth. It will not do to call the statements made in the gospels

"depositions," until it is absolutely established who made them, and the

circumstances under which they were made. Neither can we say that "they

were made in the immediate prospect of death," until we know who made

them. It is absurd to say that "the witnesses could not have been

mistaken, because the nature of the facts precluded the possibility of

any delusion about them." Can it be pretended that the witnesses could

not have been mistaken about the relation the Holy Ghost is alleged

to have sustained to Jesus Christ? Is there no possibility of delusion

about a circumstance of that kind? Did the writers of the four gospels

have "'the sensible and true avouch of their own eyes' and ears" in

that behalf? How was it possible for any one of the four Evangelists

to know that Christ was the Son of God, or that he was God? His mother

wrote nothing on the subject. Matthew says that an angel of the Lord

told Joseph in a dream, but Joseph never wrote an account of this

wonderful vision. Luke tells us that the angel had a conversation with

Mary, and that Mary told Elizabeth, but Elizabeth never wrote a word.

There is no account of Mary or Joseph or Elizabeth or the angel, having

had any conversation with Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in which one word

was said about the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. The persons who

knew did not write, so that the account is nothing but hearsay. Does Mr.

Black pretend that such statements would be admitted as evidence in any

court? But how do we know that the disciples of Christ wrote a word of

the gospels? How did it happen that Christ wrote nothing? How do we know

that the writers of the gospels "were men of unimpeachable character"?

All this is answered by saying "that nothing was said by the most

virulent enemies against the personal honesty of the Evangelists." How

is this known? If Christ performed the miracles recorded in the New

Testament, why would the Jews put to death a man able to raise their

dead? Why should they attempt to kill the Master of Death? How did

it happen that a man who had done so many miracles was so obscure, so

unknown, that one of his disciples had to be bribed to point him out? Is

it not strange that the ones he had cured were not his disciples? Can

we believe, upon the testimony of those about whose character we know

nothing, that Lazarus was raised from the dead? What became of Lazarus?

We never hear of him again. It seems to me that he would have been an

object of great interest. People would have said: "He is the man who was

once dead." Thousands would have inquired of him about the other world;

would have asked him where he was when he received the information that

he was wanted on the earth. His experience would have been vastly

more interesting than everything else in the New Testament. A returned

traveler from the shores of Eternity--one who had walked twice through

the valley of the shadow--would have been the most interesting of human

beings. When he came to die again, people would have said: "He is not

afraid; he has had experience; he knows what death is." But, strangely

enough, this Lazarus fades into obscurity with "the wise men of the

East," and with the dead who came out of their graves on the night of

the crucifixion. How is it known that it was claimed, during the life of

Christ, that he had wrought a miracle? And if the claim was made, how

is it known that it was not denied? Did the Jews believe that Christ was

clothed with miraculous power? Would they have dared to crucify a man

who had the power to clothe the dead with life? Is it not wonderful that

no one at the trial of Christ said one word about the miracles he had

wrought? Nothing about the sick he had healed, nor the dead he had

raised?

Is it not wonderful that Josephus, the best historian the Hebrews

produced, says nothing about the life or death of Christ; nothing about

the massacre of the infants by Herod; not one word about the wonderful

star that visited the sky at the birth of Christ; nothing about the

darkness that fell upon the world for several hours in the midst of day;

and failed entirely to mention that hundreds of graves were opened, and

that multitudes of Jews arose from the dead, and visited the Holy

City? Is it not wonderful that no historian ever mentioned any of these

prodigies? and is it not more amazing than all the rest, that Christ

himself concealed from Matthew, Mark, and Luke the dogma of the

atonement, the necessity of belief, and the mystery of the second birth?

Of course I know that two letters were said to have been written by

Pilate to Tiberius, concerning the execution of Christ, but they have

been shown to be forgeries. I also know that "various letters were

circulated attributed to Jesus Christ," and that one letter is said to

have been written by him to Abgarus, king of Edessa; but as there was

no king of Edessa at that time, this letter is admitted to have been a

forgery. I also admit that a correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul

was forged.

Here in our own country, only a few years ago, men claimed to have found

golden plates upon which was written a revelation from God. They founded

a new religion, and, according to their statement, did many miracles.

They were treated as outcasts, and their leader was murdered. These men

made their "depositions" "in the immediate prospect of death." They were

mobbed, persecuted, derided, and yet they insisted that their prophet

had miraculous power, and that he, too, could swing back the hingeless

door of death. The followers of these men have increased, in these

few years, so that now the murdered prophet has at least two hundred

thousand disciples. It will be hard to find a contradiction of these

pretended miracles, although this is an age filled with papers,

magazines, and books. As a matter of fact, the claims of Joseph Smith

were so preposterous that sensible people did not take the pains to

write and print denials. When we remember that eighteen hundred years

ago there were but few people who could write, and that a manuscript did

not become public in any modern sense, it was possible for the gospels

to have been written with all the foolish claims in reference to

miracles without exciting comment or denial. There is not, in all the

contemporaneous literature of the world, a single word about Christ

or his apostles. The paragraph in Josephus is admitted to be an

interpolation, and the letters, the account of the trial, and several

other documents forged by the zeal of the early fathers, are now

admitted to be false.

Neither will it do to say that "the statements made by the Evangelists

are alike upon every important point." If there is anything of

importance in the New Testament, from the theological standpoint, it is

the ascension of Jesus Christ. If that happened, it was a miracle great

enough to surfeit wonder. Are the statements of the inspired witnesses

alike on this important point? Let us see.

Matthew says nothing upon the subject. Either Matthew was not there, had

never heard of the ascension,--or, having heard of it, did not believe

it, or, having seen it, thought it too unimportant to record. To this

wonder of wonders Mark devotes one verse: "So then, after the Lord

had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the

right-hand of God." Can we believe that this verse was written by one

who witnessed the ascension of Jesus Christ; by one who watched his

Master slowly rising through the air till distance reft him from his

tearful sight? Luke, another of the witnesses, says: "And it came to

pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried

up into heaven." John corroborates Matthew by saying nothing on the

subject. Now, we find that the last chapter of Mark, after the eighth

verse, is an interpolation; so that Mark really says nothing about the

occurrence. Either the ascension of Christ must be given up, or it must

be admitted that the witnesses do not agree, and that three of them

never heard of that most stupendous event.

Again, if anything could have left its "form and pressure" on the

brain, it must have been the last words of Jesus Christ. The last words,

according to Matthew, are: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have

commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the

world." The last words, according to the inspired witness known as Mark,

are: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: in my name shall

they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take

up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;

they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Luke tells us

that the last words uttered by Christ, with the exception of a blessing,

were: "And behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you; but

tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from

on high." The last words, according to John, were: "Peter, seeing Him,

saith to Jesus: Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him,

If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou

me."

An account of the ascension is also given in the Acts of the Apostles;

and the last words of Christ, according to that inspired witness, are:

"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you;

and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea,

and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." In this

account of the ascension we find that two men stood by the disciples in

white apparel, and asked them: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing

up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven,

shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

Matthew says nothing of the two men. Mark never saw them. Luke may have

forgotten them when writing his gospel, and John may have regarded them

as optical illusions.

Luke testifies that Christ ascended on the very day of his resurrection.

John deposes that eight days after the resurrection Christ appeared to

the disciples and convinced Thomas. In the Acts we are told that

Christ remained on earth for forty days after his resurrection. These

"depositions" do not agree. Neither do Matthew and Luke agree in their

histories of the infancy of Christ. It is impossible for both to be

true. One of these "witnesses" must have been mistaken.

The most wonderful miracle recorded in the New Testament, as having been

wrought by Christ, is the resurrection of Lazarus. While all the writers

of the gospels, in many instances, record the same wonders and the

same conversations, is it not remarkable that the greatest miracle is

mentioned alone by John?

Two of the witnesses, Matthew and Luke, give the genealogy of Christ.

Matthew says that there were forty-two generations from Abraham to

Christ. Luke insists that there were forty-two from Christ to David,

while Matthew gives the number as twenty-eight. It may be said that

this is an old objection. An objection-remains young until it has been

answered. Is it not wonderful that Luke and Matthew do not agree on a

single name of Christ's ancestors for thirty-seven generations?

There is a difference of opinion among the "witnesses" as to what the

gospel of Christ is. If we take the "depositions" of Matthew, Mark, and

Luke, then the gospel of Christ amounts simply to this: That God will

forgive the forgiving, and that he will be merciful to the merciful.

According to three witnesses, Christ knew nothing of the doctrine of the

atonement; never heard of the second birth; and did not base salvation,

in whole nor in part, on belief. In the "deposition" of John, we find

that we must be born again; that we must believe on the Lord Jesus

Christ; and that an atonement was made for us. If Christ ever said these

things to, or in the hearing of, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they forgot to

mention them.

To my mind, the failure of the evangelists to agree as tu what is

necessary for man to do in order to insure the salvation of his soul, is

a demonstration that they were not inspired.

Neither do the witnesses agree as to the last words of Christ when he

was crucified. Matthew says that he cried: "My God, my God, why hast

thou forsaken me?" Mark agrees with Matthew. Luke testifies that his

last words were: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." John

states that he cried: "It is finished."

Luke says that Christ said of his murderers: "Father, forgive them; for

they know not what they do." Matthew, Mark, and John do not record these

touching words. John says that Christ, on the day of his resurrection,

said to his disciples: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted

unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained."

The other disciples do not record this monstrous passage. They did not

hear the abdication of God. They were not present when Christ placed

in their hands the keys of heaven and hell, and put a world beneath the

feet of priests.

It is easy to account for the differences and contradictions in these

"depositions" (and there are hundreds of them) by saying that each one

told the story as he remembered it, or as he had heard it, or that the

accounts have been changed, but it will not do to say that the witnesses

were inspired of God. We can account for these contradictions by the

infirmities of human nature; but, as I said before, the infirmities of

human nature cannot be predicated of a divine being.

Again, I ask, why should there be more than one inspired gospel? Of

what use were the other three? There can be only one true account of

anything. All other true accounts must simply be copies of that. And

I ask again, why should there have been more than one inspired

gospel? That which is the test of truth as to ordinary witnesses is a

demonstration against their inspiration. It will not do at this late day

to say that the miracles worked by Christ demonstrated his divine origin

or mission. The wonderful works he did, did not convince the people

with whom he lived. In spite of the miracles, he was crucified. He was

charged with blasphemy. "Policemen" denounced the "scurrility" of his

words, and the absurdity of his doctrines. He was no doubt told that

it was "almost a crime to utter blasphemy in the presence of a Jewish

woman;" and it may be that he was taunted for throwing away "the golden

metewand" of the "infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea," and

taking the "elastic cord of human feeling."

Christians tell us that the citizens of Mecca refused to believe on

Mohammed because he was an impostor, and that the citizens of Jerusalem

refused to believe on Jesus Christ because he was _not_ an impostor.

If Christ had wrought the miracles attributed to him--if he had cured

the maimed, the leprous, and the halt--if he had changed the night of

blindness into blessed day--if he had wrested from the fleshless hand

of avaricious death the stolen jewel of a life, and clothed again with

throbbing flesh the pulseless dust, he would have won the love and

adoration of mankind. If ever there shall stand upon this earth the king

of death, all human knees will touch the ground.

We are further informed that "what we call the fundamental truths of

Christianity consist of great public events which are sufficiently

established by history without special proof."

Of course, we admit that the Roman Empire existed; that Julius Caesar

was assassinated; and we may admit that Rome was founded by Romulus and

Remus; but will some one be kind enough to tell us how the assassination

of Caesar even tends to prove that Romulus and Remus were suckled by

a wolf? We will all admit that, in the sixth century after Christ,

Mohammed was born at Mecca; that his victorious hosts vanquished half

the Christian world; that the crescent triumphed over the cross upon a

thousand fields; that all the Christians of the earth were not able to

rescue from the hands of an impostor the empty grave of Christ. We will

all admit that the Mohammedans cultivated the arts and sciences; that

they gave us our numerals; taught us the higher mathematics; gave us our

first ideas of astronomy, and that "science was thrust into the brain of

Europe on the point of a Moorish lance;" and yet we will not admit that

Mohammed was divinely inspired, nor that he had frequent conversations

with the angel Gabriel, nor that after his death his coffin was

suspended in mid-air.

A little while ago, in the city of Chicago, a gentleman addressed a

number of Sunday-school children. In his address, he stated that some

people were wicked enough to deny the story of the deluge; that he was

a traveler; that he had been to the top of Mount Ararat, and had brought

with him a stone from that sacred locality. The children were then

invited to form in procession and walk by the pulpit, for the purpose of

seeing this wonderful stone. After they had looked at it, the lecturer

said: "Now, children, if you ever hear anybody deny the story of the

deluge, or say that the ark did not rest on Mount Ararat, you can tell

them that you know better, because you have seen with your own eyes a

stone from that very mountain."

The fact that Christ lived in Palestine does not tend to show that he

was in any way related to the Holy Ghost; nor does the existence of the

Christian religion substantiate the ascension of Jesus Christ. We all

admit that Socrates lived in Athens, but we do not admit that he had a

familiar spirit. I am satisfied that John Wesley was an Englishman, but

I hardly believe that God postponed a rain because Mr. Wesley wanted

to preach. All the natural things in the world are not sufficient to

establish the supernatural. Mr. Black reasons in this way: There was a

hydra-headed monster. We know this, because Hercules killed him. There

must have been such a woman as Proserpine, otherwise Pluto could not

have carried her away. Christ must have been divine, because the Holy

Ghost was his father. And there must have been such a being as the Holy

Ghost, because without a father Christ could not have existed. Those who

are disposed to deny everything because a part is false, reason exactly

the other way. They insist that because there was no hydra-headed

monster, Hercules did not exist. The true position, in my judgment, is

that the natural is not to be discarded because found in the company

of the miraculous, neither should the miraculous be believed because

associated with the probable. There was in all probability such a man

as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been

crucified, but that he was the Son of God, or that he was raised from

the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the

nature of things, can never be, substantiated.

Apparently tired with his efforts to answer what I really said, Mr.

Black resorted to the expedient of "compressing" my propositions and

putting them in italics. By his system of "compression" he was enabled

to squeeze out what I really said, and substitute a few sentences of his

own. I did not say that "Christianity offers eternal salvation as the

reward of belief alone," but I did say that no salvation is offered

_without_ belief. There must be a difference of opinion in the minds of

Mr. Black's witnesses on this subject. In one place we are told that

a man is "justified by faith without the deeds of the law;" and in

another, "to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth

the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness;" and the

following passages seem to show the necessity of belief:

"_He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not

is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of

the only begotten Son of God." "He that believeth on the Son hath

everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life;

but the wrath of God abideth on him." "Jesus said unto her, I am the

resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead,

yet shall he live." "And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall

never die." "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves;

it is the gift of God." "Not of works, lest any man should boast."

"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in

him, and he in God." "Whosoever believeth not shall be damned._"

I do not understand that the Christians of to-day insist that simple

belief will secure the salvation of the soul. I believe it is stated in

the Bible that "the very devils believe;" and it would seem from this

that belief is not such a meritorious thing, after all. But Christians

do insist that without belief no man can be saved; that faith is

necessary to salvation, and that there is "none other name under heaven

given among men whereby we can be saved," except that of Christ. My

doctrine is that there is only one way to be saved, and that is to act

in harmony with your surroundings--to live in accordance with the facts

of your being. A Being of infinite wisdom has no right to create a

person destined to everlasting pain. For the honest infidel, according

to the American Evangelical pulpit, there is no heaven. For the upright

atheist, there is nothing in another world but punishment. Mr. Black

admits that lunatics and idiots are in no danger of hell. This being

so, his God should have created only lunatics and idiots. Why should the

fatal gift of brain be given to any human being, if such gift renders

him liable to eternal hell? Better be a lunatic here and an angel there.

Better be an idiot in this world, if you can be a seraph in the next.

As to the doctrine of the atonement, Mr. Black has nothing to offer

except the barren statement that it is believed by the wisest and the

best. A Mohammedan, speaking in Constantinople, will say the same of the

Koran. A Brahmin, in a Hindu temple, will make the same remark, and so

will the American Indian, when he endeavors to enforce something upon

the young of his tribe. He will say: "The best, the greatest of our

tribe have believed in this." This is the argument of the cemetery, the

philosophy of epitaphs, the logic of the coffin. Who are the greatest

and wisest and most virtuous of mankind? This statement, that it has

been believed by the best, is made in connection with an admission that

it cannot be fathomed by the wisest. It is not claimed that a thing is

necessarily false because it is not understood, but I do claim that

it is not necessarily true because it cannot be comprehended. I still

insist that "the plan of redemption," as usually preached, is absurd,

unjust, and immoral.

For nearly two thousand years Judas Iscariot has been execrated by

mankind; and yet, if the doctrine of the atonement is true, upon his

treachery hung the plan of salvation. Suppose Judas had known of this

plan--known that he was selected by Christ for that very purpose, that

Christ was depending on him. And suppose that he also knew that only

by betraying Christ could he save either himself or others; what ought

Judas to have done? Are you willing to rely upon an argument that

justifies the treachery of that wretch?

I insisted upon knowing how the sufferings of an innocent man could

satisfy justice for the sins of the guilty. To this, Mr. Black replies

as follows: "This raises a metaphysical question, which it is not

necessary or possible for me to discuss here." Is this considered an

answer? Is it in this way that "my misty creations are made to roll away

and vanish into air one after another?" Is this the best that can be

done by one of the disciples of the infallible God who butchered babes

in Judea? Is it possible for a "policeman" to "silence a rude disturber"

in this way? To answer an argument, is it only necessary to say that

it "raises a metaphysical question"? Again I say: The life of Christ

is worth its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence. And

again I say: The effort to vindicate a law by inflicting punishment on

the innocent is a second violation instead of a vindication.

Mr. Black, under the pretence of "compressing," puts in my mouth the

following: "The doctrine of non-resistance, forgiveness of injuries,

reconciliation with enemies, as taught in the New Testament, is the

child of weakness, degrading and unjust."

This is entirely untrue. What I did say is this: "The idea of

non-resistance never occurred to a man who had the power to protect

himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born when resistance

was impossible." I said not one word against the forgiveness of

injuries, not one word against the reconciliation of enemies--not

one word. I believe in the reconciliation of enemies. I believe in a

reasonable forgiveness of injuries. But I do not believe in the doctrine

of non-resistance. Mr. Black proceeds to say that Christianity forbids

us "to cherish animosity, to thirst for mere revenge, to hoard up wrongs

real or fancied, and lie in wait for the chance of paying them back; to

be impatient, unforgiving, malicious, and cruel to all who have crossed

us." And yet the man who thus describes Christianity tells us that it is

not only our right, but our duty, to fight savages as savages fight us;

insists that where a nation tries to exterminate us, we have a right

to exterminate them. This same man, who tells us that "the diabolical

propensities of the human heart are checked and curbed by the spirit of

the Christian religion," and that this religion "has converted men from

low savages into refined and civilized beings," still insists that the

author of the Christian religion established slavery, waged wars of

extermination, abhorred the liberty of thought, and practiced the divine

virtues of retaliation and revenge. If it is our duty to forgive our

enemies, ought not God to forgive his? Is it possible that God will hate

his enemies when he tells us that we must love ours? The enemies of

God cannot injure him, but ours can injure us. If it is the duty of the

injured to forgive, why should the uninjured insist upon having revenge?

Why should a being who destroys nations with pestilence and famine

expect that his children will be loving and forgiving?

Mr. Black insists that without a belief in God there can be no

perception of right and wrong, and that it is impossible for an atheist

to have a conscience. Mr. Black, the Christian, the believer in God,

upholds wars of extermination. I denounce such wars as murder. He

upholds the institution of slavery. I denounce that institution as the

basest of crimes. Yet I am told that I have no knowledge of right and

wrong; that I measure with "the elastic cord of human feeling," while

the believer in slavery and wars of extermination measures with "the

golden metewand of God."

What is right and what is wrong? Everything is right that tends to the

happiness of mankind, and everything is wrong that increases the sum of

human misery. What can increase the happiness of this world more than to

do away with every form of slavery, and with all war? What can increase

the misery of mankind more than to increase wars and put chains

upon more human limbs? What is conscience? If man were incapable of

suffering, if man could not feel pain, the word "conscience" never would

have passed his lips. The man who puts himself in the place of another,

whose imagination has been cultivated to the point of feeling the

agonies suffered by another, is the man of conscience. But a man who

justifies slavery, who justifies a God when he commands the soldier

to rip open the mother and to pierce with the sword of war the child

unborn, is controlled and dominated, not by conscience, but by a cruel

and remorseless superstition.

Consequences determine the quality of an action. If consequences are

good, so is the action. If actions had no consequences, they would be

neither good nor bad. Man did not get his knowledge of the consequences

of actions from God, but from experience and reason. If man can, by

actual experiment, discover the right and wrong of actions, is it not

utterly illogical to declare that they who do not believe in God can

have no standard of right and wrong? Consequences are the standard by

which actions are judged. They are the children that testify as to the

real character of their parents. God or no God, larceny is the enemy of

industry--industry is the mother of prosperity--prosperity is a good,

and therefore larceny is an evil. God or no God, murder is a crime.

There has always been a law against larceny, because the laborer wishes

to enjoy the fruit of his toil. As long as men object to being killed,

murder will be illegal.

According to Mr. Black, the man who does not believe in a supreme being

acknowledges no standard of right and wrong in this world, and therefore

can have no theory of rewards and punishments in the next. Is it

possible that only those who believe in the God who persecuted for

opinion's sake have any standard of right and wrong? Were the greatest

men of all antiquity without this standard? In the eyes of intelligent

men of Greece and Rome, were all deeds, whether good or evil, morally

alike? Is it necessary to believe in the existence of an infinite

intelligence before you can have any standard of right and wrong? Is it

possible that a being cannot be just or virtuous unless he believes in

some being infinitely superior to himself? If this doctrine be true, how

can God be just or virtuous? Does he believe in some being superior to

himself?

It may be said that the Pagans believed in a god, and consequently had

a standard of right and wrong. But the Pagans did not believe in the

"true" God. They knew nothing of Jehovah. Of course it will not do to

believe in the wrong God. In order to know the difference between right

and wrong, you must believe in the right God--in the one who established

slavery. Can this be avoided by saying that a false god is better than

none?

The idea of justice is not the child of superstition--it was not born of

ignorance; neither was it nurtured by the passages in the Old Testament

upholding slavery, wars of extermination, and religious persecution.

Every human being necessarily has a standard of right and wrong; and

where that standard has not been polluted by superstition, man abhors

slavery, regards a war of extermination as murder, and looks upon

religious persecution as a hideous crime. If there is a God, infinite

in power and wisdom, above him, poised in eternal calm, is the figure of

Justice. At the shrine of Justice the infinite God must bow, and in her

impartial scales the actions even of Infinity must be weighed. There

is no world, no star, no heaven, no hell, in which gratitude is not a

virtue and where slavery is not a crime.

According to the logic of this "reply," all good and evil become mixed

and mingled--equally good and equally bad, unless we believe in the

existence of the infallible God who ordered husbands to kill their

wives. We do not know right from wrong now, unless we are convinced

that a being of infinite mercy waged wars of extermination four thousand

years ago. We are incapable even of charity, unless we worship the being

who ordered the husband to kill his wife for differing with him on the

subject of religion.

We know that acts are good or bad only as they effect the actors, and

others. We know that from every good act good consequences flow, and

that from every bad act there are only evil results. Every virtuous deed

is a star in the moral firmament. There is in the moral world, as in

the physical, the absolute and perfect relation of cause and effect. For

this reason, the atonement becomes an impossibility. Others may suffer

by your crime, but their suffering cannot discharge you; it simply

increases your guilt and adds to your burden. For this reason happiness

is not a reward--it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment--it

is a result.

It is insisted that Christianity is not opposed to freedom of thought,

but that "it is based on certain principles to which it requires the

assent of all." Is this a candid statement? Are we only required to

give our assent to certain principles in order to be saved? Are the

inspiration of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, and the

Trinity, principles? Will it be admitted by the orthodox world that good

deeds are sufficient unto salvation--that a man can get into heaven by

living in accordance with certain principles? This is a most excellent

doctrine, but it is not Christianity. And right here, it may be well

enough to state what I mean by Christianity. The morality of the world

is not distinctively Christian. Zoroaster, Gautama, Mohammed, Confucius,

Christ, and, in fact, all founders of religions, have said to their

disciples: You must not steal; You must not murder; You must not bear

false witness; You must discharge your obligations. Christianity is the

ordinary moral code, _plus_ the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ, his

crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, the inspiration of the

Bible, the doctrine of the atonement, and the necessity of belief.

Buddhism is the ordinary moral code, _plus_ the miraculous illumination

of Buddha, the performance of certain ceremonies, a belief in the

transmigration of the soul, and in the final absorption of the human

by the infinite. The religion of Mohammed is the ordinary moral code,

_plus_ the belief that Mohammed was the prophet of God, total abstinence

from the use of intoxicating drinks, a harem for the faithful here and

hereafter, ablutions, prayers, alms, pilgrimages, and fasts.

The morality in Christianity has never opposed the freedom of thought.

It has never put, nor tended to put, a chain on a human mind, nor a

manacle on a human limb; but the doctrines distinctively Christian--the

necessity of believing a certain thing; the idea that eternal punishment

awaited him who failed to believe; the idea that the innocent can suffer

for the guilty--these things have opposed, and for a thousand years

substantially destroyed, the freedom of the human mind. All religions

have, with ceremony, magic, and mystery, deformed, darkened, and

corrupted the soul. Around the sturdy oaks of morality have grown and

clung the parasitic, poisonous vines of the miraculous and monstrous.

I have insisted, and I still insist, that it is impossible for a finite

man to commit a crime deserving infinite punishment; and upon this

subject Mr. Black admits that "no revelation has lifted the veil between

time and eternity;" and, consequently, neither the priest nor the

"policeman" knows anything with certainty regarding another world. He

simply insists that "in shadowy figures we are warned that a very marked

distinction will be made between the good and bad in the next world."

There is "a very marked distinction" in this; but there is this rainbow

on the darkest human cloud: The worst have hope of reform. All I insist

is, if there is another life, the basest soul that finds its way to that

dark or radiant shore will have the everlasting chance of doing right.

Nothing but the most cruel ignorance, the most heartless superstition,

the most ignorant theology, ever imagined that the few days of human

life spent here, surrounded by mists and clouds of darkness, blown over

life's sea by storms and tempests of passion, fixed for all eternity the

condition of the human race. If this doctrine be true, this life is but

a net, in which Jehovah catches souls for hell.

The idea that a certain belief is necessary to salvation unsheathed the

swords and lighted the fagots of persecution. As long as heaven is the

reward of creed instead of deed, just so long will every orthodox church

be a bastile, every member a prisoner, and every priest a turnkey.

In the estimation of good orthodox Christians, I am a criminal, because

I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters,

husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from

a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and

scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of

innocent pleasure--a God made of sticks, called creeds, and of old

clothes, called myths. I have tried to take from the coffin its horror,

from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by

the savages of the past. Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its

light from the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty,

endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler

hardens, debases, and pollutes the soul. While there is one sad and

breaking heart in the universe, no perfectly good being can be perfectly

happy. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and

generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in any

heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and redeemed drown with

merry shouts the cries and sobs of hell--in which happiness forgets

misery--where the tears of the lost increase laughter and deepen the

dimples of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality,

fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea tends to show that our remote

ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves--only

from mouths filled with cruel fangs--only from hearts of fear and

hatred--only from the conscience of hunger and lust--only from the

lowest and most debased, could come this most cruel, heartless, and

absurd of all dogmas.

Our ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too astonished

to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea that

everything happened with reference to them; that they caused storms and

earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind; that on

account of something they had done, or omitted to do, the lightning of

vengeance leaped from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that

at least two vast and powerful beings presided over this world; that

one was good and the other bad; that both of these beings wished to get

control of the souls of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal

foes; that both welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that one offered

rewards in this world, and the other in the next. Man saw cruelty and

mercy in nature, because he imagined that phenomena were produced to

punish or to reward him. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that

he loved to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing

made him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above

all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and regarded

investigation as rebellion. Each community felt it a duty to see that

the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to

live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil--every

misfortune--was accounted for by something the community had permitted

or done. When epidemics appeared, brought by ignorance and welcomed by

filth, the heretic was brought out and sacrificed to appease the anger

of God. By putting intention behind what man called good, God was

produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the Devil was

created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils fade away. If

not a human being existed, the sun would continue to shine, and tempest

now and then would devastate the earth; the rain would fall in pleasant

showers; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, the

earthquake would devour, birds would sing and daisies bloom and roses

blush, and volcanoes fill the heavens with their lurid glare; the

procession of the seasons would not be broken, and the stars would shine

as serenely as though the world were filled with loving hearts and happy

homes. Do not imagine that the doctrine of eternal revenge belongs

to Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a

corner-stone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built. Over

the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was

regarded as one of trial. Here, a God of infinite wisdom experimented

with man. Between the outstretched paws of the Infinite, the

mouse--man--was allowed to play. Here, man had the opportunity of

hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here, he could read, and hear

read, the sacred books. Here, he could have the example of the pious and

the counsels of the holy. Here, he could build churches and cathedrals.

Here, he could burn incense, fast, wear hair-cloth, deny himself all the

pleasures of life, confess to priests, construct instruments of torture,

bow before pictures and images, and persecute all who had the courage

to despise superstition, and the goodness to tell their honest thoughts.

After death, if he died out of the church, nothing could be done to make

him better. When he should come into the presence of God, nothing was

left except to damn him. Priests might convert him here, but God could

do nothing there. All of which shows how much more a priest can do for

a soul than its creator. Only here, on the earth, where the devil is

constantly active, only where his agents attack every soul, is there

the slightest hope of moral improvement. Strange! that a world cursed by

God, filled with temptations, and thick with fiends, should be the only

place where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible!

Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves got a

kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The imprisoned

imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this place for the

strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished for their victors;

the priest for the thinker; religion for reason; superstition for

science. All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all

the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is

capable, grew, blossomed, and bore fruit in this one word--Hell. For

the nourishment of this dogma, cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain, and

fear was light.

Why did Mr. Black fail to answer what I said in relation to the doctrine

of inspiration? Did he consider that a "metaphysical question"? Let us

see what inspiration really is. A man looks at the sea, and the sea says

something to him. It makes an impression on his mind. It awakens memory,

and this impression depends upon his experience--upon his intellectual

capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain;

he has a different experience. The sea may speak to him of joy, to the

other of grief and tears. The sea cannot tell the same thing to any two

human beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience.

One may think of wreck and ruin, and another, while listening to the

"multitudinous laughter of the sea," may say: Every drop has visited

all the shores of earth; every one has been frozen in the vast and icy

North, has fallen in snow, has whirled in storms around the mountain

peaks, been kissed to vapor by the sun, worn the seven-hued robe of

light, fallen in pleasant rain, gurgled from springs, and laughed in

brooks while lovers wooed upon the banks. Everything in nature tells a

different story to all eyes that see and to all ears that hear. So, when

we look upon a flower, a painting, a statue, a star, or a violet, the

more we know, the more we have experienced, the more we have thought,

the more we remember, the more the statue, the star, the painting,

the violet has to tell. Nature says to me all that I am capable of

understanding--gives all that I can receive. As with star, or flower,

or sea, so with a book. A thoughtful man reads Shakespeare. What does he

get? All that he has the mind to understand. Let another read him, who

knows nothing of the drama, nothing of the impersonations of passion,

and what does he get? Almost nothing. Shakespeare has a different

story for each reader. He is a world in which each recognizes his

acquaintances. The impression that nature makes upon the mind, the

stories told by sea and star and flower, must be the natural food

of thought. Leaving out for the moment the impressions gained from

ancestors, the hereditary fears and drifts and trends--the natural food

of thought must be the impressions made upon the brain by coming in

contact through the medium of the senses with what we call the outward

world. The brain is natural; its food is natural; the result, thought,

must be natural. Of the supernatural we have no conception. Thought may

be deformed, and the thought of one may be strange to, and denominated

unnatural by, another; but it cannot be supernatural. It may be weak, it

may be insane, but it is not supernatural. Above the natural, man cannot

rise. There can be deformed ideas, as there are deformed persons.

There may be religions monstrous and misshapen, but they were naturally

produced. The world is to each man according to each man. It takes the

world as it really is and that man to make that man's world.

You may ask, And what of all this? I reply, As with everything in

nature, so with the Bible. It has a different story for each reader. Is,

then, the Bible a different book to every human being who reads it? It

is. Can God, through the Bible, make precisely the same revelation to

two persons? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is not inspired.

God should inspire readers as well as writers.

You may reply: God knew that his book would be understood differently by

each one, and intended that it should be understood as it is understood

by each. If this is so, then my understanding of the Bible is the

real revelation to me. If this is so, I have no right to take the

understanding of another. I must take the revelation made to me through

my understanding, and by that revelation I must stand. Suppose then,

that I read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through am

compelled to say, "The book is not true." If this is the honest result,

then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to

me, or that the revelation that it is not true is the revelation made to

me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work

of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and brain do

not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or

should have made my brain to fit his book. The inspiration of the Bible

depends on the credulity of him who reads. There was a time when

its geology, its astronomy, its natural history, were thought to be

inspired; that time has passed. There was a time when its morality

satisfied the men who ruled the world of thought; that time has passed.

Mr. Black, continuing his process of compressing my propositions,

attributes to me the following statement: "The gospel of Christ does not

satisfy the hunger of the heart." I did not say this. What I did say

is: "The dogmas of the past no longer reach the level of the highest

thought, nor satisfy the hunger of the heart." In so far as Christ

taught any doctrine in opposition to slavery, in favor of intellectual

liberty, upholding kindness, enforcing the practice of justice and

mercy, I most cheerfully admit that his teachings should be followed.

Such teachings do not need the assistance of miracles. They are not in

the region of the supernatural. They find their evidence in the glad

response of every honest heart that superstition has not touched and

stained. The great question under discussion is, whether the immoral,

absurd, and infamous can be established by the miraculous. It cannot be

too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle. That

which actually happens sets in motion innumerable effects, which, in

turn, become causes producing other effects. These are all "witnesses"

whose "depositions" continue. What I insist on is, that a miracle cannot

be established by human testimony. We have known people to be mistaken.

We know that all people will not tell the truth. We have never seen the

dead raised. When people assert that they have, we are forced to weigh

the probabilities, and the probabilities are on the other side. It will

not do to assert that the universe was created, and then say that such

creation was miraculous, and, therefore, all miracles are possible. We

must be sure of our premises. Who knows that the universe was created?

If it was not; if it has existed from eternity; if the present is the

necessary child of all the past, then the miraculous is the impossible.

Throw away all the miracles of the New Testament, and the good teachings

of Christ remain--all that is worth preserving will be there still. Take

from what is now known as Christianity the doctrine of the atonement,

the fearful dogma of eternal punishment, the absurd idea that a certain

belief is necessary to salvation, and with most of the remainder the

good and intelligent will most heartily agree.

Mr. Black attributes to me the following expression: "Christianity is

pernicious in its moral effect, darkens the mind, narrows the soul,

arrests the progress of human society, and hinders civilization." I said

no such thing. Strange, that he is only able to answer what I did

not say. I endeavored to show that the passages in the Old Testament

upholding slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious

intolerance had filled the world with blood and crime. I admitted

that there are many wise and good things in the Old Testament. I also

insisted that the doctrine of the atonement--that is to say, of moral

bankruptcy--the idea that a certain belief is necessary to salvation,

and the frightful dogma of eternal pain, had narrowed the soul, had

darkened the mind, and had arrested the progress of human society. Like

other religions, Christianity is a mixture of good and evil. The church

has made more orphans than it has fed. It has never built asylums enough

to hold the insane of its own making. It has shed more blood than light.

Mr. Black seems to think that miracles are the most natural things

imaginable, and wonders that anybody should be insane enough to deny the

probability of the impossible. He regards all who doubt the miraculous

origin, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, as afflicted

with some "error of the moon," and declares that their "disbelief seems

like a kind of insanity."

To ask for evidence is not generally regarded as a symptom of a brain

diseased. Delusions, illusions, phantoms, hallucinations, apparitions,

chimeras, and visions are the common property of the religious and the

insane. Persons blessed with sound minds and healthy bodies rely on

facts, not fancies--on demonstrations instead of dreams. It seems to me

that the most orthodox Christians must admit that many of the miracles

recorded in the New Testament are extremely childish. They must see that

the miraculous draught of fishes, changing water into wine, fasting for

forty days, inducing devils to leave an insane man by allowing them to

take possession of swine, walking on the water, and using a fish for a

pocket-book, are all unworthy of an infinite being, and are calculated

to provoke laughter--to feed suspicion and engender doubt.

Mr. Black takes the ground that if a man believes in the creation of the

universe--that being the most stupendous miracle of which the mind can

conceive--he has no right to deny anything. He asserts that God created

the universe; that creation was a miracle; that "God would be likely to

reveal his will to the rational creatures who were required to obey it,"

and that he would authenticate his revelation by giving his prophets and

apostles supernatural power.

After making these assertion, he triumphantly exclaims: "It therefore

follows that the improbability of a miracle is no greater than the

original improbability of a revelation, and that is not improbable at

all."

How does he know that God made the universe? How does he know what God

would be likely to do? How does he know that any revelation was made?

And how did he ascertain that any of the apostles and prophets were

entrusted with supernatural power? It will not do to prove your premises

by assertions, and then claim that your conclusions are correct, because

they agree with your premises.

If "God would be likely to reveal his will to the rational creatures

who were required to obey it," why did he reveal it only to the Jews?

According to Mr. Black, God is the only natural thing in the universe.

We should remember that ignorance is the mother of credulity; that

the early Christians believed everything but the truth, and that

they accepted Paganism, admitted the reality of all the Pagan

miracles--taking the ground that they were all forerunners of their own.

Pagan miracles were never denied by the Christian world until late in

the seventeenth century. Voltaire was the third man of note in Europe

who denied the truth of Greek and Roman mythology. "The early Christians

cited Pagan oracles predicting in detail the sufferings of Christ. They

forged prophecies, and attributed them to the heathen sibyls, and they

were accepted as genuine by the entire church."

St. Irenaeus assures us that all Christians possessed the power of

working miracles; that they prophesied, cast out devils, healed the

sick, and even raised the dead. St. Epiphanius asserts that some rivers

and fountains were annually transmuted into wine, in attestation of the

miracle of Cana, adding that he himself had drunk of these fountains.

St. Augustine declares that one was told in a dream where the bones

of St. Stephen were buried, that the bones were thus discovered, and

brought to Hippo, and that they raised five dead persons to life, and

that in two years seventy miracles were performed with these relics.

Justin Martyr states that God once sent some angels to guard the human

race, that these angels fell in love with the daughters of men, and

became the fathers of innumerable devils.

For hundreds of years, miracles were about the only things that

happened. They were wrought by thousands of Christians, and testified

to by millions. The saints and martyrs, the best and greatest, were the

witnesses and workers of wonders. Even heretics, with the assistance

of the devil, could suspend the "laws of nature." Must we believe

these wonderful accounts because they were written by "good men," by

Christians, "who made their statements in the presence and expectation

of death"? The truth is that these "good men" were mistaken. They

expected the miraculous. They breathed the air of the marvelous. They

fed their minds on prodigies, and their imaginations feasted on effects

without causes. They were incapable of investigating. Doubts were

regarded as "rude disturbers of the congregation." Credulity and

sanctity walked hand in hand. Reason was danger. Belief was safety.

As the philosophy of the ancients was rendered almost worthless by the

credulity of the common people, so the proverbs of Christ, his religion

of forgiveness, his creed of kindness, were lost in the mist of miracle

and the darkness of superstition.

If Mr. Black is right, there were no virtue, justice, intellectual

liberty, moral elevation, refinement, benevolence, or true wisdom,

until Christianity was established. He asserts that when Christ came,

"benevolence, in any shape, was altogether unknown."

He insists that "the infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea"

established a government; that he was the head and king of the Jewish

people; that for this reason heresy was treason. Is it possible that God

established a government in which benevolence was unknown? How did it

happen that he established no asylums for the insane? How do you account

for the fact that your God permitted some of his children to become

insane? Why did Jehovah fail to establish hospitals and schools? Is it

reasonable to believe that a good God would assist his chosen people to

exterminate or enslave his other children? Why would your God people

a world, knowing that it would be destitute of benevolence for four

thousand years? Jehovah should have sent missionaries to the heathen.

He ought to have reformed the inhabitants of Canaan. He should have sent

teachers, not soldiers--missionaries, not murderers. A God should not

exterminate his children; he should reform them.

Mr. Black gives us a terrible picture of the condition of the world at

the coming of Christ; but did the God of Judea treat his own children,

the Gentiles, better than the Pagans treated theirs? When Rome enslaved

mankind--when with her victorious armies she sought to conquer or to

exterminate tribes and nations, she but followed the example of Jehovah.

Is it true that benevolence came with Christ, and that his coming

heralded the birth of pity in the human heart? Does not Mr. Black know

that, thousands of years before Christ was born, there were hospitals

and asylums for orphans in China? Does he not know that in Egypt, before

Moses lived, the insane were treated with kindness and wooed back to

natural thought by music's golden voice? Does he not know that in all

times, and in all countries, there have been great and loving souls who

wrought, and toiled, and suffered, and died that others might enjoy? Is

it possible that he knows nothing of the religion of Buddha--a religion

based upon equality, charity and forgiveness? Does he not know that,

centuries before the birth of the great Peasant of Palestine, another,

upon the plains of India, had taught the doctrine of forgiveness; and

that, contrary to the tyranny of Jehovah, had given birth to the sublime

declaration that all men are by nature free and equal? Does he not know

that a religion of absolute trust in God had been taught thousands of

years before Jerusalem was built--a religion based upon absolute special

providence, carrying its confidence to the extremest edge of human

thought, declaring that every evil is a blessing in disguise, and that

every step taken by mortal man, whether in the rags of poverty or the

royal robes of kings, is the step necessary to be taken by that soul in

order to reach perfection and eternal joy? But how is it possible for

a man who believes in slavery to have the slightest conception of

benevolence, justice or charity? If Mr. Black is right, even Christ

believed and taught that man could buy and sell his fellow-man. Will

the Christians of America admit this? Do they believe that Christ from

heaven's throne mocked when colored mothers, reft of babes, knelt by

empty cradles and besought his aid?

For the man Christ--for the reformer who loved his fellow-men--for the

man who believed in an Infinite Father, who would shield the innocent

and protect the just--for the martyr who expected to be rescued from the

cruel cross, and who at last, finding that his hope was dust, cried out

in the gathering gloom of death: "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken

me?"--for that great and suffering man, mistaken though he was, I have

the highest admiration and respect. That man did not, as I believe,

claim a miraculous origin; he did not pretend to heal the sick nor raise

the dead. He claimed simply to be a man, and taught his fellow-men

that love is stronger far than hate. His life was written by reverent

ignorance. Loving credulity belittled his career with feats of jugglery

and magic art, and priests, wishing to persecute and slay, put in his

mouth the words of hatred and revenge. The theological Christ is the

impossible union of the human and divine--man with the attributes of

God, and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man.

After giving a terrible description of the Pagan world, Mr. Black says:

"The church came, and her light penetrated the moral darkness like a new

sun; she covered the globe with institutions of mercy."

Is this true? Do we not know that when the Roman empire fell, darkness

settled on the world? Do we not know that this darkness lasted for a

thousand years, and that during all that time the church of Christ held,

with bloody hands, the sword of power? These years were the starless

midnight of our race. Art died, law was forgotten, toleration ceased

to exist, charity fled from the human breast, and justice was unknown.

Kings were tyrants, priests were pitiless, and the poor multitude were

slaves. In the name of Christ, men made instruments of torture, and the

_auto da fe_ took the place of the gladiatorial show. Liberty was in

chains, honesty in dungeons, while Christian superstition ruled mankind.

Christianity compromised with Paganism. The statues of Jupiter were used

to represent Jehovah. Isis and her babe were changed to Mary and the

infant Christ. The Trinity of Egypt became the Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost. The simplicity of the early Christians was lost in heathen rites

and Pagan pomp. The believers in the blessedness of poverty became rich,

avaricious, and grasping, and those who had said, "Sell all, and give to

the poor," became the ruthless gatherers of tithes and taxes. In a

few years the teachings of Jesus were forgotten. The gospels were

interpolated by the designing and ambitious. The church was infinitely

corrupt. Crime was crowned, and virtue scourged. The minds of men were

saturated with superstition. Miracles, apparitions, angels, and devils

had possession of the world. "The nights were filled with incubi and

succubi; devils', clad in wondrous forms, and imps in hideous shapes,

sought to tempt or fright the soldiers of the cross. The maddened

spirits of the air sent hail and storm. Sorcerers wrought sudden death,

and witches worked with spell and charm against the common weal."

In every town the stake arose. Faith carried fagots to the feet of

philosophy. Priests--not "politicians"--fed and fanned the eager flames.

The dungeon was the foundation of the cathedral.

Priests sold charms and relics to their flocks to keep away the wolves

of hell. Thousands of Christians, failing to find protection in the

church, sold their poor souls to Satan for some magic wand. Suspicion

sat in every house, families were divided, wives denounced husbands,

husbands denounced wives, and children their parents. Every calamity

then, as now, increased the power of the church. Pestilence supported

the' pulpit, and famine was the right hand of faith. Christendom was

insane.

Will Mr. Black be kind enough to state at what time "the church covered

the globe with institutions of mercy"? In his reply, he conveys the

impression that these institutions were organized in the first century,

or at least in the morning of Christianity. How many hospitals for the

sick were established by the church during a thousand years? Do we not

know that for hundreds of years the Mohammedans erected more hospitals

and asylums than the Christians? Christendom was filled with racks

and thumbscrews, with stakes and fagots, with chains and dungeons, for

centuries before a hospital was built. Priests despised doctors. Prayer

was medicine. Physicians interfered with the sale of charms and relics.

The church did not cure--it killed. It practiced surgery with the sword.

The early Christians did not build asylums for the insane. They charged

them with witchcraft, and burnt them. They built asylums, not for the

mentally diseased, but for the mentally developed. These asylums were

graves.

All the languages of the world have not words of horror enough to

paint the agonies of man when the church had power. Tiberius, Caligula,

Claudius, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus were not as cruel, false, and

base as many of the Christians Popes. Opposite the names of these

imperial criminals write John the XII., Leo the VIII., Boniface the

VII., Benedict the IX., Innocent the III., and Alexander the VI.

Was it under these pontiffs that the "church penetrated the moral

darkness like a new sun," and covered the globe with institutions of

mercy? Rome was far better when Pagan than when Catholic. It was better

to allow gladiators and criminals to fight than to burn honest men.

The greatest of the Romans denounced the cruelties of the arena. Seneca

condemned the combats even of wild beasts. He was tender enough to say

that "we should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing

that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood

and suffering." Aurelius compelled the gladiators to fight with blunted

swords. Roman lawyers declared that all men are by nature free and

equal. Woman, under Pagan rule in Rome, became as free as man. Zeno,

long before the birth of Christ, taught that virtue alone establishes a

difference between men. We know that the Civil Law is the foundation

of our codes. We know that fragments of Greek and Roman art--a few

manuscripts saved from Christian destruction, some inventions and

discoveries of the Moors--were the seeds of modern civilization.

Christianity, for a thousand years, taught memory to forget and reason

to believe. Not one step was taken in advance. Over the manuscripts of

philosophers and poets, priests with their ignorant tongues thrust out,

devoutly scrawled the forgeries of faith. For a thousand years the torch

of progress was extinguished in the blood of Christ, and his disciples,

moved by ignorant zeal, by insane, cruel creeds, destroyed with flame

and sword a hundred millions of their fellow-men. They made this world

a hell. But if cathedrals had been universities--if dungeons of the

Inquisition had been laboratories--if Christians had believed in

character instead of creed--if they had taken from the Bible all the

good and thrown away the wicked and absurd--if domes of temples had been

observatories--if priests had been philosophers--if missionaries had

taught the useful arts--if astrology had been astronomy--if the black

art had been chemistry--if superstition had been science--if religion

had been humanity--it' would have been a heaven filled with love, with

liberty, and joy.

We did not get our freedom from the church. The great truth, that all

men are by nature free, was never told on Sinai's barren crags, nor by

the lonely shores of Galilee.

The Old Testament filled this world with tyranny and crime, and the New

gives us a future filled with pain for nearly all the sons of men. The

Old describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell of the future.

The Old tells us the frightful things that God has done--the New the

cruel things that he will do. These two books give us the sufferings of

the past and future--the injustice, the agony, the tears of both

worlds. If the Bible is true--if Jehovah is God--if the lot of countless

millions is to be eternal pain--better a thousand times that all the

constellations of the shoreless vast were eyeless darkness and eternal

space. Better that all that is should cease to be. Better that all the

seeds and springs of things should fail and wither from great Nature's

realm. Better that causes and effects should lose relation and become

unmeaning phrases and forgotten sounds. Better that every life should

change to breathless death, to voiceless blank, and every world to blind

oblivion and to moveless naught.

Mr. Black justifies all the crimes and horrors, excuses all the tortures

of all the Christian years, by denouncing the cruelties of the French

Revolution. Thinking people will not hasten to admit that an infinitely

good being authorized slavery in Judea, because of the atrocities of the

French Revolution. They will remember the sufferings of the Huguenots.

They will remember the massacre of St. Bartholomew. They will not forget

the countless cruelties of priest and king. They will not forget the

dungeons of the Bastile. They will know that the Revolution was an

effect, and that liberty was not the cause--that atheism was not the

cause. Behind the Revolution they will see altar and throne--sword and

fagot--palace and cathedral--king and priest--master and slave--tyrant

and hypocrite. They will see that the excesses, the cruelties, and

crimes were but the natural fruit of seeds the church had sown. But the

Revolution was not entirely evil. Upon that cloud of war, black with

the myriad miseries of a thousand years, dabbled with blood of king and

queen, of patriot and priest, there was this bow: "Beneath the flag of

France all men are free." In spite of all the blood and crime, in spite

of deeds that seem insanely base, the People placed upon a Nation's brow

these stars:--Liberty, Fraternity, Equality--grander words than ever

issued from Jehovah's lips.

Robert G. Ingersoll.