It gave us the history of the world--of the stars, and the beginning of all things. It taught the geology of Moses--the astronomy of Joshua and Elijah. It taught the fall of man and the atonement--proved that a Jewish peasant was God--established the existence of hell, purgatory and heaven.
It pretended to have a revelation from God--the Scriptures, in which could be found all knowledge--everything that man could need in the journey of life. Nothing outside of the inspired book--except legends and prayers--could be of any value. Books that contradicted the Bible were hurtful, those that agreed with it--useless. Nothing was of importance except faith, credulity--belief. The church said: "Let philosophy alone, count your beads. Ask no questions, fall upon your knees. Shut your eyes, and save your souls."
What has the church done?
For centuries it kept the earth flat, for centuries it made all the hosts of heaven travel around this world--for centuries it clung to "sacred" knowledge, and fought facts with the ferocity of a fiend. For centuries it hated the useful. It was the deadly enemy of medicine.
Disease was produced by devils and could be cured only by priests, decaying bones, and holy water. Doctors were the rivals of priests. They diverted the revenues.
The church opposed the study of anatomy--was against the dissection of the dead. Man had no right to cure disease--God would do that through his priests.
Man had no right to prevent disease--diseases were sent by God as judgments.
The church opposed inoculation--vaccination, and the use of chloroform and ether. It was declared to be a sin, a crime for a woman to lessen the pangs of motherhood. The church declared that woman must bear the curse of the merciful Jehovah.
What has the church done?
It taught that the insane were inhabited by devils. Insanity was not a disease. It was produced by demons. It could be cured by prayers--gifts, amulets and charms. All these had to be paid for. This enriched the church. These ideas were honestly entertained by Protestants as well as Catholics--by Luther, Calvin, Knox and Wesley.
What has the church done?
It taught the awful doctrine of witchcraft. It filled the darkness with demons--the air with devils, and the world with grief and shame. It charged men, women and children with being in league with Satan to injure their fellows. Old women were convicted for causing storms at sea--for preventing rain and for bringing frost. Girls were convicted for having changed themselves into wolves, snakes and toads. These witches were burned for causing diseases--for selling their souls and for souring beer. All these things were done with the aid of the Devil who sought to persecute the faithful, the lambs of God. Satan sought in many ways to scandalize the church. He sometimes assumed the appearance of a priest and committed crimes.
On one occasion he personated a bishop--a bishop renowned for his sanctity--allowed himself to be discovered and dragged from the room of a beautiful widow. So perfectly did he counterfeit the features and form of the bishop, that many who were well acquainted with the prelate, were actually deceived, and the widow herself thought her lover was the bishop. All this was done by the Devil to bring reproach upon holy men.
Hundreds of like instances could be given, as the war waged between demons and priests was long and bitter.
These popes and priests--these clergymen, were not hypocrites. They believed in the New Testament--in the teachings of Christ, and they knew that the principal business of the Savior was casting out devils.
What has the church done?
It made the wife a slave--the property of the husband, and it placed the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband. It taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother. It induced millions of pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life--to take the veil woven of night and death, to wear the habiliments of the dead--made them believe that they were the brides of Christ.
For my part, I would as soon be a widow as the bride of a man who had been dead for eighteen hundred years.
The poor deluded girls imagined that they, in some mysterious way, were in spiritual wedlock united with God. All worldly desires were driven from their hearts. They filled their lives with fastings--with prayers--with self-accusings. They forgot fathers and mothers and gave their love to the invisible. They were the victims, the convicts of superstition--prisoners in the penitentiaries of God. Conscientious, good, sincere--insane.
These loving women gave their hearts to a phantom, their lives to a dream.
A few years ago, at a revival, a fine buxom girl was "converted," "born again." In her excitement she cried, "I'm married to Christ--I'm married to Christ." In her delirium she threw her arms around the neck of an old man and again cried, "I'm married to Christ." The old man, who happened to be a kind of skeptic, gently removed her hands, saying at the same time: "I don't know much about your husband, but I have great respect for your father-in-law."
Priests, theologians, have taken advantage of women--of their gentleness--their love of approbation. They have lived upon their hopes and fears. Like vampires, they have sucked their blood. They have made them responsible for the sins of the world. They have taught them the slave virtues--meekness, humility--implicit obedience. They have fed their minds with mistakes, mysteries and absurdities. They have endeavored to weaken and shrivel their brains, until, to them, there would be no possible connection between evidence and belief--between fact and faith.
What has the church done?
It was the enemy of commerce--of business. It denounced the taking of interest for money. Without taking interest for money, progress is impossible. The steamships, the great factories, the railroads have all been built with borrowed money, money on which interest was promised and for the most part paid.
The church was opposed to fire insurance--to life insurance. It denounced insurance in any form as gambling, as immoral. To insure your life was to declare that you had no confidence in God--that you relied on a corporation instead of divine providence. It was declared that God would provide for your widow and your fatherless children.
To insure your life was to insult heaven.
What has the church done?
The church regarded epidemics as the messengers of the good God. The "Black Death" was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some and whose justice murdered the rest. To stop the scourge, they tried to soften the heart of God by kneelings and prostrations--by processions and prayers--by burning incense and by making vows. They did not try to remove the cause. The cause was God. They did not ask for pure water, but for holy water. Faith and filth lived or rather died together.
Religion and rags, piety and pollution kept company. Sanctity kept its odor.
What has the church done?
It was the enemy of art and literature. It destroyed the marbles of Greece and Rome. Beauty was Pagan. It destroyed so far as it could the best literature of the world. It feared thought--but it preserved the Scriptures, the ravings of insane saints, the falsehoods of the Fathers, the bulls of popes, the accounts of miracles performed by shrines, by dried blood and faded hair, by pieces of bones and wood, by rusty nails and thorns, by handkerchiefs and rags, by water and beads and by a finger of the Holy Ghost.
This was the literature of the church.
I admit that the priests were honest--as honest as ignorant. More could not be said.
What has the church done?
Christianity claims, with great pride, that it established asylums for the insane. Yes, it did. But the insane were treated as criminals. They were regarded as the homes--as the tenement-houses of devils. They were persecuted and tormented. They were chained and flogged, starved and killed. The asylums were prisons, dungeons, the insane were victims and the keepers were ignorant, conscientious, pious fiends. They were not trying to help men, they were fighting devils--destroying demons. They were not actuated by love--but by hate and fear.
What has the church done?
It founded schools where facts were denied, where science was denounced and philosophy despised. Schools, where priests were made--where they were taught to hate reason and to look upon doubts as the suggestions of the Devil. Schools where the heart was hardened and the brain shriveled.
Schools in which lies were sacred and truths profane. Schools for the more general diffusion of ignorance--schools to prevent thought--to suppress knowledge. Schools for the purpose of enslaving the world.
Schools in which teachers knew less than pupils.
What has the church done?
It has used its influence with God to get rain and sunshine--to stop flood and storm--to kill insects, rats, snakes and wild beasts--to stay pestilence and famine--to delay frost and snow--to lengthen the lives of kings and queens--to protect presidents--to give legislators wisdom--to increase collections and subscriptions. In marriages it has made God the party of the third part. It has sprinkled water on babes when they were named. It has put oil on the dying and repeated prayers for the dead.
It has tried to protect the people from the malice of the Devil--from ghosts and spooks, from witches and wizards and all the leering fiends that seek to poison the souls of men. It has endeavored to protect the sheep of God from the wolves of science--from the wild beasts of doubt and investigation. It has tried to wean the lambs of the Lord from the delights, the pleasures, the joys, of life. According to the philosophy of the church, the virtuous weep and suffer, the vicious laugh and thrive, the good carry a cross, and the wicked fly. But in the next life this will be reversed. Then the good will be happy, and the bad will be damned.
The church filled the world with faith and crime.
It polluted the fountains of joy. It gave us an ignorant, jealous, revengeful and cruel God--sometimes merciful--sometimes ferocious. Now just, now infamous--sometimes wise--generally foolish. It gave us a Devil, cunning, malicious, almost the equal of God, not quite as strong--but quicker--not as profound--but sharper.
It gave us angels with wings--cherubim and seraphim and a heaven with harps and hallelujahs--with streets of gold and gates of pearl.
It gave us fiends and imps with wings like bats. It gave us ghosts and goblins, spooks and sprites, and little devils that swarmed in the bodies of men, and it gave us hell where the souls of men will roast in eternal flames. Shall we thank the church? Shall we thank the orthodox churches?
Shall we thank them for the hell they made here? Shall we thank them for the hell of the future?
II.
WE must remember that the church was founded and has been protected by God, that all the popes, and cardinals, all the bishops, priests and monks, all the ministers and exhorters were selected and set apart--all sanctified and enlightened by the infinite God--that the Holy Scriptures were inspired by the same Being, and that all the orthodox creeds were really made by him.
We know what these men--filled with the Holy Ghost--have done. We know the part they have played. We know the souls they have saved and the bodies they have destroyed. We know the consolation they have given and the pain they have inflicted--the lies they have defended--the truths they have denied. We know that they convinced millions that celibacy is the greatest of all virtues--that women are perpetual temptations, the enemies of true holiness--that monks and priests are nobler than fathers, that nuns are purer than mothers. We know that they taught the blessed absurdity of the Trinity--that God once worked at the trade of a carpenter in Palestine. We know that they divided knowledge into sacred and profane--taught that Revelation was sacred--that Reason was blasphemous--that faith was holy and facts false. That the sin of Adam and Eve brought disease and pain, vice and death into the world. We know that they have taught the dogma of special providence--that all events are ordered and regulated by God--that he crowns and uncrowns kings--preserves and destroys--guards and kills--that it is the duty of man to submit to the divine will, and that no matter how much evil there may be--no matter how much suffering--how much pain and death, man should pour out-his heart in thankfulness that it is no worse.
Let me be understood. I do not say and I do not think that the church was dishonest, that the clergy were insincere. I admit that all religions, all creeds, all priests, have been naturally produced. I admit, and cheerfully admit, that the believers in the supernatural have done some good--not because they believed in gods and devils--but in spite of it.
I know that thousands and thousands of clergymen are honest, self-denying and humane--that they are doing what they believe to be their duty--doing what they can to induce men and women to live pure and noble lives. This is not the result of their creeds--it is because they are human.