_“The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for
hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money.”—Micah 3: 11._
_“Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat
a piece of bread.”—1 Sam. 2: 36._
THE cognomens priest, prophet, presbyter, preacher, parson, and pastor
have certain things in common, and these titles may therefore be used
interchangeably.
As far back as history extends, the office or order now represented by
the clerical profession existed. It was as common among pagan tribes in
the remotest periods as among Jews and Christians in more modern times.
Service done to the gods by the few in behalf of the many is the primary
idea of the priestly function. It has always and everywhere been the
profession and prerogative of the priests to pretend to approach nearest
to the gods and to propitiate them; on account of which they have always
been supposed to have special influence with the reigning deity and to
be the authorized expounders and interpreters of the divine oracles. The
priesthood has always been a _caste, a “holy order;”_ and it was no less
so among ancient Jews than among modern Christians. In all churches
clergymen _ex-officio_ exercise certain sacred prerogatives. They occupy
select seats in every sanctuary. They lead in every act of worship. They
preside over every sacred ceremony. They exclusively administer the
ordinances of religion. They baptize the children and give or withhold
the “Holy Communion.” They celebrate our marriages, visit our sick, and
conduct our funerals. In Romish churches and in some of our Protestant
churches they pretend to pronounce “absolution” and to seal the
postulant for the heavenly rest. It is not necessary, now and here, to
speak of the evil influence that these pretensions exert upon the common
people, nor of the light in which intelligent, thinking women and men
commonly regard them; but it is appropriate to note the reflex influence
which such assumptions have upon the clergy themselves, disqualifying
them for such rational presentation of doctrinal truth as their hearers
have a right to expect.
The pride of his order makes it humiliating for the priest to admit that
what he does not know is worth knowing. Claiming to be the authorized
expounder of God’s will, how can he admit that he can possibly be in
error in any matter relating to religion? In view of the high
pretensions of his order, founded, as he claims, upon a
plenarily-inspired and infallible book-revelation, and he professing to
be specially called and sanctified by God himself as his representative,
it would be ecclesiastical treason to admit, even by implication, that
he is not in possession of all truth. Regarding his creed as a finality,
his mind becomes narrow, circumscribed, and unprogressive. He was taught
from childhood that “to doubt is to be damned,” and through all his
novitiate he was warned against being unsettled by the delusions of
reason and the wiles of infidelity. His professional education has been
narrow, one-sided, sectarian. He has seldom, if ever, read anything
outside of his own denominational literature, and has heard little from
anybody but his own theological professors and associates. He suspects
that Humboldt, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall are all infidels, and that
the sum and substance of Evolution, as taught by Darwin, is that man is
the lineal descendant of the monkey.
Some persons think that ministers are often selected from among
weaklings in the family fold. However, this may be, the absorption of
the “holy-orders” idea, and the natural self-assurance and
self-satisfaction that belong to a caste profession, render delusive the
hope that anything original can ever come from such a source. Whether
weak at first or not, the habits of thought and the peculiar training of
young ecclesiastics are almost sure to dwarf them intellectually for
life. The theological student has become the _butt_ in wide-awake
society everywhere, and his appearance in public is the occasion for
jests and ridicule over his sanctimonious vanity and silly pride. The
extreme clerical costume which he is sure to assume excites the disgust
of sensible people, though he may march through the street and up the
aisle with the regulation step of the “order,” and suppose himself to be
the object of reverent admiration on the part of all beholders. No
wonder that the churches complain that few young men of ability enter
the ministry in these modern times.
The priestly office has always been deemed one of great influence, so
that ancient kings were accustomed to assume it. This was true of the
kings of ancient Egypt, and the practice was kept up among the Greeks
and Romans. Even Constantine, the first Christian emperor (so called),
continued to exercise the function of a pagan priest after his professed
conversion to Christianity, and he was not initiated into the Christian
Church by baptism until just before his death. One excommunicated king
lay for three days and nights in the snow in the courtyard before the
Pope would grant him an audience! The “Pontifex-Maximus” idea of the
Roman emperors was the real foundation of the “temporal power” claimed
by the bishops of Rome. Kingcraft and priestcraft have always been in
close alliance. When the king was not a priest he always used the
priest; and the priest has generally been willing to be used on the side
of the king as against the people when liberally subsidized by the
reigning potentate. Moreover, priestcraft has always been ambitious for
power, and sometimes has been so influential as to make the monarch
subservient to the monk. More than one proud crown has been humbly
removed in token of submission to priestly authority, and powerful
sovereigns have been obliged to submit to the most menial exactions and
humiliations at ecclesiastical mandates. The priestly rôle has always
been to utilize the religious sentiment for the subjection of the
credulous to the arbitrary influence of the caste or order.
Priestcraft never could afford to have a conscience, so admitted, and
therefore it has not shrunk from the commission of any crime that could
augment its dominion. Its greatest success has been in the work of
demoralization. It has always been the corrupter of religion. The
ignorance and superstition of the people and the perversions of the
religious sentiment, innate in man, have been the stock in trade of the
craft in all ages, and are to-day.
It will be shown later how the whole system of dogmatic theology, Romish
and Protestant (for the system is the same), has been formed so as to
aggrandize the priest, perpetuate his power, and hold the masses in
strict subjection. This is a simple matter of fact. History is
philosophy teaching by example, and often repeats itself, and it seldom
gives an example of a priestly caste or “holy” order of men leading in a
great practical reform. The dominant priestly idea is to protect the
interests of the _order_, not to promote the welfare of the people.
In view of these principles and facts, and others which might be
presented, it is reasonable to conclude that we cannot expect the whole
living, unadulterated truth, even if they had it, from the professional
clergy. The caste idea renders it essentially unnatural and
philosophically impossible.
But there are other potent reasons why such expectation is vain. All
Christendom is covered with numerous sects in the form of ecclesiastical
judicatories, each claiming to be the true exponent of all religious
truth. The Romish Church is pre-eminently priestly and autocratic. The
priesthood is the Church, and the people only belong to the Church; that
is, belong to the priesthood, and that, too, in a stronger sense than at
first seems to attach to the word _belong_. Then the priesthood itself
is subdivided into castes.:
“Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas; and so—ad infinitum”
When Patrick J. Ryan was installed Archbishop in Philadelphia, an office
conferred by a foreign potentate, our own city newspapers in flaming
headlines called it “The Enthronement of a Priest!” And so it was. He
sat upon a throne and received the honors of a prince. He is called “His
Grace,” and wears the royal purple in the public streets. Bishops are
higher than the “inferior clergy,” and the priest, presbyter, or elder
is of a higher caste than the deacon, and all are higher and more holy
than the people. All ministers exercise functions which would be deemed
sacrilege in a layman. The same odious spirit of caste prevails in fact,
if not so prominently in form, in all orthodox denominations, especially
as to the distinction between the clergy and the laity. Even Quakers
have higher seats for “recommended ministers.”
Moreover, priests have laid down creeds containing certain affirmations
and denials which are called “Articles of Religion,” to which all
students of divinity and candidates for holy orders must subscribe
before they can be initiated into the sacred arcana.
The professor in the theological seminary, who perhaps was selected for
the chair quite as much for his conservatism as for his learning, has
taken a pledge, if not an oath, that he will teach the young aspirant
for ecclesiastical honors nothing at variance with the standards of his
denomination; which covenant he is very sure to keep (having other
professors and aspirants for professorships to watch him) in full view
of the penalty of dismission from his chair and consequent
ecclesiastical degradation. The very last place on this earth where one
might expect original research, thorough investigation, and fearless
proclamation of the whole truth is in a theological school. A horse in a
bark-mill becomes blind in consequence of going round and round in the
same circular path; and the theological professor in his treadmill
cannot fail to become purblind as regards all new truth.
What can be expected from the _graduates_ of such seminaries?
The theological novitiate sits with trembling reverence at the feet of
the venerable theological Gamaliel. From his sanctified lips he is to
learn all wisdom. Without his approbation he cannot receive the coveted
diploma. Without his recommendation he will not be likely to receive an
early call to a desirable parish.
The student is _obliged_ to find in the Bible just what his Church
requires, and nothing more and nothing less. In order to be admitted
into the clerical caste and have holy hands laid upon his youthful head
he must believe or profess to believe, _ipsissima verba_, just what the
“Confession” and “Catechism” contain. The Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller once
said in a sort of confidential undertone, “What is the use of examining
candidates for the ministry at all as to what they believe? The fact
that they apply for admission shows that they intend to answer all
questions as we expect them to answer; else, they very well know, we
would not admit them.”
The ecclesiastical system is emphatically an iron-bedstead system. If a
candidate is too long, it cuts him shorter; and if too short, it
stretches him. He must be made to fit. Then, after “ordination” or
“consecration,” the new-fledged theologian enters upon his public work
so pressed by the cares of his charge and the social and professional
demands upon his time that he finds it impossible to prepare a lecture
and two original sermons a week; so he falls back upon the “notes” he
took from the lips of his “old professor” in the divinity school, or
upon some of those numerous “skeletons” and “sketches” of sermons
expressly published for the “aid” of busy young ministers; and he gives
to “his people” a dish of theological hash, if not of re-hash, instead
of pouring out his own living words that should breathe and thoughts
that should burn.
Hence it is easy to see why one scarcely ever gets a fresh, living truth
from the pulpit. It is almost always the same old, old story of
commonplace fossils that the wide-awake world has outgrown long ago, and
that modern science has fearlessly consigned to the “bats and the moles”
of the Dark Ages. No wonder the pulpit platitudes fail to attract the
masses of earnest men, especially in our great cities.
Then if a clergyman should discover, after years of thought and study,
that he has been in error in some matters, and that a pure rational
interpretation of the Bible is possible, and he really feels that the
creeds, as well as the Scriptures, need revising, what can he do? If he
lets his new light shine, he will share the fate of Colenso, Robertson
Smith, Augustus Blauvelt, Professor Woodrow, and scores of others. He
knows that heresy-hunters are on the scent of his track. The mad-dog cry
of _Heretic_ would be as fatal as a sharp shot from the ecclesiastical
rifle. Proscription, degradation, ostracism, stare him in the face. Few
men who have the _esprit de corps_ of ecclesiasticism and a reasonable
regard for personal comfort and preferment are heroic enough to face the
social exclusion, financial ruin, and beggary for themselves and
families which are almost sure to follow a trial and condemnation for
heresy. If the newly-enlightened minister escapes the inquisition of a
heresy trial by declaring himself independent, he has a gauntlet to run
in which many poisoned arrows will be sure to pierce his quivering
spirit. It is true that some sects have no written creed and no trials
for heresy; but even among them there is an _implied_ standard of what
is “regular,” and more than one grand soul knows by a sorrowful
experience, what it is to belong to the “left wing” of the Liberal army,
and to follow the “spirit of truth” outside of the implied creed.
Another reason why the whole truth cannot be expected from the regular
clergy is, the influence of their pecuniary dependence upon those to
whom they minister. The Jews have always been great borrowers and
imitators. It was quite natural that they should adopt the
“price-current list” of the ancient Phœnicians, whose priests not only
exacted the tribute of “first-fruits,” but a fee in kind of each
sacrifice. Then the judicial functions exercised by Jewish priests
became a fruitful source of revenue, as the fines for certain offences
were paid to the priests (2 Kings 12: 16; Hosea 4: 8; Amos 2: 8).
According to 2 Sam. 8: 18 and 2 Bangs 10: 11, also 12: 2, the priests of
the royal sanctuaries became the grandees of the realm, while the petty
priests were generally poor enough—just as is well known to be the case
among the Christian clergy of to-day, some receiving a salary of
twenty-five thousand dollars and more per annum, while many of the
“inferior clergy” hardly average two hundred and fifty dollars a year.
That the Christian clerical profession was borrowed from the Jews, just
as the latter copied it from the heathen, is evident from the fact that
Paul, while refusing for himself pecuniary support, preferring to “work
with his own hands” (weaving tent-cloth), “living in his own hired
house,” nevertheless defended the principle of ministerial support,
mainly on the ground of the Mosaic law (Deut. 25: 4), “Thou shalt not
muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (1 Cor. 9: 9; 1 Tim. 5:
18). It is a striking illustration of the inconsistency of the modern
clergy that they quote, in reference to a salaried ministry, the words
ascribed to Jesus (Matt. 10: 10), “The workman is worthy of his meat,”
or, as it is rendered in Luke 10: 7, “The laborer is worthy of his
hire,” very conveniently forgetting to quote the connecting words
requiring them to “provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in their
purse, nor scrip for their journey, neither two coats, neither shoes,
nor yet staves,” but to enter unceremoniously into any house, accepting
any proffered hospitality, “eating such things as might be set before
them.” The fact is, the first disciples of Jesus, according to our
Gospels, were mendicant monks, leading lives of asceticism and poverty.
There is no evidence that one of them ever received a salary; they made
themselves entirely dependent on public charity and hospitality. The
idea of a “church living” or “beneficed clergy” or a salaried ministry
never entered into the mind of Him of whom it is said he “had not where
to lay his head.”
It is enough for the present argument to emphasize the point that, in
the very nature of things, it is not reasonable to expect the whole
truth from a salaried ministry. Those who have a large salary naturally
desire to retain it; those who have small and insufficient salaries
naturally desire to have them increased.
This can only be done by carefully preserving a good orthodox standing
according to the sectarian _shibboleth_, and in pleasing the people who
rent the pews or who dole out their penurious subscriptions for “the
support of the gospel.” High-salaried ministers are most likely to be
proud, arrogant, bigoted, sectarian. Starveling ministers become broken
in spirit, fawning, and crouching, and they generally have an
unconscious expression of appeal for help, of importunity and
expectancy, stamped upon their faces. The millstone of pecuniary
dependence hangs so heavily about their necks that they seldom hold up
their heads like men, and they can never utter a new truth or a
startling sentiment without pausing to consider what effect it may have
on the bread and butter of a dependent and generally numerous family.
Ministers with high salaries are almost sure to be spoiled, and those
with low ones are sure to be stultified and dwarfed intellectually and
morally; so that we cannot depend upon either class for the highest and
latest truths. Those who have a “living,” provided in a State Church,
and those who depend upon voluntary contributions from the people, are
alike manacled and handicapped. We must look elsewhere than to the
modern pulpit for that truth which alone can give freedom and true
manliness. Perfect indifference as to ecclesiastical standing, backed by
pecuniary independence, is an essential condition for untrammelled
investigation and the fearless proclamation of the whole truth.
It was noticed in the recent convention of scientists in this city (the
American Association) that it was the salaried professors in Church
colleges who professed to find no conflict between Geology and Genesis.
It will always be so until the ecclesiastical tyranny is greatly
weakened or destroyed, and men can utter their boldest thoughts without
fear or favor, and when teachers can afford to have a conscience by
making themselves free from Church control and menial dependence upon
those to whom they minister for the necessaries of a mere livelihood.
Science itself has made progress only as it has been fearless of
priestly maledictions; and when it shall throw off the incubus of Church
patronage it will astonish the world in showing the eternal antagonisms
between the dogmas of the dominant theology and the essential truths of
natural religion and morality.
CONCLUSIONS.
The following conclusions follow from what has been said:
(1) The clerical fraternity claims to be more than a mere profession.
It is essentially a caste, a “holy order,” borrowed from the
ancient paganism, but somewhat modified by Judaism and a perverted
Christianity.
(2) From such a caste or order the whole truth is not to be expected,
especially when the truth would show the order to be an imposture.
The assumptions of peculiar sanctity, official pre-eminence,
functional prerogatives, and special spiritual authority make such
a hope unnatural and quite impossible.
(3) The church system, with its tests of orthodoxy, its ecclesiastical
handcuffs, and its worse than physical thumb-screws, puts an end
to all independent thinking, and results in an enforced conformity
inconsistent with intellectual progress and the discovery and full
publication of the whole truth.
(4) The pecuniary stipend upon which professional preachers are
dependent has a demoralizing and degrading influence, so that the
doctrinal teaching of the pulpit should not be received without
hesitation and distrust. The common law excludes the testimony of
interested witnesses, and, though modern statutes admit such
testimony, the courts take it for what it is worth, but always
with many grains of allowance. “A gift perverteth judgment,” and
self-interest may sway the convictions of a man who intends and
desires to be fairly honest.
(5) The existing systems of ministerial education and support deter
many superior men from entering the profession, and have placed
preaching upon a commercial or mercantile basis, which has
manacled and crippled the pulpit, and must sooner or later result
in the consideration of the question whether the services of the
clergy are worth what they cost, and whether the truth must not be
sought for in some other direction. More than two hundred and
fifty thousand priests and ministers (of whom about one hundred
thousand are in the United States) are maintained at an annual
expense of more than five hundred millions of dollars; and, as a
rule, where priests are most numerous, people are poorest and
public morality lowest.
A member of the Canadian Parliament (Hon. James Beatty) has recently
published a book in which he opposes the whole system of a salaried
clergy on scriptural and other grounds; and many other thoughtful men
are beginning to inquire how it is that the Society of Friends get along
so well without a “hireling ministry.”
(6) It is a great mistake to suppose that we must look mainly to
professional clergymen for instruction in divine things. It is a
significant fact that the most able and important books that have
been published within the last decade have been written by laymen
or by persons, like Emerson, who have outgrown the narrow garments
of a caste profession and have laid them off. How to get along
without professional ministers has been well answered by Capt.
Robert C. Adams (quoted in the writer’s book, Man—Whence and
Whither? pp. 218, 219).
If ministers would give up the _holy-orders_ idea, cast into the sea the
millstone incumbrance of pecuniary dependence, engage earnestly in some
legitimate work to support themselves, they would then for the first
time begin to realize what soul-freedom is, and they could then preach
with an intelligence and power and with a satisfaction to themselves of
which they now know nothing. Let them try it for themselves and learn a
lesson. Whether the clerical order is so divine an institution that we
have no right to call it into question or to abolish it altogether, is a
question that must be practically considered soon.
(7) There is a deep impression widely prevailing among thoughtful and
sincerely religious persons that the infidelity of the pulpit is
largely responsible for the prevailing skepticism of the age. The
word “infidelity” is here specially used in a strict philological
sense—_infidele_, not faithful, unfaithfulness to a trust—but it
is also used in its more general sense of _disbelief_ in certain
religious dogmas.
We impeach and arraign the clergy (admitting a few honorable exceptions)
on the general charge of _infidelity_ in the strictest and broadest
sense of the word—
1st. In that they fail to qualify themselves to be the leaders of
thought in the great, living questions affecting religion and morality.
We have elsewhere said: “Not one minister in a thousand ‘discerns the
signs of the times’ or is prepared for the crisis. Few pastors ever read
anything beyond their own denominational literature. Their education is
partial, one-sided, professional. They cling to mediaeval superstitions
with the desperate grasp of drowning men. The great majority of the
clergy are not men of broad minds and wide and deep research, and have
not the ability to meet the vexed questions of to-day.”
It is an admitted policy, especially among the orthodox clergy (so
called), not to read or to listen to anything that might unsettle their
faith in what they have accepted as a finality; whereas no man can
intelligently _believe_ anything until he has candidly considered the
reasons assigned by other men for not believing what he does. “He that
is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and
searcheth him.”
Professor Fisher, the champion of Yale-College orthodoxy, has recently
admitted in the _North American Review_ that at least one of the causes
of the decline of clerical authority and influence is the increased
intelligence of the laity. If the people cannot get what they desire
from the pulpit, they will seek it from the platform and the press.
Truth is no longer to be concealed in cloisters and smothered in
theological seminaries, but it is to be proclaimed from housetops and in
language understood in every-day life.
It was once said that “the lips of the priest give knowledge,” but it
may now be truly said that modern scientists and philosophers among the
laity are the principal teachers of mankind, and that publications like
the _North American Review_ and _The Forum_, and last, but not least,
the secular daily newspapers, are doing more to instruct the people in
living truths than the whole brood of ecclesiastical parrots.
2d. We charge that many professional clergymen suppress things which
they do believe to be true, and not unfrequently suggest things, at
least by implication, which they do know to be false.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale recently published an article in the _North
American Review_ entitled “Insincerity in the Pulpit;” and the Rev. Dr.
Phillips Brooks of Boston, who recently received episcopal honors in
Massachussetts, has confirmed in the _Princeton Review_ what Dr. Hale
charged in the _North American Review_ regarding clerical
disingenuousness. Dr. Brooks wrote thus:
“A large acquaintance with clerical life has led me to think that almost
any company of clergymen, talking freely to each other, will express
opinions which would greatly surprise, and at the same time greatly
relieve, the congregations who ordinarily listen to these ministers....
How many men in the ministry to-day believe in the doctrine of verbal
inspiration which our fathers held? and how many of us have frankly told
the people that we do not believe it?... How many of us hold that the
everlasting punishment of the wicked is a clear and certain truth of
revelation? But how many of us who do not have ever said a word?”
The same principle of prevarication and deceit was practised by the
early Fathers of the Christian Church, who not only concealed the truth
from the masses of the people, but did not hesitate to deceive and
mislead them.
Mosheim, an ecclesiastical historian of high authority, testifies that
“in the fourth century it was an almost universally adopted maxim that
it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when by such means the
interests of the Church might be promoted.” He further says of the fifth
century, “Fraud and impudent imposture were artfully proportioned to the
credulity of the vulgar.”
Milman, in his _History of Christianity_, says: “It was admitted and
avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to
hallow deceit itself.” He further says in the same historical work,
“That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forgeries can
scarcely be questioned.” There is not a Bible manuscript or version that
has not been manipulated by ecclesiastics for century after century.
Many of these priests were both ignorant and vicious. From the fifth to
the fifteenth century crimes not fit to be mentioned prevailed among the
clergy.
Dr. Lardner says that Christians of all sorts were guilty of fraud, and
quotes Cassaubon as saying, “In the earliest times of the Church it was
considered a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their
own inventions.” Dr. Thomas Burnet, in a Latin treatise intended for the
clergy only, said, “Too much light is hurtful to weak eyes;” and he
recommended the practice of deceiving the common people for their own
good. I _know_ that this same policy is in vogue in our day. This same
nefarious doctrine of the exoteric and esoteric, one thing for the
priest and another for the people, is far from being dead in this
nineteenth century. It has always been, and now is, the real priestly
policy to keep the common people in ignorance of many things; and if all
do not accept the maxim of Gregory, that “Ignorance is the mother of
Devotion,” many ministers _privately_ hold in our day that “where
ignorance is bliss ’Tis folly to be wise.”
3d. The third article of impeachment, under the general charge of
infidelity is, that sacerdotalists teach dogmas which they do not
believe themselves. They do not all believe, _ex animo_, the distinctive
dogmas of the orthodox creeds—that God is angry with the great body of
mankind, that his wrath is a burning flame, and that there is, as to a
majority of men, but a moment’s time and a point of space between them
and eternal torture more terrible than imagination can conceive or
language describe. It is well said that “Actions speak louder than
words;” and we need only ask the question, “Do ministers who profess to
believe these horrible dogmas preach as if they really believed them?”
Notice the general deportment of the clergy at the summer resort, at the
seaside, or on the mountain-top, and say whether they can possibly
believe what for eight or nine months they have been preaching in their
now closed churches. Listen to the private conversation of our
evangelists at the camp-meeting or at the meetings of ecclesiastical
bodies, and then conclude, if you can, that they believe what they
teach.
Take, if you please, the case of one of our best-known evangelical
ministers, a member of the strictest of our orthodox sects, who spends a
large proportion of his time in studying the ways of insects, and who
would chase a pismire across the continent to find out its habits. Can a
pastor believe in his heart the dogmas of the Westminster Confession,
and yet devote so much time to ants? It is impossible. He may deceive
himself; he cannot deceive others.
4th. Our fourth article of impeachment under the general charge is, that
the pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism called infidelity, in
that it insists upon the belief of dogmas which are absurd upon their
face, such as the miraculous conception of Jesus, the dogma of the
Trinity, the origin and fall of man, vicarious atonement,
predestination, election and reprobation, eternal torture for the
majority, and many other absurdities which no rational mind can now
consistently accept.
True, these dogmas may be found in the Bible; and when men ate told with
weekly reiterations that the Bible is purely divine, supernatural, and
infallible, and they find that it is purely human, natural, and very
fallible, they cannot believe the Bible, though they find many inspiring
and helpful things in it. When ministers tell thinking men that they
must believe all or reject all, they accept the foolish alternative and
reject all. And so it might be further shown how, in very many ways, the
pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism and infidelity, and that the
professed teachers of religion are its greatest enemies, its most
effective clogs and successful antagonists. No wonder that the most
thoughtful and intelligent men and women in every community have drifted
away from the popular faith, and are anxiously inquiring, What next?
President Thomas Jefferson, in writing to Timothy Pickering, well said:
“The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of
Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have
caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock
reasonable thinkers to revolt them against the whole, and drive them
rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor.” Writing to Dr. Cooper, he
said: “_My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel if
there had never been a priest._”
We would not abolish the office, or, if you please, the profession, of
_public moral teacher_, but we would banish from the world the caste
idea, the _holy-order_ pretence. When simple-minded young men and grave
and surpliced bishops talk about taking “holy orders,” sensible and
thoughtful men know that they are talking holy nonsense. No man has a
right to assume that he is more holy than other men, or that he has
authority to exercise religious functions that other men have not.
Nor have we any objection that moral teachers should be paid for their
services as other teachers are paid; but when educated men can afford to
teach without pecuniary compensation, we think it would be well for them
to do so; and when the teacher of morals adopts the example of St. Paul,
“working with his own hands” and “living in his own hired house,” we
think the world will be the better for it. Let us hope that the day will
soon dawn when clergymen will consider themselves moral teachers only,
and for ever repudiate the false pretence of special authority and
priestly sanctimoniousness, and clearly understand that mediocrity and
stupidity will not much longer be tolerated because of the so-called
sacredness of a profession.
That the estimate here made of sacerdotalists may not seem extreme and
unjustifiable, I add the testimony of one of the most honored
ecclesiastics of the Established Church of England, Canon Farrar, who in
a recent sermon on priestcraft said: “In all ages the exclusive
predominance of priests has meant the indifference of the majority and
the subjection of the few. It has meant the slavery of men who will not
act, and the indolence of men who will not think, and the timidity of
men who will not resist, and the indifference of men who do not care.”
Alas that “holy hands” should so often be laid “upon skulls that cannot
teach and will not learn”!
Let me here quote from Professor Huxley an admirable statement of the
facts in the case:
“Everywhere have they (sacerdotalists) broken the spirit of wisdom and
tried to stop human progress by quotations from their Bibles or books of
their saints. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern
physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the
incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall
number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of
Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name
blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? Who shall count the host
of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to
harmonize impossibilities; whose life has been wasted in the attempt to
force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism,
compelled by the outcry of the same strong party? It is true that if
philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged.
Extinguished theologies lie about the cradle of every science as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that
whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has
been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not
annihilated, scotched if not slain. But orthodoxy learns not, neither
can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it
is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis
contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with
such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralyzed hands can hurl those who
refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive Judaism.” “Religion,”
he also elsewhere writes, “arising like all other knowledge out of the
action and interaction of man’s mind, has taken the intellectual
coverings of Fetishism, Polytheism, of Theism or Atheism, of
Superstition or Rationalism; and if the religion of the present differs
from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has
become more scientific than that of the past; not because it has
renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but it begins to see the
necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and
traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the
noblest and most human of man’s emotions by worship, ‘for the most part
of the silent sort,’ at the altar of the _unknown and unknowable_”...
“If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are,
and I reply that I know not, that neither I nor any one else have any
means of knowing, and that under these circumstances I decline to
trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right
to call me a skeptic.” Again: “What are among the moral convictions most
fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the
convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit
attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a
bad one, and skepticism a sin; and there are many excellent persons who
still hold by these principles.”... “Yet we have no reason to believe
that it is the improvement of our faith nor that of our morals which
keeps the plague from our city; but it is the improvement of our natural
knowledge. We have learned that pestilences will only take up their
abode among those who have prepared unswept and ungarnished residences
for them. Their cities must have narrow, un watered streets full of
accumulated garbage; their houses must be ill-drained, ill-ventilated;
their subjects must be ill-lighted, ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed;
the London of 1665 was such a city; the cities of the East, where plague
has an enduring dwelling, are such cities; we in later times have
learned somewhat of Nature, and partly obey her. Because of this partial
improvement of our natural knowledge, and that of fractional obedience,
we have no plague; but because that knowledge is very imperfect and that
obedience yet incomplete, typhus is our companion and cholera our
visitor.”