THE next church is the Presbyterian, and in my judgment the worst of
all, as far as creed is concerned. This church was founded by John
Calvin, a murderer!
John Calvin, having power in Geneva, inaugurated human torture. Voltaire
abolished torture in France. The man who abolished torture, if the
Christian religion be true, God is now torturing in hell, and the man
who inaugurated torture, is now a glorified angel in heaven. It will not
do.
John Knox started this doctrine in Scotland, and there is this
peculiarity about Presbyterianism--it grows best where the soil is
poorest. I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox
and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!
Imagine a conversation between a block and an ax! As I read their
conversation it seemed to me as though John Knox and John Calvin were
made for each other; that they fitted each other like the upper and
lower jaws of a wild beast. They believed happiness was a crime; they
looked upon laughter as blasphemy; and they did all they could to
destroy every human feeling, and to fill the mind with the infinite
gloom of predestination and eternal death. They taught the doctrine that
God had a right to damn us because he made us. That is just the reason
that he has not a right to damn us. There is some dust. Unconscious
dust! What right has God to change that unconscious dust into a human
being, when he knows that human being will sin; when he knows that human
being will suffer eternal agony? Why not leave him in the unconscious
dust? What right has an infinite God to add to the sum of human agony?
Suppose I knew that I could change that piece of furniture into a
living, sentient human being, and I knew that that being would suffer
untold agony forever. If I did it, I would be a fiend. I would leave
that being in the unconscious dust.
And yet we are told that we must believe such a doctrine or we are to be
eternally damned! It will not do.
In 1839 there was a division in this church, and they had a lawsuit to
see which was the church of God. And they tried it by a judge and jury,
and the jury decided that the new school was the church of God, and then
they got a new trial, and the next jury decided that the old school
was the church of God, and that settled it. That church teaches that
infinite innocence was sacrificed for me! I do not want it! I do not
wish to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go there
because I ought to go there. I have said, and I say again, I do not wish
to be a charity angel. I have no ambition to become a winged pauper of
the skies.
The other day a young gentleman, a Presbyterian who had just been
converted, came to me and he gave me a tract, and he told me he was
perfectly happy. Said I, "Do you think a great many people are going to
hell?" "Oh, yes." "And you are perfectly happy?" Well, he did not know
as he was, quite. "Would not you be happier if they were all going to
heaven?" "Oh, yes." "Well, then, you are not perfectly happy?" No,
he did not think he was. "When you get to heaven, then you will be
perfectly happy?" "Oh, yes." "Now, when we are only going to hell, you
are not quite happy; but when we are in hell, and you in heaven, then
you will be perfectly happy? You will not be as decent when you get to
be an angel as you are now, will you?" "Well," he said, "that was not
exactly it." Said I, "Suppose your mother were in hell, would you be
happy in heaven then?" "Well," he says, "I suppose God would know the
best place for mother." And I thought to myself, then, if I was a woman,
I would like to have five or six boys like that.
It will not do. Heaven is where those are we love, and those who love
us. And I wish to go to no world unless I can be accompanied by those
who love me here. Talk about the consolations of this infamous doctrine.
The consolations of a doctrine that makes a father say, "I can be happy
with my daughter in hell;" that makes a mother say, "I can be happy with
my generous, brave boy in hell;" that makes a boy say, "I can enjoy the
glory of heaven with the woman who bore me, the woman _who would have
died for me_, in eternal agony." And they call that tidings of great
joy.
No church has done more to fill the world with gloom than the
Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and hellish. The
Presbyterian god is the monster of monsters. He is an eternal
executioner, jailer and turnkey. He will enjoy forever the shrieks
of the lost,--the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the
Presbyterian god.