7411 lines
360 KiB
D
7411 lines
360 KiB
D
114 page printout
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
This disk, its printout, or copies of either
|
||
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
AND
|
||
|
||
OTHER LECTURES.
|
||
BY
|
||
HELEN H. GARDENER.
|
||
|
||
AUTHOR OF "A Thoughtless Yes;" "Is This Your Son, My Lord,"
|
||
A Radical Novel "Sex In Brain;" And Other Essays.
|
||
|
||
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
|
||
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
|
||
|
||
Copyright.
|
||
BY HELEN GARDENER
|
||
1885
|
||
|
||
THIRTEENTH EDITION.
|
||
|
||
NEW YORK:
|
||
THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY,
|
||
28 LAFAYETTE PLACE.
|
||
**** ****
|
||
THIS LITTLE VOLUME,
|
||
is
|
||
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
|
||
WITH THE LOVE OF THE AUTHOR,
|
||
To
|
||
MRS. EVA INGERSOLL,
|
||
|
||
THE BRAVE, HAPPY WIFE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST ORATOR,
|
||
AND A WOMAN'S TRUEST FRIEND.
|
||
IN HER BEAUTIFUL HOME-LIFE SUPERSTITION AND FEAR HAVE NEVER
|
||
ENTERED; "HUMAN EQUALITY AND FREEDOM HAVE
|
||
THEIR HIGHEST ILLUSTRATION;
|
||
AND
|
||
TIME HAS DEEPENED YOUTHFUL LOVE INTO A DIVINER WORSHIP
|
||
THAN ANGELS OFFER OR THAN GODS INSPIRE.
|
||
|
||
|
||
INTRODUCTION.
|
||
|
||
NOTHING gives me more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise
|
||
for the future, than the fact that woman is achieving intellectual
|
||
and physical liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our
|
||
country, there are thousands of women who think and express their
|
||
own thoughts -- who are thoroughly free and thoroughly
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
1
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
conscientious -- who have neither been narrowed nor corrupted by a
|
||
heartless creed -- who do not worship a being in heaven whom they
|
||
would shudderingly loathe on earth. Women who do not stand before
|
||
the altar of a cruel faith with downcast eyes of timid
|
||
acquiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a
|
||
thoughtless yes. They are no longer satisfied with being told. They
|
||
examine for themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of
|
||
society -- the satisfied serfs of husbands or the echoes of
|
||
priests. They demand the rights that naturally belong to
|
||
intelligent human beings. If wives, they wish to be the equals of
|
||
husbands -- if mothers, they wish to rear their children in the
|
||
atmosphere of love, liberty and philosophy. They believe that woman
|
||
can discharge all her duties without the aid of superstition, and
|
||
preserve all that is true, pure and tender without sacrificing in
|
||
the temple of absurdity the convictions of the soul.
|
||
|
||
Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked
|
||
-- not mind -- but opportunity. In the long night of barbarism
|
||
physical strength, and the cruelty to use it, were the badges of
|
||
superiority. Muscle was more than mind, In the ignorant age of
|
||
Faith the loving nature of woman was abused, her conscience was
|
||
rendered morbid and diseased. It might almost be said that she was
|
||
betrayed by her own virtues. At best, she secured, not opportunity,
|
||
but flattery, the preface to degradation. She was deprived of
|
||
liberty and without that nothing is worth the having. She was
|
||
taught to obey without question, and to believe without thought.
|
||
There were universities for men before the alphabet had been taught
|
||
to woman. At the intellectual feast there were no places for wives
|
||
and mothers. Even now they sit at the second table and eat the
|
||
crusts and crumbs. The schools for women, at the present time, are
|
||
just far enough behind those for men to fall heirs to the
|
||
discarded. On the, same principle, when a doctrine becomes too
|
||
absurd for the pulpit, it is given to the Sunday School. The ages
|
||
of muscle, and miracle -- of fists and faith -- are passing away.
|
||
Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than Hercules. Now, a word
|
||
is stronger than a blow.
|
||
|
||
At last we see women who depend upon themselves -- who stand
|
||
self poised the shocks of this sad world without leaning for
|
||
support against a church -- who do not go to the literature of
|
||
barbarism for consolation, nor use the falsehoods and mistakes of
|
||
the past for the foundation of their hope -- women brave enough and
|
||
tender enough to meet and bear the facts and fortunes of this
|
||
world.
|
||
|
||
The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of
|
||
man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence,
|
||
substantiate their declaration.
|
||
|
||
Yet, I must admit that there are thousands of wives who still
|
||
have faith in the saving power of superstition -- who still insist
|
||
on attending church while husbands prefer the shores, the woods, or
|
||
the fields. In this way families are divided. Parents grow apart,
|
||
and unconsciously the pearl of greatest price is thrown away. The
|
||
wife ceases to be the intellectual companion of the husband. She
|
||
reads the "Christian Register," sermons in the Monday papers, and
|
||
a little gossip about folks and fashions, while he studies the
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
works of Darwin, Haeckel and Humboldt. Their sympathies become
|
||
estranged. They are no longer mental friends. The husband smiles at
|
||
the follies of the wife and she weeps for the supposed sins of the
|
||
husband. Such wives should read this book. They should not be
|
||
satisfied to remain forever in the cradle of thought, amused with
|
||
the toys of superstition.
|
||
|
||
The parasite of woman is the priest.
|
||
|
||
It must also be admitted that there are thousands of men who
|
||
believe that superstition is good for women and children -- who
|
||
regard falsehood as the fortress of virtue, and feel indebted to
|
||
ignorance for the purity of daughters and the fidelity of wives.
|
||
These men think of priests as detectives in disguise, and regard
|
||
God as a policeman who prevents elopements. Their opinions about
|
||
religion are as correct as their estimate of woman.
|
||
|
||
The church furnishes but little food for the mind. People of
|
||
intelligence are growing tired of the platitudes of the pulpit --
|
||
the iterations of the itinerants. The average sermon is "as tedious
|
||
as a twice-told tale vexing the ears of a drowsy man."
|
||
|
||
One Sunday a gentleman who is a great inventor called at my
|
||
house. Only a few words had passed between us, when he arose,
|
||
saying that he must go as it was time for church. Wondering that a
|
||
man of his mental wealth could enjoy the intellectual poverty of
|
||
the pulpit, I asked for an explanation, and he gave me the
|
||
following: "You know that I am an inventor. Well, the moment my
|
||
mind becomes absorbed in some difficult problem, I am afraid that
|
||
something may happen to distract my attention. Now, I know that I
|
||
can sit in church for an hour without the slightest danger of
|
||
having the current of my thought disturbed."
|
||
|
||
Most women cling to the Bible because they have been taught
|
||
that to give up that book is to give up all hope of another life --
|
||
of ever meeting again the loved and lost. They have also been
|
||
taught that the Bible is their friend, their defender, and the real
|
||
civilizer of man.
|
||
|
||
Now if they will only read this book -- these three lectures,
|
||
without fear, and then read the Bible, they will see that the truth
|
||
or falsity of the dogma of inspiration. has nothing to do with the
|
||
question of immortality, Certainly the Old Testament does not teach
|
||
us that there is another life, and upon that question, even the New
|
||
is obscure and vague. The hunger of the heart finds only a few
|
||
small and scattered crumbs. There is nothing definite, solid, and
|
||
satisfying. United with the idea of immortality we find the
|
||
absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy that depends for its
|
||
fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy the brain or
|
||
heart.
|
||
|
||
There are but few who do not long for a dawn beyond the night.
|
||
And this longing is born of, and nourished by, the heart. Love
|
||
wrapped in shadow -- bending with tear-filled eyes above its dead,
|
||
convulsively clasps the outstretched hand of hope.
|
||
|
||
I had the pleasure of introducing Helen H. Gardener to her
|
||
first audience, and in that introduction said a few words that I
|
||
will repeat.
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"We do not know, we can not 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, of an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one.
|
||
|
||
"Under the seven-hued arch of hope let the dead sleep."
|
||
|
||
They will also discover, as they read the "Sacred Volume,"
|
||
that it is not the friend of woman. They will find that the writers
|
||
of that book, for the most part, speak of woman as a poor beast of
|
||
burden -- a serf, a drudge, a kind of necessary evil -- as mere
|
||
property. Surely a book that upholds polygamy is not the friend of
|
||
wife and mother.
|
||
|
||
Even Christ did not place woman on an equality with man. He
|
||
said not one word about the sacredness of home, the duties of the
|
||
husband to the wife -- nothing calculated to lighten the hearts of
|
||
those who bear the saddest burdens of this life.
|
||
|
||
They will also find that the Bible has not civilized mankind.
|
||
A book that establishes and defends slavery and wanton war is not
|
||
calculated to soften the hearts of those who believe implicitly
|
||
that it is the work of God. A book that not only permits, but
|
||
command religious persecution, has not in my judgment developed the
|
||
affection nature of man. Its influence has been bad and bad only.
|
||
It has filled the world with bitterness revenge, and crime, and
|
||
retarded in countless ways the progress of our race.
|
||
|
||
The writer of this little volume has read the Bible with open
|
||
eyes. The mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision. She
|
||
has had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She
|
||
has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the
|
||
humorous side of the stupidly solemn. Her heart protests against
|
||
the cruel, and her brain rejects the childish, the unnatural, and
|
||
absurd. There is no misunderstanding between her head and heart.
|
||
She says what she thinks, and feels what she says.
|
||
|
||
No human being can answer her arguments. There is no answer.
|
||
All the priests in the world cannot explain away her objections.
|
||
There is no explanation. They should remain dumb, unless they can
|
||
show that the impossible is the probable -- that slavery is better
|
||
than freedom -- that polygamy is the friend of woman -- that the
|
||
innocent can justly suffer for the guilty, and that to persecute
|
||
for opinion's sake is an act of love and worship.
|
||
|
||
Wives who cease to learn -- who simply forget and believe,
|
||
will fill the evening of their lives with barren sighs and bitter
|
||
tears, The mind should outlast youth.
|
||
|
||
If, when beauty fades, Thought, the deft and unseen sculptor,
|
||
hath not left his subtle lines upon the face, then all is lost. No
|
||
charm is left. The light is out. There is no flame within to
|
||
glorify the wrinkled clay.
|
||
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
|
||
|
||
Hoffman House,
|
||
NEW YORK, July 22, 1885.
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
by
|
||
HELEN GARDENER
|
||
|
||
IT is thought strange and particularly shocking by some
|
||
persons for a woman to question the absolute correctness of the
|
||
Bible. She is supposed to be able to go through the world with her
|
||
eyes shut, and her month open wide enough to swallow Jonah and the
|
||
Garden of Eden without making a wry face. It is usually recounted
|
||
as one of her most beautiful traits of character that she has faith
|
||
sufficient to float the Ark without inspecting the animals.
|
||
|
||
So it is thought strange that a woman should object to any of
|
||
the teachings of the Patriarchs. I claim, however, that if she
|
||
honestly thinks there is anything wrong about them she has a right
|
||
to say so. I claim that I have a right to offer my objections to
|
||
the Bible from the standpoint of a woman. I think that it is fair,
|
||
at least, to put the case before you as it looks to me, using the
|
||
Bible itself as my chief witness. That Book I think degrades and
|
||
belittles women, and I claim the right to say why I think so. The
|
||
opposite opinion has been stated by hundreds of people, hundreds of
|
||
times, for hundreds of years, so that it is only fair that I be
|
||
allowed to bring in a minority report.
|
||
|
||
Women have for a long time been asking for the right to an
|
||
education, for the right to live on an equal footing with their
|
||
brothers, and for the right to earn money honestly; while at the
|
||
same time they have supported a book and a religion which hold them
|
||
as the inferiors of their sons and as objects of contempt and
|
||
degradation with Jehovah. They have sustained a so-called
|
||
"revelation" which holds them as inferior and unclean things. Now
|
||
it has always seemed to me that these, women are trying to stand on
|
||
both sides of the fence at the same time -- and that neither foot
|
||
touches.
|
||
|
||
I think they are making a mistake. I think they are making a
|
||
mistake to sustain any religion which is based upon faith. Even
|
||
though a religion claim a superhuman origin -- and I believe they
|
||
all claim that -- it must be tested by human reason, and if our
|
||
highest moral sentiments revolt at any of its dictates, its
|
||
dictates must go. For the only good thing about any religion is its
|
||
morality, and morality has nothing to do with faith. The one has to
|
||
do with right actions in this world; the other with unknown
|
||
quantities in the next. The one is a necessity of time the other a
|
||
dream of Eternity. Morality depends upon universal evolution; Faith
|
||
upon special "revelation;" and no woman can afford to accept any
|
||
"revelation" that has yet been offered to this world.
|
||
|
||
That Moses or Confucius, Mohammed or Paul, Abraham or Brigham
|
||
Young asserts that his particular dogma came directly from God, and
|
||
that it was a personal communication to either or all of these
|
||
favored individuals, is a fact that can have no power over us
|
||
unless their teachings are in harmony with our highest thought; our
|
||
noblest purpose, and our purist conception of life. Which of them
|
||
can bear the test? Not one "revelation" known to man to-day can
|
||
look in the face of the nineteenth century and say, "I am parallel
|
||
with your richest development; I still lead your highest thought;
|
||
none of my teachings shock your sense of justice." Not one.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
it is faith in "revelation" that makes a mother tear from her
|
||
arms a tender, helpless child and throw it in the Ganges -- to
|
||
appease the gods! It is a religion of faith that teaches the
|
||
despicable principle of caste -- and that religion was invented by
|
||
those who profited by caste. It was our religion of faith that
|
||
sustained the institution of slavery -- and it had for its
|
||
originators dealers in human flesh. It is the Mormon's religion of
|
||
faith, his belief in the Bible and in the wisdom of Solomon and
|
||
David, that enables the monster of polygamy to flaunt its power and
|
||
its filth in the face of morality of the nineteenth century, which
|
||
has outgrown the Jehovah of the Jews.
|
||
|
||
Every religion must be tried at the bar of human justice, and
|
||
stand or fall by the verdict there. It has no right to crouch
|
||
behind the theory of "inspiration" and demand immunity from
|
||
criticism; and yet that is just what every one of them does. They
|
||
all claim that we have no right to use our reason on their
|
||
inventions. But evil cannot be made good by revelation, and good
|
||
cannot be made evil by persecution.
|
||
|
||
A "revelation" that teaches us to trample on purity, or bids
|
||
us despise beauty -- that gives power to vice or crushes the weak
|
||
-- is an evil. The dogma that leads us to ignore our humanity, that
|
||
asks us to throw away our pleasures, that tells us to be miserable
|
||
here in order that we may be happy hereafter, is a doctrine built
|
||
upon a false philosophy, cruel in its premises and false in its
|
||
promises. And the religion that teaches us that believing Vice is
|
||
holler than unbelieving Virtue is a grievous wrong. Credulity is
|
||
not a substitute for morality. Belief is not a question of right or
|
||
wrong, it is a question of mental organization. Man cannot believe
|
||
what he will, he must believe what he must. If his brain tells him
|
||
one thing and his catechism tolls him another, his brain ought to
|
||
win. You don't leave your umbrella at home during a storm, simply
|
||
because the almanac calls for a clear day.
|
||
|
||
A religion that teaches a mother that she can be happy in
|
||
heaven, with her children in hell -- in everlasting torment --
|
||
strikes at the very roots of family affection. It makes the human
|
||
heart a stone. Love that means no more than that, is not love at
|
||
all. No heart that has ever loved can see the object of its
|
||
affection in pain and itself be happy. The thing is impossible. Any
|
||
religion that can make that possible is more to be dreaded than war
|
||
or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all that is
|
||
great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a
|
||
mockery and love a curse.
|
||
|
||
I once knew a case myself, where an oldest son who was an
|
||
unbeliever died. He had been a kind son and a good man. He had
|
||
shielded his widowed mother from every hardship. He had tried to
|
||
lighten her pain and relieve her loneliness. He had worked early
|
||
and late to keep her comfortable and happy. When he died she was
|
||
heartbroken. It seemed to her more than she could bear. As she sat
|
||
and gazed at his dear face in a transport of grief, the door opened
|
||
and her preacher came in to bring her the comfort of religion. He
|
||
talked with her of her loss, and finally he said, "But it would not
|
||
be so hard for you to bear if he had been a Christian. If he had
|
||
accepted what was freely offered him yon would one day see him
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
again. But he chose his path, he denied his Lord, and he is lost.
|
||
And now, dear madam, place your affections on your living son, who
|
||
is, thank God, saved." That was the comfort he brought her. That
|
||
was the consolation of his religion. I am telling yon of an actual
|
||
occurrence. This is all a fact. Well, a few years later that dear
|
||
old lady died in her son's house, where she had gone on a visit. He
|
||
broke her will -- this son who was saved -- and brought in a bill
|
||
against her estate for her board and nursing while she was ill!
|
||
Which one of those boys do you think would be the best company for
|
||
her in the next world?
|
||
|
||
It has always seemed to me that I would rather go to hell with
|
||
a good son than to heaven with a good Christian. I may be wrong,
|
||
but with my present light that is the way it looks to me; and for
|
||
the sake of humanity I am glad that it looks that way.
|
||
|
||
ACCIDENT INSURANCE.
|
||
|
||
A church member said to me some time ago that even though the
|
||
Bible were not "the word of God," even though it were not necessary
|
||
to believe in the creed in order to go to heaven, it could not do
|
||
any harm to believe it; and he thought it was "best to be on the
|
||
safe side, for," said he, "suppose after all it should happen to be
|
||
true!"
|
||
|
||
So he carries a church-membership as a sort of accident
|
||
insurance policy.
|
||
|
||
I do not believe we have a right to work upon that basis, It
|
||
is not honest. I do not believe that any "suppose it should be"
|
||
gives us the right to teach "I know that it is." I do not believe
|
||
in the honesty and right of any cause that has to prop up its
|
||
backbone with faith, and splinter its legs with ignorance. I do not
|
||
believe in the harmlessness of any teaching that is not based upon
|
||
reason, justice, and truth. I do not believe that it is harmless to
|
||
uphold any religion that is not noble and elevating in itself. I do
|
||
not believe that it is "just as well" to spread any dogma that
|
||
stultifies reason and ignores common-sense. I do not believe that
|
||
it is ever well to compromise with dishonesty and pretence. And I
|
||
cannot admit that it "can do no harm" to teach a belief in the
|
||
goodness of a God who sends an Emerson or a Darwin to hell because
|
||
Eve was fond of fruit, and who offers a reserved seat in heaven to
|
||
Chastine Cox because a mob murdered Jesus Christ. It does not seem
|
||
to me good morals, and it is certainly poor logic.
|
||
|
||
And speaking of logic, I heard a funny story the other day
|
||
about one of those absurdly literal little girls who, when she
|
||
heard people say they "wanted to be an angel," did not know it was
|
||
a joke. She thought it was all honor-bright. She was standing by
|
||
the window killing flies, and her mother called her and said, "Why
|
||
child, don't you know that is very wicked? Don't you know that God
|
||
made those dear little flies, and that he loves them?" (Just
|
||
imagine an infinite God in love with a blue-bottle fly!) Well, the
|
||
little girl thought that was queer taste, but she was sorry, and
|
||
said that she would not do it any more. By and by, however, a great
|
||
lazy fly was too tempting, and her plump little finger began to
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
follow him around slowly on the glass, and she said, "Oh you nice
|
||
big fly, did dod nade you? And does dod love you? And does you love
|
||
dod?" (Down came the finger.) Well, you shall see him."
|
||
|
||
Yet we all know Christians who love God. better than anything
|
||
else -- "with all their hearts and soul and strength" -- who prefer
|
||
to postpone seeing him till the very last minute. They say it is
|
||
because they have not "fulfilled their allotted time." Why not be
|
||
honest and say it is because they like to live? They "long to put
|
||
on immortality;" but their sleep is sounder if they live next door
|
||
to a good doctor.
|
||
|
||
People say that men are infidels because it is easier -- to
|
||
rid themselves of responsibility. But it seems to me that anyone
|
||
who advances the doctrine of "morality and works" instead of that
|
||
of "repentance and faith," on the ground that it is easier, is
|
||
laboring under a mistake. I don't see how any one could ask for an
|
||
easier way of getting rid of his sins than the plan that simply
|
||
unloads them on to another man. I fail to see anything hard about
|
||
that -- except for the man who catches the load; and I am unable to
|
||
see anything commendable about it either. But it is not always easy
|
||
for a man to be brave enough to be responsible for his own mistakes
|
||
or faults. It is not always easy for a man to say "I did it, and I
|
||
will suffer the penalty." That is not always easy, but it is always
|
||
just. No one but a coward or a knave needs to shift his personal
|
||
responsibility on to the shoulders of the dead. Honest men and
|
||
women do not need to put "Providence" up between themselves and
|
||
their own motives.
|
||
|
||
A short time ago the wife of a very devout man apparently
|
||
died, but her body remained so lifelike and her color so natural
|
||
that her relatives decided that she could not be dead, and they
|
||
summoned a physician. The husband, however, refused to have him
|
||
administer any restoratives. He said that if the Lord had permitted
|
||
her to go into a trance and was anxious to bring her out alive he
|
||
would do it. Meanwhile he did not intend to meddle with Providence.
|
||
His maxim was, "Whatever else you do, don't interfere with
|
||
Providence. Give Providence a good chance and if it doesn't come
|
||
round all right for Betsy, I think I can bear it -- and she will
|
||
have to."
|
||
|
||
If we take care of our motives toward each ether, "Providence"
|
||
will take care of itself.
|
||
|
||
Did you ever know a pious man do a real mean thing -- that
|
||
succeeded -- who did not claim that Providence had a finger in it?
|
||
The smaller the trick, the bigger the finger. He is perfectly
|
||
honest in his belief too. He is the sort of man that never has a
|
||
doubt about hell -- and that most people go there. Thinks they all
|
||
deserve it. Has entire confidence that God is responsible for every
|
||
word in the Bible, and that all other Bibles and all other
|
||
religions are the direct work of the devil. Probably prays for
|
||
people who don't believe that way. He is perfectly honest in it.
|
||
That is simply his size, and he usually pities anybody who wears a
|
||
larger hat.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
CHIEFLY WOMEN.
|
||
|
||
But they say this is not a matter of reason. This is outside
|
||
of reason, it is all a matter of faith. But whenever a superstition
|
||
claims to be so holy that you must not use your reason about it,
|
||
there is something wrong some place. Truth is not afraid of reason,
|
||
nor reason of truth.
|
||
|
||
I am going to say something to-night about why I do not
|
||
believe in a religion of faith. I am going to tell you some of the
|
||
reasons why I do not believe that the Bible is "inspired;" why I,
|
||
as a woman, don't want to think it is the word of God; why I think
|
||
that women, above all others, should not believe that it is. And
|
||
since women are the bulwarks of the churches to-day, it seems to me
|
||
they have, the right, and that it is a part of their duty, to ask
|
||
themselves why. Since about seven-tenths of all church-members are
|
||
women, surely the churches should not deny them the right to use
|
||
their reason (or whatever serves them in that capacity) in regard
|
||
to their own work.
|
||
|
||
I saw some ladies begging the other day for money to pay off
|
||
the debt of a $200,000 church, on the corner-stone of which were
|
||
cut the words, "My kingdom is not of this world;" and I wondered at
|
||
the time what the property would have been like if the kingdom had
|
||
been of this world. It seemed to me that a few hundred such untaxed
|
||
houses would be a pretty fair property almost anywhere.
|
||
|
||
One of our prominent bishops, when speaking recently of
|
||
church-membership, said, "The Church must recruit her ranks
|
||
hereafter almost entirely with children;" and he added, "the time
|
||
has passed when she can recruit her ranks with grown men." Good!
|
||
And the New York Evangelist (one of the strongest church papers)
|
||
says, "Four-fifths of the earnest young men of this country are
|
||
skeptics, distrust the clergy, and are disgusted with evangelical
|
||
Christianity." Good again.
|
||
|
||
The Congregational Club of Boston has recently been discussing
|
||
the question how to win young men to Christianity. The Rev. R.R.
|
||
Meredith said: "The churches to-day do not get the best and
|
||
sharpest young men. They get the goody-goody ones easily enough;
|
||
but those who do the thinking are not brought into the church in
|
||
great numbers. You cannot reach them by the Bible. How many did
|
||
Moody touch in this city, during his revival days? You can count
|
||
them on your fingers. The man who wants them cannot get them with
|
||
the Bible under his arm. He must be like them, sharp. They cannot
|
||
be gathered by sentimentality. If you say to them, 'Come to Jesus,'
|
||
very likely they will reply; Go to thunder.' [In Boston!] The thing
|
||
to be done with such a man is to first get into his heart, and then
|
||
lead him into salvation before he knows it."
|
||
|
||
I don't know how good this recipe is, but I should infer that
|
||
it is a double-back-action affair of some sort that could get into
|
||
a man's heart and lead him into salvation before he knew it, and
|
||
that if the Church can just got a patent on that she is all right;
|
||
otherwise I suspect that the goody-goody ones are likely to be
|
||
about all she will get in large numbers.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Do I need any stronger, plainer evidence than this to show
|
||
that the thought of the world is against it, and that it is time
|
||
for women to ask themselves whether a faith that can hold its own
|
||
only by its grasp upon the ignorance and credulity of children, a
|
||
faith that has made four-fifths of the earnest men skeptics, a
|
||
faith that has this deplorable effect upon Boston manners, is one
|
||
that does honor to the intellect and judgment of the women of
|
||
to-day?
|
||
|
||
We hear women express indignation that the law classes them
|
||
with idiots and children; but from these orthodox statements it
|
||
would seem that in the Church they voluntarily accept about this
|
||
classification themselves. If only these church-people go to
|
||
heaven, what a queer kindergarten it will be, to be sure, with only
|
||
a few male voices to join in the choruses -- and most of those
|
||
tenor.
|
||
|
||
This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and
|
||
give her nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her
|
||
with contempt and oppression. No wonder that four-fifths of the
|
||
earnest men are against it, for it is not manly and it is not just;
|
||
and such men are willing to free women from the ecclesiastical
|
||
bondage that makes her responsible for all the ills of life, for
|
||
all the pains of deed and creed, while it allows her no choice in
|
||
their formation, no property in their fruition. Such men are
|
||
outgrowing the petty jealousies and musty superstitions of narrow-
|
||
minded dogmatists sufficiently to look upon the question not as one
|
||
of personal preference, but as one of human justice. They do not
|
||
ask, "Would I like to see woman do thus or thus?" but, "have I a
|
||
right to dictate the limit of her efforts or her energy?" -- not,
|
||
"Am I benefitted by her ecclesiastical bondage and credulity? Does
|
||
it give me unlimited power over her?" but, "Have I a right to keep
|
||
in ignorance, have I a right to degrade, any human intellect?" And
|
||
they have answered with equal dignity and impersonal judgment that
|
||
it is the birthright of no human being to dominate or enslave
|
||
another; that it is the just lot of no human being to be born
|
||
subject to the arbitrary will or dictates of any living soul; and
|
||
that it is, after all, as great an injustice to a man to make him
|
||
a tyrant as it is to make him a slave.
|
||
|
||
Whenever a man rises high enough to leave his own personality
|
||
out of the question, he has gone beyond the Stage of silly
|
||
platitudes. His own dignity is too secure, his title to respect too
|
||
far beyond question, for him to need such little subterfuges to
|
||
guard his position, either as husband, as household-king, or as
|
||
public benefactor. His home life is not founded upon compulsory
|
||
obedience; but is filled with the perfume of perfect trust, the
|
||
fragrance of loving admiration and respect. It is the domestic
|
||
tyrant, the egotistic mediocre, and the superstitious Church that
|
||
are afraid for women to think, that fear to lose her as worshipper
|
||
and serf.
|
||
|
||
You need go only a very little way back in history to learn
|
||
that the Church decided that a woman who learned the alphabet
|
||
overstepped all bounds of propriety, and that She would be wholly
|
||
lost to shame who should so far forget her modesty as to become
|
||
acquainted With the multiplication table.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
And to-day, if she offers her opinion and her logic for what
|
||
they are worth, the clergy preach doleful sermons about her losing
|
||
her beautiful home character, about her innocence being gone, about
|
||
their idea of her glorious exaltation as wife and mother being
|
||
destroyed. Then they grow florid and exclaim that "man is after all
|
||
subject to her, that he is born for the rugged path and she for the
|
||
couch of flowers!" [NOTE: "A pertinacious adversary, pushed to
|
||
extremities, may say that husbands indeed are willing to be
|
||
reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their partners without
|
||
being compelled to it, but that wives are not; that if allowed any
|
||
rights of their own they will acknowledge no rights at all in any
|
||
one else, and never will yield in anything, unless they can be
|
||
compelled, by the man's mere authority, to yield in everything.
|
||
This would have been said by many persons some generations ago,
|
||
when satires on women were in vogue, and men thought it a clever
|
||
thing to insult women for being what men made them. But it will be
|
||
said by no one now who is worth replying to. It is not the doctrine
|
||
of the present day that women are less susceptible of good feeling
|
||
and consideration for those with whom they are united by the
|
||
strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are perpetually
|
||
told that women are better than men by those who are totally
|
||
opposed to treating them as if they were as good; so that the
|
||
saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended to put a
|
||
complimentary face upon an injury." -- John Stuart Mill.]
|
||
|
||
You recognize it all, I see. You seem to have heard it
|
||
somewhere before. I recall one occasion when I heard it from a
|
||
country clergyman, who know so much about heaven and hell that he
|
||
hardly had time to know enough about this world to enable him to
|
||
keep out of the fire unless he was tied to a chair. It was in the
|
||
summer of 1876, and I remember the conversation began by his asking
|
||
a lady in the room about the Centennial display, from which she had
|
||
just returned. He asked her if she would advise him to take his
|
||
daughter. She said she thought it would be a very nice thing for
|
||
the girl, and she added, "It will be good for you. You will see so
|
||
much that is new and wonderful. It will be of use to you in your
|
||
work, I am sure." He said, "Well, I don't know about that. There
|
||
won't be anything much that is now to me. I've seen it all. I was
|
||
in Philadelphia in 1840." Then he gave us quite a talk on "woman's
|
||
sphere." He could tell you in five minutes just what it was; and
|
||
the amount of information that man possessed about the next world
|
||
was simply astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think
|
||
he could tell you, within a fraction or two, just how much material
|
||
it took to make wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings
|
||
bass or tenor. His presbytery says he is a most remarkable
|
||
theologian -- and I don't doubt it, According to the law of
|
||
compensation, however, what he does not know about this world would
|
||
make a very comprehensive encyclopedia.
|
||
|
||
But seriously, did it ever occur to you to ask any of these
|
||
divine oracles why, if all these recent compliments are true about
|
||
the superior beauty and virtue and truth and power resting with
|
||
women -- why it is that they always desire as heirs sons rather
|
||
than daughters? You would think their whole desire would be for
|
||
girls, and that, like Oliver Twist, their chief regret would be
|
||
that they hadn't "more." But the Bible (and the clergy, until quite
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
recently) pronounces it twice as great a crime to be the mother of
|
||
a girl as to be the mother of a boy. A crime to be the mother of a
|
||
little child -- a double crime if the child should be a girl.
|
||
|
||
It is often urged that women are better off under the
|
||
Christian than under any other religion; that our Bible is more
|
||
just to her than other Bibles are. For the time we will grant this,
|
||
and respectfully inquire -- what does it prove? If it proves
|
||
anything it is this -- that all "divine revelations" are an
|
||
indignity to women, and that they had better stick to nature.
|
||
Nature may be exacting, but she is not partial. If it proves
|
||
anything, it is that all religions have been made by men for men
|
||
and through men. I do not contend for the superiority of other
|
||
Bibles, I simply protest against the wrong in ours. One wrong
|
||
cannot excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not
|
||
make a hero of the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more
|
||
cruel than Jehovah, that would be no palliation of the awful crimes
|
||
of the Old Testament. That slaves have better clothes than savages
|
||
cannot make noble traffic in human blood. A choice of evils is
|
||
often necessary, but it does not make either of them a good. But
|
||
there is no book which tells of a more infamous monster than the
|
||
Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and cruelty and revenge,
|
||
unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God with hell, and
|
||
extends his outrages throughout all eternity!
|
||
|
||
WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.
|
||
|
||
Another argument is that if orthodox Christianity were not
|
||
good for women they would not support and cling to it; if it did
|
||
not comfort them they would discard it. In reply to that I need
|
||
only recall to you the fact that it is the same in all religions.
|
||
Women have ever been the stanchest defenders of the faith. the most
|
||
bitter haters of an Infidel, the most certain that their form of
|
||
faith is the only truth. Yet I do not hear this fact advanced to
|
||
prove the divinity of the Koran or the book of Mormon. If it is a
|
||
valid argument in the one case it is valid in the others. The
|
||
trouble with it is it proves too much. it takes in the whole field.
|
||
It does not leave a weed from the first incantation of the first
|
||
aborigine to the last shout of the last convert to Mormonism, out
|
||
of its range; and it does, and always has done, just as good
|
||
service for any one of the other religions as it does for ours. It
|
||
is a free-for-all, go-as-you-please argument; but it is the sort of
|
||
chaff they feed theological students on -- and they sift it over
|
||
for women. It is pretty light diet when it gets to them -- but it
|
||
is filling.
|
||
|
||
Recently I heard a clergyman give the following as his reason
|
||
for opposing medical, or scientific training of any sort, for
|
||
women: "Now her whole energy and force of action (outside of the
|
||
family) must be expended upon religion. If she were allowed other
|
||
fields of action or thought, her energy, like that of man, would be
|
||
withdrawn from and fatally cripple the Church."
|
||
|
||
To me, however, it seems that any organization that finds it
|
||
necessary to cripple its adherents in order to keep them has a
|
||
screw loose somewhere.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
And it also seems to me that it is time for women to try to
|
||
find out where the trouble is. They will not want for aid from the
|
||
men who think -- the men who hold self vastly inferior to principle
|
||
and justice -- the rare noblemen of nature, honorable, fair, just,
|
||
tender, and thoughtful men -- men who love to see the weakest share
|
||
with them the benefits of freedom -- men who know that they are not
|
||
the less men because they are tender, that women are not the less
|
||
women because they are strong; and no land under the sky holds so
|
||
many such as ours.
|
||
|
||
WHAT IT TEACHES.
|
||
|
||
It seemed to me that the time had come when women should know
|
||
for themselves what the Bible teaches for them and what the pulpit
|
||
has upheld; so I have looked it up a little, and although I cannot
|
||
soil my lips nor your ears with much of it, there is enough, I
|
||
think, that I may use to make any self-respecting, pure woman blush
|
||
that she has sustained it by word or act.
|
||
|
||
The Bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a
|
||
slave, [Ex. xxi. 7.] that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob,
|
||
[Judges xix. 24.] and that he may murder her, and still be a good
|
||
father and a holy man. It teaches that a man may have any number of
|
||
wives; that he may sell them, give them away, or change them
|
||
around, and still be a perfect gentleman, a good husband, a
|
||
righteous man, and one of God's most intimate friends; and that is
|
||
a pretty good position for a beginning. It teaches almost every
|
||
infamy under the heavens for woman, and it does not recognize her
|
||
as a self-directing, free human being. It classes her as property,
|
||
just as it does a sheep: and it forbids her to think, talk, act, or
|
||
exist, except under conditions and limits defined by some priest.
|
||
|
||
If the Bible were strictly followed, women and negroes would
|
||
still be publicly bought and sold in America. If it were believed
|
||
in as it once was, if the Church had the power she once had, I
|
||
should never see the light of another day, and your lives would be
|
||
made a hell for sitting here to-night. The iron grasp of
|
||
superstition would hold you and your children forever over the
|
||
bottomless pit of religious persecution, and cover your fair fame
|
||
with infamous slander, because you dared to sit here and hear me
|
||
strike a blow at infinite injustice.
|
||
|
||
Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a
|
||
Christian country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted
|
||
and perpetuated by the pulpit. That seems strong language, no
|
||
doubt; but I shall give you an opportunity to decide as to its
|
||
truth. I will now bring my witnesses. They are from the "inspired
|
||
word" itself, and therefore must be all that could be desired.
|
||
|
||
I will read yon a short passage from Exodus xx. 22; xxi. 7-8:
|
||
|
||
22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the
|
||
children of Israel, Ye have seen that I talked with you from
|
||
heaven. * * *
|
||
|
||
7. And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she
|
||
shall not go out as the men-servants do.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
8. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to
|
||
himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a
|
||
strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt
|
||
deceitfully with her.
|
||
|
||
The Lord doesn't object to a man selling his daughter, but if
|
||
any one thing makes him angrier than another it is to have her go
|
||
about as the men-servants do after she is sold. On a little point
|
||
like that he is absolutely fastidious. You may here notice that God
|
||
took the trouble to come down from heaven to tell the girl what not
|
||
to do after she was sold. He forgot to suggest to her father that
|
||
it might be as well not to sell her at all. He forgot that. But in
|
||
an important conversation one often overlooks little details. The
|
||
next is Joshua xv. 16-17:
|
||
|
||
16 And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh
|
||
it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife.
|
||
|
||
17 And Othniel the brother of Caleb [and consequently the
|
||
girl's uncle] took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.
|
||
|
||
Please to remember that the said Caleb was one of God's
|
||
intimates -- a favorite with the Almighty. The girl was not
|
||
consulted; the father paid off his warriors in female scrip. The
|
||
next is Gen. xix. 5-8
|
||
|
||
5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the
|
||
men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us that
|
||
we may know them.
|
||
|
||
6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door
|
||
after him.
|
||
|
||
7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
|
||
|
||
8 Behold now, I have two daughters * * * * let me, I pray you,
|
||
bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes;
|
||
only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the
|
||
shadow of my roof.
|
||
|
||
These men had come under the shadow of Lot's roof for
|
||
protection, it seems, and Lot felt that his honor demanded that he
|
||
should shield them even at the cost of the purity and safety of his
|
||
own daughters! Do you know I have always had a mild curiosity to
|
||
know what his daughters were under the shadow of his roof for. It
|
||
could not have been for protection, I judge, since Lot was one of
|
||
God's best friends. He was on all sorts of intimate terms with the
|
||
Deity -- knew things were going to happen before they came -- was
|
||
the only man good enough to save from a doomed city -- the only one
|
||
whose acts pleased God and this act seems to have been particularly
|
||
satisfactory. These men were "angels of God" who required this
|
||
infamy for their protection! If it takes all the honor out of a man
|
||
when he gets to be an angel, they may use my wings for a feather-
|
||
duster.
|
||
|
||
Now here is a little property law. Num. xxvii.
|
||
|
||
6 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
8 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If
|
||
a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to
|
||
pass unto his daughter.
|
||
|
||
And our law works a little that way yet; being the result of
|
||
ecclesiastical law it naturally would.
|
||
|
||
Next we have Num. xxxvi.:
|
||
|
||
8 And every daughter that possesseth an inheritance in any
|
||
tribe of the children of Israel, shall be wife unto one of the
|
||
family of the tribe of her father, that the children of Israel may
|
||
enjoy every man the inheritance of his fathers.
|
||
|
||
9 Neither shall the inheritance remove from one tribe to
|
||
another tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children of
|
||
Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance.
|
||
|
||
10 Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of
|
||
Zelophehad.
|
||
|
||
That is all the women were for -- articles of conveyance for
|
||
property. Save the land, no matter about the girls. Now these silly
|
||
women actually believed that God told Moses whom they had to marry
|
||
just because Noses said so! I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it is
|
||
not safe to take heavenly communications at second-hand. Second-
|
||
hand articles are likely to be varnished over, and have to be taken
|
||
at a discount. And it seems to me that, if the lord is at all
|
||
particular as to whom a girl should marry she is the one for him to
|
||
discuss the matter with. Moses didn't have to live with the sons of
|
||
Zelophehad, and consequently wasn't the one to talk the matter over
|
||
with. But, you see, it won't do to question what Moses said God
|
||
told him, because upon his veracity the whole structure is built.
|
||
He had more personal interviews with the Deity than any other man
|
||
-- he and Solomon -- and hence they are the best authority.
|
||
|
||
I have here the 31st chapter of Numbers, but it is unfit to
|
||
read. It tolls a story of shame and crime unequalled in atrocity.
|
||
It tells that God commanded Moses and Eleazar, the priest, to
|
||
produce vice and perpetrate crime on an unparalleled scale. It
|
||
tells us that they obeyed the order, and that 16,000 helpless girls
|
||
were dragged in the mire of infamy and divided amongst the
|
||
victorious soldiers. They were made dissolute by fore, and by
|
||
direct command of God!
|
||
|
||
This one chapter stamps as false, forever, the claim of
|
||
inspiration for the Bible. That one chapter would settle it for me.
|
||
Do you believe that God told Moses that? Do you believe there is a
|
||
God who is a thief, a murderer, and a defiler of innocent girls? Do
|
||
you believe it? Yet this religion is built upon Moses' word, and
|
||
woman's position was established by him. It seems to me time for
|
||
women to retire Moses from active life. Coax him to resign on
|
||
account of his health. Return him to his constituency. He has been
|
||
on the supreme bench long enough. Don't let your children believe
|
||
in such a God. Better let them believe in annihilation. Better lot
|
||
them think that the sleep of death is the end of all! Better, much
|
||
better, let them believe that the tender kiss at parting is the
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
last of all consciousness for them, and after that eternal rest!
|
||
Don't let their hearts be seared, their lives clouded, their
|
||
intellects dwarfed by the cruel dread of the God of Moses! Better,
|
||
thrice better, let the cold earth close over the loved and loving
|
||
dust forever, than that it should enter the portals of infinite
|
||
tyranny.
|
||
|
||
Next we will take Deut. xx. 10-16
|
||
|
||
10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then
|
||
proclaim peace unto it. [Good scheme!]
|
||
|
||
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open
|
||
unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found
|
||
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
|
||
|
||
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war
|
||
against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
|
||
|
||
13 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands,
|
||
thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
|
||
|
||
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all
|
||
that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take
|
||
unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thy enemies, which
|
||
the LORD thy God hath given thee.
|
||
|
||
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far
|
||
off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
|
||
|
||
16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God
|
||
doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing
|
||
that breatheth.
|
||
|
||
The injunction to proclaim peace unto a city about to be
|
||
attacked and plundered strikes me as a particularly brilliant idea.
|
||
When you go to rob and murder a man, just tell him to keep cool and
|
||
behave like a gentleman and you won't do a thing to him but steal
|
||
all his property and cut his throat and retire in good order. God
|
||
always seemed to fight on the side of the man who would murder most
|
||
of his fellow-men and degrade the greatest number of women. He
|
||
seemed, in fact, to rather insist on this point if he was
|
||
particular about nothing else. And, by the way, if you had happened
|
||
to live in one of those cities, what opinion do you think you would
|
||
have had of Jehovah? Would he have impressed you as a loving
|
||
Father?
|
||
|
||
Here we have 2 Samuel v. 10, 12-13:
|
||
|
||
10 And David went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of
|
||
hosts was with him.
|
||
|
||
12 And David perceived that the LORD had established him king
|
||
over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for his people
|
||
Israel's sake.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
13 And David took him more concubines and wives out of
|
||
Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons
|
||
and daughters born to David.
|
||
|
||
The nearer he got to God -- the more God was "with him," the
|
||
more wives he wanted.
|
||
|
||
Next we have 2 Samuel xx. 3:
|
||
|
||
3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took
|
||
the ten women, his concubines, whom he had left to keep the house,
|
||
and put them in ward, and fed them * * * * * So they were shut up
|
||
unto the day of their death, living in widowhood.
|
||
|
||
Now what did David do that for? I don't know. It was such a
|
||
trifling little matter that it was not thought necessary to give
|
||
any reason. Perhaps he had eaten too much pie and felt cross; and
|
||
what else were those women for but to be made to stand around on
|
||
such occasions? Weren't they his property? Didn't those ten women
|
||
belong to David? Hadn't he a perfect right to shut them up and feed
|
||
them if he wanted to? Don't you think it was kind of him to feed
|
||
them? I wonder if he sang any of his psalms to them through the
|
||
key-hole. His son Absalom had just been killed, and he felt
|
||
miserable about that. He had just delivered himself of that
|
||
touching apostrophe we often hear repeated from the pulpit to-day,
|
||
to awaken sympathy for God's afflicted prophet: "O my son Absalom,
|
||
my son, my son Absalom I would God I had died for thee, O Absalom,
|
||
my son, my son!" And I haven't a doubt that there, were at least
|
||
ten women who echoed that wish most heartily. It must have been
|
||
carried in the family without a dissenting vote.
|
||
|
||
To this God of the Bible a woman may not go unless her father
|
||
or husband consents. She can't even promise to be good without
|
||
asking permission. This God holds no communication with women
|
||
unless their male relations approve. He wants to be on the safe
|
||
side, I suppose. I'll read you about that. It is in one of the
|
||
chapters that are not commonly cited as evidence that God is no
|
||
respecter of persons, and that the Bible holds woman as man's
|
||
equal; nevertheless it is as worthy of belief as any of the rest of
|
||
it, and its "Thus saith the Lord" and "I as the Lord commanded
|
||
Moses" are "frequent and painful and free," as Mr. Bret Harte might
|
||
say. The chapter is Numbers xxx.:
|
||
|
||
And Moses spake unto the heads of the tribes concerning the
|
||
children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD hath
|
||
commanded.
|
||
|
||
2 If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind
|
||
his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do
|
||
according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.
|
||
|
||
3 if a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by
|
||
a bond, being in her father's house in her youth;
|
||
|
||
4 And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath
|
||
bound, her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her; then
|
||
all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound
|
||
her soul shall stand.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
5 But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth;
|
||
not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her
|
||
soul, shall stand: and the LORD shall forgive her, because her
|
||
father disallowed her.
|
||
|
||
6 And if she had at all an husband when she vowed, or uttered
|
||
aught out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul;
|
||
|
||
7 And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her in the
|
||
day that he heard it; then her vows shall stand, and her bonds
|
||
wherewith she bound her soul shall stand.
|
||
|
||
8 But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he heard
|
||
it; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and that which she
|
||
uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound her soul, of none
|
||
effect: and the LORD shall forgive her.
|
||
|
||
9 But every vow of a widow, and of her that is divorced,
|
||
where-with they have bound their souls, shall stand against her.
|
||
|
||
10 And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound her soul
|
||
by a bond with an oath;
|
||
|
||
11 And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her, and
|
||
disallowed her not; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond
|
||
wherewith she bound her soul shall stand.
|
||
|
||
12 But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the day
|
||
he heard them; then whatsoever proceeded out of her lips concerning
|
||
her vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand: her
|
||
husband hath made them void; and the LORD shall forgive her.
|
||
|
||
13 Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her
|
||
husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.
|
||
|
||
14 But if the husband altogether hold his peace at her from
|
||
day to day; then he establisheth all her vows, or all her bonds,
|
||
which are upon her: he confirmeth them, because he held his peace
|
||
at her in the day that he heard them.
|
||
|
||
15 But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath
|
||
heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity.
|
||
|
||
16 These are the statutes, which the LORD commanded Moses,
|
||
between a man and his wife, between the father and his daughter,
|
||
being yet in her youth in her father's house.
|
||
|
||
Between man and his God they tell us there is no one but a
|
||
Redeemer; but between woman and man's God there seems to be all her
|
||
male relations, which, I should think, would prevent any very close
|
||
intimacy. And by the time the divine commands to woman were
|
||
filtered through the entire male population, from Moses to the last
|
||
gentleman who in the confusion natural to the occasion, misquotes
|
||
"with all thy worldly goods I me endow," I should think it not
|
||
impossible that some slight errors may have crept in, and the
|
||
Church should not feel offended if I were to aid her in their
|
||
detection.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Here we have two or three passages that are said to be the
|
||
words of Jesus. I hope that is not true. But I, believing him to
|
||
have been a man, can understand how they might have been the words
|
||
of even a very good man in that age and with his surroundings; but
|
||
the words of a perfect being -- never! Of course I know that we
|
||
have no positive knowledge of any of the words of Jesus, since no
|
||
one pretends that they were ever written down until long after his
|
||
death; but I am dealing now with the theological creation upon the
|
||
theologian's own grounds. My own idea of Jesus places him far above
|
||
the myth that bears his name.
|
||
|
||
3 And when they waited wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto
|
||
him, They have no wine.
|
||
|
||
4 Jesus saith unto her, woman, what have I to do with thee?
|
||
|
||
-- John ii, 3-4.
|
||
|
||
I hope that Christ did not say that -- for his manhood I hope
|
||
so. I would rather believe that this is the mistake of some
|
||
"uninspired" writer than think that one who in much had so gentle
|
||
and tender a nature, was unkind and brutal to has mother. No one
|
||
would attempt, in this age, to apologize for such a reply to so
|
||
simple a remark made by a mother to her son. But they say "he was
|
||
divine." They also tell us he was a perfect example; but with this
|
||
evidence before me, I am glad our men are human. Still I cannot
|
||
pretend to say that this is not divine -- never having made any
|
||
divine acquaintances. I can only say, humanity is better.
|
||
|
||
Then again he is reported to have said a most cruel thing to
|
||
the broken-hearted mother of a dying child, and I would rather
|
||
believe the Bible uninspired and keep my respect for Jesus, the
|
||
man. It will be better for this world to believe in Jesus, the
|
||
brave, earnest man, than in Jesus, the cruel God.
|
||
|
||
21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of
|
||
Tyre and Sodom.
|
||
|
||
22 And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts,
|
||
and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of
|
||
David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
|
||
|
||
23 But he answered her not a word.
|
||
|
||
25 Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me.
|
||
|
||
26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the
|
||
children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
|
||
|
||
27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs
|
||
which fall from their masters' table. -- Matt.
|
||
xv.
|
||
|
||
Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What
|
||
would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed
|
||
and said, "Doctor, come to my daughter; she is very ill. She has
|
||
lost her reason, and she is all I have!" What would you think of
|
||
the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend
|
||
his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician?
|
||
Do you think that, even if he were to cure the child then, he would
|
||
have done a noble thing? Is it evidence of a perfect character to
|
||
accompany a service with an insult? Do you think a man who could
|
||
offer such an indignity to a sorrowing mother has a perfect
|
||
character, is an ideal God? I do not. And I hope that Jesus never
|
||
said it. I prefer to believe that that story is a libel.
|
||
|
||
It won't do. We have either to give up the "inspiration"
|
||
theory of the Bible, and acknowledge that it is the work of men of
|
||
a crude and brutal age, and like any other book of legend and myth
|
||
of any other people; or else to give up the claim that God is any
|
||
better than the rest of us. You can take your choice.
|
||
|
||
Whenever a theologian undertakes to explain matters so as to
|
||
keep the Bible and the divine character both intact, I am always
|
||
reminded of the story of the Irishman who was given a bed in the
|
||
second story of a lodging-house the first night he spent in New
|
||
York. In the night the fire-engines ran past with their frightful
|
||
noise. Aroused from a deep sleep and utterly terrified, Mike's
|
||
first thought was to get out of the house. He hastily jerked on the
|
||
most important part of his costume, unfortunately wrong side
|
||
before, and jumped out of the window. His friend ran to the window
|
||
and exclaimed, "Are ye kill, Mike?" Picking himself up and looking
|
||
himself over by the light of the street lamp, he replied, "No, not
|
||
kilt, Pat, but I fear I am fatally twisted."
|
||
|
||
Next we have God's opinion (on Bible authority) as to the use
|
||
of wives. They were to be forcibly changed around as a Punishment
|
||
to their husbands and for offenses committed by the latter.
|
||
|
||
11 Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against
|
||
thee out of thy own house, and I will take thy wives before thy
|
||
eyes and give them unto thy neighbor. -- 2 Sam. xii.
|
||
|
||
The latter part of the verse is omitted as being unfit to
|
||
read. Don't understand that I think any of it is exactly choice
|
||
literature; but that cover has been used to silence objection long
|
||
enough. if it is fit to teach as the word and will of God. for
|
||
women, it ought to be fit to read in a theater -- but it is not.
|
||
|
||
What do you think of a religion that upholds such morals and
|
||
such justice as that just quoted? What do you think of women
|
||
supporting the Bible in the face of that as the will of God? Of all
|
||
human beings a woman should spurn the Bible first. She, above all
|
||
others, should try to destroy its influence; and I mean to do what
|
||
little I can in that direction. The morals of the nineteenth
|
||
century have outgrown the Bible. Jehovah stands condemned before
|
||
the bar of every noble soul. What Moses and David and Samuel taught
|
||
as the word and will of God, we, who are fortunate enough to live
|
||
in the same age with Charles Darwin, know to be the expression of
|
||
a low social condition untempered by the light of science. Their
|
||
"thus saith the Lord," read in the light of to-day, is "thus saith
|
||
ignorance and fear" -- no more, no less.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
If you will read the 12th chapter of Leviticus, which is unfit
|
||
to read here, you will see that the Bible esteems it twice as great
|
||
a crime to be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy; so
|
||
highly esteemed was woman by the priesthood; so great a favorite
|
||
was she of Jehovah.
|
||
|
||
And do you know there is a law in the Bible which "the Lord
|
||
spake unto Moses" that says if a man is jealous of his wife,
|
||
"whether he have cause or not," he is to take her to a priest, and
|
||
take a little barley meal (if you ever want to try it, remember it
|
||
must be barley meal; I don't suppose the priest could tell whether
|
||
she was guilty or not if you were to take corn meal or hominy
|
||
grits) and put it in the wife's hands. And the priest is to take
|
||
some "holy" water and scrape up the dirt off the floor of the
|
||
Tabernacle, and put the dirt in the water and make the wife drink
|
||
it. Now just imagine an infinite God getting up a scheme like that!
|
||
Then the priest curses her and says if she is guilty she shall rot.
|
||
. . . "and she shall say Amen." That is her defence! Then the
|
||
priest takes the stuff she has in her hands -- this barley-meal
|
||
"jealousy offering" -- and "waves it before the Lord." (I suppose
|
||
you all know what that part is done for. If you don't, ask some
|
||
theological student with a number six hat-band; he'll tell you.)
|
||
And then he burns a pinch of it (that is probably for luck), and at
|
||
this point it is time to make the woman drink some more of the
|
||
filthy water (which he does with great alacrity), and "if she be
|
||
guilty the water will turn bitter within her," ... "and she shall
|
||
be accursed among her people." (You doubtless perceive that her
|
||
defence has been most elaborate throughout.) Do you think that
|
||
water would be bitter to the priest?
|
||
|
||
But if she does not complain that the water is bitter, and if
|
||
her "Amen" is perfectly satisfactory all round, and she be
|
||
pronounced innocent, what then? Is the husband in any way reproved
|
||
for his brutality? Did the Lord "reveal" to Moses that he should
|
||
drink the rest of that holy water and dirt? No! That wasn't in
|
||
Moses' line. Neither he nor the husband drink the rest of that
|
||
water -- priest doesn't either; they don't even take a pinch of the
|
||
barley. But after she is subjected to this, and the show is over,
|
||
"if she be innocent, then shall she go free!" Oh, ye gods! what
|
||
magnificent generosity! I should have thought they would have
|
||
hanged her then for being innocent.
|
||
|
||
"And then shall the man be guiltless of iniquity, and the
|
||
woman shall bear her iniquity."
|
||
|
||
If she is innocent she shall bear he iniquity. You all see how
|
||
that is done I suppose. If you don't, ask your little number six
|
||
theological student, and he will tell you all about it, and he will
|
||
also prove to you, without being asked, that he and God are capable
|
||
of regulating the entire universe without the aid of General
|
||
Butler.
|
||
|
||
But I am told that I ought to respect and love the Bible that
|
||
all women ought to take an active part in teaching it to the
|
||
heathen, to show them how good Jehovah is to his daughters. But if
|
||
he is, he has been unusually unfortunate in his choice of
|
||
executors.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Nor is it only in the Old Testament that such morals and such
|
||
justice are taught. The clergy put that part off by saying -- "Oh,
|
||
that was a different dispensation, and God, the Unchangeable, has
|
||
changed his mind." That is the sole excuse they give for all the
|
||
"holy" men, who used to talk personally with God, practicing
|
||
polygamy and all the other immoralities. They maintain that it was
|
||
God's best man who upheld polygamy then, and that it is the Devil's
|
||
best man who does it now. Odd idea isn't it? Simply a question of
|
||
time and place; and as Col. Ingersoll says, you have got to look on
|
||
a map to see whether you are dammed or not. But it does seem to me
|
||
that a God that did not always know better than that, is not a safe
|
||
chief magistrate. He might take to those views again. They say
|
||
history is likely to repeat itself. Anyhow, I would rather be on
|
||
the safe side and just fix the laws so that he couldn't. It would
|
||
be just as well.
|
||
|
||
FROM MOSES TO PAUL.
|
||
|
||
But now we have come to "St." Paul and his ideas on the woman
|
||
question. He worked the whole problem by simple proportion and
|
||
found that man stands in the same relation to woman as God stands
|
||
to man. That is, man is to woman as God is to man -- and only a
|
||
slight remainder. I'm not going to misrepresent this gifted saint.
|
||
I shall let him speak for himself. He does it pretty well for a
|
||
saint, and much more plainly than they usually do.
|
||
|
||
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto
|
||
the Lord.
|
||
|
||
23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is
|
||
the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body.
|
||
|
||
-- Ephesians v.
|
||
|
||
The husband is the savior of the wife! Pretty slim hold on
|
||
heaven for most women, isn't it? And then suppose she hasn't any
|
||
husband." Her case is fatal.
|
||
|
||
24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the
|
||
wives be to their own husbands in everything. -- Ephesians v.
|
||
|
||
Paul was a modest person in his requirements.
|
||
|
||
9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest
|
||
apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair,
|
||
or gold, or pearls, or costly array. -- I Timothy ii,
|
||
|
||
It does seem as if anybody would know that braided hair was
|
||
wicked; and as to "gold and pearls and costly array," all you have
|
||
to do to prove the infallibility of Paul -- and what absolute faith
|
||
Christians have in it! -- is to go into any fashionable church and
|
||
observe the absence of all such sinfulness:
|
||
|
||
10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good
|
||
works.
|
||
|
||
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
|
||
over the man, but to be in silence.
|
||
|
||
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
|
||
|
||
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was
|
||
in the transgression. -- I Timothy ii.
|
||
|
||
According to the reasoning of verse 13 man should be subject
|
||
to all the lower animals, because they were first formed, and then
|
||
Adam. Verse 14 tells us that Adam sinned knowingly; Eve was
|
||
deceived, so she deserves punishment. Now I like that. If you
|
||
commit a crime understandingly it is all right. If you are deceived
|
||
into doing it you ought to be damned. The law says, "The
|
||
criminality of an act resides in the intent; "but more than likely
|
||
St. Paul was not up in Blackstone and did not use Coke.
|
||
|
||
This next is St. Peter, and I believe this is one of the few
|
||
topics upon which the infallible Peter and the equally infallible
|
||
Paul did not disagree:
|
||
|
||
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands;
|
||
that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be
|
||
won by the conversation of the wives;
|
||
|
||
2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with
|
||
fear. -- 1 Peter iii.
|
||
|
||
I should think that would be a winning card. If the
|
||
conversation of a wife, coupled with a good deal of fear, would not
|
||
convert a man, he is a hopeless case.
|
||
|
||
But here is Paul again, in all his mathematical glory, and
|
||
mortally afraid that women won't do themselves honor.
|
||
|
||
3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is
|
||
Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of
|
||
Christ is God.
|
||
|
||
4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered,
|
||
dishonoreth his head.
|
||
|
||
5 But every woman that prayeth or prophosieth with her head
|
||
uncovered, dishonoreth her head; for that is even all one as if she
|
||
were shaven.
|
||
|
||
6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but
|
||
if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be
|
||
covered.
|
||
|
||
7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as
|
||
he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the
|
||
man:
|
||
|
||
8 For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
9 Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for
|
||
the man. -- 1 Cor. xi.
|
||
|
||
And that settles it, I suppose. But what on earth was man
|
||
created for? I should not think it could have been just for fun.
|
||
|
||
34 Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not
|
||
permitted unto them to speak but they are commanded to be under
|
||
obedience, as also saith the law.
|
||
|
||
85 And if they will learn anything, let them ask their
|
||
husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the
|
||
church. -- 1 Cor. xiv.
|
||
|
||
That is a principle that should entitle St. Paul to the
|
||
profound admiration of women. And yet, when I come to think of it,
|
||
I don't know which one gets the worst of that either. Whenever you
|
||
want to know anything, ask your husband, at home! No wonder most
|
||
husbands don't have time to stay at home much. No wonder they have
|
||
to see a man so often. It would unseat any man's reason if he lived
|
||
in constant feat that he might, any minute, be required to explain
|
||
to a woman of sense, how death could have been brought into this
|
||
world by Eve, when every one knows that long before man could have
|
||
lived upon this earth animals lived and died. It would make any man
|
||
remember that he had to "catch a car" if he were asked suddenly to
|
||
explain the doctrine of the Trinity. I would not blame the most
|
||
sturdy theologian for remembering that it was club night, if his
|
||
wife were to ask him, unexpectedly, how Nebuchadnezzar, with his
|
||
inexperience, could digest grass with only one stomach, when it
|
||
takes four for the oxen that are used to it. That may account,
|
||
however, for his hair turning to feathers.
|
||
|
||
I don't believe St. Paul could have realized what a diabolical
|
||
position he was placing husbands in, when he told wives to ask them
|
||
every time they wanted to know anything -- unless he wanted to make
|
||
marriage unpopular. There is one thing certain, he was careful not
|
||
to try it himself, which looks much as if he had some realizing
|
||
sense of what he had cut out for husbands to do, and felt that
|
||
there were some men who would rather be drafted -- and then send a
|
||
Substitute.
|
||
|
||
But why are his commands not followed to-day? Why are not the
|
||
words, sister, mother, daughter, wife, only names for degradation
|
||
and dishonor?
|
||
|
||
Because men have grown more honorable than their religion, and
|
||
the strong arm of the law, supported by the stronger arm of public
|
||
sentiment, demands greater justice than St. Paul ever dreamed of.
|
||
Because men are growing grand enough to recognize the fact that
|
||
right is not masculine only, and that justice knows no sex. And
|
||
because the Church no longer makes the laws. Saints have been
|
||
retired from the legal profession. I can't recall the name of a
|
||
single one who is practicing law now. Have any of yon ever met a
|
||
saint at the bar?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a
|
||
position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to
|
||
Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied
|
||
his commands. That she does not crouch to-day where Saint Paul
|
||
tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave
|
||
enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.
|
||
|
||
And remember that I have not read yon the worst stories of the
|
||
Bible. The greater number of those which refer to women are wholly
|
||
unfit to read here. Are you willing to think they are the word of
|
||
God? I am not. Believe in a God if you will, but do not degrade him
|
||
by accepting an interpretation of him that would do injustice to
|
||
Mephistopheles! Have a religion if you desire, but demand that it
|
||
be free from impurity and lies, and that it be just. Exercise faith
|
||
if you must, but temper it wisely with reason. Do not allow
|
||
ministers to tell you stories that are sillier than fairy tales,
|
||
more brutal than barbaric warfare, and too unclean to be read, and
|
||
then assure you that they are the word of God. Use your reason; and
|
||
when you are told that God came down and talked to Moses behind a
|
||
bush, and told him to murder several thousand innocent people; when
|
||
you are told that he created a vast universe and filled it with
|
||
people upon all of whom he placed a never-ending curse because of
|
||
a trivial disobedience of one; give him the benefit of a reasonable
|
||
doubt and save your reputation for slander.
|
||
|
||
Now just stop and think about it. Don't you think that if a
|
||
God had come down and talked to Moses he would have had something
|
||
more important to discuss than the arrangement of window curtains
|
||
and the cooking of a sheep? Since Moses was the leader of God's
|
||
people, their lawgiver, the guardian of their morals, don't you
|
||
think that the few minutes of conversation could have been better
|
||
spent in calling attention to some of the little moral
|
||
delinquencies of Moses himself? Don't you think it would have been
|
||
more natural for an infinite and just ruler to have mentioned the
|
||
impropriety of murdering so many men, and degrading so many young
|
||
girls to a life worse than that of the vilest quarter of any
|
||
infamous dive, than to have occupied the time in trivial details
|
||
about a trumpery jewel-box? Since God elected such a man as Moses
|
||
to guide and govern his people, does it not seem natural that he
|
||
would have given more thought to the moral worth and practices of
|
||
his representative on earth, than to the particular age at which to
|
||
kill a calf? If he were going to take the trouble to say anything,
|
||
would it not seem more natural that he should say something
|
||
important?
|
||
|
||
In his numerous chats with Solomon, don't you think he could
|
||
have added somewhat to that gentleman's phenomenal wisdom by just
|
||
hinting to him that he had a few more wives than were absolutely
|
||
necessary? He had a thousand we are told, which leaves Brigham
|
||
Young away behind. Yet there are Christians to-day who teach their
|
||
children that Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, and that
|
||
Brigham Young was very close to the biggest fool. It is not strange
|
||
that some of these children infer that the trouble with Brigham was
|
||
that he had not wives enough, and that if he had only married the
|
||
whole state of Massachusetts he and Solomon would now occupy
|
||
adjoining seats on the other shore, and use the same jew's-harp?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Do you believe for one moment that a God ever talked with any
|
||
man and told him to murder a whole nation of men, to steal their
|
||
property, to butcher in cold blood the mothers, and to give the
|
||
young girls to a camp of brutal soldiers -- and that he helped to
|
||
do it? Do you believe any God ever told a man to give so many of
|
||
those girls to one tribe, so many to another, and to burn so many
|
||
as an offering to himself? Do you believe it? I don't. Would you
|
||
worship him if he had? I would not.
|
||
|
||
And yet it is true that he did help in such work, or else the
|
||
word of Moses is not worth a nickel. God did this, or else our
|
||
religion is founded upon a fraud. He did it, or orthodoxy is a
|
||
mistake. He did it, or the Bible is an imposition. If it is true,
|
||
no woman should submit to such a fiend for an hour; if it is false,
|
||
let her unclasp the clutches of the superstition which is built
|
||
upon her dishonor and nourished by her hand.
|
||
|
||
They say it is a shame for a woman to attack the Bible. I say
|
||
she is the one who should do it. It is she who has everything to
|
||
gain by its overthrow. It is she who has everything to loose by its
|
||
support. They tell me it is the word an will of God. I do not, I
|
||
cannot, believe it! And it does seem to me that nothing but lack of
|
||
moral perception or mental capacity could enable any human being
|
||
who was honest (and not seared) to either respect or believe in
|
||
such a God.
|
||
|
||
As a collection of ingenious stories, as a record of folly and
|
||
wickedness, as a curious and valuable old literary work, keep the
|
||
Bible in the library. But put it on the top shelf -- or just behind
|
||
it, and don't let the children see it until they are old enough to
|
||
read it with discrimination. As a mythological work it is no worse
|
||
than several others. As a divine revelation it is simply monstrous.
|
||
|
||
Among your other tales you might tell the children some from
|
||
it. You might tell them that at one time a man got mad at another
|
||
man, and caught three hundred foxes, and set fire to their tails
|
||
(they standing still the while), and then turned them loose into
|
||
the other man's corn, and burnt it all up. If they don't know much
|
||
about foxes, and have never experimented in burning live hair, they
|
||
may think it is a pretty good story. But I would not tell them that
|
||
the man who got up that torch-light procession was a good man. I
|
||
would not tell them that he was one of God's most intimate friends;
|
||
because even if they think he had a right to burn his enemy's
|
||
crops, I don't believe that any right-minded child would think it
|
||
was fair to the foxes.
|
||
|
||
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
|
||
|
||
Some time ago I went to hear a noted minister, who preached a
|
||
sermon about the "fruit of the tree of knowledge" to a congregation
|
||
composed, as most congregations are, chiefly of women. Yet his
|
||
sermon was a monument of insult, bigotry, and dogmatic intolerance
|
||
that would have done honor to a witch-hunter several centuries ago.
|
||
That women will subject themselves to such insults week after week,
|
||
and that there are still men who will condescend to offer them, is
|
||
a sad commentary upon their self-respect as well as upon the
|
||
degrading influence of their religion.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Why will they listen to such nonsense? Perhaps woman was made
|
||
of a rib and so should be held as flesh and blood only, devoid of
|
||
intellect. But I don't know that she was; I was not there to see,
|
||
and, in fact, none of my family were; and since they tell us that
|
||
the only gentleman present upon that interesting occasion was
|
||
asleep, I don't know who could have told the story in the first
|
||
place.
|
||
|
||
It is always a surprise to me that women will sit, year after
|
||
year, and be told that, because of a story as silly and childish as
|
||
it is unjust, she is responsible for all the ills of life; that
|
||
because, forsooth, some thousands of years ago a woman was so
|
||
horribly wicked as to eat an apple she must and should occupy a
|
||
humble and penitent position, and remain forever subject to the
|
||
dictates of ecclesiastical pretenders. It is so silly, so childish,
|
||
that for people of sense to accept it seems almost incredible.
|
||
|
||
According to the story, she was deceived. According to the
|
||
story, she believed that she was doing a thing which would give
|
||
greater knowledge and a broader life, and she had the courage to
|
||
try for it. According to the story, she first evinced the desire to
|
||
be more and wiser than a mere brute, and incidentally gave her
|
||
husband an opportunity to invent the first human lie (a privilege
|
||
still dear to the heart), a field which up to that time had been
|
||
exclusively worked by the reptiles. But they never got a chance at
|
||
it again. From the time that Adam entered the lists, competition
|
||
was too lively for any of the lower animals to stand a ghost of a
|
||
chance at it, and that may account for the fact that, from that
|
||
time to this, nobody has ever heard a shake tell a lie or volunteer
|
||
information to a woman. The Church has had a monopoly of these
|
||
profitable perquisites ever since. The serpent never tried it
|
||
again. He turned woman over to the clergy, and from that time to
|
||
this they have been the instructors who have told her which apple
|
||
to bite, and how big a bite to take. She has never had a chance
|
||
since to change her diet. From that day to this she has had apple
|
||
pie, stewed apple, dried apple, baked apple, apple-jack, and cider;
|
||
and this clergyman that I heard, started out fresh on apple-sauce.
|
||
He seemed to think -- "anything for a change." You would have
|
||
thought to hear him, that the very worst thing that ever happened
|
||
to this world was the birth of the desire for knowledge, and that
|
||
such desire in woman had been the curse of all mankind.
|
||
|
||
But it seems to me that if in this day of intelligence a
|
||
minister preaches or acts upon such dogmas, women should scorn him
|
||
both as a teacher and as a man. If a creed or Church upholds such
|
||
doctrines they should shun it as they would a pest-house. If all
|
||
system or any book of religion teaches such principles they should
|
||
exert every effort to utterly destroy its influence. I want to do
|
||
what I can to show woman that the mercury of self-respect must fall
|
||
several degrees at the church door, and that the light of reason
|
||
must go out.
|
||
|
||
In this sermon that I speak of, we were warned "not to be wise
|
||
above that which is written." As if a man should bind his thoughts
|
||
and knowledge down to what was known, believed, or written in ages
|
||
past! As though a man should fear and tremble, should hesitate to
|
||
reach out after, to labor to know, all that his intellect and
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
energy can compass. As though to be good he must accept situations,
|
||
sentiments, ideas ready-made, and dwarf his intellect and bind his
|
||
mental ability by the capacity of somebody else.
|
||
|
||
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
|
||
|
||
He that hath eyes to see, let him see."
|
||
|
||
And he that hath a brain to think, let him think. What is his
|
||
intellect for! Why is his mind one vast interrogation point? Why
|
||
should not Eve have grasped with eagerness the fruit of the tree of
|
||
knowledge?
|
||
|
||
A taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge does drive man
|
||
from the paradise of ignorance, does send him forth a laborer in
|
||
the vast fields of speculation and thought, where there is no rest,
|
||
and no possibility of the cessation of labor so long as his
|
||
energies and his love of truth remain to impel him to the conquest
|
||
of the infinite domain that lies unexplored beyond.
|
||
|
||
But would any man sell what is gained in liberty, in strength,
|
||
in breadth, in conscious superiority, for the delights which every
|
||
brute has left him in his stagnant paradise of ignorance and rest?
|
||
What man in this nineteenth century can unblushingly say he would
|
||
not choose the labor with all its pain, the effort with all its
|
||
failure, the struggle with all its exhaustion? Why try to bind the
|
||
human mind by the silly theory that a God requires man to crush out
|
||
or subject the intellect he has given him? Whatever religion may
|
||
have gained by such a course, think what morality and progress have
|
||
lost by it!
|
||
|
||
What has not woman lost by that silly fable which made her
|
||
responsible for transgression? Honor her for it! Honor her the more
|
||
if it was she who first dared the struggle rather than lose her
|
||
freedom or crush her reason. If she learned first that the price of
|
||
ignorance and slavery was too great to pay for the luxury of
|
||
idleness -- honor her for it. The acceptance of such contemptible
|
||
stories, as told by the clergy in all ages and in all religions as
|
||
the "word of God," has done more to enslave and injure women's
|
||
intellects, and to brutalize men, than has been done by any other
|
||
influence; and our boasted superior civilization is not the result
|
||
of the Christian religion, but has been won step by step in despite
|
||
of it. For the Church has fought progress with a vindictive
|
||
bitterness and power found in no other antagonist -- from the time,
|
||
long ago, when it crushed Galileo for daring to know more than its
|
||
"inspired" leaders could ever learn, down to yesterday, when it
|
||
raised a wild howl against Prof. Tyndall for making a simple
|
||
statement, in itself absolutely incontrovertible.
|
||
|
||
It had to yield to Galileo as the people grew beyond its power
|
||
to blind them to his truth. It is yielding every hour to-day to
|
||
Tyndall from the same dire necessity; while its nimble devotees vie
|
||
with each other in proclaiming that they thought that way all the
|
||
time; had neglected to say so (through an oversight); but that it
|
||
was one of their very strongest holds from the beginning. They have
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
recently told us that modern scientific doctrines (evolution
|
||
included) are "plainly indicated in the Bible," and that Science
|
||
has at last worked up towards the comprehension of scriptural
|
||
truths.
|
||
|
||
It used to be the fashion to burn the man who got up a new
|
||
theory or discovered a new law of nature that interfered with the
|
||
"revelation" theory; but the style now is to go into the mental
|
||
gymnastic business and "reconcile" the old dogma with the now
|
||
truth. The only kind of reconciling the Church ever thought of in
|
||
the days of her power, was to become reconciled to the death of the
|
||
scientist or thinker. To-day she can take evolution and revelation,
|
||
shake them up in a theological bag, and then bring them forth so
|
||
marvelously alike in appearance that their own father would not
|
||
know them apart. And the rest of us can't recognize them at all.
|
||
|
||
To-morrow, when she has to yield her whole field to science,
|
||
she will hasten to assure us that it was only a few mistaken souls
|
||
who ever objected to Col. Ingersoll's style of theology; and that
|
||
if we would only interpret the Bible aright (and understood Hebrew)
|
||
we should at once discover that Col. Ingersoll was the "biggest
|
||
card" they had had yet.
|
||
|
||
You may not live until that to-morrow; I may not live until
|
||
that to-morrow; but it is as sure to come as it is certain that the
|
||
old tenets have yielded one by one before the irresistible march of
|
||
an age of intelligence and freedom, in which a priest or a Church
|
||
can no longer be judge, jury, and counsel.
|
||
|
||
Not long ago I heard two gentlemen -- one a very devout
|
||
Christian -- talking about what use the Church could make of Col.
|
||
Ingersoll's teachings. One said he was such a moral man, and always
|
||
insisted so strongly upon right action in this world, that it was
|
||
a pity he did not have more faith. He said, "What a power he would
|
||
be in the Church! What a preacher he would make! He would be a
|
||
second St. Paul -- I have been praying for years for his
|
||
conversion." "Well," said the other, "you needn't waste your time
|
||
any longer; softening of the brain doesn't run in Robert's family."
|
||
|
||
KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
|
||
|
||
Let man rid himself of the pernicious idea that knowledge is
|
||
a crime, and then let only the man who is afraid to enter the world
|
||
of thought go back to his native paradise of ignorance and rest.
|
||
Let him cling to his old ideas. Humanity can do better without such
|
||
a man, and humanity will be better without him. The time is past
|
||
when his type is needed, and let us hope that it is nearly past
|
||
when it can be found. He may have been abreast of the time in 1840,
|
||
but his grave was dug, his epitaph written, in 1841. Science did
|
||
not wait for him, and the world forgot his name!
|
||
|
||
Do you think the world has any further use for the man who can
|
||
gravely tell those stories about Samson, for instance as truth --
|
||
as the word of God? Do you think they do honor to most attenuated
|
||
intellect? Now just stop and think of it. Just think of one
|
||
thousand able-bodied men (1,000 is a good many men) quietly
|
||
standing around waiting for Samson to knock them on the head with
|
||
a bone! And how does the durability of that bone strike you?
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
If prowess with arms were estimated, I should say that was
|
||
about the most effective piece of generalship on record. If the
|
||
gentleman who conducted that neat little skirmish were living
|
||
to-day there would not be a question as to his eligibility for a
|
||
third term, unit rule or no unit rule. If we could provide our
|
||
generals with a bone like that, we might reduce the standing army
|
||
sufficiently to reassure the most timid congressman of the whole
|
||
lot. It would not take more than four or five generals and a
|
||
captain to guard the whole frontier. Then we might keep a private
|
||
to keep the peace at the polls, and that would give us sufficient
|
||
force to readily murder several thousand people any morning before
|
||
breakfast, and I don't see how you could ask for anything better
|
||
than that. Two live men and one dead mule could raise a siege in a
|
||
quarter of an hour. Now, if there is anybody who wants to start "a
|
||
brilliant foreign policy," here is his chance. He could at the same
|
||
time make a record for economy, for it would be an enormous saving
|
||
to this country in arms and ammunition alone. For durability,
|
||
cheapness, and certainty not to miss fire there is simply no
|
||
comparison at all.
|
||
|
||
It may be objected that our soldiers are not so strong as
|
||
Samson; but I am told by those who are intimately acquainted with
|
||
mules, that they have not deteriorated. They have simply
|
||
transferred their superior strength and durability from their jaw-
|
||
bones to their heals -- and they engineer them themselves. So if
|
||
our men can stand his voice and aim him right, they won't have to
|
||
wear long hair.
|
||
|
||
But seriously, if it is necessary to believe such stories as
|
||
that in order to go to heaven, don't you think the admission fee is
|
||
a trifle high? It is entirely beyond my means, and that is not one
|
||
of the big stories either.
|
||
|
||
The one that comes right after it is just as absurd. It is the
|
||
second scene of the same performance, and Samson only went out
|
||
between acts for a drink, and then he playfully walked off with a
|
||
building about the size of the capitol at Washington.
|
||
|
||
They say we must believe these tales or be damned; and that a
|
||
woman has not even a right to say, "I object." But it always did
|
||
seem to me that anybody who could believe them would not have
|
||
brains enough to know whether he was damned or not. They say we
|
||
must not laugh at such very solemn things as that. They also say
|
||
that even if we don't believe them ourselves we should show respect
|
||
for those, who do.
|
||
|
||
That is a very good theory, but I should like to know how any
|
||
human being with a sense of humor could sit and look solemn, and
|
||
feel very respectful, with that sort of chaff rattling down his
|
||
back. It can't be done unless he is scared. Fear will convince a
|
||
man the quickest of anything on earth. Even a shadow is provocative
|
||
of solemnity if the light is dark enough and the man is
|
||
sufficiently seared.
|
||
|
||
Ignorance and Fear made the Garden of Eden, they created
|
||
Jehovah, gave Samson his wonderful strength, and Solomon his
|
||
wisdom; they divided the Red Sea, and raised Lazarus from the dead.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
It is not strange, therefore that they have compelled women to
|
||
cling to the Church, and slaves to cling to slavery. There were
|
||
many black men in the South who voluntarily went back and offered
|
||
to remain in bondage. And that is one of the strongest arguments
|
||
against the institution of slavery -- that it can so far degrade
|
||
its victims that they lose even the ambition to be free! [NOTE: "It
|
||
was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit
|
||
to death by torture rather than betray their masters. Yet we know
|
||
how cruelly many Romans treated their slaves. But in truth these
|
||
intense individual feelings nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height
|
||
as under the most atrocious institutions. It is part of the irony
|
||
of life, that strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which
|
||
human nature seems susceptible, are called forth in human beings
|
||
toward those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly
|
||
existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power. How great a
|
||
place in most men this sentiment fills, even in religious devotion,
|
||
it would be cruel to inquire. We daily see how much their gratitude
|
||
to Heaven appears to be stimulated by the contemplation of fellow-
|
||
creatures to whom God has not been so merciful as he has to
|
||
themselves." -- Mill.]
|
||
|
||
The time is not far distant when a bondage of the intellect to
|
||
the Church will receive no more respectful consideration than a
|
||
bondage of the body to a master. This nineteenth century cannot
|
||
much loner be bound by the ignorance and intolerance of an age when
|
||
might was the highest law and force the only appeal. We need to
|
||
recognize that the broadest possible liberty is the greatest
|
||
possible good; and that the liberty to think is the highest good of
|
||
all. So don't let people make you afraid to think, or to laugh at
|
||
nonsense wherever you see it.
|
||
|
||
Solomon saying it cannot make a silly thing wise, nor Moses
|
||
doing it a cruel thing kind. David cannot make brutality gentle,
|
||
nor Paul injustice just; and that the Bible sustains a wrong can
|
||
never make it right.
|
||
|
||
Don't you know that if the leading men of the Old Testament
|
||
were living to-day, they would be known as liars, thieves, and
|
||
murderers -- some indeed as monsters to whom even these terms would
|
||
be base flattery. Despoilers of those who had not injured them;
|
||
infamous liars in the name of God; murderers of men; butchers of
|
||
children; debauchers of women; if they were living in the
|
||
nineteenth century they would be unanimously elected to the gallows
|
||
-- that is if they escaped Judge Lynch long enough. And yet they
|
||
are held up to us, who have outgrown their morals, as authorities
|
||
on the subject of God's will to man, as Prophets, Saints,
|
||
Mediators!
|
||
|
||
Do you want your children taught to believe in the purity and
|
||
honor of such men? Do you want your children taught to worship a
|
||
God who sanctioned, commanded, and gloried (and usually
|
||
participated) in their worst crimes? Do you want them to believe
|
||
that at any time, in any age, a God was the director in the most
|
||
heinous crimes, in the vilest plots, in the most cruel, vulgar,
|
||
cowardly acts of vice that were ever recorded? Either he was or
|
||
else Moses' word is not worth a copper, and theology is the
|
||
invention of ignorance. He did these hideous things or the Bible is
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
mistaken about it. There is to-day that kind of a God somewhere in
|
||
space waiting around to pounce on anybody who doesn't admire him,
|
||
or else the Church is founded upon the ignorance and fear of its
|
||
dupes, and teaches them what is not true.
|
||
|
||
They say it is wicked to inquire into the facts. I say it is
|
||
wrong not to. It seems to me that in a matter like this the most
|
||
important thing is to be honest all round, and that if the claims
|
||
of the Church are true no inquiry can injure them. They say, "Oh,
|
||
well, drop all the bad part, and only take the good. There is a
|
||
great deal of good in it too." But if I don't know what is good
|
||
myself I won't go to Moses and that class of men to find out. I'll
|
||
go to somebody who has got a clean record. I won't go to men who
|
||
robbed and murdered in the name of God; I won't go to men who
|
||
bought and sold their fellow-men; I won't go to men who gave their
|
||
own daughters over to the hate and lust of others, even bargaining
|
||
for them with sons and brothers. Such men cannot tell me what is
|
||
good. Such men cannot make a religion for me to live by, or a God
|
||
that I can accept.
|
||
|
||
I am sometimes told that intelligent ministers nowadays do not
|
||
believe in the inspiration of the Bible and do not teach it. Yet
|
||
every minister who, like the Rev. R. Heber Newton, dares to suggest
|
||
mildly that even the apple story is a fable, is silenced by his
|
||
bishop or hounded down for "heresy." And still they go right on
|
||
telling little children that it is the "word of God" and the only
|
||
guide of life, For truth, better give them AEsop's Fables or the
|
||
Arabian Nights; for purity the Decameron or Don Juan; for examples
|
||
of justice the story of Blue-Beard or the life of Henry the Eighth.
|
||
|
||
I wish you would read the Bible carefully just as you would
|
||
any other book, and see what you think of its morals. I am debarred
|
||
from touching the parts of it that are the greatest insult to
|
||
purity and the most infamous travesties of justice, I can only say
|
||
to you, read it, and if you are lover's of purity you will find
|
||
that it teaches respect for a God who taught the most degrading
|
||
impurity and defended those who forced it upon others. If you
|
||
believe in the sacredness of human life, he gave the largest
|
||
license to murder. It does not matter that Moses said he told him
|
||
to tell somebody else "Thou shalt not kill;" for the same gentleman
|
||
remarked upon several other occasions that God told him not only to
|
||
kill, but to steal, to lie, to commit arson, to break pretty much
|
||
all the other commandments -- and to be a professional tramp
|
||
besides. (I am told that he followed this latter occupation for
|
||
forty years, which I should think would give him the belt.) So you
|
||
see we have the same gentleman's word for all of it; and at times,
|
||
I must confess, it does not seem to me absolutely reliable
|
||
authority. There is one thing certain, if the returns are correct,
|
||
and that is that Moses did not take his own medicine in the little
|
||
matter of keeping the commandments. The were for his enemies and
|
||
his slaves.
|
||
|
||
If you love liberty remember that the Bible teaches slavery in
|
||
every form, Not only the buying of slaves, but the stealing them
|
||
into bondage. How any man or woman who censured slavery in our
|
||
Southern States can permit their children to be taught that the
|
||
Bible is a book of authority, and think they are consistent, I
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
cannot understand. Ever slave-whip had for its lash the Bible.
|
||
Every slave-holder had its teachings for his guide. Every slave-
|
||
driver found his authority there. When the sword of the North
|
||
severed the thongs of the black man, it destroyed the absolute
|
||
control of the Bible in America and gave a fatal blow to Jehovah
|
||
the God of oppression. Only in the South is it that the Bible still
|
||
holds its own. Freedom has outgrown it; and the young South is
|
||
reading it, for the first time, with an eraser!
|
||
|
||
If you respect your mother, if you wish your children to
|
||
respect theirs, you will find that the Bible teaches not only
|
||
disrespect for her, but abject slavery and the most oppressive
|
||
degradation. If you love your young sister, your beautiful pure
|
||
daughter, remember that Jehovah taught that, whenever men could do
|
||
so, they were to abuse, ruin, degrade them; and remember, further,
|
||
that his "prophets" -- The men who made our religion -- did these
|
||
things and gloried in. the work.
|
||
|
||
It is for this reason that I say it is right and peculiarly
|
||
fitting that women should object to his teaching. After you have
|
||
read the 31st chapter of Numbers, with its "thus saith the Lord,"
|
||
think then if you want to follow such teachings. Decide then
|
||
whether or not the words, the acts, the commands, or the religion
|
||
of such men is good enough for you. Think then whether or not you
|
||
want your daughters, your sons, to believe that the Bible has one
|
||
grain of authority, or is in any sense a revelation of the divine
|
||
will."
|
||
|
||
Don't allow ministers to palm off platitudes on you for
|
||
"revelation;" and don't let them make you believe that anything
|
||
that Moses or David or Solomon said was the command of God to
|
||
women. Neither one of those men was fit to speak of a respectable
|
||
woman. With the superior morals of our time neither one of them
|
||
would be considered fit to live outside of a brothel.
|
||
|
||
And don't lot them toll you what "Saint" Paul said either.
|
||
What did he know about women anyway? He was a brilliant but erratic
|
||
old bachelor who fought on whichever side he happened to find
|
||
himself on. He could accommodate himself to circumstances and
|
||
accept the situation almost as gracefully as that other biblical
|
||
gentleman who quietly went to housekeeping inside of a whale, and
|
||
held the fort for three days.
|
||
|
||
AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.
|
||
|
||
Did it ever occur to you that those absurd tales have as much
|
||
claim to be called the "word of God" as any of the rest of it? How
|
||
can people say they believe such nonsense? And how can they think
|
||
it is evidence of goodness to believe it? They say it takes a
|
||
horribly wicked man to doubt one of those yams; and to come right
|
||
out and say honestly, "I don't believe it," will elect you, on the
|
||
first ballot, to a permanent seat in the lower house. Mr. Talmage
|
||
says four out of five Christians "try to explain away" these tales
|
||
by giving them. another meaning, and he urges them not to do it. He
|
||
says, stick to the original story in all its literal bearings. The
|
||
advice is certainly honest, but it would take a brave man to follow
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
it. And four out of five of even professed Christians is a pretty
|
||
heavy balance on the side of intellectual integrity; and even Mr.
|
||
Talmage's mammoth credulity fails to tip the scale.
|
||
|
||
They simply can't believe these biblical stories, so they try
|
||
to explain the marvelous part entirely away. It has about come to
|
||
this, in this day of thought an intelligence, that when a thinking
|
||
man claims to believe these tales, and says it is an evidence of
|
||
righteousness to believe them, there are just two things to
|
||
examine, his intellect and his integrity. If one is all right the
|
||
other is pretty sure to be out of repair. Defective intellect or
|
||
doubtful integrity is what he suffers from. He has got one of them
|
||
sure, and he may have both.
|
||
|
||
Now I should just like to ask you one honest question. Why
|
||
should any book bind us to sentiments that we would not tolerate if
|
||
they came from any other source? And why tolerate them coming from
|
||
it? Do you know who compiled the Bible? Do you know it was settled
|
||
by vote which manuscripts God did and which he did not write? The
|
||
ballot is a very good thing to have; but I decline to have it
|
||
extend its power into eternity, and bind my brain by the capacity
|
||
of a ballot-box hold by caste and saturated with blood.
|
||
|
||
There can be but slow progress while we are weighted down by
|
||
the superstitions of ages past. The brain of the nineteenth century
|
||
should not be bound down to the capacity of the third, nor its
|
||
moral sentiment dwarfed to fit Jehovah.
|
||
|
||
But so long as the theories of revelation and vicarious
|
||
atonement are taught, we shall not need to be surprised that every
|
||
murderer who is hanged to-day says that he is going, with bloody
|
||
hands, directly into companionship with the deity of revelation. He
|
||
has had ample time in prison to re-read in the Bible (what he had
|
||
previously been taught in Sunday school), of many worse crimes than
|
||
his which his spiritual adviser assures him (to the edification and
|
||
encouragement of all his kind outside) were not only forgiven, but
|
||
were actually ordered and participated in, by the God he is going
|
||
to.
|
||
|
||
That is what orthodoxy tolls him! Just think of it! Do you
|
||
think that is a safe doctrine to teach to the criminal classes?
|
||
Aside from its being dishonest, is it safe? Does it not put a
|
||
premium on crime? I maintain that it is always a dangerous religion
|
||
where faith in a given dogma, and not continuous uprightness of
|
||
life, is the standard of excellence. It is a cruel religion where
|
||
force is king and immorality God. It is an unjust religion which
|
||
seeks to make women serfs and men tyrants. It is an unreasonable
|
||
religion where credulity usurps the place of intellect and
|
||
judgment. It is an immoral religion where vice is deified and
|
||
virtue strangled. It is a cowardly religion where an innocent man,
|
||
who was murdered 1,800 years ago, is asked to bear the burden of
|
||
your wrong acts to-day. Aside from its impossibility that is
|
||
cowardly.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
34
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Man should be taught that for every wrong he does, he must
|
||
himself be responsible -- not that some one else stands between him
|
||
and absolute personal responsibility -- not that Eve caused him to
|
||
sin, nor that Christ stands between him and full accountability for
|
||
his every act.
|
||
|
||
And he should be taught that for every noble deed, for every
|
||
act of justice or mercy, he deserves the credit himself; that
|
||
Christ does not need it; that Christ cannot want it; and that
|
||
Christ does not deserve it.
|
||
|
||
And you will not want to "wash your hands in the blood of
|
||
Christ," nor to shed that of any other innocent man, if your
|
||
motives are pure and your lives clean.
|
||
|
||
VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
|
||
|
||
IN an art collection in Boston there is a god -- a redeemer --
|
||
the best illustration I have ever seen of the vicarious atonement
|
||
theory. It is a perfect representation of the agony endured by a
|
||
helpless and innocent being in order to relieve the guilty of their
|
||
guilt. This god was captured in Central Africa before his mission
|
||
was complete, and there is still suffering-space upon his body
|
||
unused.
|
||
|
||
It is a wooden image of some frightful beast, and it is
|
||
represented as suffering the most intense physical agony. Nails are
|
||
driven into its head, body, legs, and feet. Each wrong-doer who
|
||
wanted to relieve himself of his own guilt drove a nail, a tack, a
|
||
brad, or a spike into the flesh of his god. The god suffered the
|
||
pain; the man escaped the punishment. He cast his burdens on his
|
||
god, and went on his way rejoicing. Here is vicarious atonement in
|
||
all its pristine glory. The god is writhing and distorted with
|
||
pain; the criminal has relieved himself of further responsibility,
|
||
and his faith has made him whole. his sins are forgiven, and his
|
||
god will assume his load.
|
||
|
||
It is carious to examine the various illustrations of human
|
||
nature as represented by the size and shape of the nails. A
|
||
sensitive man had committed a trifling offence, and he drove a
|
||
great spike into the head of the god. A thick-skinned criminal
|
||
inserted a small tack where it would do the least harm -- in the
|
||
hoof. An honest, or an egotistic penitent drove his nail in where
|
||
it stands out prominently; while the secretive devotee placed his
|
||
among a mass of others of long standing and inconspicuous location.
|
||
|
||
One day I stood with a friend looking at this god. My friend,
|
||
who was a devout believer in the vicarious theory of justification
|
||
and punishment as explained away by the ethical divines of Boston,
|
||
was unable to see anything but the most horrible brutality and
|
||
willingness to inflict pain on the part of these African devotees,
|
||
and was equally unwilling to recognize the same principle when
|
||
applied to orthodoxy. She said, "Is it not horrible, the ignorance
|
||
and superstition of these poor people? What a vast field of labor
|
||
our missionaries have."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
35
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
To her the idea of justification by faith in a suffering god
|
||
meant only superstition and brutality when plainly illustrated in
|
||
somebody else's religion; but the same idea, the same morality, the
|
||
same justice, she thought beautiful when applied to Christianity.
|
||
|
||
I said, "There is the whole vicarious theory in wood and iron.
|
||
That is exactly the same as the Christian idea; and the same human
|
||
characteristics are plainly traceable in the size and location of
|
||
these nails.
|
||
|
||
A Presbyterian or Methodist drives his nail in the most
|
||
conspicuous spot, where the flesh is tender and the suffering
|
||
plainly visible. The Episcopalian or Catholic uses a small tack,
|
||
and drives it as much out of sight as possible, covering it over
|
||
with stained glass, and distracting the attention with music; but
|
||
the bald, cruel, unjust, immoral, degrading, and dishonest
|
||
principle is there just the same.
|
||
|
||
"Faith in blind acts of devotion; the suffering of innocence
|
||
for guilt; transferring of crime; comfort and safety purchased for
|
||
self by the infliction of pain and unmerited torture upon another;
|
||
premiums offered for ignorance and credulity; punishments
|
||
guaranteed for honest doubt and earnest protest -- all these
|
||
beautiful provisions of the vicarious theory are as essential to
|
||
our missionary's belief as to that of his African converts; and it
|
||
seems to me simply a choice between thumbs up and thumbs down."
|
||
|
||
While we were talking my friend's pastor joined us, and she
|
||
told him what I had said, and asked him what was the difference
|
||
between the Christian and the heathen idea of a suffering god. He
|
||
said he could explain it in five minutes some morning when he had
|
||
time. He said that the one was the true and living faith, and the
|
||
other was blind superstition. He also said that he could easily
|
||
make us see which was which. Then he gracefully withdrew with the
|
||
air of one who says: "In six days God made the heavens and the
|
||
earth, and on the seventh day he and I rested." He has not called
|
||
since to explain. While he stayed, however, his manner was deeply
|
||
solemnly, awfully impressive; and of course I resigned on the spot.
|
||
|
||
The theory of vicarious atonement is the child of cowardice
|
||
and fear. It arranges for a man to be a criminal and to escape the
|
||
consequences of his crime. It destroys personal responsibility, the
|
||
most essential element of moral character. It is contrary to every
|
||
moral principle.
|
||
|
||
The Church never has been and never will be able to explain
|
||
why a god should be forced to resort to such injustice to rectify
|
||
a mistake of his own. To earnest questions and honest thoughts it
|
||
has always replied with threats. It has always silenced inquiry and
|
||
persecuted thought. Past authority is its god, present
|
||
investigation its devil. With it brains are below par, and
|
||
ignorance is at a premium. It has never learned that the most
|
||
valuable capital in this world is the brain of a scholar.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
36
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
FEAR.
|
||
|
||
Every earnest thought, like every earnest thinker, adds
|
||
something to the wealth of the world. Blind belief in the thought
|
||
of another produces only hopeless mediocrity. Individual effort,
|
||
not mere acceptance, marks the growth of the mind. The most fatal
|
||
blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right
|
||
of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think
|
||
is the right to express that thought without fear.
|
||
|
||
Fear is the nearest approach to the ball and chain that this
|
||
age will permit, and it should be the glorious aim of the thinkers
|
||
of to-day that so refined and cruel a form of tyranny shall not be
|
||
left for those who come after us. We owe physical freedom to the
|
||
intellectual giants of the lost past; let us leave mental freedom
|
||
to the intellectual children of the future.
|
||
|
||
Fear scatters the blossoms of genius to the winds, and
|
||
superstition buries truth beneath the incrustation or inherited
|
||
mediocrity. Fear puts the fetters of religious stagnation on every
|
||
child of the brain. It covers the form of purity and truth with the
|
||
contagion of contumely and I distrust. It warps and dwarfs every
|
||
character that it touches. It is the father, mother, and nurse of
|
||
hypocrisy. It is the one great disgrace of our day, the one
|
||
incalculable curse of our time; and its nurse and hot-bed is the
|
||
Church.
|
||
|
||
Because I, a woman, have dared to speak publicly against the
|
||
dictatorship of the Church, the Church, with its usual force and
|
||
honor, answers argument with personal abuse. One reply it gives. It
|
||
is this. If a woman did not find comfort and happiness in the
|
||
Church. she would not cling to it. If it were not good for her, she
|
||
in her purity and truth would not uphold it in the face of the
|
||
undeniable fact that the present generation of thinking men have
|
||
left it utterly.
|
||
|
||
Yon will find, however, that in every land, under every form
|
||
of faith, in each phase of credulity it is the woman who clings
|
||
closest and longest to the religion she has been taught; yet no
|
||
Christian will maintain that this fact establishes the truth of any
|
||
other belief. [NOTE: "Exactly the same thing may be said of the
|
||
women in the harem of an Oriental. They do not complain. ... They
|
||
think our women insufferably unfeminine." -- Mill]
|
||
|
||
They will not argue from this that women know more of and
|
||
heave a clearer insight into the divine will! If she knows more
|
||
about it, if she understands it all better than men, why does she
|
||
not occupy the pulpit? Why does she not hold the official positions
|
||
in the Churches? Why has she not received even recognition in our
|
||
system of religion? Who ever heard of a minister being surprised
|
||
that God did not reveal any of the forms of belief through a woman?
|
||
If she knows and does the will of God so much better than men, why
|
||
did he not reveal himself to her and place his earthly kingdom in
|
||
her hands?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
37
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
That argument won't do! As long as creed and Church held
|
||
absolute power there was no question but that woman was a curse,
|
||
that she was an inferior being, an after-thought. No Church but the
|
||
Roman Catholic has the decency to recognize even the so-called
|
||
mother of God! The Church has never offered women equality or
|
||
justice. Its test of excellence is force. The closer a Church or
|
||
creed clings to its spirit, the more surely does it assume to
|
||
dictate to and control woman and to degrade her. The more liberal
|
||
the creed the nearer does it come to offering individual justice
|
||
and liberty.
|
||
|
||
The testimony of our own missionaries, as well as that of many
|
||
others, assures us that it is not the Turk but his wives who hold
|
||
fastest to their faith. The woman of the harem, whom we pity
|
||
because of the injustice of their religious training, are the last
|
||
to relinquish their god, the most bitter opponents of the infidel
|
||
or skeptic in their Church, the most devout and constant believers
|
||
of the faith, and the most content with its requirements. They are
|
||
the ones who cling to the form even when the substance has departed
|
||
-- and it is so with us!
|
||
|
||
Among the "heathen" it is the women who are most shocked and
|
||
offended by the attacks made upon their superstitions by the
|
||
missionaries whom we pay to go to them and blaspheme their gods and
|
||
destroy their idols.
|
||
|
||
Go where you will, read history as you may, and you will find
|
||
that it is the men who invented religion, and the women who
|
||
believed in it. They are the last to give it up. The physically
|
||
weak dread change. Inexperience fears the unknown. Ignorance shuns
|
||
thought or development. The dependent cannot be brave.
|
||
|
||
We are all prepared to admit, I think, that, with but few
|
||
marked exceptions here and there the women of most countries are
|
||
physically and mentally undeveloped. They have had fear and
|
||
dependence, the dread enemies of progress and growth, constantly to
|
||
retard them. Fear of physical harm, fear of social ostracism, fear
|
||
of eternal damnation. With rare exceptions a child, with a weak
|
||
body, or any other dependent, will do as he is told; and women have
|
||
believed to order. They have done so not only in Christianity but
|
||
in Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, and Fetichism -- in each and
|
||
all of them. Each and all of them being matter of faith, religion
|
||
was the one subject in which every Church alike claimed ignorance
|
||
as a virtue; and the women understood that the men understood it as
|
||
little as they did. It was a field where credulity and a solemn
|
||
countenance placed all on an intellectual level -- and the altitude
|
||
of the level was immaterial.
|
||
|
||
Women have never been expected to understand anything; hence
|
||
jargon about the "testimony of the spirit," the "three in one"
|
||
absurdity, the "horns of the altar," or the widow's oil miracle was
|
||
not more empty or unmeaning to her than a conversation about Bonds
|
||
and Stocks, Political Economy, or Medical Science. She swallowed
|
||
her religion just as She did her pills, because the doctor told her
|
||
to, and said there was something wrong with her head -- and usually
|
||
there was.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
38
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
BEGINNING TO THINK.
|
||
|
||
The past education of woman gave her an outlook which simply
|
||
embraced a husband or nothing at all, which was often only a choice
|
||
between two of a kind.
|
||
|
||
There are a great many women to-day who think that orthodoxy
|
||
is as great nonsense as I do, but who are afraid to say so. They
|
||
whisper it to each other. They are afraid of the slander of the
|
||
Church.
|
||
|
||
I want to help make it so that they will dare to speak. I want
|
||
to do what I can to make it so that a mother wont have to evade the
|
||
questions of her children about the Bible.
|
||
|
||
CREEDS.
|
||
|
||
I am sometimes asked, "What do you propose to give in place of
|
||
this comforting faith? It makes people so happy. You take away all
|
||
this blessing and you give no other in its place. What is your
|
||
creed?"
|
||
|
||
It has never seemed to me, that a creed was the staff of life.
|
||
Man cannot live by creeds alone. I should not object, however, to
|
||
one that should read something like this:
|
||
|
||
I believe in honesty.
|
||
|
||
I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not
|
||
know.
|
||
|
||
I believe that a clean life and a tender heart are worth more
|
||
to this world than all the faith and all the gods of Time.
|
||
|
||
I believe that this world needs all our best efforts and
|
||
earnest endeavors twenty-four hours every day.
|
||
|
||
I believe that if our labors were needed in another world we
|
||
should be in another world; so long as we are in this one I believe
|
||
in making the best and the most of the materials we have on hand.
|
||
|
||
I believe that fear of a god cripples men's intellects more
|
||
than any other influence. I believe that Humanity needs and should
|
||
have all our time, efforts, love, worship, and tenderness.
|
||
|
||
I believe that one world is all we can deal with at a time.
|
||
|
||
I believe that, if there is a future life, the best possible
|
||
preparation for it is to do the very best we can here and now.
|
||
|
||
I believe that love for our fellow-men is infinitely nobler,
|
||
better, and more necessary than love for God.
|
||
|
||
I believe that men, women, and children need our best
|
||
thoughts, our tenderest consideration, and our earnest sympathy.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
39
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
I believe that God can get on just as well without any of
|
||
these as with them. If he wants anything he can get it without our
|
||
assistance. it is people with limitations, not gods without
|
||
limitations, who need and should have our aid.
|
||
|
||
I believe that it is better to build one happy home here than
|
||
to invest in a thousand churches which deal with a hereafter.
|
||
|
||
If a life that embraces this line of action does not fit a man
|
||
for heaven, and if faith in vicarious atonement will, then such a
|
||
heaven is not worth going to, and its god would be unworthy to make
|
||
a good man's acquaintance.
|
||
|
||
But suppose that faith in a myth is destroyed and another
|
||
mysticism be not set up in its place, what then? If a mother takes
|
||
her child away from the fire, which it finds beautiful, and
|
||
believes to be a nice toy, is it necessary for her to give it a
|
||
kerosene lamp in its place? She destroys a pleasant delusion -- a
|
||
faith and a delightful hope and confidence -- because she knows its
|
||
danger and recognizes its false foundation. It is surely not
|
||
necessary that she should give to the child another delusion
|
||
equally dangerous and false. She gives it something she knows to be
|
||
safe; something she understands will not burn; something which,
|
||
though not so bright and attractive to the child at first, gives
|
||
pleasure without pain, occupation without disaster. Is she cruel or
|
||
only sensible? If I were to pretend to a knowledge of a divine
|
||
creed, a superhuman system, I should be guilty of the same
|
||
dishonesty, the same deception of which I complain in the Church.
|
||
|
||
I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most
|
||
important human ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of
|
||
another world. I do not know anything about "a land that is fairer
|
||
than day." I do know that women make shirts for seventy cents a
|
||
dozen in this one. I do know that the needs of humanity and this
|
||
world are infinite, unending, constant, and immediate. They will
|
||
take all our time, our strength, our love, and our thoughts and our
|
||
work here will be only then began.
|
||
|
||
Why not, if you believe in a God at all, give him credit for
|
||
placing you where he wanted you? Why not give him credit for giving
|
||
you brains and sympathies, as well as the courage to use them. Even
|
||
if Eve did eat that apple, why should we insist upon having the
|
||
colic?
|
||
|
||
SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.
|
||
|
||
I want to see the time come when mothers won't have to explain
|
||
to their children that God has changed his mind about goodness and
|
||
right since he used to incite murder; that eighteen hundred years
|
||
ago he was a criminal with bloody hands and vile, polluted breath;
|
||
that less than three hundred years ago his greatest pleasure was
|
||
derived from witnessing the agony of pure young girls burning
|
||
alive, whose only crime was beauty of face or honesty of thought.
|
||
|
||
I want it so that she won't allow her children to hear and
|
||
believe such a statement as Bishop Fallows made not long ago. He
|
||
said, in effect, that sins of omission are as heinous as those of
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
40
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
commission; that Saul committed two sins in his life, and that one
|
||
of them was a refusal to commit a cold-blooded murder! He spared
|
||
the life of a conquered enemy! Out of a whole nation he saved one
|
||
life -- and that was a crime, a sin! Bishop Fallows said that God
|
||
expressly commanded Saul to utterly exterminate that whole nation,
|
||
and not only the nation but its flocks; and that God took Saul's
|
||
kingdom from him because he saved the life of one fallen enemy.
|
||
|
||
That story, I think, is a libel; and I believe that if there
|
||
is a God he was never such a fiend! And I want it so that no mother
|
||
will allow her child to hear such an infamous travesty of the
|
||
character of a Deity who is called good.
|
||
|
||
I want it so that all the lessons of the week, all the careful
|
||
training of a wise father or a good mother, will not be antagonized
|
||
on Sunday by such a statement as the Rev. Mr. Williamson made at a
|
||
large church convention recently. Speaking of prayer, he said: "We
|
||
should offer to God, by prayer, our virtue, our purity, and our
|
||
pious aspirations" (so far I do not object, for if it means
|
||
anything I fail to grasp it), "for by not doing so we claim self-
|
||
control, which is displeasing to God!"
|
||
|
||
I object! The lesson of self-control is precisely what we
|
||
need. And when we control ourselves and regulate our lives on
|
||
principles of right and truth, instead of allowing a Church to
|
||
regulate them through a fear of hell, we shall be a better people,
|
||
and character will have a chance to grow.
|
||
|
||
Then this same gentleman added: "We should also give him our
|
||
vices, our worry, our temper, and our passions, so that he may
|
||
dispose of them."
|
||
|
||
Dispose of them yourselves! Don't try to shift your
|
||
responsibilities on to somebody else. Don't drive your tack into
|
||
the brain of justice, expecting to save your own soft skull. Don't
|
||
enervate your strength to do right by accepting the fatal doctrine
|
||
of vicarious atonement. It weakens every character that it touches.
|
||
|
||
VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.
|
||
|
||
The doctrine of vicarious atonement is found in some form in
|
||
most religions, and it is the body an soul of ours. The idea is not
|
||
a Christian invention. It caused the Carthaginians to put to death
|
||
their handsomest prisoners if a battle were won, the most promising
|
||
children of their own nobility if it were lost. They were offerings
|
||
to appease the gods.
|
||
|
||
In old times there were peoples who believed that if a chief
|
||
was guilty of a misdemeanor it was just to punish or enslave any
|
||
one of his tribe. That was their idea of liberty and justice. If a
|
||
father committed a crime it could be expiated by the murder of his
|
||
son. That was the doctrine of vicarious atonement in all its
|
||
pristine glory. So they adopted that style of justice in our
|
||
religion, and condemned the whole lot of us to the eternal wrath of
|
||
God on account of that little indiscretion attributed to Eve. It
|
||
seems a very little thing for anybody to get so angry at us all
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
41
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
about and stay angry so long! It doesn't seem to me that if one of
|
||
you were to eat every apple I had in my orchard, I should want to
|
||
murder all the folks that live in Asia Minor. Do you think you
|
||
would?
|
||
|
||
In the 11th verse of the 12th chapter of the second book of
|
||
Samuel it is claimed that God said he was going to be revenged for
|
||
the crimes of some men by a vile punishment of their wives.
|
||
|
||
Only a short time ago a man tried that same style of justice
|
||
in one of our Western towns. He claimed that Smith had alienated
|
||
the affections of his wife, so he went over to Smith's house and
|
||
whipped Mrs. Smith! And do you know that the judge who tried that
|
||
case (not being a good Bible student) actually sent that good,
|
||
pious man to the house of correction -- that man who not only
|
||
believed in his Bible but lived by it! And just as likely as not
|
||
that judge will be elected again. Truly we have fallen on
|
||
degenerate times
|
||
|
||
Legal minds outgrew the idea of vicarious punishment long ago.
|
||
Physical liberty came to have a new meaning, and punishment was
|
||
awarded more and more where it was due. But the religious mind
|
||
never outgrows anything. It is born as big as it ever gets.
|
||
Development is its terror. It abhors a change. It forces you to sin
|
||
by proxy. to be redeemed by proxy; and the only thing it does
|
||
permit you to receive at first hand is Hell. That is the only one
|
||
thing you can't delegate to somebody else.
|
||
|
||
If you commit no sin, you are responsible for the sins of
|
||
other people -- dead people, too, that yon can't look after. If you
|
||
are good and true and noble -- even if you are a Christian -- you
|
||
don't get any credit for it. If there is any one thing above
|
||
another that God detests it is to have a man try to be grand and
|
||
noble and true, and then got the credit of it. "To Christ belongs
|
||
all the honor, the praise, and the glory -- world without end,
|
||
Amen."
|
||
|
||
But when it comes to the punishment, the vicarious notion
|
||
doesn't seem to work. There is the one point where you are welcome
|
||
to your own, and no discount allowed to heavy takers. Hell is
|
||
always at par and no bail permitted. Even ignorance of the
|
||
requirements is no excuse. If you did not know any better, somebody
|
||
else did, and you've got to pay for it.
|
||
|
||
Now if the vicarious principle is not big enough to go clear
|
||
round, I'll leave my share off at the other end. If the Church
|
||
wants to take my hell (vicariously) it is welcome to it. I will let
|
||
it go cheap.
|
||
|
||
Awhile ago a man stayed some time at a hotel in New York, and
|
||
when the time came for him to pay his bill he hadn't the money.
|
||
Well, the proprietor felt sorry for him and said, "I tell you what
|
||
I'll do about that bill, I'll throw off half." His guest was
|
||
overwhelmed by this liberality, and with tears of gratitude said,
|
||
"I cannot permit yon to out do me in generosity; I'll throw off the
|
||
other half and we'll call it square."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
42
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
So if the Church desires all the credit, it is also welcome to
|
||
all the blame. I cannot permit it to outdo me in generosity. But
|
||
I'd rather be responsible for just my own sins, and then I can
|
||
regulate them better, and I can take care of my own reward when I
|
||
got it. I shall not want to deposit it with the clergy. A profit
|
||
and loss system that is chiefly loss will not pay me.
|
||
|
||
The doctrines of vicarious atonement and original or inherited
|
||
sin are the most infamously unjust dogmas that ever clouded the
|
||
brain of man.
|
||
|
||
TWIN MONSTERS INHERITED FROM INTELLECTUAL PYGMIES.
|
||
|
||
They are twin monsters inherited from intellectual pygmies.
|
||
|
||
Let me read you a little prayer based upon this idea of right.
|
||
I heard it offered as a thanksgiving tribute. "Oh, God, we do thank
|
||
thee that thou didst give thy only son to die for us! We thank thee
|
||
that the innocent has suffered for the guilty, and that through the
|
||
suffering and death of thy most holy son our sins are blotted out!"
|
||
|
||
Monstrous! How would that work in a court of justice? What
|
||
would you think of a person who coolly thanked a judge who had
|
||
knowingly allowed the wrong man to be hung? What do you think of a
|
||
code of morals that offers as one of its beautiful provisions the
|
||
murder of the innocent instead of the punishment of the guilty?
|
||
|
||
People ask what good I expect to come of an attack on
|
||
Christianity. They ask me if I think Christianity does any direct
|
||
harm. Yes! It makes a man unjust to believe in unjust doctrines.
|
||
Any man who honestly believes in the righteousness of a system of
|
||
vicarious rewards and punishments is ripe for any form of tyranny.
|
||
And the more honestly he believes in it the less will he be a good
|
||
man from principle.
|
||
|
||
I want men and women to be good and true because it is right
|
||
towards each other, and not because they are afraid of Hell. Honor
|
||
towards people in this world, not fear of a fiend in the next --
|
||
that is my doctrine. That is the way to make men and women strong
|
||
and brave and noble. Stop telling them they can't be good
|
||
themselves; teach them that they must do right themselves. Make
|
||
them self-dependent. Teach them to stand alone. Honor towards
|
||
others, kindness, and love -- these are what make a man a good
|
||
husband, a noble father -- king in his household.
|
||
|
||
Fear never made any man a gentleman. Fear never made any woman
|
||
a true wife or a good mother. Fear never covered the pitfalls of
|
||
vice with anything stronger than the gloss of hypocrisy.
|
||
|
||
When Reason's torch burned low, Faith led her victims by
|
||
chains of ignorance into the land of hopeless superstition, and
|
||
built her temple there.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
43
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.
|
||
|
||
A religion of faith is simply a question in geography. Keep
|
||
your locality in mind and you are all right. On the banks of the
|
||
Red Sea murder and slavery were a religious duty. On the Ganges
|
||
infanticide is a virtue. In Rome you may steal or lie; you may
|
||
deceive an innocent young girl and blast her life forever; you may
|
||
stab your friend in the dark, and you are all right: but if you eat
|
||
a piece of fried pork on Friday you are a lost man! China arranges
|
||
her prayers in a machine, and turns her obligations to Deity off
|
||
with a crank. There is usually more or less intimate relationship
|
||
between prayer and a crank. Our God loved human sacrifice in
|
||
Galilee, and rewarded Abraham for it. He abhors it in Pocasset,
|
||
America, and his followers threaten to hang the only consistent
|
||
follower of Jehovah who has come amongst them.
|
||
|
||
If you live in Utah, or had lived in Jerusalem, your most
|
||
certain hope of salvation would have been the possession of
|
||
numerous wives. In England or New York more than one is sure
|
||
damnation.
|
||
|
||
Lose your bearings and you are a lost man! Make a mistake in
|
||
your country and your soul is not worth a copper. A traveler is not
|
||
safe five minutes, and I doubt if an accident policy would cover
|
||
his case.
|
||
|
||
God and the Devil have been held accountable for about every
|
||
crime that ever has been committed, and it has been very largely a
|
||
geographical question which of the two was responsible. If it was
|
||
longitude 35 degrees 14' east it was the Lord! If you shifted to
|
||
longitude 70 degrees 58' west it was the Devil.
|
||
|
||
When locality becomes the all-important question, we do not
|
||
wonder at the old lady who felt relieved when the new survey threw
|
||
her house just across the state line into Ohio, after she had been
|
||
under the impression that she lived in Indiana. "Well," said she,
|
||
"I am glad we don't live in Indiana; I always did say it was a very
|
||
unhealthy state. Now, our doctor's bills won't be so high.
|
||
|
||
Pocasset, Mass., is in the devil's country, and murder is not
|
||
safe; it is a crime. Abraham and Saul lived in a healthier climate
|
||
-- in God's congressional district, where murder was above par and
|
||
decency was out of fashion. Take it all in all, and the devil seems
|
||
to make the best Governor.
|
||
|
||
Now it seems to me that Sunday-schools should teach nothing so
|
||
much as geography, so that a man may not be in doubt as to who is
|
||
his Secretary of State, and when an order comes from head-quarters
|
||
he may fairly be expected to know whether it is safe to obey --
|
||
whether obedience means glorification on earth and a home in
|
||
heaven, or a sprained neck and a bright fire. It seems now that
|
||
Pocasset is over the line and out of the Lord's clearing.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
44
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
REVELATION.
|
||
|
||
Now this God either did or he did not believe in and command
|
||
murder and rapine in the, days when he used to sit around evenings
|
||
and chat with Abraham and Moses and the rest of them. His especial
|
||
plans and desires were "revealed" or they were not. The ideas of
|
||
justice and right were higher in those days than they are now, or
|
||
else we are wiser and better than God, or else the Bible is not his
|
||
revealed will. You can take your choice. My choice is to keep my
|
||
respect for divine justice and honor, and let the Bible bear the
|
||
burden of its own mistakes.
|
||
|
||
If religion is a revelation, then it is not a growth, and it
|
||
would have been most perfect in design and plan when it was nearest
|
||
its birth. Now accepting the Bible theory of Jehovah, we find that
|
||
when the communications of God were immediate and personal there
|
||
could have been no mistake as to his will. To deal with it as a
|
||
growth or evolution toward better things is to abandon the whole
|
||
tenet of a revealed law of God. But to deal with it as a revelation
|
||
is to make God a being too repulsive and brutal to contemplate for
|
||
one moment with respect.
|
||
|
||
He either did or did not tell those men those things. Which
|
||
will you accept?
|
||
|
||
He divided men into two classes. Of one he made tyrants and
|
||
butchers; of the other, victims. He made woman weak in order that
|
||
she might be the more easily overcome by vice; helpless, in order
|
||
that she might the more easily be made the victim of brutal lust!
|
||
He made children to be the beasts of burden, the human sacrifices,
|
||
the defenseless property of criminals and fiends. He did these
|
||
things or the prophets romanced about it, or some one else romanced
|
||
about them. Which?
|
||
|
||
If I accept the former alternative. I can have nothing but
|
||
loathing and contempt for the Deity and his followers. If the
|
||
latter, it clouds the character of no one. It simply places the
|
||
ignorance of the past on the same plane with the ignorance of the
|
||
present. It rescues the reputation of the Infinite at the trifling
|
||
expense of a few musty fables.
|
||
|
||
I choose the latter! I prefer to believe either that a few men
|
||
were themselves deceived, or that they tried to deceive others --
|
||
it does not much matter which. I prefer to adopt this belief, and
|
||
so keep the character of even a supposititious God above reproach.
|
||
|
||
If we accept a God at all let us accept an honest one.
|
||
|
||
EVIDENCE OF FAITH.
|
||
|
||
We are asked to be as fair toward the evidence of Bible
|
||
witnesses as we are toward other evidence. We are told that we
|
||
believe a great deal that we have never seen, and that we accept it
|
||
on the word of ethers; that we have never seen a man hung, but that
|
||
we believe that men have been hung; we never saw Napoleon's great
|
||
feats of generalship, but we believe in them because history
|
||
records them. Why not believe in the Bible as well as in other
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
45
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
history? Why not, on the testimony of witnesses, believe that
|
||
Christ turned water into wine, as readily as that a man was hung?
|
||
Why not accept the miracle of the loaves and fishes on evidence, as
|
||
readily as the victories of Napoleon?
|
||
|
||
Now that line of argument, although it is the one used by and
|
||
for theological students, is entirely illogical. It will not work
|
||
with people who think. The cases are not parallel.
|
||
|
||
We believe the facts of history and the occurrences of to-day
|
||
not solely on the testimony of others, but because they are in
|
||
accord with common sense and experience and judgment; because they
|
||
fall within the range of possibility, and do not antagonize the
|
||
laws of nature. We know a man can be hung. We know one general may
|
||
defeat another. We are asked to believe nothing outside of
|
||
reasonable bounds. Here then the only thing to examine is the
|
||
credibility of the witnesses.
|
||
|
||
If, however, our witnesses told us that whenever Napoleon
|
||
wanted to know the strength of an enemy he flew up over their camp
|
||
and counted their men; or that when he found too many he prayed
|
||
down fire from heaven and burned them up, we should dismiss their
|
||
testimony at once as unworthy of further notice. We should know
|
||
that they were deceived, or that they were trying to deceive us. We
|
||
should know that Napoleon's real means of estimating the strength
|
||
of his enemy were of a different nature, and that he did not resort
|
||
to the upper air and flit about at will. We should know that no
|
||
fire was prayed down, and that although soldiers might be told to
|
||
put their trust in God, the little addition -- "and keep your
|
||
powder dry" -- would be the really important part of the command.
|
||
|
||
So when we are told that wine was made out of water, and bread
|
||
and fish out of nothing in large quantities, we know that we are
|
||
listening to statements that simply go out of the field of credible
|
||
testimony into the realm of supreme credulity. Such assertions
|
||
require you to believe not only what you have not seen, but what
|
||
all experience and reason tell you you never can see. They ask you
|
||
not only to believe in a past event, but in a past event outside of
|
||
all reason, beyond all experience, incapable of demonstration,
|
||
unsupported by nature, opposed to all natural laws -- beneath the
|
||
realm of reason, out of the light of experience, under the shadow
|
||
of superstition!
|
||
|
||
The great electric light of the intellect is turned off at the
|
||
church. door. On one day out of every seven the human lamps enter
|
||
in utter darkness a field of superstition. During six days the
|
||
light is turned full on the world of commerce, science, art, and
|
||
literature, and these glow and grow and are examined by its rays.
|
||
When, however, the signal tolls from the steeple on the seventh
|
||
day, the light is turned off for that day and for that topic alone;
|
||
and then there is brought out once more the old tallow candle of
|
||
ignorance that hides in shadow the cobwebs of undeveloped thought!
|
||
|
||
Use your noblest powers of thought freely in the bank; strain
|
||
and develop your ability to improve and control in the engine-room;
|
||
train and exert your judgment, in literature and art push and
|
||
brighten and sharpen your reason in science or political economy.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
46
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
In the practical affairs of life faith will not help you. It
|
||
is childish and insecure. It will not honor your cheque; it will
|
||
not prevent the broken engine from hurling its human companion into
|
||
eternity. It will not prove the rotundity of the earth, nor
|
||
establish a sound financial basis for a nation. In all such matters
|
||
it to nothing but ignorance and disaster. In theology it is the one
|
||
element of light.
|
||
|
||
As a test and an aid in this world, it is puerile and
|
||
trifling; but the depths of the Great Beyond it fathoms to a
|
||
nicety. It gives no grasp upon the truths of Time; but it is the
|
||
all-sufficient hold on Eternity. It leads to the discovery of no
|
||
important principle here; but it holds the keys to the secret
|
||
chambers of divinity! It is an attribute of childish development
|
||
now. It is to indicate infinite mental superiority hereafter!
|
||
|
||
It is a strange philosophy which asserts that a faculty which
|
||
is a hindrance to superiority in this world is the one thing
|
||
needful for the soul of man!
|
||
|
||
Give me the brain that dares to think! Give me the mind that
|
||
grasps with herculean power the rocks that crush the treasures of
|
||
intellectual growth, and tears them from their foundation! Give me
|
||
the mind that dares to step from the fallen stones, that leaps from
|
||
rock to rock past the dark rift torn in the superstitions of ages
|
||
past, and that, standing on the farthest crag, waits and witches
|
||
for the breaking light! He can trust his future whose present
|
||
scorns stagnation.
|
||
|
||
DID HE TALK?
|
||
|
||
In olden times -- in the times of the Bible -- men believed
|
||
that animals sometimes used human language, and that beasts were
|
||
wiser than their masters. I'm not now going to question that
|
||
belief, but still, I don't think that nowadays one-half of us would
|
||
take the word of a horse on any important subject. You must
|
||
remember, however, that it took an ass to know an angel at first
|
||
sight in Baalim's time. Baalim never suspected that there was an
|
||
angel in his path until that ass told him! In those days, on a
|
||
little matter like that, the word of any beast seemed to be taken
|
||
as good evidence.
|
||
|
||
But let a mule jam his rider's foot against a wall, nowadays,
|
||
and then lie down under him, and there, is not one man in ten who
|
||
would associate that fact in his mind with the presence of an
|
||
angel. I suppose, however, there wasn't as much known about mules
|
||
then as there is now; and most asses were of a more pious turn of
|
||
mind.
|
||
|
||
I don't suppose there is one intelligent man in this city who
|
||
believes that story, and yet he is not a good Christian if he
|
||
questions it.
|
||
|
||
Show me a locality where actual belief -- where old time
|
||
orthodoxy -- is looked upon as a requisite of good citizenship and
|
||
standing in society, and you will show me a place where
|
||
intellectual development and rapid progress have died or gone to
|
||
sleep!
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
47
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
The most ignorant and backward parts of this great country,
|
||
the localities where Congress is asking for better and more secular
|
||
schools to be established as a means of safety to the state, are
|
||
situated in the very States where orthodoxy holds absolute sway. In
|
||
those status a man is looked upon as a very dangerous character if
|
||
he questions the accuracy of that story about those, three hot-
|
||
house plants, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Yes, the people of
|
||
that pious region would be afraid of a man who was wicked enough to
|
||
laugh at that yarn; and yet do you believe there is a man in this
|
||
city who could make you believe it? And you don't look dangerous
|
||
either; and I don't think that I do.
|
||
|
||
It seems that when they used to run ashore for big scare-
|
||
stories, they just poked up the fire and went into the blast-
|
||
furnace business -- here and hereafter. But -- seeing that a
|
||
furnace -- a real one -- heated seven times hotter than it takes to
|
||
melt iron, did not injure those three tropical innocents -- did not
|
||
even singe their eve-brows -- it does look a little as if we should
|
||
stand a pretty fair show with the spiritual fuel they now promise
|
||
us hereafter. Still I must say I don't believe I should like the
|
||
climate.
|
||
|
||
Speaking of Bible arguments, I must tell you of a new one
|
||
heard recently. A gentleman acquaintance of mine asked a colored
|
||
woman, who had applied to him for money to help build a colored
|
||
people's church, whether she thought God was black or white. She
|
||
replied that the Bible implied that he was black -- that it said,
|
||
"And his wool shall be whiter than snow;" and that white men don't
|
||
have wool!
|
||
|
||
WHAT YOU MAY THINK.
|
||
|
||
Show me a grade of society that buckles its little belt of
|
||
belief and faith around its members, and you will show me a
|
||
collection of hopeless mediocres. The thinkers move out or die out.
|
||
They object to being fossilized. They decline to go down to history
|
||
as physical members of the nineteenth century, and mental members
|
||
of the third.
|
||
|
||
I would rather have the right to put on my monument "She was
|
||
abreast of her time," than have all the sounding texts and all the
|
||
feathered tribes chiseled upon it. I would prefer that it be said
|
||
of me, "She was a good woman because she had a pure heart," than to
|
||
have this record: "She was a Christian. She was afraid of Hell. She
|
||
cast her burdens on the Lord, and went to heaven."
|
||
|
||
You have been told, "Blessed are they who die in the Lord."
|
||
Rather let us say, "Blessed are they who live clean lives."
|
||
|
||
But the Church does not allow you to regulate your lives by
|
||
what you believe to be right. It always did and it always will hate
|
||
a thinker. It proposes to do the mental labor for great minds by
|
||
means of brains large enough to hold nothing but Faith. It says, "I
|
||
cannot and you shall not outgrow the past. The measure of my
|
||
capacity shall be the limit of your attainment."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
48
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
the laws of a nation presume to regulate only what you may do.
|
||
The Church is kind enough to say what you may think. It proposes to
|
||
control the mental condition of every man and woman for time and
|
||
eternity, and its first command is that we shall not grow.
|
||
|
||
It seems to me rather a queer admission to make, but the
|
||
Church says that a child or a fool knows quite enough for its
|
||
purpose -- and it does not seem to be my place to question that
|
||
fact. Now that may be all very well for the child and the fool, but
|
||
it is rather binding on the rest of us.
|
||
|
||
Once in a while a minister outgrows the doctrines that were
|
||
big enough for him in his youth; but that minister, though his life
|
||
be as pure and his character as sweet as a flower, would be safer
|
||
to be cast into the sea than that this instrument of torture, this
|
||
court of injustice, should discover that he had laid aside the
|
||
outfit of his undeveloped years. His mind may have grown to be a
|
||
giant in strength, but it must be compressed into the nut-shell of
|
||
superstition -- dwarfed to the capacity of intellectual pygmies.
|
||
|
||
Christ was a thinker, a man of progress, an infidel, a man who
|
||
outgrow the Church of his time; and the Church of his time
|
||
crucified him. Those who oppose the spirit of religious stagnation
|
||
to-day meet the same spirit in the Church that Christ met, and
|
||
receive the same treatment so far as the law will permit.
|
||
|
||
It is a sentiment as true as it is beautiful that asks us to
|
||
reverence the great men, the thinkers of the past; but it is no
|
||
mark of respect to them to rest forever over their graves. We show
|
||
our respect and our appreciation better by a spirit of research
|
||
that reaches beyond them, than by a simple admiration which takes
|
||
their gifts and dies. The lessons they left were not alone lessons
|
||
of memory and acceptance, but examples of effort and progress.
|
||
|
||
A pupil who stops content with his teacher's last words is no
|
||
great credit either to himself or to his master. If he has learned
|
||
only to accept, his lesson is only begun; and until he knows that
|
||
he must investigate, his education is that of a child, his
|
||
development that of a clown.
|
||
|
||
it is no compliment to Christ, the man of progress 1800 years
|
||
ago, that his followers clip the whigs of thought. He struck for
|
||
freedom from ecclesiastical bondage. The added a now link to the
|
||
chain of intellectual growth, and his followers have riveted it
|
||
back to the immovable rock of superstition. He offered a key to
|
||
open the door of individual liberty. They have wrapped it in the
|
||
folds of ignorance and laid it in the closet of fear. He said in
|
||
effect, "When you have outgrown the Church, leave it and bless the
|
||
world." They say, "Leave it and be damned." For what is a Christian
|
||
to-day without his hell? The chief objection I hear offered to the
|
||
last arrangements made for us by the revisers is that they left out
|
||
some of the hell, and gave the part they kept a poetical name.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
49
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW.
|
||
|
||
When the day comes when offenses against the intellect are
|
||
deemed as great crimes as offenses against the person, intellectual
|
||
gag-law will meet with no more respect than lynch-law does to-day,
|
||
and will be recognized as the expression of an undeveloped moral
|
||
and social condition. Choking an opinion into or out of a man's
|
||
mind is no more respectable than the same argument applied to his
|
||
body.
|
||
|
||
Any form of faith, any religion, that has the vicarious
|
||
element in it, is an insult to the intellect. It is based upon the
|
||
idea of a God of revenge, a ruler infamously unjust. It is a system
|
||
utterly ineffectual without the wanton sacrifice of helpless
|
||
innocence under fangs of beastly cruelty -- a revenge that has no
|
||
thought of the redress of wrong by its punishment -- a revenge that
|
||
simply requires a victim -- and blood!
|
||
|
||
Even with those two elements of the plan it is still impotent
|
||
until it has appealed to the bassist element in every human breast
|
||
-- the willingness to accept happiness that is bought by the agony
|
||
of another! It is too abjectly selfish and groveling to command the
|
||
least respect from a noble character or a great, tender soul. It
|
||
severs the ties of affection without compunction. It destroys all
|
||
loyalty. It says, "No matter what becomes of my loved ones -- those
|
||
who would die to help me -- I must save my soul." Without the use
|
||
of the microscope, however, such a soul would never know whether if
|
||
was saved or not.
|
||
|
||
What sort of a soul would it be that could have a heaven apart
|
||
from those it loved? It would not be big enough to save, and its
|
||
heaven would not be good enough to have.
|
||
|
||
I prefer the philosophy, the dignified loyalty and love for
|
||
the dead of the old Goth, the captive warrior whom the Christians
|
||
persuaded to be baptized. As he stood by the font he asked the
|
||
bishop, "Where are the souls of my heathen ancestors?" The bishop,
|
||
with great alacrity, replied, "In hell." The brave old warrior, the
|
||
loyal Goth, drew his skins about him and said, "I would prefer, if
|
||
you do not object, to go to my people;" and he left unbaptized.
|
||
|
||
That was heathen philosophy; but I think I prefer it to the
|
||
Christianity of a devout man, a Sunday-school superintendent, whom
|
||
I know. He is a great light in a Christian church today. He
|
||
worships the beautiful provisions of vicarious atonement. He
|
||
refused his mother her dying wish, and on the following Sunday
|
||
atoned for the inhuman act by singing with unusual unction, "How
|
||
gentle God's commands," and reading with devout fervor, "The Lord
|
||
is my shepherd, I shall not want." His mother, who had the same
|
||
shepherd, had wanted for much. She even wanted for a stone to mark
|
||
her grave, because the money she had left for that purpose her holy
|
||
son thought best to use, vicariously, upon himself. That man
|
||
believes in the Bible absolutely. He is a good Christian, and he
|
||
abhors an infidel! He knows he is going to heaven because he has
|
||
faith in Christ, and Christ had an extra stab on his account. He is
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
50
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
willing to take his heavenly home through the blood of Christ, and
|
||
his earthly one, out of the pockets of a dead mother. The blood of
|
||
the murdered Nazarene obliterates the infamy of his acts over her
|
||
dishonored grave.
|
||
|
||
And this is perfectly consistent! A religion of faith, a
|
||
religion that gets its good vicariously and shifts its sins and
|
||
responsibilities on to the past, is a religion that can never
|
||
elevate character; it simply makes a man more intensely what he was
|
||
before. It is all self, self, self. Think of the infinitesimal
|
||
smallness, the irredeemable worthlessness, the unutterable meanness
|
||
of a soul that could forsake those it had loved, and be happy
|
||
believing that they were suffering and eternally lost!
|
||
|
||
Yet who does not know men who go tramping about the country,
|
||
living on the charity of their dupes, and declaring that "the Lord
|
||
is their Shepherd, they shall not want,!' whose families want for
|
||
almost every comfort of life? And this is true orthodox doctrine.
|
||
"Ye shall forsake father, mother, wife, and children," for what? --
|
||
to "follow me Think of the infamy of it!
|
||
|
||
If that is the kind of souls that go to heaven, I shall do all
|
||
I can to keep mine amongst more respectable spirits. I will go with
|
||
the Goth. I could suffer in hell (if there were such a place) with
|
||
those I love, and keep my self-respect.
|
||
|
||
If I believed I could be happy in heaven with my loved ones in
|
||
agony below -- if I believed it of myself -- there is no vile,
|
||
slime-covered reptile on earth that I would so loathe! Forsake
|
||
father, mother, husband, children to save my soul! Never! I will go
|
||
with my people!
|
||
|
||
THE VICARIOUS THEORY THE CAUSE OF CRIME.
|
||
|
||
This idea of vicarious atonement has encouraged injustice and
|
||
crime of every kind. Out of eighty-four men who have been hanged
|
||
recently, seventy-one have gone directly to heaven. They asked the
|
||
assembled spectators to be as good as they conveniently could, and
|
||
meet them on the other shore. Their spiritual advisers administered
|
||
the holy sacrament, and assured them that they were "lambs of the
|
||
fold," and that a robe and a harp awaited them at the right hand of
|
||
God.
|
||
|
||
Just imagine a lamb in a robe, playing on a harp! A lamb with
|
||
wings, a harp, a long white robe, and golden slipper's seems to me
|
||
an object to arouse the sympathy of a demon. Poor lamb! He would
|
||
wish himself a goat every hour of the day.
|
||
|
||
There is an implied crime in the very word vicarious. If it
|
||
means anything it means the suffering of innocence to atone for
|
||
guilt. It means that one crime is condoned by the commission of
|
||
another -- a deliberate one. It means that truth must die in order
|
||
that dishonor may live. It substitutes vengeance for justice. It
|
||
does not seek to protect society by checking villainy; it seeks the
|
||
safety of the criminal by a shifting of responsibility. If the
|
||
framers of human laws were no wiser that the revealers of divine
|
||
law, no nation could live, no family would be secure, no justice
|
||
possible.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
51
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Not long ago the New York 'Independent' contained an article
|
||
against Sarah Bernhart, calling her "a lewd woman," and against her
|
||
play because it did not contain good morals. The same paper
|
||
contained an article against George Eliot's works, and said that
|
||
the Mormon Congressman is a disgrace to all America because he is
|
||
a polygamist. All these things by a man who swallows David and Lot
|
||
whole, and has Solomon pose as the summit of all wisdom! All this
|
||
by a man who builds his life on the word of Moses, and denies to
|
||
others the right to object to his code of morals or his version of
|
||
heavenly wisdom and divine direction!
|
||
|
||
I should like a little consistency. The Christian who rails
|
||
against polygamy, and at the same time poses in morals with a bible
|
||
in his hand, is a man who saws his own legs from under him, and
|
||
still expects us to believe that he has legs, which we might
|
||
possibly do if only our sight were aided by faith. As long as my
|
||
eyes hold out, I'll stick to unaided vision; after that, spectacles
|
||
or faith according to circumstances.
|
||
|
||
When goodness and virtue are measured, not by a book, but by
|
||
our own acts toward each other; when a man's character is judged by
|
||
the amount of joy he gives to his household; when a happy laugh
|
||
from his children and a bright smile from his wife, greet him as
|
||
often as he comes home; when these are taken as the evidence of a
|
||
good man, deacons will go out of fashion. Meek, tired, persecuted
|
||
-- looking wives will not listen to a canting husband and believe
|
||
that he is a holy man, when they know that he is a bad husband and
|
||
a tyrannical father.
|
||
|
||
There is not any way that I know of to make a home happy
|
||
vicariously. No confession of faith can take pain out of a mother's
|
||
heart. No "testimony of the spirit" can make love and beauty in a
|
||
home where "the heathen" hold the first place, and foreign missions
|
||
get tangled up in the children's hair. No man accustomed to a high
|
||
intellectual temperature can keep warm by theological fires. No man
|
||
whose brain is king can ever again recognize the authority of this
|
||
mere undisciplined sentiment.
|
||
|
||
REVISION.
|
||
|
||
As a system Christianity has had its day. Long ago it may have
|
||
served a good purpose, but after eighteen hundred years it is worn
|
||
threadbare and useless. If some of its milder tenets still cling to
|
||
and fit our vast mediocrity, it is equally certain that the
|
||
intellectual giants have molted it as the birds moult their plumage
|
||
in a dying year, and have taken on the bright new garments of
|
||
higher thought, the spring plumage of intellectual liberty.
|
||
|
||
When I heard that the Bible was going to be revised I felt
|
||
very glad because I thought there was a wide field of usefulness
|
||
open to somebody right there; and I concluded to do all I could to
|
||
help it along. I understood that they wanted the substance retained
|
||
as it was, with the language made more as we use language now.
|
||
|
||
So I began my revision in this way: "Good morning, Moses, I
|
||
hear that you have some gods in this country. Do you know anything
|
||
about it?"
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
52
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"Oh, yes, I'm the head god's head man."
|
||
|
||
"You are?"
|
||
|
||
"Yes, I had a talk with the head god -- the top one of the
|
||
three (we are down to three here now), and he told me to tell
|
||
people what a good god he is, and that they must all praise him up
|
||
for it."
|
||
|
||
He did! Well is that all he said?
|
||
|
||
Oh, no, he told me to tell them that he is the only God, and
|
||
is the kind father of all, and loves all alike, and that they must
|
||
all just trust in him and he will take good care of them." I
|
||
thought you said a while ago that there were three of these gods;
|
||
now this one says he is the only one. Is there trouble in the
|
||
cabinet?"
|
||
|
||
"No, there are three, but there is one. See?
|
||
|
||
"Well, no, I can't say that I do. But no matter, the rest of
|
||
that about the father business was pretty good. That was the best
|
||
I ever heard. But do you know that the very last man I talked with
|
||
said that this god was partial to some folks and treated some
|
||
others pretty shabbily."
|
||
|
||
"Oh, that is not so; my god is no respecter of persons; that's
|
||
his very strongest hold. He treats rich and poor just alike, only
|
||
if anything he leans a little toward the poor."
|
||
|
||
"That is pretty clever. But what else did he tell you in that
|
||
talk?"
|
||
|
||
"Well, he told me to tell the people, 'Thou shalt not kill and
|
||
afterwards, at another time, he told me to take a lot of my men,
|
||
and go over there to that town just across, and kill all the men
|
||
and boys I could find, and if they fought hard for their homes, and
|
||
I seemed to be getting the worst of it for a little while, not to
|
||
be afraid, he'd be with me, and he'd see that I came out all right.
|
||
Oh, he's the gayest old god you ever saw to help in a fight."
|
||
|
||
"Well, yes, that was pretty clever to you; but isn't he the
|
||
god of that village too!"
|
||
|
||
"Oh, yes; but you see one of the men that lives over there
|
||
went and worshipped another god one day, and this one didn't like
|
||
it.
|
||
|
||
I see; but if he treats them all that way, don't you think it
|
||
is rather natural that they should go and hunt up another god to
|
||
admire?"
|
||
|
||
Well, while I was waiting for Moses to answer this question,
|
||
I heard another man say that only a day or two previously this very
|
||
fellow had burned up their homes, and murdered a good many people
|
||
who had never injured him; and that he had dashed out the brains of
|
||
the innocent children, and had actually sold the sweet, pure young
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
53
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
girls to his brutal soldiers. Since I heard that, my mind has been
|
||
so occupied with some other little matters that my revision has not
|
||
gone any farther, and somebody else has got one out; so I don't
|
||
know that I shall ever finish mine. It does not seem to be very
|
||
encouraging work any way; and I am afraid that people would find
|
||
fault with its scholarship if it should be finished. Theological
|
||
scholarship and common-sense always did disagree. A man who is well
|
||
vaccinated with either will never catch the other.
|
||
|
||
THE CHURCH'S MONEY-BOX.
|
||
|
||
The Church used to keep a box about four feet long and two
|
||
feet wide which it called the sacred ark of God. It was certain
|
||
death for any man not a priest to touch that box. It is supposed
|
||
that they kept in it gold and jewels which they extorted from their
|
||
dupes, and that for fear of robbery they made superstition their
|
||
banker. Well, they had to move that jewelry-box once for some
|
||
reason, and it is not said that anything happened to the men who
|
||
put it on the cart; but as the man who drove the oxen -- in one
|
||
place it says that they were oxen, in another that they were cows
|
||
with young calves, and you will be damned if you don't believe both
|
||
-- anyhow, as the driver walked along in horrid fear lest something
|
||
should happen to that ark of God, the oxen shied, and the ark
|
||
toppled, and instinctively the driver put out his hand to steady
|
||
the sacred thing. Well, you would think that any sane man, any
|
||
reasonable being, would have commended him for it; but no! Jehovah
|
||
struck him dead for his pains. Why? Because that box was so
|
||
supremely sacred. Supreme nonsense! Suppose he had not touched it
|
||
and it had fallen? What then? Most likely Jehovah would then have
|
||
struck him dead for not touching it. It strikes me that the only
|
||
reasonable, sensible being connected with that whole story was the
|
||
driver, the man they abuse, the man the priests murdered, I suspect
|
||
because he discovered what was in that ark, and threatened to
|
||
expose the humbug.
|
||
|
||
Whenever any man uses judgment and common-sense the Church
|
||
calls him wicked and dangerous. They say he "touches with unholy
|
||
hands holy things;" and when he dies, whether his death was
|
||
expedited or otherwise, they say God killed him.
|
||
|
||
Now, if God did kill that man for touching the ark to save it
|
||
from falling, what do yon think of him -- as a God? I can tell you
|
||
what you would think of him as a man. Yon would think he was a
|
||
ruffian and a murderer that is what you would think of him as a
|
||
man.
|
||
|
||
Truly gods are made of poor stuff. If I can't have a god that
|
||
is nobler and better and truer and kinder than the very best man I
|
||
ever saw, then I don't want any god at all. And candor forbids me
|
||
to state that I ever saw, heard or read of any such a god. All the
|
||
gods I ever read or heard of have fallen infinitely below a few men
|
||
I know.
|
||
|
||
Jehovah, it seems to me, is hardly an average god, even as
|
||
gods go. He believed in polygamy. He believed in slavery. He was a
|
||
murderer -- killed 52,000 people once because somebody looked into
|
||
that four-by-two box that he thought so much of. Human life was not
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
54
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
worth a copper in his neighborhood. He was always in a rage about
|
||
something, and you never knew when he would "get the drop on you"
|
||
because somebody else had ruffled his temper. "Any man was liable,"
|
||
as the Irishman said, "to wake up any morning and find him-self
|
||
burned to ashes in his bed," because one of his neighbors had been
|
||
wicked enough to lend a five-dollar green-back to one of the
|
||
Philistines, or had eaten a gum-drop in the dark of the moon, or
|
||
committed some other awful crime like that.
|
||
|
||
SHALL PROGRESS STOP?
|
||
|
||
In its day the Bible was all very well, no doubt. It was the
|
||
expression of the best that the Jewish people then knew in morals.
|
||
In his time Christ was a great reformer and a brave man. His
|
||
philosophy was then an onward spring, and he detested the shams of
|
||
the Church.
|
||
|
||
But with the knowledge we have to-day we should call that man
|
||
a lunatic who tried to bind medical science by the teachings of
|
||
that age, and maintained that when a man was sick he had a devil,
|
||
and that if he got worse he had a whole flock of them. Yet Christ
|
||
thought that. We should call the man utterly insane who insisted
|
||
that Joshua gave us the last light that is ever to be thrown on
|
||
astronomy. We should simply look with pity on one who should try to
|
||
convince us that the legal profession ought to be bound by the laws
|
||
of Moses; and we know that any nation that attempted to act under
|
||
his guidance would be soon convinced by the unerring voice of
|
||
foreign cannon that somebody had made a mistake.
|
||
|
||
Science has grown. Philosophy has developed. International law
|
||
has sprung up. In religion alone we are asked to accept the
|
||
standard of morality and honor of ages that are dead -- to take as
|
||
the last word of wisdom the reformer's code of eighteen hundred
|
||
years ago. We may grow in all else; in this we must stand still. We
|
||
may use a text-book on Nature, Medicine, Law, or Mechanics, until
|
||
by its aid we pass beyond its knowledge to a higher; but in morals
|
||
and religion the book that was a light to the ages of ignorance and
|
||
superstition, and the production of its brain, must still be the
|
||
sole illumator of a world made wise and critical and thoughtful by
|
||
science and deep experience. The fisherman's lantern, although
|
||
useful in its day, cannot guide us while we stand in the glare of
|
||
electricity. Why stand persistently with our faces westward, and
|
||
gaze at the declining light, crying out impotently and hopelessly
|
||
as we see it grow dim and vanish?
|
||
|
||
Our wise men have kept steadily onward, guided by the light of
|
||
the breaking dawn; and with their faces to the East their star has
|
||
never set. The fishermen's light has sunk below the horizon,
|
||
leaving behind it the glow of honest labor and earnest effort to
|
||
keep their memory bright. The scientist's star has risen, and with
|
||
no claim that it is even yet the highest light -- the final
|
||
promise, it throws its rays of knowledge, its beams of hope, far
|
||
into the future, and bids us follow, leaving the cold embers of the
|
||
dead past for the warmth and light of the living future.
|
||
|
||
The hope of the past is the despair of the future. Stagnation
|
||
is death. In movement and thought alone is progress. The wealth of
|
||
the world is the brain of the scholar.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
55
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
The past is dead; peace to its ashes. The future is ours to
|
||
form on new models; models deformed by past superstitions, or
|
||
models though faulty, instinct with true freedom. You are the jury,
|
||
what is the verdict?
|
||
|
||
HISTORICAL FACTS AND THEOLOGICAL FICTIONS.
|
||
|
||
CHURCH FICTIONS.
|
||
|
||
It is one of the glittering fictions of the Church that to her
|
||
civilization is due, and that it is to her benign influence and
|
||
direction alone that woman has been advanced to her present
|
||
position in the social scale; that without the Bible and the Church
|
||
the status of woman in Christian countries would be lower and her
|
||
lot harder.
|
||
|
||
1st. To prove this claim she directs attention to the status
|
||
of woman in several non-Christian countries, and compares the
|
||
degradation and hardship she there endures to the position of woman
|
||
to-day in America, England, and France.
|
||
|
||
2d. The Church claims the credit of originating and sustaining
|
||
the various steps of progress by which woman has been elevated. She
|
||
claims to have originated and to sustain the idea that woman is
|
||
man's equal, and to recognize her as such in the Church.
|
||
|
||
3d. She points with pride to the superior education and
|
||
intelligence of the women of Christian countries, and contrasts
|
||
this intellectual altitude with that of women elsewhere. She says
|
||
that women owe their superior opportunities of education and
|
||
advancement to their religion.
|
||
|
||
4th. But above all the clergy attempt to silence those who ask
|
||
questions, by calling attention to the superior legal status of
|
||
woman in Christian countries, and asserting that the Church secured
|
||
this and that it made marriage honorable and home a possibility.
|
||
|
||
5th. The clergy claim that the Bible is woman's best friend
|
||
and staunchest defender, and that it is the originator of morality.
|
||
|
||
HISTORICAL FACTS.
|
||
|
||
"The moment there is fixation, petrification and death ensue."
|
||
Profound sincerity is the only basis of character." --
|
||
Emerson.
|
||
|
||
CIVILIZATION.
|
||
|
||
We are told that our superior civilization and high moral tone
|
||
are due to Christianity. I think that this is not true. The whole,
|
||
or at least much the larger and foundation part of the question of
|
||
civilization -- where it shall grow and where only live, where it
|
||
shall drag and where scarcely exist -- seems to me to be decided
|
||
primarily by environment, the basis of which is climate and soil.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
56
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Where the climate and soil are most favorable to the highest
|
||
development; where the environment is neither too hard nor too
|
||
indulgent; where man is neither enervated by heat and the absence
|
||
of necessity to labor, nor stunted by cold and hardship and the
|
||
ever-present necessity to search or labor for food and warmth;
|
||
there will be the highest types and forms of civilization.
|
||
|
||
If the Buddhist religion had chanced to be the one that in the
|
||
process of events took root in the climate and soil where the
|
||
Hebrew Bible and the Christian belief hold sway; and if, on the
|
||
other hand, the Hebrew and Christian religions had been the ones
|
||
developed in India or China, the civilization of the various
|
||
countries would still, in the main, be what they are to-day.
|
||
|
||
If our superior civilization were the result of our religion,
|
||
then the most civilized countries would be the most intensely
|
||
Christian countries. We all know that this is not the case. Compare
|
||
the intense Christianity of Spain or Russia, and their backward
|
||
civilization, with the easy-going religious or irreligious
|
||
condition of France, or America, and their recognition of Liberty
|
||
and Humanity, equalled nowhere else on earth.
|
||
|
||
I admit unreservedly that a religion, by its inelasticity, may
|
||
do much to retard progress, or by its greater elasticity may permit
|
||
a more rapid development than a more nearly petrified or incoherent
|
||
system would allow; but what I hold is this, that the primary and
|
||
controlling causes of the various stages of civilization are
|
||
climate and soil.
|
||
|
||
There are, of course, many other things which modify the
|
||
social development or civilization in any country, as its religion,
|
||
its laws, and what we may call "accidents of intellectual or civil
|
||
contest," such as the religions or other wars -- our own war in
|
||
which the blacks were freed, arbitration, and immigration. All of
|
||
these, and many others, are modifying influences; but no one of
|
||
them can claim the primary place.
|
||
|
||
Soil, climate, and location determine the occupation of a
|
||
nation, as whether it shall be militant, commercial, or
|
||
agricultural. In turn occupation determines what the character of
|
||
a people and their laws shall be, whether they shall be warlike or
|
||
peaceful, inventive or receptive, stationary or roving; and these,
|
||
in turn, are the matters which determine the civil scale to which
|
||
a people shall rise.
|
||
|
||
True, the religion of a people will make itself felt strongly
|
||
but whenever a nation has found it expedient or desirable to
|
||
accomplish a feat which was in opposition to its religion, it has
|
||
invariably modified the religion to fit the case, or waived it in
|
||
favor of that particular movement.
|
||
|
||
In keeping with this fact it is found that in those countries
|
||
where the greatest changes and modifications of government and
|
||
occupation have occurred, there have the religions undergone the
|
||
greatest modification to fit the new order of things. If it were
|
||
the religion that dominated the, matter, civilization and morals
|
||
would be immovable, and legislation would revolve around the
|
||
guidance of the Church.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
57
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
According to the very theory of Divine revelation a religion
|
||
would be most perfect at its beginning. It would be without flaw
|
||
when born. It would be incapable of improvement or growth. In a
|
||
word it would be immovable. It would possess the fixation of which
|
||
Emerson speaks. It would not have to readjust itself to the changed
|
||
and improved conditions of man, and its word would be always a
|
||
higher light on every movement of progress. It would be to the
|
||
Church and not to the State that the great principles of progress,
|
||
of liberty, and of justice would look for the highest guidance and
|
||
the last light. How far this is from the real state of things in
|
||
any country or in any religion all readers of history know.
|
||
|
||
It is the State or Science which has proposed and made the
|
||
steps of progress, and the, Church has (often after the most bitter
|
||
fight and denunciation) readjusted her creed to the new code, and
|
||
then claimed that she had that light and knew that principle
|
||
before, although neither she nor any one else had ever suspected
|
||
it.
|
||
|
||
This has been the case with almost every important discovery
|
||
that Science has ever made. The Church has retarded the acceptance
|
||
of the new light and has set her seal of "divine disapproval and
|
||
damnation" on the brow of the thinkers who strove to bless mankind.
|
||
It has been the rule in State reforms as well. It was so in the
|
||
struggle to separate Church and State. It is so in the effort to
|
||
sustain the belief in the "divine right of kings." The Church
|
||
fought individual liberty and representative Government, and she
|
||
still contests the question of individual conscience and individual
|
||
equality and independence. [NOTE: See reports of the last General
|
||
Conference of the Methodist Church held in Philadelphia, where,
|
||
during a heated debate, one member said that he was in favor of
|
||
using common-sense and the principle of justice in deciding
|
||
questions of right and wrong and of liberty of conscience;
|
||
whereupon a large majority voted him a dangerous man, and decided
|
||
that common-sense and justice had nothing to do with religion. One
|
||
member naively remarked that the whole career and life of a good
|
||
preacher fully disproved that any such heretical doctrines obtained
|
||
in the Church as that the use of common-sense was admissible; and
|
||
since the majority voted with him it does not seem to be my place
|
||
to question that fact.]
|
||
|
||
In these matters the Church has invariably been on the side
|
||
that ultimately had to go to the wall, and she has become a party
|
||
to the progress only after the principle has become an established
|
||
fact.
|
||
|
||
Now it is the efforts of Science and Law towards the elevation
|
||
of man and the betterment of his condition in this world -- the
|
||
procuring for him of greater personal advantage, dignity, and
|
||
liberty -- that have marked the progress of civilization.
|
||
|
||
The climate and soil decided mans occupation; his occupation
|
||
determined what his higher needs should be; and his higher needs
|
||
and the gained results of his occupations enabled him to strive for
|
||
the bettering of his condition and surroundings. The man who lived
|
||
in a climate favorable to mental and physical activity, and in a
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
58
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
country with a rich and varied soil, was enabled to accomplish his
|
||
ends as his less fortunate brother -- lacking such support and
|
||
stimulus and motive -- has been unable to do.
|
||
|
||
If such a thing had been possible, thirty years ago, as that
|
||
all knowledge of our religion had been utterly wiped out of
|
||
America, and a thorough knowledge of Buddhism or Mohammedanism
|
||
instilled into every Yankee brain in its stead, the Yankee, brain
|
||
would have, simply adjusted its religion to its surroundings and
|
||
not its surroundings to its religion; and America would have gone
|
||
right on in the front rank of liberty and toleration and progress.
|
||
There would have been social and political and religious contests
|
||
over "caste" or "harems" or "Tripitaka," instead of over slavery as
|
||
a divine institution, the right of a mother to her own offspring,
|
||
or the inspiration of the Bible. The wheels of progress would have
|
||
been blocked some days by devotees who preached damnation for those
|
||
who believed in the "Trinity" instead of for those who did not.
|
||
Hell would have been as freely promised to the man who suggested
|
||
that Newton knew more than Mohammed, as it is to-day to any one who
|
||
makes the same odious comparison between Darwin and Moses. The
|
||
timid would have been terrified by sermons to prove the lost
|
||
condition of a man who touched one of lower rank, in place of the
|
||
edification our clergy often in the shape of eternal damnation for
|
||
unbaptized infants. And there would have been so little difference
|
||
between the arguments for the divinity of the Tripitaka and the
|
||
Bible, and for the miracles of each, that if any devout
|
||
Presbyterian had by accident left his barrel of sermons on the
|
||
latter subject behind him, his Buddhist brother could have utilized
|
||
them without the change of an argument. But the wheel would turn
|
||
and the devotee would either go down or change his creed, and it
|
||
would depend chiefly upon his age and consequent flexibility which
|
||
course he would adopt.
|
||
|
||
No known religion could transfer the conditions of
|
||
civilization in China to America or England or France, and no
|
||
amount of christianizing (if such a thing were possible) could
|
||
transform China into a like condition with us, so long as her
|
||
climate, her soil, and her population remain what they are to-day.
|
||
You may make the Arab or the Jap digest the whole Westminster
|
||
catechism, but he will, he must, be an Arab or a Jap still -- if he
|
||
lives though it all. If his constitution is good, and he gets over
|
||
it, his condition and grade of civilization will continue to
|
||
conform to his environment; and the trifling difference involved,
|
||
between turning-off prayers on a wheel and counting them off on
|
||
beads will be simply the difference between tweedledee and
|
||
tweedledum.
|
||
|
||
Notwithstanding this as a primary fact, the religion of a
|
||
country has a modifying influence on the rapidity of its progress,
|
||
and the more fixed a religion -- the more certainly it claims
|
||
perfection, the greater claim it lays to holding the final word;
|
||
and the more fully this claim is accepted by the people, the
|
||
greater influence will it have, the greater check will it be to the
|
||
development of any new thought, discovery, invention, or principle
|
||
that arises in the process of evolution toward a freer atmosphere
|
||
and a broader understanding of individual liberty and dignity and
|
||
life. William Kingdom Clifford, F.R.S., in his delightful book on
|
||
the "Scientific Basis of Morals." says:
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
59
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"It is sometimes said that moral questions have been
|
||
authoritatively settled by other methods; that we ought to
|
||
accept this decision, and not to question it by any method of
|
||
scientific inquiry; and that reason should give way to
|
||
revelation on such matters.
|
||
|
||
"I hope before I have done to show just cause why we
|
||
should pronounce on such teaching as this no light sentence of
|
||
moral condemnation: first, because it is our duty to form
|
||
those beliefs which are to guide our actions by the two
|
||
scientific modes of inference, and by these alone; and,
|
||
secondly, because the proposed mode of settling ethical
|
||
questions by authority is contrary to the very nature of right
|
||
and wrong.
|
||
|
||
"The worship of a deity who is represented as unfair or
|
||
unfriendly to any portion of the community is a wrong thing,
|
||
however great may be, the threats and promises by which it is
|
||
commended. And still worse, the reference of right and wrong
|
||
to his arbitrary will as a standard, the diversion of the
|
||
allegiance of the moral sense from the, community to him, is
|
||
the most insidious and, fatal of social diseases.
|
||
|
||
"The first principle of natural ethics is the sole and
|
||
supreme allegiance of conscience to the community.
|
||
|
||
"Secondly, veracity to the community depends upon faith
|
||
in man. Surely I ought to be talking platitudes when I say
|
||
that it is not English to tell a man a lie, or to suggest a
|
||
lie by your silence or your actions, because you are afraid
|
||
that he is not prepared for the truth, because you don't quite
|
||
know what he will do when he knows it, because perhaps after
|
||
all this lie is a better thing for him than the truth would
|
||
be, this same man being all the time an honest fellow-citizen
|
||
whom you have every to trust. Surely I have headed that this
|
||
craven crookedness is the object of our national detestation.
|
||
And yet it is constantly whispered that it would be dangerous
|
||
to divulge certain truths to the masses. 'I know the whole
|
||
thing is untrue: but then it is so useful for the people; you
|
||
don't know what harm you might do by shaking their faith in
|
||
it.' Crooked ways are none the less crooked because they are
|
||
meant to deceive great masses of people instead of
|
||
individuals. If a thing is true, let us all believe it, rick
|
||
and poor, men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let
|
||
us all disbelieve it, rich and poor, men, women and children.
|
||
Truth is a thing to be shouted from the housetops, not to be
|
||
whispered over rose-water after dinner when the ladies go
|
||
away.
|
||
|
||
"Even in those whom I would most reverence, who would
|
||
shrink with horror from such actual deception as I have just
|
||
mentioned, I find traces of a want of faith in man. Even that
|
||
noble thinker, to whom we of this generation owe more than I
|
||
can tell, seemed to say in one of his posthumous essays that
|
||
in regard to questions of great public importance we, might
|
||
encourage a hope in excess of the evidence (which would
|
||
infallibly grow into a belief and defy evidence) if we found
|
||
that life was made easier by it. As if we should not lose
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
60
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
infinitely more by nourishing a tendency to falsehood than we
|
||
could gain by the delusion of a pleasing fancy. Life must
|
||
first of all be made straight and true; it may get easier
|
||
through the help this brings to the commonwealth. And lange,
|
||
the great historian of materialism, says that the amount of
|
||
false belief necessary to morality in a given society is a
|
||
matter of taste. I cannot believe that any falsehood whatever
|
||
is necessary to morality. It cannot be true of my race and
|
||
yours that to keep ourselves from becoming scoundrels we must
|
||
needs believe a lie, The sense of right grew up among healthy
|
||
men and was fixed by the practice of comradeship. It has never
|
||
had help from panthoms and falsehoods, and it never can want
|
||
any. By faith in man and piety toward men we have taught each
|
||
other the right hitherto; with faith in man and piety toward
|
||
men we shall never more depart from it."
|
||
|
||
If religion decided and produced the civilization of a people,
|
||
what sort of civilization would exist to-day among the Jews? All
|
||
Jews would be bigamists, and murder would be their pastime. No
|
||
people would be free from their rapine, no woman safe from their
|
||
lust. But fortunately they have followed their scientific and
|
||
political leaders instead of their Prophets, and the consequence is
|
||
that they are so far above and superior to their religion and their
|
||
Bible, that only in its trivial and immaterial dictates is it their
|
||
guide and law to-day.
|
||
|
||
And we, building upon the same foundation, with an added story
|
||
to our edifice, modify, to suit legislation and a higher public
|
||
sentiment and a broader conception of justice, both the foundation
|
||
and the roof whenever a new principle is born or some great soul
|
||
floods the world with light.
|
||
|
||
And so the world moves on, those nations in advance that
|
||
possess the climate to stimulate and the soil to support to the
|
||
best advantage their citizens -- philosophers and scientists who
|
||
grope towards perfection and stumble on the way over real and
|
||
imaginary obstacles, but still bring each generation nearer the
|
||
goal, and freer to brush aside the cobwebs of superstition and
|
||
ignorance, and to look fairly out on the light that breaks in the
|
||
East.
|
||
|
||
There is another feature of the subject that will bear looking
|
||
at. Christians are the last to give credit to other religions for
|
||
the development and advance of civilization in the countries
|
||
possessing them. What Christian will admit that it is the religion
|
||
of the Chinese that makes them the most orderly, law-abiding, mob-
|
||
avoiding people on the globe? Will any Christian admit that it is
|
||
the inferior moral tone of Christ and his teachings which enables
|
||
the followers of Confucius and Buddha to offer this superior
|
||
showing? Is he prepared to say that Mohammedanism is superior to
|
||
Christianity because its followers outdo the Christians in honesty?
|
||
[Travelers tell us that a native can leave, an order together with
|
||
a bag of uncounted gold at the shop of a dealer, and upon the
|
||
return of the buyer his order will be exactly filled, his gold
|
||
properly and honestly divided, and all where he had left them, even
|
||
though the shop be open to the street and unattended and
|
||
unguarded.] Is it owing to the superior blessings of the Mormon
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
61
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
faith that its followers are more thrifty, and that paupers are few
|
||
or unknown among them? Is it because their religion is superior to
|
||
ours that the Lapp women are better treated, that their comparative
|
||
status is higher, and their family life purer than with ourselves"
|
||
["Though Norway with Ladies." By W. Mattieu Williams. F.R.A.S.,
|
||
F.C.S.]
|
||
|
||
The claim that superiority of civilization is due to
|
||
Christianity, and that to it we owe the good things of the nations
|
||
where it is the prevailing religion proves too much. It will work
|
||
just as well for any other religion as for our own. Its reach is
|
||
too extended, its conclusion too comprehensive for its purpose.
|
||
Christianity could not be made its sole terminus. It reminds one of
|
||
the story of the brakeman who was persuaded to go to church. When
|
||
he came out his friend asked him how he liked the preacher. He
|
||
said, "Very well, on the main line. He had good wheels, his track
|
||
was straight and level, and he carried a good head of steam, but he
|
||
seems to lack terminal facilities." [Horace Seaver recently wrote
|
||
the following:
|
||
|
||
ALL OWING TO THE BIBLE.
|
||
|
||
It is a very common argument with Christians, that only those
|
||
nations which have had the Bible were refined, civilized, and
|
||
learned. A Christian paper, now before us, exultingly says:
|
||
|
||
"Take the map of the world, draw a line around those,
|
||
countries that have enjoyed the highest degree of refinement, and
|
||
you will encircle just those nations that have received the Bible
|
||
as their authority in religion.'
|
||
|
||
"From this language, the plain inference is, that those
|
||
nations have been indebted to the influence of the Bible for the
|
||
positions to which they have attained. Let us follow out a little
|
||
this line of argument and see where it will lead.
|
||
|
||
"The ancient Egyptians stood as far in advance of their
|
||
contemporaries as do the nations of Christendom at the present day,
|
||
as the remains of Egyptian cities and temples fully attest. And if
|
||
the argument is good, they were indebted for that superiority to
|
||
their worship of cats, crocodiles, and onions!
|
||
|
||
"The ancient Greek might have exclaimed, as he beheld the
|
||
proud position to which Greece had attained -- 'See what we owe to
|
||
a belief in our glorious mythology; we have reached the highest
|
||
point of enlightenment the world has ever witnessed; we stand
|
||
unequalled in power, wealth, the cultivation of the arts, and all
|
||
that makes a nation refined, polished, and great!'
|
||
|
||
How immeasurably would his faith in the elevating tendency of
|
||
his religion have been increased, could he have looked with
|
||
prophetic eye into the distant ages of the future, and beheld the
|
||
enlightened and Christianized nations of the nineteenth century
|
||
adopting the remains of Grecian architecture, sculpture, painting,
|
||
oratory, music, and literature as their models!
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
62
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"Pagan Rome, too, once mistress of the world and arbitress of
|
||
nations -- the home of philosophers and sages -- the land in which
|
||
the title, 'I am a Roman citizen,' was the proudest that a mortal
|
||
could wear -- Rome, by the above Christian argument, should have
|
||
ascribed all her honor, praise, and glory to her mythology.
|
||
|
||
"The Turk and the Saracen, likewise, have had their day of
|
||
power and renown. Baghdad was the seat of science and learning at
|
||
a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in darkness and
|
||
superstition. The Turk and Saracen should have pointed to the Koran
|
||
as the source of their refinement.
|
||
|
||
"Thus we see that for Christian argument we are noticing, if
|
||
it proves anything, proves too much. If the nations of Christendom
|
||
are indebted to the Bible for their enlightenment, likewise were
|
||
the Egyptians indebted to their cat and crocodile, and onion
|
||
worship, the Greeks and Romans to their mythology, and the Turks
|
||
and Saracens to their Koran."
|
||
|
||
It is a fact that in some Christian countries the actual
|
||
status of woman is higher than it is to-day in any other country;
|
||
but it is also true that her comparative status is often lower.
|
||
[See Appendix C, 1-6]
|
||
|
||
If we compare the actual status of woman in Russia or Spain
|
||
(the two most intensely Christian countries to-day) with that of
|
||
the Chinese or Hindoo woman, the showing may be somewhat in favor
|
||
of the former; but on the other hand, her comparative position
|
||
(when taken with that of the men of her country) does not gain but
|
||
loses by the contrast. It is a significant fact that, of all the
|
||
Christian countries, in those where the Church stands highest and
|
||
has most power women rank lowest and have fewest rights accorded
|
||
them, whether of personal liberty or proprietary interest. In the
|
||
countries named above and in other countries where the Church still
|
||
has a strong grip upon the throat of the State, woman's position is
|
||
degraded indeed; while in the three so-called Christian countries
|
||
where the Church has least power, where law is not wholly or in so
|
||
large part canonical, woman's position is more free, more
|
||
independent, and less degraded, when compared with the position of
|
||
the men of those countries.
|
||
|
||
That tells the whole story. If it were to the Church or to her
|
||
religion that she owed her advancement, it would be in the most
|
||
strictly Christian countries that her elevation and advantages
|
||
would be greatest. Under the canon law her status would be higher
|
||
than under the common law. On the contrary, however, it is under
|
||
the least religious, freest, and most purely secular forms of
|
||
government that she has attained most full recognition and secured
|
||
the greatest advancement.
|
||
|
||
Compare the position of woman in Christian Spain with her
|
||
position in Infidel France. Compare her condition in Russia, with
|
||
the flag of the Church and the seal of the Cross for her
|
||
protection, with that of her sister under the stars and stripes of
|
||
America, with a constitution written by the infidels Jefferson and
|
||
Paine.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
63
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Compare them and decide whether it is to the Church and the
|
||
Cross, with their wars and persecutions, or to Liberty and
|
||
Skepticism that women owe their loyal love and their earnest
|
||
support. Compare them and determine then whether it is to
|
||
Christianity or to Science that she should fly for protection, and
|
||
where it is that she will be most certain of justice. Compare them
|
||
and answer whether it is to the Fathers of the Church or to the
|
||
Founders of Republics that women should be most grateful. Compare
|
||
them, and be thankful, oh women of America, that the Church never
|
||
had her hand on the throat of the Constitution of the United
|
||
States, and that she is losing her grip on the Supreme Bench! [On
|
||
the status of women there is much of interest in Mr. Herbert
|
||
Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," vol. 1. Mr. Spencer deals with
|
||
the subject, in the main, from a different point of view from the
|
||
one taken in this article; but that his position (in regard to the
|
||
causes of woman's advancement being due to the Church) is not
|
||
wholly unlike my own, will, I think, be readily seen. He places
|
||
more stress on the results of war than I have done (and in this the
|
||
corroborating evidence furnished by the Holy wars would sustain the
|
||
position of both), I having included this phase of action under the
|
||
term occupation, since I have dealt almost wholly with nations more
|
||
advanced and freer from the fortunes of the Militant type than Mr.
|
||
Spencer has done.]
|
||
|
||
In our pride of race we forget that it is less than three
|
||
hundred short years since Christianity by both legal and spiritual
|
||
power enforced the most degrading and vile conditions upon woman,
|
||
compelling her to live solely by the sale of her virtue. [See
|
||
Appendix D]
|
||
|
||
Only within the past three hundred years of growing skepticism
|
||
and loss of power by the Church has either purity or dignity become
|
||
possible for women; and it is well for us to remember that for over
|
||
1500 years of Christianity when the Church had almost absolute
|
||
power, it never dreamed of elevating woman, or recognizing her as
|
||
other than an inferior being created solely to minister to the
|
||
lowest nature of man, and possessing neither a right to her own
|
||
person nor a voice in her own defence.
|
||
|
||
I wish that every woman who upholds the Church to-day might
|
||
read the array of facts on this subject so ably presented by
|
||
Matilda Joslyn Gage in her work on "Woman, Church, and State," a
|
||
digest of which is printed in the last chapter of vol. 1. of the
|
||
"History of Woman Suffrage," of which she is one of the editors. It
|
||
is so ably written, and the facts collected are so damning, that I
|
||
need add no word of mine to such passages as I can give from it, in
|
||
the accompanying appendix to this work. [See Appendix E.]
|
||
|
||
WOMEN AS PERSONS.
|
||
|
||
Blackstone enumerates three "absolute rights of persons."
|
||
First, "The right of personal security, in the legal enjoyment of
|
||
life, limb, body, health, and reputation." Second, "The right of
|
||
personal liberty -- free powder of locomotion without legal
|
||
restraint." Third, "The right of private property -- the free use
|
||
and disposal of his own lawful acquisitions."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
64
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
None of these three primary and essential rights of persons
|
||
were conceded to women, and Church law did not rank her as a person
|
||
deprived of these rights, but held that she was not a person at
|
||
all, but only a function; therefore she possessed no rights of
|
||
person in this world and no hope of safety in the next.
|
||
|
||
As to the first of these "absolute rights of persons," any one
|
||
of her male relations, or her husband after she passed from one to
|
||
the other, had absolute power over her, even to the extent of
|
||
bodily injury, [Although England was christianized in the fourth
|
||
century, it was not until the tenth that a daughter had a right to
|
||
reject a husband selected for her by her father; and it was not
|
||
until the same century that a Christian wife of a Christian husband
|
||
acquired the right of eating at the table with him. For many
|
||
hundred years the law bound out to servile labor all unmarried
|
||
women between the ages of eleven and forty." -- M.J. Gage.
|
||
|
||
"Wives in England were bought from the fifth to the eleventh
|
||
century." [The dates are significant; let the Church respond.] --
|
||
Herbert Spencer.
|
||
|
||
"In England, as late as the seventeenth century, husbands of
|
||
decent station were not ashamed to beat their wives. Gentlemen
|
||
arranged parties of pleasure for the purpose of seeing wretched
|
||
women whipped at Bridewell. It was not until 1817 that the public
|
||
whipping of women was abolished in England." -- Spencer.] bargain
|
||
and sale of her person, and death. Nor did even this limit the
|
||
number of her masters. By both Church and Common Law the lords
|
||
temporal (barons and other peers) and the Lords spiritual
|
||
(Archbishops, Bishops, and Abbots) possessed and exercised the
|
||
right to dispose of her purity, either for a money consideration or
|
||
as a bribe or present as they saw fit. [See Appendix E.]
|
||
|
||
Thus was the forced degradation of woman made a source of
|
||
revenue to the Church, and a means of crushing her self-respect and
|
||
destroying her sense of personal responsibility as to her own acts
|
||
in the matter of chastity, the legitimate outcome of which is to be
|
||
found in the vast army of women who are named only to be reviled.
|
||
In them the Church can look on her own work. The fruit is the
|
||
natural outcome of the training woman received that taught and
|
||
compelled her always to submit to the dictates of some man, no
|
||
matter what her own judgment, modesty, or desires might be. She was
|
||
not supposed to have an opinion or to know right from wrong; and
|
||
from Paul's injunction, "If you want to know anything ask your
|
||
husband at home," down to the decisions of the last General
|
||
Conference of the Methodist Church, the teaching that woman must
|
||
subordinate her own sense of right and her own judgment to the
|
||
dictates of someone else -- any one else of the opposite sex --
|
||
from first to last has been as ingenious a method as could have
|
||
been devised to fill the world with libertines and their victims.
|
||
[See Appendix F, 2.] It is time for the followers of St. Paul to
|
||
face the results of their own work.
|
||
|
||
Under the provisions of the law which held that all "persons
|
||
"could recover damages for injury -- have legal redress for a wrong
|
||
inflicted upon them -- woman again was held as not a person.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
65
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
If she were assaulted and beaten, or if she were subjected to
|
||
the greatest indignity that it is possible to inflict upon her, she
|
||
had no redress. She could not complain. The law gave her no
|
||
protection whatever. Her father or husband could, if he saw fit,
|
||
bring suit to recover damages for the loss of her services as a
|
||
servant, and wholly upon the ground that it was an injury to him
|
||
and to his feelings. She was no more recognized as a "person" in
|
||
the matter, nor was she more highly considered than if she were an
|
||
inmate of a zoological garden to which some mischievous visitor had
|
||
fed too many bonbons. The owner was damaged because the brute might
|
||
die or be injured in the sight of the patrons, but aside from that
|
||
view of the case no harm was done and no account taken of so
|
||
trivial a matter.
|
||
|
||
No matter what the injury she sustained, whether it crippled
|
||
her physically or blighted her mentally and made life to her the
|
||
worst curse that could be inflicted, she had no appeal. The wounded
|
||
feelings of one of her male relations received due consideration,
|
||
and he could recover the money-value he might set upon the injury
|
||
to his lacerated mind. This is still the letter and the practice of
|
||
the law in many places, even in America.
|
||
|
||
If she had no male relations, the injury did not count, and no
|
||
"person" being injured everything was lovely and prayers went right
|
||
on to the God who, being no respecter of persons (except they were
|
||
free, white, adult males), enjoyed the incense from altars whereon
|
||
burning "witches" writhed in agony and helpless young girls plead
|
||
for mercy under the loathed and loathsome touch of the "St."
|
||
Augustine ["To Augustine, whose early life was spent in company
|
||
with the most degraded of womankind, is Christianity indebted for
|
||
the full development of the doctrine of Original sin." -- Gage.
|
||
|
||
"All or at least the greater part of the fathers of the Greek
|
||
Church before Augustine, denied any real original sin." -- Emerson.
|
||
|
||
"The doctrine had a gradual growth, and was fully developed by
|
||
Augustine." -- Waite.] and "St." Pelayos, ["The abbot elect of
|
||
St. Augustine, at Canterbury, in 1171, was found on investigation
|
||
to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village. An
|
||
abbot of St. Pelayo in Spain, in 1130, was proved to have kept no
|
||
less than seventy mistresses. Henry III., Bishop of Liege, was
|
||
deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children." --
|
||
Lecky, "History of European Morals."
|
||
|
||
"This same bishop boasted, at a public banquet, that in
|
||
twenty-two months fourteen children had been born to him. A license
|
||
to the clergy to keep concubines was during several centuries
|
||
levied by princes." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"It was openly attested that 100,000 women in England alone
|
||
were made dissolute by the clergy." -- Draper, "Intellectual
|
||
Development of Europe."] whose praises are chanted and whose
|
||
divine goodness is recounted by Christendom to-day.
|
||
|
||
Such was the "elevation" and civilization offered by the
|
||
Church to woman. These are among her debts to the Church, and the
|
||
men who fought and contended against the incorporation of such
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
66
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
infamy into the common law were branded as infidels. It was said
|
||
they denied their Lord. They were pronounced most dangerous, and
|
||
the clergy held up their hands in holy horror and whispered that
|
||
such men "as much as denied the Bible, blasphemed their God, and
|
||
sold their souls to the Devil." And the women, poor dupes, believed
|
||
it.
|
||
|
||
One method the Church took to benefit woman and show its
|
||
respect for her was this: any married man was prohibited from being
|
||
a priest. Women were so unholy, so unclean, and so inferior, that
|
||
to have one as a wife degraded a man to such an extent that he was
|
||
unfit to be a minister or to touch holy things. The Catholic Church
|
||
still prohibits either party who is so unholy as to marry from
|
||
profaning its pulpit; but the Protestant Churches divide up, giving
|
||
women the disabilities and men the offices. The unselfishness of
|
||
such a course is quite touching. It says to women you support us
|
||
and we will damn you; there is nothing mean about us."
|
||
|
||
As to Blackstone's second count -- "the right to personal
|
||
liberty" -- I can perhaps do no better than give a few bald facts.
|
||
|
||
Under Pagan rule the personal liberty of woman had become very
|
||
considerable, as well as her proprietary liberty; but Christianity
|
||
began her degradation at once.
|
||
|
||
Christianity was introduced into England in the fourth
|
||
century, and the sale of women began in the fifth; and it was not
|
||
until the eleventh that a girl could refuse to marry any suitor her
|
||
father chose for her. In a word, she always had a guardian; she had
|
||
no personal liberty whatever; she could neither buy nor own
|
||
property as her brothers could; she could not marry when and whom
|
||
she preferred, live where she wished, eat, drink, or wear what she
|
||
liked, or refuse any of these provisions when they were offered by
|
||
her male relatives. If they decided that she had too many back
|
||
teeth they simply pulled them out, and she had nothing to say on
|
||
the subject. She could be sold outright by her father, or leased or
|
||
bound out as he preferred. She never got so old but that her
|
||
earnings belonged to him, and a mother never arrived at an age
|
||
sufficiently advanced to be entitled to the earnings of her
|
||
children.
|
||
|
||
Sharswood says, "A father is entitled to the benefits of his
|
||
children's labor." "An infant [any one not of age] owes reverence
|
||
and respect to his mother; but she has no right to his services."
|
||
[Blackstone, Sharswood.]
|
||
|
||
This is upon the theory, doubtless, that starvation is
|
||
wholesome for a widowed mother, but that it does not agree with a
|
||
father's digestion at any time.
|
||
|
||
Sir Henry Maine. in his "Ancient Law" says, that from the
|
||
Pagan laws all this inequality and oppressiveness of guardianship
|
||
and restriction of the personal liberty of women had disappeared,
|
||
and he adds: "The consequence was that the situation of the Roman
|
||
female, whether married or unmarried, became one of great personal
|
||
and proprietary independence. But Christianity tended somewhat from
|
||
the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. ... The great
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
67
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
jurisconsult himself [Gaius] scouts the popular Christian apology
|
||
offered for it in the mental inferiority of the female sex. ... Led
|
||
by their theory of Natural Law, the Roman [Pagan] jurisconsult had
|
||
evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a
|
||
principle of their code of equity."
|
||
|
||
Of the Christians, led by their theory of a revealed divine
|
||
law which treated women as inferior beings and useful only as prey,
|
||
Lecky says ("European Morals," vol. 1, page 358): "But in the whole
|
||
feudal [Christian and chiefly Canon] legislation women were placed
|
||
in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan empire. The
|
||
complete inferiority of the sex was continually maintained by the
|
||
law; and that generous public opinion which in Pagan Rome had
|
||
frequently revolted against the injustice done to girls, in
|
||
depriving them of the greater part of the inheritance of their
|
||
fathers, totally disappeared. Wherever the canon law had been the
|
||
basis of legislation, we find laws of succession sacrificing the
|
||
interest of daughters and of wives, and a state of public opinion
|
||
which has been formed and regulated by these laws; nor was any
|
||
serious attempt made to abolish them till the close of the last
|
||
century. The French revolutionists, though rejecting the proposal
|
||
of Sieyes and Condorcet [both infidels] to accord political
|
||
emancipation to women, established at least an equal succession of
|
||
sons and daughters, and thus initiated a great reformation of both
|
||
law and opinion which sooner or later must traverse the world."
|
||
|
||
How soon or how late this will happen will depend very greatly
|
||
upon the amount of power retained by the Church. Pagans, Infidels,
|
||
and Scientists have fought for, and the Church has fought against,
|
||
the dignity, honor, and welfare of women for centuries; and because
|
||
fear, organization, wealth, selfishness, and power have been on the
|
||
side of the Church, and she has kept women too ignorant to
|
||
understand the situation, she has succeeded for many generations in
|
||
retarding the progress and shutting out the light that slowly came
|
||
in despite of her.
|
||
|
||
"No society which preserves any tincture of Christian
|
||
institutions is ever likely to restore to married women the
|
||
personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman law; but the
|
||
proprietary disabilities of married females stand on quite a
|
||
different basis from their personal incapacities, and it is by
|
||
keeping alive and consolidating the former that the canon law has
|
||
so deeply injured civilization. There are many vestiges of a
|
||
struggle between the secular and ecclesiastical principles; but the
|
||
canon law nearly everywhere prevailed." [Maine's "Ancient Law,"
|
||
158.]
|
||
|
||
It has always been uphill work fighting the Church. So long as
|
||
it had sword and fagot at its command, and the will to use them; so
|
||
long as it pretended to have, and people believed that it had,
|
||
power to mete out damnation to its appeasers; just so long were
|
||
science, justice, and thought fatally crippled.
|
||
|
||
But when Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet and the great
|
||
encyclopedist circle of France got their hands on the throat of the
|
||
Church, and dipped their pens in the fire of eloquence, wit,
|
||
ridicule, reason, and justice, then, and not till then, began to
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
68
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
dawn a day of honor toward women, of humanity and justice, and
|
||
truth. They drew back the curtain, the world saw, the cloud lifted,
|
||
and life began on a new plane. Under Pagan rule woman had begun, as
|
||
we have seen, to receive recognition apart from sex. She was a
|
||
human being. A general law of "persons" applied to and shielded
|
||
her. But from the first the Christian Church refused to consider
|
||
her apart from her capacity for reproduction; and this one ground
|
||
of consideration it pronounced a curse, a crime, and a shame to
|
||
her. [See Lea's "Sacerdotal Celibacy."] Her only claim to
|
||
recognition at all was a curse. She was not a person, she was only
|
||
a function.
|
||
|
||
Man it pronounced a person first, with rights, privileges, and
|
||
protection as such. Incidentally he might also be a husband, a
|
||
father, or a son. His welfare, duties, and rights as a person, as
|
||
a human being, were apart from and superior to those that were
|
||
special and incidental. He received consideration always as a
|
||
person. He might be dealt with as husband or father.
|
||
|
||
But ignoring all her mental life and denying that she had any,
|
||
and ignoring all her physical possibilities, ambitions, desires,
|
||
and capabilities as a person, the Church narrowed woman's life and
|
||
restricted her energies into a compass where its power over her
|
||
became absolute and her subjection certain. Nor has the loss been
|
||
wholly to woman, for any influence which cripples the mother's
|
||
capacity of endowment takes cruel revenge on the race. [It is not
|
||
impossible but that a more correct understanding of the laws of
|
||
life and heredity may establish the fact that because of the
|
||
subjection of woman, the entire race has been mentally dwarfed and
|
||
physically weakened." -- Gamble.]
|
||
|
||
From this outlook the debt of civilization to the Church is
|
||
heavy indeed. Is it a debt of gratitude?
|
||
|
||
Under this head there is space for but one point farther, out
|
||
of the great store at hand.
|
||
|
||
The clergy were licensed to commit crime. They got up a neat
|
||
little scheme called "benefit of clergy" by which they were secure
|
||
from the punishment meted out to other criminals. The relief
|
||
offered did sometimes reach other men, but as learning was largely
|
||
confined to the clergy they were the chief beneficiaries, as the
|
||
name implies and as was the intent of the law. Any man who could
|
||
read was allowed "benefit of clergy;" in other words, his
|
||
punishment was lightened or entirely omitted. But a woman, though
|
||
she were a perfect mine of wisdom and could read in any number of
|
||
languages, could receive no such benefit, because, she, could not
|
||
take holy orders. They first enacted that she should not take
|
||
orders, and then they denied to her the relief which only that
|
||
ability could give. So great a favorite was woman with the Church!
|
||
|
||
The ordinary male criminal received the ordinary punishment.
|
||
the clergy received none; and in order that the requisite gross
|
||
amount of suffering for crime should be inflicted on somebody, the
|
||
clergy enacted that woman should receive their share vicariously in
|
||
addition to her own, and then to this they added such interest as
|
||
would make the twenty-per-cent-a-month men of Wall street ashamed
|
||
of their stupid financiering.
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
69
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Thus the Church arrogated to itself the exclusive right to
|
||
commit crime with impunity, and also claimed and exercised the
|
||
right to prevent women from learning to read. If she still
|
||
persisted it could then punish her doubly, because she had no right
|
||
to learn.
|
||
|
||
For offenses for which ordinary men were hanged, women were
|
||
burned alive, and priests were glorified. For larceny a man was
|
||
branded in the hand or imprisoned for a few months while for a
|
||
first offence of the kind a woman was kindly permitted to be hanged
|
||
or beheaded without benefit of clergy; and the clergy went scot
|
||
free. [Blackstone, Christian.] The Church did then as it does
|
||
now, it claimed all the, benefits of citizenship and paid none of
|
||
the penalties and bore none of the burdens. [It still claims
|
||
exemption from taxation, thus throwing its burden on others; and it
|
||
also claims immunity from the very gambling laws which it so
|
||
rigidly enforces against other institutions.]
|
||
|
||
The Church did then just as it does now, in principle, in
|
||
setting up certain great benefits which only priests might hope to
|
||
obtain, and then enacting that certain persons were forever
|
||
ineligible to the priesthood; and the, same or quite as good
|
||
reasons were given for denying women such relief from the penalties
|
||
of the law as was freely extended to men, as are given to-day for
|
||
refusing her the liberty, emoluments, and benefits that are freely
|
||
accorded to the most imbecile little theological student who is
|
||
educated by the needle of a sister and supported by money wrong
|
||
from the fears of shop or factory girls, to whom he paints the
|
||
terrors of hell, and freely threatens the same to those who disobey
|
||
him. Salvation comes high, but no preacher ever gets so poor that
|
||
he cannot distribute hell free of charge to the multitude without
|
||
the least diminution of his stock-in-trade.
|
||
|
||
I should think that an orthodox pulpit would be about the last
|
||
place a self-respecting woman would wish to fill; but I am glad,
|
||
since there are some who do so wish, that the issue has again been
|
||
forced upon the Church, and that in 1884, true to her history, she
|
||
was again compelled to acknowledge herself a respecter of persons,
|
||
a degrader of women, and a clog to progress and individual liberty,
|
||
equality, and conscience.
|
||
|
||
I am glad that women have recently forced the Methodist and
|
||
Presbyterian Churches to declare their principles of class
|
||
preference and partial legislation. I am glad that in 1884 these
|
||
Churches were compelled to say in effect to women, so that the
|
||
world could hear: "You are not and you never can be our equals. We
|
||
are holy. You are unclean. We will hold you back and down to the
|
||
ancient level we made for you just as long as the life is in us;
|
||
and if you ever receive recognition as a human being, it must be at
|
||
the hands of those who defy the Church and hate creeds that are not
|
||
big enough to go all round. Our creeds are only large enough to
|
||
give each sex half. But we won't be stingy, we only want our share.
|
||
You are entirely welcome to all the degradation here and all the
|
||
damnation hereafter; and any man who attempts to deprive you of
|
||
these blessings is a heretic and a sinner. Let us pray."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
70
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
EDUCATION.
|
||
|
||
In dealing with this point the humor of the situation is too
|
||
plain to require comment, and I need only cite a few facts in order
|
||
to place the beautiful little fiction where it belongs. [See
|
||
Appendix T.]
|
||
|
||
As to general education it is well known that the Church has
|
||
fought investigation and persecuted science. From the third century
|
||
to Bruno, and from Bruno to Darwin and Tyndall there is an unbroken
|
||
chain of evidence as to her position in these matters and her
|
||
opposition to the diffusion of knowledge. When, however, it became
|
||
impossible for her to resist the demand of the people for
|
||
education; when she could no longer retard liberty and prevent the
|
||
recognition of individual rights; then she modestly demanded the
|
||
right to do the teaching herself and to control its extent and
|
||
scope. [See Appendix G, 1-4.]
|
||
|
||
With a brain stultified by faith [See Appendix U.] She
|
||
proposed to regulate investigations in which the habit of faith
|
||
would necessarily prove fatal to the discovery of truth. [See
|
||
Clifford's "Scientific Basis of Morals," pp. 25-6.] She proposed
|
||
to teach nothing but the dead languages and theology, and to
|
||
confine knowledge to these fields, and she succeeded for many
|
||
generations in so doing. Every time she found a man who had
|
||
discovered something, or who had a theory he was trying to test by
|
||
some little scientific investigations, she cried "heretic" and
|
||
suppressed that man. She stuck to the dead languages, and the only
|
||
thing she is not afraid of to-day is something dead. Any other kind
|
||
of knowledge is a dangerous acquaintance for her to make. [See
|
||
Morley's "Diderot," p. 190.]
|
||
|
||
If you meet a clergyman to-day who has devoted his time to the
|
||
dead languages you need not be afraid that he is a heretic; but if
|
||
he is studying the sciences, arts, literature, and history of the
|
||
living world in earnest yon can get your fagot ready. His orthodoxy
|
||
is a dead doxy. It is only a question of time and bravery when he
|
||
will swear off. [See Ibid, p. 126.]
|
||
|
||
In the Church schools and "universities" to-day it is quite
|
||
pathetic to hear the professors wrestle with geology and Genesis,
|
||
and cut their astronomy to fit Joshua. If in one of these
|
||
institutions for the petrifaction of the human mind there is a
|
||
teacher who is either not nimble enough to escape the conclusions
|
||
of a bright pupil or too honest to try, he is at once found to be
|
||
"incompetent as an instructor," and is dropped from the faculty. I
|
||
know one case where it took twenty years to discover that a
|
||
professor was not able to teach geology -- and it took a heresy-
|
||
hunter with a Bible to do it then.
|
||
|
||
But it is the claim of the Church in regard to the education
|
||
of women with which I have to do here.
|
||
|
||
Women in Greece and Rome under Pagan rule had become learned
|
||
and influential to an unparalleled degree. [See Lecky, Milman,
|
||
Diderot, Morley, Christian, and others.]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
71
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
The early Fathers of the Church found women thirsty for
|
||
knowledge and eager for opportunities to learn. They there-upon set
|
||
about making it disreputable for a woman to know anything, ["In
|
||
the fourth century we find that holy men in council gravely argued
|
||
the question, and that too with abundant confidence in their
|
||
ability and power to decide the whole matter: 'Ought women to be
|
||
called human beings?' A wise and pious father in the Church, after
|
||
deliberating solemnly and long on the vexed question of women,
|
||
finally concluded: 'The female sex is not a fault in itself, but a
|
||
fact in nature for which women themselves are not to blame;' but he
|
||
graciously cherished the opinion that women will be permitted to
|
||
rise as men, at the resurrection. A few centuries later the
|
||
masculine mind underwent great agitation over the question: 'Would
|
||
it be consistent with the duties and uses of women for them to
|
||
learn the alphabet? And in America, after Bridget Gaffort had
|
||
donated the first plot of ground for a public school, girls were
|
||
still denied the advantages of such schools. The questions --
|
||
'Shall women be allowed to enter colleges?' and 'Shall they be
|
||
admitted into the professions?' have been as hotly contested as has
|
||
been the question of their humanity." -- Gamble.] and in order to
|
||
clinch their prohibition the Church asserted that women was unable
|
||
to learn, had not the mental capacity, ["There existed at the same
|
||
time in this celebrated city a class of women, the glory of whose
|
||
intellectual brilliancy still survives; and when Alcibiades drew
|
||
around him the first philosophers and statesmen of Greece, 'it was
|
||
a virtue to applaud Aspasia;' of whom it has been said that she
|
||
lectured publicly on rhetoric and philosophy with such ability that
|
||
Socrates and Alcibiades gathered wisdom from her lips, and so
|
||
marked was her genius for statesmanship that Pericles afterward
|
||
married her and allowed her to govern Athens, then at the height of
|
||
its glory and power. 'Numerous examples might be cited in which
|
||
Athenian women rendered material aid to the state." -- Gamble.]
|
||
was created without mental power and for purely physical purposes.
|
||
It was maintained that her "Sphere" was clearly defined, and that
|
||
it was purely and solely an animal one; and worst of all it was
|
||
stoutly asserted that her greatest crime had always been a desire
|
||
for wisdom, and that it was this desire which brought the penalty
|
||
of labor and death into this world. [See Morley's "Diderot," p.
|
||
76; Lea's "Sacerdotal Celibacy:" Lecky's "European Morals."]
|
||
|
||
With such a belief it is hardly strange that the education of
|
||
girls was looked upon as a crime; and with such a record it is
|
||
almost incredible effrontery that enables the Church to-day to
|
||
claim credit for the education of women. [See Appendix H, 1 to 4.]
|
||
If she were to educate every woman living, free, of charge, in
|
||
every branch of known knowledge, she could not repay woman for what
|
||
she has deprived her of in the past, or efface the indignity she
|
||
has already offered. [Lecky, "European Morals," p. 310.]
|
||
|
||
A prominent clergyman of the Church of England, who was
|
||
recently much honored in this country, lately said; in a sermon to
|
||
women: "There are those who think a woman can be taught logic. This
|
||
is a mistake. Men are logical, women are not." He was too modest to
|
||
give his proofs. It seemed to me strange that he, did not mention
|
||
the doctrines of the trinity and vicarious atonement, or a few of
|
||
the miracles, as the result of logic in the masculine mind. And I
|
||
could not help thinking at the time that a man whose mental
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
72
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
furniture was chiefly composed of the thirty-nine articles and the
|
||
Westminster Catechism would naturally be a profound authority on
|
||
logic. An orthodox preacher talking about logic is a sight to
|
||
arouse the compassion of a demon. Next to the natural sciences,
|
||
logic can give the Church the colic quicker than any other kind of
|
||
a green apple. And so it is not strange that the clergy should be
|
||
afraid that it would disagree with the more delicate constitution
|
||
of a woman. They always did maintain that any diet that was a
|
||
trifle too heavy for them couldn't be digested by anybody else; and
|
||
they would be perfectly right in their supposition if intellectual
|
||
dyspepsia or softening of the brain were contagious.
|
||
|
||
The "sphere" of no other creature is wholly determined and
|
||
bounded by one physical characteristic or capacity. To every other
|
||
creature is conceded without question the right to use more than
|
||
one talent.
|
||
|
||
But the Fathers decided in holy and solemn council that it
|
||
would be "unbecoming" for a woman to learn the alphabet, and that
|
||
she could have no possible use for such information. They said that
|
||
she would be a better mother without distracting her dear little
|
||
brain with the a, b, cs, and that therefore she should not learn
|
||
them. They also decided that she who was so far lost to modesty as
|
||
to become acquainted with the multiplication table "was an unfit
|
||
associate for our wives and mothers." There was something wrong
|
||
with such a woman. She was either a "witch" or else she was
|
||
"married to the devil."
|
||
|
||
That is the way the Church encouraged education for women.
|
||
This was done, the holy Fathers said, to "protect women from the
|
||
awful temptations of life to which the Lord in his infinite wisdom
|
||
had subjected man." They had too much respect for their wives and
|
||
mothers to permit them to come in contact with the wickedness of
|
||
long division or cube root, and they hoped while life lasted that
|
||
no man would be so negligent of duty as to allow his sister to soil
|
||
her pure mind with conic sections.
|
||
|
||
Well, in time there were a few women brave enough, and a few
|
||
men honorable and moral enough, to set aside the letter of this
|
||
prohibition; but much of its spirit still blossoms in all its
|
||
splendor in Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and various other institutions
|
||
of learning, where women are either not permitted to enter at all
|
||
or are required to learn and accomplish unaided that which it takes
|
||
a large faculty of instructors and every known or obtainable
|
||
educational device (together with future business stimulus) to
|
||
enable the young men to do the same thing!
|
||
|
||
The Fathers said, in effect, "It was through woman wanting to
|
||
know something that sin came into this world; therefore let her
|
||
hereafter want to know nothing." They taught that a desire for
|
||
knowledge on the part of woman was the greatest crime ever
|
||
committed on this earth, and that it so enraged God that he
|
||
punished it by death and by every curse known to man. When it was
|
||
pointed out that animals had lived and died on this earth long
|
||
before man could have lived, they said that God knew Adam was going
|
||
to live and Eve was going to sin, so he made death retroactive
|
||
because Adam would represent all animals when he should be created!
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
73
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
All this was thought and done and taught in order to agree
|
||
with the silly story of the "fall of man in the Garden of Eden,"
|
||
which every one acquainted with the simple rudiments of science or
|
||
the history of the races knows to be a childish legend of an
|
||
undeveloped people. Instead of a "fall" from perfect beginnings,
|
||
there has been and is a constant rise in the moral as well as in
|
||
the mental and physical conditions of man. The type is higher, the
|
||
race nobler and nearer perfection than it ever was before; and the
|
||
stories of our Bible are the same as those of all other Bibles,
|
||
simply the effort of ignorant or imaginative men to account for the
|
||
origin and destiny of things of which they had no accurate
|
||
knowledge. [One of the Simplest and most interesting explanations
|
||
of this latter point will be found in "The Childhood of Religions,"
|
||
by Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., where the Christian reader may be
|
||
surprised to find that the "ten-commandment" idea (with a number of
|
||
them which apply to general morals, as "Thou shalt not kill," etc.)
|
||
is not confined to our Bible, but is found also in the Buddhist
|
||
Bible in the same form; that the "golden rule" was given by
|
||
Confucius 500 years before Christ; and that Christianity, when
|
||
taken as it should be with the other great religions and examined
|
||
in the same way, presents no problem, no claim, and no proofs which
|
||
are not found in equal strength in one or more of the other forms
|
||
of faith. In the matters of morality, miracles, and power to
|
||
attract and "comfort" multitudes of people, it ranks neither first
|
||
nor last. It is simply one of several, and in no essential matter
|
||
is it different from them.]
|
||
|
||
St. Paul said, "If they [women] will learn anything, let them
|
||
ask their husbands at home;" and the colossal ignorance of most
|
||
women would seem to indicate that they have obeyed the command to
|
||
the letter. But fortunately for women the civilization of freedom
|
||
has outgrown St. Paul as it has the dictates of the Church, and one
|
||
by one the doors of information, and hence the doors to honest
|
||
labor, have been opened, and the possibility of living with dignity
|
||
and honor has replaced the forced degradation of the days when the
|
||
power of the Church enabled it to reduce women to the animal
|
||
existence it so long forced upon her.
|
||
|
||
So long as the Church allowed woman but one avenue of support,
|
||
so long did it force her to use that single means of livelihood. So
|
||
long as it made her believe that she could bring to this world
|
||
nothing of value but her capacity to minister to the lower animal
|
||
wants of man, so long did it force upon her that single alternative
|
||
-- or starvation.
|
||
|
||
So long as it is able to make multitudes of women believe
|
||
themselves of value for but one purpose, just that long will it
|
||
continue to insure the degradation of many of those women who are
|
||
helpless, or weak, or loving, or ignorant of the motives of those
|
||
in whose power they are. So long as it teaches woman that she can
|
||
repay her debt to the world in but one way, so long will it promote
|
||
commerce in vice and revenue in shame.
|
||
|
||
Every man is taught that he can repay his debt to this world
|
||
in many ways. He has open to him many avenues of happiness, many
|
||
paths to honorable employment. If he fails in one there is still
|
||
hope. If he misses supreme happiness in marriage he has still left
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
74
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
ambition, labor, study, fame; if the one failure overtakes him, no
|
||
matter how sad, he still can turn aside and find, if not joy, at
|
||
least occupation and rest.
|
||
|
||
But the Church has always taught woman that there is but one
|
||
"sphere," one hope, one occupation, one life for her. If she fails
|
||
in that, what wonder that with broken hope comes broken virtue or
|
||
despair? Every woman who has fallen or lost her way has been
|
||
previously taught by the Church that She had and has but one
|
||
resource; that there is open to her in life but one path; that
|
||
whether that path be legally crooked or straight, she was created
|
||
for but one purpose; that man is to decide for her what that
|
||
purpose is; and that she must under no circumstances set her own
|
||
judgement up against his.
|
||
|
||
The legitimate fruits of such an education are too horribly
|
||
apparent to need explanation. Every fallen woman is a perpetual
|
||
monument to the infamy of a religion and a social custom that
|
||
narrow her life to the possibilities of but one function, and
|
||
provide her no escape -- a system that trains her to depend wholly
|
||
on one physical characteristic of her being, and to neglect all
|
||
else.
|
||
|
||
That system teaches her that her mind is to be of but slight
|
||
use to her; that her hands may not learn the cunning of a trade nor
|
||
her brain the bearings of a profession; that mentally she is
|
||
nothing; and that physically she is worse than nothing only in so
|
||
far as she may minister to one appetite. I hold that the most
|
||
legitimate outcome of such an education is to be found in the class
|
||
that makes merchandise of all that woman is taught that she
|
||
possesses that is of worth to herself or to this world. No system
|
||
could be more perfectly devised to accomplish this purpose. [See
|
||
Lea's II Sacerdotal Celibacy.]
|
||
|
||
AS WIVES.
|
||
|
||
We are told that women owe honorable marriage to Christianity:
|
||
[See Appendix I, 1-2.] that the more beautiful and tender
|
||
relations of husband and wife find their root there; that
|
||
Christianity protects and elevates the mother as no other law or
|
||
religion ever has.
|
||
|
||
Let us see.
|
||
|
||
On this subject I find in Maine's "Ancient Law" these facts:
|
||
|
||
"Although women had been objects of barter and sale,
|
||
according to barbaric usages, between their male relatives,
|
||
the later Roman [Pagan] law having assumed, on the theory of
|
||
Natural Law, the equality of the sexes, control of the person
|
||
of women was quite obsolete when Christianity was born. Her
|
||
situation had become one of great personal liberty and
|
||
proprietary independence, even when married, and the arbitrary
|
||
power over her of her male relations, or her guardian, was
|
||
reduced to a nullity, while the form of marriage conferred on
|
||
the husband no superiority."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
75
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Thus as a daughter and as a wife had she grown to be honored
|
||
and recognized as an equal under Pagan rule.
|
||
|
||
"But Christianity tended from the first to narrow this
|
||
remarkable liberty. ... The latest Roman [Pagan] law, so far
|
||
as touched by the constitutions of the Christian emperors,
|
||
bears marks of reaction against these great liberal
|
||
doctrines." -- Maine.
|
||
|
||
And again began the sale of women. Christianity held her as
|
||
unclean and in all respects inferior; and. "during the era which
|
||
begins modern history the woman of dominant races are seen
|
||
everywhere under various forms of archaic guardianship, and the
|
||
husband pays a money price to her male relations for her. The
|
||
prevalent state of religious sentiment may explain why it is that
|
||
modern jurisprudence has absorbed among its rudiments much more
|
||
than usual of those rules [archaic] concerning the position of
|
||
women which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization." --
|
||
Ibid.
|
||
|
||
Thus it will be seen that from the first, and extending down
|
||
to the present, the Church did all she could to cast woman back
|
||
into the night of the race from which in a great measure she had
|
||
been rescued through the ages when Natural Law and not "revelation"
|
||
was the guide of man. The laws which the Church found liberal and
|
||
just toward women it discarded, and it searched back in the ages of
|
||
night for such as it saw fit to re-enact for her. Of this Maine
|
||
says: "The husband now draws to himself the power which formerly
|
||
belonged to his wife's male relatives, the only difference being
|
||
that he no longer pays anything for the privilege."
|
||
|
||
As Christians grew economical wives came cheaper than
|
||
formerly, and it became a dogma that wives were not worth much
|
||
anyhow, and then, too, it enabled persons of limited means to have
|
||
more of them. Of a somewhat later date Maine says: "At this point
|
||
heavy disabilities begin to be imposed upon wives."
|
||
|
||
That was to make marriage honorable and attractive, no doubt,
|
||
and, says Maine: "It was very long before the subordination
|
||
entailed on women by marriage was sensibly diminished." And what
|
||
diminution it received came from men who fought against Church law.
|
||
[See Lecky, Maine, Lea, Milman, Christian, Blackstone, Morley, and
|
||
others for ample proof of this fact.]
|
||
|
||
It was only the crumbs of liberty, honor, and justice extorted
|
||
by men who fought the Church on behalf of wives, that lightened
|
||
their most oppressive burdens. It was true then, and it is true
|
||
to-day, that women owe what justice and freedom and power they
|
||
possess to the fact that the best and clearest-headed men are more
|
||
honorable than our religion, and that they have invited Moses and
|
||
St. Paul to take a back seat. Moses has complied, and St. Paul is
|
||
half-way down the aisle.
|
||
|
||
Some of the clergy now explain that although Paul may have
|
||
written certain things inimical to women, he did not mean them. so
|
||
it is all right. Such passages as 1 Cor. xi. 3-9; xiv. 34-35; and
|
||
Eph, v, 22-24, are now explained to be intended in a purely
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
76
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Pickwickian sense; and a Rev. Mr. Boyd, of St. Louis, has even gone
|
||
so far as to produce the doughty apostle before a woman-suffrage
|
||
society, as on their side of that argument. This second conversion
|
||
of St. Paul impresses one as even more remarkable than his first.
|
||
It took an "angel of God" to show him the error of his ways in
|
||
Ephesus, but one little Baptist preacher did it this time -- all by
|
||
himself. Truly St. Paul is getting easier to deal with than he use
|
||
to be.
|
||
|
||
But to resume, Maine, in tracing the amalgamation of the later
|
||
Roman (pagan) law with the archaic laws of a lower civilization
|
||
(the result of which was Christian law), shows that the Church,
|
||
while it chose the Roman laws, which had arrived at so high a
|
||
state, for others, retained for women, and particularly for wives,
|
||
the least favorable of the Roman, eked out with the archaic Patria
|
||
Potestas and the more degrading provisions of the earlier
|
||
civilizations. Maine reluctantly says that the jurisconsult of the
|
||
day contended for butter laws for wives, but that the Church
|
||
prevailed in most instances, and established the more oppressive
|
||
ones.
|
||
|
||
With certain of these laws -- the worst ones -- I cannot deal
|
||
here for obvious reasons; but a few of them I may be permitted to
|
||
give without offence to the modesty of any one.
|
||
|
||
Blackstone says "By marriage the husband and wife are one
|
||
person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the
|
||
woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated
|
||
and consolidated into that of the husband. The husband becomes her
|
||
baron or lord -- she his servant. Upon this principle of the union
|
||
of person in husband and wife depend almost all the legal rights,
|
||
duties, and disabilities they acquire by marriage."
|
||
|
||
That is to say the husband acquires all the rights, and the
|
||
wife all the disabilities; and the Church wishing to be fair has
|
||
made the latter as many as possible.
|
||
|
||
"And therefore," continues Blackstone, "it is also generally
|
||
true, that all compacts made between husband and wife, when single,
|
||
are voided by the intermarriage." The working of this principle has
|
||
been so often illustrated as to render comment unnecessary. A wife
|
||
retains no rights which her husband is bound to respect, no matter
|
||
how solemn the compact before marriage, nor what her belief in its
|
||
strength might have been.
|
||
|
||
Fortunately for women, happily for wives, men are more decent
|
||
than their religion; and the law of custom and public opinion has
|
||
largely outgrown this enactment of the Church, made when she had
|
||
the power to thus degrade women and brutalize men.
|
||
|
||
"If the wife be injured in her person or her property she can
|
||
briny no action for redress without her husband's concurrence and
|
||
in his name," and on the basis of loss of her services to him as a
|
||
servant. "But in criminal prosecutions, it is true, the wife may be
|
||
indicted and punished separately." [Blackstone.]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
77
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
In the case of punishment the Church was entirely willing to
|
||
give the devil his due. It had no ambition to deprive women of any
|
||
indictments and punishments that were to be had. In this case,
|
||
although the husband and wife were one, she was that one. Where
|
||
privileges or property-rights were to be considered, he was the
|
||
"one." Such grand reversible doctrines were always on tap with the
|
||
clergy, and their barrel was always full. Truly, wives do owe much
|
||
to the Church.
|
||
|
||
Some of the provisions of these laws have, of late years, been
|
||
modified by the efforts of men who were pronounced "infidels,
|
||
destroyers of the Bible, the home, and the dignity of women," aided
|
||
by women whom the orthodox deride as "strong-minded, ill-balanced,
|
||
coarse, impious," etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam. A strong
|
||
mind, whether in man or woman, has always been to the clergy as a
|
||
red rag to a bull.
|
||
|
||
"A woman may make a will, with the assent of her husband, by
|
||
way of appointment of her personal property. She cannot even with
|
||
his consent devise lands. ... Although our law in general considers
|
||
a man and wife as one person, yet there are some instances where
|
||
she is considered separately as his inferior," [Ibid.] and for
|
||
that trip only.
|
||
|
||
As I remarked before when it comes to penalties she is welcome
|
||
to the whole lot.
|
||
|
||
"She may not make a deed."
|
||
|
||
"A man may administer moderate correction to his wife."
|
||
|
||
"These are the chief legal effects of marriage. Even the
|
||
disabilities of the wife," Blackstone naively remarks, "are for the
|
||
most part intended for her protection; so great a favorite is the
|
||
female sex of the laws of England!"
|
||
|
||
I should think that if this latter point were not quite clear
|
||
to a woman, "moderate correction" might convince her that she was
|
||
quite an unreasonable favorite -- beyond her most eager desires.
|
||
Where the Pagan law recognized her as the equal of her husband, the
|
||
Church discarded that law, and based the Canon Law upon an archaic
|
||
invention.
|
||
|
||
Where Maine speaks of the later growth of Pagan law and of
|
||
Christian influence upon it, he says: "But the chapter of law
|
||
relating to married women was for the most part read by the light,
|
||
not of Roman [or Pagan] but of Canon [or Church] Law, which in no
|
||
one particular departs so widely from the [improved] spirit of the
|
||
secular jurisprudence as in the view it takes of the relations
|
||
created by marriage. This was in part inevitable, since no society
|
||
which possesses any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to
|
||
restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by
|
||
the middle Roman law."
|
||
|
||
Women who support the clergy with one hand, and hold out the
|
||
other for the ballot; who one day express indignation at the
|
||
refusal to them of human recognition, and the next day intone the
|
||
creeds, will have to learn that there is nothing which has so
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
78
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
successfully stood, and still so powerfully stands, in the way of
|
||
the individual liberty, human rights, and dignity of wives, as the
|
||
Church which they support.
|
||
|
||
Blackstone says: "In times of popery a great variety of
|
||
impediments to marriage were made, which impediments might,
|
||
however, be bought off with money."
|
||
|
||
You could, for instance, bay a more distant relationship to
|
||
your future wife for so much cash down to the Church. If your
|
||
inamorata were your first cousin, you could remove her several
|
||
degrees with five hundred dollars, and make her no relation at all
|
||
for a little more. Such little sleight-of-hand performances are as
|
||
nothing to a well-trained clergyman. Slip a check into one hand,
|
||
and a request to marry your aunt into the other, let a clergyman
|
||
shake them up in the coffers of the Church, and when one comes out
|
||
gold, the other will appear as a blushing bride not even related to
|
||
her own father, and not more than third cousin to herself.
|
||
|
||
Of the claim made by the early Christian Fathers, that it was
|
||
because of the mental inferiority and incapacity of women that the
|
||
more unjust and binding laws were enacted for them, thus doing all
|
||
they could to create and intensify by law the incapacity with which
|
||
they asserted was imposed by God, Maine says: "But the proprietary
|
||
disabilities of married females stand on quite a different basis
|
||
from personal incapacity, and it is by the tendency of their
|
||
doctrines to keep alive and consolidate the former, that the
|
||
expositors of the Canon Law have deeply injured civilization."
|
||
|
||
He adds that there are many evidences of a struggle between
|
||
secular principles in favor of justice for wives, and
|
||
ecclesiastical principles against it, "but the Canon Law nearly
|
||
everywhere prevailed. The systems which are least indulgent to
|
||
married women are invariably those which have followed the Canon
|
||
Law exclusively. ... It enforced the complete legal subjection of
|
||
wives."
|
||
|
||
Lecky says Fierce invectives against the sex form a
|
||
conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Fathers.
|
||
Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all
|
||
human ills. She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is
|
||
a woman. ... Women were even forbidden, in the sixth century, on
|
||
account of their impurity, to receive the Eucharist into their
|
||
naked hands. Their essentially subordinate position was continually
|
||
maintained. This teaching in part determined the principles of
|
||
legislation concerning the sex. [See Appendix J.] The Pagan laws
|
||
during the empire had been continually repealing the old
|
||
disabilities of women, and the legislative movement in their favor
|
||
continued with unabated force from Constantine to Justinian, and
|
||
appeared also in some of the early laws of the barbarians. But in
|
||
the whole feudal [Christian] legislation women were placed in a
|
||
much lower legal position than in the Pagan empire."
|
||
|
||
And he adds that the French revolutionists (the infidel party)
|
||
established better laws for women, "and initiated a great
|
||
reformation of both law and opinion, which sooner or later must
|
||
traverse the world." And these reformations, being in Christendom
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
79
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
will be calmly claimed in the future, as in the present, as due to
|
||
the beneficent influence of the Church. The Church always belongs
|
||
to the conservative party, but after a good thing is established in
|
||
spite of her, she says: "Just see what I have done! 'See what a
|
||
good boy am I!'"
|
||
|
||
Not many years ago a few great-souled men who were, "heretics"
|
||
got a glimpse of a principle which has electrified the world. They
|
||
said that individual liberty is a universal right; they maintained
|
||
that humanity is a unit, with interests and aims indivisible, and
|
||
that liberty to use to the utmost advantage all natural abilities
|
||
cannot be denied one-half of the race without crippling both. A few
|
||
even went so far as to suggest that the assumption of the
|
||
inferiority of women, and the imposition of disabilities upon them,
|
||
under the claim of divine authority, is the greatest crime in the
|
||
great calendar of crime for which the Church has yet to render a
|
||
reckoning to humanity.
|
||
|
||
To one who reads the history of Canon Law, it is not strange
|
||
that Christian Judges still decide that women are "incompetent to
|
||
practice law," and that they should not be allowed to study it. A
|
||
woman well versed in the history of ancient and modern law might
|
||
easily be an uncomfortable advocate for such a judge to face. He
|
||
would probably feel the need of an umbrella.
|
||
|
||
It is not strange that Columbia College, with its corps of
|
||
clergymen, "fails to see the propriety" of opening its doors to
|
||
women. The few clergymen who have for some little time past taken
|
||
the side of fair-play in this and like matters have simply deserted
|
||
their colors and come over to the side they are worldly-wise enough
|
||
to see is to be the side of the future. When it comes to diplomacy
|
||
the Church is always on deck in time to gather in the spoils; but
|
||
she stays safely below during the engagement, and simply holds back
|
||
and anchors firm until she sees which way it is likely to end.
|
||
|
||
The moment there is an understanding on the part of women of
|
||
what they owe to Church Law, that moment will end educational
|
||
clerical monopolists, such as the champion anchor of Columbia, be
|
||
compelled to earn an honest living in some honest business
|
||
pertaining to this world. It will be a great day for women when
|
||
they refuse to longer support these pretenders to divine knowledge,
|
||
who are willing, at so much a head, to tell what they do not know
|
||
at the expense of the pale, tired needle-woman, who is in want of
|
||
almost every comfort that money can buy in this world, together
|
||
with the surplus gold of the fashionable devotees who minister to
|
||
the vanity of the clergy, and give to the coffers of the Church
|
||
that which would save thousands of young girls from degradation and
|
||
crime, and put the roses of health on the cheek of innocence.
|
||
|
||
Every dollar that is paid to support the Church is paid to
|
||
degrade a woman. Every collection that is made to spread
|
||
"revelation" is used to suppress enlightenment and retard
|
||
civilization. Every dollar that is invested in "another world" is
|
||
a dollar diverted from useful purposes in this. Every hour that is
|
||
spent mooning about "heaven" is that much time taken from needed
|
||
labor here.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
80
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
If our energies were wanted in another world we should most
|
||
likely be in another world. Since we are in this one it is a pretty
|
||
strong hint that we are expected to attend to business right here.
|
||
We can't do justice to two worlds at the same time: and since we
|
||
are assured that we shall have the whole of eternity to arrange
|
||
matters in the next one, it leaves very little time by comparison
|
||
to devote to our duties in this.
|
||
|
||
There we are to have nothing to do but sing and be happy --
|
||
twang a harp and smile.
|
||
|
||
Here we have pain to alleviate, ignorance to dispel, innocence
|
||
to protect, disease to master, and crime to restrain and prevent.
|
||
Here we have the helpless to shield and guard and protect. Here we
|
||
have homes to make happy, the hearts of husbands and wives to make
|
||
glad, the light of love and trust to kindle in the eyes of
|
||
children. Here is old age to cheer and console. Here are orphans to
|
||
educate and protect, widows to comfort, and oppression to uproot.
|
||
|
||
There -- nothing to do but look after yourself and manage your
|
||
harp; nobody to help -- all will be perfect; nothing to learn --
|
||
all will be wise; no hearts to cheer -- all will be happy. All that
|
||
a mother will have to do if she gets a little tired practicing on
|
||
her lyre and feels gloomy will be to just take a good look over the
|
||
wall, and photograph on her eyes the picture of her husband and
|
||
children freshly dipped in oil and put on the griddle, and she will
|
||
come back to business perfectly satisfied, take up her song where
|
||
she left off, and praise the Lamb for his infinite mercy. All
|
||
eternity to learn how to fly round in a robe and keep time with the
|
||
orchestra! Why a deaf man could learn to do that in fifty or sixty
|
||
years, and then have all the rest of the time to spare.
|
||
|
||
We are here such a little while, there is so much to learn,
|
||
there is so much to do, there is so much to undo, that no man can
|
||
afford to waste his time on an infinite future of time, space, and
|
||
leisure. Men cannot afford to lose your best energies. "God" can
|
||
get on very well without them. Time is short, and needs are
|
||
pressing; and this thing you know -- you can keep busy doing good
|
||
right here. If there is a hereafter, could there be a better
|
||
preparation for it than that?
|
||
|
||
NOT WOMAN'S FRIEND.
|
||
|
||
After all that has preceded this page I need hardly do more
|
||
with this count of the last claim of "Theological Fiction" than
|
||
simply say, if the Bible is woman's best friend, then the clergy,
|
||
without authority and in violation of the precepts of their own
|
||
guide, have been her worst enemy, either through malice or
|
||
ignorance; in either of which cases they are and have always been
|
||
unfit to dictate, to lead opinion, or to receive a following as
|
||
reliable guides for this world or the next.
|
||
|
||
If they have been so ignorant or so malicious for nearly
|
||
nineteen hundred years as to thus systematically misconstrue their
|
||
own authority -- their own "revelation" -- to the constant
|
||
disadvantage of women (and the consequent enfeeblement of the
|
||
race), surely they can claim no respect for their opinions and no
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
81
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
confidence in their divine calling. [See Appendix K.] In trying
|
||
to shield the Bible the clergy simply convict themselves. [See
|
||
Appendix L.]
|
||
|
||
But I incline to the opinion that in the main this view of the
|
||
case is unfair to the clergy, and that they have followed, in
|
||
spirit if not literally, the dictates of the Bible as a whole. It
|
||
is undoubtedly true that the Bible throughout holds woman as an
|
||
inferior in both mental and moral characteristics; and upon this
|
||
understanding of it the Fathers built the Church and crystallized
|
||
the laws.
|
||
|
||
The Fathers of the Church were as a rule a bad lot themselves.
|
||
All contemporaneous history and all internal evidence prove this
|
||
fact: and when we remember that the "Prophets" were almost to a man
|
||
polygamists; that their belief and practices in this regard were of
|
||
the order and type of Mormondom to-day, and for the same reasons;
|
||
that they were slave-holders and slave-stealers; that they believed
|
||
in a God of infinite cruelty and revenge -- of arbitrary will and
|
||
reasonless barbarity; and that they were licentious and brutal
|
||
beyond description; [See Appendix M.] it will be easy to
|
||
understand the position which such men -- with these beliefs,
|
||
practices, mentality, and moral degradation -- would accord to
|
||
women. Every Bible of every people every history of every race
|
||
showing like civilization, will show you like results.
|
||
|
||
In the New Testament we find an effort to readjust old clothes
|
||
to a new body, some of whose members had grown bettor and some
|
||
worse in dogma and belief. Where women are especially dealt with we
|
||
find them commanded to "be under obedience," and always to subject
|
||
their wills to the ways and wills of men; while the general tone
|
||
and treatment are always based upon the assumption that she is an
|
||
inferior, a secondary creation, and a subject class. [See Appendix
|
||
N.]
|
||
|
||
That this is the understanding of the Bible always recognized
|
||
by the Church (and to-day questioned by only a very small minority
|
||
who are shrewd enough to see the necessity of revamping it to fit
|
||
the new public morality and civilization), all history attests; but
|
||
the vehemence with which the doctrine has been asserted the
|
||
foregoing pages can only faintly indicate. [See Appendix O.]
|
||
|
||
But certainly, if for thousands of years the clergy have, as
|
||
a body, misconstrued or misunderstood the spirit of their own book
|
||
(to which they have always claims to possess the only key), they
|
||
should not blame those who to-day take issue with them upon their
|
||
information, their dictates, their bases of morality, or their
|
||
interpretations of the rights of humanity.
|
||
|
||
If, as they claim to-day, the Bible is the friend of women and
|
||
no respecter of persons, a conclusion which it took them hundreds
|
||
of years to reach, it has taken them too long to discover the fact
|
||
for their guidance to be either a desirable or a safe one for
|
||
humanity; and the millions of women they have degraded and
|
||
oppressed in the past are certainly not an argument in favor of
|
||
their infallibility now. [See Appendix P.]
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
82
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
Let them give way to men who, claiming no right to divine
|
||
authority or superhuman wisdom, speak in the interest of all
|
||
humanity the best they know (always acknowledged to be subject to
|
||
revision for the better); who are not bound back and retarded by
|
||
the outgrown toggery of the Jewish civilization of David and his
|
||
time or the Christian dictatorship of Paul. [See Appendix Q.]
|
||
Acknowledging themselves as false and oppressive interpreters of
|
||
divine law for centuries past is but a poor recommendation of their
|
||
ability or integrity for the future.
|
||
|
||
Whichever horn of the dilemma they accept, there is but one
|
||
horrible course for the clergy to pursue, and that is to resign in
|
||
favor of those who have all along been on the right track, without
|
||
a pretence of divine guidance; who in despite of faith and fagot
|
||
have made progress possible.
|
||
|
||
MORALS.
|
||
|
||
After my lecture on Men, Women, and Gods, in Chicago, I was
|
||
asked how it would be possible to train children to be good without
|
||
a belief in the divinity of the Bible; how they could be made to
|
||
know it is wrong to lie and steal and kill.
|
||
|
||
The belief that the Bible is the originator of these and like
|
||
moral ideas, or that Christ was their first teacher, is far from
|
||
the truth; and it is only another evidence of the duplicity or
|
||
ignorance of the Church that such a belief obtains or that such a
|
||
falsehood is systematically taught.
|
||
|
||
It is too easily forgotten that morals are universal, that
|
||
Christianity is local, Practical moral ideas grow up very early,
|
||
and develop with the development of a race. They are the response
|
||
to the needs of a people, and when formulated have in several cases
|
||
taken the shape of "commandments" from some unseen power. These
|
||
necessary practical laws are by degrees attached to those of
|
||
imaginary value, and all alike are held in esteem as of equal moral
|
||
worth. By this means a fictitious standard of right and wrong
|
||
becomes established, and a weakening of confidence in the valueless
|
||
part results in damage to that portion which was originally the
|
||
result of wise and necessary legislation. ["Durable morality had
|
||
been associated with a transitory religious faith. The faith fell
|
||
into intellectual discredit, and sexual morality shared its decline
|
||
for a short season. This must always be the natural consequence of
|
||
building sound ethics on the shifting sands and rotting foundations
|
||
of theology. It is one of those enormous drawbacks that people
|
||
seldom take into account when they are enumerating the blessings of
|
||
superstition." -- Morley's "Diderot," p. 71.]
|
||
|
||
When children (of whatever age) do this or that "because God
|
||
said so," the precepts taught on this basis, even though they are
|
||
good, will have no hold upon the man who discovers that their
|
||
origin was purely human. It is a dangerous experiment and depends
|
||
wholly upon ignorance for its success. A firm basis of reason in
|
||
this world is the only solid foundation of moral training.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
83
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
My Chicago questioner proceeded upon the hypothesis that what
|
||
of valuable morals are contained in the Bible were a "revelation"
|
||
to one people, and that their value was dependent upon this origin.
|
||
For the benefit of those who have been similarly imposed upon, I
|
||
will cite a few facts in as short space as possible.
|
||
|
||
Brahmanism, with its two hundred millions of believers, and
|
||
its Rig-Veda (Bible) composed two thousand four hundred years
|
||
before Christ, has its rigid code of morals; its theory of
|
||
creation; its teachings about sin its revelations its belief in the
|
||
ability of the gods to forgive; [Professor Max Muller says that
|
||
"the consciousness of sin is a leading feature in the religion of
|
||
the Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take
|
||
away from man the heavy burden of his sins." its belief that its
|
||
bible came from God; and its devotees who believe that an infinite
|
||
God is pleased with the toys of worship, praise, and adulation of
|
||
man. It has its prayers and hymns, its offerings and sacrifices.
|
||
Corresponding with our "Trinity" idea the Brahmin has his three
|
||
great gods; and in place of our "angels" he has his infinite number
|
||
of little ones. [See Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., "Childhood of
|
||
Religions."]
|
||
|
||
Next, Zoroastrianism, certainly twelve hundred years older
|
||
than Christ, its legends (quite as authentic as our own) of
|
||
miracles performed by its founder and his followers; its Zend-
|
||
Avesta (Bible); its "Supreme Spirit;" its belief in gods and demons
|
||
who interfere with affairs in this world and who are ever at war
|
||
with each other; its sacred fires; its Lord; its praise; and its
|
||
pretence to direct communication in the past with spirits and with
|
||
gods who gave their Prophet "Commandments." ["In the Gathas or
|
||
oldest part of the Zend-Avesta, which contains the leading
|
||
doctrines of Zoroaster, he asks Ormuzd [God] for truth and
|
||
guidance, and desires to know what he shall do. He is told to be
|
||
pure in thought, word and deed; to be temperate, chaste, and
|
||
truthful; to offer prayer to Ormuzd and the powers that fight with
|
||
him; to destroy all hurtful things; and to do all that will
|
||
increase the well-being of mankind. Men were not to cringe before
|
||
the powers of darkness as slaves crouch before a tyrant, they were
|
||
to meet them upstanding, and confound them by unending opposition
|
||
and the power of a holy life. 'Oh men if you cling to these
|
||
commandments which Mazda has given, which are a torment to the
|
||
wicked and a blessing to the righteous, then there will be victory
|
||
through them.'" -- Max Muller.] It lacks none of the paraphernalia
|
||
of a "divine institution" ready for business, and we are unable to
|
||
discount it in either loaves or fishes. It also has its heaven and
|
||
hell; ["In this old faith there was a belief in two abodes for the
|
||
departed: heaven, the 'house of the abgels' hymns,' and hell, where
|
||
the wicked were sent. Between the two there was a bridge." --
|
||
Ibid.] its Messiah or Prophet; its arch fiend or devil; its rites
|
||
and ceremonies.
|
||
|
||
Professor Max Muller remarks: "There were periods in the
|
||
history of the world when the worship of Ormuzd threatened to rise
|
||
triumphant on the ruins of the temples of all other gods. If the
|
||
battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost and Greece had
|
||
succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire of Cyrus,
|
||
which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the religion of
|
||
the whole civilized world."
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
84
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
in which case my Chicago friend would have asked, "If you
|
||
destroy a belief in Ormuzd, and that he gave the only supernatural
|
||
moral law to Zoroaster, how will children ever be taught what is
|
||
right and what is wrong, and how can they ever know that it is not
|
||
right to lie and kill and steal?"
|
||
|
||
"Their creed is of the simplest kind; it is to fear God, to
|
||
live a life of pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds, and to die in
|
||
the hope of a world to come. It is the creed of those who have
|
||
lived nearest to God and served him faithfullest in every age, and
|
||
wherever they dwell who accept it and practice it, they bear
|
||
witness to that which makes them children of God and brethren of
|
||
the prophets, among whom Zoroaster was not the least. The Jews were
|
||
carried away as captives to Babylon some 600 years before Christ,
|
||
and during the seventy years of their exile there, they came into
|
||
contact with the Persian religion and derived from it ideas about
|
||
the immortality of the soul, which their own religion did not
|
||
contain. They also borrowed from it their belief in a multitude of
|
||
angels, and in Satan as the ruler over evil spirals." [So you see
|
||
that even our devil is a borrowed one, and it now seems to be about
|
||
time to return him with thanks.] "The case with which man believes
|
||
in unearthly powers working for his hurt prepares a people to admit
|
||
into its creed the doctrine of evil spirits, and although it is
|
||
certain that the Jews had no belief in such spirits before their
|
||
captivity in Babylon, they spoke of Satan (which means an
|
||
adversary) as a messenger sent from God to watch the deeds of man
|
||
and accuse them to Him for their wrong-doing. Satan thus becoming
|
||
by degrees an object of dread, upon whom all the evil which befell
|
||
man was charged, the maids of the Jews were ripe for accepting the
|
||
Persian doctrine of Ahriman with his legions of devils. Ahriman
|
||
became the Jewish Satan, a belief in whom formed part of early
|
||
Christian doctrine, and is now but slowly dying out. What fearful
|
||
ills it has caused, history has many a page to tell. The doctrine
|
||
that Satan, once an angel of light, had been cast from heaven for
|
||
rebellion against God, and had ever since played havoc among
|
||
mankind, gave rise to the belief that he and his demons could
|
||
possess the souls of men and animals at pleasure. Hence grew the
|
||
belief in wizards and witches, under which millions of creatures,
|
||
both young and old, were cruelly tortured and put to death. We turn
|
||
over the smeared pages of this history in haste, thankful that from
|
||
such a nightmare the world has wakened." [Clodd, F.R.A.S.]
|
||
|
||
The world has awakened, but the Church still snores on,
|
||
confident and happy in the belief that she has a devil all her own,
|
||
and that he is attending strictly to business.
|
||
|
||
Next we have Buddhism, which numbers more followers than any
|
||
other faith. It is five hundred years older than Christianity. It
|
||
has its prophet or Messiah who was exposed to a tempter,
|
||
["Afterward the tempter sent his three daughters, one a winning
|
||
girl, one a blooming virgin, and one a middle-aged beauty, to
|
||
allure him, but they could not. Buddha was proof against all the
|
||
demon's arts, and his only trouble was whether it were well or not
|
||
to preach his doctrines to men. Feeling how hard to gain was that
|
||
which he had gained, and how enslaved men were by their passions so
|
||
that they might neither listen to him nor understand him, he had
|
||
well-nigh resolved to be silent, but, at the last, deep compassion
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
85
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
for all beings made him resolve to tell his secret to mankind, that
|
||
they too might be free, and he thus became the founder of the most
|
||
popular religion of ancient or modern times. The spot where Buddha
|
||
obtained his knowledge became one of the most sacred places in
|
||
India." -- Clodd.] and overcame all evil; its fastings and
|
||
prayers; its miracles and its visions. Of Buddha's teachings Prof.
|
||
Max Muller tells us that he used to say, "Nothing on earth is
|
||
stable, nothing is real. Life is as transitory as a spark of fire,
|
||
or the sound of a lyre. There must be some supreme intelligence
|
||
where we could find rest. If I attained it I could bring light to
|
||
men. If I were free myself I could deliver the world."
|
||
|
||
Buddha, like Christ, wrote nothing, and the doctrines of the
|
||
new religion were fixed and written by his disciples after his
|
||
death. Councils were held afterwards to correct errors and send out
|
||
missionaries. You will see, therefore, that even "revisions" are
|
||
not a product of Christianity, and that "revelations" have always
|
||
been subject to reform to fit the times. ["Two other councils were
|
||
afterward held for the correction of errors that had crept into the
|
||
faith, and for sending missionaries into other lands. The last of
|
||
these councils is said to have been held 251 years before Christ,
|
||
so that long before Christianity was founded we have this great
|
||
religion with its sacred traditions of Buddha's words, its councils
|
||
and its missions, besides, as we shall presently see, many things
|
||
strangely like the rites of the Roman Catholic Church." -- Clodd.]
|
||
|
||
I will here give a few of the wise or kind or moral commands
|
||
of Buddha. If the first were followed in Christian countries we
|
||
should be a more moral and a less superstitious people than we are
|
||
to-day.
|
||
|
||
"Buddha said: 'The succoring of mother and father, the
|
||
cherishing of child and wife, and the following of a lawful
|
||
calling, this is the greatest blessing.'
|
||
|
||
" 'The giving alms, a religious life, aid rendered to
|
||
relations, blameless acts, this, is the greatest blessing.'
|
||
|
||
" 'The abstaining from sins and the avoiding them, the
|
||
eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds,
|
||
reverence and humility, contentment and gratefulness, this is
|
||
the greatest blessing.'
|
||
|
||
" 'Those who having done these things, become invincible
|
||
on all sides, attain happiness on all sides. This is the
|
||
greatest blessing.'
|
||
|
||
" 'He who lives a hundred years, vicious and
|
||
unrestrained, a life of one day is better if a man is virtuous
|
||
and reflecting.'
|
||
|
||
" 'Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart,
|
||
it will not come near unto me. Even by the falling of water-
|
||
drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil if
|
||
he gathers it little by little.'
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
86
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
" 'Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's
|
||
mind, that is the teaching of the Awakened.' (This is one of
|
||
the most solemn verses among the Buddhists).
|
||
|
||
" 'Lot us live happily then, not hating those who hate us
|
||
Let us dwell free from hatred among men who hate!'
|
||
|
||
"After these doctrines there follow ten commandments, of
|
||
which the first five apply to all people, and the rest chiefly
|
||
to such as set themselves apart for a religious life. They
|
||
are: not to kill; not to steal; not to commit adultery; not to
|
||
lie; not to get drunk; to abstain from late meals; from public
|
||
amusements; from expensive dress; from large beds; and to
|
||
accept neither gold nor silver." [Clodd.]
|
||
|
||
Keep in mind that Buddhism lived more than 500 years
|
||
before Christ.
|
||
|
||
"The success of Buddhism was in this: It was a protest against
|
||
the powers of the priests; it to a large degree broke down caste by
|
||
declaring that all men are equal, and by allowing any one desiring
|
||
to live a holy life to become a priest. It abolished sacrifices;
|
||
made it the duty of all men to honor their parents and care for
|
||
their children, to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, and
|
||
to forgive their enemies and return good for evil; it spread a
|
||
spirit of charity abroad which encompassed the lowest life as well
|
||
as the highest." [Ibid.]
|
||
|
||
With these before him will a Christian suppose that morals are
|
||
dependent upon our Bible?
|
||
|
||
Of Confucianism, believed by millions to be essential to their
|
||
salvation, and one of the three state religions of China, Clodd
|
||
says: "On the soil of this great country there is crowded nearly
|
||
half the human race, the most orderly people on the globe. This man
|
||
Confucius), who was reviled in life, but whose influence sways the
|
||
hundreds of millions of China, was born 551 years before Christ.
|
||
His nature was so beautifully simple and sincere that he would not
|
||
pretend to knowledge of that which he felt was beyond human reach
|
||
and thought,"
|
||
|
||
What an earthquake there would be if our clergymen where only
|
||
to become inoculated with that sort of simple sincerity! His
|
||
disciples and followers did that for him as has been done in most
|
||
other cases.
|
||
|
||
"The sacred books of China are called the Kings, and are five
|
||
in number, containing treatises on morals, books of rites, poems,
|
||
and history. They are of great age, perhaps as old as the earliest
|
||
hymns of the Rig-Veda, and are free from any impure thoughts.
|
||
[Which is much more than can be said of our own sacred books, which
|
||
are not so old.] In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces,
|
||
but the design of them all may be embraced in that one sentence,
|
||
'Have no depraved thoughts.'
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
87
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"At the time when Confucius lived, China was divided into a
|
||
number of petty kingdoms whose rulers were ever quarrelling, and
|
||
although he became engaged in various public situations of trust,
|
||
the disorder of the State at last caused him to resign them, and he
|
||
retired to another part of the country. He then continued the life
|
||
of a public teacher, instructing men in the simple moral truths by
|
||
which he sought to govern his own life. The purity of that life,
|
||
and the example of veneration for the old laws which he set,
|
||
gathered round him many grave and thoughtful men, who worked with
|
||
him for the common good."
|
||
|
||
Confucius said among other wise and moral things: "Coarse rice
|
||
for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a pillow -- happiness
|
||
may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue, both riches and
|
||
honor seem to me like the passing cloud. ... Our passions shut up
|
||
the door of our souls against God."
|
||
|
||
What we are pleased to call "the golden rule," and to look
|
||
upon as purely Christian, he gave in these words 500 years before
|
||
Christ was born: "Tsze-kung said, 'What I do not wish men to do to
|
||
me, I also wish not to do to men.' The Master said, 'Yon have not
|
||
attained to that.'
|
||
|
||
"Such is the power of words, that those uttered by this
|
||
intensely earnest man, whose work was ended only by death, have
|
||
kept alive throughout the vast empire of China a reverence for the
|
||
past and a sense of duty to the present which have made the Chinese
|
||
the most orderly and moral people in the world."
|
||
|
||
So much for the great religions that are older than our own
|
||
and could not have borrowed from us. So much for the moral
|
||
sentiments of the peoples who developed them, and who live and die
|
||
happy with them today. It leaves only a small part of this globe
|
||
and a comparatively small number of its inhabitants who believe in
|
||
and are guided by the Bible, or by the morality which has grown
|
||
side-by-side with it.
|
||
|
||
But there is one other great religion which is of interest to
|
||
us: [See Appendix R.]
|
||
|
||
"And the value of Islam, the youngest of the great religions,
|
||
is that we are able to see how its first simple form became
|
||
overlaid with legend and foolish superstition, and thus learn how,
|
||
in like manner, myth and fable have grown around more ancient
|
||
religions (and around our own),
|
||
|
||
"For example although Mohammed came into the world like other
|
||
children, wonderful things are said to have taken place at his
|
||
birth.
|
||
|
||
"He never claimed to be a perfect man; he did not pretend to
|
||
foretell events or to work miracles.
|
||
|
||
"In spite of all this, his followers said of him, while he was
|
||
yet living, that he worked wonders, and they believed the golden
|
||
vision, hinted at in Koran, to have been a real event, although
|
||
Mohammed said over and over again that it was but a dream.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
88
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"This religion is the guide in life and the support in death
|
||
of one hundred and fifty millions of our fellow creatures; like
|
||
Christianity, it has its missionaries scattered over the globe, and
|
||
offers itself as a faith needed by all men.
|
||
|
||
"The, success of Islam was great. Not one hundred years after
|
||
the death of the prophet, it had converted half the then known
|
||
world, and its green flag waved from China to Spain. Christianity
|
||
gave way before it, and has never regained some of the ground then
|
||
lost, while at this day we see Islam making marked progress in
|
||
Africa and elsewhere. Travelers tell us that the gain is great when
|
||
a tribe casts away its idols and embraces Islam. Filth and
|
||
drunkenness flee away, and the state of the people is bettered in
|
||
a high degree."
|
||
|
||
"Muslims have not treated Christ as we have treated Mohammed,
|
||
for the devout among them never utter his name without adding the
|
||
touching words, 'on whom be peace.'"
|
||
|
||
"Mohammed counseled men to live a good life, and to strive
|
||
after the mercy of God by fasting, charity, and prayer, which he
|
||
called 'the, key of paradise.'"
|
||
|
||
He abolished the frightful practice of killing female
|
||
children, and made the family tie more respected."
|
||
|
||
He said: "A man's true wealth hereafter is the good he has
|
||
done in this world to his fellow-men. When he dies, people will
|
||
ask, What property has he left behind him? But the angels will ask,
|
||
What good deeds has he sent before him?" [Which is a doctrine
|
||
wholesome and just, so for as it applies to this world, and
|
||
inculcates the right sort of morals.]
|
||
|
||
"Mohammed commanded his followers to make no image of any
|
||
living thing, to show mercy to the weak and orphaned, and kindness
|
||
to brutes; to abstain from gambling, and the use of strong drink.
|
||
|
||
"The great truth which he strove to make real to them was that
|
||
God is one, that, as the Koran says, 'they surely are infidels who
|
||
say that God is the third of three, for there is no God but one
|
||
God.'"
|
||
|
||
He was the great original Unitarian.
|
||
|
||
"I should add that the wars of Islam did not leave waste and
|
||
ruin in their path, but that the Arabs, when they came to Europe,
|
||
alone held aloft the light of learning, and in the once famous
|
||
schools of Spain, taught 'philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and the
|
||
golden art of song.'"
|
||
|
||
We cannot speak so well of the "holy wars" of Christianity.
|
||
|
||
In speaking of the men who wrote our Bible, Clodd says:
|
||
|
||
"Nor is it easy to find in what they have said truths which in
|
||
one form or another, have not been stated by the writers of some of
|
||
the sacred books into which we have dipped."
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
89
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
I have quoted more fully than had been my intention simply to
|
||
show the egotistic ignorance of the Christian's claim to possess a
|
||
religion or a Bible which differs, in any material regard, from
|
||
several others which are older, and to indicate that moral ideas,
|
||
precepts, and practices are the property of no special people but
|
||
are the inevitable result of continued life itself, and the
|
||
evolution of civilizations however different in outward form and
|
||
expression. They are the necessary results of human companionship
|
||
and necessities, and not the fruits of any religion or the
|
||
"revelation" from on high to any people. As William Kingdom
|
||
Clifford, F.R.S., in his work on the "Scientific Basis of Morales,"
|
||
very justly says:
|
||
|
||
"There is more than one moral sense, and what I feel to be
|
||
right another man may feel to be wrong.
|
||
|
||
In just the same way our question about the best conscience
|
||
will resolve itself into a question about the purpose or function
|
||
of the conscience -- why we have got it, and what it is good for.
|
||
|
||
"Now to my mind the simplest and clearest and most profound
|
||
philosophy that was ever written upon this subject is to be found
|
||
in the 2d and 3d chapters of Mr. Darwin's 'Descent of Man.' In
|
||
these chapters it appears that just as most physical
|
||
characteristics of organisms have been evolved and preserved
|
||
because they were useful to the individual in the struggle for
|
||
existence against other individuals and other species, so this
|
||
particular feeling has been evolved and preserved because it is
|
||
useful to the tribe or Community in the struggle for existence
|
||
against other tribes, and against the environment as a whole. The
|
||
function of conscience is the preservation of the tribe as a tribe.
|
||
And we shall rightly train our consciences if we learn to approve
|
||
these actions which tend to the advantage of the community.
|
||
|
||
The virtue of purity, for example, attains in this way a
|
||
fairly exact definition: purity in a man is that course of conduct
|
||
which makes him to be a good husband and father, in a woman that
|
||
which makes her to be a good wife and mother, or which helps other
|
||
people so to prepare and keep themselves. It is easy to see how
|
||
many false ideas and pernicious precepts are swept away by even so
|
||
simple a definition as that.
|
||
|
||
In urging the necessity of a more substantial basis of morals
|
||
than one built upon a theory of arbitrary dictation, he says: "The
|
||
worship of a deity who is represented as unfair or unfriendly to
|
||
any portion of the community is a wrong thing, however great may be
|
||
the threats and promises by which it is commended. And still worse,
|
||
the reference of right and wrong to his arbitrary will as a
|
||
standard, the diversion of the allegiance of the moral sense from
|
||
the community to him, is the most insidious and fatal of social
|
||
diseases. ... If I let myself believe anything on insufficient
|
||
evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it
|
||
may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it
|
||
in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong toward
|
||
man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
90
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great
|
||
enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of
|
||
testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back
|
||
into savagery.
|
||
|
||
"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined
|
||
to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent
|
||
support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I
|
||
believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of
|
||
what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each
|
||
reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how
|
||
shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am
|
||
careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe
|
||
them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not
|
||
learn to cry, 'Peace,' to me, when there is no peace? By such a
|
||
course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood
|
||
and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to the me,
|
||
in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and daring lies; but it
|
||
matters much to Man that I have made my neighbors ready to deceive.
|
||
The credulous man is father to the liar. ...
|
||
|
||
"We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and
|
||
support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they
|
||
lead to; and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is
|
||
great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the
|
||
credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of
|
||
believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. ...
|
||
|
||
"The fact that believers have found joy and peace in believing
|
||
gives us the right to say that the doctrine is a comfortable
|
||
doctrine, and pleasant to the soul; but it does not give us the
|
||
right to say that it is true. ...
|
||
|
||
"And the question which our conscience is always asking about
|
||
that which we are tempted to believe is not, 'is it comfortable and
|
||
pleasant?' but, 'Is it true?'"
|
||
|
||
The sooner moral actions and the necessity of clean, helpful,
|
||
and charitable living are put upon a basis more solid and permanent
|
||
than theology the better will it be for civilization; and if this
|
||
chapter shall, by its light style, attract the attention of those
|
||
who are too busy, or are disinclined for any reason whatsoever, to
|
||
collect from more profound works the facts here given, I shall be
|
||
satisfied with the result, because I shall have done something
|
||
toward the triumph of fact over fiction.
|
||
|
||
We cannot repeat too often nor emphasize too strongly this one
|
||
simple fact, that we need all our energy and time to make this
|
||
world fit to live in; to make homes where mothers are happy and
|
||
children are glad -- homes where fathers hasten when their work is
|
||
done, and are welcomed with a shout of joy.
|
||
|
||
The toilers who wend up the hillside,
|
||
The toilers below in the mill
|
||
Alike are the victims of priestcraft,
|
||
They "do but the Master's will."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
91
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
The Master's will! ah the cunning,
|
||
The bitterly cruel device,
|
||
To wring from the lowly and burdened
|
||
Submission at any price!
|
||
|
||
Submission to tyrants in Russia --
|
||
Submission to tyrants in Rome;
|
||
The throne and the altar have ever
|
||
Combined to despoil the home.
|
||
|
||
But the home is the heaven to live for,
|
||
And Love is the God sublime
|
||
who paints in tints of glory,
|
||
Upon the wings of Time
|
||
|
||
This legend, grand and simple,
|
||
And true as eternal Right --
|
||
No Justice e'er came, from Jury,
|
||
Whose verdict was based on might!
|
||
|
||
As high above earth as is heaven;
|
||
As high as the stars above
|
||
The Church, the chapel, the altar;
|
||
Is the home whose God is Love.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX A.
|
||
|
||
1. "For a species increases or decreases in numbers, widens
|
||
or contracts its habitat, migrates or remains stationary, continues
|
||
an old mode of life or falls into a new one, under the combined
|
||
influence of its intrinsic nature and the environing actions,
|
||
inorganic and organic.
|
||
|
||
"Beginning with the extrinsic factors, we see that from the
|
||
outset several kinds of them are variously operative. They need but
|
||
barely enumerating. We have climate, hot, cold, or temperate, moist
|
||
or dry, constant or variable. We have surface, much or little of
|
||
which is available, and the available part of which is fertile in
|
||
greater or less degree; and we have configuration of surface, as
|
||
uniform or multiform. ... On these sets of conditions, inorganic
|
||
and organic, characterizing the environment, primarily depends the
|
||
possibility of social evolution." -- Spencer, "Principles of
|
||
Sociology," Vol. 1, p. 10.
|
||
|
||
2. "These considerations clearly prove that of the two
|
||
Primary causes of civilization, the fertility of the soil is the
|
||
one which in the ancient world exercised most influence. But in
|
||
European civilization, the other great cause, that is to say,
|
||
climate, has been the most powerful.
|
||
|
||
"Owing to circumstances which I shall presently state, the
|
||
only progress which is really effective depends, not upon the
|
||
bounty of nature, but upon the energy of man. Therefore it is, that
|
||
the civilization of Europe, which in its earliest stage, was
|
||
governed by climate, has shown a capacity of development unknown to
|
||
those civilizations which were originated by soil." -- Buckle,
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
92
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"History of Civilization,"' vol. 1, p. 36-37. [I wish to state
|
||
here that I had never read the above from Buckle, nor had I seen
|
||
anywhere a statement so like my own, at the time mine was written.
|
||
I read this for the first time while reading the proofs of this
|
||
chapter, So much for what may appear plagiarism. -- H.H.G.]
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX B.
|
||
|
||
1. "Napoleon himself was indifferent to Christianity, but he
|
||
saw that the clergy were friends of despotism." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2. "Thus it is that a careful survey of history will prove
|
||
that the Reformation made the first progress not in those countries
|
||
where the people were most enlightened, but in those countries
|
||
where, from political causes, the clergy were least able to
|
||
withstand the people." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
3. "Christian civilization in the twentieth century of its
|
||
existence, degrades its women to labor fit only for beasts of the
|
||
field; harnessing them with dogs to do the most menial labors; it
|
||
drags them below even this, holding their womanhood up to sale,
|
||
putting both Church and State sanction upon their moral death;
|
||
which, in some places, as in the city of Berlin, so far recognizes
|
||
the sale of woman's bodies for the vilest purposes as part of the
|
||
Christian religion, that license for this life is refused until
|
||
they have partaken of the Sacrament; and demands of the '10,000
|
||
licensed women of the town' of the city of Hamburg, certificates
|
||
showing that they regularly attend church and also partake of the
|
||
sacrament." -- Gage.
|
||
|
||
Even a lower depth than this is reached in England, France,
|
||
Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and nearly every country of
|
||
Europe, says the same writer, "a system of morality which declares
|
||
'the necessity' of woman's degradation, and annually sends tens of
|
||
thousands down to a death from which society grants no
|
||
resurrection." -- Gage.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX C.
|
||
|
||
1. "Sappho flourished B.C. 600, and a little later; and so
|
||
highly did Plato value, her intellectual, as well as her
|
||
imaginative endowments, that he assigned her the honors of sage as
|
||
well as poet; and familiarly entitled her the 'tenth muse.'" --
|
||
Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2. "Wilkinson says among no ancient people had women such
|
||
influence and liberty as among the ancient Egyptians." Buckle.
|
||
|
||
3. "The Americans have in the treatment of women fallen below,
|
||
not only their own democratic principles, but the practice of some
|
||
parts of the Old World." -- Harriet Martineau.
|
||
|
||
4. "Mr. F. Newman denies that Christianity has improved the
|
||
position of women; and he observes that, 'with Paul, the sole
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
93
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
reason for marriage is, that a man may, without sin, vent his
|
||
sensual desires. He teaches that, but for this object, it would be
|
||
better not to marry;' and he takes no notice of the social
|
||
pleasures of marriage. Newman says: 'In short, only in countries
|
||
where Germanic sentiment has taken root do we see marks of any
|
||
elevation of the female sex superior to that of Pagan antiquity.'"
|
||
-- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
5. "Female voices are never heard in the Russian churches;
|
||
their place is supplied by boys; women do not yet stand high enough
|
||
in the estimation of the churches. ... to be permitted to sing the
|
||
praises of God in the presence of men." -- Kohl.
|
||
|
||
6. "Christianity diminished the influence of women." --
|
||
Neander, "Hist. of the Church."
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX D.
|
||
|
||
Within the reign of the present sovereign Mrs. Gage tells us
|
||
of a young girl being ordered by the Petty Sessions Bench back to
|
||
the "service" of a landlord, from whom she had run away because
|
||
such service meant the sacrifice of her honor. She refused to go
|
||
and was put in jail.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX E.
|
||
|
||
1. "Women were taught by the Church and State alike, that the
|
||
Feudal Lord or Seigneur had a right to them, not only against
|
||
themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The law
|
||
known as Marchetta, or Marquette, compelled newly-married women to
|
||
a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful
|
||
prey of the Feudal Lord from one to three days after their
|
||
marriage, and from this custom, the oldest son of the serf was held
|
||
as the son of the lord, 'as perchance it was he who begat him' From
|
||
this nefarious degradation of woman, the custom of Borough-English
|
||
arose, in which the youngest son became the heir. ... France,
|
||
Germany, Prussia, England, Scotland, and all Christian countries
|
||
where feudalism existed, held to the enforcement of Marquette. The
|
||
lord deemed this right as fully his as he did the claim to half the
|
||
crops of the land, or to half the wool of the sheep. More than one
|
||
reign of terror arose in France from the enforcement of this law,
|
||
and the uprisings of the peasantry over Europe during the twelfth
|
||
century, and the fierce Jacquerie, or Peasant Wars, of the
|
||
fourteenth century in France owed their origin, among other causes,
|
||
to the enforcement of these claims by the lords upon the newly-
|
||
married wife. The edicts of Marly transplanted that claim to
|
||
America when Canada was under the control of France. To persons not
|
||
conversant with the history of feudalism, and of the Church for the
|
||
first fifteen hundred years of its existence, it will seem
|
||
impossible that such foulness could ever have been part of
|
||
Christian civilization. That the crimes they have been trained to
|
||
consider the worst forms of heathendom could have exist in
|
||
Christian Europe, upheld by both Church and State for more than a
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
94
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
thousand five hundred years, will strike most people with
|
||
incredulity. Such, however, is the truth; we can but admit well-
|
||
attested facts of history, how severe a blow they strike our
|
||
preconceived beliefs.
|
||
|
||
"Marquette was claimed by the Lords Spiritual, ["In days to
|
||
come people will be slow to believe that the law among Christian
|
||
nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden slavery;
|
||
that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous outrage
|
||
that could ever wound man's heart. The Lords Spiritual (clergy) had
|
||
this right no less than the Lords Temporal. The parson, being a
|
||
lord, expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was
|
||
willing to sell his right to the husband. The Courts of Berne
|
||
openly maintain that this right grew up naturally." -- Michelet,
|
||
"La Sorcerie," p. 62.] as well as by the Lords Temporal. The
|
||
Church, indeed, was the bulwark of this base feudal claim. With the
|
||
power of penance and excommunication in its grasp, this demand
|
||
could neither have originated nor been sustained unless sanctioned
|
||
by the Church. ... These customs of feudalism were the customs of
|
||
Christianity during many centuries. (One of the Earls of Crawford,
|
||
known as the 'Earl Brant,' in the sixteenth century, was probably
|
||
among the last who openly claimed by right the literal translation
|
||
of droit de Jambage.) These infamous outrages upon woman were
|
||
enforced under Christian law by both Church and State.
|
||
|
||
"The degradation of the husband at this infringement of the
|
||
lord spiritual and temporal upon his marital right, has been
|
||
pictured by many writers, but history has been quite silent upon
|
||
the despair and shame of the wife. No hope appeared for woman
|
||
anywhere. The Church. ... dragged her to the lowest depths, through
|
||
the vileness of its priestly customs. ... We who talk of the
|
||
burning of wives upon the funeral pyres of husbands in India, may
|
||
well turn our eyes to the records of Christian countries." --
|
||
Matilda Joslyn Gage in "Woman, Church, and State."
|
||
|
||
2. From this point Mrs. Gage calls attention to the various
|
||
efforts to throw off this degrading custom. The women held meetings
|
||
at night, and among other things travestied the celebration of Mass
|
||
and other Church customs; but the end and aim of these meetings
|
||
being a protest and rebellion against Marquette, the clergy called
|
||
those who took part in them "witches;" ["There are few
|
||
superstitions which have been so universal as a belief in
|
||
witchcraft. The severe theology of paganism despised the wretched
|
||
superstition, which has been greedily believed by millions of
|
||
Christians." -- Buckle.] and then and there began the persecution
|
||
which the Church carried on against women under this disguise
|
||
(under Catholic and Protestant rule alike), which extended down to
|
||
the latter part of the last century, with its list of horrors and
|
||
indignities extending over all Christian countries and blossoming
|
||
in all their vigor in our own eastern States, upheld by Luther,
|
||
John Wesley, and Baxter, who unfortunately had not at that time
|
||
entered into the everlasting rest of the Saints. And, true to these
|
||
noble and wise leaders, the Churches which they founded are to-day
|
||
expressing the same sentiments (in principle) in regard to the
|
||
honor and dignity and position of woman. The arguments of the Rev.
|
||
Dr. Craven, the prosecutor in the famous Presbyterian trial of
|
||
1876, which are given by Mrs. Gage, together with numerous other
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
95
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
similar ones, fully establish the fact that woman is to the Church
|
||
what she always was -- so far as secular law will permit. And
|
||
numerous instances (such as the Buckley exhibition at the last
|
||
Methodist Conference, in which he was sustained by the Conference)
|
||
prove that they have learned nothing since 1876.
|
||
|
||
3. I wish I might copy here the sermon to women which the Rev.
|
||
Knox-Little, the well-known High-Church clergyman of England,
|
||
preached when in this country in 1880, in which he said, "There is
|
||
no crime which a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving
|
||
him. It is her duty to subject herself to him always, and no crime
|
||
that he can commit can justify her lack of obedience." Although a
|
||
little balder in statement than are most utterances of orthodox
|
||
clergymen in this age, yet in sentiment and in the reason given for
|
||
it the echo of "Amen" comes from every pulpit where a believer in
|
||
original sin, vicarious atonement, or the inspiration of the Bible
|
||
has a representative and a voice. If self-respect or honor is ever
|
||
to be the lot of woman, it will not be until her foot is on the
|
||
neck of orthodoxy, and when the Bible ranks where it belongs in the
|
||
field of literature.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX F.
|
||
|
||
1. "The French government, about the middle of the eighteenth
|
||
century, seems to have reached the maturity of its wickedness,
|
||
allowing if not instigating religious persecutions of so infamous
|
||
a nature that they would not be believed if they were not attested
|
||
by documents of the courts in which the sentences were passed." --
|
||
Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2. Of Louis XV., the eminently Christian king of France,
|
||
Buckle says: "His harem cost more than 100,000,000 francs, and was
|
||
composed of little girls. He was constantly drunk," and "turned out
|
||
his own illegitimate children to prostitute themselves."
|
||
|
||
3. "It will hardly be believed that, when sulfuric ether was
|
||
first used to lessen the pains of childbirth, it was objected to as
|
||
'a profane attempt to abrogate the primeval curse pronounced upon
|
||
woman. ... The injury which the theological principle has done to
|
||
the world is immense. It has prevented men from studying the laws
|
||
of nature." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX G.
|
||
|
||
1.The narrow range of their sympathies [the clergy's], and the
|
||
intellectual servitude they have accepted, render them peculiarly
|
||
unfitted for the office of educating the young, which they so
|
||
persistently claim, and which, to the great misfortune of the
|
||
world, they were long permitted to monopolize. ... The almost
|
||
complete omission from female education of those studies which most
|
||
discipline and strengthen the intellect, increases the difference,
|
||
while at the same time it has been usually made a main object to
|
||
imbue them with a passionate faith in traditional opinions, and to
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
96
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
preserve them from all contact with opposing views. But contracted
|
||
knowledge and imperfect sympathy are not the sole fruits of this
|
||
education. It has always been the peculiarity of a certain kind of
|
||
theological teaching, that it inverts all the normal principles of
|
||
judgment and absolutely destroys intellectual diffidence. On other
|
||
subjects we find, if not a respect for honest conviction, at least
|
||
some sense of the amount of knowledge that is requisite to entitle
|
||
men to express an opinion on grate controversies. A complete
|
||
ignorance of the subject-matter of a dispute restrains the
|
||
confidence of dogmatism; and an ignorant person who is aware that,
|
||
by much reading and thinking in spheres of which he has himself no
|
||
knowledge, his educated neighbor has modified or rejected opinions
|
||
which that ignorant person had been taught, will, at least if he is
|
||
a man of sense or modesty, abstain from compassionating the
|
||
benighted condition of his more instructed friend. But on
|
||
theological questions this has never been so.
|
||
|
||
"Unfaltering belief being taught as the first of duties, and
|
||
all doubt being usually stigmatized as criminal or damnable, a
|
||
state of mind is formed to which we find no parallel in other
|
||
fields. Many men and most women, though completely ignorant of the
|
||
very rudiments of biblical criticism, historical research, or
|
||
scientific discoveries, though they have never read a single page,
|
||
or understood a single proposition of the writings of those whom
|
||
they condemn, and have absolutely no rational knowledge either of
|
||
the arguments by which their faith is defended, or of those by
|
||
which it has been impugned, will nevertheless adjudicate with the
|
||
utmost confidence upon every polemical question, denounce, hate,
|
||
pity, or pray for the conversion of all who dissent from what they
|
||
have been taught, assume, as a matter beyond the faintest
|
||
possibility of doubt, that the opinions they have received without
|
||
inquiry must be true, and that the opinions which others have
|
||
arrived at by inquiry must be false, and make it a main object of
|
||
their lives to assail what they call heresy in every way in their
|
||
power, except by examining the grounds on which it rests. It is
|
||
possible that the great majority of voices that swell the clamor
|
||
against every book which is regarded as heretical, are the voices
|
||
of those who would deem it criminal even to open that book, or to
|
||
enter into any real, searching, and impartial investigation of the
|
||
subject to which it relates. Innumerable pulpits support this tone
|
||
of thought, and represent, with a fervid rhetoric well fitted to
|
||
excite the nerves and imaginations of women, the deplorable
|
||
condition of all who deviate from a certain type of opinions or
|
||
emotions; a blind propagandism or a secret wretchedness penetrates
|
||
into countless households, poisoning the peace of families,
|
||
chilling the mental confidence of husband and wife, adding
|
||
immeasurably to the difficulties which every searcher into truth
|
||
has to encounter, and diffusing far and wide intellectual timidity,
|
||
disingenuousness, and hypocrisy." -- Lecky.
|
||
|
||
2. "The clergy, with a few honorable exceptions, have in all
|
||
modern countries been the avowed enemies of the diffusion of
|
||
knowledge, the danger of which to their own profession they, by a
|
||
certain instinct, seem always to have perceived." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
97
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
3. "In the fourth century there arose monarchism, and in the
|
||
sixth century the Christians succeeded in cutting off the last ray
|
||
of knowledge, and shutting up the schools of Greece. Then followed
|
||
a long period of theology, ignorance, and vice." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
4. Contempt for human sciences was one of the first features
|
||
of Christianity. It had to avenge itself of the outrages of
|
||
philosophy; it feared that spirit of investigation and doubt, that
|
||
confidence of man in his own reason, the pest alike of all
|
||
religious creeds. The light of the natural sciences was ever odious
|
||
to it, and was ever regarded with a suspicious eye, as being a
|
||
dangerous enemy to the success of miracles; and there is no
|
||
religion that does not oblige its sectaries to follow some physical
|
||
absurdities. The triumph of Christianity was thus the final signal
|
||
of the entire decline both of the sciences an of philosophy." --
|
||
"Progress of the Human Mind," Condorcet.
|
||
|
||
"Accordingly it ought not to astonish us that Christianity,
|
||
though unable in the sequel to prevent their reappearance in
|
||
splendor after the invention of printing, was at this period
|
||
sufficiently powerful to accomplish their ruin." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"In the disastrous epoch at which we are now arrived, we shall
|
||
see the human mind rapidly descending from the height to which it
|
||
had raised itself. ... Everywhere was corruption, cruelty, and
|
||
perfidy. ... Theological reveries, superstitions, delusions, are
|
||
become the sole genius of man, religious intolerance his only
|
||
morality; and Europe, crushed between sacerdotal tyranny and
|
||
military despotism, awaits in blood and in tears the moment when
|
||
the revival of light shall restore it to liberty, to humanity, and
|
||
to virtue. ... The priests held human learning in contempt. ...
|
||
Fanatic armies laid waste the provinces. Executioners, under the
|
||
guidance of legates and priests, put to death those whom the
|
||
soldiers had spared. A tribunal of monks was established, with
|
||
power of condemning to the stake whoever should be suspected of
|
||
making use of his reason. ... All sects, all governments, every
|
||
species of authority, inimical as they were to each other in every
|
||
point else, seemed to be of accord in granting no quarter to the
|
||
exercise of reason. ... Meanwhile education, being everywhere
|
||
subjected [to the clergy], had corrupted everywhere the general
|
||
understanding, by clogging the reason of children with the weight
|
||
of the religious prejudices of their country. ... In the eighth
|
||
century an ignorant pope had persecuted a deacon for contending
|
||
that the earth was round, in opposition to the opinion of the
|
||
rhetorical Saint Austin. In the fifteenth, the ignorance of another
|
||
pope, much more inexcusable, delivered Galileo into the hands of
|
||
the inquisition, accused of having proved the diurnal and annual
|
||
motion of the earth. The greatest genius that modern Italy has
|
||
given to the sciences, overwhelmed with age and infirmities, was
|
||
obliged to purchase his release from punishment and from prison, by
|
||
asking pardon of God for having taught men better to understand his
|
||
works." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
98
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX H.
|
||
|
||
1. Fenelon, a celebrated French clergyman and writer of the
|
||
seventeenth century, discouraged the acquisition of knowledge by
|
||
women. -- See Hallam's. "Lit. of Europe."
|
||
|
||
2. "Perhaps it is to the spirit of Puritanism that we owe the
|
||
little influence of women, and the consequent inferiority of their
|
||
education." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
3. "In England (1840) a distrust and contempt for reason
|
||
prevail's amongst religious circles to a wide extent; many
|
||
Christians think it almost a matter of duty to decry the human
|
||
faculties as poor, mean, and almost worthless; and thus seek to
|
||
exalt piety at the expense of intelligence." -- Morell's "Hist. of
|
||
Speculative Phil."
|
||
|
||
4. "That woman are more deductive than men, because they think
|
||
quicker than men, is a proposition which some people will not
|
||
relish, and yet it may be proved in a variety of ways. Indeed
|
||
nothing could prevent its being universally admitted except the
|
||
fact that the remarkable rapidity with which women think is
|
||
obscured by that miserable, that contemptible, that preposterous
|
||
system, called their education, in which valuable things are
|
||
carefully kept from them, and trifling things carefully taught to
|
||
them, until their fine and nimble minds are too often irretrievably
|
||
injured." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX I.
|
||
|
||
1. "The Roman [Pagan] religion was essentially domestic, and
|
||
it was a main object of the legislator to surround marriage with
|
||
every circumstance of dignity and solemnity. Monogamy was from the
|
||
earliest times, strictly enjoined, and it was one of the great
|
||
benefits that have resulted from the expansion of Roman power, that
|
||
it made this type dominant in Europe. In the legends of early Rome
|
||
we have ample evidence both of the high moral estimate of women,
|
||
and of their prominence in Roman life. The tragedies of Lucretia
|
||
and of Virginia display a delicacy of honor, a sense of the supreme
|
||
excellence of unsullied purity which no Christian nation could
|
||
surpass." -- Lecky, "European Morals," Vol. I., p. 316.
|
||
|
||
2. "Marriage [under Christian rule] was viewed in its
|
||
coarsest and most degraded form. The notion of its impurity took
|
||
many forms, and exercised for some centuries an extremely wide
|
||
influence over the Church. -- Ibid,, p. 343.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX J.
|
||
|
||
1. "We are continually told that civilization and
|
||
Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile
|
||
the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband; no less so, as
|
||
far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She
|
||
vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it
|
||
all through her life by law. Casuists may say that the obligation
|
||
of obedience stops short of participation in crime, but it
|
||
certainly extends to everything else. She can do no act whatever
|
||
but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
99
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
but for him; the instant it becomes hers even if by inheritance, it
|
||
becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife's position under
|
||
the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws
|
||
of many countries; by the Roman law, for example, a slave might
|
||
have peculium, which, to a certain extent, the law guaranteed him
|
||
for his exclusive use." -- Mill.
|
||
|
||
2. Speaking of self-worship which leads to brutality toward
|
||
others, Mill says "Christianity will never practically teach it"
|
||
(the equality of human beings) "While it sanctions institutions
|
||
grounded on an arbitrary preference for one human being over
|
||
another."
|
||
|
||
"The morality of the first ages rested on the obligation to
|
||
submit to power; that of the ages next following, on the right of
|
||
the weak to the forbearance and protection of the strong. How much
|
||
longer is one form of society and life to content itself with the
|
||
morality made for another? We have had the morality of submission,
|
||
and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come
|
||
for the morality of justice." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"Institutions, books, education, society all go on training
|
||
human beings for the old, long after the new has come; much more
|
||
when it is only coming." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
There have been abundance of people, in all ages of
|
||
Christianity, who tried ... to convert us into a Sort of Christian
|
||
Mussulmans, with the Bible for a Koran, prohibiting all
|
||
improvement; and great has been their power, and many have had to
|
||
sacrifice their lives in resisting them. But they have been
|
||
resisted, and the resistance has made us what we are, and will yet
|
||
make us what we are to be." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX K.
|
||
|
||
In this tendency [to depreciate extremely the character and
|
||
position of woman] we may detect in part the influence of the
|
||
earlier Jewish writings, in which it is probable that most
|
||
impartial observers will detect evident traces of the common
|
||
oriental depreciation of women. The custom of money-purchase to the
|
||
father of the, bride was admitted. Polygamy was authorized, and
|
||
practiced by the wisest men on an enormous scale. A woman was
|
||
regarded as the origin of human ills. A period of purification was
|
||
appointed after the birth of every child; but, by a very
|
||
significant provision, it was twice as long in the case of a female
|
||
as of a male child (Levit. xii. 1-5). The badness of men, a Jewish
|
||
writer emphatically declared, is better than the goodness of women
|
||
Ecclesiastics xlii. 14). The types of female excellence exhibited
|
||
in the early period of Jewish history are in general of a low
|
||
order, and certainly far inferior to those of Roman history or
|
||
Greek poetry; and the warmest eulogy of a woman in the Old
|
||
Testament is probably that which was bestowed upon her who, with
|
||
circumstances of the most exaggerated treachery, had murdered the
|
||
sleeping fugitive who had taken refuge under her roof." -- Lecky,
|
||
"European Morals," vol. 1, p. 357.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
100
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX L.
|
||
|
||
1. "Mr. F. Newman, who looks on toleration as the result
|
||
intellectual progress, says Nevertheless, not only does the Old
|
||
Testament justify bloody persecution, but the New teaches that God
|
||
will visit men with fiery vengeance for holding an erroneous
|
||
creed." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2. "The first great consequence of the decline of priestly
|
||
influence was the rise of toleration. ... I suspect that the
|
||
impolicy of persecution was perceived before its wickedness." --
|
||
Ibid.
|
||
|
||
3. "While a multitude of scientific discoveries, critical
|
||
and historical researches, and educational reforms have brought
|
||
thinking men face to face with religious problems of extreme
|
||
importance, women have been almost absolutely excluded from their
|
||
influence." -- Lecky.
|
||
|
||
4. "The domestic unhappiness arising from difference of
|
||
belief was probably almost or altogether unknown in the world
|
||
before the introduction of Christianity. ... The deep and widening
|
||
chasm between the religious opinions of most highly educated men,
|
||
and of the immense majority of women is painfully apparent.
|
||
Whenever any strong religious fervor fell upon a husband or a wife,
|
||
its first effect was to make a happy union impossible." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
5. "The combined influence of the Jewish writings [Old
|
||
Testament) and of that ascetic feeling which treated woman as the
|
||
chief source of temptation to man, caused her degradation. ... In
|
||
the writings of the Fathers, woman was represented as the door of
|
||
hell, as the mother of all human ills. She should be ashamed at the
|
||
very thought that she is a woman. She should live in continual
|
||
penance, on account of the curse she has brought into the world.
|
||
She should be ashamed of her dress and especially ashamed of her
|
||
beauty." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX M.
|
||
|
||
|
||
1. "The writers of the Middle Ages are full of accounts of
|
||
nunneries that were like brothels. ... The inveterate prevalence of
|
||
incest among the clergy rendered it necessary again and again to
|
||
issue the most stringent enactments that priests should not be
|
||
permitted to live with their mothers or sisters. ... An Italian
|
||
bishop of the tenth century epigrammatically described the morals
|
||
of his tame, when he declared, that if he were to enforce the
|
||
canons against unchaste people administering ecclesiastical rites,
|
||
no one would be left in the Church except the boys." -- Lecky.
|
||
|
||
2. In the middle of the sixteenth century "the majority of
|
||
the clergy were nearly illiterate, and many of them addicted to
|
||
drunkenness and low vices. -- Hallam, "Const. Hist. of Eng."
|
||
|
||
3. "The clergy have ruined Italy." -- Brougham, "Pol. Phil."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
101
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
4. It was a significant prudence of many of the lay
|
||
Catholics, who were accustomed to insist that their priests should
|
||
take a concubine for the protection of the families of the
|
||
parishioners. ... It can hardly be questioned that the extreme
|
||
frequency of illicit connections among the clergy tended during
|
||
many centuries most actively to lower the moral tine of laity. ...
|
||
An impure chastity was fostered, which continually looked upon
|
||
marriage in its coarsest light. ... Another injurious consequence
|
||
resulting, in a great measure, from asceticism, was a tendency to
|
||
depreciate extremely the character and the position of woman." --
|
||
Lecky.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX N.
|
||
|
||
The great and main duty which a wife, as a wife, ought to
|
||
learn, and so learn as to practice it, is to be subject to her own
|
||
husband. ... There is not any husband to whom this honor of
|
||
submission is not due; no personal infirmity, frowardness of
|
||
nature; no, not even on the point of religion, doth deprive him of
|
||
it." -- Fergusson on "the Epistles."
|
||
|
||
2. "The sum of a wife's duty unto her husband is subjection."
|
||
-- Abernethy.
|
||
|
||
3. "We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty
|
||
of obedience [upon wives]; as every established fact which is too
|
||
bad to admit of any other defense, is always presented to us as an
|
||
injunction of religion. The Church, it is true, enjoins it in her
|
||
formularies." -- Mill.
|
||
|
||
"The principle of the modern movement in morals and in
|
||
polities, is that conduct, and conduct alone, entitles to respect:
|
||
that not what men are, but what they do constitutes their claim to
|
||
deference; that, above all, merit and not birth is the only
|
||
rightful claim to power and authority." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"Taking the care of people's lives out of their own hands and
|
||
relieving them from the consequences of their own acts, saps the
|
||
very foundation of the self-respect and self-control which are the
|
||
essential conditions both of individual prosperity and of social
|
||
virtue." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"Inferior classes of men always, at heart, feel disrespect
|
||
toward those who are subject to their power. -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
4. "Among those causes of human improvement that are of most
|
||
importance to the general welfare, must be included the total
|
||
annihilation of the prejudices which have established between the
|
||
sexes an inequality of right, fatal even to the party which it
|
||
favors. In vain might we seek for motives to justify the principle,
|
||
in difference of physical organization, of intellect, or of moral
|
||
sensibility. It had at first no other origin but abuse of strength,
|
||
and all the attempts which have since been made to support it are
|
||
idle sophisms" -- "Progress of the Human Mind," Condorcet.
|
||
|
||
5. Notwithstanding the work of such men is the Encyclopedists
|
||
of France and other liberal thinkers for the proper recognition of
|
||
women, the Church had held her grip so tight that upon the passage
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
102
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
of the bill, as late as 1848. giving to married women the right to
|
||
own their own property, the most doleful prophesies went up as to
|
||
the just retribution that would fall upon women for their wicked
|
||
insubordination, and upon the men who had defied divine commands so
|
||
far is to pass such a law. A recent writer tells us that Wm. A.
|
||
Stokes, in talking to a lady whom he blamed for its passage, said:
|
||
"We hold you responsible for that law, and I tell you now you will
|
||
live to rue the day when you opened such a Pandora's box in your
|
||
native State, and cast such an apple of discord into every family
|
||
of the State."
|
||
|
||
And the sermons that were preached against it -- the
|
||
prophecies of deacon and preacher -- were so numerous, so
|
||
denunciatory, and so violent that they form a queer and interesting
|
||
chapter in the history of the attitude of the Church toward women,
|
||
and illustrate, in our own time, how persistent it has been in its
|
||
efforts to prevent woman from sharing in the benefits of the higher
|
||
civilization of the nineteenth century.
|
||
|
||
But fortunately for women, Infidels are more numerous than
|
||
they ever were before, and the power of the Church is dying of dry
|
||
rot, or as Col. Ingersoll wittily says, of the combined influence
|
||
of softening of the brain and ossification of the heart.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX O.
|
||
|
||
"St. Gregory the Great describes the virtue of a priest, who
|
||
through motives of piety had discarded his wife. ... Their wives,
|
||
in immense numbers, were driven forth with hatred and with scorn.
|
||
... Pope Urban II. gave license to the nobles to reduce to slavery
|
||
the wives of priests who refused to abandon them." -- Lecky.
|
||
______
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX P.
|
||
|
||
1. "Hallam denies that respect for women is due to
|
||
Christianity." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2. "In England, wives are still occasionally led to the market
|
||
by a halter around the neck to be sold by the husband to the
|
||
highest bidder." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
"The sale of a wife with a halter around her neck is still a
|
||
legal transaction in England. The sale must be made in the cattle
|
||
market, as if she were a mare, all women being considered as mares
|
||
by old English law, and indeed called 'mares' in certain counties
|
||
where genuine old English law is still preserved." -- Borrow.
|
||
|
||
3. "Contempt for woman, the result of clerical teaching, is
|
||
shown in myriad forms." -- Gage.
|
||
|
||
4. "The legal subordination of one sex to another is wrong in
|
||
itself, and is now one of the chief hinderance to human
|
||
improvement." -- John Stuart Mill.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
103
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
5. "I have no relish for a community of goods resting on the
|
||
doctrine, that what is mine is yours, but what is yours is not
|
||
mine; and I should prefer to decline entering into such a compact
|
||
with anyone, though I were myself the person to profit by it." --
|
||
Ibid.
|
||
|
||
It will take a long time for that sort of morality to filter
|
||
into the skull of the Church, and when it does the skull will
|
||
burst.
|
||
|
||
6. "Certain beliefs have been inculcated, certain crimes
|
||
invented, in order to intimidate the masses. Hence the Church made
|
||
free thought the worst of sins, and the spirit of inquiry the worst
|
||
of blasphemies. ... As late as the time of Bunyan the chief
|
||
doctrine inculcated from the pulpit was obedience to the temporal
|
||
power. ... All these influences fell with crushing weight on
|
||
woman." -- Matilda Joslyn Gage in "Hist. Woman Suffrage."
|
||
|
||
7. "Taught that education for her was indelicate and
|
||
irreligious, she has been kept in such gross ignorance as to fall
|
||
a prey to superstition, and to glory in her degradation. ... Such
|
||
was the prejudice against a liberal education for women, that the
|
||
first public examination of a girl in geometry (1829) created as
|
||
bitter a storm of ridicule as has since assailed women who have
|
||
entered the law, the pulpit, or the medical profession." -- Ibid,
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX Q.
|
||
|
||
1. "The five writers to whose genius we owe the first attempt
|
||
at comprehensive views of history were Bolingbroke, Montesquieu,
|
||
Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon. Of these the second was but a cold
|
||
believer in Christianity, if, indeed, he believed in it at all; and
|
||
the other four were avowed and notorious infidels." -- Buckle.
|
||
|
||
2 "Here, then, we have the starting-point of progress --
|
||
skepticism. ... All, therefore, that men want is no hindrance from
|
||
their political and religious rulers. ... Until common minds doubt
|
||
respecting religion they can never receive any new scientific
|
||
conclusion at variance with it -- as Joshua and Copernicus." --
|
||
Ibid.
|
||
|
||
3. "The immortal work of Gibbon, of which the sagacity is, if
|
||
possible, equal to the learning, did find readers, but the
|
||
illustrious author was so cruelly reviled by men who called
|
||
themselves Christians, that it seemed doubtful if, after such an
|
||
example, subsequent writers would hazard their comfort and
|
||
happiness by attempting to write philosophic history. Middleton
|
||
wrote in 1750. ... As long as the theological spirit was alive
|
||
nothing could be effected." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
4. "The questions which presented themselves to the acuter
|
||
minds of a hundred years ago were present to the acuter minds who
|
||
lived hundreds of years before that. ... But the Church had known
|
||
how to deal with intellectual insurgents, from Abelard in the
|
||
twelfth century down to Bruno and Vanini in the seventeenth. They
|
||
were isolated, and for the most part submissive; and if they were
|
||
not, the arm of the Church was very long and her grasp mortal. ...
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
104
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
They [the thinkers] could have taught Europe earlier than the
|
||
Church allowed it to learn, that the sun does not go round the
|
||
earth, and that it is the earth which goes round the sun. ... After
|
||
the middle of the last century the insurrection against the
|
||
pretensions of the Church and against the doctrines of Christianity
|
||
was marked in one of its most important phases by a new, and most
|
||
significant, feature. ... It was an advance both in knowledge and
|
||
in moral motive. ... The philosophical movement was represented by
|
||
"Diderot" [leading the Encyclopaedist circle.] ... Broadly stated
|
||
the great central moral of it was this: that human nature is good,
|
||
that the world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place.
|
||
and that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and
|
||
bad institutions. This cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as
|
||
a commonplace and a truism. A hundred years ago in France it was a
|
||
wonderful gospel, and the beginning of a new dispensation. ... into
|
||
what fresh and unwelcome sunlight it brought the articles of the
|
||
old theology. ... Every social improvement since has been the
|
||
outcome of that new doctrine in one form or another. ... The
|
||
teaching of the Church paints men as fallen and depraved. The
|
||
deadly chagrin with which churchmen saw the new fabric rising was
|
||
very natural. ... The new secular knowledge clashed at a thousand
|
||
points, alike in letter and spirit, with the old sacred lore. ...
|
||
A hundred years ago this perception was vague and indefinite, but
|
||
there was an unmistakable apprehension that the Catholic ideal of
|
||
womanhood was no more adequate to the facts of life, than Catholic
|
||
views about science, or popery, or labor, or political order and
|
||
authority." -- Morley.
|
||
|
||
And it took the rising infidels to discover the fact. See
|
||
Morley, "Diderot," p. 76.
|
||
|
||
"The greatest fact in the intellectual history of the
|
||
eighteenth century is the decisive revolution that overtook the
|
||
sustaining conviction of the Church. The central conception, that
|
||
the universe was called into existence only to further its
|
||
Creator's purpose toward man, became incredible [by the light of
|
||
the new thought]. What seems to careless observers a mere
|
||
metaphysical dispute was in truth. and still is, the decisive
|
||
quarter of the great battle between theology and a philosophy
|
||
reconcilable with science." -- Morley.
|
||
|
||
"The man who ventured to use his mind [Diderot] was thrown
|
||
into the dungeon at Vincennes." -- Ibid.
|
||
|
||
5. "Those thinkers [Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot] taught
|
||
men to reason; reasoning well leads to acting well; justness in the
|
||
mind becomes justice in the heart. Those toilers for progress
|
||
labored usefully. ... The French Revolution was their soul. It was
|
||
their radiant manifestation. It came from them; we find them
|
||
everywhere in that blest and superb catastrophe, which formed the
|
||
conclusion of the past and the opening of the future. ... The new
|
||
society, the desire for equality and concession, and that beginning
|
||
of fraternity which called itself tolerance, reciprocal good-will
|
||
the just accord of men and rights, reason recognized as the supreme
|
||
law, the annihilation of prejudices and fixed opinions, the
|
||
serenity of souls, the spirit of indulgence and of pardon, harmony,
|
||
peace -- behold what has come from them!" -- Victor Hugo, "Oration
|
||
on Voltaire."
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
105
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX R.
|
||
|
||
"He [Mohammed] promulgated a mass of fables, which he
|
||
pretended to have received from heaven. ... After enjoying for
|
||
twenty years a power without bounds, and of which there exists no
|
||
other example, he announced publicly, that, if he had committed any
|
||
act of injustice, be was ready to make reparation. All were silent.
|
||
... He died; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to his people
|
||
will be seen to change the face of three-quarters of the globe. ...
|
||
I shall add that the religion of Mohammed is the most simple in its
|
||
dogmas, the least absurd in its practices, above all others
|
||
tolerant in its principles." --Condorcet.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX S.
|
||
|
||
The claim is so often and so boldly made that Infidelity
|
||
produces crime, and that Christianity, or belief, or faith, makes
|
||
people good, that the following statistics usually produce a rather
|
||
chilly sensation in the believer when presented in the midst of an
|
||
argument based upon the above mentioned claim. I have used it with
|
||
effect. The person upon whom it is used will never offer that
|
||
argument to you again. The following statistics were taken from the
|
||
British Parliamentary reports, made on the instance of Sir John
|
||
Trelawney, in 1873:
|
||
|
||
ENGLAND AND WALES.
|
||
|
||
Criminals in England and Wales in 1873 ............ 146,146
|
||
|
||
SECTARIAN AND INFIDEL POPULATION OF THE SAME.
|
||
|
||
Church of England ..................................... 6,933,935
|
||
Dissenters ............................................ 7,235.158
|
||
Catholics ............................................ 1,500,000
|
||
Jews ..................................................... 57,000
|
||
Infidels .............................................. 7,000,000
|
||
|
||
RELIGIOUS PERSUASIONS OF CRIMINALS OF THE SAME.
|
||
|
||
Church of England ......................................... 96,097
|
||
Catholics ................................................. 35,581
|
||
Dissenters ................................................ 10,648
|
||
Jews ......................................................... 256
|
||
Infidels ..................................................... 296
|
||
|
||
CRIMINALS TO 100,000 POPULATION.
|
||
|
||
Catholics .................................................. 2,500
|
||
Church of England .......................................... 1,400
|
||
Dissenters ................................................... 150
|
||
Infidels ....................................................... 5
|
||
|
||
These statistics are taken from the report of the British
|
||
Parliament, which, for learning and intelligence, as a deliberative
|
||
body, has not its superior, if it has its equal, in the world, and
|
||
it is surely a sufficiently Christian body to be accepted as
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
106
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
authority in this matter, since a large number of its members are
|
||
clergymen. These statistics hardly sustain the allegation that
|
||
"Infidelity is coupled with impurity."
|
||
|
||
We are willing to stand upon our record. But, lest it be
|
||
claimed that this is a British peculiarity, allow me to defer to
|
||
the patriotic sentiment of my readers by one other little set of
|
||
tables which, while not complete, is equally as suggestive.
|
||
|
||
"In sixty-six different prisons, jails, reformatories,
|
||
refuges, penitentiaries, and lock-ups there for the years given in
|
||
reports, 41,335 men and boys, women and girls, of the following
|
||
religious sects:
|
||
|
||
Catholics ......................................... 16,431
|
||
Church of England .................................. 9,975
|
||
Eighteen other Protestant denominations ........... 14,811
|
||
Universalists .......................................... 5
|
||
Jews, Chinese, and Mormons ........................... 110
|
||
Infidels (two so-called, one avowed) ................... 3
|
||
|
||
These included the prisons of Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee, New
|
||
York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, and Canada."
|
||
|
||
Present these two tables to those who assure you that crime
|
||
follows in the wake of Infidelity, and you will have time to take
|
||
a comfortable nap before your Christian friend returns to the
|
||
attack or braces up after the shock sustained by his sentiments and
|
||
inflicted by these two small but truly suggestive tables.
|
||
|
||
One cold fact like this will inoculate one of the faithful
|
||
with more modesty than an hour of usual argument based upon the
|
||
assumptions of the clergy and the ignorance of his hearers.
|
||
|
||
Infidels are not perfect. Many of them need reconstruction
|
||
sadly, but the above data seem to indicate that they compare rather
|
||
favorably with their fellow-men in the matter of good citizenship.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX T.
|
||
|
||
"Moreover, as Goethe has already shown, the celebrated Mosaic
|
||
moral precepts, the so-called Ten Commandments, were not upon the
|
||
tables upon which Moses wrote the laws of the covenant which God
|
||
made with his people.
|
||
|
||
"Even the extraordinary diversity of the many religions
|
||
diffused over the surface of the earth suffices to show that they
|
||
can stand in no necessary connection with morals, as it is well
|
||
known that wherever tolerably well-ordered political and social
|
||
conditions exist, the moral precepts in their essential principles
|
||
are the same, whilst when such conditions are wanting, a wild and
|
||
irregular confusion, or even an entire deficiency of moral notions
|
||
is met with. ["In China, where people are, as is well-known, very
|
||
indifferent or tolerant in religions matters, this fine proverb is
|
||
current: Religions are various, but reason is one, and we are all
|
||
brothers."] History also shows incontrovertibly that religion and
|
||
morality have by no means gone hand in hand in strength and
|
||
development, but that even contrariwise the most religious times
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
107
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
and countries have produced the greatest number of crimes and sins
|
||
against the laws of morality, and indeed, as daily experience
|
||
teaches, still produce them. The history of nearly all religions is
|
||
filled with such horrible abominations, massacres, and boundless
|
||
wickedness of every kind that at the mere recollection of them the
|
||
heart of a philanthropist seems to stand still, and we turn with
|
||
disgust and horror from a mental aberration which could produce
|
||
such deeds. If it is urged in vindication of religion that it has
|
||
advanced and elevated human civilization, even this merit appears
|
||
very doubtful in presence of the facts of history, and at least as
|
||
very rarely or isolatedly the case. In general, however, it cannot
|
||
be denied that most systems of religion have proved rather inimical
|
||
than friendly to civilization. For religion, as already stated,
|
||
tolerates no doubt, no discussion, no contradiction, no
|
||
investigations, by those eternal pioneers of the future of science
|
||
and intellect! Even the simple circumstance that our present state
|
||
of culture has already long since left far behind it all and even
|
||
the highest intellectual ideals established and elaborated by
|
||
former religions may show how little intellectual progress is
|
||
influenced by religion. Mankind is perpetually being thrown to and
|
||
fro between science, and religion, but it advances more
|
||
intellectually, morally and physically in proportion as it turns
|
||
away from religion and to science.
|
||
|
||
It is therefore clear that for our present age and for the
|
||
future a foundation must be sought and found for culture and
|
||
morality, different from that which can be furnished to us by
|
||
religion. It is not the fear of God that acts amelioratingly or
|
||
ennoblingly upon manners, of which the middle ages furnish us with
|
||
a striking proof; but the ennobling of the conception of the world
|
||
in general which goes hand in hand with the advance of
|
||
civilization. Let us then give up making a show of the profession
|
||
of hypocritical words of faith, the only purpose of which seems to
|
||
be that they may be continually shown to be lies by the actions and
|
||
deeds of their professors! The man of the future will feel far more
|
||
happy and contented when he has not to contend at every step of his
|
||
intellectual forward development with those tormenting
|
||
contradictions between knowledge and faith which plague his youth,
|
||
and occupy his mature age unnecessarily with the slow renunciation
|
||
of the notions which he imbibed in his youth. What we sacrifice to
|
||
God, we take away from mankind, and absorb a great part of his best
|
||
intellectual powers in the pursuit of an unattainable goal. At any
|
||
rate, the least that we can expect in this respect from the state
|
||
and society of the future is a complete separation between
|
||
ecclesiastical and worldly affairs, or an absolute emancipation of
|
||
the state and the school from every ecclesiastical influence.
|
||
Education must be founded upon knowledge, not upon faith; and
|
||
religion itself should be taught in the public schools only as
|
||
religious history and as an objective or scientific exposition of
|
||
the different religious systems prevailing among mankind. Any one
|
||
who, after such an education, still experiences the need of a
|
||
definite law or rule of faith may then attach himself to any
|
||
religious sect that may seem good to him, but cannot claim that the
|
||
community should bear the cost of this special fancy!
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
108
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"As regards Christianity, or the Paulinism which is falsely
|
||
called Christianity, it stands, by its dogmatic portion or
|
||
contents, in such striking and irreconcilable, nay absolutely
|
||
absurd contradiction with all the acquisitions and principles of
|
||
modern science that its future tragical fate can only be a question
|
||
of time. But even its ethical contents or its moral principles are
|
||
in no way essentially distinguished above those of other peoples,
|
||
and were equally well and in part better known to mankind even
|
||
before its appearance. Not only in this respect, but also in its
|
||
supposed character as the world-religion, it is excelled by the
|
||
much older and probably most widely diffused religious system in
|
||
the world, the celebrated Buddhism, which recognizes neither the
|
||
idea of a personal God, nor that of a personal duration, and
|
||
nevertheless teaches an extremely pure, amiable, and even ascetic
|
||
morality. The doctrine of Zoroaster or Zarathrustra also, 1800
|
||
years B.C., taught the principles of humanity and toleration for
|
||
those of different modes of thinking in a manner and purity which
|
||
were unknown to the Semitic religions and especially to
|
||
Christianity. Christianity originated and spread, as is well-known,
|
||
at a time of general decline of manners, and of very great moral
|
||
and national corruption; and its extraordinary success must be
|
||
partly explained by the prevalence of a sort of intellectual and
|
||
moral disease, which had overpowered the spirits of men after the
|
||
fall of the ancient civilization and under the demoralizing
|
||
influence of the gradual collapse of the great Roman empire. But
|
||
even at that time those who stood intellectually high and looked
|
||
deeply to things recognized the whole danger of this new turn of
|
||
mind, and it is very remarkable that the best and most benevolent
|
||
of the Roman emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius, Julian, etc., were
|
||
the most zealous persecutors of Christianity, whilst it was
|
||
tolerated by the bad ones, such as Commodus, Heliogabalus, etc.
|
||
When it had gradually attained the superiority, one of its first
|
||
sins against intellectual progress consisted in the destruction by
|
||
Christian fanaticism of the calibrated Library of Alexandria, which
|
||
contained all the intellectual treasures of antiquity -- an
|
||
incalculable loss to science, which can never be replaced. It is
|
||
usually asserted in praise of Christianity that in the middle ages
|
||
the Christian monasteries were the preservers of science and
|
||
literature, but even this is correct only in a very limited sense,
|
||
since boundless ignorance and rudeness generally prevailed in the
|
||
monasteries, and innumerable ecclesiastes could not even read.
|
||
Valuable literary treasures on parchment contained in the libraries
|
||
of the monasteries were destroyed, the monks when they wanted money
|
||
selling the books as parchment, or tearing out the leaves and
|
||
writing psalms upon them. Frequently they entirely effaced the
|
||
ancient classics, to make room for their foolish legends and
|
||
homilies; nay, the reading of the classics, such as Aristotle for
|
||
example, was directly forbidden by papal decrees.
|
||
|
||
"In New Spain Christian fanaticism immediately destroyed
|
||
whatever of arts and civilization existed among the natives, and
|
||
that this was not inconsiderable is shown by the numerous monuments
|
||
now in ruins which place beyond a doubt the former existence of a
|
||
tolerably high degree of culture. But in the place of this not a
|
||
trace of Christian civilization is now to be observed among the
|
||
existing Indians, and the resident Catholic clergy keep the Indians
|
||
purposely in a state of the greatest ignorance and stupidity (see,
|
||
Richthofen, Die Zustande der Republic Mexico, Berlin, 1854).
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
109
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"Thus Christianity has always acted consistently in accordance
|
||
with the principles of one of the fathers of the Church,
|
||
Tertullian, who says: 'Desire of knowledge is no longer necessary
|
||
since Jesus Christ, nor is investigation necessary since the
|
||
Gospel.' If the civilization of the European and especially of
|
||
Christian Nations has notwithstanding made such enormous progress
|
||
in the course of centuries, an unprejudiced consideration of
|
||
history can only tell us that this has taken place not by means of
|
||
Christianity, but in spite of it. And this is a sufficient
|
||
indication to what an extent this civilization must still be
|
||
capable of development when once it shall be completely freed from
|
||
the narrow bounds of old superstitious and religious
|
||
embarrassments!"
|
||
|
||
"We must therefore endeavor to form convictions which are not
|
||
to stand once and for all, as philosophers and theologians usually
|
||
do, but such as may change and become improved with. the advance of
|
||
knowledge. Whoever does not recognize this and gives himself up
|
||
once for all to a belief which he regards as final truth, whether
|
||
it be of a theological or philosophical kind, is of course
|
||
incapable of accepting a conviction supported upon scientific
|
||
grounds. Unfortunately our whole education is founded upon an early
|
||
systematic curbing and fettering of the intellect in the direction
|
||
of dogmatic (philosophical or theological) doctrines of faith, and
|
||
only a comparatively small number of strong minds succeed in after
|
||
years in freeing themselves by their own powers from these fetters,
|
||
whilst the majority remain captive in the accustomed bonds and form
|
||
their judgment in accordance with the celebrated saying of Bishop
|
||
Berkeley: 'Few men think; but all will have opinions.'" -- Buchner,
|
||
Man in the Past, Present, and Future."
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX U.
|
||
|
||
"And here it may be remarked, once for all, that no man who
|
||
has subscribed to creeds and formulas, whether in theology or
|
||
philosophy, can be an unbiased investigator of the truth or an
|
||
unprejudiced judge of the opinions of others. His sworn
|
||
preconceptions warping his discernment, adherence to his sect or
|
||
party engenders intolerance to the honest convictions of other
|
||
inquirers. Beliefs we may and must have, but a belief to be changed
|
||
with new and advancing knowledge impedes no progress, while a creed
|
||
subscribed to as ultimate truth, and sworn to be defended, not only
|
||
puts a bar to further research, but as a consequence throws the
|
||
odium of distrust on all that may seem to oppose it.
|
||
|
||
"Even when such odium cannot deter, it annoys and irritates;
|
||
hence the frequent unwillingness of men of science to come
|
||
prominently forward with the avowal of their beliefs.
|
||
|
||
"It is time this delicacy were thrown aside, and such
|
||
theologians plainly told that the skepticism and Infidelity -- if
|
||
skepticism and Infidelity there be -- lies all on their own side.
|
||
|
||
"There is no skepticism so offensive as that which doubts the
|
||
facts of honest and careful observation: no Infidelity so gross as
|
||
that which disbelieves the deductions of competent and unbiased
|
||
judgments." -- David Page, "Man," etc., Edinburgh, 1867.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
110
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
APPENDIX V.
|
||
|
||
Since I have recorded this incident of my lecture in Chicago,
|
||
it is peculiarly fitting and pleasant to be able to give the
|
||
following extract from the review of the first edition of this book
|
||
printed in the Chicago Times. No great daily paper would have dared
|
||
to print such a comment a few years ago. To-day it is stated as a
|
||
matter quite beyond controversy:
|
||
|
||
"She takes considerable pains to show what one would think
|
||
need scarcely be insisted upon in our day, that the morals of
|
||
civilization -- morals in general, indeed -- are not at all based
|
||
in or dependent upon religion, certainly not on Christianity, since
|
||
the so-called 'golden rule,' the highest principle of morality,
|
||
antedates Christianity a thousand years."
|
||
|
||
ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY AND OTHERS.
|
||
|
||
Up to the present time I have tried to reply personally to
|
||
each one who has favored me with a letter of thanks, criticism, or
|
||
praise of the little book, Men, Women, and Gods, and Other
|
||
Lectures," just published, but I find that if I continue, to do
|
||
this I shall have but little time for anything else.
|
||
|
||
The very unexpected welcome which the book has received
|
||
prompts me to take this plan and means of replying to many who have
|
||
honored me by writing me personal letters. First, permit me to
|
||
thank those, who have written letters of praise and gratitude, and
|
||
to say that, although I may be unable to reply in a private letter,
|
||
I am not indifferent to these evidences of your interest, and am
|
||
greatly helped in my work by your sympathy and encouragement. I
|
||
have also received most courteous letters from various clergymen
|
||
who, disagreeing with me, desire to convert me either by mail or
|
||
personal (private) interviews.
|
||
|
||
It is wholly impossible for me to grant these requests, since
|
||
my time and strength are demanded in other work, but I wish to say
|
||
here what I have written to several of my clerical correspondents,
|
||
and desire to say to them all.
|
||
|
||
Although I cannot enter into private correspondence with, nor
|
||
grant personal interviews to, such a number of our body, I am
|
||
entirely willing to respond in a public way to any replies to my
|
||
arguments which come under the following conditions:
|
||
|
||
1. On page fourteen of the introduction to my book Col.
|
||
Ingersoll says: "No human being can answer her arguments. There is
|
||
no answer. All the priests in the world cannot explain away her
|
||
objections. There is no explanation. They should remain dumb unless
|
||
they can show that the impossible is the probable, that slavery is
|
||
better than freedom, that polygamy is the friend of woman, that the
|
||
innocent can justly suffer for the guilty, that to persecute for
|
||
opinion's sake is an act of love and worship."
|
||
|
||
Now, whenever any one of these gentlemen who wish to convert
|
||
me will show that the Colonel is wrong in this brief paragraph;
|
||
whenever they will, in print or in public, refute the arguments to
|
||
which he refers, and to which they object, I shall not be slow to
|
||
respond.
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
111
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
2. It must be argument, not personal abuse, and it must be
|
||
conducted in a courteous manner and tone.
|
||
|
||
3. It must proceed upon the basis that I am as honest, as
|
||
earnest, and as virtuous in my motives and intentions as they are
|
||
in theirs.
|
||
|
||
Now, surely these gentlemen cannot object to these simple
|
||
requirements; and since some of them are men whose names are
|
||
proceeded by a title and followed by several capital letters from
|
||
D.D. to O.S.F. -- (which last I, in my ignorance, guess at as
|
||
meaning Order of St. Francis, but shall like to be corrected if I
|
||
am wrong) they must believe that to answer the arguments themselves
|
||
is both simple and easy.
|
||
|
||
If they do not so believe they surely have no right to occupy
|
||
the positions which they do occupy. If they do so believe it will
|
||
do much more good to answer them publicly, since they have been
|
||
made publicly, and are already in the hands of several thousand
|
||
people, who could not be reached by any amount of eloquence poured
|
||
out on my devoted head in the privacy of ny own parlor (or writing-
|
||
desk).
|
||
|
||
Therefore, gentlemen, permit me to say to you all that which
|
||
I have already written to several of you personally -- that Col.
|
||
Ingersoll's paragraph, quoted above, expresses my own views and
|
||
those of a great many other people, and will continue so to do so
|
||
long as your efforts to show that he is wrong are only whispered to
|
||
me behind a fun, or in the strict seclusion of a letter marked
|
||
"private and personal."
|
||
|
||
The arguments I have given against the prevailing Christian
|
||
dogmas and usages, which you uphold, are neither private nor
|
||
personal, nor shall I allow them to take that phase. Life is too
|
||
short for me to spend hours day after day in sustaining, in
|
||
private, a public argument which has never been (and, in my
|
||
opinion, never will be) refuted. And it would do no good to the
|
||
thousands whom you are pleased to say you fear will be led astray
|
||
by my position. You have a magnificent opportunity to lead them
|
||
back again by honest public letters, or lectures, or sermons, not
|
||
by an afternoon's chat with me.
|
||
|
||
And, while I recognize the courtesy of your pressing requests
|
||
(made, without exception, in the most gentlemanly terms) to permit
|
||
you to meet me personally and refute my arguments, I feel compelled
|
||
to say that, unless you are willing to show the courage of your
|
||
convictions, and the quality of your defense, to the public, I fear
|
||
they would have no weight with me, and I should have wasted your
|
||
precious time as well as my own, which I should feel I had no right
|
||
to do, nor to allow you to do, without this frank statement of the
|
||
case.
|
||
|
||
Now, do not suppose that I have the slightest objection to
|
||
meeting the clergy personally and socially. Upon the contrary, many
|
||
of my friends are clergymen -- even bishops -- but candor compels
|
||
me, to state that up to the present time not one of them has
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
112
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
(either privately or otherwise) been able to answer either of the
|
||
first two lectures in that little book, and as to the third one, no
|
||
one of them, in my opinion, will ever try to answer it.
|
||
|
||
Time will show whether I am right in this.
|
||
|
||
In the mean time accept my thanks for your interest, and
|
||
believe me,
|
||
|
||
Sincerely,
|
||
|
||
HELEN H. GARDENER.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
LETTER TO THE CLEVELAND CONGRESS OF
|
||
FREETHINKERS, OCTOBER, 1885.
|
||
|
||
I send my greetings to the Congress of Freethinkers assembled
|
||
at Cleveland, and regret, more than I can express that I am unable
|
||
to be there and hear the all the good things you will hear, and see
|
||
all the earnest workers you will see.
|
||
|
||
The Freethinkers of America ought to be a very proud and
|
||
enthusiastic body, when they have in their presidential chair the
|
||
ablest orator of modern times, and the broadest, bravest, and most
|
||
comprehensive intellect that has ever been called "Mr. President"
|
||
in this land of bravery and presidents. Washington was a patriot of
|
||
whom we are all justly proud. He was liberal in his religion and
|
||
progressive in his views of personal rights. And yet he had his
|
||
limitations. To him liberty and personal rights were modified by
|
||
the words, "free white, adult, males." He got no farther. He who
|
||
fought for freedom upheld slavery! And yet we are all proud and
|
||
glad to pay honor and respect to the memory of Washington.
|
||
|
||
Abraham Lincoln we place still higher on the roll of honor;
|
||
for, added to his still more liberal religious views, in his
|
||
conceptions of freedom and justice he had at least two fewer
|
||
limitations than had the patriot of 1776. He, struck both "free"
|
||
and "white" from his mental black list, and gave once more an
|
||
impulse to the human race.
|
||
|
||
But what shall we say of our president -- Ingersoll? A man who
|
||
in ten short years has carried mental liberty into every household
|
||
in America -- who is without limitations in religion, and modifies
|
||
justice with no prefix. A man who, with unequaled oratory,
|
||
champions Freedom -- not the, "free white, adult, male freedom of
|
||
Washington. A man who has breasted a whirlwind of destruction and
|
||
abuse for Justice -- not the "male, adult" justice of Lincoln, but
|
||
the freedom and justice, without limitation, for man, woman, and
|
||
child."
|
||
|
||
With such a leader, what should not be achieved? With such a
|
||
champion, what cause could fail? If the people ever place such a
|
||
man in the White House, the nations of this earth will know, for
|
||
the first time, the real meaning of a free government under secular
|
||
administration.
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
113
|
||
|
||
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
|
||
|
||
"A government of the people, for the people, by the people,"
|
||
will be more than simply a high-sounding phrase, which, read by the
|
||
light of the past, was only a bitter mockery to a race in chains;
|
||
and, read by the light of the present, is a choice bit of grim
|
||
humor to half of a nation in petticoats. But so long as the taste
|
||
of the voter is such that he prefers to place in the executive
|
||
chair a type of man so eminently fitted for private life that when
|
||
you want to find him you have to shake the chair to see if he is in
|
||
it, just so long will there be no danger that the lightning will
|
||
strike so as to deprive the Freethinkers of one man in America who
|
||
could fill the national executive chair full, and strain the back
|
||
and sides a little getting in.
|
||
|
||
Once more I send greetings to the Convention, with the hope
|
||
that you may have as grand a time as you ought to have, and that
|
||
Freethought will receive a new impulse from the harmony and
|
||
enthusiasm of this meeting.
|
||
|
||
Sincerely,
|
||
|
||
HELEN H. GARDENER.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books, magazines,
|
||
newspapers, pamphlets, etc. please contact us, we need to give them
|
||
back to America. If you have such books please send us a list that
|
||
includes Title, Author, publication date, condition and price.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
BANK of WISDOM
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
114
|
||
|