Ministers ought to be free. They should be the heralds of the ever coming day, but they are the bats, the owls that inhabit ruins, that hate the light. They denounce honest men who express their thoughts, as blasphemers, and do what they can to close their mouths. For their Bible they ask the protection of law. They wish to be shielded from laughter by the Legislature. They ask that the arguments of their opponents be answered by the courts. This is the result of a due admixture of cowardice, hypocrisy and malice.
What valuable fact has been proclaimed from an orthodox pulpit? What ecclesiastical council has added to the intellectual wealth of the world?
Many centuries ago the church gave to Christendom a code of laws, stupid, unphilosophic and brutal to the last degree.
The church insists that it has made man merciful and just. Did it do this by torturing heretics--by extinguishing their eyes--by flaying them alive? Did it accomplish this result through the Inquisition--by the use of the thumb-screw, the rack and the fagot? Of what science has the church been the friend and champion? What orthodox church has opened its doors to a persecuted truth? Of what use has Christianity been to man?
They tell us that the church has been and is the friend of education.
I deny it. The church founded colleges not to educate men, but to make proselytes, converts, defenders. This was in accordance with the instinct of self-preservation. No orthodox church ever was, or ever will be in favor of real education. A Catholic is in favor of enough education to make a Catholic out of a savage, and the Protestant is in favor of enough education to make a Protestant out of a Catholic, but both are opposed to the education that makes free and manly men.
So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
So, they tell us that the church has built hospitals. This is not true.
Men have not built hospitals because they were Christians, but because they were men. They have not built them for charity--but in self-defence.
If a man comes to your door with the smallpox, you cannot let him in, you cannot kill him. As a necessity, you provide a place for him. And you do this to protect yourself. With this Christianity has had nothing to do.
The church cannot give, because it does not produce. It is claimed that the church has made men and women forgiving. I admit that the church has preached forgiveness, but it has never forgiven an enemy--never. Against the great and brave thinkers it has coined and circulated countless lies. Never has the church told, or tried to tell, the truth about an honest foe.
The church teaches the existence of the supernatural. It believes in the divine sleight-of-hand--in the "presto" and "open sesame" of the Infinite; in some invisible Being who produces effects without causes and causes without effects; whose caprice governs the world and who can be persuaded by prayer, softened by ceremony, and who will, as a reward for faith, save men from the natural consequences of their actions.
The church denies the eternal, inexorable sequence of events.
What Good has the Church Accomplished?
It claims to have preached peace because its founder said, "I came not to bring peace but a sword."
It claims to have preserved the family because its founder offered a hundred-fold here and life everlasting to those who would desert wife and children.
So, it claims to have taught the brotherhood of man and that the gospel is for all the world, because Christ said to the woman of Samaria that he came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and declared that it was not meet to take the bread of the children and cast it unto dogs.
In the name of Christ, who threatened eternal revenge, it has preached forgiveness.
Of what Use are the Orthodox Ministers?
They are the enemies of pleasure. They denounce dancing as one of the deadly sins. They are shocked at the wickedness of the waltz--the pollution of the polka. They are the enemies of the theatre. They slander actors and actresses. They hate them because they are rivals.
They are trying to preserve the sacredness of the Sabbath. It fills them with malice to see the people happy on that day. They preach against excursions and picnics--against those who seek the woods and the sea, the shadows and the waves. They are filled with holy wrath against bicycles and bloomers. They are opposed to divorces. They insist that for the glory of God, husbands and wives who loathe each other should be compelled to live together. They abhor all works of fiction, and love the Bible. They declare that the literary master-pieces of the world are unfit to be read. They think that the people should be satisfied with sermons and poems about death and hell. They hate art--abhor the marbles of the Greeks, and all representations of the human form. They want nothing painted or sculptured but hands, faces and clothes. Most of the priests are prudes, and publicly denounce what they secretly admire and enjoy. In the presence of the nude they cover their faces with their holy hands, but keep their fingers apart. They pretend to believe in moral suasion, and want everything regulated by law. If they had the power, they would prohibit everything that men and women really enjoy.
They want libraries, museums and art galleries closed on the Sabbath.
They would abolish the Sunday paper--stop the running of cars and all public conveyances on the holy day, and compel all the people to enjoy sermons, prayers and psalms.
These dear ministers, when they have poor congregations, thunder against trusts, syndicates, and corporations--against wealth, fashion and luxury. They tell about Dives and Lazarus, paint rich men in hell and beggars in heaven. If their congregations are rich they turn their guns in the other direction.
They have no confidence in education--in the development of the brain. They appeal to hopes and fears. They ask no one to think--to investigate. They insist that all shall believe. Credulity is the greatest of virtues, and doubt the deadliest of sins.
These men are the enemies of science--of intellectual progress. They ridicule and calumniate the great thinkers. They deny everything that conflicts with the "sacred Scriptures." They still believe in the astronomy of Joshua and the geology of Moses. They believe in the miracles of the past, and deny the demonstrations of the present. They are the foes of facts--the enemies of knowledge. A desire to be happy here, they regard as wicked and worldly--but a desire to be happy in another world, as virtuous and spiritual.
Every orthodox church is founded on mistake and falsehood. Every good orthodox minister asserts what he does not know, and denies what he does know.
What are the Orthodox Clergy Doing for the Good of Mankind?
Absolutely nothing.
What harm are they doing?
On every hand they sow the seeds of superstition. They paralyze the minds, and pollute the imaginations of children. They fill their hearts with fear. By their teachings, thousands become insane. With them, hypocrisy is respectable and candor infamous.
They enslave the minds of men. Under their teachings men waste and misdirect their energies, abandon the ends that can be accomplished, dedicate their lives to the impossible, worship the unknown, pray to the inconceivable, and become the trembling slaves of a monstrous myth born of ignorance and fashioned by the trembling hands of fear.
Superstition is the serpent that crawls and hisses in every Eden and fastens its poisonous fangs in the hearts of men.
It is the deadliest foe of the human race.
Superstition is a beggar--a robber, a tyrant.
Science is a benefactor.
Superstition sheds blood.
Science sheds light.
The dear preachers must give up the account of creation--the Garden of Eden, the mud-man, the rib-woman, and the walking, talking, snake. They must throw away the apple, the fall of man, the expulsion, and the gate guarded by angels armed with swords. They must give up the flood and the tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. They must give up Abraham and the wrestling match between Jacob and the Lord. So, the story of Joseph, the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians, the story of Moses in the bullrushes, the burning bush, the turning of sticks into serpents, of water into blood, the miraculous creation of frogs, the killing of cattle with hail and changing dust into lice, all must be given up. The sojourn of forty years in the desert, the opening of the Red Sea, the clothes and shoes that refused to wear out, the manna, the quails and the serpents, the water that ran up hill, the talking of Jehovah with Moses face to face, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the opening of the earth to swallow the enemies of Moses--all must be thrown away.
These good preachers must admit that blowing horns could not throw down the walls of a city, that it was horrible for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter, that the day was not lengthened and the moon stopped for the sake of Joshua, that the dead Samuel was not raised by a witch, that a man was not carried to heaven in a chariot of fire, that the river Jordan was not divided by the stroke of a cloak, that the bears did not destroy children for laughing at a prophet, that a wandering soothsayer did not collect lightnings from heaven to destroy the lives of innocent men, that he did not cause rain and make iron float, that ravens did not keep a hotel where preachers got board and lodging free, that the shadow on a dial was not turned back ten degrees to show that a king was going to recover from a boil, that Ezekiel was not told by God how to prepare a dinner, that Jonah did not take cabin passage in a fish--and that all the miracles in the old Testament are not allegories, or poems, but just old-fashioned lies. And the dear preachers will be compelled to admit that there never was a miraculous babe without a natural father, that Christ, if he lived, was a man and nothing more. That he did not cast devils out of folks--that he did not cure blindness with spittle and clay, nor turn water into wine, nor make fishes and loaves of bread out of nothing--that he did not know where to catch fishes with money in their mouths--that he did not take a walk on the water--that he did not at will become invisible--that he did not pass through closed doors--that he did not raise the dead--that angels never rolled stones from a sepulchre--that Christ did not rise from the dead and did not ascend to heaven.
All these mistakes and illusions and delusions--all these miracles and myths must fade from the minds of intelligent men.
My dear preachers, I beg you to tell the truth. Tell your congregations that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. Tell them that nobody knows who wrote the five books. Tell them that Deuteronomy was not written until about six hundred years before Christ. Tell them that nobody knows who wrote Joshua, or Judges, or Ruth, Samuel, Kings, or Chronicles, Job, or the Psalms, or the Song of Solomon. Be honest, tell the truth. Tell them that nobody knows who wrote Esther--that Ecclesiastes was written long after Christ--that many of the prophecies were written after the events pretended to be foretold had happened.
Tell them that Ezekiel and Daniel were insane. Tell them that nobody knows who wrote the gospels, and tell them that no line about Christ written by a contemporary has been found. Tell them it is all guess--and may be, and perhaps. Be honest. Tell the truth, develop your brains, use all your senses and hold high the torch of Reason.
In a few years the pulpits will be filled with teachers instead of preachers--with thoughtful, brave, and honest men. The congregations will be civilized--intellectually honest and hospitable.
Now, most of the ministers insist that the old falsehoods shall be treated with reverence--that ancient lies with long white beards--wrinkled and bald-headed frauds--round-shouldered and toothless miracles, and palsied mistakes on crutches, shall be called allegories, parables, oriental imagery, inspired poems. In their presence the ungodly should remove their hats. They should respect the mould and moss of antiquity. They should remember that these lies, these frauds, the miracles and mistakes, have for thousands of years ruled, enslaved, and corrupted the human race.
These ministers ought to know that their creeds are based on imagined facts and demonstrated by assertion.
They ought to know that they have no evidence,--nothing but promises and threats. They ought to know that it is impossible to conceive of force existing without and before matter--that it is equally impossible to conceive of matter without force--that it is impossible to conceive of the creation or destruction of matter or force,--that it is impossible to conceive of infinite intelligence dwelling from eternity in infinite space, and that it is impossible to conceive of the creator, or creation, of substance.
The God of the Christian is an enthroned guess--a perhaps--an inference.
No man, and no body of men, can answer the questions of the Whence and Whither. The mystery of existence cannot be explained by the intellect of man.
Back of life, of existence, we cannot go--beyond death we cannot see.
All duties, all obligations, all knowledge, all experience, are for this life, for this world.
We know that men and women and children exist. We know that happiness, for the most part, depends on conduct.
We are satisfied that all the gods are phantoms and that the supernatural does not exist.
We know the difference between hope and knowledge, we hope for happiness here and we dream of joy hereafter, but we do not know. We cannot assert, we can only hope. We can have our dream. In the wide night our star can shine and shed its radiance on the graves of those we love. We can bend above our pallid dead and say that beyond this life there are no sighs--no tears--no breaking hearts.