2211 lines
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2211 lines
110 KiB
Plaintext
34 page printout.
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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**** ****
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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1881
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I have sometimes thought that it will not make great and
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splendid character to rock children in the cradle of hypocrisy. I
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do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and
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glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon
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certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go
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through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will
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think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that
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above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he
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believes. For my part, I believe men will be nearer honest in
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business, in politics, grander in art -- in everything that is good
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and grand and beautiful, if they are taught from the cradle to the
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coffin to tell their honest opinion.
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Neither do I believe thought to be dangerous. It is incredible
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that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible
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that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be
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no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond
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what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real
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opinions.
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We have passed midnight in the great struggle between Fact and
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Faith, between Science and Superstition. The brand of intellectual
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inferiority is now upon the orthodox brain. There is nothing
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grander than to rescue from the leprosy of slander the reputation
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of a good and generous man. Nothing can be nearer just than to
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benefit our benefactors.
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The Infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the
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next. The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. The
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old passes away, and the new becomes old. There is in the
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intellectual world, as in the material, decay and growth, and ever
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by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy. The history of
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intellectual progress is written in the lives of Infidels.
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Political rights have been preserved by traitors -- the liberty of
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the mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason -- to dispute
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the priest was blasphemy. The sword and cross were allies. They
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defended each other. The throne and altar were twins -- vultures
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from the same egg.
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It was James I. who said: "No bishop, no king." He might have
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said: "No cross, no crown."
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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The king owned the bodies, and the priest the souls, of men.
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One lived on taxes, the other on alms. One was a robber, the other
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a beggar, and each was both.
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These robbers and beggars controlled two worlds. The king made
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laws, the priest made creeds. With bowed backs the people received
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the burdens of the one, and with wonder's open mouth the dogmas of
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the other. If any aspired to be free they were crushed by the king,
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and every priest was a Herod who slaughtered the children of the
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brain. The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by
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both.
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The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and he
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made me king. He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces
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for me. Such is the justice of God." And the priest said: "God made
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you ignorant and vile. He made me holy and wise. If you do not obey
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me, God will punish you here and torment you hereafter. Such is the
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mercy of God."
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Infidels are intellectual discoverers. They sail the unknown
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seas and find new isles and continents in the infinite realms of
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thought.
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An Infidel is one who has found a new fact, who has an idea of
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his own, and who in the mental sky has seen another star.
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He is an intellectual capitalist, and for that reason excites
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the envy and hatred of the theological pauper.
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THE ORIGIN OF GOD AND HEAVEN,
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OF THE DEVIL AND HELL.
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In the estimation of good orthodox Christians I am a criminal,
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because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers,
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sisters, husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally
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arising from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to
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tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that priests erected
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in the fields of innocent pleasure -- a God made of sticks called
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creeds, and of old clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take
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from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out
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the fires of revenge kindled by an infinite fiend.
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Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the
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glare of Hell?
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Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice,
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immortal meanness. To worship an eternal goaler hardens, debases,
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and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and
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breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly
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happy.
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Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every
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grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell
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should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens
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eternal pain should be hated, not loved -- cursed, not worshiped.
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A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell.
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I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell
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-- in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the
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lost only increase laughter and double bliss.
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The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear,
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cowardice, and revenge. This idea testifies that our remote
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ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves,
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only from mouths filled with cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear
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and hatred, only from the conscience of hunger and lust, only from
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the lowest and most debased could come this most cruel, heartless
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and bestial of all dogmas.
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Our barbarian ancestors knew but little of nature. They were
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too astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of
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the idea that everything happened with reference to them; that they
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caused storms and earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and
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the whirlwind; that on account of something they had done, or
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omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped from the darkened
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sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and powerful
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beings presided over this world; that one was good and the other
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bad; that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls
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of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal foes; that both
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welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that both demanded praise
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and worship; that one offered rewards in this world, and the other
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in the next. The Devil has paid cash -- God buys on credit.
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Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature, because he imagined that
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phenomena were produced to punish or to reward him. When his poor
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hut was torn and broken by the wind, he thought it a punishment.
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When some town or city was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined
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that the crimes of the inhabitants had been avenged. When the land
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was filled with plenty, when the seasons were kind, he thought that
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he had pleased the tyrant of the skies.
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It must he remembered that both gods and devils were supposed
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to be presided over by the greatest God and the greatest Devil. The
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God could give infinite rewards and could inflict infinite
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torments. The Devil could assist man here; could give him wealth
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and place in this world, in consideration of owning his soul
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hereafter. Each human soul was a prize contended for by these
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deities. Of course this God and this Devil had innumerable spirits
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at their command, to execute their decrees. The God lived in heaven
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and the Devil in hell. Both were monarchs and were infinitely
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jealous of each other. The priests pretended to be the agents and
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recruiting sergeants of this God, and they were duly authorized to
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promise and threaten in his name; they had power to forgive and
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curse. These priests sought to govern the world by force and fear.
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Believing that men could be frightened into obedience, they
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magnified the tortures and terrors of perdition. Believing also
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that man could in part be influenced by the hope of reward, they
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magnified the joys of heaven. In other words, they promised eternal
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joy and threatened everlasting pain. Most of these priests, born of
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the ignorance of the time, believed what they taught. They proved
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that God was good, by sunlight and harvest, by health and
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happiness; that he was angry, by disease and death. Man, according
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to this doctrine, was led astray by the Devil, who delighted only
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in evil. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that he loved
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing made
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him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above
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all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and that he
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regarded all investigation as rebellion.
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Now and then believers in these ideas, those who had gained
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great reputation for learning and sanctity, or had enjoyed great
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power, wrote books, and these books after a time were considered
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sacred. Most of them were written to frighten mankind, and were
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filled with threatenings and curses for unbelievers and promises
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for the faithful. The more frightful the curses, the more
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extravagant the promises, the more sacred the books were
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considered. All of the gods were cruel and vindictive, unforgiving
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and relentless, and the devils were substantially the same. It was
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also believed that certain things must be accepted as true, no
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matter whether they were reasonable or not; that it was pleasing to
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God to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the
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creed of the majority. Each community felt it a duty to see that
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the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to
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live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil --
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every misfortune -- was accounted for by something the community
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had permitted or done. When epidemics appeared, brought by
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ignorance and welcomed by filth, the heretic was brought out and
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sacrificed to appease the vengeance of God. From the knowledge they
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had -- from their premises -- they reasoned well. They said, if God
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will inflict such frightful torments upon us here, simply for
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allowing a few heretics to live, what will he do with the heretics?
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Of course the heretics would be punished forever. They knew how
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cruel was the barbarian king when he had the traitor in his power.
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They had seen every horror that man could inflict on man. Of course
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a God could do more than a king. He could punish forever. The fires
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he would kindle never could be quenched. The torments he would
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inflict would be eternal. They thought the amount of punishment
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would be measured only by the power of God.
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These ideas were not only prevalent in what are called
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barbarous times, but they are received by the religious world of
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to-day.
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No death could be conceived more horrible than that produced
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by flames. To these flames they added eternity, and hell was
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produced. They exhausted the idea of personal torture.
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By putting intention behind what man called good, God was
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produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the
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Devil was created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils
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fade away.
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If not a human being existed the sun would continue to shine,
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and tempests now and then would devastate the world; the rain would
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fall in pleasant showers, and the bow of promise would adorn the
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cloud; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, and the
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earthquake would devour; birds would sing, and daisies bloom, and
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roses blush, and the volcanoes would fill the heavens with their
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lurid glare; the procession of the seasons would not be broken, and
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the stars would shine just as serenely as though the world was
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filled with loving hearts and happy homes. But in the olden time
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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man though otherwise. He imagined that he was of great importance.
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Barbarians are always egotistic. They think that the stars are
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watching them; that the sun shines on their account; that the rain
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falls for them and that gods and devils are really troubling
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themselves about their poor and ignorant souls.
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In those days men fought for their God as they did for their
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king. They killed the enemies of both. For this their king would
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reward them here, and their God hereafter. With them it was loyalty
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to destroy the disloyal. They did not regard God as a vague
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"spirit," nor as an "essence" without body or parts, but as a
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being, a person, an infinite man, a king, the monarch of the
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universe, who had garments of glory for believers and robes of
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flame for the heretic and infidel.
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Do not imagine that this doctrine of hell belongs to
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Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a
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corner-stone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built.
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Over the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This
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world was regarded as one of trial. Here a God of infinite wisdom
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experimented with man. Between the outstretched paws of the
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Infinite the mouse, man, was allowed to play. Here man had the
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opportunity of hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here he
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could read and hear read the sacred books. Here he could have the
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example of the pious and the counsels of the holy. Here he could
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build churches and cathedrals. Here he could burn incense, fast,
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wear haircloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to
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priests, count beads, be miserable one day in seven, make creeds,
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construct instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images,
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eat little square pieces of bread, sprinkle water on the heads of
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babes, shut his eyes and say words to the clouds, and slander and
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defame all who have the courage to despise superstition, and the
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goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death, nothing could
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be done to make him better. When he should come into the presence
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of God, nothing was left except to damn him. Priests might convert
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him here, but God could do nothing there, -- all of which shows how
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much more a priest can do for a soul than its creator; how much
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more potent is the example of your average Christian than that of
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all the angels, and how much superior earth is to heaven for the
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moral development of the soul. In heaven the Devil is not allowed
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to enter. There all are pure and perfect, yet they cannot influence
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a soul for good.
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Only here, on the earth, where the Devil is constantly active,
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only where his agents attack every soul, is there the slightest
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hope of moral improvement.
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Strange! that a world cursed by God, filled with temptations
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and thick with fiends, should be the only place where hope exists,
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the only place where man can repent, the only place where reform is
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possible. Strange that heaven, filled with angels and presided over
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by God, is the only place where reformation is utterly impossible!
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Yet these are the teachings of all the believers in the eternity of
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punishment.
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Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves
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got a kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The
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poor have damned the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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5
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THE GREAT INFIDELS
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imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this place for
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the strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished for their
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victors; the priest for the thinker, religion for reason,
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superstition for science.
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All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all
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the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of
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man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word --
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Hell.
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For the nourishment of this dogma cruelty was soil, ignorance
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was rain, and fear was light.
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Christians have placed upon the throne of the universe a God
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of eternal hate. I cannot worship a being whose vengeance is
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boundless, whose cruelty is shoreless, and whose malice is
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increased by the agonies he inflicts.
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APPEAL TO THE CEMETERY.
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Whoever attacks a custom or a creed, will be confronted with
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a list of the names of the dead who upheld the custom, or believed
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the creed. He is asked in a very triumphant and sneering way, if he
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knows more than all the great and honored of the past. Every
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defender of a creed has graven upon his memory the names of all
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"great" men whose actions or words can be tortured into evidence
|
||
for his doctrine. The church is always anxious to have some king or
|
||
president certify to the moral character of Christ, the authority
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||
of the Scriptures, and the justice of the Jewish God. Of late
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years, confessions of gentlemen about to be hanged have been
|
||
considered of great value, and the scaffold is regarded as a means
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of grace.
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All the churches of our day seek the rich. They are no longer
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||
the friends and defenders of the poor. Poverty no longer feels at
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||
home in the house of God. In the Temple of the Most High, garments
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||
out of fashion are considered out of place. People now, before
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confessing to God what worthless souls they have, enrich their
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bodies. Now words of penitence mingle with the rustle of silk, and
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||
light thrown from diamonds adorns the repentant tear. We are told
|
||
that the rich, the fortunate, the holders of place and office, the
|
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fashionable, the respectable, are all within the churches. And yet
|
||
all these People grow eloquent over the poverty of Christ -- boast
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||
that he was born in a manger -- that the Holy Ghost passed by all
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||
the ladies of titled wealth and fashion and selected the wife of a
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poor and unknown mechanic for the Mother of God.
|
||
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They admit that all the men of Jerusalem who held high
|
||
positions -- all the people of wealth, influence and power -- were
|
||
the enemies of the Savior and held his pretensions in contempt.
|
||
They admit that he had influence only with the poor, and that he
|
||
was so utterly unknown -- so indigent in acquaintance, that it was
|
||
necessary to bribe one of his disciples to point him out to the
|
||
police. They assert that he had done a great number of miracles --
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had cured the sick, and raised the dead -- that he had preached to
|
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vast multitudes -- had made a kind of triumphal entry into
|
||
Jerusalem -- had scourged from the temple the changers of money --
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||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
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||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
had disputed with the doctors -- and yet, notwithstanding all these
|
||
things, he remained in the very depths of obscurity. Surely he and
|
||
his disciples could have been met with the argument: that the
|
||
"great" dead were opposed to the new religion.
|
||
|
||
The apostles, it is claimed, preached the doctrines of Christ
|
||
in Rome and Athens, and the people of those cities could have used
|
||
the arguments against Christianity that Christians now use in its
|
||
support. They could have asked the apostles if they were wiser than
|
||
all the philosophers, poets orators, and statesmen dead -- if they
|
||
knew more coming as they did from a weak and barbarous nation, than
|
||
the greatest men produced by the highest civilization of the known
|
||
world. With what scorn would the Greeks listen to a barbarian's
|
||
criticisms upon Socrates and Plato. How a Roman would laugh to hear
|
||
a vagrant Hebrew attack a mythology that had been believed by Cato
|
||
and Virgil.
|
||
|
||
Every new religion has to overcome this argument of the
|
||
cemetery -- this logic of the grave. Old ideas take shelter behind
|
||
a barricade of corpse and tombstones. They have epitaphs for battle
|
||
cries, and malign the living in the name of the dead. The moment,
|
||
however, that a new religion succeeds, it becomes the old religion
|
||
and uses the same argument against a new idea that it once so
|
||
gallantly refuted. The arguments used to-day against what they are
|
||
pleased to call infidelity would have shut the mouth of every
|
||
religious reformer, from Christ to the founder of the last sect.
|
||
The general objection to the new is, that it differs somewhat from
|
||
the old, and the fact that it does differ is urged as an argument
|
||
against its truth.
|
||
|
||
Every man is forced to admit that he does not agree with all
|
||
the great men, living or dead. The average Catholic, if not a
|
||
priest, as a rule will admit that Sir Isaac Newton was in some
|
||
things his superior, that Demosthenes had the advantage of him in
|
||
expressing his ideas in public, and that as a sculptor he is far
|
||
below the unknown man of whose hand and brain was born the Venus de
|
||
Milo, but he will not, on account of these admissions, change his
|
||
views upon the important question of transubstantiation.
|
||
|
||
Most Protestants will cheerfully admit that they are inferior
|
||
in brain and genius to some men who have lived and died in the
|
||
Catholic Church; that in the matter of preaching funeral sermons
|
||
they do not pretend to equal Bossuet; that their letters are not so
|
||
interesting and polished as those of Pascal; that Torquemada
|
||
excelled them in the genius of organization, and that for planning
|
||
a massacre they would not for a moment dispute the palm with
|
||
Catherine de Medici.
|
||
|
||
And yet, after all these admissions, they would insist that
|
||
the Pope is an unblushing impostor, and that the Catholic Church is
|
||
a vampire fattened by the best blood of a thousand years.
|
||
|
||
The truth is, that in favor of almost every sect, the names of
|
||
some great men can he pronounced. In almost every church there have
|
||
been men whose only weakness was their religion, and who in other
|
||
directions achieved distinction. If you call men great because they
|
||
were emperors, kings, noblemen, statesmen, millionaires -- because
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
they commanded vast armies and wielded great influence in their day
|
||
then more names can be found to support and prop the Church of Rome
|
||
than any other Christian sect.
|
||
|
||
Is Protestantism willing to rest its claims upon the "great
|
||
man" argument? Give me the idea, the religions, not that have been
|
||
advanced and believed by the so-called great of the past, but that
|
||
will be defended and believed by the great souls of the future.
|
||
|
||
It gives me pleasure to say that Lord Bacon was a great man;
|
||
but I do not for that reason abandon the Copernican system of
|
||
astronomy, and insist that the earth is stationary. Samuel Johnson
|
||
was an excellent writer of latinized English, but I am confident
|
||
that he never saw a real ghost. Matthew Hale was a reasonably good
|
||
judge of law, but he was mistaken about witches causing children to
|
||
vomit crooked pins. John Wesley was quite a man, in a kind of
|
||
religious way, but in this country few people sympathize with his
|
||
hatred of republican government, or with his contempt for the
|
||
Revolutionary Fathers. Sir Isaac Newton, in the domain of science,
|
||
was the colossus of his time, but his commentary on the book of
|
||
Revelation would hardly excite envy, even in the breast of a
|
||
Spurgeon or a Talmage. Upon many questions, the opinions of
|
||
Napoleon were of great value, and yet about his bed, when dying, he
|
||
wanted to see burning the holy candles of Rome. John Calvin has
|
||
been called a logician, and reasoned well from his premises, but
|
||
the burning of Servetus did not make murder a virtue. Luther
|
||
weakened somewhat the Power of the Catholic Church, and to that
|
||
extent was a reformer, and yet Lord Brougham affirmed that his
|
||
"Table Talk" was so obscene that no respectable English publisher
|
||
would soil paper with a translation. He was a kind of religious
|
||
Rabelais; and yet a man can defend Luther in his attack upon the
|
||
church without justifying his obscenity. If every man in the
|
||
Catholic Church was a good man that would not convince me that
|
||
Ignatius Loyola ever met and conversed with the Virgin Mary. The
|
||
fact is, very few men are right in everything.
|
||
|
||
Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot
|
||
sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common
|
||
stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem. No one
|
||
should attempt to refute an argument by pronouncing the name of
|
||
some man, unless he is willing to adopt all the ideas and beliefs
|
||
of that man. It is better to give reasons and facts than names. An
|
||
argument should not depend for its force upon the name of its
|
||
author. Facts need no pedigree logic has no heraldry, and the
|
||
living should not awed by the mistakes of the dead.
|
||
|
||
The greatest men the world has produced have known but little.
|
||
They had a few facts, mingled with mistakes without number. In some
|
||
departments they towered above their fellows, while in others they
|
||
fell below the common level of mankind.
|
||
|
||
Daniel Webster had great respect for the Scriptures, but very
|
||
little for the claims of his creditors. Most men are strangely
|
||
inconsistent. Two propositions were introduced into the Confederate
|
||
Congress by the same man. One was to hoist the black flag, and the
|
||
other was to prevent carrying the mails on Sunday. George
|
||
Whitefield defended the slave trade, because it brought the negroes
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
within the sound of the gospel, and gave them the advantage of
|
||
associating with the gentlemen who stole them. And yet this same
|
||
Whitefield believed and taught the dogma of predestination. Volumes
|
||
might be written upon the follies and imbecilities of great men. A
|
||
full rounded man -- a man of sterling sense and natural logic -- is
|
||
just as rare as a great painter, poet, or sculptor. If you tell
|
||
your friend that he is not a painter, that he has no genius for
|
||
poetry, he will probably admit the truth of what you say, without
|
||
feeling that he has been insulted in the least. But if you tell him
|
||
that he is not a logician, that he has but little idea of the value
|
||
of a fact, that he has no real conception of what evidence is, and
|
||
that he never had an original thought in his life, he will cut your
|
||
acquaintance. Thousands of men are most wonderful in mechanics, in
|
||
trade, in certain professions, keen in business, knowing well the
|
||
men among whom they live, and yet satisfied with religions
|
||
infinitely stupid, with politics perfectly senseless and they will
|
||
believe that wonderful things were common long ago, such things as
|
||
no amount of evidence could convince them had happened in their
|
||
day. A man may be a successful merchant, lawyer, doctor, mechanic,
|
||
statesman, or theologian without one particle of originality, and
|
||
almost without the ability to think logically upon any subject
|
||
whatever. Other men display in some directions the most marvelous
|
||
intellectual power, astonish mankind with their grasp and vigor,
|
||
and at the same time, upon religious subjects drool and drivel like
|
||
David at the gates of Gath.
|
||
|
||
We have found, at last, that other nations have sacred books
|
||
much older than our own, and that these books and records were and
|
||
are substantiated by traditions and monuments, by miracles and
|
||
martyrs, christs and apostles, as well as by prophecies fulfilled.
|
||
In all of these nations differences of opinion as to the
|
||
authenticity and meaning of these books arose from time to time,
|
||
precisely as they have done and still do with us, and upon these
|
||
differences were founded sects that manufactured creeds. These
|
||
sects denounced each other, and preached with the sword and
|
||
endeavored to convince with the fagot. Our theologians were greatly
|
||
astonished to find in other bibles the same stories, precepts,
|
||
laws, customs and commands that adorn and stain our own. At first
|
||
they accounted for this, by saying that these books were in part
|
||
copies of the Jewish Scriptures, mingled with barbaric myths. To
|
||
such an extent did they impose upon and insult probability, that
|
||
they declared that all the morality of the world, all laws
|
||
commanding right and prohibiting wrong, all ideas respecting the
|
||
unity of a Supreme Being, were borrowed from the Jews, who obtained
|
||
them directly from God. The Christian world asserts with warmth,
|
||
not always born of candor, that the Bible is the source, origin,
|
||
and fountain of law, liberty, love, charity, and justice; that it
|
||
is the intellectual and moral sun of the world; that it alone gives
|
||
happiness here, and alone points out the way to joy hereafter; that
|
||
it contains the only revelation from the Infinite; that all others
|
||
are the work of dishonest and mistaken men. They say these things
|
||
in spite of the fact that the Jewish nation was one of the weakest
|
||
and most barbaric of the past; in spite of the fact that the
|
||
civilization of Egypt and India had commenced to wane before that
|
||
of Palestine existed. To account for all the morality contained in
|
||
the sacred books of the Hindus by saying that it was borrowed from
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
the wanderers in the Desert of Sinai, from the escaped slaves of
|
||
the Egyptians, taxes to the utmost the credulity of ignorance,
|
||
bigotry, and zeal.
|
||
|
||
The men who make these assertions are not superior to other
|
||
men. They have only the facts common to all, and they must admit
|
||
that these facts do not force the same conclusions upon all. They
|
||
must admit that men equally honest, equally well-informed as
|
||
themselves, deny their premises and conclusions. They must admit
|
||
that had they been born and educated in some other country, they
|
||
would have had a different religion, and would have regarded with
|
||
reverence and awe the books they now hold as false and foolish.
|
||
Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of
|
||
others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave
|
||
countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume.
|
||
So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and
|
||
solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of
|
||
neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or
|
||
creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to
|
||
hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each
|
||
religion, the same arguments would be urged. There is the same
|
||
evidence in favor of the inspiration of the Koran and Bible. Both
|
||
are substantiated in exactly the same way. It is just as wicked and
|
||
unreasonable to be a heretic in Constantinople as in New york. To
|
||
deny the claims of Christ and Mohammed is alike blasphemous. It all
|
||
depends upon where you are when you make the denial. No religion
|
||
has ever fallen that carried with it down to dumb death a solitary
|
||
fact. Mistakes moulder with the temples in which they were taught,
|
||
and countless superstitions sleep with their dead priests.
|
||
|
||
Yet Christians insist that the religions of all nations that
|
||
have fallen from wealth and power were false, with of course the
|
||
solitary exception of the Jewish, simply because the nations
|
||
teaching them dropped from their dying hands the swords of power.
|
||
This argument drawn from the fate of nations proves no more than
|
||
would one based upon the history of persons. With nations as with
|
||
individuals, the struggle for life is perpetual, and the law of the
|
||
survival of the fittest applies equally to both.
|
||
|
||
It may be that the fabric of our civilization will crumbling
|
||
fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods
|
||
and even memory forgets. Perhaps the blind Samson of some
|
||
imprisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, may so wreck and
|
||
strand the world that man, in stress and strain of want and fear,
|
||
will shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. The time
|
||
may come in which this thrilled and throbbing earth, shorn of all
|
||
life, will in its soundless orbit wheel a barren star, on which the
|
||
light will fall as fruitlessly as falls the gaze of love upon the
|
||
cold, pathetic face of death.
|
||
|
||
FEAR.
|
||
|
||
There is a view quite prevalent, that in some way you can
|
||
prove whether the theories defended or advanced by a man are right
|
||
or not, by showing what kind of man he was, what kind of life he
|
||
lived, and what manner of death he died.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
A man entertains certain opinions; he is persecuted. He
|
||
refuses to change his mind; he is burned, and in the midst of
|
||
flames cries out that he dies without change. Hundreds then say
|
||
that he has sealed his testimony with his blood, and his doctrines
|
||
must be true.
|
||
|
||
All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient
|
||
to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule,
|
||
establishes the sincerity of the martyr, -- never the correctness
|
||
of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth
|
||
cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established,
|
||
or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely
|
||
enough to make it a truth.
|
||
|
||
No Christian will admit that any amount of heroism displayed
|
||
by a Mormon is sufficient to prove that Joseph Smith was divinely
|
||
inspired. All the courage and culture, all the poetry and art of
|
||
ancient Greece, do not even tend to establish the truth of any
|
||
myth.
|
||
|
||
The testimony of the dying concerning some other world, or in
|
||
regard to the supernatural, cannot be any better, to say the least,
|
||
than that of the living. In the early days of Christianity a serene
|
||
and intrepid death was regarded as a testimony in favor of the
|
||
church. At that time Pagans were being converted to Christianity --
|
||
were throwing Jupiter away and taking the Hebrew God instead. In
|
||
the moment of death many of these converts, without doubt, retraced
|
||
their steps and died in the faith of their ancestors. But whenever
|
||
one died clinging to the cross of the new religion, this was seized
|
||
upon as an evidence of the truth of the gospel. After a time the
|
||
Christians taught that an unbeliever, one who spoke or wrote
|
||
against their doctrines, could not meet death with composure --
|
||
that the infidel in his last moments would necessarily be a prey to
|
||
the serpent of remorse. For more than a thousand years they have
|
||
made the "facts" to fit this theory. Crimes against men have been
|
||
considered as nothing when compared with a denial of the truth of
|
||
the Bible, the divinity of Christ, or the existence of God.
|
||
|
||
According to the theologians, God has always acted in this
|
||
way. As long as men did nothing except to render their fellows
|
||
wretched; as long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and
|
||
helpless, God maintained the strictest and most heartless
|
||
neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul
|
||
expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to
|
||
the wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real
|
||
God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his
|
||
quivering flesh tore his wretched soul.
|
||
|
||
There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of
|
||
murder has been paralyzed -- no truthful account in all the
|
||
literature of the world of the innocent being shielded by God.
|
||
Thousands of crimes are committed every day -- men are this moment
|
||
lying in wait for their human prey -- wives are whipped and
|
||
crushed, driven to insanity and death -- little children begging
|
||
for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces
|
||
of fathers and mothers -- sweet girls are deceived, lured, and
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things -- no time to
|
||
defend the good and to protect the pure. He is too busy numbering
|
||
hairs and watching sparrows.
|
||
|
||
He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at
|
||
priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in
|
||
colleges who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy
|
||
of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing if you won't
|
||
swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking
|
||
God's name in vain, but millions of men, women, and children have
|
||
been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no
|
||
one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful
|
||
hand of God.
|
||
|
||
All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with
|
||
reasonable serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a
|
||
pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon
|
||
the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the
|
||
multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in
|
||
making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he
|
||
has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the
|
||
eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged
|
||
cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and
|
||
fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has
|
||
succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and
|
||
bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint.
|
||
|
||
The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power,
|
||
murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year
|
||
that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ
|
||
was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was
|
||
consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are
|
||
thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of
|
||
the divinity of the Savior. Theodosius called a council at
|
||
Constantinople in 381, and this council decided that the Holy Ghost
|
||
proceeded from the Father. Theodosius, the younger, assembled
|
||
another council at Ephesus to ascertain who the Virgin Mary really
|
||
was, and it was solemnly decided in the year 431 that she was the
|
||
Mother of God. In 451 it was decided by a council held at
|
||
Chalcedon, called together by the Emperor Marcian, that Christ had
|
||
two natures -- the human and divine. In 680, in another general
|
||
council, held at Constantinople, convened by order of Pognatius, it
|
||
was also decided that Christ had two wills, and in the year 1274 it
|
||
was decided at the Council of Lyons, that the Holy Ghost proceeded
|
||
not only from the Father, but from the Son as well. Had it not been
|
||
for these councils, we might have been without a Trinity even unto
|
||
this day. When we take into consideration the fact that a belief in
|
||
the Trinity is absolutely essential to salvation, how unfortunate
|
||
it was for the world that this doctrine was not established until
|
||
the year 1274. Think of the millions that dropped into hell while
|
||
these questions were being discussed.
|
||
|
||
This, however, is a digression. Let us go back to Constantine.
|
||
This Emperor, stained with every crime, is supposed to have died
|
||
like a Christian. We hear nothing of fiends leering at him in the
|
||
shadows of death. He does not see the forms of his murdered wife
|
||
and son covered with the blood he shed. From his white and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
shrivelled lips issued no shrieks of terror. He does not cover his
|
||
glazed eyes with thin and trembling hands to shut out the visions
|
||
of hell. His chamber is filled with the rustle of wings -- of wings
|
||
waiting to bear his soul to the thrilling realms of joy.
|
||
|
||
Against the Emperor Constantine the church has hurled no
|
||
anathema. She has accepted the story of his vision in the clouds,
|
||
and his holy memory has been guarded by priest and pope. All the
|
||
persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who burned their
|
||
brothers in the name of Christ rest in consecrated ground. Whole
|
||
libraries could not contain even the names of the wretches who have
|
||
filled the world with violence and death in defence of book and
|
||
creed, and yet they all died the death of the righteous, and no
|
||
priest or minister describes the agony and fear, the remorse and
|
||
horror, with which their guilty souls were filled in the last
|
||
moments of their lives. These men had never doubted -- they
|
||
accepted the creed -- they were not infidels -- they had not denied
|
||
the divinity of Christ -- they had been baptized -- they had
|
||
partaken of the Last Supper -- they had respected priests -- they
|
||
admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded," and these things put
|
||
pillows beneath their dying heads, and covered them with the
|
||
drapery of peace.
|
||
|
||
Now and then, in the history of this world, a man of genius,
|
||
of sense, of intellectual honesty has appeared. These men have
|
||
denounced the superstitions of their day. They pitied the
|
||
multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people filled
|
||
them with indignation. These men were honest enough to tell their
|
||
thoughts. Then they were denounced, tried, condemned, executed.
|
||
Some of them escaped the fury of the people who loved their
|
||
enemies, and died naturally in their beds.
|
||
|
||
It would not do for the church to admit that they died
|
||
peacefully. That would show that religion was not actually
|
||
necessary in the last moment. Religion got much of its power from
|
||
the terror of death.
|
||
|
||
THE DEATH TEST.
|
||
|
||
You had better live well and die wicked, you had better live
|
||
well and die cursing than live badly and die praying.
|
||
|
||
It would not do to have the common people understand that a
|
||
man could deny the Bible, refuse to look at the cross, contend that
|
||
Christ was only a man, and yet die as calmly as Calvin did after he
|
||
had murdered Servetus, or as did King David after advising one son
|
||
to kill another.
|
||
|
||
The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments
|
||
of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were
|
||
infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could
|
||
not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every
|
||
good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these
|
||
accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the
|
||
world. Protestant ministers have repeated the inventions of
|
||
Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity,
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
have sworn to the falsehoods told by Protestants. Upon this point
|
||
they have always stood together, and will as long as the same
|
||
calumny can be used by both.
|
||
|
||
Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grow eloquent. When
|
||
describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever,
|
||
their eyes glitter with delight.
|
||
|
||
It is a festival.
|
||
|
||
They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open
|
||
graves. They devour the reputations of the dead.
|
||
|
||
It is a banquet.
|
||
|
||
Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze
|
||
at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that
|
||
never dies. They see them in flames -- in oceans of fire -- in
|
||
gulfs of pain -- in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They
|
||
applaud.
|
||
|
||
It is an auto da fe, presided over by God and his angels.
|
||
|
||
The men they thus describe were not atheists; they were all
|
||
believers in God, in special providence, and in the immortality of
|
||
the soul. They believed in the accountability of man -- in the
|
||
practice of virtue, in justice. and liberty, but they did not
|
||
believe in that collection of follies and fables called the Bible.
|
||
In order to show that an infidel must die overwhelmed with remorse
|
||
and fear, they have generally selected from all the "unbelievers"
|
||
since the day of Christ five men -- the Emperor Julian, Spinoza,
|
||
Voltaire, Diderot, David Hume, and Thomas Paine.
|
||
|
||
Hardly a minister in the United States has attempted to
|
||
"answer" me without referring to the death of one or more of these
|
||
men. In vain have these calumniators of the dead been called upon
|
||
to prove their statements. In vain have rewards been offered to any
|
||
priestly malinger to bring forward the evidence.
|
||
|
||
Let us once for all dispose of these slanders -- of these
|
||
pious calumnies.
|
||
|
||
JULIAN.
|
||
|
||
They say that the Emperor Julian was an "apostate;" that he
|
||
was once a Christian; that he fell from grace, and that in his last
|
||
moments, throwing some of his own blood into the air, he cried out
|
||
to Jesus Christ, "Galilean, thou hast conquered!"
|
||
|
||
It must be remembered that the Christians had persecuted and
|
||
imprisoned this very Julian; that they had exiled him; that they
|
||
had threatened him with death. Many of his relatives were murdered
|
||
by the Christians. He became emperor, and Christians conspired to
|
||
take his life. The conspirators were discovered and they were
|
||
pardoned. He did what he could to prevent the Christians from
|
||
destroying each other. He held pomp and pride and luxury in
|
||
contempt, and led his army on foot, sharing the privations of the
|
||
meanest soldier.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Upon ascending the throne he published an edict proclaiming
|
||
universal religious toleration. He was then a Pagan. It is claimed
|
||
by some that he never did entirely forget his Christian education.
|
||
In this I am inclined to think there is some truth, because he
|
||
revoked his edict of toleration, and for a time was nearly as
|
||
unjust as though he had been a saint. He was emperor one year and
|
||
seven months. In a battle with the Persians he was mortally
|
||
wounded. "Brought back to his tent, and feeling that he had but a
|
||
short time to live, he spent his last hours in discoursing with his
|
||
friends on the immortality of the soul. He reviewed his reign and
|
||
declared that he was satisfied with his conduct, and had neither
|
||
penitence nor remorse to express for anything that he had done."
|
||
His last words were: "I submit willingly to the eternal decrees of
|
||
heaven, convinced that he who is captivated with life, when his
|
||
last hour has arrived is more weak and pusillanimous than he who
|
||
would rush to voluntary death when it is his duty still to live.
|
||
|
||
When we remember that a Christian emperor murdered Julian's
|
||
father and most of his kindred, and that he narrowly escaped the
|
||
same fate, we can hardly blame him for having a little prejudice
|
||
against a church whose members were fierce, ignorant, and bloody --
|
||
whose priests were hypocrites, and whose bishops were assassins. If
|
||
Julian had said he was a Christian -- no matter what he actually
|
||
was, he would have satisfied the church.
|
||
|
||
The story that the dying emperor acknowledged that he was
|
||
conquered by the Galilean was originated by some of the so-called
|
||
Fathers of the Church, probably by Gregory or Theodoret. They are
|
||
the same wretches who said that Julian sacrificed a woman to the
|
||
moon, tearing out her entrails with his own hands. We are also
|
||
informed by these hypocrites that he endeavored to rebuild the
|
||
temple of Jerusalem, and that fire came out of the earth and
|
||
consumed the laborers employed in the sacrilegious undertaking.
|
||
|
||
I did not suppose that an intelligent man could be found in
|
||
the world who believed this childish fable, and yet in the January
|
||
number for 1880, of the Princeton Review, the Rev. Stuart Robinson
|
||
(whoever he may be) distinctly certifies to the truth of this
|
||
story. He says: "Throughout the entire era of the planting of the
|
||
Christian Church, the gospel preached was assailed not only by the
|
||
malignant fanaticism of the Jew and the violence of Roman
|
||
statecraft, but also by the intellectual weapons of philosophers,
|
||
wits, and poets. Now Celsus denounced the new religion as base
|
||
imposture. Now Tacitus described it as but another phase of the
|
||
odium generius humani. Now Julian proposed to bring into contempt
|
||
the prophetic claims of its founder by the practical test of
|
||
rebuilding the Temple." Here then in the year of grace 1880 is a
|
||
Presbyterian preacher, who really believes that Julian tried to
|
||
rebuild the Temple, and that God caused fire to issue from the
|
||
earth and consume the innocent workmen.
|
||
|
||
All these stories rest upon the same foundation, the mendacity
|
||
of priests.
|
||
|
||
Julian changed the religion of the Empire, and diverted the
|
||
revenues of the church. Whoever steps between a priest and his
|
||
salary, will find that he has committed every crime. No matter how
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
often the slanders may be refuted, they will be repeated until the
|
||
last priest has lost his body and found his wings. These falsehoods
|
||
about Julian were invented some fifteen hundred years ago, and they
|
||
are repeated to-day by just as honest and just as respectable
|
||
people as these who told them at first. Whenever the church cannot
|
||
answer the arguments of an opponent, she attacks his character. She
|
||
resorts to falsehood, and in the domain of calumny she has stood
|
||
for fifteen hundred years without a rival.
|
||
|
||
The great Empire was crumbling to its fall. The literature of
|
||
the world was being destroyed by priests. The gods and goddesses
|
||
were driven from the earth and sky. The paintings were torn and
|
||
defaced. The statues were broken. The walls were left desolate, and
|
||
the niches empty. Art, like Rachel, wept for her children, and
|
||
would not be comforted. The streams and forests were deserted by
|
||
the children of the imagination, and the whole earth was barren,
|
||
poor and mean.
|
||
|
||
Christian ignorance, bigotry and hatred, in blind unreasoning
|
||
zeal, had destroyed the treasures of our race. Art was abhorred,
|
||
Knowledge was despised, Reason was an outcast. The sun was blotted
|
||
from the intellectual heaven, every star extinguished, and there
|
||
fell upon the world that shadow -- that midnight, -- known as "The
|
||
Dark Ages."
|
||
|
||
This night lasted for a thousand years.
|
||
|
||
The First Great Star -- Herald of the Dawn -- was Bruno.
|
||
|
||
BRUNO.
|
||
|
||
The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The
|
||
first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was
|
||
Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.
|
||
|
||
He was born in 1550, was educated for a priest, became a
|
||
Dominican friar. At last his reason revolted against the doctrine
|
||
of transubstantiation. He could not believe that the entire Trinity
|
||
was in a wafer, or in a swallow of wine. He could not believe that
|
||
a man could devour the Creator of the universe by eating a piece of
|
||
bread. This led him to investigate other dogmas of the Catholic
|
||
Church, and in every direction he found the same contradictions and
|
||
impossibilities supported, not by reason, but by faith.
|
||
|
||
Those who loved their enemies threatened his life. He was
|
||
obliged to flee From his native land, and he became a vagabond in
|
||
nearly every nation of Europe. He declared that he fought, not what
|
||
priests believed, but what they pretended to believe. He was driven
|
||
from his native country because of his astronomical opinions. He
|
||
had lost confidence in the Bible as a scientific work. He was in
|
||
danger because he had discovered a truth.
|
||
|
||
He fled to England. He gave some lectures at Oxford. He found
|
||
that institution controlled by priests. He found that they were
|
||
teaching nothing of importance -- only the impossible and the
|
||
hurtful. He called Oxford "the widow of true learning." There were
|
||
in England, at that time, two men who knew more than the rest of
|
||
the world. Shakespeare was then alive.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Bruno was driven from England. He was regarded as a dangerous
|
||
man, -- he had opinions, he inquired after reasons, he expressed
|
||
confidence in facts. He fled to France. He was not allowed to
|
||
remain in that country. He discussed things -- that was enough. The
|
||
church said, "move on." He went to Germany. He was not a believer
|
||
-- he was an investigator. The Germans wanted believers: they
|
||
regarded the whole Christian system as settled; they wanted
|
||
witnesses; they wanted men who would assert. So he was driven from
|
||
Germany.
|
||
|
||
He returned at last to his native land. He found himself
|
||
without friends, because he had been true, not only to himself, but
|
||
to the human race. But the world was false to him because he
|
||
refused to crucify the Christ of his own soul between the two
|
||
thieves of hypocrisy and bigotry. He was arrested for teaching that
|
||
there are other worlds than this; that many of the stars are suns,
|
||
around which other worlds revolve; that Nature did not exhaust all
|
||
her energies on this grain of sand called the earth. He believed in
|
||
a plurality of worlds, in the rotation of this, in the heliocentric
|
||
theory. For these crimes, and for these alone, he was imprisoned
|
||
for six years. He was kept in solitary confinement. He was allowed
|
||
no books, no friends, no visitors. He was denied pen and paper. In
|
||
the darkness, in the loneliness, he had time to examine the great
|
||
questions of origin, of existence, of destiny. He put to the test
|
||
what is called the goodness of God. He found that he could neither
|
||
depend upon man nor upon any deity. At last. the Inquisition
|
||
demanded him. He was tried, condemned, excommunicated and sentenced
|
||
to be burned. According to Professor Draper, he believed that this
|
||
world is animated by an intelligent soul -- the cause of forms, but
|
||
not of matter; that it lives in all things, even in such as seem
|
||
not to live; that everything is ready to become organized; that
|
||
matter is the mother of forms, and then their grave; that matter
|
||
and the soul of things, together, constitute God. He was a
|
||
pantheist -- that is to say, an atheist. He was a lover of Nature,
|
||
-- a reaction from the asceticism of the church. He was tired of
|
||
the gloom of the monastery. He loved the fields, the woods, the
|
||
streams. He said to his brother-priests: Come out of your cells,
|
||
out of your dungeons: come into the air and light. Throw away your
|
||
beads and your crosses. Gather flowers; mingle with your fellow-
|
||
men; have wives and children; scatter the seeds of joy; throw away
|
||
the thorns and nettles of your creeds; enjoy the, perpetual miracle
|
||
of life.
|
||
|
||
On the sixteenth day of February, in the year of grace 1600,
|
||
by "the triumphant beast," the Church of Rome, this philosopher,
|
||
this great and splendid man, was burned. He was offered his liberty
|
||
if he would recant. There was no God to be offended by his
|
||
recantation, and yet, as an apostle of what he believed to be the
|
||
truth, he refused this offer. To those who passed the sentence upon
|
||
him he said: "It is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence
|
||
upon me than I receive it." This man, greater than any naturalist
|
||
of his day; grander than the martyr of any religion, died willingly
|
||
in defence of what he believed to be the sacred truth. He was great
|
||
enough to know that real religion will not destroy the joy of life
|
||
on earth; great enough to know that investigation is not a crime --
|
||
that the really useful is not hidden in the mysteries of faith. He
|
||
knew that the Jewish records were below the level of the Greek and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Roman myths; that there is no such thing as special providence;
|
||
that prayer is useless; that liberty and necessity are the same,
|
||
and that good and evil are but relative. He was the first real
|
||
martyr, -- neither frightened by perdition, nor bribed by heaven.
|
||
He was the first of all the world who died for truth without
|
||
expectation of reward. He did not anticipate a crown of glory. His
|
||
imagination had not peopled the heavens with angels waiting for his
|
||
soul. He had not been promised an eternity of joy if he stood firm,
|
||
nor had he been threatened with the fires of hell if he wavered and
|
||
recanted. He expected as his reward an eternal nothing! Death was
|
||
to him an everlasting end -- nothing beyond but a sleep without a
|
||
dream, a night without a star, without a dawn -- nothing but
|
||
extinction, blank, utter, and eternal. No crown, no palm, no "well
|
||
done, good and faithful servant," no shout of welcome, no song of
|
||
praise, no smile of God, no kiss of Christ, no mansion in the fair
|
||
skies -- not even a grave within the earth -- nothing but ashes,
|
||
wind-blown and priest-scattered, mixed with earth and trampled
|
||
beneath the feet of men and beasts.
|
||
|
||
The murder of this man will never be completely and perfectly
|
||
avenged until from Rome shall be swept every vestige of priest and
|
||
pope, until over the shapeless ruin of St. Peter's, the crumbled
|
||
Vatican and the fallen cross, shall rise a monument to Bruno, --
|
||
the thinker, philosopher, philanthropist, atheist, martyr.
|
||
|
||
THE CHURCH IN THE TIME OF VOLTAIRE.
|
||
|
||
When Voltaire was born, the natural was about the only thing
|
||
in which the church did not believe. The monks sold little amulets
|
||
of consecrated paper. They would cure diseases. If laid in a cradle
|
||
they would prevent a child being bewitched. So, they could be put
|
||
into houses and barns to keep devils away, or buried in a field to
|
||
prevent bad weather, to delay frost, and to insure good crops.
|
||
There was a regular formulary by which they were made, ending with
|
||
a prayer, after which the amulets were sprinkled with holy water.
|
||
The church contended that its servants were the only legitimate
|
||
physicians. The priests cured in the name of the church, and in the
|
||
name of God, by exorcism, relics, water, salt, and oil. St.
|
||
Valentine cured epilepsy, St. Gervasius was good for rheumatism,
|
||
St. Michael de Sanatis for cancer, St. Judas for coughs, St.
|
||
Ovidius for deafness, St. Sebastian for poisonous bites, St.
|
||
Apollonia for toothache, St. Clara for rheum in the eye, St. Hubert
|
||
for hydrophobia. Devils were driven out with wax tapers, with
|
||
incense, with holy water, by pronouncing prayers. The church, as
|
||
late as the middle of the twelfth century, prohibited good
|
||
Catholics from having anything to do with physicians.
|
||
|
||
It was believed that the devils produced storms of wind, of
|
||
rain and of fire from heaven; that the atmosphere was a battlefield
|
||
between angels and devils; that Lucifer had power to destroy fields
|
||
and vineyards and dwellings, and the principal business of the
|
||
church was to protect the people from the Devil. This was the
|
||
origin of church bells. These bells were sprinkled with holy water,
|
||
and their clangor cleared the air of imps and fiends. The bells
|
||
also prevented storms and lightning. The church used to
|
||
anathematize insects. In the sixteenth century, regular suits were
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
commenced against rats, and judgment was rendered. Every monastery
|
||
had its master magician, who sold magic incense, salt, and tapers,
|
||
consecrated palms and relics.
|
||
|
||
Every science was regarded as an outcast, an enemy. Every fact
|
||
held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were enemies
|
||
in disguise. Thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its
|
||
vast power for centuries to prevent the intellectual progress of
|
||
man. There was no liberty, no education, no philosophy, no science;
|
||
nothing but credulity, ignorance, and superstition. The world was
|
||
really under the control of Satan and his agents. The church, for
|
||
the purpose of increasing her power, exhausted every means to
|
||
convince the people of the existence of witches, devils, and
|
||
fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power.
|
||
She simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding
|
||
communication with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear
|
||
him to pieces.
|
||
|
||
To such an extent was this frightful course pursued, and such
|
||
was the prevalence of the belief in the supernatural, that the
|
||
worship of the devil was absolutely established. The poor people,
|
||
brutalized by the church, filled with fear of Satanic influence,
|
||
finding that the church did not protect, as a last resort began to
|
||
worship the Devil. The power of the Devil was proven by the Bible.
|
||
The history of Job, the temptation of Christ in the desert, the
|
||
carrying of Christ to the top of the temple, and hundreds of other
|
||
instances, were relied upon as establishing his power; and when
|
||
people laughed about witches riding upon anointed sticks in the
|
||
air, invisible, they were reminded of a like voyage when the Devil
|
||
carried Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple.
|
||
|
||
This frightful doctrine filled every friend with suspicion of
|
||
his friend. It made the husband denounce the wife, the children the
|
||
parents, and the parents the children. It destroyed all the sweet
|
||
relations of humanity. It did away with justice in the courts. It
|
||
destroyed the charity of religion. It broke the bond of friendship.
|
||
It filled with poison the golden cup of life. It turned earth into
|
||
a very hell, peopled with ignorant, tyrannical, and malicious
|
||
demons.
|
||
|
||
Such was the result of a few centuries of Christianity. Such
|
||
was the result of a belief in the supernatural. Such was the result
|
||
of giving up the evidence of our own senses, and relying upon
|
||
dreams, visions, and fears. Such was the result of destroying human
|
||
reason, of depending upon the supernatural, of living here for
|
||
another world instead of for this, of depending upon priests
|
||
instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants vied with the Catholics.
|
||
Luther stood side by side with the priests he had deserted, in
|
||
promoting this belief in devils and fiends. To the Catholic, every
|
||
Protestant was possessed by a devil. To the Protestant, every
|
||
Catholic was the homestead of a fiend. All order, all regular
|
||
succession of causes and effects, were known no more. The natural
|
||
ceased to exist. The learned and the ignorant were on a level. The
|
||
priest had been caught in the net spread for the peasant, and
|
||
Christendom was a vast madhouse, with insane priests for keepers.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
When Voltaire was born, the church ruled and owned France. It
|
||
was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were
|
||
mostly libertines. The judges were nearly as cruel as venal. The
|
||
royal palace was simply a house of assignation. The nobles were
|
||
heartless, proud, arrogant, and cruel to the last degree. The
|
||
common people were treated as beasts. It took the church a thousand
|
||
years to bring about this happy condition of things.
|
||
|
||
The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered
|
||
by every noble and by every priest. They germinated in the hearts
|
||
of the helpless. They were watered by the tears of agony. Blows
|
||
began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood.
|
||
Workmen, blackened by the sun, bent by labor, looked at the white
|
||
throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them.
|
||
|
||
In those days witnesses were cross-examined with instruments
|
||
of torture. The church was the arsenal of superstition. Miracles,
|
||
relics, angels and devils were as common as rags. Voltaire laughed
|
||
at the evidences, attacked the pretended facts, held the Bible up
|
||
to ridicule, and filled Europe with indignant protests against the
|
||
cruelty, bigotry, and injustice of the time.
|
||
|
||
He was a believer in God, and in some ingenious way excused
|
||
this God for allowing the Catholic Church to exist. He had an idea
|
||
that, originally, mankind were believers in one God, and practiced
|
||
all the virtues. Of course this was a mistake. He imagined that the
|
||
church had corrupted the human race. In this he was right.
|
||
|
||
It may be that, at one time, the church relatively stood for
|
||
progress, but when it gained power, it became an obstruction. The
|
||
system of Voltaire was contradictory. He described a being of
|
||
infinite goodness, who not only destroyed his children with
|
||
pestilence and famine, but allowed them to destroy each other.
|
||
While rejecting the God of the Bible, he accepted another God, who,
|
||
to say the least, allowed the innocent to be burned for loving him.
|
||
|
||
Voltaire hated tyranny, and loved liberty. His arguments to
|
||
prove the existence of a God were just as groundless as those of
|
||
the reverend fathers of his day to prove the divinity of Christ, or
|
||
that Mary was the mother of God. The theologians of his time
|
||
maligned and feared him. He regarded them as a spider does flies.
|
||
He spread nets for them. They were caught, and he devoured them for
|
||
the amusement and benefit of the public. He was educated by the
|
||
Jesuits, and sometimes acted like one.
|
||
|
||
It is fashionable to say that he was not profound, This is
|
||
because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed,
|
||
and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a
|
||
priest forever: this was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to
|
||
prevent Christians from murdering each other and did what he could
|
||
to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect,
|
||
obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow
|
||
fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the
|
||
Christian world. Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of
|
||
antiquity, had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed
|
||
himself, devoured the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet
|
||
of philosophy in the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven
|
||
this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Instead of doing these things, he willfully closed his eyes to
|
||
the light of the gospel, examined the Bible for himself advocated
|
||
intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an
|
||
arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of
|
||
man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal
|
||
toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed.
|
||
|
||
These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die
|
||
in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might
|
||
follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy
|
||
fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so
|
||
successful an enemy of the church, to die without leaving some
|
||
shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of
|
||
chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam.
|
||
|
||
He was an old man of eighty-four. He had been surrounded with
|
||
the comforts of life; he was a man of wealth, of genius. Among the
|
||
literary men of the world he stood first. God had allowed him to
|
||
have the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the
|
||
intoxication of flattery. He stood at the summit of his age.
|
||
|
||
The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would
|
||
forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example
|
||
of Voltaire.
|
||
|
||
Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that
|
||
Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the
|
||
unclean birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey.
|
||
|
||
"Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure
|
||
of Saint Sulpice and the Abbe Gautier and brought them into his
|
||
uncle's sick chamber, who was informed that they were there. 'Ah,
|
||
well!' said Voltaire, 'give them my compliments and my thanks.' The
|
||
Abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The cure
|
||
of Saint Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and
|
||
asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the
|
||
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his
|
||
hands against the cure's coif shoving him back, and cried, turning
|
||
abruptly to the other side, 'Let me die in peace.' The cure
|
||
seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by
|
||
the touch of the philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little
|
||
brushing, and went out with the Abbe Gautier."
|
||
|
||
He expired, says Wagniere, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about
|
||
a quarter past eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquillity.
|
||
Ten minutes before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his
|
||
valet de chamber, who was watching by him, pressed it and said:
|
||
"Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last words.
|
||
|
||
From this death, so simple and serene, so natural and
|
||
peaceful; from, these words so utterly destitute of cant or
|
||
dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing
|
||
utterances, have been drawn and made. From these materials, and
|
||
from these alone, have been constructed all the shameless lies
|
||
about the death of this great and wonderful man, compared with whom
|
||
all of his calumniators, dead and living. were and are but dust and
|
||
vermin.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Voltaire was the intellectual autocrat of his time. From his
|
||
throne at the foot of the Alps he pointed the finger of scorn at
|
||
every hypocrite in Europe. He was the pioneer of his century. He
|
||
was the assassin of superstition. He left the quiver of ridicule
|
||
without an arrow. Through the shadows of faith and fable, through
|
||
the darkness of myth and miracle, through the midnight of
|
||
Christianity, through the blackness of bigotry, past cathedral and
|
||
dungeon, past rack and stake, past altar and throne, he carried,
|
||
with chivalric hands, the sacred torch of reason.
|
||
|
||
DIDEROT.
|
||
|
||
DOUBT IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD TRUTH.
|
||
|
||
Diderot was born in 1713. His parents were in what may be
|
||
called the humbler walks of life. Like Voltaire he was educated by
|
||
the Jesuits. He had in him something of the vagabond, and was for
|
||
several years almost a beggar in Paris. He was endeavoring to live
|
||
by his pen. In that day and generation, a man without a patron,
|
||
endeavoring to live by literature, was necessarily almost a beggar.
|
||
He nearly starved -- frequently going for days without food.
|
||
Afterward, when he had something himself, he was as generous as the
|
||
air. No man ever was more willing to give, and no man less willing
|
||
to receive, than Diderot.
|
||
|
||
He wrote upon all conceivable subjects, that he might have
|
||
bread. He even wrote sermons, and regretted it all his life. He and
|
||
D'Alembert were the life and soul of the Encyclopedia. With
|
||
infinite enthusiasm he helped to gather the knowledge of the world
|
||
for the use of each and all. He harvested the fields of thought,
|
||
separated the grain from the straw and chaff, and endeavored to
|
||
throw away the seeds and fruit of superstition. His motto was,
|
||
"Incredulity is the first step towards philosophy."
|
||
|
||
He had the vices of most Christians -- was nearly as immoral
|
||
as the majority of priests. His vices he shared in common, his
|
||
virtues were his own. All who knew him united in saying that he had
|
||
the pity of a woman, the generosity of a prince, the self-denial of
|
||
an anchorite, the courage of Caesar, and the enthusiasm of a poet.
|
||
He attacked with every power of his mind the superstition of his
|
||
day. He said what he thought. The priests hated him. He was in
|
||
favor of universal education -- the church despised it. He wished
|
||
to put the knowledge of the whole world within reach of the
|
||
poorest.
|
||
|
||
He wished to drive from the gate of the Garden of Eden the
|
||
cherubim of superstition, so that the child of Adam might return to
|
||
eat once more the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Every Catholic
|
||
was his enemy. His poor little desk was ransacked by the police
|
||
searching for manuscripts in which something might be found that
|
||
would justify the imprisonment of such a dangerous man. Whoever, in
|
||
1750, wished to increase the knowledge of mankind was regarded as
|
||
the enemy of social order.
|
||
|
||
The intellectual superstructure of France rests upon the
|
||
Encyclopedia. The knowledge given to the people was the impulse,
|
||
the commencement, of the revolution that left the church without an
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
altar and the king without a throne. Diderot thought for himself,
|
||
and bravely gave his thoughts to others. For this reason he was
|
||
regarded as a criminal. He did not expect his reward in another
|
||
world. He did not do what he did to please some imaginary God. He
|
||
labored for mankind. He wished to lighten the burdens of those who
|
||
should live after him. Hear these noble words:
|
||
|
||
"The more man ascends through the past, and the more he
|
||
launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these
|
||
philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen
|
||
victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the
|
||
fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This:
|
||
That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the
|
||
vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred
|
||
stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who
|
||
art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the
|
||
hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy
|
||
consoling faith never, never abandon me!" Posterity is for the
|
||
philosopher what the other world is for the devotee.
|
||
|
||
Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true
|
||
Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he
|
||
should have used it.
|
||
|
||
Of course it would not do for the church to allow a man to die
|
||
in peace who had added to the intellectual wealth of the world. The
|
||
moment Diderot was dead, Catholic priests began painting and
|
||
recounting the horrors of his expiring moments. They described him
|
||
as overcome with remorse, as insane with fear; and these falsehoods
|
||
have been repeated by the Protestant world, and will probably be
|
||
repeated by thousands of ministers after we are dead. The truth is,
|
||
he had passed his three-score years and ten. He had lived for
|
||
seventy-one years. He had eaten his supper. He had been conversing
|
||
with his wife. He was reclining in his easy chair. His mind was at
|
||
perfect rest. He had entered, without knowing it, the twilight of
|
||
his last day. Above the horizon was the evening star, telling of
|
||
sleep. The room grew still and the stillness was lulled by the
|
||
murmur of the street. There were a few moments of perfect peace.
|
||
The wife said, "He is asleep." She enjoyed his repose, and breathed
|
||
softly that he might not be disturbed. The moments wore on, and
|
||
still he slept. Lovingly, softly, at last she touched him. Yes, he
|
||
was asleep. He had become a part of the eternal silence.
|
||
|
||
DAVID HUME.
|
||
|
||
The worst religion of the world was the Presbyterianism of
|
||
Scotland as it existed in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
|
||
The Kirk had all the faults of the Church of Rome without a
|
||
redeeming feature. The Kirk hated music, painting, statuary, and
|
||
architecture. Anything touched with humanity -- with the dimples of
|
||
joy -- was detested and accursed. God was to be feared -- not
|
||
loved.
|
||
|
||
Life was a long battle with the Devil. Every desire was of
|
||
Satan. Happiness was a snare, and human love was wicked, weak and
|
||
vain. The Presbyterian priest of Scotland was as cruel, bigoted and
|
||
heartless as the familiar of the Inquisition.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
One case will tell it all;
|
||
|
||
In the beginning of this, the nineteenth century, a boy
|
||
seventeen years of age, Thomas Aikenhead, was indicted and tried at
|
||
Edinburgh for blasphemy. He had denied the inspiration of the
|
||
Bible. He had on several occasions, when cold, jocularly wished
|
||
himself in hell that he might get warm. The poor, frightened boy
|
||
recanted -- begged for mercy; but he was found guilty, hanged,
|
||
thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold, and his weeping
|
||
mother vainly begged that his bruised and bleeding body might be
|
||
given to her.
|
||
|
||
This one case, multiplied again and again, gives you the
|
||
condition of Scotland when, on the 26th of April, 1711, David Hume
|
||
was born.
|
||
|
||
David Hume was one of the few Scotchmen of his day who were
|
||
not owned by the church. He had the manliness to examine historical
|
||
and religious questions for himself, and the courage to give his
|
||
conclusions to the world. He was singularly capable of governing
|
||
himself, He was a philosopher, and lived a calm and cheerful life,
|
||
unstained by an unjust act, free from all excess, and devoted in a
|
||
reasonable degree to benefiting his fellow-men. After examining the
|
||
Bible he became convinced that it was not true. For failing to
|
||
suppress his real opinion, for failing to tell a deliberate
|
||
falsehood, he brought upon himself the hatred of the church.
|
||
|
||
Intellectual honesty is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and
|
||
whether God will forgive this sin or not his church has not, and
|
||
never will.
|
||
|
||
Hume took the ground that a miracle could not be used as
|
||
evidence until the fact that it had happened was established. But
|
||
how can a miracle be established? Take any miracle recorded in the
|
||
Bible, and how could it be established now? You may say: Upon the
|
||
testimony of those who wrote the account. Who were they? No one
|
||
knows. How, could you prove the resurrection of Lazarus? Or of the
|
||
widow's son? How could you substantiate, today, the ascension of
|
||
Jesus Christ? In what way could you prove that the river Jordan was
|
||
divided upon being struck by the coat of a prophet? How is it
|
||
possible now to establish the fact that the fires of a furnace
|
||
refused to burn three men? Where are the witnesses? Who, upon the
|
||
whole earth, has the slightest knowledge upon this subject?
|
||
|
||
He insisted that at the bottom of all good was the useful;
|
||
that human happiness was an end worth working and living for; that
|
||
origin and destiny were alike unknown; that the best religion was
|
||
to live temperately and to deal justly with our fellowmen; that the
|
||
dogma of inspiration was absurd, and that an honest man had nothing
|
||
to fear. Of course the Kirk hated him. He laughed at the creed.
|
||
|
||
To the lot of Hume fell ease, respect, success, and honor.
|
||
While many disciples of God were the sport and prey of misfortune,
|
||
he kept steadily advancing. Envious Christians bided their time.
|
||
They waited as patiently as possible for the horrors of death to
|
||
fall upon the heart and brain of David Hume. They knew that all the
|
||
furies would be there, and that God would get his revenge.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Adam Smith, author of the "Wealth of Nations," speaking of
|
||
Hume in his last sickness, says that in the presence of death "his
|
||
cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements ran
|
||
so much in the usual strain, that, notwithstanding all his bad
|
||
symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. A few days
|
||
before his death Hume said: 'I am dying as fast as my enemies -- if
|
||
I have any -- could wish, and as easily and tranquilly as my best
|
||
friends could desire.'"
|
||
|
||
Col. Edmondstoune shortly afterward wrote Hume a letter, of
|
||
which the following is an extract:
|
||
|
||
"My heart is full, could not see you this morning. I thought
|
||
it was better for us both. You cannot die -- you must live in the
|
||
memory of your friends and acquaintances; and your works will
|
||
render you immortal. I cannot conceive that it was possible for any
|
||
one to dislike you, or hate you. He must be more than savage who
|
||
could be an enemy to a man with the best head and heart and the
|
||
most amiable manners. Adam Smith happened to go into his room while
|
||
he was reading the above letter, which he immediately showed him.
|
||
Smith said to Hume that he was sensible of how much he was
|
||
weakening, and that appearances were in many respects bad; yet,
|
||
that his cheerfulness was so great and the spirit of life still
|
||
seemed to be so strong in him, that he could not keep from,
|
||
entertaining some hopes.
|
||
|
||
Hume answered, "When I lie down in the evening I feel myself
|
||
weaker than when I arose in the morning; and when I rise in the
|
||
morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible,
|
||
besides, that some of my vital parts are affected so that I must
|
||
soon die."
|
||
|
||
"Well." said Mr. Smith, "if it must be so, you have at least
|
||
the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, and the members of
|
||
your brother's family in particular, in great prosperity."
|
||
|
||
He replied that he was so sensible of his situation that when
|
||
he was reading Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, among all the
|
||
excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into
|
||
his boat, he could not find one that fitted him. He had no house to
|
||
finish; he had no daughter to provide for; he had no enemies upon
|
||
whom he wished to revenge himself; "and I could not well," said he,
|
||
"imagine what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a
|
||
little delay. I have done everything of consequence which I ever
|
||
meant to do, and I could, at no time expect to leave my relations
|
||
and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now
|
||
likely to leave them; and I have, therefore, every reason to die
|
||
contented."
|
||
|
||
"Upon further consideration," said he, "I thought I might say
|
||
to him, 'Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new
|
||
edition. Allow me a little time that I may see how the public
|
||
receives the alterations.' 'But,' Charon would answer, 'when you
|
||
have seen the effect of this, you will be for making other
|
||
alterations. There will be no end to such excuses; so, my honest
|
||
friend, please step into the boat.' 'But,' I might still urge,
|
||
'have a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavoring to
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
open the eyes of the public; if I live a few years longer, I may
|
||
have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the
|
||
prevailing systems of superstition.' And Charon would then lose all
|
||
temper and decency, and would cry out, 'You loitering rogue, that
|
||
will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant
|
||
you a lease for so long a time? Get into the boat this instant.'"
|
||
|
||
To the Comtesse de Boufflers, the dying man, with the perfect
|
||
serenity that springs from an honest and loving life, writes:
|
||
|
||
"I see death approach gradually without any anxiety or regret.
|
||
* * * I salute you with great affection and regard, for the last
|
||
time."
|
||
|
||
On the 25th of August, 1776, the philosopher, the historian,
|
||
the infidel, the honest man, and a benefactor of his race, in the
|
||
composure born of a noble life, passed quietly and panglessly away.
|
||
|
||
Dr Black wrote the following account of his death;
|
||
|
||
"Monday, 26 August, 1776.
|
||
|
||
"Dear Sir: Yesterday, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Mr.
|
||
Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident on the
|
||
evening between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became
|
||
exhaustive, and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer
|
||
rise from his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and
|
||
free from much pain or feeling of distress. He never dropped the
|
||
smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to
|
||
speak to the people about him, always did it with all affection and
|
||
tenderness. * * * When he became very weak, it cost him an effort
|
||
to speak, and he died in such happy composure of mind that nothing
|
||
could exceed it."
|
||
|
||
Dr. Cullen writes Dr. Hunter on the 17th of September, 1776,
|
||
from which the following extracts are made:
|
||
|
||
"You desire an account of Mr. Hume's last days, and I give it
|
||
to you with great pleasure. * * * It was truly an example des
|
||
grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant; and to me, who have
|
||
been so often shocked with the horrors of superstition, the
|
||
reflection on such a death is truly agreeable. For many weeks
|
||
before his death he was very sensible of his gradual decay; and his
|
||
answer to inquiries after his health was, several times, that he
|
||
was going as fast as his enemies could wish, and as easily as his
|
||
friends could desire. He passed most of the time in his drawing-
|
||
room, admitting the visits of his friends, and with his usual
|
||
spirit conversed with them upon literature and politics and
|
||
whatever else was started. In conversation he seemed to be
|
||
perfectly at ease; and to the last abounded with that pleasantry
|
||
and those curious and entertaining anecdotes which ever
|
||
distinguished him. * * * His senses and judgment did not fail him
|
||
to the last hour of his life. He constantly discovered a strong
|
||
sensibility of the attention and care of his friends; and midst
|
||
great uneasiness and languor never betrayed any peevishness or
|
||
impatience." (Here follows the conversation with Charon.) "These
|
||
are a few particulars which may, perhaps, appear trivial; but to
|
||
me, no particulars seem trivial which relate to so great a man. It
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
is perhaps from trifles that we can best distinguish the
|
||
tranquilness and cheerfulness of the philosopher at a time when the
|
||
most part of mankind are under disquiet, and sometimes even horror.
|
||
I consider the sacrifice of the cock as a more certain evidence of
|
||
the tranquillity of Socrates than his discourse on immortality."
|
||
|
||
The Christians took it for granted that this serene and placid
|
||
man died filled with remorse for having given his real opinions,
|
||
and proceeded to describe, with every incident and detail of
|
||
horror, the terrors of his last moments. Brainless clergymen,
|
||
incapable of understanding what Hume had written, knowing only in
|
||
a general way that he had held their creeds in contempt, answered
|
||
his arguments by maligning his character.
|
||
|
||
Christians took it for granted that he died in horror and
|
||
recounted the terrible scenes.
|
||
|
||
When the facts of his death became generally known to
|
||
intelligent men, the ministers redoubled their efforts to maintain
|
||
the old calumnies, and most of them are in this employment even
|
||
unto this day. Finding it impossible to tell enough falsehoods to
|
||
hide the truth, a few of the more intelligent among the priests
|
||
admitted that Hume not only died without showing any particular
|
||
fear, but was guilty of unbecoming levity. The first charge was
|
||
that he died like a coward; the next that he did not care enough,
|
||
and went through the shadowy doors of the dread unknown with a
|
||
smile upon his lips. The dying smile of David Hume scandalized the
|
||
believers in a God of love. They felt shocked to see a man dying
|
||
without fear who denied the miracles of the Bible; who had spent a
|
||
life investigating the opinions of men; in endeavoring to prove to
|
||
the world that the right way is the best way; that happiness is a
|
||
real and substantial good, and that virtue is not a termagant with
|
||
sunken cheeks and hollow eyes.
|
||
|
||
Christians hated to admit that a philosopher had died serenely
|
||
without the aid of superstition -- one who had taught that man
|
||
could not make God happy by making himself miserable, and that a
|
||
useful life, after all, was the best possible religion. They
|
||
imagined that death would fill such a man with remorse and terror.
|
||
He had never persecuted his fellowmen for the honor of God, and
|
||
must needs die in despair. They were mistaken.
|
||
|
||
He died as he had lived. Like a peaceful river with green and
|
||
shaded banks he passed, without a murmur, into that waveless sea
|
||
where life at last is rest.
|
||
|
||
BENEDICT SPINOZA.
|
||
|
||
One of the greatest thinkers was Benedict Spinoza, a Jew, born
|
||
at Amsterdam, in 1632. He studied medicine and afterward theology.
|
||
He endeavored to understand what he studied. In theology he
|
||
necessarily failed. Theology is not intended to be understood, --
|
||
it is only to be believed. It is an act, not of reason, but of
|
||
faith. Spinoza put to the rabbis so many questions, and so
|
||
persistently asked for reasons, that he became the most troublesome
|
||
of students. When the rabbis found it impossible to answer the
|
||
questions, they concluded to silence the questioner. He was tried,
|
||
found guilty, and excommunicated from the synagogue.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
By the terrible curse of the Jewish religion, he was made an
|
||
outcast from every Jewish home. His father could not give him
|
||
shelter. His mother could not give him bread -- could not speak to
|
||
him, without becoming an outcast herself. All the cruelty of
|
||
Jehovah, all the infamy of the Old Testament, was in this curse. In
|
||
the darkness of the synagogue the rabbis lighted their torches, and
|
||
while pronouncing the curse, extinguished them in blood, imploring
|
||
God that in like manner the soul of Benedict Spinoza might be
|
||
extinguished.
|
||
|
||
Spinoza was but twenty-four years old when he found himself
|
||
without kindred, without friends, surrounded only by enemies. He
|
||
uttered no complaint. He earned his bread with willing hands, and
|
||
cheerfully divided his crust with those still poorer than himself.
|
||
|
||
He tried to solve the problem of existence. To him, the
|
||
universe was One. The Infinite embraced the All. The All was God.
|
||
According to his belief, the universe did not commence to be. It
|
||
is; from eternity it was; to eternity it will be.
|
||
|
||
He was right. The universe is all there is, or was, or will
|
||
be. It is both subject and object, contemplator and contemplated,
|
||
creator and created, destroyer and destroyed, preserver and
|
||
preserved, and hath within itself all causes, modes, motions and
|
||
effects.
|
||
|
||
In this there is hope. This is a foundation and a star. The
|
||
Infinite is the All. Without the All, the Infinite cannot be. I am
|
||
something. Without me, the Infinite cannot exist.
|
||
|
||
Spinoza was a naturalist -- that is to say, a pantheist. He
|
||
took the ground that the supernatural is, and forever will be, an
|
||
infinite impossibility. His propositions are luminous as stars, and
|
||
each of his demonstrations is a Gibraltar, behind which logic sits
|
||
and smiles at all the sophistries of superstition.
|
||
|
||
Spinoza has been hated because he has not been answered. He
|
||
was a real republican. He regarded the people as the true and only
|
||
source of political power. He put the state above the church, the
|
||
people above the priest. He believed in the absolute liberty of
|
||
worship, thought and speech. In every relation of life he was just,
|
||
true, gentle, patient, modest and loving. He respected the rights
|
||
of others, and endeavored to enjoy his own, and yet he brought upon
|
||
himself the hatred of the Jewish and the Christian world. In his
|
||
day, logic was blasphemy, and to think was the unpardonable sin.
|
||
The priest hated the philosopher, revelation reviled reason, and
|
||
faith was the sworn foe of every fact.
|
||
|
||
Spinoza was a philosopher, a philanthropist. He lived in a
|
||
world of his own. He avoided men. His life was an intellectual
|
||
solitude. He was a mental hermit. Only in his own brain he found
|
||
the liberty he loved. And yet the rabbis and the priests, the
|
||
ignorant zealot and the cruel bigot, feeling that this quiet,
|
||
thoughtful, modest man was in some way forging weapons to be used
|
||
against the church, hated him with all their hearts.
|
||
|
||
He did not retaliate. He found excuses for their acts. Their
|
||
ignorance, their malice, their misguided and revengeful zeal
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
excited only pity in his breast. He injured no man. He did not live
|
||
on alms. He was poor -- and yet, with the wealth of his brain, he
|
||
enriched the world. On Sunday, February 21, 1677, Spinoza, one of
|
||
the greatest and subtlest of metaphysicians -- one of the noblest
|
||
and purest of human beings, -- at the age of forty-four, passed
|
||
tranquilly away; and notwithstanding the curse of the synagogue
|
||
under which he had lived and most lovingly labored, death left upon
|
||
his lips the smile of perfect peace.
|
||
|
||
OUR INFIDELS.
|
||
|
||
In our country there were three infidels -- Paine, Franklin
|
||
and Jefferson. The colonies were filled with superstition, the
|
||
Puritans with the spirit of persecution. Laws savage, ignorant and
|
||
malignant had been passed in every colony, for the purpose of
|
||
destroying intellectual liberty. Mental freedom was absolutely
|
||
unknown. The Toleration Acts of Maryland tolerated only Christians
|
||
-- not infidels, not thinkers, not investigators. The charity of
|
||
Roger Williams was not extended to those who denied the Bible, or
|
||
suspected the divinity of Christ. It was not based upon the rights
|
||
of man, but upon the rights of believers, who differed in non-
|
||
essential points.
|
||
|
||
The moment the colonies began to deny the rights of the king
|
||
they suspected the power of the priest. In digging down to find an
|
||
excuse for fighting George the Third, they unwittingly undermined
|
||
the church. They went through the Revolution together. They found
|
||
that all denominations fought equally well. They also found that
|
||
persons without religion had patriotism and courage, and were
|
||
willing to die that a new nation might be born. As a matter of fact
|
||
the pulpit was not in hearty sympathy with our fathers. Many
|
||
priests were imprisoned because they would not pray for the
|
||
Continental Congress. After victory had enriched our standard, and
|
||
it became necessary to make a constitution -- to establish a
|
||
government -- the infidels -- the men like Paine, like Jefferson,
|
||
and like Franklin, saw that the church must be left out; that a
|
||
government deriving its just powers from the consent of the
|
||
governed could make no contract with a church pretending to derive
|
||
its powers from an infinite God.
|
||
|
||
By the efforts of these infidels, the name of God was left out
|
||
of the Constitution of the United States. They knew that if an
|
||
infinite being was put in, no room would be left for the people.
|
||
They knew that if any church was made the mistress of the state,
|
||
that mistress, like all others, would corrupt, weaken, and destroy.
|
||
Washington wished a church established by law in Virginia. He was
|
||
prevented by Thomas Jefferson. It was only a little while ago that
|
||
people were compelled to attend church by law in the Eastern
|
||
States, and taxes were raised for the support of churches the same
|
||
as for the construction of highways and bridges. The great
|
||
principle enunciated in the Constitution has silently repealed most
|
||
of these laws. In the presence of this great instrument, the
|
||
constitutions of the States grew small and mean, and in a few years
|
||
every law that puts a chain upon the mind, except in Delaware, will
|
||
be repealed, and for these our children may thank the Infidels of
|
||
1776.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
The church never has pretended that Jefferson or Franklin died
|
||
in fear. Franklin wrote no books against the fables of the ancient
|
||
Jews. He thought it useless to cast the pearls of thought before
|
||
the swine of ignorance and fear. Jefferson was a statesman. He was
|
||
the father of a great party. He gave his views in letters and to
|
||
trusted friends. He was a Virginian, author of the Declaration of
|
||
Independence, founder of a university, father of a political party,
|
||
President of the United States, a statesman and philosopher. He was
|
||
too powerful for the divided churches of his day. Paine was a
|
||
foreigner, a citizen of the world. He had attacked Washington and
|
||
the Bible. He had done these things openly, and what he had said
|
||
could not he answered. His arguments were so good that his
|
||
character was bad.
|
||
|
||
THOMAS PAINE.
|
||
|
||
THOMAS PAINE was born in Thetford, England. He came from the
|
||
common people. At the age of thirty-seven he left England for
|
||
America. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the New World.
|
||
He wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense," and in a few months the
|
||
Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent
|
||
States -- a new nation was born. Paine having aroused the spirit of
|
||
independence, gave every energy of his soul to keep the spirit
|
||
alive. He was with the army. He shared its defeats and its glory.
|
||
When the situation became desperate, he gave them "The Crisis." It
|
||
was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, leading the way
|
||
to freedom, honor, and to victory.
|
||
|
||
The writings of Paine are gemmed with compact statements that
|
||
carry conviction to the dullest. Day and night he labored for
|
||
America, until there was a government of the people and for the
|
||
people. At the close of the Revolution, no one stood higher than
|
||
Thomas Paine. Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would
|
||
have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by
|
||
other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an
|
||
imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites,
|
||
and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a
|
||
hypocritical monument covered with lies.
|
||
|
||
Having done so much for man in America, he went to France. The
|
||
seeds sown by the great infidels were bearing fruit in Europe. The
|
||
eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the wreath of
|
||
progress. Upon his arrival in France he was elected a member of the
|
||
French Convention -- in fact, he was selected about the same time
|
||
by the people of no less than four Departments. He was one of the
|
||
committee to draft a constitution for France. In the Assembly,
|
||
where nearly all were demanding the execution of the king, he had
|
||
the courage to vote against death. To vote against the death of the
|
||
king was to vote against his own life. This was the sublimity of
|
||
devotion to principle. For this he was arrested, imprisoned, and
|
||
doomed to death. While under sentence of death, while in the gloomy
|
||
cell of his prison, Thomas Paine wrote to Washington, asking him to
|
||
say one word to Robespierre in favor of the author of "Common
|
||
Sense." Washington did not reply. He wrote again. Washington, the
|
||
President, paid no attention to Thomas Paine, the prisoner. The,
|
||
letter was thrown into the wastebasket of forgetfulness, and Thomas
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Paine remained condemned to death. Afterward he gave his opinion of
|
||
Washington at length, and I must say, that I have never found it in
|
||
my heart to greatly blame him.
|
||
|
||
Thomas Paine, having done so much for political liberty,
|
||
turned his attention to the superstitions of his age. He published
|
||
"The Age of Reason;" and from that day to this, his character has
|
||
been maligned by almost every priest in Christendom. He has been
|
||
held up as the terrible example. Every man who has expressed an
|
||
honest thought, has been warningly referred to Thomas Paine. All
|
||
his services were forgotten. No kind word fell from any pulpit. His
|
||
devotion to principle, his zeal for human rights, were no longer
|
||
remembered. Paine simply took the ground that it is a contradiction
|
||
to call a thing a revelation that comes to us second-hand. There
|
||
can be no revelation beyond the first communication. All after that
|
||
is hearsay. He also showed that the prophecies of the Old Testament
|
||
had no relation whatever to Jesus Christ, and contended that Jesus
|
||
Christ was simply a man. In other words, Paine was an enlightened
|
||
Unitarian. Paine thought the Old Testament too barbarous to have
|
||
been the work of an infinitely benevolent God. He attacked the
|
||
doctrine that salvation depends upon belief. He insisted that every
|
||
man has the right to think.
|
||
|
||
After the publication of these views every falsehood that
|
||
malignity could coin and malice pass was given to the world. On his
|
||
return to America, after the election to the presidency of another
|
||
infidel, Thomas Jefferson, it was not safe for him to appear in the
|
||
public streets. He was in danger of being mobbed. Under the very
|
||
flag he had helped to put in heaven his rights were not respected.
|
||
Under the Constitution that he had suggested, his life was
|
||
insecure. He had helped to give liberty to more than three millions
|
||
of his fellow-citizens, and they were willing to deny it unto him.
|
||
He was deserted, ostracized, shunned, maligned, and cursed. He
|
||
enjoyed the seclusion of a leper; but he maintained through it all
|
||
his integrity. He stood by the convictions of his mind. Never for
|
||
one moment did he hesitate or waver.
|
||
|
||
He died almost alone. The moment he died Christians commenced
|
||
manufacturing horrors for his death-bed. They had his chamber
|
||
filled with devils rattling chains, and these ancient lies are
|
||
annually certified to by the respectable Christians of the present
|
||
day. The truth is, he died as he had lived. Some ministers were
|
||
impolite enough to visit him against his will. Several of them he
|
||
ordered from his room. A couple of Catholic priests, in all the
|
||
meekness of hypocrisy, called that they might enjoy the agonies of
|
||
a dying friend of man. Thomas Paine, rising in his bed, the few
|
||
embers of expiring life blown into flame by the breath of
|
||
indignation, had the goodness to curse them both. His physician,
|
||
who seems to have been a meddling fool, just as the cold hand of
|
||
death was touching the patriot's heart, whispered in the dull ear
|
||
of the dying man: "Do you believe, or do you wish to believe, that
|
||
Jesus Christ is the son of God?" And the reply was: "I have no wish
|
||
to believe on that subject."
|
||
|
||
These were the last remembered words of Thomas Paine. He died
|
||
as serenely as ever Christian passed away. He died in the full
|
||
possession of his mind, and on the very brink and edge of death
|
||
proclaimed the doctrines of his life.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
Every Christian, every philanthropist, every believer in human
|
||
liberty, should feel under obligation to Thomas Paine for the
|
||
splendid service rendered by him in the darkest days of the
|
||
American Revolution. In the midnight of Valley Forge, "The Crisis"
|
||
was the first star that glittered in the wide horizon of despair.
|
||
Every good man should remember with gratitude the brave words
|
||
spoken by Thomas Paine in the French Convention against the death
|
||
of Louis. He said: "We will kill the king, but not the man. We will
|
||
destroy monarchy, not the monarch."
|
||
|
||
Thomas Paine was a champion, in both hemispheres, of human
|
||
liberty; one of the founders and fathers of this Republic; one of
|
||
the foremost men of his age. He never wrote a word in favor of
|
||
injustice. He was a despiser of slavery. He abhorred tyranny in
|
||
every form. He was, in the widest and best sense, a friend of all
|
||
his race. His head was as clear as his heart was good, and he had
|
||
the courage to speak his honest thought.
|
||
|
||
He was the first man to write these words: "The United States
|
||
of America" He proposed the present Federal Constitution. He
|
||
furnished every thought that now glitters in the Declaration of
|
||
Independence.
|
||
|
||
He believed in one God and no more. He was a believer even in
|
||
special providence, and he hoped for immortality.
|
||
|
||
How can the world abhor the man who said:
|
||
|
||
"I believe in the equality of man, and that religious duties
|
||
consist in doing justice, in loving mercy, and endeavoring to make
|
||
our fellow-creatures happy." --
|
||
|
||
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
|
||
faithful to himself" --
|
||
|
||
"The word of God is the creation which we behold." --
|
||
|
||
"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." --
|
||
|
||
"My opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in
|
||
doing good and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will
|
||
be happy hereafter." --
|
||
|
||
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."
|
||
|
||
"I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness
|
||
beyond this life." --
|
||
|
||
"Man has no property in man" -- and
|
||
|
||
"The key of heaven is not in the keeping of any sect!"
|
||
|
||
Had it not been for Thomas Paine I could not deliver this
|
||
lecture here to-night.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
It is still fashionable to calumniate this man -- and yet
|
||
Channing, Theodore Parker, Longfellow, Emerson, and in fact all the
|
||
liberal Unitarians and Universalists of the world have adopted the
|
||
opinions of Thomas Paine.
|
||
|
||
Let us compare these Infidels with the Christians of their
|
||
time,:
|
||
|
||
Compare Julian with Constantine, -- the murderer of his wife,
|
||
-- the murderer of his son -- and who established Christianity with
|
||
the same sword he had wet with their blood. Compare him with all
|
||
the Christian emperors -- with all, the robbers and murders and
|
||
thieves -- the parricides and fratricides. and matricides that ever
|
||
wore the imperial purple on the banks of the Tiber or the shores of
|
||
the Bosphorus.
|
||
|
||
Let us compare Bruno with the Christians who burned him; and
|
||
we will compare Spinoza, Voltaire. Diderot, Hume, Jefferson, Paine
|
||
-- with the men who it is claimed have been the visible
|
||
representatives of God.
|
||
|
||
Let it be remembered that the popes have committed every crime
|
||
of which human nature is capable, and that not one of them was the
|
||
friend of intellectual liberty -- that not one of them ever shed
|
||
one ray of light.
|
||
|
||
Let us compare these Infidels with the founders of sectarian
|
||
churches; you will see how narrow, how bigoted, how cruel were
|
||
their founders, and how broad, how generous, how noble, were these
|
||
infidels.
|
||
|
||
Let us be honest. The great effort of the human mind is to
|
||
ascertain the order of facts by which we are surrounded -- the
|
||
history of things.
|
||
|
||
Who has accomplished the most in this direction -- the church,
|
||
or the unbelievers? Upon one side write all that the church has
|
||
discovered -- every phenomenon that has been explained by a creed,
|
||
every new fact in Nature that has been discovered by a church, and
|
||
on the other side write the discoveries of Humboldt, and the
|
||
observations and demonstrations of Darwin!
|
||
|
||
Who has made Germany famous -- her priests, or her scientists?
|
||
|
||
Goethe.
|
||
|
||
Kant: That immortal man who said: "Whoever thinks that he can
|
||
please God in any way except by discharging his obligations to his
|
||
fellows, is superstitious.
|
||
|
||
And that greatest and bravest of thinkers, Ernst Haeckel.
|
||
|
||
Humboldt.
|
||
|
||
Italy: -- Mazzini. Garibaldi.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|
||
THE GREAT INFIDELS
|
||
|
||
In France who are and were the friends of freedom -- the
|
||
Catholic priests, or Renan? the bishops, or Gambetta? -- Dupanloup,
|
||
or Victor Hugo?
|
||
|
||
Michelet -- Taine -- Auguste Comte.
|
||
|
||
England -- Let us compare her priests with John Stewart Mill,
|
||
-- Harriet Martineau, that "free rover on the breezy common of the
|
||
universe." -- George Eliot -- with Huxley and Tydall, with Holyoake
|
||
and Harrison -- and above and over all with Charles Darwin.
|
||
|
||
CONCLUSION.
|
||
|
||
Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the
|
||
mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of
|
||
France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as
|
||
Diderot and Voltaire? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much
|
||
to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the
|
||
clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals
|
||
and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as
|
||
much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? -- as much for science as
|
||
Charles Darwin?
|
||
|
||
What would the world be if infidels had never been?
|
||
|
||
The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the
|
||
flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed
|
||
day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past;
|
||
the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls,
|
||
proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all
|
||
the years to be.
|
||
|
||
Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted
|
||
their lives to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been
|
||
hissed at in the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while
|
||
men who defended slavery, practiced polygamy, justified the
|
||
stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked
|
||
hack of unpaid labor are supposed to have passed smilingly from
|
||
earth to the embraces of the angels? Why should we think that the
|
||
brave thinkers, the investigators, the honest men, must have left
|
||
the crumbling shore of time in dread and fear, while the
|
||
instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and
|
||
users of thumbscrews, of iron boots and racks; the burners and
|
||
tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the
|
||
enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers, and
|
||
babes; the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the
|
||
builders of dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the
|
||
slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all
|
||
died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded
|
||
upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of prejudice, the
|
||
apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty, the breakers of
|
||
fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded by the fierce hands
|
||
of God?
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
34
|
||
|