Neither must we imagine that our civilization is the only one in the world. They had no locks and keys in Japan until that country was visited by Christians, and they are now used only in those ports where Christians are allowed to enter. It has often been claimed that there is but one way to make a man temperate, and that is by making him a Christian; and this is claimed in face of the fact that Christian nations are the most intemperate in the world. For nearly thirteen centuries the followers of Mohammed have been absolute teetotalers--not one drunkard under the flag of the star and crescent. Wherever, in Turkey, a man is seen under the influence of liquor, they call him a Christian. You must also remember that almost every Christian nation has held slaves. Only a few years ago England was engaged in the slave trade. A little while before that our Puritan ancestors sold white Quaker children in the Barbadoes, and traded them for rum, sugar, and negro slaves. Even now the latest champion of Christianity upholds slavery, polygamy, and wars of extermination.
Sometimes I suspect that our own civilization is not altogether perfect.
When I think of the penitentiaries crammed to suffocation, and of the many who ought to be in; of the want, the filth, the depravity of the great cities; of the starvation in the manufacturing centers of Great Britain, and, in fact, of all Europe; when I see women working like beasts of burden, and little children deprived, not simply of education, but of air, light and food, there is a suspicion in my mind that Christian civilization is not a complete and overwhelming success.
After all, I am compelled to account for the advance that we have made, by the discoveries and inventions of men of genius. For the future I rely upon the sciences; upon the cultivation of the intellect. I rely upon labor; upon human interests in this world; upon the love of wife and children and home. I do not rely upon sacred books, but upon good men and women. I do not rely upon superstition, but upon knowledge; not upon miracles, but upon facts; not upon the dead, but upon the living; and when we become absolutely civilized, we shall look back upon the superstitions of the world, not simply with contempt, but with pity.
Neither do I rely upon missionaries to convert those whom we are pleased to call "the heathen." Honest commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics. The effort to force a religion upon the people always ends in war. Commerce, founded upon mutual advantage, makes peace. An honest merchant is better than a missionary.
Spain was blessed with what is called Christian civilization, and yet, for hundreds of years, that government was simply an organized crime.
When one pronounces the name of Spain, he thinks of the invasion of the New World, the persecution in the Netherlands, the expulsion of the Jews, and the Inquisition. Even to-day, the Christian nations of Europe preserve themselves from each other by bayonet and ball. Prussia has a standing army of six hundred thousand men, France a half million, and all their neighbors a like proportion. These countries are civilized.
They are in the enjoyment of Christian governments--have their hundreds of a thousands of ministers, and the land covered with cathedrals and churches--and yet every nation is nearly beggared by keeping armies in the field. Christian kings have no confidence in the promises of each other. What they call peace is the little time necessarily spent in reloading their guns. England has hundreds of ships of war to protect her commerce from other Christians, and to force China to open her ports to the opium trade. Only the other day the Prime Minister of China, in one of his dispatches to the English government, used substantially the following language: "England regards the opium question simply as one of trade, but to China, it has a moral aspect." Think of Christian England carrying death and desolation to hundreds of thousands in the name of trade. Then think of heathen China protesting in the name of morality.
At the same time England has the impudence to send missionaries to China.
What has been called Christianity has been a disturber of the public peace in all countries and at all times. Nothing has so alienated nations, nothing has so destroyed the natural justice of mankind, as what has been known as religion. The idea that all men must worship the same God, believe the same dogmas, has for thousands of years plucked with bloody hands the flower of pity from the human heart.
Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies.
It is not a result of "inspiration." It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge--that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized.
_Question_. Since Laplace and other most distinguished astronomers hold to the theory that the earth was originally in a gaseous state, and then a molten mass in which the germs, even, of vegetable or animal life, could not exist, how do you account for the origin of life on this planet without a "Creator"?--Dr. T. B. Taylor.
_Answer._ Whether or not "the earth was originally in a gaseous state and afterwards a molten mass in which the germs of vegetable and animal life could not exist," I do not know. My belief is that the earth as it is, and as it was, taken in connection with the influence of the sun, and of other planets, produced whatever has existed or does exist on the earth. I do not see why gas would not need a "creator" as much as a vegetable. Neither can I imagine that there is any more necessity for some one to start life than to start a molten mass. There may be now portions of the world in which there is not one particle of vegetable life. It may be that on the wide waste fields of the Arctic zone there are places where no vegetable life exists, and there may be many thousand miles where no animal life can be found. But if the poles of the earth could be changed, and if the Arctic zone could be placed in a different relative position to the sun, the snows would melt, the hills would appear, and in a little while even the rocks would be clothed with vegetation. After a time vegetation would produce more soil, and in a few thousand years forests would be filled with beasts and birds.
I think it was Sir William Thomson who, in his effort to account for the origin of life upon this earth, stated that it might have come from some meteoric stone falling from some other planet having in it the germs of life. What would you think of a farmer who would prepare his land and wait to have it planted by meteoric stones? So, what would you think of a Deity who would make a world like this, and allow it to whirl thousands and millions of years, barren as a gravestone, waiting for some vagrant comet to sow the seeds of life?
I believe that back of animal life is the vegetable, and back of the vegetable, it may be, is the mineral. It may be that crystallization is the first step toward what we call life, and yet I believe life is back of that. In my judgment, if the earth ever was in a gaseous state, it was filled with life. These are subjects about which we know but little.
How do you account for chemistry? How do you account for the fact that just so many particles of one kind seek the society of just so many particles of another, and when they meet they instantly form a glad and lasting union? How do you know but atoms have love and hatred? How do you know that the vegetable does not enjoy growing, and that crystallization itself is not an expression of delight? How do you know that a vine bursting into flower does not feel a thrill? We find sex in the meanest weeds--how can you say they have no loves?
After all, of what use is it to search for a creator? The difficulty is not thus solved. You leave your creator as much in need of a creator as anything your creator is supposed to have created. The bottom of your stairs rests on nothing, and the top of your stairs leans upon nothing.
You have reached no solution.
The word "God" is simply born of our ignorance. We go as far as we can, and we say the rest of the way is "God." We look as far as we can, and beyond the horizon, where there is nought so far as we know but blindness, we place our Deity. We see an infinitesimal segment of a circle, and we say the rest is "God."
Man must give up searching for the origin of anything. No one knows the origin of life, or of matter, or of what we call mind. The whence and the whither are questions that no man can answer. In the presence of these questions all intellects are upon a level. The barbarian knows exactly the same as the scientist, the fool as the philosopher. Only those who think that they have had some supernatural information pretend to answer these questions, and the unknowable, the impossible, the unfathomable, is the realm wholly occupied by the "inspired."
We are satisfied that all organized things must have had a beginning, but we cannot conceive that matter commenced to be. Forms change, but substance remains eternally the same. A beginning of substance is unthinkable. It is just as easy to conceive of anything commencing to exist _without_ a cause as _with_ a cause. There must be something for cause to operate upon. Cause operating upon nothing--were such a thing possible--would produce nothing. There can be no relation between cause and nothing. We can understand how things can be arranged, joined or separated--and how relations can be changed or destroyed, but we cannot conceive of creation--of nothing being changed into something, nor of something being made--except from preexisting materials.
_Question_. Since the universal testimony of the ages is in the affirmative of phenomena that attest the continued existence of man after death--which testimony is overwhelmingly sustained by the phenomena of the nineteenth century--what further evidence should thoughtful people require in order to settle the question, "Does death end all?"
_Answer._ I admit that in all ages men have believed in spooks and ghosts and signs and wonders. This, however, proves nothing. Men have for thousands of ages believed the impossible, and worshiped the absurd.
Our ancestors have worshiped snakes and birds and beasts. I do not admit that any ghost ever existed. I know that no miracle was ever performed except in imagination; and what you are pleased to call the "phenomena of the nineteenth century," I fear are on an exact equality with the phenomena of the Dark Ages.
We do not yet understand the action of the brain. No one knows the origin of a thought. No one knows how he thinks, or why he thinks, any more than one knows why or how his heart beats. People, I imagine, have always had dreams. In dreams they often met persons whom they knew to be dead, and it may be that much of the philosophy of the present was born of dreams. I cannot admit that anything supernatural ever has happened or ever will happen. I cannot admit the truth of what you call the "phenomena of the nineteenth century," if by such "phenomena" you mean the reappearance of the dead. I do not deny the existence of a future state, because I do not know. Neither do I aver that there is one, because I do not know. Upon this question I am simply honest. I find that people who believe in immortality--or at least those who say they do--are just as afraid of death as anybody else. I find that the most devout Christian weeps as bitterly above his dead, as the man who says that death ends all. You see the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. Still, I do not say that man is not immortal; but I do say that there is nothing in the Bible to show that he is. The Old Testament has not a word upon the subject--except to show us how we lost immortality. According to that book, man was driven from the Garden of Eden, lest he should put forth his hand and eat of the fruit of the tree of life and live forever. So the fact is, the Old Testament shows us how we lost immortality. In the New Testament we are told to seek for immortality, and it is also stated that "God alone hath immortality."
There is this curious thing about Christians and Spiritualists: The Spiritualists laugh at the Christians for believing the miracles of the New Testament; they laugh at them for believing the story about the witch of Endor. And then the Christians laugh at the Spiritualists for believing that the same kind of things happen now. As a matter of fact, the Spiritualists have the best of it, because their witnesses are now living, whereas the Christians take simply the word of the dead--of men they never saw and of men about whom they know nothing. The Spiritualist, at least, takes the testimony of men and women that he can cross-examine. It would seem as if these gentlemen ought to make common cause. Then the Christians could prove their miracles by the Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists could prove their "phenomena" by the Christians.
I believe that thoughtful people require some additional testimony in order to settle the question, "Does death end all?" If the dead return to this world they should bring us information of value.
There are thousands of questions that studious historians and savants are endeavoring to settle--questions of history, of philosophy, of law, of art, upon which a few intelligent dead ought to be able to shed a flood of light. All the questions of the past ought to be settled. Some modern ghosts ought to get acquainted with some of the Pharaohs, and give us an outline of the history of Egypt. They ought to be able to read the arrow-headed writing and all the records of the past. The hieroglyphics of all ancient peoples should be unlocked, and thoughts and facts that have been imprisoned for so many thousand years should be released and once again allowed to visit brains. The Spiritualists ought to be able to give us the history of buried cities. They should clothe with life the dust of all the past. If they could only bring us valuable information; if they could only tell us about some steamer in distress so that succor could be sent; if they could only do something useful, the world would cheerfully accept their theories and admit their "facts." I think that thoughtful people have the right to demand such evidence. I would like to have the spirits give us the history of all the books of the New Testament and tell us who first told of the miracles. If they could give us the history of any religion, or nation, or anything, I should have far more confidence in the "phenomena of the nineteenth century."
There is one thing about the Spiritualists I like, and that is, they are liberal. They give to others the rights they claim for themselves. They do not pollute their souls with the dogma of eternal pain. They do not slander and persecute even those who deny their "phenomena." But I cannot admit that they have furnished conclusive evidence that death does not end all. Beyond the horizon of this life we have not seen. From the mysterious beyond no messenger has come to me.
For the whole world I would not blot from the sky of the future a single star. Arched by the bow of hope let the dead sleep.
_Question_. How, when, where, and by whom was our present calendar originated,--that is "Anno Domini,"--and what event in the history of the nations does it establish as a fact, if not the birth of Jesus of Nazareth?
_Answer._ I have already said, in answer to a question by another gentleman, that I believe the man Jesus Christ existed, and we now date from somewhere near his birth. I very much doubt about his having been born on Christmas, because in reading other religions, I find that that time has been celebrated for thousands of years, and the cause of it is this:
About the 21st or 22d of December is the shortest day. After that the days begin to lengthen and the sun comes back, and for many centuries in most nations they had a festival in commemoration of that event. The Christians, I presume, adopted this day, and made the birth of Christ fit it. Three months afterward--the 21st of March--the days and nights again become equal, and the day then begins to lengthen. For centuries the nations living in the temperate zones have held festivals to commemorate the coming of spring--the yearly miracle of leaf, of bud and flower. This is the celebration known as Easter, and the Christians adopted that in commemoration of Christ's resurrection. So that, as a matter of fact, these festivals of Christmas and Easter do not even tend to show that they stand for or are in any way connected with the birth or resurrection of Christ. In fact the evidence is overwhelmingly the other way.
While we are on the calendar business it may be well enough to say that we get our numerals from the Arabs, from whom also we obtained our ideas of algebra. The higher mathematics came to us from the same source.
So from the Arabs we receive chemistry, and our first true notions of geography. They gave us also paper and cotton.
Owing to the fact that the earth does not make its circuit in the exact time of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and owing to the fact that it was a long time before any near approach was made to the actual time, all calendars after awhile became too inaccurate for general use, and they were from time to time changed.
Right here, it may be well enough to remark, that all the monuments and festivals in the world are not sufficient to establish an impossible event. No amount of monumental testimony, no amount of living evidence, can substantiate a miracle. The monument only proves the _belief_ of the builders.
If we rely upon the evidence of monuments, calendars, dates, and festivals, all the religions on the earth can be substantiated. Turkey is filled with such monuments and much of the time wasted in such festivals. We celebrate the Fourth of July, but such celebration does not even tend to prove that God, by his special providence, protected Washington from the arrows of an Indian. The Hebrews celebrate what is called the Passover, but this celebration does not even tend to prove that the angel of the Lord put blood on the door-posts in Egypt. The Mohammedans celebrate to-day the flight of Mohammed, but that does not tend to prove that Mohammed was inspired and was a prophet of God.
Nobody can change a falsehood to a truth by the erection of a monument.
Monuments simply prove that people endeavor to substantiate truths and falsehoods by the same means.
_Question_. Letting the question as to hell hereafter rest for the present, how do you account for the hell here--namely, the existence of pain? There are people who, by no fault of their own, are at this present time in misery. If for these there is no life to come, their existence is a mistake; but if there is a life to come, it may be that the sequel to the acts of the play to come will justify the pain and misery of this present time?--Rev. Myron W. Reed.
_Answer._ There are four principal theories:
_First_--That there is behind the universe a being of infinite power and wisdom, kindness, and justice.
_Second_--That the universe has existed from eternity, and that it is the only eternal existence, and that behind it is no creator.
_Third_--That there is a God who made the universe, but who is not all-powerful and who is, under the circumstances, doing the best he can.
_Fourth_--That there is an all-powerful God who made the universe, and that there is also a nearly all-powerful devil, and this devil ravels about as fast as this God knits.
By the last theory, as taught by Plato, it is extremely easy to account for the misery in this world. If we admit that there is a malevolent being with power enough, and with cunning enough, to frequently circumvent God, the problem of evil becomes solved so far as this world is concerned. But why this being was evil is still unsolved; why the devil is malevolent is still a mystery. Consequently you will have to go back of this world, on that theory, to account for the origin of evil.
If this devil always existed, then, of course, the universe at one time was inhabited only by this God and this devil.
If the third theory is correct, we can account for the fact that God does not see to it that justice is always done.
If the second theory is true, that the universe has existed from eternity, and is without a creator, then we must account for the existence of evil and good, not by personalities behind the universe, but by the nature of things.
If there is an infinitely good and wise being who created all, it seems to me that he should have made a world in which innocence should be a sufficient shield. He should have made a world where the just man should have nothing to fear.
My belief is this: We are surrounded by obstacles. We are filled with wants. We must have clothes. We must have food. We must protect ourselves from sun and storm, from heat and cold. In our conflict with these obstacles, with each other, and with what may be called the forces of nature, all do not succeed. It is a fact in nature that like begets like; that man gives his constitution, at least in part, to his children; that weakness and strength are in some degree both hereditary.
This is a fact in nature. I do not hold any god responsible for this fact--filled as it is with pain and joy. But it seems to me that an infinite God should so have arranged matters that the bad would not pass--that it would die with its possessor--that the good should survive, and that the man should give to his son, not the result of his vices, but the fruit of his virtues.
I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this. If he allows injustice to prevail here, why will he not allow the same thing in the world to come? If there is any being with power to prevent it, why is crime permitted? If a man standing upon the railway should ascertain that a bridge had been carried off by a flood, and if he also knew that the train was coming filled with men, women, and children; with husbands going to their wives, and wives rejoining their families; if he made no effort to stop that train; if he simply sat down by the roadside to witness the catastrophe, and so remained until the train dashed off the precipice, and its load of life became a mass of quivering flesh, he would be denounced by every good man as the most monstrous of human beings. And yet this is exactly what the supposed God does. He, if he exists, sees the train rushing to the gulf. He gives no notice. He sees the ship rushing for the hidden rock. He makes no sign. And he so constructed the world that assassins lurk in the air--hide even in the sunshine--and when we imagine that we are breathing the breath of life, we are taking into ourselves the seeds of death.
There are two facts inconsistent in my mind--a martyr and a God.
Injustice upon earth renders the justice of heaven impossible.