780 lines
40 KiB
D
780 lines
40 KiB
D
12 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
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
The Thinker's Library, NO. 4
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN
|
||
FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
and Other Selections
|
||
from the Works of
|
||
|
||
CHARLES BRADLAUGH
|
||
|
||
WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY HIS DAUGHTER
|
||
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER
|
||
|
||
LONDON:
|
||
|
||
WATTS & CO:
|
||
|
||
5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
|
||
|
||
THROWN on his own resources as a boy, with every man's hand
|
||
against him, my father was both essentially and by force of
|
||
circumstances a man of action, and his writings were usually
|
||
inspired by the need of the time. His pen and his tongue were
|
||
servants to be used to further the causes he had at heart: weapons
|
||
with which he sought to overcome the dragons of intolerance and
|
||
superstition, Most of his writings appeared in his weekly journal,
|
||
the 'National Reformer,' or were issued in pamphlet form. There
|
||
are, unfortunately, few books to his credit; for these demanded
|
||
more time than he was able to give.
|
||
|
||
The essay, "Humanity's Gain from Unbelief," which gives the
|
||
title to the present selection, was prepared at the request of
|
||
Allen Thorndike Rice for the 'North American Review' of March,
|
||
1889. Although written less than two years before his death and
|
||
when disease had already begun to sap his fine physique, the paper
|
||
shows no sign of failing vigor in style or argument. In the opening
|
||
sentences, commenting on the continuous modification in the dogma
|
||
and practice of religion, he used the phrase, "None sees a religion
|
||
die," which has been quoted again and again down to quite recent
|
||
times, While acknowledging the good done by individual Christians,
|
||
he contended that the special services rendered to human progress
|
||
by these exceptional men were not in consequence of their adhesion
|
||
to Christianity, but in spite of it, and in direct opposition to
|
||
Biblical enactments.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
1
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
This essay was immediately reprinted in various parts of
|
||
America and Australia as well as here in England, and at once gave
|
||
rise to a storm of controversy. Sermons were preached in
|
||
refutation, and discussions took place in the provincial press.
|
||
The 'Newcastle Weekly Chronicle,' in particular, opened its columns
|
||
to a lengthy discussion of the subject; and, as a consequence, in
|
||
the following June Mr. Bradlaugh received an invitation from the
|
||
Rev. Marsden Gibson, a Newcastle vicar, to substantiate in debate
|
||
the statements he had made. This debate took place in September,
|
||
and caused much excitement in and around Newcastle. People came
|
||
from long distances to hear it, and the hall proved too small to
|
||
accommodate the crowds who desired to attend, so that large numbers
|
||
were turned away on each of the two nights. Years afterwards some
|
||
pitmen in a Durham mining village, talking to me of that occasion,
|
||
recalled with pride and delight how they had clubbed together to
|
||
hire a break to take them to Newcastle and back, and how they never
|
||
went to bed that night but stayed up going over the points raised
|
||
in the debate until the hour of their morning shift came round.
|
||
Such was the enthusiasm of yester-year.
|
||
|
||
The word "Atheist" has always been used as a term of obloquy
|
||
by Christians, even by educated Christians who have not the excuse
|
||
of ignorance. Misapprehension and deliberate misrepresentation of
|
||
Atheism have been constant, and indeed are not unknown at the
|
||
present day. In the late seventies of the last century my father
|
||
wrote "A Plea for Atheism," a brief but careful examination of what
|
||
Atheism really is and what it is not. He wrote this, he said, in
|
||
the hope of removing some of the many prejudices against Atheists.
|
||
In comparing Atheism with Theism he gave special consideration to
|
||
the Baird lectures upon Theism, then recently delivered by
|
||
Professor Flint.
|
||
|
||
The "Doubts in Dialogue," of which some are included in this
|
||
selection, were written from time to time between 1884 and January,
|
||
1891 -- the month in which my father died. The "Doubts " dealt with
|
||
were either put to him personally by letter or by spoken word, or
|
||
were suggested by some book he had been reading. They represent the
|
||
opinions upon religious questions held by him up to the very hour
|
||
of his death.
|
||
|
||
Just recently the Rev. R.J. Campbell declared that "it is not
|
||
Romanism, but secularism, that is the most dangerous enemy of true
|
||
religion to-day." What "true religion" is is a perennial matter of
|
||
dispute among religionists, but I presume that at the time of
|
||
writing the Rev. R.J. Campbell believed it was to be found in the
|
||
Church of England. In any case, these selections from the works of
|
||
my father are issued in order that they may play their part in
|
||
promoting the cause of "secularism" in the future as they have done
|
||
in the past. Now, as always, the open discussion of questions which
|
||
concern the welfare of humanity is a fundamental principle of
|
||
Rationalism.
|
||
|
||
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
|
||
|
||
January, 1929.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
CONTENTS
|
||
(of origional book)
|
||
PAGE
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF 1
|
||
A PLEA FOR ATHEISM 23
|
||
WHO WAS JESUS CHRIST, AND WHAT DID HE TEACH? 59
|
||
DOUBTS IN DIALOGUE 90
|
||
(These titles are in other files in this computer series.)
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
by
|
||
Charles Bradlough
|
||
|
||
AS an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been
|
||
a real gainer from skepticism, and that the gradual and growing
|
||
rejection of Christianity -- like the rejection of the faiths which
|
||
preceded it -- has in fact added, and will add, to man's happiness
|
||
and well-being. I maintain that in physics science is the outcome
|
||
of skepticism, and that general progress is impossible without
|
||
skepticism on matters of religion. I mean by religion every form of
|
||
belief which accepts or asserts the supernatural. I write as a
|
||
Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning all phenomena, every
|
||
phenomenon, all that is necessary for the happening of any and
|
||
every phenomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and at any
|
||
given time is the measure of the civilization attained by what
|
||
Guizot described as the "juste milieu" of those who profess it.
|
||
Each religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and
|
||
practice by the gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it
|
||
is professed. Each discovery destroys in whole or part some
|
||
theretofore cherished belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by
|
||
any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion
|
||
die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs:
|
||
the decay is long and -- like the glacier march -- is perceptible
|
||
only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long
|
||
periods. A superseded religion may often be traced in the
|
||
festivals, ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has
|
||
replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in
|
||
popular customs, in old wives' stories, and in children's tales.
|
||
|
||
It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood,
|
||
that I should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very
|
||
attempt at this explanation there will, I think, be found strong
|
||
illustration of the value of unbelief. Christianity in practice may
|
||
be gathered from its more ancient forms, represented by the Roman
|
||
Catholic and the Greek Churches, or from the various Churches which
|
||
have grown up in the last few centuries. Each of these Churches
|
||
calls itself Christian. Some of them deny the right of the others
|
||
to use the word Christian. Some Christian Churches treat, or have
|
||
treated, other Christian Churches as heretics or unbelievers. The
|
||
Roman Catholics and the Protestants in Great Britain and Ireland
|
||
have in turn been terribly cruel one to the other; and the
|
||
ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enacted
|
||
by the English Protestants against English and Irish Papists, are
|
||
a disgrace to civilization. These penal laws, enduring longest in
|
||
Ireland, still bear fruit in much of the political mischief and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
agrarian crime of to-day. It is only the tolerant indifference of
|
||
skepticism that, one after the other, has repealed most of the laws
|
||
directed by the Established Christian Church against Papists and
|
||
Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church of England
|
||
clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing
|
||
nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of
|
||
such denounciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox
|
||
catechism written by the Rev. F.A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex,
|
||
the popularity of which is vouched by the fact that it has gone
|
||
through ten editions. This catechism for little children teaches
|
||
that "Dissent is a great sin," and that Dissenters "worship God
|
||
according to their own evil and corrupt imaginations, and not
|
||
according to his revealed will, and therefore their worship is
|
||
idolatrous." Church of England Christians and Dissenting
|
||
Christians, when fraternizing amongst themselves, often publicly
|
||
draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these have
|
||
any sort of right to call themselves Christians.
|
||
|
||
In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were
|
||
flogged and imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early
|
||
Christian settlers in New England, escaping from the persecution of
|
||
Old World Christians, showed scant mercy to the followers of Fox
|
||
and Penn. It is customary, in controversy, for those advocating the
|
||
claims of Christianity, to include all good men in nominally
|
||
Christian countries, as if such good were the result of
|
||
Christianity. while they contend that evil which exists prevails in
|
||
spite of Christianity. I shall try to make out that the
|
||
ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by
|
||
the heretics of each age, though I quote concede that the men and
|
||
women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one
|
||
century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later
|
||
generation.
|
||
|
||
What, then, is Christianity? As a system or scheme of
|
||
doctrine, Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from
|
||
the Old and New Testaments. It is true that some Christians to-day
|
||
desire to escape from submission to portions, at any rate, of the
|
||
Old Testament; but this very tendency seems to me to be part of the
|
||
result of the beneficial heresy for which I am pleading. Man's
|
||
humanity has revolted against Old Testament barbarism, and
|
||
therefore he has attempted to dissociate the Old Testament from
|
||
Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are accepted as God's
|
||
revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim than any other
|
||
of the world's many religions, if no such claim can be made out for
|
||
it apart from the Bible. And though it is quite true that some who
|
||
deem themselves Christians put the Old Testament completely in the
|
||
background, this is, I allege, because they are out-growing their
|
||
Christianity. Without the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of
|
||
Jesus, Christianity, as a religion, is naught; but unless the story
|
||
of Adam's fall is accepted, the redemption from the consequences of
|
||
that fall cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the
|
||
United States the Old and New Testaments are forced on the people
|
||
as part of Christianity; for it is blasphemy at common law to deny
|
||
the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine
|
||
authority; and such denial is punishable with fine and
|
||
imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity intended
|
||
throughout this paper is therefore the rejection of the Old and New
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the rejection alike
|
||
of the authorized teachings of the Church of Rome and of the Church
|
||
of England, as these may be found in the Bible, the creeds, the
|
||
encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and homilies of either or
|
||
both of these Churches. It is the rejection of the Christianity of
|
||
Luther, of Calvin, and of Wesley.
|
||
|
||
A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the
|
||
progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and
|
||
the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent
|
||
servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other
|
||
of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services
|
||
rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been
|
||
in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of
|
||
it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have
|
||
been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical
|
||
enactments.
|
||
|
||
A.S. Farrar says [Farrar's "Critical History of Free
|
||
Thought."] that Christianity "asserts authority over religious
|
||
belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God,
|
||
and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of
|
||
possessing sacred books, which are at once the record and the
|
||
instrument of the communication, written by men endowed with
|
||
supernatural inspiration." Unbelievers refuse to submit to the
|
||
asserted authority, and deny this claim of control over human
|
||
thought; they allege that every effort at freethinking must provoke
|
||
sturdier thought.
|
||
|
||
Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief --
|
||
i.e., in the abolition of slavery in some countries, in the
|
||
abolition of the slave trade in most civilized countries, and in
|
||
the tendency to its total abolition, I am unaware of any religion
|
||
in the world which in the past forbade slavery. The professors of
|
||
Christianity for ages supported it; the Old Testament repeatedly
|
||
sanctioned it by special laws; the New Testament has no repealing
|
||
declaration. Though we are at the close of the nineteenth century
|
||
of the Christian era, it is only during the past three-quarters of
|
||
a century that the battle for freedom has been gradually won. It is
|
||
scarcely a quarter of a century since the famous emancipation
|
||
amendment was carried to the United States Constitution. And it is
|
||
impossible for any well-informed Christian to deny that the
|
||
abolition movement in North America was most steadily and bitterly
|
||
a opposed by the religious bodies in the various States. Henry
|
||
Wilson, in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America";
|
||
Samuel J. May, in his "Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict";
|
||
and J. Greenleaf Whittier, in his poems, alike are witnesses that
|
||
the Bible and pulpit, the Church and its great influence, were used
|
||
against abolition and in favor of the slave-owner. I know that
|
||
Christians in the present day often declare that Christianity had
|
||
a large share in bringing about the abolition of slavery, and this
|
||
because men professing Christianity were abolitionists. I plead
|
||
that these so-called Christian abolitionists were men and women
|
||
whose humanity, recognizing freedom for all, was in this in direct
|
||
conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty years since the
|
||
European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the slave
|
||
trade. What of the effect of Christianity on these powers in the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
centuries which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet pleaded
|
||
powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-
|
||
holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal
|
||
held slaves. Porto Rico freedom is not of long date: and Cuban
|
||
emancipation is even yet newer. It was a Christian King, Charles V,
|
||
and a Christian friar, who founded in Spanish America the slave
|
||
trade between the Old World and the New. For some 1800 years,
|
||
almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, bred
|
||
slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool less than
|
||
100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. During the ninth
|
||
century Greek Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the
|
||
eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome,
|
||
and the profit went to the Church.
|
||
|
||
It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a
|
||
Christian. But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted
|
||
with unbelief. As an abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus xxv.
|
||
44-6; he must have rejected Exodus xxi. 2-6; he could not have
|
||
accepted the many permissions and injunctions by the Bible deity to
|
||
his chosen people to capture and hold slaves. In the House of
|
||
Commons on 18th February, 1796, Wilberforce reminded that Christian
|
||
assembly that infidel and anarchic France had given liberty to the
|
||
Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic England was "obstinately
|
||
continuing a system of cruelty and injustice."
|
||
|
||
Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery, found
|
||
the whole influence of the English Court, and the great weight of
|
||
the Episcopal Bench, against him. George III, a most Christian
|
||
king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and the
|
||
Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting freedom to
|
||
the slave. When Christian missionaries some sixty-two years ago
|
||
preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of Christian England,
|
||
they were treated by Christian judges, holding commission from
|
||
Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A Christian
|
||
commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of England,
|
||
signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as the
|
||
year 1824. In the evidence before a Christian court-martial, a
|
||
missionary is charged with having tended to make the negroes
|
||
dissatisfied with their condition as slaves, and with having
|
||
promoted discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the slaves against
|
||
their lawful masters. For this the Christian judges sentenced the
|
||
Demerara abolitionist missionary to be hanged by the neck till he
|
||
was dead. The judges belonged to the Established Church; the
|
||
missionary was a Methodist. In this the Church of England
|
||
Christians in Demerara were no worse than Christians of other
|
||
sects; their Roman Catholic Christian brethren in St. Domingo
|
||
fiercely attacked the Jesuits as criminals because they treated
|
||
negroes as though they were men and women, in encouraging "two
|
||
slaves to separate their interest and safety from that of the
|
||
gang," whilst orthodox Christians let them couple promiscuously and
|
||
breed for the benefit of their owners like any other of their
|
||
plantation cattle. In 1823 the 'Royal Gazette' (Christian) of
|
||
Demerara said: "We shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves,
|
||
who are bylaw our property, till you can demonstrate that when they
|
||
are made religious and knowing they will continue to be our
|
||
slaves."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most earnest
|
||
abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in Boston,
|
||
Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in which to
|
||
speak, was the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the "infidel"
|
||
editor of the 'Boston investigator,' who had been sent to gaol for
|
||
blasphemy. Every Christian sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd
|
||
Garrison the use of the buildings they severally controlled. Lloyd
|
||
Garrison told me himself how honored deacons of a Christian Church
|
||
joined in an actual attempt to hang him.
|
||
|
||
When abolition was, advocated in the United States in 1790,
|
||
the representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the
|
||
Southern clergy did not condemn either slavery or the slave trade
|
||
and Mr. Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded that
|
||
"from Genesis to Revelation" the current was favorable to slavery.
|
||
Elias Hicks, the brave Abolitionist Quaker, was denounced as an
|
||
Atheist, and less than twenty years ago a Hicksite Quaker was
|
||
expelled from one of the Southern American Legislatures, because of
|
||
the reputed irreligion of these abolitionist "Friends."
|
||
|
||
When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North
|
||
America, large numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination
|
||
were found ready to defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the
|
||
famous abolitionist, was driven from the pulpit as irreligious,
|
||
solely because of his attacks on slave-holding. Northern clergymen
|
||
tried to induce "silver tongued" Wendell Phillips to abandon his
|
||
advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits rang with praises for the
|
||
murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The slayers of Elijah Lovejoy
|
||
were highly reputed Christian men.
|
||
|
||
Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church
|
||
exerted its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European
|
||
Civilization," vol. i., p.110)" "It has often been repeated that
|
||
the abolition of slavery among modem people is entirely due to
|
||
Christians. That, I think, is saying too much. Slavery existed for
|
||
a long period in the heart of Christian society, without its being
|
||
particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude of causes, and a
|
||
great development in other ideas and principles of civilization,
|
||
were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all
|
||
iniquities." And my contention is that this "development in other
|
||
ideas and principles of civilization" was long retarded by
|
||
Governments in which the Christian Church was dominant. The men who
|
||
advocated liberty were imprisoned, racked, and burned, so long as
|
||
the Church was strong enough to be merciless.
|
||
|
||
The Rev. Francis Minton, Rector of Middlewich, in his recent
|
||
earnest volume ["Capital and Wages," p. 19] on the struggles of
|
||
labor, admits that "a few centuries ago slavery was acknowledged
|
||
throughout Christendom to have the divine sanction. ... Neither the
|
||
exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the belief in
|
||
The righteousness of slavery, can be defined. It was doubtless due
|
||
to a combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the
|
||
recognition of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline
|
||
of the belief the abolition of slavery took place."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian
|
||
Scotland in the seventeenth century, where the white coal workers
|
||
and salt workers of East Lothian were chattels, as were their negro
|
||
brethren in the Southern States thirty years since; they "went to
|
||
those who succeeded to the property of the works, and they could be
|
||
sold, bartered, or pawned." ["Perversion of Scotland," p. 197.]
|
||
"There is," says J.M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant
|
||
clergy of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which
|
||
grew up before their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after
|
||
republican and irreligious France had set the example, that it was
|
||
legally abolished."
|
||
|
||
Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief,
|
||
or rather disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the
|
||
brutality by Christians towards, those suspected of witchcraft, the
|
||
hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably
|
||
great so long as belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the
|
||
past two centuries, and especially those of the eighteenth century,
|
||
might have benefitted mankind much earlier and much more largely,
|
||
but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and the shocking ferocity
|
||
exhibited against those suspected of necromancy. After quoting a
|
||
large number of cases of trial and punishment for witchcraft from
|
||
official records in Scotland, J.M. Robertson says: "The people seem
|
||
to have passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they became
|
||
more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church,
|
||
till after many generations the slow spread of human science began
|
||
to counteract the ravages, of superstition, the clergy resisting
|
||
reason and humanity to the last."
|
||
|
||
The Rev. Mr. Minton ["Capital and Wages," pp. 15, 16.]
|
||
concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which has rendered
|
||
the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft
|
||
grotesquely ridiculous." He admits that "for more than 1,500 years
|
||
the belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom," and that
|
||
"the public mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in
|
||
the economy of nature." He adds: "If we ask why the world now
|
||
rejects what was once so unquestioningly believed, "we can only
|
||
reply that advancing knowledge has gradually undermined the
|
||
belief."
|
||
|
||
In a letter recently sent to the 'Pall Mall Gazette' against
|
||
modem Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares "that the older form
|
||
of the same fundamental delusion -- the belief in possession and in
|
||
witchcraft -- gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and
|
||
seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent
|
||
men, women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more
|
||
murderous than any to which the Christians of the first three
|
||
centuries were subjected by the authorities of pagan Rome." And
|
||
Professor Huxley adds: "No one deserves much blame for being
|
||
deceived in these matters. We are all intellectually handicapped in
|
||
youth by the incessant repetition of the stories about possession
|
||
and witchcraft in both the Old and the New Testaments. The majority
|
||
of us are taught nothing which will help us to observe accurately
|
||
and to interpret observations with due caution."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was
|
||
disfigured by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure
|
||
from the Christian Churches, which Acts have been repealed only in,
|
||
consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "Thou shalt
|
||
not suffer a witch to live." The statute I James 1, C. 12,
|
||
condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or
|
||
consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or
|
||
rewarding any evil spirit," or generally practicing any "infernal
|
||
arts." This was not repealed until the eighteenth century was far
|
||
advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280 years ago have ensured
|
||
martyrdom for its inventor; the utilization of electric force to
|
||
transmit messages around the world would have been clearly the
|
||
practice of an infernal art. At least we may plead that unbelief
|
||
has healed the bleeding feet of Science, and made the road free for
|
||
her upward march.
|
||
|
||
Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has
|
||
been apparent in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on
|
||
the unbelief in the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were
|
||
examples either of demoniacal possession or of special visitation
|
||
of deity? For centuries under Christianity mental disease was most
|
||
ignorantly treated. Exorcism, shackles, and the whip were the
|
||
penalties rather than the curatives for mental maladies. From the
|
||
heretical departure of Pinel at the close of the last century to
|
||
the position of Maudsley to-day, every step illustrates the march
|
||
of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in the unbelief not yet
|
||
complete, but now largely preponderant, in the dogma that sickness,
|
||
pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine anger, the
|
||
results of which could neither be avoided nor prevented. The
|
||
Christian Churches have done little or nothing to dispel this
|
||
superstition. The official and authorized prayers of the principal
|
||
denominations, even to-day, reaffirm it. Modern study of the laws
|
||
of health, experiments in sanitary improvements, more careful
|
||
applications of medical knowledge, have proved more efficacious in
|
||
preventing or diminishing plagues and pestilence than have the
|
||
intervention of the priest or the practice of prayer. Those in
|
||
England who hold the old faith that prayer will suffice to cure
|
||
disease are to-day termed "peculiar people," and are occasionally
|
||
indicted for manslaughter when their sick children die, because the
|
||
parents have trusted to God instead of appealing to the resources
|
||
of science.
|
||
|
||
It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the
|
||
Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been
|
||
overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our
|
||
little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon
|
||
stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its
|
||
record. As Buckle, arguing for the morality of skepticism, says:
|
||
["History of Civilization," vol. 1, p. 345.] "As long as men refer
|
||
the movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God, and as
|
||
long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by which
|
||
the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the
|
||
blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural
|
||
appearances. Before they could dare to investigate the causes of
|
||
these mysterious phenomena, it is necessary that they should
|
||
believe, or at all events that they should suspect, that the
|
||
phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by the human
|
||
mind."
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to
|
||
humanity has been almost solely in measure of the rejection of the
|
||
Christian theory. A century since it was almost universally held
|
||
that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or, at any rate, that
|
||
by the sin of the first man, Adam, death commenced about that
|
||
period. Ethnology and Anthropology have only been possible in so
|
||
far as, adopting the regretful words of Sir, W. Jones, "intelligent
|
||
and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the
|
||
accounts delivered by Moses concerning the primitive world."
|
||
|
||
Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung
|
||
up against the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe
|
||
that the monarch is "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be
|
||
are ordained of God." In the struggles for political freedom the
|
||
weight of the Church was mostly thrown on the side of the tyrant.
|
||
The homilies of the Church of England, declare that "even the
|
||
wicked rulers have their power and authority from God," and that
|
||
"such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against their
|
||
princes disobey God and procure their own damnation." It can
|
||
scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States
|
||
of America that the origin of their liberties was in the rejection
|
||
of faith in the divine right of George III.
|
||
|
||
Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend, that it is not
|
||
certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible
|
||
doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great
|
||
majority of the human family? Is it not gain to have diminished the
|
||
faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be
|
||
content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?
|
||
|
||
If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as
|
||
justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty
|
||
for the utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing
|
||
unbelief. At one period in Christendom each Government acted as
|
||
though only one religious faith could be true, and as though the
|
||
holding, or at any rate the making known, any other opinion was a
|
||
criminal act deserving punishment. Under the one word "infidel,"
|
||
even as late as Lord Coke, were classed together all who were not
|
||
Christians, oven though they were Mohammedans, Brahmins, or Jews.
|
||
All who did not accept the Christian faith were sweepingly
|
||
denounced as infidels and therefore 'hors de la loi.' One hundred
|
||
and forty-five years since, the Attorney-General, pleading in our
|
||
highest court, said: [Omychund v. Barker, I Atkyns 29.] "What is
|
||
the definition of an infidel? Why, one who does not believe in the
|
||
Christian religion. Then a Jew is an infidel." And English history
|
||
for several centuries prior to the Commonwealth shows how
|
||
habitually and most atrociously Christian kings, Christian courts,
|
||
and Christian churches persecuted and harassed these infidel Jews.
|
||
There was a time in England when Jews were such infidels that they
|
||
were not even avowed to be sworn as witnesses. In 1740 a legacy
|
||
left for establishing an assembly for the reading of the Jewish
|
||
scriptures was held to be void [D'Costa v. D'Pays, Amb. 228.]
|
||
because it was "for the propagation of the Jewish law in
|
||
contradiction to the, Christian religion." It is only in very
|
||
modern times that municipal rights have been accorded in England to
|
||
Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have been allowed to sit
|
||
in Parliament. In 1851 the late Mr. Newdegate in debate [3 Hansard
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
cxvi. 381.] objected "that they should have sitting in that House
|
||
an individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor." Lord
|
||
Chief. Justice Raymond has shown [1 Lord Raymond's records 282,
|
||
Wells v. Williams.] how it was that Christian intolerance was
|
||
gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but heretofore
|
||
he could not; for then they were looked upon as enemies, but now
|
||
commerce has taught the world more humanity."
|
||
|
||
Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right
|
||
of any kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt
|
||
was payable. The plea of alien infidel as answer to a claim was
|
||
actually pleaded in court as late as 1737. [Ramkissenseat v.
|
||
Barker, 1 Atkyus, 51.] In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says [7
|
||
Coke's reports, Calvin's case.]: "All infidels are in law Perpetui
|
||
inimici; for between them, as with the devils whose subjects they
|
||
be, and the Christian, there is perpetual hostility.". Twenty years
|
||
ago the law of England required the writer of any periodical
|
||
publication or pamphlet under sixpence in price to give sureties
|
||
for 800 pounds against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last
|
||
person prosecuted in 1868 for non-compliance with that law, which
|
||
was repealed by Mr. Gladstone in 1869. Up till the 23rd December,
|
||
1888, an infidel in Scotland was allowed to enforce any legal claim
|
||
in court only on condition that, if challenged, he denied his
|
||
infidelity. If he lied and said he was a Christian, he was
|
||
accepted, despite his lying. If he told the truth and said he was
|
||
an unbeliever, then he was practically an outlaw, incompetent to
|
||
give evidence for himself or for any other. Fortunately all this
|
||
was changed by the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on 24th December.
|
||
Has not humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through
|
||
unbelief?
|
||
|
||
For more than a century and a half the Roman Catholic had in
|
||
practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant
|
||
Christian than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or
|
||
the unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of
|
||
abnegation, which to a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in
|
||
effect an outlaw, and the "jury packing" so much complained of
|
||
to-day in Ireland is one of the habit survivals of the old bad time
|
||
when Roman Catholics were thus by law excluded from the jury box.
|
||
|
||
The 'Scotsman' of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the
|
||
Rev. Dr. Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening
|
||
lectures on Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity
|
||
and untenableness of regarding every word in the Bible as inspired:
|
||
and it adds: "We well remember the awful indignation such opinions
|
||
inspired, and it is refreshing to contrast them with the calmness
|
||
with which they are now received. Not only from the pulpits of the
|
||
city, but from the press (misnamed religious) were his doctrines
|
||
denounced. And one eminent U.P. minister went the length of
|
||
publicly praying for him, and for the students under his care. It
|
||
speaks volumes for the progress made since then, when we think in
|
||
all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the chair,
|
||
differs in his teaching from the Confession of Faith much more
|
||
widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely
|
||
orthodox, whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other
|
||
all his life."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF
|
||
|
||
And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual
|
||
progress of unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take
|
||
from differing Churches two recent illustrations: The late
|
||
Principal Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his
|
||
important work on "Biblical Theology," claims that "all the
|
||
statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting
|
||
to us the mind of God." Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says: "We
|
||
find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred
|
||
authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what
|
||
modem research has shown to be the scientific truth -- i.e., we
|
||
find in them statements which modern science proves to be
|
||
erroneous."
|
||
|
||
At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at
|
||
Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J.G.
|
||
Richardson said of the Old Testament that "it was no longer honest
|
||
or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the
|
||
elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given -- so the Church had
|
||
always taught, and would always teach -- under the inspiration of
|
||
Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes
|
||
inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and
|
||
accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical
|
||
world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it
|
||
contained passages of narrative which devout and temperate men
|
||
pronounced discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it
|
||
praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated,
|
||
conduct which the teaching of Christ and the conscience of the
|
||
Christian alike condemned."
|
||
|
||
Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that
|
||
"the teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and
|
||
humanized, and that "the conscience of the Christian is in quantity
|
||
and quality made fitter for human progress by the ever-increasing
|
||
additions of knowledge of these later and more heretical days.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
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 send us a list that includes
|
||
Title, Author, publication date, condition and price desired, and
|
||
we will give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|