1626 lines
83 KiB
Plaintext
1626 lines
83 KiB
Plaintext
25 page printout.
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
This file, its printout, or copies of either
|
||
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
|
||
The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
Part 2 -- FIELD - INGERSOLL debate.
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
1887
|
||
|
||
"Doubt is called the beacon of the wise."
|
||
|
||
My Dear Mr. Field:
|
||
|
||
I answer your letter because it is manly, candid and generous.
|
||
It is not often that a minister of the gospel of universal
|
||
benevolence speaks of an unbeliever except in terms of reproach,
|
||
contempt and hatred. The meek are often malicious. The statement in
|
||
your letter, that some of your brethren look upon me as a monster
|
||
on account of my unbelief, tends to show that those who love God
|
||
are not always the friends of their fellow-men.
|
||
|
||
Is it not strange that people who admit that they ought to be
|
||
eternally damned, that they are by nature totally depraved, and
|
||
that there is no soundness or health in them, can be so arrogantly
|
||
egotistic as to look upon others as "monsters"? And yet "some of
|
||
your brethren," who regard unbelievers as infamous, rely for
|
||
salvation entirely on the goodness of another, and expect to
|
||
receive as alms an eternity of joy.
|
||
|
||
The first question that arises between us, is as to the
|
||
innocence of honest error -- as to the right to express an honest
|
||
thought.
|
||
|
||
You must know that perfectly honest men differ on many
|
||
important subjects. Some believe in free trade, others are the
|
||
advocates of protection. There are honest Democrats and sincere
|
||
Republicans. How do you account for these differences? Educated
|
||
men, presidents of colleges, cannot agree upon questions capable of
|
||
solution -- questions that the mind can grasp, concerning which the
|
||
evidence is open to all and where the facts can be with accuracy
|
||
ascertained. How do you explain this? If such differences can exist
|
||
consistently with the good faith of those who differ, can you not
|
||
conceive of honest people entertaining different views on subjects
|
||
about which nothing can be positively known?
|
||
|
||
You do not regard me as a monster. "Some of your brethren" do.
|
||
How do you account for this difference? Of course, your brethren --
|
||
their hearts having been softened by the Presbyterian God -- are
|
||
governed by charity and love. They do not regard me as a monster
|
||
because I have committed an infamous crime, but simply for the
|
||
reason that I have expressed my honest thoughts.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
1
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
What should I have done? I have read the Bible with great
|
||
care, and the conclusion has forced itself upon my mind not only
|
||
that it is not inspired, but that it is not true. Was it my duty to
|
||
speak or act contrary to this conclusion? Was it my duty to remain
|
||
silent? If I had been untrue to myself, if I had joined the
|
||
majority, -- if I had declared the book to be the inspired word of
|
||
God, -- would your brethren still have regarded me as a monster?
|
||
Has religion had control of the world so long that an honest man
|
||
seems monstrous?
|
||
|
||
According to your creed -- according to your Bible -- the same
|
||
Being who made the mind of man, who fashioned every brain, and
|
||
sowed within those wondrous fields the seeds of every thought and
|
||
deed, inspired the Bible's every word, and gave it as a guide to
|
||
all the world. Surely the book should satisfy the brain. And yet,
|
||
there are millions who do not believe in the inspiration of the
|
||
Scriptures. Some of the greatest and best have held the claim of
|
||
inspiration in contempt. No Presbyterian ever stood higher in the
|
||
realm of thought than Humboldt. He was familiar with Nature from
|
||
sands to stars, and gave his thoughts, his discoveries and
|
||
conclusions, "more precious than the tested gold," to all mankind.
|
||
Yet he not only rejected the religion of your brethren, but denied
|
||
the existence of their God. Certainly, Charles Darwin was one of
|
||
the greatest and purest of men, -- as free horn prejudice as the
|
||
mariner's compass, -- desiring only to find amid the mists and
|
||
clouds of ignorance the star of truth. No man ever exerted a
|
||
greater influence on the intellectual world. His discoveries,
|
||
carried to their legitimate conclusion, destroy the creeds and
|
||
sacred Scriptures of mankind. In the light of "Natural Selection,"
|
||
"The Survival of the Fittest," and "The Origin of Species," even
|
||
the Christian religion becomes a gross and cruel superstition. Yet
|
||
Darwin was an honest, thoughtful, brave and generous man.
|
||
|
||
Compare, I beg of you, these men, Humboldt and Darwin, with
|
||
the founders of the Presbyterian Church. Read the life of Spinoza,
|
||
the loving pantheist, and then that of John Calvin, and tell me,
|
||
candidly, which, in your opinion, was a "monster." Even your
|
||
brethren do not claim that men are to be eternally punished for
|
||
having been mistaken as to the truths of geology, astronomy, or
|
||
mathematics. A man may deny the rotundity and rotation of the
|
||
earth, laugh at the attraction of gravitation, scout the nebular
|
||
hypothesis, and hold the multiplication table in abhorrence, and
|
||
yet join at last the angelic choir. I insist upon the same freedom
|
||
of thought in all departments of human knowledge. Reason is the
|
||
supreme and final test.
|
||
|
||
If God has made a revelation to man, it must have been
|
||
addressed to his reason. There is no other faculty that could even
|
||
decipher the address. I admit that reason is a small and feeble
|
||
flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless
|
||
night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet it is the
|
||
only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.
|
||
|
||
You draw a distinction between what you are pleased to call
|
||
"superstition" and religion. You are shocked at the Hindoo mother
|
||
when she gives her child to death at the supposed command of her
|
||
God. What do you think of Abraham, of Jephthah? What is your
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
opinion of jehovah himself? Is not the sacrifice of a child to a
|
||
phantom as horrible in Palestine as in India? Why should a God
|
||
demand a sacrifice from man? Why should the infinite ask anything
|
||
from the finite? Should the sun beg of the glow-worm, and should
|
||
the momentary spark excite the envy or the source of light?
|
||
|
||
You must remember that the Hindoo mother believes that her
|
||
child will be forever blest -- that it will become the especial
|
||
care of the God to whom it has been given. This is a sacrifice
|
||
through a false belief on the part of the mother. She breaks her
|
||
heart for the love of her babe. But what do you think of the
|
||
Christian mother who expects to be happy in heaven, with her child
|
||
a convict in the eternal prison -- a prison in which none die, and
|
||
from which none escape? What do you say of those Christians who
|
||
believe that they, in heaven, will be so filled with ecstasy that
|
||
all the loved of earth will be forgotten -- that all the sacred
|
||
relations of life, and all the passions of the heart, will fade and
|
||
die, so that they will look with stony, unreplying, happy eyes upon
|
||
the miseries of the lost?
|
||
|
||
You have laid down a rule by which superstition can be
|
||
distinguished from religion. It is this: "It makes that a crime
|
||
which is not a crime, and that a virtue which is not a virtue." Let
|
||
us test your religion by this rule.
|
||
|
||
Is it a crime to investigate, to think, to reason, to observe?
|
||
Is it a crime to be governed by that which to you is evidence, and
|
||
is it infamous to express your honest thought? There is also
|
||
another question: Is credulity a virtue? Is the open mouth of
|
||
ignorant wonder the only entrance to Paradise?
|
||
|
||
According to your creed, those who believe are to be saved,
|
||
and those who do not believe are to be eternally lost. When you
|
||
condemn men to everlasting pain for unbelief -- that is to say,
|
||
for, acting in accordance with that which is evidence to them -- do
|
||
you not make that a crime which is not a crime? And when you reward
|
||
men with an eternity of joy for simply believing that which happens
|
||
to be in accord with their minds, do you not make that a virtue
|
||
which is not a virtue? In other words, do you not bring your own
|
||
religion exactly within your own definition of superstition?
|
||
|
||
The truth is, that no one can justly be held responsible for
|
||
his thoughts. The brain thinks without asking our consent. We
|
||
believe, or we disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is
|
||
a result. It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales
|
||
turn in spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of being
|
||
honest or dishonest in the formation of an opinion. The conclusion
|
||
is entirely independent of desire. We must believe, or we must
|
||
doubt, in spite of what we wish.
|
||
|
||
That which must be, has the right to be.
|
||
|
||
We think in spite of ourselves. The brain thinks as the heart
|
||
beats, as the eyes see, as the blood pursues its course in the old
|
||
accustomed ways.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
The question then is, not have we the right to think, -- that
|
||
being a necessity, -- but have we the right to express our honest
|
||
thoughts? You certainly have the right to express yours, and you
|
||
have exercised that right. Some of your brethren, who regard me as
|
||
a monster, have expressed theirs. The question now is, have I the
|
||
right to express mine? In other words, have I the right to answer
|
||
your letter? To make that a crime in me which is a virtue in you,
|
||
certainly comes within your definition of superstition. To exercise
|
||
a right yourself which you deny to me is simply the act of a
|
||
tyrant. Where did you get your right to express your honest
|
||
thoughts? When, and where, and how did I lose mine?
|
||
|
||
You would not burn, you would not even imprison me, because I
|
||
differ with you on a subject about which neither of us knows
|
||
anything. To you the savagery of the Inquisition is only a proof of
|
||
the depravity of man. You are far better than your creed. You
|
||
believe that even the Christian world is outgrowing the frightful
|
||
feeling that fagot, and dungeon, and thumb-screw are legitimate
|
||
arguments, calculated to convince those upon whom they are used,
|
||
that the religion of those who use them was founded by a God of
|
||
infinite compassion. You will admit that he who now persecutes for
|
||
opinion's sake is infamous. And yet, the God you worship will,
|
||
according to your creed, torture through all the endless years the
|
||
man who entertains an honest doubt. A belief in such a God is the
|
||
foundation and cause of all religious persecution. You may reply
|
||
that only the belief in a false God causes believers to be inhuman.
|
||
But you must admit that the Jews believed in the true God, and you
|
||
are forced to say that they were so malicious, so cruel, so savage,
|
||
that they crucified the only Sinless Being who ever lived. This
|
||
crime was committed, not in spite of their religion, but in
|
||
accordance with it. They simply obeyed the command of Jehovah. And
|
||
the followers of this Sinless Being, who, for all these centuries,
|
||
have denounced the cruelty of the Jews for crucifying a man on
|
||
account of his opinion, have destroyed millions and millions of
|
||
their fellow-men for differing with them. And this same Sinless
|
||
Being threatens to torture in eternal fire countless myriads for
|
||
the same offence. Beyond this, inconsistency cannot go. At this
|
||
point absurdity becomes infinite.
|
||
|
||
Your creed transfers the Inquisition to another world, making
|
||
it eternal. Your God becomes, or rather is, an infinite Torquemada,
|
||
who denies to his countless victims even the mercy of death. And
|
||
this you call "a consolation."
|
||
|
||
You insist that at the foundation of every religion is the
|
||
idea of God, According to your creed, all ideas of God, except
|
||
those entertained by those of your faith, are absolutely false. You
|
||
are not called upon to defend the Gods of the nations dead, nor the
|
||
Gods of heretics. It is your business to defend the God of the
|
||
Bible -- the God of the Presbyterian Church. When in the ranks
|
||
doing battle for your creed, you must wear the uniform of your
|
||
church. You dare not say that it is sufficient to insure the
|
||
salvation of a soul to believe in a god, or in some god. According
|
||
to your creed, man must believe in your God. All the nations dead
|
||
believed in gods, and all the worshipers of Zeus, and Jupiter, and
|
||
Isis, and Osiris, and Brahma prayed and sacrificed in vain. Their
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
petitions were not answered, and their souls were not saved. Surely
|
||
you do not claim that it is sufficient to believe in any one of the
|
||
heathen gods.
|
||
|
||
What right have you to occupy the position of the deists, and
|
||
to put forth arguments that even Christians have answered? The
|
||
deist denounced the God of the Bible because of his cruelty, and at
|
||
the same time lauded the God of Nature. The Christian replied that
|
||
the God of Nature was as cruel as the God of the Bible. This answer
|
||
was complete.
|
||
|
||
I feel that you are entitled to the admission that none have
|
||
been, that none are, too ignorant, too degraded, to believe in the
|
||
supernatural; and I freely give you the advantage of this
|
||
admission. Only a few -- and they among the wisest, noblest, and
|
||
purest of the human race -- have regarded all gods as monstrous
|
||
myths. Yet a belief in "the true God" does not seem to make men
|
||
charitable or just. For most people, theism is the easiest solution
|
||
of the universe. They are satisfied with saying that there must be
|
||
a Being who created and who governs the world. But the universality
|
||
of a belief does not tend to establish its truth. The belief in the
|
||
existence of a malignant Devil has been as universal as the belief
|
||
in a beneficent God, yet few intelligent men will say that the
|
||
universality of this belief in an infinite demon even tends to
|
||
prove his existence. In the world of thought, majorities count for
|
||
nothing. Truth has always dwelt with the few.
|
||
|
||
Man has filled the world with impossible monsters, and he has
|
||
been the sport and prey of these phantoms born of ignorance and
|
||
hope and fear. To appease the wrath of these monsters man has
|
||
sacrificed his fellow-man. He has shed the blood of wife and child;
|
||
he has fasted and prayed; he has suffered beyond the power of
|
||
language to express, and yet he has received nothing from these
|
||
gods -- they have heard no supplication. they have answered no
|
||
prayer.
|
||
|
||
You may reply that your God "sends his rain on the just and on
|
||
the unjust," and that this fact proves that he is merciful to all
|
||
alike. I answer, that your God sends his pestilence on the just and
|
||
on the unjust -- that his earthquakes devour and his cyclones rend
|
||
and wreck the loving and the vicious, the honest and the criminal.
|
||
Do not these facts prove that your God is cruel to all alike? In
|
||
other words, do they not demonstrate the absolute impartiality of
|
||
divine negligence?
|
||
|
||
Do you not believe that any honest man of average
|
||
intelligence, having absolute control of the rain, could do vastly
|
||
better than is being done? Certainly there would be no droughts or
|
||
floods; the crops would not be permitted to wither and die, while
|
||
rain was being wasted in the sea. Is it conceivable that a good man
|
||
with power to control the winds would not prevent cyclones? Would
|
||
you not rather trust a wise and honest man with the lightning?
|
||
|
||
Why should an infinitely wise and powerful God destroy the
|
||
good and preserve the vile? Why should he treat all alike here, and
|
||
in another world make an infinite difference? Why should your God
|
||
allow his worshipers, his adorers, to be destroyed by his enemies?
|
||
Why should he allow the honest, the loving, the noble, to perish at
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
the stake? Can you answer these questions? Does it not seem to you
|
||
that your God must have felt a touch of shame when the poor slave
|
||
mother -- one that had been robbed of her babe -- knelt and with
|
||
clasped hands, in a voice broken with sobs, commenced her prayer
|
||
with the words "Our Father"?
|
||
|
||
It gave me pleasure to find that, notwithstanding your creed,
|
||
you are philosophical enough to say that some men are
|
||
incapacitated, by reason of temperament, for believing in the
|
||
existence of a God. Now, if a belief in God is necessary to the
|
||
salvation of the soul, why should God create a soul without this
|
||
capacity? Why should he create souls that he know would be lost?
|
||
You seem to think that it is necessary to be poetical, or dreamy,
|
||
in order to be religious, and by inference, at least, you deny
|
||
certain qualities to me that you deem necessary. Do you account for
|
||
the atheism of Shelley by saying that he was not poetic, and do you
|
||
quote his lines to prove the existence of the very God whose being
|
||
he so passionately denied? Is it possible that Napoleon -- one of
|
||
the most infamous of men -- had a nature so finely strung that he
|
||
was sensitive to the divine influences? Are you driven to the
|
||
necessity of proving the existence of one tyrant by the words of
|
||
another? Personally, I have but little confidence in a religion
|
||
that satisfied the heart of a man who, to gratify his ambition,
|
||
filled half the world with widows and orphans. In regard to
|
||
Agassiz, it is just to say that he furnished a vast amount of
|
||
testimony in favor of the truth of the theories of Charles Darwin,
|
||
and then denied the correctness of these theories -- preferring the
|
||
good opinions of Harvard for a few days to the lasting applause of
|
||
the intellectual world.
|
||
|
||
I agree with you that the world is a mystery, not only, but
|
||
that everything in nature is equally mysterious, and that there is
|
||
no way of escape from the mystery of life and death. To me, the
|
||
crystallization of the snow is as mysterious as the constellations.
|
||
But when you endeavor to explain the mystery of the universe by the
|
||
mystery of God, you do not even exchange mysteries -- you simply
|
||
make one more.
|
||
|
||
Nothing can be mysterious enough to become an explanation.
|
||
|
||
The mystery of man cannot be explained by the mystery of God.
|
||
That mystery still asks for explanation. The mind is so that it
|
||
cannot grasp the idea of an infinite personality, That is beyond
|
||
the circumference. This being so, it is impossible that man can be
|
||
convinced by any evidence of the existence of that which he cannot
|
||
in any measure comprehend. Such evidence would be equally
|
||
incomprehensible with the incomprehensible fact sought to be
|
||
established by it, and the intellect of man can grasp neither the
|
||
one nor the other.
|
||
|
||
You admit that the God of Nature -- that is to say, your God
|
||
-- is as inflexible as nature itself. Why should man worship the
|
||
inflexible? Why should he kneel to the unchangeable? you say that
|
||
your God "does not bend to human thought any more than to human
|
||
will," and that "the more we study him, the more we find that he is
|
||
not what we imagined him to be." So that, after all, the only thing
|
||
you are really certain of in relation to your God is, that he is
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
not what you think he is. Is it not almost absurd to insist that
|
||
such a state of mind is necessary to salvation, or that it is a
|
||
moral restraint, or that it is the foundation of social order?
|
||
|
||
The most religious nations have been the most immoral, the
|
||
cruelest and the most unjust. Italy was far worse under the Popes
|
||
than under the Casars. Was there ever a barbarian nation more
|
||
savage than the Spain of the sixteenth century? Certainly you must
|
||
know that what you call religion has produced a thousand civil
|
||
wars, and has severed with the sword all the natural ties that
|
||
produce "the unity and married calm of States." Theology is the
|
||
fruitful mother of discord; order is the child of reason. If you
|
||
will candidly consider this question -- if you will for a few
|
||
moments forget your preconceived opinions -- you will instantly see
|
||
that the instinct of self-preservation holds society together.
|
||
Religion itself was born of this instinct. People, being ignorant,
|
||
believed that the Gods were jealous and revengeful. They peopled
|
||
space with phantoms that demanded worship and delighted in
|
||
sacrifice and ceremony, phantoms that could be flattered by praise
|
||
and changed by prayer. These ignorant people wished to preserve
|
||
themselves. They supposed that they could in this way avoid
|
||
pestilence and famine, and postpone perhaps the day of death. Do
|
||
you not see that self-preservation lies at the foundation of
|
||
worship? Nations, like individuals, defend and protect themselves.
|
||
Nations, like individuals, have fears, have ideals, and live for
|
||
the accomplishment of certain ends. Men defend their property
|
||
because it is of value. Industry is the enemy of then. Men, as a
|
||
rule, desire to live, and for that reason murder is a crime. Fraud
|
||
is hateful to the victim. The majority of mankind work and produce
|
||
the necessities, the comforts, and the luxuries of life. They wish
|
||
to retain the fruits of their labor. Government is one of the
|
||
instrumentalities for the preservation of what man deems of value.
|
||
This is the foundation of social order, and this holds society
|
||
together.
|
||
|
||
Religion has been the enemy of social order, because it
|
||
directs the attention of man to another world. Religion teaches its
|
||
votaries to sacrifice this world for the sake of that other. The
|
||
effect is to weaken the ties that hold families and States
|
||
together. Of what consequence is anything in this world compared
|
||
with eternal joy?
|
||
|
||
You insist that man is not capable of self-government, and
|
||
that God made the mistake of filling a world with failures -- in
|
||
other words, that man must be governed not by himself, but by your
|
||
God, and that your God produces order, and establishes and
|
||
preserves all the nations of the earth. This being so, your God is
|
||
responsible for the government of this world. Does he preserve
|
||
order in Russia? Is he accountable for Siberia? Did he establish
|
||
the institution of slavery? Was he the founder of the Inquisition?
|
||
|
||
You answer all these questions by calling my attention to "the
|
||
retributions of history." What are the retributions of history? The
|
||
honest were burned at the stake; the patriotic, the generous, and
|
||
the noble were allowed to die in dungeons; whole races were
|
||
enslaved; millions of mothers were robbed of their babes. What were
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
the retributions of history? They who committed these crimes wore
|
||
crowns, and they who justified these infamies were adorned with the
|
||
tiara.
|
||
|
||
You are mistaken when you say that Lincoln at Gettysburg said:
|
||
"Just and true are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty." Something
|
||
like this occurs in his last inaugural, in which he says, --
|
||
speaking of his hope that the war might soon be ended, -- "If it
|
||
shall continue until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be
|
||
paid by another drawn with the sword, still it must be said, 'The
|
||
judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" But
|
||
admitting that you are correct in the assertion, let me ask you one
|
||
question: could one standing over the body of Lincoln, the blood
|
||
slowly oozing from the madman's wound, have truthfully said: "Just
|
||
and true are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty"?
|
||
|
||
Do you really believe that this world is governed by an
|
||
infinitely wise and good God? Have you convinced even yourself of
|
||
this? Why should God permit the triumph of injustice? Why should
|
||
the loving be tortured? Why should the noblest be destroyed? Why
|
||
should the world be filled with misery, with ignorance, and with
|
||
want? What reason have you for believing that your God will do
|
||
better in another world than he has done and is doing in this? Will
|
||
he be wiser? Will he have more power? Will he be more merciful?
|
||
|
||
When I say "your God," of course I mean the God described in
|
||
the Bible and the Presbyterian Confession of Faith. But again I
|
||
say, that in the nature of things, there can be no evidence of the
|
||
existence of an infinite being.
|
||
|
||
An infinite being must be conditionless, and for that reason
|
||
there is nothing that a finite being can do that can by any
|
||
possibility affect the well-being of the conditionless. This being
|
||
so, man can neither owe nor discharge any debt or duty to an
|
||
infinite being. The infinite cannot want, and man can do nothing
|
||
for a being who wants nothing. A conditioned being can be made
|
||
happy, or miserable, by changing conditions, but the conditionless
|
||
is absolutely independent of cause and effect.
|
||
|
||
I do not say that a God does not exist, neither do I say that
|
||
a God does exist; but I say that I do not know -- that there can be
|
||
no evidence to my mind of the existence of such a being, and that
|
||
my mind is so that it is incapable of even thinking of an infinite
|
||
personality. I know that in your creed you describe God as "without
|
||
body, parts, or passions." This, to my mind, is simply a
|
||
description of an infinite vacuum. I have had no experience with
|
||
gods. This world is the only one with which I am acquainted, and I
|
||
was surprised to find in your letter the expression that "perhaps
|
||
others are better acquainted with that of which I am so ignorant."
|
||
Did you, by this, intend to say that you know anything of any other
|
||
state of existence -- that you have inhabited some other planet --
|
||
that you lived before you were born, and that you recollect
|
||
something of that other world, or of that other state?
|
||
|
||
Upon the question of immortality you have done me,
|
||
unintentionally, a great injustice. With regard to that hope, I
|
||
have never uttered "a flippant or a trivial" word. I have said a
|
||
thousand times, and I say again, that the idea of immortality,
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
that, like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its
|
||
countless waves of hope and fear beating against the shores and
|
||
rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed,
|
||
nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will
|
||
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and
|
||
darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
|
||
|
||
I have said a thousand times, and I say again, that we do not
|
||
know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door -- the
|
||
beginning, or end, of a day -- the spreading of pinions to soar, or
|
||
the folding forever of wings -- the rise or the set of a sun, or an
|
||
endless life, that brings rapture and love to every one.
|
||
|
||
The belief in immorality is far older than Christianity.
|
||
Thousands of years before Christ was born billions of people had
|
||
lived and died in that hope. Upon countless graves had been laid in
|
||
love and tears the emblems of another life. The heaven of the New
|
||
Testament was to be in this world. The dead, after they were
|
||
raised, were to live here. Not one satisfactory word was said to
|
||
have been uttered by Christ -- nothing philosophic, nothing clear,
|
||
nothing that adorns, like a bow of promise, the cloud of doubt.
|
||
|
||
According to the account in the New Testament, Christ was dead
|
||
for a period of nearly three days. After his resurrection, why did
|
||
not some one of his disciples ask him where he had been? Why did he
|
||
not tell them what world he had visited? There was the opportunity
|
||
to "bring life and immortality to light." And yet he was as silent
|
||
as the grave that he had left -- speechless as the stone that
|
||
angels had rolled away.
|
||
|
||
How do you account for this? Was it not infinitely cruel to
|
||
leave the world in darkness and in doubt, when one word could have
|
||
filled all time with hope and light?
|
||
|
||
The hope of immortality is the great oak round which have
|
||
climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. The vines have not
|
||
supported the oak -- the oak has supported the vines. As long as
|
||
men live and love and die, this hope will blossom in the human
|
||
heart.
|
||
|
||
All I have said upon this subject has been to express my hope
|
||
and confess my lack of knowledge. Neither by word nor look have I
|
||
expressed any other feeling than sympathy with those who hope to
|
||
live again -- for those who bend above their dead and dream of life
|
||
to come. But I have denounced the selfishness and heartlessness of
|
||
those who expect for themselves an eternity of joy, and for the
|
||
rest of mankind predict, without a tear, a world of endless pain.
|
||
Nothing can be more contemptible than such a hope -- a hope that
|
||
can give satisfaction only to the hyenas of the human race.
|
||
|
||
When I say that I do not know -- when I deny the existence of
|
||
perdition, you reply that "there is something very cruel in this
|
||
treatment of the belief of my fellow-creatures."
|
||
|
||
You have had the goodness to invite me to a grave over which
|
||
a mother bends and weeps for her only son. I accept your
|
||
invitation. We will go together. Do not, I pray you, deal in
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
splendid generalities. Be explicit. Remember that the son for whom
|
||
the loving mother weeps was not a Christian, not a believer in the
|
||
inspiration of the Bible nor in the divinity of Jesus Christ. The
|
||
mother turns to you for consolation, for some star of hope in the
|
||
midnight of her grief. What must you say? Do not desert the
|
||
Presbyterian creed. Do not forget the threatenings of Jesus Christ.
|
||
What must you say? Will you read a portion of the Presbyterian
|
||
Confession of Faith? Will you read this?
|
||
|
||
"Although the light of Nature. and the works of creation and
|
||
Providence. do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom. and power of
|
||
God as to leave man inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to
|
||
give that knowledge of God and of his will which is necessary to
|
||
salvation."
|
||
|
||
Or, will you read this?
|
||
|
||
"By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory,
|
||
some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life and
|
||
others foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men,
|
||
thus predestined and foreordained, are particularly and
|
||
unchangeably destined, and their number is so certain and definite
|
||
that it cannot be either increased or diminished."
|
||
|
||
Suppose the mother, lifting her tear-stained face, should say:
|
||
"My son was good, generous, loving and kind. He gave his life for
|
||
me. Is there no hope for him?" Would you then put this serpent in
|
||
her breast?
|
||
|
||
"Men not professing the Christian religion cannot be saved in
|
||
any other way whatsoever, be they ever so diligent to conform their
|
||
lives according to the light of Nature. We cannot by our best works
|
||
merit pardon of sin. There is no sin so small but that it deserves
|
||
damnation. Works done by unregenerate men, although, for the matter
|
||
of that, there may be things which God commands, and of good use
|
||
both to themselves and others, are sinful and cannot please God or
|
||
make a man meet to receive Christ or God"
|
||
|
||
And suppose the mother should then sobbingly ask: "What has
|
||
become of my son? Where is he now?" Would you still read from your
|
||
Confession of Faith, or from your Catechism this?
|
||
|
||
"The souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain
|
||
in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the
|
||
great day. At the last day the righteous shall come into
|
||
everlasting life, but the wicked shall be cast into eternal torment
|
||
and punished with unspeakable torment, both of body and soul, with
|
||
the devil and his angels forever."
|
||
|
||
If the poor mother still wept, still refused to be comforted,
|
||
would you thrust this dagger in her heart?
|
||
|
||
"At the Day of Judgment you, being caught up to Christ in the
|
||
clouds, shall be seated at his right hand and there openly
|
||
acknowledged and acquitted, and you shall join with him in the
|
||
damnation of your son."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
If this failed to still the beatings of her aching heart,
|
||
would you repeat these words which you say came from the loving
|
||
soul of Christ?
|
||
|
||
"They who believe and are baptized shall be saved, and they
|
||
who believe not shall be damned: and these shall no away into
|
||
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
|
||
|
||
Would you not be compelled, according to your belief, to tell
|
||
this mother that "there is but one name given under heaven and
|
||
among men whereby" the souls of men can enter the gates of
|
||
Paradise? Would you not be compelled to say: "Your son lived in a
|
||
Christian land. The means of grace were within his reach. He died
|
||
not having experienced a change of heart, and your son is forever
|
||
lost. You can meet your son again only by dying in your sins; but
|
||
if you will give your heart to God you can never clasp him to your
|
||
breast again."
|
||
|
||
What could I say? Let me tell you: "My dear madam, this
|
||
reverend gentleman knows nothing of another world. He cannot see
|
||
beyond the tomb. He has simply stated to you the superstitions of
|
||
ignorance, of cruelty and fear. If there be in this universe a God,
|
||
he certainly is as good as you are. Why should he have loved your
|
||
son in life loved him, according to this reverend gentleman, to
|
||
that degree that he gave his life for him; and why should that love
|
||
be changed to hatred the moment your son was dead?
|
||
|
||
"My dear woman, there are no punishments, there are no rewards
|
||
-- there are consequences; and of one thing you may rest assured,
|
||
and that is, that every soul, no matter what sphere it may inhabit,
|
||
will have the everlasting opportunity of doing right.
|
||
|
||
"If death ends all, and if this handful of dust over which you
|
||
weep is all there is, you have this consolation: Your son is not
|
||
within the power of this reverend gentleman's God -- that is
|
||
something. Your son does not suffer. Next to a life of joy is the
|
||
dreamless sleep of death."
|
||
|
||
Does it not seem to you infinitely absurd to call orthodox
|
||
Christianity "a consolation"? Here in this world, where every human
|
||
being is enshrouded in cloud and mist, -- where all lives are
|
||
filled with mistakes, -- where no one claims to be perfect, is it
|
||
"a consolation" to say that "the smallest sin deserves eternal
|
||
pain"? Is it possible for the ingenuity of man to extract from the
|
||
doctrine of hell one drop, one ray, of "consolation"? If that
|
||
doctrine be true, is not your God an infinite criminal? Why should
|
||
he have created uncounted billions destined to suffer forever? Why
|
||
did he not leave them unconscious dust? Compared with this crime,
|
||
any crime that man can by any possibility commit is a virtue.
|
||
|
||
Think for a moment of your God, -- the keeper of an infinite
|
||
penitentiary filled with immortal convicts, -- your God an eternal
|
||
turnkey, without the pardoning power. In the presence of this
|
||
infinite horror, you complacently speak of the atonement, -- a
|
||
scheme that has not yet gathered within its horizon a billionth
|
||
part of the human race, -- an atonement with one-half the world
|
||
remaining undiscovered for fifteen hundred years after it was made.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
If there could be no suffering, there could be no sin. To
|
||
unjustly cause suffering is the only possible crime. How can a God
|
||
accept the suffering of the innocent in lieu of the punishment of
|
||
the guilty?
|
||
|
||
According to your theory, this infinite being, by his mere
|
||
will, makes right and wrong. This I do not admit. Right and wrong
|
||
exist in the nature of things -- in the relation they bear to man,
|
||
and to sentient beings. You have already admitted that "Nature is
|
||
inflexible, and that a violated law calls for its consequences. "I
|
||
insist that no God can step between an act and its natural effects.
|
||
If God exists, he has nothing to do with punishment, nothing to do
|
||
with reward. From certain acts flow certain consequences; these
|
||
consequences increase or decrease the happiness of man; and the
|
||
consequences must be borne.
|
||
|
||
A man who has forfeited his life, to the commonwealth may be
|
||
pardoned, but a man who has violated a condition of his own well-
|
||
being cannot he pardoned -- there is no pardoning power. The laws
|
||
of the State are made, and, being made, can be changed; but the
|
||
facts of the universe cannot be changed. The relation of act to
|
||
consequence cannot be altered. This is above all power, and,
|
||
consequently, there is no analogy between the laws of the State and
|
||
the facts in Nature. An infinite God could not change the relation
|
||
between the diameter and circumference of the circle.
|
||
|
||
A man having committed a crime may be pardoned, but I deny the
|
||
right of the State to punish an innocent man in the place of the
|
||
pardoned -- no matter how willing the innocent man may be to suffer
|
||
the punishment. There is no law in Nature, no fact in Nature, by
|
||
which the innocent can be justly punished to the end that the
|
||
guilty may go free. Let it be understood once for all: Nature
|
||
cannot pardon.
|
||
|
||
You have recognized this truth. You have asked me what is to
|
||
become of one who seduces and betrays, of the criminal with the
|
||
blood of his victim upon his hands? Without the slightest
|
||
hesitation I answer, whoever commits a crime against another must,
|
||
to the utmost of his power in this world and in another, if there
|
||
be one, make full and ample restitution, and in addition must bear
|
||
the natural consequences of his offence. No man can be perfectly
|
||
happy, either in this world or in any other, who has by his perfidy
|
||
broken a loving and confiding heart. No power can step between acts
|
||
and consequences -- no forgiveness, no atonement.
|
||
|
||
But, my dear friend, you have taught for many years, if you
|
||
are a Presbyterian, or an evangelical Christian, that a man may
|
||
seduce and betray, and that the poor victim, driven to insanity,
|
||
leaping from some wharf at night where ships strain at their
|
||
anchors in storm and darkness -- you have taught that this poor
|
||
girl may be tormented forever by a God of infinite compassion. This
|
||
is not all that you have taught. You have said to the seducer, to
|
||
the betrayer, to the one who would not listen to her wailing cry,
|
||
-- who would not even stretch forth his hand to catch her
|
||
fluttering garments, -- you have said to him: "Believe in the Lord
|
||
Jesus Christ, and you shall be happy forever; you shall live in the
|
||
realm of infinite delight, from which you can, without a shadow
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
falling upon your face, observe the poor girl, your victim,
|
||
writhing in the agonies of hell." You have taught this. For my
|
||
part, I do not see how an angel in heaven meeting another angel
|
||
whom he had robbed on the earth, could feel entirely blissful. I go
|
||
further. Any decent angel, no matter if sitting at the right hand
|
||
of God, should he see in hell one of his victims, would leave
|
||
heaven itself for the purpose of wiping one tear from the cheek of
|
||
the damned.
|
||
|
||
You seem to have forgotten your statement in the commencement
|
||
of your letter, that your God is as inflexible as Nature -- that he
|
||
bends not to human thought nor to human will. You seem to have
|
||
forgotten the line which you emphasized with italics: "The effect
|
||
of everything which is of the nature of a cause, is eternal." In
|
||
the light of this sentence, where do you find a place for
|
||
forgiveness -- for your atonement? Where is a way to escape from
|
||
the effect of a cause that is eternal? Do you not see that this
|
||
sentence is a cord with which I easily tie your hands? The
|
||
scientific part of your letter destroys the theological. You have
|
||
put "new wine into old bottles," and the predicted result has
|
||
followed. Will the angels in heaven, the redeemed of earth, lose
|
||
their memory? Will not all the redeemed rascals remember their
|
||
rascality? Will not all the redeemed assassins remember the faces
|
||
of the dead? Will not all the seducers and betrayers remember her
|
||
sighs, her tears, and the tones of her voice, and will not the
|
||
conscience of the redeemed be as inexorable as the conscience of
|
||
the damned?
|
||
|
||
If memory is to be forever "the warder of the brain," and if
|
||
the redeemed can never forget the sins they committed, the pain and
|
||
anguish they caused, then they can never be perfectly happy; and if
|
||
the lost can never forget the good they did, the kind actions, the
|
||
loving words, the heroic deeds; and if the memory of good deeds
|
||
gives the slightest pleasure, then the lost can never be perfectly
|
||
miserable. Ought not the memory of a good action to live as long as
|
||
the memory of a bad one? So that the undying memory of the good, in
|
||
heaven, brings undying pain, and the undying memory of those in
|
||
hell brings undying pleasure. Do you not see that if men have done
|
||
good and bad, the future can have neither a perfect heaven nor a
|
||
perfect hell?
|
||
|
||
I believe in the manly doctrine that every human being must
|
||
bear the consequences of his acts, and that no man can be justly
|
||
saved or damned on account of the goodness or the wickedness of
|
||
another.
|
||
|
||
If by atonement you mean the natural effect of self-sacrifice,
|
||
the effects following a noble and disinterested action; if you mean
|
||
that the life and death of Christ are worth their effect upon the
|
||
human race, -- which your letter seems to show, -- then there is no
|
||
question between us. If you have thrown away the old and barbarous
|
||
idea that a law had been broken, that God demanded a sacrifice, and
|
||
that Christ, the innocent, was offered up for us, and that he bore
|
||
the wrath of God and suffered in our place, then I congratulate you
|
||
with all my heart.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
It seems to me impossible that life should be exceedingly
|
||
joyous to any one who is acquainted with its miseries, its burdens,
|
||
and its tears. I know that as darkness follows light around the
|
||
globe, so misery and misfortune follow the sons of men. According
|
||
to your creed, the future state will be worse than this. Here, the
|
||
vicious may reform; here, the wicked may repent; here, a few gleams
|
||
of sunshine may fall upon the darkest life. But in your future
|
||
state, for countless billions of the human race, there will be no
|
||
reform, no opportunity of doing right, and no possible gleam of
|
||
sunshine can ever touch their souls. Do you not see that your
|
||
future state is infinitely worse than this? You seem to mistake the
|
||
glare of hell for the light of morning.
|
||
|
||
Let us throw away the dogma of eternal retribution. Let us
|
||
"cling to all that can bring a ray of hope into the darkness of
|
||
this life."
|
||
|
||
You have been kind enough to say that I find a subject for
|
||
caricature in the doctrine of regeneration. If, by regeneration,
|
||
you mean reformation, -- if you mean that there comes a time in the
|
||
life of a young man when he feels the touch of responsibility, and
|
||
that he leaves his foolish or vicious ways, and concludes to act
|
||
like an honest man, -- if this is what you mean by regeneration, I
|
||
am a believer. But that is not the definition of regeneration in
|
||
your creed -- that is not Christian regeneration. There is some
|
||
mysterious, miraculous, supernatural, invisible agency, called, I
|
||
believe, the Holy Ghost, that enters and changes the heart of man,
|
||
and this mysterious agency is like the wind, under the control,
|
||
apparently, of no one, coming and going when and whither it
|
||
willeth. It is this illogical and absurd view of regeneration that
|
||
I have attacked.
|
||
|
||
You ask me how it came to pass that a Hebrew peasant, born
|
||
among the hills of Galilee, had a wisdom above that of Socrates or
|
||
Plato, of Confucius or Buddha, and you conclude by saying, "This is
|
||
the greatest of miracle -- that such a being should live and die on
|
||
the earth."
|
||
|
||
I can hardly admit your conclusion, because I remember that
|
||
Christ said nothing in favor of the family relation. As a matter of
|
||
fact, his life tended to cast discredit upon marriage. He said
|
||
nothing against the institution of slavery; nothing against the
|
||
tyranny of government; nothing of our treatment of animals; nothing
|
||
about education, about intellectual progress; nothing of art.
|
||
declared no scientific truth, and said nothing as to the rights and
|
||
duties of nations.
|
||
|
||
You may reply that all this is included in "Do unto others as
|
||
you would be done by;" and "Resist not evil." More than this is
|
||
necessary to educate the human race. It is not enough to say to
|
||
your child or to your pupil, "Do right." The great question still
|
||
remains: What is right? Neither is there any wisdom in the idea of
|
||
non-resistance. Force without mercy is tyranny. Mercy without force
|
||
is but a waste of tears. Take from virtue the right of self-defence
|
||
and vice becomes the master of the world.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
Let me ask you how it came to pass that an ignorant driver of
|
||
camels, a man without family, without wealth, became master of
|
||
hundreds of millions of human beings? How is it that he conquered
|
||
and overran more than half of the Christian world? How is it that
|
||
on a thousand fields the banner of the cross went down in blood,
|
||
while that of the crescent floated in triumph? How do you account
|
||
for the fact that the flag of this impostor floats to-day above the
|
||
sepulchre of Christ? Was this a miracle? Was Mohammed inspired? How
|
||
do you account for Confucius, whose name is known wherever the sky
|
||
bends? Was he inspired -- this man who for many centuries has stood
|
||
first, and who has been acknowledged the superior of all men by
|
||
hundreds and thousands of millions of his fellow-men? How do you
|
||
account for Buddha, -- in many respects the greatest religious
|
||
teacher this world has ever known, -- the broadest, the most
|
||
intellectual of them all; he who was great enough, hundreds of
|
||
years before Christ was born, to declare the universal brotherhood
|
||
of man, great enough to say that intelligence is the only lever
|
||
capable of raising mankind? How do you account for him, who has had
|
||
more followers than any other? Are you willing to say that all
|
||
success is divine? How do you account for Shakespeare, born of
|
||
parents who could neither read nor write, held in the lap of
|
||
ignorance and love, nursed at the breast of poverty -- how do you
|
||
account for him, by far the greatest of the human race, the wings
|
||
of whose imagination still fill the horizon of human thought;
|
||
Shakespeare, who was perfectly acquainted with the human heart,
|
||
knew all depths of sorrow, all heights of joy, and in whose mind
|
||
were the fruit of all thought, of all experience, and a prophecy of
|
||
all to be; Shakespeare, the wisdom and beauty and depth of whose
|
||
words increase with the intelligence and civilization of mankind?
|
||
How do you account for this miracle? Do you believe that any
|
||
founder of any religion could have written "Lear" or "Hamlet"? Did
|
||
Greece produce a man who could by any possibility have been the
|
||
author of "Troilus and Cressida"? Was there among all the countless
|
||
millions of almighty Rome an intellect that could have written the
|
||
tragedy of "Julius Caesar"? Is not the play of "Antony and
|
||
Cleopatra" as Egyptian as the Nile? How do you account for this
|
||
man, within whose veins there seemed to be the blood of every race,
|
||
and in whose brain there were the poetry and philosophy of a world?
|
||
|
||
You ask me to tell my opinion of Christ. Let me say here, once
|
||
for all, that for the man Christ -- for the man who, in the
|
||
darkness, cried out, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me!" -- for
|
||
that man I have the greatest possible respect. And let me say, once
|
||
for all, that the place where man has died for man is holy ground.
|
||
To that great and serene peasant of Palestine I gladly pay the
|
||
tribute of my admiration and my tears. He was a reformer in his day
|
||
-- an infidel in his time. Back of the theological mask, and in
|
||
spite of the interpolations of the New Testament, I see a great and
|
||
genuine man.
|
||
|
||
It is hard to see how you can consistently defend the course
|
||
pursued by Christ himself. He attacked with great bitterness "the
|
||
religion of others." It did not occur to him that "there was
|
||
something very cruel in this treatment of the belief of his
|
||
fellow-creatures." He denounced the chosen people of God as a
|
||
"generation of vipers." He compared them to "whited sepulchers."
|
||
How can you sustain the conduct of missionaries? They go to other
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
lands and attack the sacred beliefs of others. They tell the people
|
||
of India and of all heathen lands, not only that their religion is
|
||
a lie, not only that their gods are myths, but that the ancestors
|
||
of these people -- their fathers and mothers who never heard of the
|
||
God of the Bible, or of Christ -- are all in perdition. Is not this
|
||
a cruel treatment of the belief of a fellow-creature?
|
||
|
||
A religion that is not manly and robust enough to bear attack
|
||
with smiling fortitude is unworthy of a place in the heart or
|
||
brain. A religion that takes refuge in sentimentality, that cries
|
||
out: "Do not, I pray you, tell me any truth calculated to hurt my
|
||
feelings," is fit only for asylums.
|
||
|
||
You believe that Christ was God, that he was infinite in
|
||
power. While in Jerusalem he cured the sick, raised a few from the
|
||
dead, and opened the eyes of the blind. Did he do these things
|
||
because he loved mankind, or did he do these miracles simply to
|
||
establish the fact that he was the very Christ? If he was actuated
|
||
by love, is he not as powerful now as he was then? Why does he not
|
||
open the eyes of the blind now? Why does he not with a touch make
|
||
the leper clean? If you had the power to give sight to the blind,
|
||
to cleanse the leper, and would not exercise it, what would be
|
||
thought of you? What is the difference between one who can and will
|
||
not cure, and one who causes disease?
|
||
|
||
Only the other day I saw a beautiful girl -- a paralytic, and
|
||
yet her brave and cheerful spirit shone over the wreck and ruin of
|
||
her body like morning on the desert. What would I think of myself,
|
||
had I the power by a word to send the blood through all her
|
||
withered limbs freighted again with life, should I refuse?
|
||
|
||
Most theologians seem to imagine that the virtues have been
|
||
produced by and are really the children of religion.
|
||
|
||
Religion has to do with the supernatural. It defines our
|
||
duties and obligations to God. It prescribes a certain course of
|
||
conduct by means of which happiness can be attained in another
|
||
world. The result here is only an incident. The virtues are
|
||
secular. They have nothing whatever to do with the supernatural,
|
||
and are of no kindred to any religion. A man may be honest,
|
||
courageous, charitable, industrious, hospitable, loving and pure,
|
||
without being religious -- that is to say, without any belief in
|
||
the supernatural; and a man may be the exact opposite and at the
|
||
same time a sincere believer in the creed of any church -- that is
|
||
to say, in the existence of a personal God, the inspiration of the
|
||
Scriptures and in the divinity of Jesus Christ. A man who believes
|
||
in the Bible may or may not be kind to his family, and a man who is
|
||
kind and loving in his family may or may not believe in the Bible.
|
||
|
||
In order that you may see the effect of belief in the
|
||
formation of character, it is only necessary to call your attention
|
||
to the fact that your Bible shows that the devil himself is a
|
||
believer in the existence of your God, in the inspiration of the
|
||
Scriptures, and in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He not only
|
||
believes these things, but he knows them, and yet, in spite of it
|
||
all, he remains a devil still.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
Few religions have been bad enough to destroy all the natural
|
||
goodness in the human heart. In the deepest midnight of
|
||
superstition some natural virtues, like stars, have been visible in
|
||
the heavens. Man has committed every crime in the name of
|
||
Christianity -- or at least crimes that involved the commission of
|
||
all others. Those who paid for labor with the lash, and who made
|
||
blows a legal tender, were Christians. Those who engaged in the
|
||
slave trade were believers in a personal God. One slave ship was
|
||
called "The Jehovah." Those who pursued with hounds the fugitive
|
||
led by the Northern star prayed fervently to Christ to crown their
|
||
efforts with success, and the stealers of babes, just before
|
||
falling asleep, commended their souls to the keeping of the Most
|
||
High.
|
||
|
||
As you have mentioned the apostles, let me call your attention
|
||
to an incident.
|
||
|
||
You remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira. The apostles,
|
||
having nothing themselves, conceived the idea of having all things
|
||
in common. Their followers who had something were to sell what
|
||
little they had, and turn the proceeds over to these theological
|
||
financiers. It seems that Ananias and Sapphira had a piece of land.
|
||
|
||
They sold it, and after talking the matter over, not being
|
||
entirely satisfied with the collateral, concluded to keep a little
|
||
-- just enough to keep them from starvation if the good and pious
|
||
bankers should abscond.
|
||
|
||
When Ananias brought the money, he was asked whether he had
|
||
kept back a part of the price. He said that he had not. Whereupon
|
||
God, the compassionate, struck him dead. As soon as the corpse was
|
||
removed, the apostles sent for his wife. They did not tell her that
|
||
her husband had been killed. They deliberately set a trap for her
|
||
life. Not one of them was good enough or noble enough to put her on
|
||
her guard; they allowed her to believe that her husband had told
|
||
his story, and that she was free to corroborate what he had said.
|
||
She probably felt that they were giving more than they could
|
||
afford, and, with the instinct of woman, wanted to keep a little.
|
||
She denied that any part of the price had been kept back. That
|
||
moment the arrow of divine vengeance entered her heart.
|
||
|
||
Will you be kind enough to tell me your opinion of the
|
||
apostles in the light of this story? Certainly murder is a greater
|
||
crime than mendacity.
|
||
|
||
You have been good enough, in a kind of fatherly way, to give
|
||
me some advice. You say that I ought to soften my colors, and that
|
||
my words would be more weighty if not so strong. Do you really
|
||
desire that I should add weight to my words? Do you really wish me
|
||
to succeed? It the commander of one army should send word to the
|
||
general of the other that his men were firing too high, do you
|
||
think the general would be misled? Can you conceive of his changing
|
||
his orders by reason of the message?
|
||
|
||
I deny that "the Pilgrims crossed the sea to find freedom to
|
||
worship God in the forests of the new world. "They came not in the
|
||
interest of freedom. It never entered their minds that other men
|
||
had the same right to worship God according to the dictates of
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
their consciences that the Pilgrims themselves had. The moment they
|
||
had power they were ready to whip and brand, to imprison and burn.
|
||
They did not believe in religious freedom. They had no more idea of
|
||
liberty of conscience than Jehovah.
|
||
|
||
I do not say that there is no place in the world for heroes
|
||
and martyrs. On the contrary, I declare that the liberty we now
|
||
have was won for us by heroes and by martyrs, and millions of these
|
||
martyrs were burned, or flayed alive, or torn in pieces, or
|
||
assassinated by the church of God. The heroism was shown in
|
||
fighting the hordes of religious superstition.
|
||
|
||
Giordano Bruno was a martyr. He was a hero. He believed in no
|
||
God, in no heaven, and in no hell, yet he perished by fire. He was
|
||
offered liberty on condition that he would recant. There was no God
|
||
to please, no heaven to expect, no hell to fear, and yet he died by
|
||
fire, simply to preserve the unstained whiteness of his soul.
|
||
|
||
For hundreds of years every man who attacked the church was a
|
||
hero. The sword of Christianity has been wet for many centuries
|
||
with the blood of the noblest. Christianity has been ready with
|
||
whip and chain and fire to banish freedom from the earth.
|
||
|
||
Neither is it true that "family life withers under the cold
|
||
sneer -- half pity and half scorn -- with which I look down on
|
||
household worship."
|
||
|
||
Those who believe in the existence of God, and believe that
|
||
they are indebted to this divine being for the few gleams of
|
||
sunshine in this life, and who thank God for the little they have
|
||
enjoyed, have my entire respect. Never have I said one word against
|
||
the spirit of thankfulness. I understand the feeling of the man who
|
||
gathers his family about him after the storm, or after the scourge,
|
||
or after long sickness, and pours out his heart in thankfulness to
|
||
the supposed God who has protected his fireside. I understand the
|
||
spirit of the savage who thanks his idol of stone, or his fetich of
|
||
wood. It is not the wisdom of the one or of the other that I
|
||
respect, it is the goodness and thankfulness that prompt the
|
||
prayer.
|
||
|
||
I believe in the family. I believe in family life; and one of
|
||
my objections to Christianity is that it divides the family. Upon
|
||
this subject I have said hundreds of times, and I say again, that
|
||
the roof-tree is sacred, from the smallest fibre that feels the
|
||
soft, cool clasp of earth, to the topmost flower that spreads its
|
||
bosom to the sun, and like a spendthrift gives its perfume to the
|
||
air. The home where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a
|
||
heart of fire, the fairest flower in all this world.
|
||
|
||
What did Christianity in the early centuries do for the home?
|
||
What have nunneries and monasteries, and what has the glorification
|
||
of celibacy done for the family? Do you not know that Christ
|
||
himself offered rewards in this world and eternal happiness in
|
||
another to those who would desert their wives and children and
|
||
follow him? What effect has that promise had upon family life?
|
||
|
||
As a matter of fact, the family is regarded as nothing.
|
||
Christianity teaches that there is but one family, the family of
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
Christ, and that all other relations are as nothing compared with
|
||
that. Christianity teaches the husband to desert the wife, the wife
|
||
to desert the husband, children to desert their parents, for the
|
||
miserable and selfish purpose of saving their own little, shriveled
|
||
souls.
|
||
|
||
lt is far better for a man to love his fellow-men than to love
|
||
God. It is better to love wife and children than to love Christ. It
|
||
is better to serve your neighbor than to serve your God -even if
|
||
God exists. The reason is palpable. You can do nothing for God. You
|
||
can do something for wife and children, You can add to the sunshine
|
||
of a life. You can plant flowers in the pathway of another.
|
||
|
||
It is true that I am an enemy of the orthodox Sabbath. It is
|
||
true that I do not believe in giving one-seventh of our time to the
|
||
service of superstition. The whole scheme of your religion can be
|
||
understood by any intelligent man in one day. Why should he waste
|
||
a seventh of his whole life in hearing the same thoughts repeated
|
||
again and again?
|
||
|
||
Nothing is more gloomy than an orthodox Sabbath. The mechanic
|
||
who has worked during the week in heat and dust, the laboring man
|
||
who has barely succeeded in keeping his soul in his body, the poor
|
||
woman who has been sewing for the rich, may go to the village
|
||
church which you have described. They answer the chimes of the
|
||
bell, and what do they hear in this village church? Is it that God
|
||
is the Father of the human race; is that all? If that were all, you
|
||
never would have heard an objection from my lips. That is not all.
|
||
If all ministers said: Bear the evils of this life; your Father in
|
||
heaven counts your tears; the time will come when pain and death
|
||
and grief will be forgotten words; I should have listened with the
|
||
rest. What else does the minister say to the poor people who have
|
||
answered the chimes of your bell? He says: "The smallest sin
|
||
deserves eternal pain." "A vast majority of men are doomed to
|
||
suffer the wrath of God forever." He fills the present with fear
|
||
and the future with fire. He has heaven for the few, hell for the
|
||
many. He describes a little grass-grown path that leads to heaven,
|
||
where travelers are "few and far between," and a great highway worn
|
||
with countless feet that leads to everlasting death.
|
||
|
||
Such Sabbaths are immoral. Such ministers are the real
|
||
savages. Gladly would I abolish such a Sabbath. Gladly would I turn
|
||
it into a holiday, a day of rest and peace, a day to get acquainted
|
||
with your wife and children, a day to exchange civilities with your
|
||
neighbors; and gladly would I see the church in which such sermons
|
||
are preached changed to a place of entertainment. Gladly would I
|
||
have the echoes of orthodox sermons -- the owls and bats among the
|
||
rafters, the snakes in crevices and corners -- driven out by the
|
||
glorious music of Wagner and Beethoven. Gladly would I see the
|
||
Sunday school where the doctrine of eternal fire is taught, changed
|
||
to a happy dance upon the village green.
|
||
|
||
Music refines. The doctrine of eternal punishment degrades.
|
||
Science civilizes. Superstition looks longingly back to savagery.
|
||
|
||
You do not believe that general morality can be upheld without
|
||
the sanctions of religion.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
Christianity has sold, and continues to sell, crime on a
|
||
credit. It has taught, and it still teaches, that there is
|
||
forgiveness for all. Of course it teaches morality. It says: "Do
|
||
not steal, do not murder;" but it adds, "but if you do both, there
|
||
is a way of escape: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
|
||
be saved. "I insist that such a religion is no restraint. It is far
|
||
better to teach that there is no forgiveness, and that every human
|
||
being must bear the consequences of his acts.
|
||
|
||
The first great step toward national reformation is the
|
||
universal acceptance of the idea that there is no escape from the
|
||
consequences of our acts. The young men who come from their country
|
||
homes into a city filled with temptations, may be restrained by the
|
||
thought of father and mother. This is a natural restraint. They may
|
||
be restrained by their knowledge of the fact that a thing is evil
|
||
on account of its consequences, and that to do wrong is always a
|
||
mistake. I cannot conceive of such a man being more liable to
|
||
temptation because he has heard one of my lectures in which I have
|
||
told him that the only good is happiness -- that the only way to
|
||
attain that good is by doing what he believes to be right. I cannot
|
||
imagine that his moral character will be weakened by the statement
|
||
that there ia no escape from the consequences of his acts. You seem
|
||
to think that he will be instantly led astray -- that he will go
|
||
off under the flaring lamps to the riot of passion. Do you think
|
||
the Bible calculated to restrain him? To prevent this would you
|
||
recommend him to read the lives of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,
|
||
and the other holy polygamists of the Old Testament? Should he read
|
||
the life of David, and of Solomon? Do you think this would enable
|
||
him to withstand temptation? Would it not be far better to fill the
|
||
young man's mind with facts so that he may know exactly the
|
||
physical consequences of such acts? Do you regard ignorance as the
|
||
foundation of virtue? Is fear the arch that supports the moral
|
||
nature of man?
|
||
|
||
You seem to think that there is danger in knowledge, and that
|
||
the best chemists are most likely to poison themselves.
|
||
|
||
You say that to sneer at religion is only a step from sneering
|
||
at morality, and then only another step to that which is vicious
|
||
and profligate.
|
||
|
||
The Jews entertained the same opinion of the teachings of
|
||
Christ. He sneered at their religion. The Christians have
|
||
entertained the same opinion of every philosopher. Let me say to
|
||
you again -- and let me say it once for all -- that morality has
|
||
nothing to do with religion. Morality does not depend upon the
|
||
supernatural. Morality does not walk with the crutches of miracles.
|
||
Morality appeals to the experience. of mankind. It cares nothing
|
||
about faith, nothing about sacred books. Morality depends upon
|
||
facts, something that can be seen, something known, the product of
|
||
which can be estimated. It needs no priest, no ceremony, no
|
||
mummery. It believes in the freedom of the human mind. It asks for
|
||
investigation. It is founded upon truth. It is the enemy of all
|
||
religion, because it has to do with this world, and with this world
|
||
alone.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
My object is to drive fear out of the world. Fear is the
|
||
jailer of the mind. Christianity, superstition -- that is to say,
|
||
the supernatural -- makes every brain a prison and every soul a
|
||
convict. Under the government of a personal deity, consequences
|
||
partake of the nature of punishments and rewards. Under the
|
||
government of Nature, what you call punishments and rewards are
|
||
simply consequences. Nature does not punish. Nature does not
|
||
reward. Nature has no purpose. When the storm comes, I do not
|
||
think: "This is being done by a tyrant." When the sun shines. I do
|
||
not say: "This is being done by a friend. "Liberty means freedom
|
||
from personal dictation. It does not mean escape from the relations
|
||
we sustain to other facts in Nature. I believe in the restraining
|
||
influence of liberty. Temperance walks hand in hand with freedom.
|
||
To remove a chain from the body puts an additional responsibility
|
||
upon the soul. Liberty says to the man: You injure or benefit
|
||
yourself; you increase or decrease your own well-being. It is a
|
||
question of intelligence You need not bow to a supposed tyrant, or
|
||
to infinite goodness. You are responsible to yourself and to those
|
||
you injure, and to none other.
|
||
|
||
I rid myself of fear, believing as I do that there is no power
|
||
above which can help me in any extremity, and believing as I do
|
||
that there is no power above or below that can injure me in any
|
||
extremity. I do not believe that I am the sport of accident, or
|
||
that I may be dashed in pieces by the blind agency of Nature. There
|
||
is no accident, and there is no agency, That which happens must
|
||
happen. The present is the necessary child of all the past, the
|
||
mother of all the future.
|
||
|
||
Does it relieve mankind from fear to believe that there is
|
||
some God who will help them in extremity? What evidence have they
|
||
on which to found this belief? When has any God listened to the
|
||
prayer of any man? The water drowns, the cold freezes, the flood
|
||
destroys, the fire burns, the bolt of heaven falls -- when and
|
||
where has the prayer of man been answered?
|
||
|
||
Is the religious world to-day willing to test the efficacy of
|
||
prayer? Only a few years ago it was tested in the United States.
|
||
The Christians of Christendom, with one accord, fell upon their
|
||
knees and asked God to spare the life of one man. You know the
|
||
result. You know just as well as I that the forces of Nature
|
||
produce the good and bad alike. You know that the forces of Nature
|
||
destroy the good and bad alike. You know that the lightning feels
|
||
the same keen delight in striking to death the honest man that it
|
||
does or would in striking the assassin with his knife lifted above
|
||
the bosom of innocence.
|
||
|
||
Did God hear the prayers of the slaves? Did he hear the
|
||
prayers of imprisoned philosophers and patriots? Did he hear the
|
||
prayers of martyrs, or did he allow fiends, calling themselves his
|
||
followers, to pile the fagots round the forms of glorious men? Did
|
||
he allow the flames to devour the flesh of those whose hearts were
|
||
his? Why should any man depend on the goodness of a God who created
|
||
countless millions, knowing that they would suffer eternal grief?
|
||
|
||
The faith that you call sacred -- "sacred as the most delicate
|
||
manly or womanly sentiment of love and honor" -- is the faith that
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
nearly all of your fellow-men are to be lost. Ought an honest man
|
||
to be restrained from denouncing that faith because those who
|
||
entertain it say that their feelings are hurt? You say to me:
|
||
"There is a hell. A man advocating the opinions you advocate will
|
||
go there when he dies." I answer: "There is no hell. The Bible that
|
||
teaches it is not true." And you say: "How can you hurt my
|
||
feelings?"
|
||
|
||
You seem to think that one who attacks the religion of his
|
||
parents is wanting in respect to his father and his mother.
|
||
|
||
Were the early Christians lacking in respect for their fathers
|
||
and mothers? Were the Pagans who embraced Christianity heartless
|
||
sons and daughters? What have you to say of the apostles? Did they
|
||
not heap contempt upon the religion of their fathers and mothers?
|
||
Did they not join with him who denounced their people as a
|
||
"generation of vipers"? Did they not follow one who offered a
|
||
reward to those who would desert fathers and mothers? Of course you
|
||
have only to go back a few generations in your family to find a
|
||
Field who was not a Presbyterian. After that you find a
|
||
Presbyterian. Was he base enough and infamous enough to heap
|
||
contempt upon the religion of his father and mother? All the
|
||
Protestants in the time of Luther lacked in respect for the
|
||
religion of their fathers and mothers. According to your idea,
|
||
Progress is a Prodigal Son. If one is bound by the religion of his
|
||
father and mother, and his father happens to be a Presbyterian and
|
||
his mother a Catholic, what is he to do? Do you not see that your
|
||
doctrine gives intellectual freedom only to foundlings?
|
||
|
||
If by Christianity you mean the goodness, the spirit of
|
||
forgiveness, the benevolence claimed by Christians to be a part,
|
||
and the principal part, of that peculiar religion, then I do not
|
||
agree with you when you say that "Christ is Christianity and that
|
||
it stands or falls with him." You have narrowed unnecessarily the
|
||
foundation of your religion. If it should be established beyond
|
||
doubt that Christ never existed, all that is of value in
|
||
Christianity would remain, and remain unimpaired. Suppose that we
|
||
should find that Euclid was a myth, the science known as
|
||
mathematics would not suffer. It makes no difference who painted or
|
||
chiseled the greatest pictures and statues, so long as we have the
|
||
pictures and statues. When he who has given the world a truth
|
||
passes from the earth, the truth is left. A truth dies only when
|
||
forgotten by the human race. Justice, love, mercy, forgiveness,
|
||
honor, all the virtues that ever blossomed in the human heart, were
|
||
known and practiced for uncounted ages before the birth of Christ.
|
||
|
||
You insist that religion does not leave man in "abject terror"
|
||
-- does not leave him "in utter darkness as to his fate."
|
||
|
||
Is it possible to know who will be saved? Can you read the
|
||
names mentioned in the decrees of the Infinite? Is it possible to
|
||
tell who is to be eternally lost? Can the imagination conceive a
|
||
worse fate than your religion predicts for a majority of the race?
|
||
Why should not every human being be in "abject terror" who believes
|
||
your doctrine? How many loving and sincere women are in the asylums
|
||
to-day fearing that they have committed "the unpardonable sin" --
|
||
a sin to which your God has attached the penalty of eternal
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
torment, and yet has failed to describe the offence? Can tyranny go
|
||
beyond this -- fixing the penalty of eternal pain for the violation
|
||
of a law not written, not known, but kept in the secrecy of
|
||
infinite darkness? How much happier it is to know nothing about it,
|
||
and to believe nothing about it! How much better to have no God!
|
||
|
||
You discover a "Great Intelligence ordering our little lives,
|
||
so that even the trials that we bear, as they call out the finer
|
||
elements of character, conduce to our future happiness." This is an
|
||
old explanation -- probably as good as any. The idea is, that this
|
||
world is a school in which man becomes educated through tribulation
|
||
-- the muscles of character being developed by wrestling with
|
||
misfortune. If it is necessary to live this life in order to
|
||
develop character, in order to become worthy of a better world, how
|
||
do you account for the fact that billions of the human race die in
|
||
infancy, and are thus deprived of this necessary education and
|
||
development? What would you think of a schoolmaster who should kill
|
||
a large proportion of his scholars during the first day, before
|
||
they had even had the opportunity to look at A?
|
||
|
||
You insist that "there is a power behind Nature making for
|
||
righteousness."
|
||
|
||
If Nature is infinite, how can there be a power outside of
|
||
Nature? If you mean by "a power making for righteousness that man,
|
||
as he becomes civilized, as he becomes intelligent, not only takes
|
||
advantage of the forces of Nature for his own benefit, but
|
||
perceives more and more clearly that if he is to be happy he must
|
||
live in harmony with the conditions of his being, in harmony with
|
||
the facts by which he is surrounded, in harmony with the relations
|
||
he sustains to others and to things; if this is what you mean, then
|
||
there is "a power making for righteousness." But if you mean that
|
||
there is something supernatural back of Nature directing events,
|
||
then I insist that there can by no possibility be any evidence of
|
||
the existence of such a power.
|
||
|
||
The history of the human race shows that nations rise and
|
||
fall. There is a limit to the life of a race; so that it can be
|
||
said of every dead nation, that there was a period when it laid the
|
||
foundations of prosperity, when the combined intelligence and
|
||
virtue of the people constituted a power working for righteousness,
|
||
and that there came a time when this nation became a spendthrift,
|
||
when it ceased to accumulate, when it lived on the labors of its
|
||
youth, and passed from strength and glory to the weakness of old
|
||
age, and finally fell palsied to its tomb.
|
||
|
||
The intelligence of man guided by a sense of duty is the only
|
||
power that makes for righteousness.
|
||
|
||
You tell me that I am waging "a hopeless war," and you give as
|
||
a reason that the Christian religion began to be nearly two
|
||
thousand years before I was born, and that it will live two
|
||
thousand years after I am dead.
|
||
|
||
Is this an argument? Does it tend to convince even yourself?
|
||
Could not Caiaphas, the high priest, have said substantially this
|
||
to Christ? Could he not have said: "The religion of Jehovah began
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
to be four thousand years before you were born, and it will live
|
||
two thousand years after you are dead"? Could not a follower of
|
||
Buddha make the same illogical remark to a missionary from Andover
|
||
with the glad tidings? Could he not say: "You are waging a hopeless
|
||
war. The religion of Buddha began to be twenty-five hundred years
|
||
before you were born, and hundreds of millions of people still
|
||
worship at Great Buddha's shrine"?
|
||
|
||
Do you insist that nothing except the right can live for two
|
||
thousand years? Why is it that the Catholic Church "lives on and
|
||
on, while nations and kingdoms perish"? Do you consider that the
|
||
"survival of the fittest"?
|
||
|
||
Is it the same Christian religion now living that lived during
|
||
the Middle Ages? Is it the same Christian religion that founded the
|
||
Inquisition and invented the thumbscrew? Do you see no difference
|
||
between the religion of Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and the
|
||
Christianity of to-day? Do you really think that it is the same
|
||
Christianity that has been living all these years? Have you noticed
|
||
any change in the last generation? Do you remember when scientists
|
||
endeavored to prove a theory by a passage from the Bible, and do
|
||
you now know that believers in the Bible are exceedingly anxious to
|
||
prove its truth by some fact that science has demonstrated? Do you
|
||
know that the standard has changed? Other things are not measured
|
||
by the Bible, but the Bible has to submit to another test. It no
|
||
longer owns the scales. It has to be weighed, -- it is being
|
||
weighed, -- it is growing lighter and lighter every day. Do you
|
||
know that only a few years ago "the glad tidings of great joy"
|
||
consisted mostly in a description of hell? Do you know that nearly
|
||
every intelligent minister is now ashamed to preach about it, or to
|
||
read about it, or to talk about it? Is there any change? Do you
|
||
know that but few ministers now believe in the "plenary
|
||
inspiration" of the Bible, that from thousands of pulpits people
|
||
are now told that the creation according to Genes's is a mistake,
|
||
that it never was as wet as the flood, and that the miracles of the
|
||
Old Testament are considered simply as myths or mistakes?
|
||
|
||
How long will what you call Christianity endure, if it changes
|
||
as rapidly during the next century as it has during the last? What
|
||
will there be left of the supernatural?
|
||
|
||
It does not seem possible that thoughtful people can, for many
|
||
years, believe that a being of infinite wisdom is the author of the
|
||
Old Testament, that a being of infinite purity and kindness upheld
|
||
polygamy and slavery, that he ordered his chosen people to massacre
|
||
their neighbors, and that he commanded husbands and fathers to
|
||
persecute wives and daughters unto death for opinion's sake.
|
||
|
||
It does not seem within the prospect of belief that Jehovah,
|
||
the cruel, the jealous, the ignorant, and the revengeful, is the
|
||
creator and preserver of the universe.
|
||
|
||
Does it seem possible that infinite goodness would create a
|
||
world in which life feeds on life, in which everything devours and
|
||
is devoured? Can there be a sadder fact than this: Innocence is not
|
||
a certain shield?
|
||
|
||
It is impossible for me to believe in the eternity of
|
||
punishment. If that doctrine be true, Jehovah is insane.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D.
|
||
|
||
Day after day there are mournful processions of men and women,
|
||
patriots and mothers, girls whose only crime is that the word
|
||
Liberty burst into flower between their pure and loving lips,
|
||
driven like beasts across the melancholy wastes of Siberian snow.
|
||
These men, these women, these daughters, go to exile and to
|
||
slavery, to a land where hope is satisfied with death. Does it seem
|
||
possible to you that an "Infinite Father" sees all this and sits as
|
||
silent as a god of stone?
|
||
|
||
And yet, according to your Presbyterian creed, according to
|
||
your inspired book, according to your Christ, there is another
|
||
procession, in which are the noblest and the best, in which you
|
||
will find the wondrous spirits of this world, the lovers of the
|
||
human race, the teachers of their fellow-men, the greatest soldiers
|
||
that ever battled for the right; and this procession of countless
|
||
millions, in which you will find the most generous and the most
|
||
loving of the sons and daughters of men, is moving on to the
|
||
Siberia of God, the land of eternal exile, where agony becomes
|
||
immortal.
|
||
|
||
How can you, how can any man with brain or heart, believe this
|
||
infinite lie?
|
||
|
||
Is there not room for a better, for a higher philosophy? After
|
||
all, is it not possible that we may find that everything has been
|
||
necessarily produced, that all religions and superstitions, all
|
||
mistakes and all crimes, were simply necessities? Is it not
|
||
possible that out of this perception may come not only love and
|
||
pity for others, but absolute justification for the individual? May
|
||
we not find that every soul has, like Mazeppa, been lashed to the
|
||
wild horse of passion, or like Prometheus to the rocks of fate?
|
||
|
||
You ask me to take the "sober second thought." I beg of you to
|
||
take the first, and if you do, you will throw away the Presbyterian
|
||
creed; you will instantly perceive that he who commits the
|
||
"smallest sin" no more deserves eternal pain than he who does the
|
||
smallest virtuous deed deserves eternal bliss; you will become
|
||
convinced that an infinite God who creates billions of men knowing
|
||
that they will suffer through all the countless years is an
|
||
infinite demon; you will be satisfied that the Bible, with its
|
||
philosophy and its folly, with its goodness and its cruelty, is but
|
||
the work of man, and that the supernatural does not and cannot
|
||
exist.
|
||
|
||
For you personally, I have the highest regard and the
|
||
sincerest respect, and I beg of you not to pollute the soul of
|
||
childhood, not to farrow the cheeks of mothers, by preaching a
|
||
creed that should be shrieked in a mad-house. Do not make the
|
||
cradle as terrible as the coffin. Preach, I pray you, the gospel of
|
||
Intellectual Hospitality -- the liberty of thought and speech. Take
|
||
from loving hearts the awful fear. Have mercy on your fellow-men.
|
||
Do not drive to madness the mothers whose tears are falling on the
|
||
pallid faces of those who died in unbelief. Pity the erring,
|
||
wayward, suffering, weeping world. Do not proclaim as "tidings of
|
||
great joy" that an Infinite Spider is weaving webs to catch the
|
||
souls of men.
|
||
|
||
Robert G. Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|