In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed for some outward revelation from G.o.d, and testified their desire by running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no sect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common as G.o.d,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity, namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans, and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith,"
while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it probable, or at least desirable, that G.o.d would supply the deficiency.
Is the religious appet.i.te the only one for which G.o.d has provided no supply?
The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the brutes presents itself right at this point. G.o.d guides animals by direct revelation--by their instincts; but having given man reason, and free will, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon the indirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. For all that we know of history, geography, politics, mechanics, agriculture, poetry, philosophy, or any of the common business of life, from the baking of a loaf of bread, or the sewing of a shirt, to the following of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted to education, not to inspiration. All a.n.a.logy then induces the belief that religion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of human teachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual.
But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally all needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on G.o.d, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed spiritual things." That we have both bodily senses and spiritual faculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the other obtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it is with mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter in which religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me to receive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from my window a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has not obtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truth which lies emphatically in the plane of her own consciousness, it is, that she is in great need of a cord of wood, and a barrel of flour, for her starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom G.o.d gave bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by his drunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his family to utter dest.i.tution of all needed material things. From one cause or another, I find mult.i.tudes here in poverty and dest.i.tution, notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, that there is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvation in Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and misery and dest.i.tution in London; which, if true, completely overturns this beautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodily senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things.
The second part of the theory is as baseless as the first. All men have spiritual faculties, and have not obtained by them all needed spiritual things. They have not in their own opinion, and surely they are competent judges of "what lies wholly in the plane of their own consciousness." In proof of the fact that mankind have not, in their own opinion, obtained all needed spiritual things by the use of their spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian.
Every one of these appeals to revelations from G.o.d. Every lawgiver of note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "_it is certain that men did believe and think them true_." If mankind has found the supply of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of the need of physicians?
Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sort acknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretended oracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. We never find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light of nature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is only amidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers can stand up and declare that they have no need of G.o.d"s teaching. Had such men lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed of spiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting an altar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown G.o.d._" One of the wisest of the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to no certainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable words, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth for us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward G.o.d and toward man." The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning the eternity of matter occupies a conspicuous place in the creed of American heathens, had no such confidence in the sufficiency of his own powers of discovering religious truth. "We can not know of ourselves what pet.i.tion will be pleasing to G.o.d, or what worship we should pay to him; but it is necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven to instruct us."
"Oh how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further declares that "_this lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us the things man can not know by his own nature_."[49] Whether this want of a revelation from G.o.d was real, or merely imaginary, will appear by a brief review of the opinions and practices of those who never enjoyed, and of those who reject the light of G.o.d"s revelation.
_They knew not G.o.d._ If there is any article of religion fundamental, and indispensable to its very existence, it is the knowledge of G.o.d. It is admitted by Rationalists that the spiritual faculties are designed to lay hold on G.o.d. It has been proved in the previous chapter, and it will be admitted by all but Atheists, that G.o.d is an Intelligent Being. And further it has been proved that G.o.d is not everything and everybody, but distinct from and supreme over all his works. Besides, in this country at least, there will not be much difference of opinion as to the propriety of a rational being adoring a brute, or a log of wood, or a lump of stone. It will be allowed that such stupidity shows both ignorance and folly. Now let us inquire into the knowledge of G.o.d possessed by the people who have no vision.
The Chaldeans, the most ancient people of whom we have any account, and who had among them the immediate descendants of Noah, and whatever traditions of Noah"s prophecies they preserved, were probably the best instructed of the heathen. Yet we find that they gave up the worship of G.o.d, adored the sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, and in process of time degenerated still further, and worshiped dumb idols. From this rock we were hewn; the common names of the days of the week, and especially of the first day of the week, will forever keep up a testimony to the necessity of that revelation which delivered our forefathers and us from burning our children upon the devil"s altars on Sun-days.
The Egyptians were reputed the most learned of mankind, and Egypt was considered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existing monuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we have presented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of the religion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; and the investigation of these monuments is still adding to our information.
Infidel writers and lecturers have not hesitated to allege that Moses merely taught the Israelites the religion of Egypt; and some have had the hardihood to allege that the ten commandments are found written on the pyramids, as an argument against the necessity of a revelation. If the statement were true, it would by no means prove the conclusion.
Egypt was favored with divine revelations to several of her kings, and enjoyed occasional visits from, or the permanent teachings of, such prophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; a fact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathen nations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion on her monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moral precepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandments are not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege the contrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them, else they would have remembered that the first commandment is, "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me;" and that Pharaoh indignantly asks, "Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice? I know not G.o.d:" and that the second is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," etc., and would have paused before alleging that these commands were engraved on the very temples of idols, and by the priests of the birds, and beasts, and images of creeping things which they adored. It is very doubtful if they believed in the existence of one supreme G.o.d, as most of the heathen did; but if they did, "they did not under any form, symbol, or hieroglyphic, represent the idea of the unity of G.o.d," as is fully proved by Wilkinson.[50] On the contrary, the monuments confirm the satirical sketch of the poet,[51] as to the "monsters mad Egypt worshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog.
This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores a crocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with a bite." Cruel wars were waged between different towns, as Plutarch tells us, because the people of Cynopolis would eat a fish held sacred by the citizens of Latopolis. Bulls, and dogs, and cats, and rats, and reptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learned Egyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of their G.o.ds, a cat, was put to death for sacrilege.[52] Whenever a dog died, every person in the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping his own coffin! Such is man"s knowledge of G.o.d without a revelation from him.
The Greeks, from their early intercourse with Egypt, borrowed from them most of their religion; but by later connections with the Hebrews, about the time of Aristotle and Alexander, they gathered a few grains of truth to throw into the heap of error. After the translation of the Scriptures into Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, any of their philosophers who desired might easily have learned the knowledge of the true G.o.d. But before this period we find little or no sense or truth in their religion. And the same remarks will apply to the Romans. Their G.o.ds were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the pa.s.sions, fears, and diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme G.o.d, Jupiter, was an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard, Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their G.o.ds too horrible to be mentioned. Such G.o.ds were worshiped, with appropriate ceremonies, of l.u.s.t, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most sacred mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities, were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them.
It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer possible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties,"
"insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and thirty millions of G.o.ds, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers, and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents, beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or under the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of the world," Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol, with its frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled the Moloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of ma.s.sive sculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice which const.i.tute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the countless mult.i.tudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning a.s.siduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head on the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodies entirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, and their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water; here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when, besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how the horrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his lofty car, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earth to shake with shouts of "Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;" how the officiating high priest, stationed in front of the elevated idol, commences the public service by a loathsome pantomimic exhibition, accompanied with the utterance of filthy, blasphemous songs, to which the vast mult.i.tude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tuneful melody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissing applause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name of sacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harsh thunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throw themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the infatuated victims of h.e.l.lish superst.i.tion; when you think of the numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs, jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able to see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and to realize more fully the necessity of a revelation from G.o.d, for the preservation of animal life to man. Literally, where there is no vision the people _perish_. Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word which proceedeth from the mouth of G.o.d.
Take one other ill.u.s.tration of ignorance of G.o.d in the minds of those who close their eyes against the light of revelation--the heathen of Europe and America, possessing that inspiration which is wide as the world, looking abroad upon all the glorious works of the great Creator, and declaring there is no G.o.d. On the other hand, we have men, possessed of this same inspiration, deifying everything, and outrunning even the Hindoos in the mult.i.tude of their divinities, declaring that every stick, and stone, and serpent, and snail that crawls on the earth is G.o.d, and making professions of holding spiritual communings with them all. To crown the monument of folly, the chief of the Positive Philosophy comes forth with a revelation from his spiritual faculties, in which by way of improving on the proverb "both are best," and of being sure of the truth, he unites Atheism, and Pantheism, and Idolatry--teaches his child to worship idols, the youth to believe in one G.o.d, and himself and other full-grown men to adore the "resultant of all the forces capable of voluntarily contributing to the perfectioning of the universe, _not forgetting his worthy friends, the animals_." To such darkness are men justly condemned who shut their eyes against the light of G.o.d"s revelation. Where there is no vision the people perish intellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turned unto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your G.o.d before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness."
_Without a revelation from G.o.d, the mind of man can attain to no certainty regarding the most important of all his interests, the destiny of his immortal soul._ He knows well--for every sickness, and sorrow, and calamity declares it, and quick returning troubles will not allow him to forget--that the Ruler of the world is offended with him; and conscience tells him why. The sense of guilt is common to the human race. This is, indeed, "the inspiration which knows no sect, no country, no religion, no age; which is as wide as humanity." Reason asks herself, Will G.o.d be always thus angry with me? Shall I always feel these pangs of remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feel that it does here? Or shall my soul exist under G.o.d"s frowns, or perish under his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hide forever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meet again? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And in a few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason gives is--solemn silence.
The wisest of men could not tell. Who has not dropped a tear over the dying words of Socrates, "I am going out of the world, and you are to continue in it, but which of us has the better part is a secret to every one but G.o.d." Cicero contended for the immortality of the soul against the mult.i.tudes of philosophers who denied it in his day; yet, after recounting their various opinions, he is obliged to say, "Which of these is true, G.o.d alone knows; and which is most probable, a very great question."[54] And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says: "Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men."[55]
The mult.i.tude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pa.s.s into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle with spirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and many other lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner this uncertainty. "Tell me," said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all his wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they might obtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when I die?" "Your soul will go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?"
"It will pa.s.s into the body of the divine peac.o.c.k." "And after that?"
"It will pa.s.s into a flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying man, "where will it go last of all?" Where will it go last of all? Aye, that is the question Reason can not answer.
The rejectors of the Bible here are as uncertain on this all-important subject as the heathen of India. They have every variety of oracles, and conjectures, and suppositions about the other world; but for their guesses they offer no proof. When they give us their oracles as if they were known truths, we are compelled to ask, How do you know? The only thing in which they are agreed among themselves is in denying the resurrection of the body; a point which they gathered from their heathen cla.s.sics. A poor, empty, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any silly sewing girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of Washington, or Newton, in the scheme of one cla.s.s of Bible rejectors. To obtain rest from such a doom, others fly to the eternal tomb, and inform us that the soul is simply an acting of the brain, and when the brain ceases to act, the soul ceases also. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. But even this hog philosophy is reasonable, compared with the dogma of the large majority, that a man may blaspheme, swear, lie, steal, murder, and commit adultery, and go straight to heaven--that "many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone--many a grim-faced Calmuck who worshiped the great G.o.d of storms--many a Grecian peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went down--many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice--shall sit down with Moses and Jesus in the kingdom of G.o.d."[56] To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the Bible.
Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Where there is no vision, hope perishes. The only plausible creed for him who rejects it is the eternal tomb, and the heart-chilling inscription: "Death is an eternal sleep!"
_Without a revelation from G.o.d, men are as ignorant how to live, as how to die._ They have no rule of life having either truth or authority to direct them. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the purity of whose blood we are so proud, trusted to their magical incantations for the cure of diseases, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lost property, for uncharming cattle and the prevention of casualties. One day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was baleful to sow seed. One day was favorable to the commencement of business, another to let blood, and others wore a forbidding aspect to these and other things. On this day they were to buy, on a second to sell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If a child was born on such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly; if on another, it would perish early.[57] Their descendants who reject the Bible are fully as superst.i.tious. Astrologers, and Mediums, and Clairvoyants, in mult.i.tudes, find a profitable trade among them; and one prominent anti-Bible lecturer will cure you of any disease you have, if you will only inclose, in a letter, a lock of hair from the right temple, and--a--five dollar bill.
The precepts of even the wisest men, and the laws of the best regulated States, commanded or approved of vice. In Babylon prost.i.tution was compulsory on every female. The Carthaginian law required human sacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage, two hundred children, of the most n.o.ble families, were murdered by the command of the senate, and three hundred citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves to Saturn.[58]
The laws of Sparta required theft, and the murder of unhealthy children. Those of ancient Rome allowed parents the power of killing their children, if they pleased. At Athens, the capital of heathen literature and philosophy, it was enacted "that infants which appeared to be maimed should either be killed or exposed."[59]
Plato, dissatisfied with the const.i.tution, made a scheme of one much better, which he has left us in his Republic. In this great advance of society, this heathen millennium, we find that there was to be a community of women and of property, just as among our modern heathens.
Women"s rights were to be maintained by having the women trained to war.
Children were still to be murdered, if convenience called for it. And the young children were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that the young whelps might early scent carnage, and be inured to slaughter."
The teachings of all these philosophers were immoral. He may lie, says Plato, who knows how to do it. Pride and the love of popular applause were esteemed the best motives to virtue. Profane swearing was commanded by the example of all their best writers and moralists. Oaths are frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. The gratification of the sensual appet.i.tes was openly taught. Aristippus taught that a wise man might steal and commit adultery when he could. Unnatural crimes were vindicated. The last dread crime--suicide--was pleaded for by Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero; and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus, and Ca.s.sius, carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.
The daily lives of these wisest of the heathen corresponded to their teachings, so far at least as vice was concerned. The most notorious vices, and even unnatural crimes, were practiced by them. The reader of the cla.s.sics does not need to be reminded that such vices are lauded in the poems of Ovid, and Horace, and Virgil; that the poets were rewarded and honored for songs which would not be tolerated for a moment in the vilest theater of New York.
Recently some daily papers and broad-church preachers have taken to the canonization of heathen saints; they denounce vigorously the bigotry of any who will not open to them the gates of heaven, or who will, in general, deny salvation to good heathens. But we do not deny salvation to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody who is good. G.o.d is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth G.o.d and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor are we about to usurp Peter"s keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of men held up to our children as n.o.ble examples of a good life, in their cla.s.sics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christian clergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of G.o.d, than bad Christians; which last may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians. But the question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or by generalities; we must have specified individual heathen saints. When, however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to be only fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of our States; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according to their accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they got there before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public.
Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stock specimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for the admiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century. But it has been well remarked of Socrates, that no American lady would live with him a year without applying for a divorce, and getting it, too, upon very sufficient grounds. Seneca, who wrote so beautifully upon morals, was an adulterer; and, moreover, prost.i.tuted his pen to write a defense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directed the murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladies to be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the public amphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, for no other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such are these boasted saints and heroes of heathendom.
What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very height of Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each other to pieces for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Roman people; and n.o.ble ladies feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their never-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reign of Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roads became unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed that one-half of the human race perished_. This was just before the toleration of Christianity. G.o.d would allow the wisest and bravest of mankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and living without his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such a course is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
A brief reference to the codes of morals which the modern opposers of the Bible would subst.i.tute for it in Christian lands shall conclude our proof of the necessity of such a revelation of G.o.d"s law to man, as shall guide his life to peace and happiness.
The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers and anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicate this crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught that the indulgence of l.u.s.t and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr.
Hobbes a.s.serted that every man has a right to all things, and may lawfully get them if he can. Bolingbroke taught that man is merely a superior animal, which is just the modern development theory, and that his chief end is to gratify the appet.i.tes and inclinations of the flesh.
Hume, whose argument against miracles is so frequently in the mouths of American Infidels, taught that adultery must be practiced, if men would obtain all the advantages of life, and that if practiced frequently, it would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all--a prediction as true as Holy Writ; the fulfillment of which hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati can attest, who have heard a lecturer publicly denounce the Bible as an immoral book, and in the same address declare that if a woman was married to a man, in her opinion of inferior development, it was her duty to leave him and live with another. This duty is by no means neglected, as the numerous divorces, spiritual marriages, separations, and elopements among this cla.s.s of persons, testify.
Voltaire held that it was not agreeable to policy to regard it as a vice in a moral sense. Rousseau, a liar, a thief, and a debauched profligate, according to his own printed "Confessions," held the same high opinion of the inner light as our American Spiritualists. "_I have only to consult myself_," said he, "_concerning what I do. All that I feel to be right, is right._"[60]
In fact, the purport of this inner light doctrine is exactly as Rousseau expressed it, and amounts simply to this, _Do what you like._
On this lawless principle these men acted. Take, for example, the chief saint on the calendar of American Infidelity, whose birthday is annually celebrated by a festival in this city, and in whose honor hundreds of men, who would like to be reputed decent citizens, parade the streets of Cincinnati in solemn procession--Thomas Paine--the author of "The Age of Reason," as his character is depicted by one who was his helper in the work of blaspheming G.o.d and seducing men, and whose testimony, therefore, in the eyes of an Infidel, is unimpeachable--William Carver.
"MR. THOMAS PAINE: I received your letter, dated the 25th ult., in answer to mine, dated November 21, and after minutely examining its contents, I found that you had taken to the pitiful subterfuge of _lying_ for your defense. You say that you paid me four dollars per week for your board and lodging, during the time you were with me, prior to the first of June last; which was the day that I went up, by your order, to bring you to York, from New Roch.e.l.le. It is fortunate for me that I have a living evidence that saw you give me five guineas, and no more, in my shop, at your departure at that time; but you said you would have given me more, but that you had no more with you at present. You say, also, that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me; but you should have said, "I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demi-john of brandy, containing four gallons," and this did not serve you three weeks. This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold truth as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times you boarded with me; the demi-john above mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick.
Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper." * * *
"I have often wondered that a French woman and three children should leave France and all their connections, to follow Thomas Paine to America. Suppose I were to go to my native country, England, and take another man"s wife and three children of his, and leave my wife and children in this country, what would be the natural conclusion in the minds of the people, but that there was some criminal connection between the woman and myself?"[61]
The death of this man was horrible.
The Philadelphia _Presbyterian_ says: "There is now in Philadelphia a lady who saw Paine on his dying-bed. She informs us that Paine"s physician also attended her father"s family in the city of New York, where in her youth she resided, and that on one occasion whilst at their house, he proposed to her to accompany him to the Infidel"s dwelling, which she did. It was a miserable hovel in what was then Raisin Street.
She had often seen Paine before, a drunken profligate, wandering about the streets, from whom the children always fled in terror. On entering his room she found him stretched on his miserable bed. His visage was lean and haggard, and wore the expression of great agony. He expressed himself without reserve as to his fears of death, and repeatedly called on the name of Jesus, begging for mercy. The scene was appalling, and so deeply engraven on her mind, that nothing could obliterate it."--_Philadelphia Presbyterian_, March 17, 1857.
The physician"s statement has been common, many years, and corresponds with the above. So do Grant Thorburn"s representations agree with both.
And the piece published by Rev. Jas. Inglis in his "Waymarks in the Wilderness," which has proved so distasteful to the Paineites here, substantially agrees with all the others. It is only the truthfulness of it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine"s miserable, and cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as Paine"s nurse testifies like the rest.
In the East these facts are so notorious that even Infidels disown allegiance or attachment to Paine, if they wish to be considered respectable. Some of the severest denunciations against him, which we ever heard, have been from Infidels. Indeed this is more than plain from the very fact of all the Infidels having forsaken Paine on his death-bed. Who was his doctor? A Christian. Who was his nurse? A Christian? Who were his most constant visitors and sympathizers?
Thorburn, McClay, etc., Christians. They went, for mercy"s sake; Infidels, having no "bowels of mercies," kept away. Carver, Jefferson, etc., were far from him in his extreme hour.
The testimony of Mons. Tronchin, a Protestant physician from Geneva, who attended Voltaire on his death-bed, was: That to see all the furies of Orestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. ("_Pour voir toutes les furies d"Oreste, il n"y avait qu"a se trouver a la mort de Voltaire._") "Such a spectacle," he adds, "would benefit the young, who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion." The Marechal de Richelieu, too, was so terrified at what he saw that he left the bedside of Voltaire, declaring that "the sight was too horrible for endurance."[62]
And these are the saints, and apostles, and heroes of Infidelity, to whose memories Infidels make orations and festivals, and whose writings are reprinted in scores of editions, not only over Christendom, but even in India, to teach mankind how to live and how to die!
Such are the lives and deaths of those who denounce the Bible as an immoral Book, and blaspheme the G.o.d of the Bible as too unholy to be reverenced or adored! "But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own unG.o.dly l.u.s.ts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." In the Free Love Inst.i.tute about to be established in our vicinity, we shall have the full development of these filthy principles and practices.
Let fathers and husbands look to this matter. Especially let unG.o.dly men set to work and devise some law of man capable of binding those who renounce the law of G.o.d, and with it all human authority. For there can be no law of man, unless there is a revealed law of G.o.d. "What right,"
says the Pantheist, the Fourierist, the Spiritualist, the Atheist, "what right have you to command me? Right and wrong are only matters of feeling, and your feelings are no rule to me. The will of the majority is only the law of might, and if I can evade it, or overcome it, my will is as good as theirs. Oaths are only an idle superst.i.tion; there is no judge, no judgment, no punishment for the false swearer." Take away the moral sanction of law, and the sacredness of oaths, and what basis have you left for any government, save the point of the bayonet? Take away the revealed law of G.o.d, and you leave not a vestige of any authority to any human law. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," said the immortal framers of the basis of the American Confederation, "that all men are created equal; that they are _endowed by their Creator_ with certain unalienable rights." It was well said. The rights of G.o.d are the only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth--that religion is the only basis of social order--in words as trenchant as the guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, "the mystery of incarnation which I perceive in religion, but the mystery of social order. It attaches to heaven an idea of equality which prevents the rich from being ma.s.sacred by the poor."[63]
Once in modern times, the rejectors of the Bible had opportunity to try the experiment of ruling a people on a large scale, and giving the world a specimen of an Infidel Republic. You have heard one of them here express his admiration of that government, and declare his intention to present a public vindication of it. Of course, as soon as practicable, that which they admire they will imitate, and the scenes of Paris and Lyons will be re-enacted in Louisville and Cincinnati. Our Bibles will be collected and burned on a dung-heap. Death will be declared an eternal sleep. G.o.d will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will be renounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prost.i.tute, crowned with garlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen of Cincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. The guillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place.
Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce their husbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them to the ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will seize the mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. The Licking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed with their blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire of the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, _Where there is no vision, the people perish._