I have infinite respect for the inventors, the thinkers, the discoverers, and above all, for the un- known millions who have, without the hope of fame, lived and labored for the ones they loved.
FIFTH INTERVIEW,
_Parson. You had belter join the church; it is the safer way.
Sinner. I can't live up to your doctrines, and you know it.
Parson. Well, you can come as near it in the church as out; and forgiveness
will be easier if you join us.
Sinner. What do you mean by that?
Parson. I will tell you. If you join the church, and happen to back-slide now and then, Christ will say to his Father: "That man is a "friend of mine, and you may charge his account to me."_
_Question_. What have you to say about the fifth sermon of the Rev. Mr. Talmage in reply to you?
_Answer_. The text from which he preached is: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"
I am compelled to answer these questions in the negative. That is one reason why I am an infidel.
I do not believe that anybody can gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. That is exactly my doctrine.
But the doctrine of the church is, that you can. The
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church says, that just at the last, no matter if you have spent your whole life in raising thorns and thistles, in planting and watering and hoeing and plowing thorns and thistles--that just at the last, if you will repent, between hoeing the last thistle and taking the last breath, you can reach out the white and palsied hand of death and gather from every thorn a cluster of grapes and from every thistle an abundance of figs. The church insists that in this way you can gather enough grapes and figs to last you through all eternity.
My doctrine is, that he who raises thorns must harvest thorns. If you sow thorns, you must reap thorns; and there is no way by which an innocent being can have the thorns you raise thrust into his brow, while you gather his grapes.
But Christianity goes even further than this. It insists that a man can plant grapes and gather thorns.
Mr. Talmage insists that, no matter how good you are, no matter how kind, no matter how much you love your wife and children, no matter how many self-denying acts you do, you will not be allowed to eat of the grapes you raise; that God will step be- tween you and the natural consequences of your goodness, and not allow you to reap what you sow.
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Mr. Talmage insists, that if you have no faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, although you have been good here, you will reap eternal pain as your harvest; that the effect of honesty and kindness will not be peace and joy, but agony and pain. So that the church does insist not only that you can gather grapes from thorns, but thorns from grapes.
I believe exactly the other way. If a man is a good man here, dying will not change him, and he will land on the shore of another world--if there is one--the same good man that he was when he left this; and I do not believe there is any God in this universe who can afford to damn a good man. This God will say to this man: You loved your wife, your children, and your friends, and I love you.
You treated others with kindness; I will treat you in the same way. But Mr. Talmage steps up to his God, nudges his elbow, and says: Although he was a very good man, he belonged to no church; he was a blasphemer; he denied the whale story, and after I explained that Jonah was only in the whale's mouth, he still denied it; and thereupon Mr. Tal- mage expects that his infinite God will fly in a passion, and in a perfect rage will say: What! did he deny that story? Let him be eternally damned!
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Not only this, but Mr. Talmage insists that a man may have treated his wife like a wild beast; may have trampled his child beneath the feet of his rage; may have lived a life of dishonesty, of infamy, and yet, having repented on his dying bed, having made his peace with God through the intercession of his Son, he will be welcomed in heaven with shouts of joy.
I deny it. I do not believe that angels can be so quickly made from rascals. I have but little confi- dence in repentance without restitution, and a hus- band who has driven a wife to insanity and death by his cruelty--afterward repenting and finding himself in heaven, and missing his wife,--were he worthy to be an angel, would wander through all the gulfs of hell until he clasped her once again..
Now, the next question is, What must be done with those who are sometimes good and sometimes bad?
That is my condition. If there is another world, I expect to have the same opportunity of behaving myself that I have here. If, when I get there, I fail to act as I should, I expect to reap what I sow. If, when I arrive at the New Jerusalem, I go into the thorn business, I expect to harvest what I plant. If I am wise enough to start a vineyard, I expect to have grapes in the early fall. But if I do there as I
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have done here--plant some grapes and some thorns, and harvest them together--I expect to fare very much as I have fared here. But I expect year by year to grow wiser, to plant fewer thorns every spring, and more grapes.
_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges that you have taken the ground that the Bible is a cruel book, and has produced cruel people?
_Answer_. Yes, I have taken that ground, and I maintain it. The Bible was produced by cruel people, and in its turn it has produced people like its authors.
The extermination of the Canaanites was cruel.
Most of the laws of Moses were bloodthirsty and cruel. Hundreds of offences were punishable by death, while now, in civilized countries, there are only two crimes for which the punishment is capital. I charge that Moses and Joshua and David and Samuel and Solomon were cruel. I believe that to read and believe the Old Testament naturally makes a man careless of human life. That book has produced hundreds of religious wars, and it has furnished the battle-cries of bigotry for fifteen hundred years.
The Old Testament is filled with cruelty, but its cruelty stops with this world, its malice ends with
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death; whenever its victim has reached the grave, revenge is satisfied. Not so with the New Testament.
It pursues its victim forever. After death, comes hell; after the grave, the worm that never dies. So that, as a matter of fact, the New Testament is in- finitely more cruel than the Old.
Nothing has so tended to harden the human heart as the doctrine of eternal punishment, and that passage: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be "saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned,"
has shed more blood than all the other so-called "sacred books" of all this world.
I insist that the Bible is cruel. The Bible invented instruments of torture. The Bible laid the foundations of the Inquisition. The Bible furnished the fagots and the martyrs. The Bible forged chains not only for the hands, but for the brains of men. The Bible was at the bottom of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Every man who has been persecuted for religion's sake has been persecuted by the Bible. That sacred book has been a beast of prey.
The truth is, Christians have been good in spite of the Bible. The Bible has lived upon the reputations of good men and good women,--men and women who were good notwithstanding the brutality they found
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upon the inspired page. Men have said: "My mother "believed in the Bible; my mother was good; there- "fore, the Bible is good," when probably the mother never read a chapter in it.
The Bible produced the Church of Rome, and Torquemada was a product of the Bible. Philip of Spain and the Duke of Alva were produced by the Bible. For thirty years Europe was one vast battle- field, and the war was produced by the Bible. The re- vocation of the Edict of Nantes was produced by the sacred Scriptures. The instruments of torture--the pincers, the thumb-screws, the racks, were produced by the word of God. The Quakers of New England were whipped and burned by the Bible--their children were stolen by the Bible. The slave-ship had for its sails the leaves of the Bible. Slavery was upheld in the United States by the Bible. The Bible was the auction-block. More than this, worse than this, infinitely beyond the computation of imagination, the despotisms of the old world all rested and still rest upon the Bible. "The powers that be" were sup- posed to have been "ordained of God;" and he who rose against his king periled his soul.
In this connection, and in order to show the state of society when the church had entire control of civil
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and ecclesiastical affairs, it may be well enough to read the following, taken from the _New York Sun_ of March 21, 1882. From this little extract, it will be easy in the imagination to re-organize the government that then existed, and to see clearly the state of so- ciety at that time. This can be done upon the same principle that one scale tells of the entire fish, or one bone of the complete animal:
"From records in the State archives of Hesse- "Darmstadt, dating back to the thirteenth century, "it appears that the public executioner's fee for boiling "a criminal in oil was twenty-four florins; for decapi- "tating with the sword, fifteen florins and-a-half; for "quartering, the same; for breaking on the wheel, "five florins, thirty kreuzers; for tearing a man to "pieces, eighteen florins. Ten florins per head was "his charge for hanging, and he burned delinquents "alive at the rate of fourteen florins apiece. For ap- "plying the 'Spanish boot' his fee was only two "florins. Five florins were paid to him every time he "subjected a refractory witness to the torture of the "rack. The same amount was his due for 'branding "'the sign of the gallows with a red-hot iron upon "'the back, forehead, or cheek of a thief,' as well as "for 'cutting off the nose and ears of a slanderer or
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"'blasphemer.' Flogging with rods was a cheap "punishment, its remuneration being fixed at three "florins, thirty kreuzers."
The Bible has made men cruel. It is a cruel book.
And yet, amidst its thorns, amidst its thistles, amidst its nettles and its swords and pikes, there are some flowers, and these I wish, in common with all good men, to save.
I do not believe that men have ever been made merciful in war by reading the Old Testament. I do not believe that men have ever been prompted to break the chain of a slave by reading the Pentateuch.
The question is not whether Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix were cruel. I have said nothing about John Howard, nothing about Abbott Lawrence.