Yes, all for you. I wanted to save some, I wanted to protect the young and the weak minded.
"Did you believe the Bible, the miracles--that I was God, that I was born of a virgin and kept money in the mouth of a fish?"
Yes, I believed it all. My reason was the slave of faith.
"Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joys of thy Lord. I was hungry and you gave me meat, naked and you clothed me.."
Another soul arises.
"What is your name?"
Giordano Bruno.
"Were you a Christian?"
At one time I was, but for many years I was a philosopher, a seeker after truth.
"Did you seek to convert your fellow-men?"
Not to Christianity, but to the religion of reason. I tried to develop their minds, to free them from the slavery of ignorance and superstition. In my day the church taught the holiness of credulity--the virtue of unquestioning obedience, and in your name tortured and destroyed the intelligent and courageous. I did what I could to civilize the world, to make men tolerant and merciful, to soften the hearts of priests, and banish torture from the world. I expressed my honest thoughts and walked in the light of reason.
"Did you believe the Bible, the miracles? Did you believe that I was God, that I was born of a virgin and that I suffered myself to be killed by the Jews to appease the wrath of God--that is, of myself--so that God could save the souls of a few?"
"No, I did not. I did not believe that God was ever born into my world, or that God learned the trade of a carpenter, or that he 'increased in knowledge,' or that he cast devils out of men, or that his garments could cure diseases, or that he allowed himself to be murdered, and in the hour of death "forsook" himself. These things I did not and could not believe. But I did all the good I could. I enlightened the ignorant, comforted the afflicted, defended the innocent, divided even my poverty with the poor, and did the best I could to increase the happiness of my fellow-men. I was a soldier in the army of progress.--I was arrested, imprisoned, tried and convicted by the church--by the 'Triumphant Beast.' I was burned at the stake by ignorant and heartless priests and my ashes given to the winds."
Then Christ, his face growing dark, his brows contracted with wrath, with uplifted hands, with half averted face, cries or rather shrieks: "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
This is the justice of God--the mercy of the compassionate Christ.
This is the belief, the dream and hope of the orthodox theologian--"the consummation devoutly to be wished."
Theology makes God a monster, a tyrant, a savage; makes man a servant, a serf, a slave; promises heaven to the obedient, the meek, the frightened, and threatens the self-reliant with the tortures of hell.
It denounces reason and appeals to the passions--to hope and fear.
It does not answer the arguments of those who attack, but resorts to sophistry, falsehood and slander. It is incapable of advancement. It keeps its back to the sunrise, lives on myth and miracle, and guards with a misers care the "sacred" superstitions of the past.
In the great struggle between the supernatural and the natural, between gods and men, we have passed midnight. All the forces of civilization, all the facts that have been found, all the truths that have been discovered are the allies of science--the enemies of the supernatural.
We need no myths, no miracles, no gods, no devils.
IX.
FOR thousands of generations the myths have been taught and the miracles believed. Every mother was a missionary and told with loving care the falsehoods of "faith" to her babe. The poison of superstition was in the mother's milk. She was honest and affectionate and her character, her goodness, her smiles and kisses, entered into, mingled with, and became a part of the superstition that she taught. Fathers, friends and priests united with the mothers, and the children thus taught, became the teachers of their children and so the creeds were kept alive.
Childhood loves the romantic, the mysterious, the monstrous. It lives in a world where cause has nothing to do with effect, where the fairy waves her hand and the prince appears. Where wish creates the thing desired and facts become the slaves of amulet and charm. The individual lives the life of the race, and the child is charmed with what the race in its infancy produced.
There seems to be the same difference between mistakes and facts that there is between weeds and corn. Mistakes seem to take care of themselves, while the facts have to be guarded with all possible care.
Falsehoods like weeds flourish without care. Weeds care nothing for soil or rain. They not only ask no help but they almost defy destruction. In the minds of children, superstitions, legends, myths and miracles find a natural, and in most instances a lasting home. Thrown aside in manhood, forgotten or denied, in old age they oft return and linger to the end.
This in part accounts for the longevity of religious lies. Ministers with clasped hands and uplifted eyes ask the man who is thinking for himself how he can be wicked and heartless enough to attack the religion of his mother. This question is regarded by the clergy as unanswerable.
Of course it is not to be asked by the missionaries, of the Hindus and the Chinese. The heathen are expected to desert the religion of their mothers as Christ and his apostles deserted the religion of their mothers. It is right for Jews and heathen, but not for thinkers and philosophers.
A cannibal was about to kill a missionary for food.
The missionary objected and asked the cannibal how he could be so cruel and wicked.
The cannibal replied that he followed the example of his mother. "My mother," said he, "was good enough for me. Her religion is my religion.
The last time I saw her she was sitting, propped up against a tree, eating cold missionary."
But now the mother argument has mostly lost its force, and men of mind are satisfied with nothing less than truth.
The phenomena of nature have been investigated and the supernatural has not been found. The myths have faded from the imagination, and of them nothing remains but the poetic. The miraculous has become the absurd, the impossible. Gods and phantoms have been driven from the earth and sky. We are living in a natural world.
Our fathers, some of them, demanded the freedom of religion. We have taken another step. We demand the Religion of Freedom.
O Liberty, thou art the god of my idolatry! Thou art the only deity that hateth bended knees. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand erect! They do not cringe, or crawl, or bend their foreheads to the earth. The dust has never borne the impress of their lips. Upon thy altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes, nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things that good men hate--the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou hast no popes, no priests, who stand between their fellow-men and thee. Thou carest not for foolish forms, or selfish prayers. At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, virtue does not tremble, superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but Reason holds aloft her inextinguishable torch whose holy light will one day flood the world.