Having treated this subject somewhat lengthily and critically in "The
World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors," we shall devote but a brief space
to its elucidation here. Nearly all religious nations have attached
great importance to the act of repentance; but such an act does not
repair the injury or wrong repented of.
The repentance of a murderer does not restore his murdered victim to
life; nor does the repentance and tears of the incendiary rebuild the
dwelling he has destroyed by fire. What, then, is its practical value?
We would ask, also, what moral value or merit can attach to an act of
repentance when it is not claimed to be an act of the sinner, but "the
power of God upon the soul"? (Luther.) It appears then, according to
orthodox logic,--1. That God won't save the sinner unless he repents. 2.
That he can't repent only as God moves him to do so. This places him in
a bad predicament. Hence, when he does repent, it is an act of God. 3.
And then God saves him because he makes him repent. Here is a jumble of
logical incongruities and moral contradictions that can find no lodgment
in a scientific mind. A few brief questions will set the doctrine of
repentance in its true light.
4. Repentance consists in merely a revival of early impressions, that
may be either right or wrong, true or false, and almost as likely to be
one as the other.
5. Who ever knew a person to embrace more rational doctrines, or become
more intelligent, or have a stronger taste for scientific pursuits, by
repentance?
6. Is it not a fact that repentance usually causes a person to cling
more tenaciously to the errors and superstitions in which he was
educated?
7. Who ever knew a person by repenting, either in health or sickness,
to condemn one wrong act which he had erroneously been taught to believe
was right? If not, does it not prove that repentance always conforms
to education, whether that education is right or wrong, and hence does
nothing toward enlightening the convert or anybody else?
8. On the contrary, when a man repents with his mind full of religious
errors, is it not evident that the act of repentance will have the
effect to rivet these errors more strongly upon his mind, and thus
effect a moral injury instead of a moral benefit?
9. If a man may abandon some of his immoral habits, which he has been
taught to believe are wrong, by an act of repentance, are not the good
effects to some extent counterbalanced by his clinging more strongly to
his religious errors?
10. Who ever knew a person to abandon a false religion by repentance?
Does a Hindoo or Mahomedan ever embrace Christianity by repenting?
11. Who ever knew a Roman Catholic to become a Protestant, or a
Protestant a Catholic, by repentance? And yet orthodox Christians will
cite the belief and testimony of a dying man as an evidence of the truth
of their doctrines.
12. How can an act of repentance do any thing toward proving what is
right and what is wrong in any case, when one person repents for doing
what another repents for not doing? We have such cases recorded in
history.
We have known a Campbellite to leave his dying testimony in favor of
water baptism, and a Quaker to leave his dying testimony against it.
Does one case prove it to be wrong, and the other right? If not, why do
Christians cite such cases? What do they prove?
For a further illustration of this subject, see "The World's Sixteen
Crucified Saviors."
DEATH-BED REPENTANCE.
If there is any class of people who need to repent for misspent time,
and for leading false and foolish lives, it is the colporteurs who
travel over the country distributing pious tracts, containing doleful
accounts of death-bed repentance, which, whether right or wrong, prove
nothing.
Such cases of repentance as are reported do not appertain to the
moral conduct, but to the religious belief, of the sinner. It is the
abandonment and condemnation of his past creeds, and not of his past
conduct, which makes the tract so valuable. Such a case contains no
moral instruction whatever.
If his early education was Mahomedan, his repentance will establish that
religion again in his mind; but, if Mormonism was the religion of
his childhood, he would again have full faith in that religion. What
nonsense!
Who ever knew repentance to divorce or emancipate a man from all or any
of the religious errors of his past life, and plant in his soul a better
and more rational religion, or lead him to advocate any religion only
that in which he had been educated?
Such repentance is worth nothing, and absolutely foolish. Let us assume
that the numerous cases of death-bed repentance published in religious
tracts are all true; and what would it prove? Why, simply this: that the
converts had all been educated to believe in Christianity, and had gone
back to that religion. Had Budhism or Mahomedanism been their early
religion, they would have returned to that. It is merely old errors
and old truths revived and re-established in the mind. But many facts
afterwards gathered by honest investigation, appertaining to some of
these cases, show that they have either been manufactured or greatly
exaggerated. As for example, the case of Thomas Paine is proved to be
without foundation. His close was calm and peaceful. Many times has it
been declared, in the pulpit and elsewhere, that "Tom Paine repented,
and died a miserable death." And yet we have the testimony of those
Christian professors who were present with him almost constantly during
his last illness, that he never manifested the least compunction of
conscience, or the least disposition to condemn any thing he had said or
written in opposition to Christianity or the Bible. Take, for example,
the testimony of Willet Hicks, a reliable Quaker preacher. On being
interrogated by a neighbor of the author of this work as to the truth of
the statement that he repented, he replied, "I was with Paine every day
during the latter part of his sickness, and can affirm that he did not
express any regret for having written 'The Age of Reason,' as has been
reported, nor for any thing he had said or written in opposition to the
Bible, nor ask forgiveness of God. He died as easy as any one I ever saw
die; and I have seen a great many die." And yet this Mr. Hicks was in
hopes he would repent. Other similar testimony might be adduced; but
this is sufficient. The story of Ethan Allen's daughter calling upon her
father during her last illness, and asking him if he would recommend her
to die in his religious belief, and his feeling so conscience-smitten by
the question, that he exclaimed, "No: die in the belief of your mother!"
(who was a Christian) has gone the rounds of the Christian pulpits. And
yet we have the statement of his nephew, Col. Hitchcock, that he had no
daughter to die during his lifetime.
There is not one word of truth in the report. These two cases furnish
samples of the manner in which a dying cause will grasp at straws.
We will subjoin here the testimony of a clergyman, in proof that
infidels are not more likely to die in a state of mental distress than
Christians: The Rev. Theodore Clap, in his autobiography, says, "In all
my experience I never saw an unbeliever die in fear. I have seen them
expire without any hope or expectation of the future, but never
in agitation from dread or misgiving as to what might befall them
hereafter. We know that the idea is prevalent that this final event
passes with some dreadful terror or agony of soul. It is imagined, that,
in the infidel's case, the pangs of dissolution are greatly augmented
by the upbraidings of a guilty conscience, and by the reluctance of
the spirit to be torn from its mortal tenement, and hurried into the
presence of an avenging Judge; but this is all a superstitious fancy. It
is a superstitious fear, from a false education, that causes any one to
die in fear."
The Rev. W. H. Spenser, of the First Parish Church (Massachusetts),
says, "Some of the men most bitterly stigmatized as infidels have been
among the most brilliant and useful minds the world has ever known, and,
when dying and suffering from calumny and scorn, have only to wait for
time to do them justice, and place them in history with the world's
benefactors or saviors. There is not to be found on record one purely
infidel man, in the sense now referred to, whose death-bed was attended
by recantations and remorse." Thus testifies a clergyman.
We will now show from reliable authority that the most ardent faith in
Christ and the Bible, and the most rigid and conscientious observance of
their doctrines and precepts, do not guarantee permanent acquiescence
or satisfaction, or protect the mind from the most violent mental
perturbation in the hour of death. John Calvin stood in the first ranks
of the Church militant in his time, and was considered by many
the leading clergyman in Christendom. Hear what Martin Luther, his
co-laborer, says with respect to his mortal exit: "He died forlorn and
forsaken of God, blaspheming to the very end.... He died of scarlet
fever, overrun and eaten up by ulcerous abscesses, the stench of which
drove every person away. He gave up the ghost, despairing of salvation,
and evoking devils from the abyss, and uttering oaths most horrible,
and blasphemies most frightful." Then tell us no more about infidels
recanting and dying unhappy, after reading this case. Yet all the cases
and evidences cited above only tend to show that no forms of religious
belief have any thing specially to do with the condition of mind in
the hour of mortal dissolution, except so far as that belief has
been invested with groundless, superstitious fears. Hence persons who
distribute death-bed tracts are in rather small business. We like the
answer of a liberal-minded man, who, when in his dying moments he was
asked by a priest if he had made his peace with his God, replied, "We
have never had any unfriendly words." We don't believe there can be a
case found in all Christendom of an infidel repenting whose parents were
unbelievers, so that he was not educated and biased in favor of any form
of religious faith or belief.