So, too, Mr. Peters takes the ground that "we are indebted to Christianity for our chronology."
According to Christianity this world has been peopled about six thousand years. Christian chronology gives the age of the first man, and then gives the line from father to son down to the flood, and from the flood down to the coming of Christ, showing that men have been upon the earth only about six thousand years. This chronology is infinitely absurd, and I do not believe that there is an intelligent, well-educated Christian in the world, having examined the subject, who will say that the Christian chronology is correct.
Neither can it, I think, truthfully be said that "we are indebted to Christianity for the continuation of history." The best modern historians of whom I have any knowledge are Voltaire, Hume, Gibbon, Buckle and Draper.
Neither can I admit that "we are indebted to Christianity for natural philosophy."
I do not deny that some natural philosophers have also been Christians, or, rather, that some Christians have been natural philosophers to the extent that their Christianity permitted. But Lamarck and Humboldt and Darwin and Spencer and Haeckel and Huxley and Tyndall have done far more for natural philosophy than they have for orthodox religion.
Whoever believes in the miraculous must be the enemy of natural philosophy. To him there is something above nature, liable to interfere with nature. Such a man has two classes of ideas in his mind, each inconsistent with the other. To the extent that he believes in the supernatural he is incapacitated for dealing with the natural, and to that extent fails to be a philosopher. Philosophy does not include the caprice of the Infinite. It is founded on the absolute integrity and invariability of nature.
Neither do I agree with the reverend gentleman when he says that "we are indebted to Christianity for our knowledge of philology."
The church taught for a long time that Hebrew was the first language and that other languages had been derived from that; and for hundreds and hundreds of years the efforts of philologists were arrested simply because they started with that absurd assumption and believed in the Tower of Babel.
Christianity cannot now take the credit for "metaphysical research." It has always been the enemy of metaphysical research. It never has said to any human being, "Think!" It has always said, "Hear!" It does not ask anybody to investigate. It lays down certain doctrines as absolutely true, and, instead of asking investigation, it threatens every investigator with eternal pain. Metaphysical research is destroying what has been called Christianity, and Christians have always feared it.
This gentleman makes another mistake, and a very common one. This is his argument: Christian countries are the most intelligent; therefore they owe that intelligence to Christianity. Then the next step is taken.
Christianity, being the best, having produced these results, must have been of divine origin.
Let us see what this proves. There was a time when Egypt was the first nation in the world. Could not an Egyptian, at that time have used the same arguments that Mr. Peters uses now, to prove that the religion of Egypt was divine? Could he not then have said: "Egypt is the most intelligent, the most civilized and the richest of all nations; it has been made so by its religion; its religion is, therefore, divine"?
So there was a time when a Hindoo could have made the same argument.
Certainly this argument could have been made by a Greek. It could have been repeated by a Roman. And yet Mr. Peters will not admit that the religion of Egypt was divine, or that the mythology of Greece was true, or that Jupiter was in fact a god.
Is it not evident to all that if the churches in Europe had been institutions of learning; if the domes of cathedrals had been observatories; if priests had been teachers of the facts in nature, the world would have been far in advance of what it is to-day?
Countries depend on something besides their religion for progress.
Nations with a good soil can get along quite well with an exceedingly poor religion; and no religion yet has been good enough to give wealth or happiness to human beings where the climate and soil were bad and barren.
Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labor of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.
Mr. Peters makes this exceedingly strange statement: "Every discovery in science, invention and art has been the work of Christian men. Infidels have contributed their share, but never one of them has reached the grandeur of originality."
This, I think, so far as invention is concerned, can be answered with one name--John Ericsson, one of the profoundest agnostics I ever met.
I am almost certain that Humboldt and Goethe were original. Darwin was certainly regarded as such.
I do not wish to differ unnecessarily with Mr. Peters, but I have some doubts about Morse having been the inventor of the telegraph.
Neither can I admit that Christianity abolished slavery. Many of the abolitionists in this country were infidels; many of them were Christians. But the church itself did not stand for liberty. The Quakers, I admit, were, as a rule, on the side of freedom. But the Christians of New England persecuted these Quakers, whipped them from town to town, lacerated their naked backs, and maimed their bodied, not only, but took their lives.
Mr. Peters asks: "What name is there among the world's emancipators after which you cannot write the name 'Christian?'" Well, let me give him a few--Voltaire, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin, Lincoln, Darwin.
Mr. Peters asks: "Why is it that in Christian countries you find the greatest amount of physical and intellectual liberty, the greatest freedom of thought, speech, and action?"
Is this true of all? How about Spain and Portugal? There is more infidelity in France than in Spain, and there is far more liberty in France than in Spain.
There is far more infidelity in England than there was a century ago, and there is far more liberty than there was a century ago. There is far more infidelity in the United States than there was fifty years ago, and a hundred infidels to-day where there was one fifty years ago; and there is far more intellectual liberty, far greater freedom of speech and action, than ever before.
A few years ago Italy was a Christian country to the fullest extent.
Now there are a thousand times more liberty and a thousand times less religion.
Orthodoxy is dying; Liberty is growing.
Mr. Ballou, a grandson, or grand-nephew, of Hosea Ballou, seems to have wandered from the faith. As a rule, Christians insist that when one denies the religion of Christian parents he is an exceedingly bad man, but when he denies the religion of parents not Christians, and becomes a Christian, that he is a very faithful, good and loving son.
Mr. Ballou insists that God has the same right to punish us that Nature has, or that the State has. I do not think he understands what I have said. The State ought not to punish for the sake of punishment. The State may imprison, or inflict what is called punishment, first, for its own protection, and, secondly, for the reformation of the punished. If no one could do the State any injury, certainly the State would have no right to punish under the plea of protection; and if no human being could by any possibility be reformed, then the excuse of reformation could not be given.
Let us apply this: If God be infinite, no one can injure him. Therefore he need not punish anybody or damn anybody or burn anybody for his protection.
Let us take another step. Punishment being justified only on two grounds--that is, the protection of society and the reformation of the punished--how can eternal punishment be justified? In the first place, God does not punish to protect himself, and, in the second place, if the punishment is to be forever, he does not punish to reform the punished.
What excuse then is left?
Let us take still another step. If, instead of punishment, we say "consequences," and that every good man has the right to reap the good consequences of good actions, and that every bad man must bear the consequences of bad actions, then you must say to the good: If you stop doing good you will lose the harvest. You must say to the bad: If you stop doing bad you need not increase your burdens. And if it be a fact in Nature that all must reap what they sow, there is neither mercy nor cruelty in this fact, and I hold no God responsible for it. The trouble with the Christian creed is that God is described as the one who gives rewards and the one who inflicts eternal pain.
There is still another trouble. This God, if infinite, must have known when he created man, exactly who would be eternally damned. What right had he to create men, knowing that they were to be damned?
So much for Mr. Ballou.
The Rev. Dr. Hillier seems to reason in a kind of circle. He takes the ground, in the first place, that "infidelity, Christianity, science, and experience all agree, without the slightest tremor of uncertainty, in the inexorable law that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap."
He then takes the ground that, "if we wish to be rid of the harvest, we must not sow the seed; if we would avoid the result, we must remove the cause; the only way to be rid of hell is to stop doing evil; that this, and this only, is the way to abolish an eternal penitentiary."
Very good; but that is not the point. The real thing under discussion is this: Is this life a state of probation, and if a man fails to live a good life here, will he have no opportunity for reformation in another world, if there be one? Can he cease to do evil in the eternal penitentiary? and if he does, can he be pardoned--can he be released?
It is admitted that man must bear the consequences of his acts. If the consequences are good, then the acts are good. If the consequences are bad, the acts are bad. Through experience we find that certain acts tend to unhappiness and others to happiness.
Now, the only question is whether we have wisdom enough to live in harmony with our conditions here; and if we fail here, will we have an opportunity of reforming in another world? If not, then the few years that we live here determine whether we shall be angels or devils forever.
It seems to me, if there be another life, that in that life men may do good, and men may do evil; and if they may do good it seems to me that they may reform.
I do not see why God, if there be one, should lose all interest in his children, simply because they leave this world and go where he is. Is it possible that an infinite God does all for his children here, in this poor ignorant world, that it is possible for him to do, and that if he fails to reform them here, nothing is left to do except to make them eternal convicts?
The Rev. Mr. Haldeman mistakes my position. I do not admit that "an infinite God, as revealed in Nature, has allowed men to grow up under conditions which no ordinary mortal can look at in all their concentrated agony and not break his heart."
I do not confess that God reveals himself in Nature as an infinite God, without mercy. I do not admit that there is an infinite Being anywhere responsible for the agonies and tears, for the barbarities and horrors of this life. I cannot believe that there is in the universe a Being with power to prevent these things. I hold no God responsible. I attribute neither cruelty nor mercy to Nature. Nature neither weeps nor rejoices. I cannot believe that this world, as it now is, as it has been, was created by an infinitely wise, powerful, and benevolent God. But it is far better that we should all go down "with souls unsatisfied" to the dreamless grave, to the tongueless silence of the voiceless dust, than that countless millions of human souls should suffer forever.
Eternal sleep is better than eternal pain. Eternal punishment is eternal revenge, and can be inflicted only by an eternal monster.
Mr. George A. Locey endeavors to put his case in an extremely small compass, and satisfies himself with really one question, and that is: "If a man in good health is stricken with disease, is assured that a physician can cure him, but refuses to take the medicine and dies, ought there to be any escape?"
He concludes that the physician has done his duty; that the patient was obdurate and suffered the penalty.
The application he makes is this:
"The Christian's 'tidings of great joy' is the message that the Great Physician tendered freely. Its acceptance is a cure certain, and a life of eternal happiness the reward. If the soul accepts, are they not tidings of great joy; and if the soul rejects, is it not unreasonable on the part of Colonel Ingersoll to try and sneak out and throw the blame on God?"
The answer to this seems easy. The cases are not parallel. If an infinite God created us all, he knew exactly what we would do. If he gave us free will it does not change the result, because he knew how we would use the free will.