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1041 lines
56 KiB
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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**** ****
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SAINTS OR SINNERS:
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WHICH?
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by CHARLES WATTS,
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Author of "History of Freethought," "Secularism: Constructive
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and Destructive," "The Philosophy of Unbelief," etc.
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NEW YORK:
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"TRUTHSEEKER" OFFICE, 33, CLINTON PLACE.
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**** ****
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SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
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SAINTS and sinners are not two selected from the numerous
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classes to be met with in the world, with which in every-day life
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we come in contact. They comprise the entire population of the
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globe. This is the one broad and essential division which includes
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all mankind. There are black races and white ones; but, then, there
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are also the intermediate red, olive, and dusky. There are tall men
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and short ones, heavy men and light ones; but not to the exclusion
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of those of middle height or weight, which stand somewhere between
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the two. Even the terms "virtuous" and "vicious" will not serve for
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an exhaustive distinction, for there are probably none so virtuous
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as to have no vices, and none so vicious as to be destitute of all
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virtue; while a great number are either so indifferent to both
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sides that they can hardly be said to belong to one class or the
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other, or to have the good and evil so balanced in their character
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that neither adjective will describe them accurately. In all other
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matters without exception gradual shadings may be detected, by
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which one class merges into the other, to say nothing of the fact
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that they will be frequently found overlapping each other. In
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reference to Saints and Sinners, however, we have a well-marked and
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perfectly distinct line, which nothing can erase -- a gulf which
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cannot be spanned, a chasm with no bridge possible. The two classes
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are distinct in species, in genera, and even in order, to use a
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simile from Natural History. They are separated the one from the
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other by a line which cannot be wiped out, and no interchange of
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qualities between them is possible. The human race, according to
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orthodox theology, is just divided into these two classes, and no
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further division on those lines is for one moment to be thought of.
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Some Saints may come very near being Sinners, and a few Sinners
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may, by a large stock of natural goodness, a strong will bent in
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the direction of virtue, and very favourable surroundings, approach
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remarkably near the line which marks them off from the Saints; but
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neither can quite get rid of that which indicates them as distinct
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beings. There are no gradations, it is said, between Heaven and
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Hell, and so there are none between those supposed to be destined
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hereafter to occupy places in these regions. If it be asked, Is
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such a division logically possible, judging from what is known of
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human character? the answer is, The distinction is not based on
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character nor on any human quality whatever. So far as all ordinary
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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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SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
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classification goes, it is purely arbitrary; its ground-work is,
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however, professedly supernatural. In the New Testament the whole
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race is symbolised as being composed only of sheep and goats, and
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in all the creeds of orthodox Churches the one distinction drawn is
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between believers and unbelievers, the converted and the
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unconverted -- in other words, Saints and Sinners. Of course, it is
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considered possible for a Sinner to become a Saint, or for a Saint
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to lapse into a Sinner; but no admixture of the qualities of the
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two can under any circumstances occur. The instant a man ceases to
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be a Saint he is a Sinner out and out, and not the smallest vestige
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of his saintliness remains; while, on the other hand, the Sinner,
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however depraved, may, by a kind of spiritual transformation, be
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changed in the twinkling of an eye into a Saint; but then he is no
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longer a Sinner, even in the most infinitesimal degree. The
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separating agent is the alleged supernatural, and as such defies
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logic and all human mental analysis. Thus it is useless to urge the
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question, Is any division of mankind into two classes possible?
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because the only reply to be received is that it is accomplished by
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the grace of God, and with God all things are said to be possible;
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and there the controversy must end. The real question to be
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considered, therefore, is, What are the characteristics of each of
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these classes, and wherein do they differ? Of course, I belong to
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the Sinners, and it may be said, therefore, that I am incompetent
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to discuss the Saints. But, then, it may be replied, in the first
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place, that the Saints are often found discussing the Sinners, and
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this would, upon such a theory, be equally unfair; in the second,
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that, as no person can be both, such discussion must be altogether
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futile from this point of view; and, thirdly, that we have ample
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material before us from the Saints themselves upon which to form an
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opinion. It will be my endeavour, therefore, to do ample justice to
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both Saints and Sinners, dealing with their respective characters
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and value a delineated in history and known by observation. Here we
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shall find no lack of material from which to judge of the part they
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have played, and are still playing, in the ranks of every-day life.
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It is bardly likely that the members of these two Masses will agree
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in the estimate they form of each other. Nor can they well work
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together upon any lines where their peculiar qualities will be
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likely to exercise any sort of influence. They have to keep,
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therefore, largely apart. The Marquis of Salisbury once, in the
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House of Lords, describing Church parties, provoked a good deal of
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laughter by an Irishism, called a bull, He said: "A congregation
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may be divided among themselves into two parties; yet, if there
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were any means of separating them, they would both go on happily
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together -- I mean," he added, "apart." Well, the Saints and
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Sinners are separated; but we can go on very happily together -- I
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rrean apart.
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Saints and Sinners: what are we to say of them? The Saints are
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holy, the Sinners unholy; the Saints are righteous, the Sinners
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unrighteous; the Saints celestial, the Sinners infernal; the Saints
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are the children of God, the Sinners the offspring of -- well, "the
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Evil One," as the Revised Version has it. The Saints are to sit on
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clouds and sing psalms through all eternity; the Sinners to gnash
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their teeth in endless woe for ever and ever, and, as Lorenzo Dow
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says, for five or six everlastings on the top of that. The Saints
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are regarded as the "goody-goody" people, not on account of their
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own intrinsic worth, but in consequence of their professed
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|
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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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SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
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allegiance to a special faith; the Sinners are those denounced by
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the Church as unregenerated members of society, because they prefer
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fidelity to conviction rather than to creeds and dogmas born of a
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cruel and mind-degenerating theology. The Saints are those who,
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thinking they lack the power of self-improvement, rely upon an
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external "Saviour" for their moral elevation; the Sinners are those
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who depend upon the potency of an enlightened and cultivated
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humaimity for the inspiration to ethical advancement, feeling
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assured --
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"That within yourselves deliverance must be sought:
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Each man his prison makes."
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In discussing Saints we come at once upon a sub-division made
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by themselves. There are Catholic Saints and Protestant Saints. It
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is by no means certain that one of those classes would admit,
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except in a very limited degree, the saintship of the other. But
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each will contend of itself that it comprises Saints par
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excellence. Of course the Catholic Saints differ widely from the
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Protestant Saints upon most points; but upon one thing they are
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agreed -- namely, that to be a Saint it is necessary to devote
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one's attention especially to matters which relate to the Church
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rather than to the world, to the supposed future life in preference
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to the present, to the effort to please God rather than to the
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desire to ennoble man, and, finally, to the sanctification of the
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soul rather than to the purification of the body. The method of
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doing this is not the same in the two cases, but the end is
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identical. The faith of the Saint in each case is admirably set
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forth by Lowell in "The Biglow Papers:" --
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"I du believe in special ways
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O'prayin' an' convtrtin'
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The bread comes back in many days,
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An' buttered, tu, fer sartin; --
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I mean in preyin' till one busts
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On wut the party chooses,
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An' in convartin' public trusts
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To very privit uses.
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* * * *
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"I du believe in prayer an' praise
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To him thet hez the grantin'
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O'jobs, -- in every thin' thet pays,
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But most of all in CANTIN';
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This doth my cup with marcies fill,
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This lays all thought o'sin to rest, --
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I don't believe in princerple,
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But, O, I du in interest.
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* * * *
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"In short, I firmly du believe
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In Humbug generally,
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Fer it's a thing thet I perceive
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To hev a solid vally;
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This heth my faithful shepherd ben,
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|
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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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SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
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In pasturs sweet heth led me,
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An' this'll keep the people green
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To feed ez they hev fed me."
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The number of Roman Catholic Saints is so great as to be
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perfectly bewildering; and it is quite impossible to remember the
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names of half of them. The principle upon which men are canonised
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-- and, of course, afterwards worshipped -- is very difficult to
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discover; but usually it is, I suppose, some kind of service
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rendered to the Church -- very often service of an exceedingly
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||
questionable character, judged of from any human standpoint. The
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members of the Church who are elevated into Saints, upon very much
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the same principle as the Pagan apotheosis of heroes into gods, are
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much less numerous to-day than in the past, for reasons which it is
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difficult to understand, unless the Church is admitted to be
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degenerating in spiritual power or zeal or holiness, or whatever
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else may be looked upon as necessary to constitute a Saint. During
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||
the first three centuries of the Christian Church nearly every
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bishop became a Saint; but in the last three hundred years only one
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||
has been so honored, and he by no means a brilliant example --
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||
viz., Pius V., who, according to Lord Acton, was the instigator of
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||
a contemplated murder of the English monarch. Ireland, that
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||
favoured son for the Roman Catholic superstition, in which
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||
Romanism, with the rank luxuriance of a noxious weed poisoning the
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||
very atmosphere of one of the most beautiful countries on the
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earth, in three centuries added eight hundred and fifty Saints to
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the calendar, while, according to Father Burke, it has not elevated
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one since Lawrence O'Toole, who lived seven hundred years ago. It
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||
is unnecessary here to enter upon the character of these Saints.
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||
History records the fact that, for the most part, they were men
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guilty of the worst of crimes, and destitute of those grand virtues
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which exalt and ennoble human character. They were haters of
|
||
freedom and the greatest enemies of progress that the world has
|
||
ever seen. The Church which they serve so faithfully, and to which
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they owe their apotheosis, has crushed out all liberty among
|
||
peoples by the heavy tread of its iron hoofs, wherever it has been
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||
able to hold up its head and send forth its pestilential breath to
|
||
poison the springs of moral, political, and intellectual life. With
|
||
these Saints perjury is often a duty when it can serve the purpose
|
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of the Church, truth dangerous to the people, murder in the cause
|
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of religion a virtue, persecution to death commendable, lying
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desirable, uncleanliness profitable, and every vile abomination on
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earth sickening to contemplate defensible on theological grounds.
|
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The perfection which saintship implies is frequently a perfection
|
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of intellectual subjection and moral degradation, resulting often
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in the most terrible form of criminality and all the foulness which
|
||
even bad men of the world would shudder at with horror. The most
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eminent doctors of the Church may be quoted as not only tolerating
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||
every conceivable crime, but even instigating and enjoying it --
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and, indeed, threatening eternal perdition to those who were not
|
||
prepared to perform acts at which pure humanity would stand aghast.
|
||
The history of saintship is written in blood and engraven with
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||
fire. To such a history the following words of the poet are
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||
exceedingly applicable: --
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||
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||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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4
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|
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SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
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||
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"It doth avail not that I speak to thee
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Ye cannot change, for ye are old and grey
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But you have chosen your lot; your fame shall be
|
||
A book of blood, whence, in a milder day,
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||
Men shall learn truth when you are wrapped in clay."
|
||
|
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Recently the 'Dublin Review' (vol. xx., p, 192), a high-class
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Roman Catholic authority, thus delivered itself on the question of
|
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education: -- "We are very far from meaning that ignorance is the
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Catholic youth's best preservative against intellectual danger; but
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it is a very powerful one never-the-less, and those who deny this
|
||
are but inventing a theory in the very teeth of manifest facts. A
|
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Catholic destitute of intellectual tastes, whether in a higher or
|
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a lower rank, may, probably enough, be tempted to idleness,
|
||
frivolity, gambling, sensuality; but in none but the very rarest
|
||
cases will he be tempted to that which, in the Catholic view, is an
|
||
immeasurably greater calamity than any of these, or all put
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together -- viz., deliberate doubt of the truth of his religion."
|
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Is it to be wondered at that, with such teaching, the greatest
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ignorance and the grossest superstition prevail among these people?
|
||
To be a Saint evidently is to be an uneducated dolt, an
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intellectual pigmy, with a dwarfed intelligence and crippled mental
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powers; for here is the honest concession of what we have long
|
||
contended for, that education is calculated to destroy the belief
|
||
in popular religions and to make men lose their faith in the
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teaching of the Church and in the creeds of the various theologies
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that abound in our midst, to the intellectual hurt of the people.
|
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One distinction, consequently, between Saints and Sinners lies
|
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here, that the former prefer and defend ignorance and pose as the
|
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champions of mental darkness, while the latter are the advocates of
|
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culture, freedom, and intellectual light. Is it any marvel that the
|
||
days when the Saints were supreme in their power over the masses
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were known as "the dark ages"? Such Saints present a striking
|
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contrast to, and cut a Sorry figure in the presence of, the Sinners
|
||
of every-day life. Lord Beaconsfield, once speaking on the subject
|
||
of Darwinism -- which clearly he did not thoroughly understand --
|
||
contrasted the theory of the descent of man from monkeys with the
|
||
hypothesis of finding his parentage in angels, and added, "I am on
|
||
the side of the angels." So we say, We are on the side of the
|
||
Sinners, and long may they live to rebuke the pretensions and
|
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correct the many errors and vices of the Saints, who have been men,
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as Milton puts it --
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"That practised falsehood under saintiy show,
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Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge."
|
||
|
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Protestant Saints differ very considerably from those of the
|
||
Catholic persuasion -- so much so, in fact, that there are very few
|
||
points of resemblance between them; one there is, and that a most
|
||
conspicuous one -- namely, their assumption of superiority over
|
||
other people. The Protestant Saint is not canonised after death by
|
||
his Church; he canonises himself during life. His infallible
|
||
authority he finds not in popes, cardinals, and priestly conclaves,
|
||
but between the covers of a book and in theological creeds; and the
|
||
source of his inspiration is not a visible Church, but what is
|
||
termed the direct operation of the spirit of God upon his own mind.
|
||
Hence he judges individually his own claims of saintship and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
decides for himself whether he is a Saint or not, independently of
|
||
any external authority. This, to say the least of it, produces a
|
||
good deal of confusion, because the claims of one are not
|
||
unfrequently denied by another. With some the whole question
|
||
resolves itself into election from all eternity, according to the
|
||
purpose of God, quite apart from any merits or demerits of the
|
||
person so chosen. Persons sharing this view consider that the
|
||
Almighty, for some reason of his own, which to human beings appears
|
||
perfectly inscrutable, selected from before the foundation of the
|
||
world certain persons to be his favourites in this world, and the
|
||
inheritors of everlasting joy in the next, quite regardless of
|
||
their character or their acts, while he damned others to perpetual
|
||
misery, from which there is no way for them to escape, simply
|
||
because he so willed it. Mr. Spurgeon, referring to this horrible
|
||
doctrine -- in which he is a firm believer -- tells an anecdote in
|
||
one of his published sermons, with great gusto, of an old woman,
|
||
who said: "If the Lord had not loved me before I was born, he would
|
||
never have loved me at all; for I am sure I have done nothing since
|
||
to cause him to do so." It would not be gallant to deny that this
|
||
very pious woman formed an accurate opinion of her own character,
|
||
if a wrong one of the purposes and decrees of her God.
|
||
Unfortunately, there are some people who go through life without
|
||
doing much to deserve the love of any one; but, too often, such
|
||
persons are the victims of orthodox delusions, and not the
|
||
recipients of Nature's ever-inspiring affection. As a rule, they
|
||
allow the usefulness of their careers to be marred by the dreadful
|
||
idea that --
|
||
|
||
"Nothing is worth a thought beneath
|
||
But how we may escape the death
|
||
That never, never dies."
|
||
|
||
Thus the value of existence is sacrificed, and the tenderness of
|
||
humanity is blunted by the worthlessness and harsh teachings of
|
||
theology.
|
||
|
||
This election and reprobation theory is terribly repugnant to
|
||
all human notions of goodness, and even justice. No doubt there is
|
||
a great truth underlying the doctrine of predestination, although
|
||
it is, of course, presented in a very false and an excessively
|
||
repugnant form. It recognises the doctrine of determinism, with
|
||
which most modern philosophic thinkers agree. The part of it which
|
||
consigns millions of men to everlasting torture for no other reason
|
||
than that God so willed it, and that it was his divine pleasure
|
||
that it should be so, is horrible beyond description. But the great
|
||
apostle of this dogma, Jonathan Edwards, has given to the world an
|
||
exceedingly valuable work on "The Freedom of the Will," which no
|
||
Arminian has yet fairly answered. We take other grounds on this
|
||
question than the great Calvinistic writer; but the conclusion at
|
||
which we arrive is the same. The will is, like all things else, an
|
||
effect as well as a cause. It certainly counts for something,
|
||
indeed for much, in human actions; but then it has itself sprung
|
||
from, and is conditioned by, organisation, environment, and other
|
||
causes which it is powerless to control. Man's motives do not arise
|
||
from his volition; on the contrary, they govern the will. Man is
|
||
free, of course, in a sense -- that is, he is free to act in
|
||
accordance with his desires; but these desires act independently of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
volition. And this is all the freedom that is possible, and it is
|
||
all that any rational person should demand. No man wants freedom to
|
||
do that which he has no inclination to do, or to act contrary to
|
||
his desires. His freedom lies in his capacity to obey his impulses;
|
||
but these impulses the will has no power to create. The will is not
|
||
an originating cause, but itself an effect, the result of a
|
||
complication of circumstances, such as external surroundings, the
|
||
condition of the brain, temperament, age, sex, and heredity. To say
|
||
that the will is free in the sense that Arminians hold it to be, is
|
||
to state that which is paradoxical, For, if a person has the power
|
||
to call up a desire by the will, it is certain that some prior
|
||
desire induced him to do so. What, therefore, caused that desire?
|
||
Suppose one individual says he wills to do a thing, and he does it:
|
||
he must have had an inclination, or he would not have thus willed
|
||
and acted. Some inclination must, therefore, precede the will, and,
|
||
clearly, the will cannot be the cause of that which precedes itself
|
||
in point of time, and to which, in fact, it owes its existence.
|
||
|
||
But the serious difficulty which arises in reference to this
|
||
election doctrine is the fact already mentioned, that each person
|
||
is left to decide for himself as to his being a Saint or a Sinner,
|
||
and also whether he is one of the favoired ones or not -- that is,
|
||
whether be belongs to the sheep or the goats. The consequence is,
|
||
that many who are elect Saints, according to their own estimation,
|
||
are such characters as to lead inevitably to the conclusion that,
|
||
if God chose them before they were born, he either did not know
|
||
what sort of people they were likely to turn out to be, or else he
|
||
displayed a very questionable taste in their election. Other good
|
||
Saints deny the whole theory of predestination, and maintain that
|
||
man's spiritual position is the result of his own choice in
|
||
accordance with the freedom of the will, and that, therefore,
|
||
whether he be a Saint or a Sinner is a matter of his own individual
|
||
decision, and, hence, if he remain alienated from God and receive
|
||
damnation after death, it is entirely his own fault. But how does
|
||
this idea harmonise with the notion of God's foreknowledge?
|
||
According to this doctrine, God knows before a child is born
|
||
whether it will be saved or lost, and that knowledge renders its
|
||
state certain. If, for instance, when I was born God foreknew that
|
||
I should live and die a Sinner and be doomed to eternal perdition
|
||
after my death, then I cannot escape; for to urge that I can is to
|
||
say that God knew and did not know at the same time. Coleridge
|
||
calls the distinction between decreeing and permitting "a quibble,"
|
||
"and one which is quite absurd when applied to an omniscience and
|
||
omnipotence perpetually creative." And Coleridge was right; for to
|
||
suppose that the "Great Father of all" would either doom or permit
|
||
any of his children to be doomed before they were born to
|
||
everlasting misery, while he had the power to arrange otherwise, is
|
||
to rob him of the attribute of goodness and to charge him with a
|
||
crime that most human parents would scorn to be guilty of. This,
|
||
however, does not affect the difficulty under consideration, which
|
||
is that, according to both the theory of predestination and that of
|
||
the freedom of the will, the individual man himself decides whether
|
||
he is a Saint or not. The evidence of saintship is internal, and
|
||
hence no one else is in a position to form an opinion with regard
|
||
to it. No Church can sit in judgment on such a person, because he
|
||
claims that the evidence -- and that of an irresistible character
|
||
-- lies within his own breast. The Saints of this class are of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
various grades, and are very often found disputing the claims of
|
||
each other. Thus the Mormons declare that they possess such
|
||
evidence in their own behalf, and that it is of such a nature that
|
||
it cannot be mistaken -- indeed, they claim that they alone possess
|
||
it, and hence they are Saints par excellence -- "Latter-Day
|
||
Saints;" that is, the only Saints in these latter days. But the
|
||
rest of the Christian world declare this sect to be heretical in
|
||
the extreme, and that those who belong to it are wild fanatics,
|
||
self-deluded madmen, and, in many instances, rank impostors. The
|
||
internal evidence which, in their own case, they deem conclusive is
|
||
denied to others to be of the least value. The Shakers are Saints
|
||
by the same kind of evidence, and it leads them to look upon all
|
||
relationship of the sexes as of the Devil, and marriage to be a
|
||
snare and a curse. The Mormons, from the same standpoint, maintain
|
||
that by polygamy alone can man attain to anything like. a state of
|
||
happiness here and blessedness in the hereafter; while the Oneida
|
||
Creek community, founded by Father Noyes, also composed of Saints
|
||
the evidence of whose sainthood is within, proclaims one of the
|
||
fruits of the spirit to be promiscuousness in sexual matters. By
|
||
some the evidence of saintship consists in immersion, by others in
|
||
keeping a seventh-day Sabbath in opposition to the first day, and
|
||
by others in some still more trivial form or rite.
|
||
|
||
All this, to a Sinner, is a little confusing, and we become
|
||
somewhat puzzled to know what are the essential qualities of a
|
||
Saint without which he would relapse into a Sinner. A good story is
|
||
told of an old woman who said that, if you took away her "total
|
||
depravity, you took away her religion." This, perhaps, is true of
|
||
many besides the old woman; so we will leave them their total
|
||
depravity, and consider it one of the essential characteristics of
|
||
a Saint.
|
||
|
||
Now, we have been pretty well governed by Saints of one kind
|
||
and the other for a good many centuries, and what is the outcome of
|
||
it all? The world is not what we would expect it to be, considering
|
||
the great pretensions of these holy ones, and the almost perfection
|
||
of character which they claim, and the superiority to Sinners which
|
||
they arrogate to themselves. Crime abounds, immorality is found on
|
||
every hand, vice overflows the land like mighty floods that have
|
||
burst their dams and are sweeping all before them; the old
|
||
modesties and rectitudes of life frequently disappear in these
|
||
days; the sacredness of obligations is lightly esteemed, often
|
||
quite disregarded; there is an apotheosis of sensuous -- not to say
|
||
sensual -- pleasure, which is destructive of the noblest part of
|
||
nian; falsehood and evasion are almost universal, hypocrisy and
|
||
cunning are fashionable, drunkenness is common, and vulgar swearing
|
||
is not infrequent; there is ostentatious display on the part of the
|
||
rich, and grinding poverty on the part of the poor, and chaos
|
||
everywhere. An able modern Christian writer (Dr. Halcombe), after
|
||
having spoken strongly of the condition of society as regards
|
||
parents, thus proceeds to deal with children: -- "From such
|
||
parents, what children? Oftentimes unwelcome visitors, hated and
|
||
persecuted before birth, neglected afterwards through ignorance, or
|
||
laziness, or selfishness; left as much as possible to servants or
|
||
subordinates, what can we expect? See what little savages -- what
|
||
early development of evil and vicious propensities, what cruelty to
|
||
insects and small animals, what meanness and perfidy to each other,
|
||
what bickerings, fightings, envyings, vanity, pride, greediness,
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
often uncorrected, unreproved; sometimes even encouraged by
|
||
parents! Injudiciously petted, in judiciously beaten, maltrained,
|
||
maltreated, they become prodigies of deceit and dissimulation;
|
||
unwatched, uninstructed, driven too early to school or to low
|
||
associates to be got out of the way, they fall into revolting
|
||
habits that poison the very springs of life. What follows?
|
||
Disobedience, head-strong passions, outrageous tempers, disrespect
|
||
for parents, quarrels and hatred of each other, false views of
|
||
life, base motives, low ambitions, concealments, hypocrisies,
|
||
selfishness and utter worldliness, and so on to manhood and
|
||
womanhood, to make husbands and wives like their parents and to
|
||
beget progeny like themselves. And for all this, after eighteen
|
||
centuries of instruction, the Christian Church is responsible."
|
||
|
||
This is strong Christian testimony as to the nature of a
|
||
Church founded, regulated, and controlled by Saints. What picture
|
||
of the domain of Sinners can be correcly drawn which shall surpass
|
||
the above confession in all the weaknesses and vices of a debased
|
||
and degraded humanity? Evidently saintship is no guarantee for
|
||
virtue and no protection against the evils that too frequently
|
||
blight the happiness and nobility of man. Of these Saints we may
|
||
say with Ophelia: --
|
||
|
||
"Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
|
||
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
|
||
While, like a puffd and reckless libertine,
|
||
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads."
|
||
|
||
But the classification into Catholic Saints and Protestant
|
||
Saints is, after all, a broad division into two great parties, and
|
||
each of these comprises within itself quite a number of varieties.
|
||
There is the melancholy Saint, who rolls up the whites of his eyes,
|
||
pulls an exceedingly long and solemn face, eschews smiles, hates
|
||
levity, denounces a good hearty laugh as a sound issuing from the
|
||
bottomless pit, fit only to be indulged in by madmen or fiends. His
|
||
countenance looks as sour as a crab-apple, his nose points up to
|
||
heaven, he is knock-kneed and intred, has a big abdomen and small
|
||
legs, and never looks you in the face while speaking to you. His
|
||
favourite text, which he never tires of quoting, is, "Man is born
|
||
to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards" (a very curious simile, by
|
||
the way; for sparks do not always fly upwards, and, if they did,
|
||
the relationship between them doing so and trouble is not easy to
|
||
discover); and when he sings it is, in the most hollow and
|
||
sepulchral tone, the cheerful words of John Wesley: --
|
||
|
||
"No room for mirth or trifling Here,
|
||
For worldly hope or worldly fear,
|
||
If life so soon be gone."
|
||
|
||
Just fancy, when one hears those words drawled out as a Methodist
|
||
of the old school alone can give them forth, what an impression it
|
||
must make upon the Sinner as to the happy influence of saintly
|
||
profession! The fact is that, so far as the pious singer is
|
||
concerned, life might as well not have been at all, and that the
|
||
sooner it "is gone" the better will it be for his comfort. In this
|
||
merry, laughing world he is clearly out of place, and could well be
|
||
spared from the busy haunts of men. The prattle of little children
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
and their frolicsome romps are, to him, the inductions of original
|
||
sin; and the bleatings of lambs and their gambols while at play
|
||
only show the necessity for the butcher to bring about that
|
||
condition in which the addition of mint sauce will be agreeable to
|
||
the epicure. This kind of Saint abhors a joke, calls a pun a
|
||
miserable perversion of the meaning of words, hyperbole lying,
|
||
metaphor absurd, and fiction the quintessence of falsehood. He says
|
||
he belongs to the "little flock," which is a blessing for which we
|
||
cannot feel too grateful; for a big flock composed of such as he
|
||
would make life intolerawle to everybody outside their fold. He has
|
||
no abiding city here, which is a mercy; and he seeks a home in the
|
||
skies, although he never seems anxious to reach it, but stays in
|
||
this world as long as possible, a trouble to himself and a nuisance
|
||
to all with whom he comes in contact. He delights to picture a
|
||
heaven beyond the skies; but "distance lends enchantment to the
|
||
view." He is serious while other men laugh, and solemn while they
|
||
are joyous. He is akin to those ancestors of ours pictured by
|
||
Charles Lamb, who lived before candles came into general use, and
|
||
who, when a joke was cracked in the dark, had to feel around for
|
||
the smile. In his case, however, there would be no smile to feel
|
||
for, inasmuch as the Saint exclaims "Woe unto you who laulh;"
|
||
"Blessed are they that mourn;" "Let your laughter be turned into
|
||
mourning, and your joy into heaviness." One writer says that
|
||
laziness begets laughter; but in this Saint's case it produces the
|
||
very opposite effect. He is lazy and grim at the same time, robbing
|
||
life of its beauty and rapture, and ignoring the possible
|
||
brilliancy of Time to the gloomy anticipations of Eternity. In the
|
||
language of Byron, he lives and acts --
|
||
|
||
"In hope to merit beaven by making earth a hell."
|
||
|
||
Then there is the zealous Saint, who bores friends and enemies
|
||
alike about the salvation of his immortal soul. This man is
|
||
generally fat, greasy, and extremely bomely; his nose is as red as
|
||
a signal light on a railway, and his eyes resemble two gimlet holes
|
||
bored in a huge turnip. He is, as a rule, quite innocent of grammar
|
||
in his speech, of good behaviour in his manners, and seems to keep
|
||
hell-fire constantly before his eyes. He drawls in his speech, and
|
||
addresses you in a soft familiar tone as "dear friend," while his
|
||
rude and obtrusive conduct would suggest that he was one of your
|
||
most objectionable enemies. He professes to be more interested in
|
||
the state of your soul than of all else on earth and tells you
|
||
that, unless you pass through a change akin to some theological
|
||
legerdemain process, you will assuredly be damned. He rejoices in
|
||
proclaiming, "I tell ye nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all
|
||
likewise perish." He pesters the life out of those who are
|
||
unfortunate enough to be his victims, with his cant jargon, with
|
||
the bundle of leaflets that he carries in his hands for
|
||
distribution, and with his warnings to flee from the "wrath to
|
||
come," till one almost thinks that damnation after all would be a
|
||
relief to escape him. He informs you that this world "is a vale of
|
||
tears," and that all sublunary things will speedily pass away,
|
||
which certainly would be "a consummation devoutly to be wished" if
|
||
he were included in the departure. It is very difficult to escape
|
||
from this Saint. He buttonholes you in the street, on the railway
|
||
or street car, and at your ordinary occupation. He has made up his
|
||
mind to convert you, and he leaves no stone unturned whereby he can
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
accomplish his purpose. He tells you that be prays for you night
|
||
and day, and you may consider yourself lucky if he do not go down
|
||
on his knees and prey upon your patience right there. He is simply
|
||
a theological bore, who sacrifices reason to passion, good taste to
|
||
fanaticism, and common sense to orthodox stupidity.
|
||
|
||
Then there is the oily Saint, whose words are smooth and soft,
|
||
and who is very unctuous in his manners, the extreme of affability.
|
||
He tells you that his soul is full of love for all mankind, that
|
||
the very worst of them have his sympathy, and that the cardinal
|
||
virtue is charity. This Saint is lean and threadbare, and will
|
||
probably end his interview by asking for the loan of five dollars
|
||
or a gift to some missionary cause, never omitting to add that "God
|
||
loveth a cheerful giver," and "He that hath pity upon the poor
|
||
lendeth unto the Lord." And, above all, he is particularly anxious
|
||
to remind you of the words of "our blessed Master," "Lend, hoping
|
||
for nothing again." This Saint is much more likely to take persons
|
||
off their guard than any of the others, for he overflows with
|
||
honeyed words and suave manners. This is the man that all should be
|
||
especially aware off; his arts are duplicity and deception, and he
|
||
lives in the very slime of hypocrisy, the very goodness of his
|
||
nature being counteracted by the evil influence of pious
|
||
extravagance and orthodox cant. There are other Saints, such as the
|
||
noisy Saint, the upstart Saint of the noisy Pecksniffian descent,
|
||
the Saint of dudist manners, the holy Saint who boasts that he has
|
||
not sinned for forty years, and the female Saint, who is, of
|
||
course, the most dangerous type of all, in consequence of the
|
||
persistent fascination of her sex and her natural influence over
|
||
the majority of men. Then there is a genus who describe themselves
|
||
as half Saint and half Sinner -- "Plymouth Brethren" they are
|
||
termed in England. They hold that, while the lower part of their
|
||
human nature may sin, the higher portion remains quite holy, and
|
||
thus the Saint and Sinner are combined in one person. It is not
|
||
necessary to discuss these people, because to recognise them will
|
||
be to spoil the classification of mankind into Saints and Sinners.
|
||
There is one interesting question, however, which may occur to some
|
||
minds in connection with these balf-and-half people, which is, What
|
||
will happen to the upper side of their natures if the devil gets
|
||
the lower side? That, perhaps, is a mystery which no Agnostic
|
||
should attempt to solve. Enough has here been said to indicate the
|
||
nature of the various kinds of Saints that abound in our midst;
|
||
probably there is a place for them in the economy of nature; but in
|
||
the domestic circle and in spheres of public usefulness, private
|
||
purity, moral culture, intellectual advancement, national freedom,
|
||
and individual liberty, they have failed to do that which would
|
||
entitle them to the sympathies of a free and enlightened
|
||
generation. Their natures have been, and are, so contradictory,
|
||
their conduct so inconsistent, their actions so detrimental to the
|
||
well-being of society, that one is justified in saying, when
|
||
thinking of most of them: "I have thought some of Nature's
|
||
journeymen had made men, and not made them well -- they imitated
|
||
humanity so abominably."
|
||
|
||
Coming to the consideration of Sinners, it may be asked, What
|
||
is a Sinner? In the regular service of the Church of England, which
|
||
the devotees of that form of religion go through every Sunday,
|
||
generally twice, each person confesses that he has "left undone the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
things which he ought to have done and done the things which he
|
||
ought not to have done." This continual acknowledgment of misdoing
|
||
is not very complimentary to the faith which is supposed to
|
||
influence the conduct of the wrong-doers. By the way, what a
|
||
peculiar predicament such worshippers would be placed in supposing
|
||
that, in some one week, they had, by an extraordinary effort, or by
|
||
having been placed in very favolirable circumstances, or by both
|
||
combined, done what they ought to do, and not done what they ought
|
||
not to do, then the following Sunday the repetition of these words
|
||
would really be lying, and, what is worse from their point of view,
|
||
lying to their God -- that is, if the confession be addressed to
|
||
him, rather than intended for the ears of the rest of the
|
||
congregation. In such a case what is to be done? The words are
|
||
there, and must be repeated. Is it not, therefore, necessary for
|
||
the people to do wrong on the week-day in order that they may speak
|
||
the truth on the Sunday? They then add, "There is no health in us,"
|
||
and go on to pray, "Have mercy upon us miserable sinners" -- or
|
||
"offenders," which means the same thing. The word "health" here has
|
||
reference, no doubt, to "spiritual" health, for the entire
|
||
congregation could scarcely be said to be suffering from some
|
||
physical disease. Indeed, it is well enough known that "health" and
|
||
"holiness" are really identical in their signification, having the
|
||
same derivation, as originally they had the same meaning. Health is
|
||
harmony; disease is discord, whether of body or mind. "Without
|
||
artificial medicament of philosophy," says Carlyle, "or tight-
|
||
lacing of creeds (always very questionable), the healthy soul
|
||
discerns what is good and adheres to it and retains it, discerns
|
||
what is bad and spontaneously casts it off. An instinct from Nature
|
||
herself, like that which guides the wild animals of the forest to
|
||
their food, shows him what he shall do and what he shall abstain
|
||
from. The false and the fantastic will not adhere to him; cant and
|
||
all diseased incrustations are impossible." The man, therefore, who
|
||
really feels that there is no health in him confesses himself to be
|
||
out of harmony with law, an abnormal product in the universe, a
|
||
morbid accretion on the fair face of Nature, a diseased and
|
||
withered branch on the tree of life. Such a confession may be fitly
|
||
indulged in for once when the discovery is made; but to be always
|
||
doing it is the height of religious folly. For, if there is an
|
||
intention to put matters richt, why is it not done? if no such
|
||
intention, then why not cease canting about it? Well may such
|
||
persons call themselves "miserable sinners," for miserable they can
|
||
hardly help being while they remain at variance with law and order,
|
||
and are everlastingly lamenting that they are so, and yet make no
|
||
attempt to amend matters. If we take these people at their own
|
||
estimate, they are offended, which shows that the confession so
|
||
glibly made week after week is insincere, to say the least of it --
|
||
in fact, it is what they themselves would call in others rank
|
||
hypocrisy. A story is told of John Wesley to the effect that an old
|
||
woman went to the great preacher and said: "Oh, Mr. Wesley, I am a
|
||
dreadful sinner." Wesley replied: "Yes, Maam." She repeated: "I am
|
||
an awful sinner." Wesley nodded assent. "You have no idea," she
|
||
continued, "how bad I am: I have been a terrible sinner." "Yes,"
|
||
said Wesley, "I can easily understand that you are very bad." At
|
||
which the old woman glared up and said: "Bad, Mr. Wesley? What do
|
||
you mean? I am not bad: I'll have you to know that I am as good as
|
||
you." Now, if you take these people at their word, and describe
|
||
them in the same terms as they apply to themselves, it will soon be
|
||
seen how insincere their confession has been.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
But what is a Sinner? A violation of the moral law one
|
||
understands; an infringement of the laws of the land is clear
|
||
enough. But neither of these is meant when sin is spoken of by
|
||
religious persons. It means something difrerent from both. True, it
|
||
may include these; but it is not necessarily connected with either.
|
||
It is, in a theological sense, an offence against God, and may or
|
||
may not involve any wrong to man. Or, if there should be a wrong to
|
||
a fellow being, it is not that which constitutes the most heinous
|
||
part of the sin. Sin, we are told, is the violation of law. Well,
|
||
but what law? Not necessarily the moral law, but some Divine law,
|
||
which is supposed to be bigher than any that can spring from human
|
||
authority. The questions here suggest themselves, What is this
|
||
alleged Divine law, and can it be known to man? If it can be known,
|
||
why has not an intelligent application of it been given to the
|
||
world? On the other hand, if we are ignorant of its nature, how can
|
||
it be acted upon? Theology teaches that the human race became
|
||
Sinners in consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve. But admitting,
|
||
Pro tem., the theory in Genesis to be true, was any sin committed
|
||
by those primitive progenitors? Samuel Taylor Coleridge says: "Sin
|
||
must be a state originant in the will of the actor, entirely
|
||
independent of circumstances extrinsic to that will." The Bible,
|
||
however, records three circumstances over which Adam and Eve could
|
||
have had no control -- namely, the fruit which was "pleasant to the
|
||
eyes," the desire to partake of the fruit, and the serpent which
|
||
tempted the woman to eat that which was "good for food." Is an act
|
||
upon the part of a person sinful if he or she is compelled to
|
||
ferform it? Besides, this act in the Garden of Eden was intended by
|
||
God either to be performed or not. If he intended it, there could
|
||
be no sin while, if he did not intend it, he being omnisotent, man
|
||
could not do it in spite of him. It is no answer to say, "God
|
||
perniitted it." A God all good could not sin, and to give man
|
||
permission to sin would be admitting that a finite being could do
|
||
more than an infinite being, and also that which he (the infinite
|
||
being) was incapable of accomplishing.
|
||
|
||
Religious opinions have everywhere in the past influenced
|
||
men's minds on the questions of morality and what should form the
|
||
basis of ethical codes. No one will deny the fact that the
|
||
conceptions formed of God will depend largely upon the
|
||
characteristics of the people among whom the conceptions are
|
||
formed. The gods of savages simply reflect the feelings and ideas
|
||
of the race where the god belief obtains. They are cruel, brutal,
|
||
revengeful, and licentious, according to the characters of the
|
||
worshippers; and the methods resorted to for appeasing them will be
|
||
just those by which the worshipper would like himself to be
|
||
approached, and which would afford him some sort of gratification.
|
||
In Greece graceful harmony, beauty, and the highest development of
|
||
art were personified in its mythology. As character and culture
|
||
became elevated, the conception of God becomes more lofty. The
|
||
different views of God which obtain have modified the conception
|
||
formed of offences against God -- in other words, sin.
|
||
|
||
The moral Iaw has often been molded by the religious
|
||
conception. In ancient Egypt so great a crime was it considered to
|
||
kill an ibis that whoever did so was put to death. The Spartans
|
||
were encouraged to steal, it being thought quite moral to do so.
|
||
Falsehood and deceit were deemed praiseworthy among the members of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
the early Christian Church. In fact, lying was regarded as a virtue
|
||
if it were indulged in for pious purposes; and St. Paul evidently
|
||
justified such acts. Even to-day lying is deemed to be no sin among
|
||
some people -- the Chinese, for instance. Hundreds of other cases
|
||
of a similar kind might be given; but these will suffice to show
|
||
that the conception of sin among one people is the reverse of what
|
||
we meet with in another.
|
||
|
||
It will now be apparent that, in the conventional sense in
|
||
which the word "sin" is employed, it may be completely dissevered
|
||
from vice or immorality. Two sets of duties are recognised by
|
||
religious persons: one relating to God and the other to man. The
|
||
neglect of the first class is sin, the omission of the other vice.
|
||
As before stated, the latter are largely influenced by the former;
|
||
but still it is the violation of the law arising out of the former
|
||
that constitutes sin, and the sinner is he who is guilty of such
|
||
violation. We have, therefore, a class of acts which are right or
|
||
wrong, independent altogether of any sort of relationship that they
|
||
may sustain, apart from theology, to mankind, and these acts will
|
||
be deemed sinful or holy in proportion as they fulfil certain
|
||
religious conditions. For example, a man planting a few flowers in
|
||
his garden on Sunday would be held in Canada and Scotland to be
|
||
guilty of a grave offence against God, although he had not in any
|
||
way injured his fellow man, or in the smallest degree violated any
|
||
moral law, except such as was supposed to be involved in the
|
||
religious code.
|
||
|
||
The disseverance of the moral and religious duties is not so
|
||
marked to-day as in the past, simply because religion, as a
|
||
distinct thing, is less recognised. The intelligent preacher of the
|
||
present time -- at least among the Protestants and outside the
|
||
ultra-orthodox party -- devotes himself to expounding moral duties
|
||
and enforcing such acts of conduct as, whatever their relationship
|
||
may be to a future world, have very much to do with the life here.
|
||
But in the past, and even now among Roman Catholics and the extreme
|
||
orthodox party, the religious duties greatly exceed the moral ones,
|
||
and hence sin is more common than immorality, and the Sinner,
|
||
consequently, much more conspicuous than the vicious man.
|
||
|
||
By these facts we are able to judge whether Saints or Sinners
|
||
make the more useful members of Society, and, judged of from a
|
||
human standpoint, which are the better adapted to the world in
|
||
which we live. Whether the Saints are more eligible for heaven is
|
||
another matter. If they are, should they not make the best of their
|
||
way thither? Many of them on this earth are clearly out of place.
|
||
The Sinner -- that is, the man whose sin is only of the theological
|
||
kind -- may not be fit for heaven; that region he knows not of; but
|
||
on earth there is plenty of room for him and ample need for his
|
||
presence. When, in the fulness of his heart and the wide sympathy
|
||
of his nature, he throws the golden beams of blessedness into a
|
||
sorrowing and distressed home, sacrificing little comforts himself
|
||
in order to help his fellows, risking the countenances of the sick,
|
||
the poor, and the suffering light up with a smile of sunshine,
|
||
where before darkness and gloom had reigned supreme, is he not
|
||
fulfilling the bighest destiny of man, Sinner though he be?
|
||
Religion, by her most ardent disciples, is portrayed in dark and
|
||
gloomy colours, as if we had no right to enjoy the beauty and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
tenderness of the lower world -- as if the deepest and purest
|
||
affections of the heart were unhallowed and unholy; whereas one
|
||
feels that the noblest and best endeavour should be to delight in
|
||
the soft mellow light of love in which float all things good and
|
||
fair. To do this is reserved for the Sinner, irrespective of any
|
||
saintly influence. Religion may have a lace in the world; but it
|
||
must not usurp the throne of man's affections, the holiest part of
|
||
his nature. We will not bow suppliantly to any altar if it is to
|
||
rob those we love of our heart's warmest devotion, to taint the
|
||
loveliness of moral greatness and dim the blaze of unsanctified
|
||
genius. Our love for parent, wife, and children, and, after them,
|
||
all the human race, must be paramount in our breasts, though we be
|
||
counted Sinners ten times over. Man is man, and not a religious
|
||
machine. Too often the Saint lowers himself and then scoffs at and
|
||
derides those who dare to be themselves. Let him scoff on. With our
|
||
feet on the earth and our eyes on the stars, we proclaim mankind
|
||
sublimer than all else in beauty and magnificence. The world has
|
||
ever yearned for a full realisation of love to man and woman. The
|
||
great heart of Humanity has sent forth its longings and
|
||
aspirations, and these have often returned desolate and
|
||
disappointed. Priests, temples, and altars have stood in the way of
|
||
the world's improvement. Again and again has the music of Nature's
|
||
better being burst forth. Saints have whined over the decadence of
|
||
the race, and the song of beauty has been hushed in the wailing of
|
||
those who should have been first and foremost in the great work of
|
||
human amelioration. But the manifestations will return and burn
|
||
brighter each time -- more brightly than the flame of the altars of
|
||
Zoroaster or the sacrificial fires of the Jewish priesthood.
|
||
|
||
Orthodoxy designates all men Sinners who have not been "born
|
||
again," and condemns them as the enemies to the nobility of
|
||
mankind. And yet, looking through the long roll of the world's
|
||
greatest men, the giants of intellect, Nature's nobles, the world's
|
||
reformers, genius bright as the sun, and disinterestedness of
|
||
character glowing like the stars are to be found anions the Sinners
|
||
of the earth. Turn over the pages of history, and what characters
|
||
shall we find standing conspicuously forth among the loftiest of
|
||
Humanity's children, towering like mighty columns above the rest?
|
||
Why, those denounced by the Church as Sinners. By whom was the
|
||
mighty civilisaiion of Greece, the strength and power of Rome, and
|
||
the grandeur of yet earlier peoples, from whom even Greece and Rome
|
||
had much to learn -- by whom was all this accomplished? Why, by
|
||
those designated Sinners. The lofty intellect of Plato, throwing in
|
||
some instances modern greatness into the shade, the grand moral
|
||
sublimity of Socrates, the profound thought of Aristotle, the fiery
|
||
eloquence of Demosthenes, and the subdued oratory of Pericles, the
|
||
world's greatest thinkers, at whose feet the scholars of to-day are
|
||
content to sit; poets, sages, philosophers, whose writincs
|
||
transcend all that the world had seen before or witnessed since,
|
||
were all Sinners according to the dictum of orthodoxy. That
|
||
marvellous strength of will which made Rome the mistress of the
|
||
world, which enabled that great empire to spread itself over the
|
||
civilised globe, holding in its hands the destiny of peoples and
|
||
the fate of nations, whose sons shed an eternal lustre on their age
|
||
and achieved an immortality of reputation lasting as long as
|
||
humanity itself -- all these heroic acts and glorious deeds are
|
||
associated with Sinners, not Saints of the Church. Even in more
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
SAINTS OR SINNERS: WHICH?
|
||
|
||
modern lands we discover the names of illustrious Sinners adorning
|
||
the pages of history. Some unbelievers or doubters of Christian
|
||
dogmas, some indifferent to all theology, others advanced thinkers
|
||
of the Deistical, Unitarian, and Agnostic type; but all Sinners
|
||
from the orthodox standpoint. From Roger Bacon to Spencer in
|
||
philosophy, from Priestley to Tyndall in science, and from
|
||
Lucretius to Walt Whitman in poetry -- these, with others of their
|
||
type, have been denounced as Sinners; yet, but for the transcendent
|
||
achievements of such men, we should in all probability have now
|
||
been groping in mental darkness and the worst kind of moral
|
||
confusion, surrounded by a state of things so truly described by
|
||
Pope when he says of Superstition: --
|
||
|
||
"She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
|
||
To Powers unseen, and mightier far away;
|
||
She, from the rending earth and burning skies,
|
||
Saw gods descend and fiends infernal rise;
|
||
Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
|
||
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods:
|
||
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
|
||
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust,
|
||
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
|
||
And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
|
||
Zeal then, not charity, become the guide,
|
||
And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books, magazines,
|
||
newspapers, pamphlets, etc. please contact us, we need to give them
|
||
back to America. If you have such books please send us a list that
|
||
includes Title, Author, publication date, condition and price.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|