One hundred fifty years ago, there was not a single white man in what
is now Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. What is now the most
flourishing part of the United States was then as little known as the
country in the heart of Africa itself. It was not until Seventeen
Hundred Seventy-six that Boone left his home in North Carolina to
become the first settler in Kentucky; and the pioneers of Ohio did not
settle that territory until twenty years later.
Canada belonged to France one hundred fifty-three years ago, and
Washington was a modest Virginia Colonel, and the United States was
the most loyal part of the British Empire, and scarcely a speck on the
political horizon indicated the struggle that in a few years was to lay
the foundation of the greatest republic in the world.
One hundred fifty years ago there were but four small newspapers in
America; steam-engines had not been imagined; and locomotives and
railroads, and telegraphs and postal cards, and friction-matches,
and revolvers and percussion-caps, and breechloading-guns and Mauser
rifles, and stoves and furnaces, and gas and electricity and rubber
shoes, and Spaulding's glue, and sewing-machines and anthracite coal,
and photographs, and kerosene-oil, free schools, and spring-beds and
hair-mattresses, and lever-watches and greenbacks were unknown. The
spinning-wheel was in almost every family, and clothing was spun and
woven and made up in the family; and the printing-press was a cumbrous
machine worked by hand.
Down to Eighteen Hundred Fourteen every paper in the world was printed
one side at a time, on an ordinary hand-press; and a nail, or a brick,
or a knife, or a pair of shears or scissors, or a razor, or a woven
pair of stockings, or an ax or a hoe or a shovel, or a lock and key, or
a plate of glass of any size, was not made in what is now the United
States.
In Seventeen Hundred Ninety, there were only seventy-five post-offices
in the country, and the whole extent of our post-routes was less
than nineteen hundred miles; cheap postage was unheard of; so were
envelopes; and had any one suggested the transmission of messages with
lightning speed, he would have been thought insane. The microscope on
the one hand and the telescope on the other were in their infancy as
instruments of science; and geology and chemistry were almost unknown,
to say nothing of the telephone and all the other various phones, and
the X-rays, and hundreds of other new things.
In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-two there were only six stagecoaches running
in all England, and these were a novelty. A man named John Crosset
thought they were so dangerous an innovation that he wrote a pamphlet
against them. "These coaches," he wrote, "make gentlemen come to London
upon every small occasion which otherwise they would not do, except
upon urgent necessity. The conveniency of the passage makes their wives
come often up, who, rather than come such long journeys on horseback,
would stay at home. Then when they come to town they must be in the
'wade' [probably that is where the word _swim_ comes in now], get fine
clothes, go to plays, and treats, and by these means get such a habit
of idleness and love of pleasure that they are uneasy ever after."
* * * * *
We can all see how much improvement there has been in all things but
_creeds_. Improvements can come, and old things go, but _creeds_ go on
forever! A creed implies something fixed and immovable. In other words,
it means you have a "heel-rope on."
The word "creed" is from _credo_, "I believe." We have had a great
deal of compulsion of belief, and a thousand years of almost absolute
unanimity. Liberty was dead and the ages were dark. We call them
the Middle Ages because they were the death between the life that
was before and the life that came after. Then came a new birth of
thought--a "Renaissance"--and after this, some reformation in the form
of a Protestantism.
Since then, the Protestants have continued to protest, not only against
the old, but against each other. And this is the best thing they have
done. Thus liberty has been saved, for each would have coerced its
fellow organization, as did their infamous mother, the Roman Catholic
Church, before them. From "creed" comes "credulous" and "credulity."
And they have filled the world with their kind. In the United States
alone, there are about one hundred forty types. Each is a system of
credulity pitted against a hundred and thirty-nine others. They all
rest on authority. They all denounce investigation--unless it has for
its end the support of their authority.
Hence, with the exception of two or three denominations, to become a
professed Christian means to accept credulously and without question
a system of belief about Nature and man and the world which you would
deny in toto if you reasoned as you do about other things, and which
you do practically deny by re-explaining and refining it into anything
but what is stated. Down deep in your heart you do not, and never
did, believe it in the same honest way in which you form your other
opinions.
Think for a moment of the Christian idea of the world, its origin, its
shape, place, importance, and its final end. Does any man or woman who
has been through a common-school geography believe the ideas implied in
the common Christian dogmas regarding the world? We must remember that
the world taught in the geography is not the Christian world.
The world taught in the Christian dogmas is beneath the heavens--not a
rolling sphere flying through space. It is flat, and the sun and stars
pass over it daily. It is the chief object of God's creation on which
to place man. It is God's footstool, and his throne is Heaven above. He
created it just four thousand and four years before the Christian era
began. Now we _all_ know that this is _not_ true; that there is no up
nor down; that the earth is not the center; that it is _not_ flat; that
the sun does not go round it; that it is a very insignificant little
orb; that "up in Heaven" is an utterly meaningless expression; and that
the world is not a creation, but an evolution.
And yet thousands of people credulously cling to creeds which embody
the notions of barbarous or uncivilized ages.
Take the dogma of revelation. It tells us that the Bible is a
revelation of the will and wisdom of an omniscient God; that it is a
perfect and sufficient rule of faith and practise. What, in the name
of humanity, causes people to make such statements today? It is like
trying to light the house with a saucer of tallow in which a rag is
immersed, instead of using gas or electricity.
Take an example of this Bible. In Deuteronomy xiv: 21, we read, "Ye
shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself: thou mayest give it
unto the sojourner that is within thy gates, that he may eat it; or
thou mayest sell it unto a foreigner: for _thou_ art a holy people unto
Jehovah thy God." In Matthew vii: 12, we read, "Whatsoever ye would
that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them."
Why do you talk about the infallibility, the inerrancy, or even the
moral unity of a volume written by many hands at widely different
times? Are such people so ignorant that they have not read the Book
they are swearing by? Are they moral idiots and do not know the
plainest right and wrong? Are they scoundrels and have some deceitful
reason for urging such a book as an authority? Or are they the dupes of
their own credulity, clinging without thought to the beliefs in which
they have been reared? They are evidently not using commonsense in an
honest way.
I often hear the Bible spoken of as a holy book, full of a holy
spirit. I sometimes reply: "Have you read the conduct of Moses, Joshua,
Samuel, David, Solomon, and other ancient worthies, who were said to be
men after the heart of the bloodthirsty and avenging Jehovah? How long
would you keep out of prison if you took them for your models? Have you
read the Thirty-fifth, Fifty-eighth, Sixty-ninth and One Hundred Ninth
Psalms? If not, read them, and tell me what you think of them."
There never was any intrinsic reason for believing the Bible except
that a designing priesthood said so, and stupid people trusted them.
Here, by common consent, people agree to be duped. Ages and ages ago,
they began to make admissions that two and two might be six, or even
sixteen, in religion. They had sense enough to say that two and two are
four in other things. In Divine Revelation they shut their eyes to all
mistakes and wilful lies. If people should deceive in other matters as
the priests, parsons and teachers do in religion, they would not escape
arrest.
Another central doctrine is that of the Atonement. This is derived
from the moral character of the Jewish God; he governed the world of
humanity on the principle of primitive society. Men were responsible to
him in everything. Any infraction of his supposed laws rendered them
subject to his vengeance. That is why the Jew thought that God sent a
thunderstorm to punish him for eating pork.
What explanation besides credulity can be suggested for the
continuation of this belief century after century? Preachers shout
it from the pulpits, and Salvation Army people hawk it through the
streets. Not one of them knows what he is talking about. Each learned
it from some one who told him to say it. They all do it because it is
a part of a system which they have inherited, but the reason for which
they do not know, and have never allowed themselves to seek.
This cringing credulity keeps the masses from using their powers. They
seem to believe that if they should lose these superstitions they would
be lost.
* * * * *
And the dogma regarding Jesus is inextricably mixed up in Christian
theology with that of the Atonement. One assumption bolsters the
other. He is made to occupy the central place in this scheme of
blood-redemption through that other highly rational fable of the
immaculate conception. If Jesus was not immaculately conceived, then
Matthew and Luke have deceived; then Jesus is not God; then he is a
mere man; and if so, he is not the Redeemer. Man could not redeem
himself according to the first premise of the scheme. Man has been and
_is_ redeeming himself by learning Nature's laws and through them
rising to a higher life ever since he reached the stage of humanity.
Take the theory of the Resurrection. The account of it was written long
after the assumed occurrence, and by credulous men with superstitious
inclinations. Men and women of these days, understanding the laws of
Nature, can not give assent to the crude beliefs which easily commanded
the minds of ancient times.
Both Protestantism and Catholicism are systems built on essentially the
same foundation. Remove any of these stones, and the systems will have
to be rebuilt. If there is no special revelation, there is no special
scheme of salvation. If there is no vengeful, blood-seeking God, there
is no theological reconciliation. If there was no fall, there is no
hopeless depravity. If there was no immaculate conception, there is
no Redeemer in a special ecclesiastical sense. If there is no total
depravity, there is no lost world. If there is no lost world, there is
no yawning Hell. One and all, these fictions have their only ground for
continuance in a _selfish_ and unreasoning priesthood and clergy, and a
credulous people.
In the place of the "fall," science has put the "rise" of man. It finds
the Garden of Eden to have been a jungle. It finds the mythical perfect
Adam to have been a savage. It finds the Biblical "origin of evil"
to have been a puerile legend. It finds that sin and evil are made by
the seeing of higher states. It finds that there was no bad until the
better was reached. It finds that it is the advancing good which makes
the existing bad. It finds that among the worst of sinners are those
who live in and propagate outworn doctrines upon their own and others'
credulity.
In the olden times, God was made a king--the world was his kingdom.
His powers, virtues and vices were simply those of earthly kings
exaggerated. Jewish and Christian liturgies are full of expressions
showing the attitude of slaves and serfs to a tyrant. Sin has been
manufactured as heresy and disobedience to the so-called orthodox
system instead of to the laws of Nature.
Science has shown that the bottomless pit did not even have a top.
Columbus sailed over the Western edge of the flat Christian world on
which all this Christian system depended, and found that the material
Heaven and Hell were unfounded myths; but the preachers and priests
still threaten _hell_ to the most ignorant and credulous, but they tell
some of us that there is a _final judgment_.
* * * * *
In the old days, we used to hear a great deal about judgments. A
certain honest, good-natured, old farmer in New Hampshire, who was a
freethinker, but had a very pious wife, lost many cattle when the
black tongue was an epidemic in the State.
One day the hired man came in and told him the red oxen were dead.
"Are they?" said the old man. "Well, they were 'breechy cusses.' Take
off their hides and carry them down to Fletcher's. They will bring the
cash."
An hour or so later the man came back with the news that Lineback and
his mate were both dead.
"Are they?" said the old man. "Well, I took them of B---- to save a bad
debt that I never expected to get. Take the hides down to Fletcher's.
They will bring the cash."
After the lapse of another hour the man came back to tell him that the
nigh brindle was dead.
"Is he?" said the old man. "Well, he was a very old ox. Take off his
hide and send it down to Fletcher's. It is worth cash and will bring
more than two of the others."
Hereupon his wife reminded him that his loss was a judgment of Heaven
upon him.
"Is it?" said the old chap. "Well, if they will take the judgment in
cattle, it is the easiest way I can pay it."
But they know no more about final judgments than they did about the
lake of fire and brimstone which commenced to drain off in Columbus'
day. Science has vaporized the notion of a future judgment by the same
method it has that of a past Creation. From the _facts_, it has learned
_laws_. But credulity is always half-hearted with facts. It does not
know enough of truth to love it. It is ever glowing over and setting
up as a dogma the little it knows, or assumes to know, of the truth of
former times. It has no faith in the newly discovered, because it knows
nothing of it.
Hence, age after age we see the spectacle of men who have not studied
the science of their own day denouncing it in pulpit and councils;
of men who have steeped themselves in the traditions of the past
pronouncing shallow invectives against the demonstrations of (science)
the present.
* * * * *
Many church people say immortality must be true, or the great majority
would not believe in it. But do they? They do not talk or write as if
they did. If language means anything, I think the majority believe in
annihilation. Most people speak of the dead body of a man as though
it were the man. They say, "He was buried at Greenwood," or, "She was
cremated at Forest Hills." And we hear the "late" Mr. Smith left an
immense fortune. If Mr. Smith still exists, why do they say the _late_
Mr. Smith? If people didn't believe that the soul and body are one,
and that life ceases and mind expires when the body dies, why do they
say, "They were"? What little the Church has learned has been by _main
force_ so to speak.
A friend of mine many years ago was a college student. At that time
they were all compelled to attend the college church. On one occasion
he heard the preacher, who was also a college professor, make these
statements:
_First_, that the _elect_ alone would be saved.
_Second_, that among those who by the world were called Christians,
probably not more than one in a hundred belonged really and truly to
the _elect_.
_Third_, that the others, by reason of their Christian privileges,
would suffer more hereafter than the heathen, who had never heard the
Gospel at all.
The young man made a note of these propositions, and on the strength
of them drew up a petition to the Faculty soliciting exemption from
further attendance at church, as only preparing for himself a more
terrible future.
He said: "The congregation here amounts to six hundred persons,
and nine of these are the college professors. Now if only one in a
hundred is to be saved, it follows that three even of the professors
must be damned, and I, being a mere student, could not expect to be
saved in preference to a professor." Far, he said, be it from him to
cherish so presumptuous a hope. Nothing remained for him, therefore,
but perdition. In this melancholy state of affairs he was anxious to
abstain from anything that might aggravate his future punishment;
and as church attendance had been shown to have this influence on the
_non-elect_, he trusted that the Faculty would for all time exempt him
from it.
The result was he came very near being expelled from the
college--simply by heeding their sermons. The professors of some
colleges have learned something, and do not insist on the students
attending church.
* * * * *
Ponder for a moment on the many dishonest ways churches have for
raising money. Think of the amount of money they can raise at a
church-fair--alias, a confidence-game.
A young man from Kentucky told me that he attended one at Chicago.
First he went to the table where refreshments were sold. A beautiful
siren with big black eyes and small white hands spread the edibles
before him. When he arose from the table he handed her a five-dollar
bill. She put it in a little box and forgot to give him any change. She
smiled sweetly at him, and asked him if he would like to walk about the
room and look at the fancy articles, all to be sold for the good of the
church.
She took his arm and murmured, "We are not strangers; we both feel
interested in the church."
"We soon came," said the young man in telling me the story, "to a
silver tea-set that was to be 'raffled off.' Would I take a chance? Of
course I did. Then came a cake with a valuable ring concealed in it.
Would I take a chance in that? Of course I did.
"So things glided on until I concluded if I took many more chances, my
chances for getting home would be slim. So I refused to tempt fortune
any further, until the little black-eyed scoundrel took me on a new
tack. Leaning heavily on my arm, and resting her cheek on my shoulder,
she said, 'Please take a chance for me.'
"It is needless to add that I took the chance, and kept on taking
chances for the beautiful and unprincipled wretch that had me in tow,
until I had not a dollar left. Yes, I was penniless, and then it
began to dawn on me that she was working me for the success of the
church. There I was, bankrupt in money and self-respect. I had been
robbed--yes, robbed, for where is the difference between a pair of
pistols and a pair of black eyes in a robbery? You part with your money
because you can not help it.
"I know that Society looks with lenient eyes upon church-fairs, but it
is my opinion that all robbers will take sentence, and when that little
Chicago robber receives her sentence, she will take her place by the
side of Jack Sheppard!"
You see he still believes in Judgments. He is learning by main force.
A very pious woman whose father was a missionary, now living in Hawaii,
wrote not long ago that professional men flocking to the Islands will
be disappointed unless they are friends of old families; and the old
families are descendants of missionaries who went there in the early
days and took lands and everything else from the natives.
There seems to be nothing like being a descendant from a missionary
family. These people, equally pious and provident, thought it a
good scheme to cheat the sinful savages out of all their worldly
possessions, in order that they might be taught humility and holiness
through the chastening influence of poverty. So they robbed the
unregenerate to the glory of God.
Who says it doesn't pay to save the heathen? Think of the ignorance and
superstition of the majority of the preachers of the present day.
* * * * *
Up in Northern Minnesota, less than fifty years ago, an old Baptist
was preaching on the death of Moses on the Mount, and his not being
permitted to go over into the Promised Land. The preacher said:
"I have always felt sorry for Moses. It has seemed so hard to me that
he could not go over with Caleb and Joshua, the only two of the host
which he had led out of Egypt, and enjoy with his people the good
country towards which they had been so long traveling. When as a boy
I read that in the Bible for the first time, I sat down and cried for
sympathy with him. But Moses had a hard time from the first. He was no
sooner born than his life was threatened. His mother had to hide him to
save it. After three months she could hide him no longer, and so she
made an ark of bulrushes and set him afloat on the river. Indeed, it
seemed as though the Lord had all he could do to raise Moses."
But the people of this generation do not take the story of Moses so
seriously. A bright young girl of ten, on being asked by her Sabbath
School teacher, "Where did Pharaoh's daughter get Moses?" replied, with
the accent on the _said_, "She _said_ she 'found him in the bulrushes.'"
I attended a campmeeting in North Carolina. The exhortations and
prayers would cause a graven image to smile audibly. One old Baptist
preacher said he always felt so sorry to think that "Ingine corn"
didn't grow in Palestine, because he would like to think that the
little Jesus had a good time playing with cob-houses.
But those preachers compare favorably with the Reverend George F. Hall,
of Decatur, Illinois, and the Reverend Doctor John P. D. John, and the
Reverend Doctor Frederick Bell, late of the Metropolitan Temple of
San Francisco, California, who at various times challenged Robert G.
Ingersoll to debate with them. It shows what ignorance, superstition
and egotism combined can do.
Darwin said the herding instinct in animals has its base in fear. Sheep
and cattle go in droves, while a lion simply flocks with his mate.
Those who wish to lead have always fostered fear, encouraging this
tendency to herd, promising protection, and offering what they call
knowledge in return for a luxurious living.
In other words, the men who preach and pray, always want the people
who _work_ to divide with them. They work on the line that fear will
compel men to join churches. This joining instinct is a manifestation
of weakness. By going with a gang they hope to get to Heaven. But the
moment you eliminate the Devil from Christianity, there is nothing
left. You can not have a revival, alias an epidemic, of religion,
without the Devil. If there were no Devil, there would be nothing to
pray about, and all these people who are gifted in prayer would be
without a job.
Think of the chaplains of the Army and Navy, in Congress and in the
Legislatures being turned out to browse for themselves. Think of their
being obliged to earn an honest living. They could not do it. I am
amused when I think of the prayers that are exchanged in war times. One
side will pray that the wrath of Heaven will descend on the other, and
the other side will return the compliment with ten per cent interest.
I remember when I was a child of reading the prayer of a Hungarian
officer. He said: "O Lord, I will not ask thee to help us, and I know
that thou wilt not help the Austrians. But if thou wilt sit on yonder
hill, thou shalt not be ashamed of thy children."
The famous Bishop Leslie prayed before a battle in Ireland, "O God, for
our unworthiness we are not fit to claim thy help, but if we are bad,
our enemies are worse, and if thou seest not meet to help us, we pray
thee help them not, but stand thou neutral this day, and leave it to
the arm of flesh."
All this dramatic power would be lost without the Devil. So it behooves
the Christian churches to hold fast to the Devil. Get a good grip on
his hoofs, horns and tail, for without him they would be relegated to
"innocuous desuetude." He should be incorporated as the fourth person
in the Orthodox Godhead, and respectfully addressed as "Holy Devil."
_There is no truth in the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, no sense
in it, no religion in it. It is the product of mythology and has no
claim upon this age._
This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right
you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of
Nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.
The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a
traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.
As far as I am concerned, I wish to be out on the high seas. I wish
to take my chances with wind and wave and star. And I had rather
go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in any
orthodox harbor whatever.
--_Robert Ingersoll._