I have given you my honest thought. Surely investigation is better than
unthinking faith. Surely reason is a better guide than fear. This world
should be controlled by the living, not by the dead. The grave is not a
throne, and a corpse is not a king. Man should not try to live on ashes.
The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living.
More than this cannot be said. About this world little is known,--about
another world, nothing.
Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The
makers of our creeds were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have,
has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the ashes of fagot.
Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. They believed in the
logic of fire and sword. They hated reason. They despised thought. They
abhorred liberty.
Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought will give us truth.
When all have the right to think and to express their thoughts, every
brain will give to all the best it has. The world will then be filled
with intellectual wealth.
As long as men and women are afraid of the church, as long as a minister
inspires fear, as long as people reverence a thing simply because
they do not understand it, as long as it is respectable to lose your
self-respect, as long as the church has power, as long as mankind
worship a book, just so long will the world be filled with intellectual
paupers and vagrants, covered with the soiled and faded rags of
superstition.
As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she
will be the slave of man. The Bible was not written by a woman. Within
its lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is
regarded as the property of man. She is made to ask forgiveness for
becoming a mother. She is as much below her husband, as her husband is
below Christ. She is not allowed to speak. The gospel is too pure to be
spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence.
In the Bible will be found no description of a civilized home. The free
mother surrounded by free and loving children, adored by a free man, her
husband, was unknown to the inspired writers of the Bible. They did not
believe in the democracy of home--in the republicanism of the fireside.
These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the rights of children. They
were the advocates of brute force--the disciples of the lash. They knew
nothing of human rights. Their doctrines have brutalized the homes of
millions, and filled the eyes of infancy with tears.
Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a book, from the slavery of
dead ignorance, from the aristocracy of the air.
There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and
women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are
broken--until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity
is not mistaken for wisdom--until mental cowardice ceases to be known
as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the
dead--until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what
we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait
until teachers take the place of preachers--until followers become
investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word--Liberty.
Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon--remain not forever in
the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and
make thy home among the children of men!
I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap
from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be
woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won
upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite
sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time"
a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for
child.