Huddled in folds they listened with wide eyes while the shepherds told
of ravening wolves. With great gladness they exchanged their fleeces for
security. Shorn and shivering, they had the happiness of seeing their
protectors comfortable and warm.
Through all the years, those who plowed divided with those who prayed.
Wicked industry supported pious idleness, the hut gave to the cathedral,
and frightened poverty gave even its rags to buy a robe for hypocrisy.
Fear is the dungeon of the mind, and superstition is a dagger with which
hypocrisy assassinates the soul. Courage is liberty. I am in favor of
absolute freedom of thought. In the realm of mind every one is monarch;
every one is robed, sceptered, and crowned, and every one wears the
purple of authority. I belong to the republic of intellectual liberty,
and only those are good citizens of that republic who depend upon reason
and upon persuasion, and only those are traitors who resort to brute
force.
Now, I beg of you all to forget just for a few moments that you are
Methodists or Baptists or Catholics or Presbyterians, and let us for an
hour or two remember only that we are men and women. And allow me to
say "man" and "woman" are the highest titles that can be bestowed upon
humanity.
Let us, if possible, banish all fear from the mind. Do not imagine that
there is some being in the infinite expanse who is not willing that
every man and woman should think for himself and herself. Do not imagine
that there is any being who would give to his children the holy torch of
reason, and then damn them for following that sacred light. Let us have
courage.
Priests have invented a crime called "blasphemy," and behind that
crime hypocrisy has crouched for thousands of years. There is but one
blasphemy, and that is injustice. There is but one worship, and that is
justice!
You need not fear the anger of a god that you cannot injure. Rather
fear to injure your fellow-men. Do not be afraid of a crime you can not
commit. Rather be afraid of the one that you may commit. The reason that
you cannot injure God is that the Infinite is conditionless. You cannot
increase or diminish the happiness of any being without changing that
being's condition. If God is conditionless, you can neither injure nor
benefit him.
There was a Jewish gentleman went into a restaurant to get his dinner,
and the devil of temptation whispered in his ear: "Eat some bacon."
He knew if there was anything in the universe calculated to excite the
wrath of an infinite being, who made every shining star, it was to see
a gentleman eating bacon. He knew it, and he knew the infinite being was
looking, that he was the eternal eavesdropper of the universe. But his
appetite got the better of his conscience, as it often has with us all,
and he ate that bacon. He knew it was wrong, and his conscience felt
the blood of shame in its cheek. When he went into that restaurant the
weather was delightful, the sky was as blue as June, and when he came
out the sky was covered with angry clouds, the lightning leaping
from one to the other, and the earth shaking beneath the voice of the
thunder. He went back into that restaurant with a face as white as milk,
and he said to one of the keepers:
"My God, did you ever hear such a fuss about a little piece of bacon?"
As long as we harbor such opinions of infinity; as long as we imagine
the heavens to be filled with such tyranny, just so long the sons of
men will be cringing, intellectual cowards. Let us think, and let us
honestly express our thought.
Do not imagine for a moment that I think people who disagree with me
are bad people. I admit, and I cheerfully admit, that a very large
proportion of mankind, and a very large majority, a vast number are
reasonably honest. I believe that most Christians believe what they
teach; that most ministers are endeavoring to make this world better.
I do not pretend to be better than they are. It is an intellectual
question. It is a question, first, of intellectual liberty, and after
that, a question to be settled at the bar of human reason. I do not
pretend to be better than they are. Probably I am a good deal worse than
many of them, but that is not the question. The question is: Bad as
I am, have I the right to think? And I think I have for two reasons:
First, I cannot help it. And secondly, I like it. The whole question is
right at a point. If I have not a right to express my thoughts, who has?
"Oh," they say, "we will allow you to think, we will not burn you."
"All right; why won't you burn me?"
"Because we think a decent man will allow others to think and to express
his thought."
"Then the reason you do not persecute me for my thought is that you
believe it would be infamous in you?"
"Yes."
"And yet you worship a God who will, as you declare, punish me forever?"
Surely an infinite God ought to be as just as man. Surely no God can
have the right to punish his children for being honest. He should not
reward hypocrisy with heaven, and punish candor with eternal pain.
The next question then is: Can I commit a sin against God by thinking?
If God did not intend I should think, why did he give me a thinker? For
one, I am convinced, not only that I have the right to think, but that
it is my duty to express my honest thoughts. Whatever the gods may say
we must be true to ourselves.
We have got what they call the Christian system of religion, and
thousands of people wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack that
system.
There are many good things about it, and I shall never attack anything
that I believe to be good! I shall never fear to attack anything I
honestly believe to be wrong! We have what they call the Christian
religion, and I find, just in proportion that nations have been
religious, just in the proportion they have clung to the religion of
their founders, they have gone back to barbarism. I find that Spain,
Portugal, Italy, are the three worst nations in Europe. I find that the
nation nearest infidel is the most prosperous--France.
And so I say there can be no danger in the exercise of absolute
intellectual freedom. I find among ourselves the men who think are at
least as good as those who do not.
We have, I say, a Christian system, and that system is founded upon
what they are pleased to call the "New Testament." Who wrote the New
Testament? I do not know. Who does know? Nobody. We have found many
manuscripts containing portions of the New Testament. Some of these
manuscripts leave out five or six books--many of them. Others more;
others less. No two of these manuscripts agree. Nobody knows who wrote
these manuscripts. They are all written in Greek. The disciples of
Christ, so far as we know, knew only Hebrew. Nobody ever saw so far as
we know, one of the original Hebrew manuscripts.
Nobody ever saw anybody who had seen anybody who had heard of anybody
that had ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the original Hebrew
manuscripts. No doubt the clergy of your city have told you these facts
thousands of times, and they will be obliged to me for having repeated
them once more. These manuscripts are written in what are called capital
Greek letters. They are called Uncial manuscripts, and the New Testament
was not divided into chapters and verses, even, until the year of grace
1551. In the original the manuscripts and gospels are signed by nobody.
The epistles are addressed to nobody; and they are signed by the same
person. All the addresses, all the pretended ear-marks showing to
whom they were written, and by whom they were written, are simply
interpolations, and everybody who has studied the subject knows it.
It is further admitted that even these manuscripts have not been
properly translated, and they have a syndicate now making a new
translation; and I suppose that I can not tell whether I really believe
the New Testament or not until I see that new translation.
You must remember, also, one other thing. Christ never wrote a solitary
word of the New Testament--not one word. There is an account that he
once stooped and wrote something in the sand, but that has not been
preserved. He never told anybody to write a word. He never said:
"Matthew, remember this. Mark, do not forget to put that down. Luke, be
sure that in your gospel you have this. John, do not forget it." Not one
word. And it has always seemed to me that a being coming from another
world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind, should at least
have verified that message by his own signature. Is it not wonderful
that not one word was written by Christ? Is it not strange that he
gave no orders to have his words preserved--words upon which hung the
salvation of a world?
Why was nothing written? I will tell you. In my judgment they expected
the end of the world in a few days. That generation was not to pass away
until the heavens should be rolled up as a scroll, and until the earth
should melt with fervent heat. That was their belief. They believed that
the world was to be destroyed, and that there was to be another coming,
and that the saints were then to govern the earth. And they even went so
far among the apostles, as we frequently do now before election, as to
divide out the offices in advance. This Testament, as it now is, was not
written for hundreds of years after the apostles were dust. Many of the
pretended facts lived in the open mouth of credulity. They were in the
wastebaskets of forgetfulness. They depended upon the inaccuracy of
legend, and for centuries these doctrines and stories were blown about
by the inconstant winds. And when reduced to writing, some gentleman
would write by the side of the passage his idea of it, and the next
copyist would put that in as a part of the text. And, when it was mostly
written, and the church got into trouble, and wanted a passage to help
it out, one was interpolated to order. So that now it is among
the easiest things in the world to pick out at least one hundred
interpolations in the Testament. And I will pick some of them out before
I get through.
And let me say here, once for all, that for the man Christ I have
infinite respect. Let me say, once for all, that the place where man has
died for man is holy ground. And let me say, once for all, that to that
great and serene man I gladly pay, I gladly pay, the tribute of my
admiration and my tears. He was a reformer in his day. He was an infidel
in his time. He was regarded as a blasphemer, and his life was destroyed
by hypocrites, who have, in all ages, done what they could to trample
freedom and manhood out of the human mind. Had I lived at that time I
would have been his friend, and should he come again he will not find a
better friend than I will be.
That is for the man. For the theological creation I have a different
feeling. If he was, in fact, God, he knew there was no such thing as
death. He knew that what we called death was but the eternal opening of
the golden gates of everlasting joy; and it took no heroism to face a
death that was eternal life.
But when a man, when a poor boy sixteen years of age, goes upon the
field of battle to keep his flag in heaven, not knowing but that death
ends all; not knowing but that when the shadows creep over him, the
darkness will be eternal, there is heroism. For the man who, in the
darkness, said: "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--for that man I
have nothing but respect, admiration, and love. Back of the theological
shreds, rags, and patches, hiding the real Christ, I see a genuine man.
A while ago I made up my mind to find out what was necessary for me to
do in order to be saved. If I have got a soul, I want it saved. I do not
wish to lose anything that is of value.
For thousands of years the world has been asking that question:
"What must we do to be saved?"
Saved from poverty? No. Saved from crime? No. Tyranny? No. But "What
must we do to be saved from the eternal wrath of the God who made us
all?"
If God made us, he will not destroy us. Infinite wisdom never made a
poor investment. Upon all the works of an infinite God, a dividend must
finally be declared. Why should God make failures? Why should he waste
material? Why should he not correct his mistakes, instead of damning
them? The pulpit has cast a shadow over even the cradle. The doctrine
of endless punishment has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. I
despise it, and I defy it.
I made up my mind, I say, to see what I had to do in order to save my
soul according to the Testament, and thereupon I read it. I read the
gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and found that the church had
been deceiving me. I found that the clergy did not understand their own
book; that they had been building upon passages that had been
interpolated; upon passages that were entirely untrue, and I will tell
you why I think so.