"Latin Christianity is responsible for the condition and progress of Europe from the fourth to the sixteenth century," and subsequently avers, "Whoever will, in in a spirit of impartiality, examine what had been done by Catholicism for the intellectual and material advancement of Europe, during her long reign, and what has been done by science in its brief period of action, can, I am persuaded, come to no other conclusion than this, that, in inst.i.tuting a comparison, he has established a contrast." ("Conflict," p. 321.) Lecky, in his "History of Morals," vol. 2, p. 18, tells us:--"For more than three centuries the decadence of theological influence has been one of the most invariable signs and measures of our progress. In medicine, physical science, commercial interests, politics, and even ethics, the reformer has been confronted with theological affirmations that have barred his way, which were all defended as of vital importance, and were all compelled to yield before the secularizing influence of civilization." (Protestant as well as Catholic Christianity is, however, obnoxious to this stricture of Lecky.)
The Freethinkers "striving to replunge the world into the depths of barbarism!" What can the Archbishop"s idea of barbarism be? Doubtless in his priestly mind everything is "barbarism" which does not square with the Encyclical, or with the dogmas of his infallible Church.
If, however, barbarism is in reality just the opposite of our most enlightened and highest civilization in Art, Science, Literature and Ethics, it will, I have the presumption to think, be found that those "foolish men"--those "brutalized" Freethinkers--are leading the van of progress forward to a higher civilization, instead of dragging it backward to barbarism. The truth of this is patent everywhere, in every civilized country, and many of our Christian opponents admit it, though Archbishop Lynch may not. A clergyman of Toronto--Rev. W. S. Rainsford, of St. James" Cathedral--(from whom the Archbishop of St. Mary"s Cathedral might probably, to his advantage, take a lesson in toleration), in a sermon preached in that city, Nov. 17th, 1878, in speaking of Freethinkers, made use of the following language, as reported in the _Globe_ of the 18th:
"This sort of infidelity, that of Materialism, has its students in the laboratory and in the library. It includes men of moral lives, of earnest purposes, * * * men who uphold morality, chast.i.ty, self-denial, perseverance with as clear a voice as Christians do, but on different grounds."
Years ago the N. Y. _Independent_, a religious paper, made the following ingenuous admission:
"To the shame of the Church it must be confessed that the foremost in all our philanthropic movements, in the interpretation of the spirit of the age, in the practical application of genuine Christianity, in the reformation of abuses in high and low places, in the vindication of the rights of man, and in practically redressing his wrongs, in the intellectual and moral regeneration of the race, are the so-called infidels in our land. The Church has pusillanimously left, not only the working oar, but the very reins of salutary reform in the hands of men she denounces as inimical to Christianity, and who are practically doing, with all their might, for humanity"s sake, what the Church ought to be doing for Christ"s sake; and if they succeed, as succeed they will, in abolishing slavery, banishing rum, restraining licentiousness, reforming abuses and elevating the ma.s.ses, then must the recoil on Christianity be disastrous. Woe, woe, woe, to Christianity when Infidels by the force of nature, or the tendency of the age, get ahead of the Church in morals, and in the practical work of Christianity. In some instances they are already far in advance. In the vindication of Truth, Righteousness, and Liberty, _they are the pioneers_, beckoning to a sluggish Church to follow in the rear."
The _Evangelist_ also, made the following admission of the same facts: "Among all the earnest minded young men, who are at this moment leading in thought and action in America, we venture to say that four-fifths are skeptical of the great historical facts of Christianity. What is held as Christian doctrine by the churches claims none of their consideration, and there is among them a general distrust of the clergy, as a cla.s.s, and an utter disgust with the very aspect of modern Christianity and of church worship. This scepticism is not flippant; little is said about it. It is not a peculiarity alone of radicals and fanatics; most of them are men of calm and even balance of mind, and belong to no cla.s.s of ultraists. It is not worldly and selfish. Nay, the doubters lead in the bravest and most self-denying enterprises of the day."
From a Church which has always opposed the education of the people, when she had the power, and exterminated or expatriated the best intellects under her jurisdiction, this talk of Freethinkers "re-plunging the world into the depths of barbarism" comes with a very bad grace from his Grace of Toronto. By this Church the Moriscoes were driven out of Spain--100,000 of them--and this because they were the friends of progress, of art and science. Buckle, the historian, tells us:--"When they were thrust out of Spain there was no one to fill their places; arts and manufactures either degenerated or were entirely lost, ard immense regions of arable land were left uncultivated; whole districts were suddenly deserted, and down to the present day have never been repeopled." The Jews also were expelled, as they, too, were in favor of knowledge and improvement, and this was sufficient cause for their expatriation.
This relentless enemy--the Church--of all science, all progress in knowledge among the people, ruthlessly exterminated the best minds within its grasp for centuries. Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," vol. 1, p. 171-2, says:--
"During the same period the Holy Inquisition selected with extreme care the freest and boldest men in order to burn and imprison them. In Spain alone some of the best men, those who doubted and questioned--and without doubting and questioning there can be no progress--were eliminated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a year."
Talk to us of barbarism and paganism! A church which, from the time, nearly fifteen centuries ago, when she burnt the Alexandrian Libraries and Museum--the intellectual legacies of centuries--to the present time, has never yet called off her sleuth-hounds with which she has always hunted down the sacred principles of liberty of thought and freedom of conscience! A Church which from "the beginning of that unhappy contest," as Mosheim tells us, "between faith and reason, religion and philosophy, piety and genius, which increased in succeeding ages, and is prolonged even to our times with a violence which renders it extremely difficult to be brought to a conclusion," to this day, would hold the world in barbarous ignorance if its paralyzed hand could but avail against the resistless march of knowledge and truth! Draper, in speaking of the condition of the people under Catholicity in the 14th century, thus pictures the civilizing (?) and elevating influences of that Holy Religion:--
"There was no far reaching, no persistent plan to ameliorate the physical condition of the nations. Nothing was done to favor their intellectual development, indeed, on the contrary, it was the settled policy to keep them not merely illiterate, but ignorant. Century after century pa.s.sed away, and left the peasantry but little better than the cattle in the fields. * * * Pestilences were permitted to stalk forth unchecked, or at best opposed only by mummeries. Bad food, wretched clothing, inadequate shelter, were suffered to produce their result, and at the end of a thousand years the population of Europe had not doubled."
For centuries, and centuries, in the Western Empire, subsequent to the invasion of the barbarians, when the Church this Toronto prelate owes allegiance to, had absolute control, such was the dense ignorance that scarcely a layman could be found who could sign his own name. There was very little learning, and what little there was the clergy carefully and jealously confined to themselves; and as Hallam, the historian, tells us:--
"A cloud of ignorance overspread the whole face of the church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the surrounding darkness." The same historian (Middle Ages, p. 460,) tells us:--"France reached her lowest point at the beginning of the eighth century, but England was, at that time, more respectable, and did not fall into complete degradation until the middle of the ninth. There could be nothing more deplorable than the state of Italy during the succeeding century. In almost every council the ignorance of the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is a.s.serted by one held in 992 that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself, who knew the first elements of letters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation to one another."
Lecky, in his "History of Morals," vol. 2, p. 222, tells us that:
"Mediaeval Catholicity discouraged and suppressed, in every way, secular studies," and further, that, "Not till the education of Europe pa.s.sed from the monasteries to the universities; not until Mahomedan science and cla.s.sical freethought and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe commence."
And, I would ask Archbishop Lynch, what was the condition of the Byzantine Empire during the thousand years or upwards of its existence?--An empire under the sway of his Church, from its foundation by the first Christian emperor, Constantine--that exemplary Christian murderer who, because the Pagan priests refused him absolution for his enormities, hastened to the bosom of the Christian Church, whose priests he found more pliable, having little compunction or hesitancy about granting absolution to the new proselyte. What is the record of history touching this Empire under the aegis of Catholic Christianity? The historian Lecky thus graphically sets forth its condition:--
"The universal verdict of history is that it const.i.tutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet a.s.sumed. Though very cruel and very sensual, there have been times when cruelty a.s.sumed more ruthless, and sensuality more extravagant aspects, but there has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely dest.i.tute of all the forms, the elements, of greatness, and none to which the epithet _mean_ may be so emphatically applied. The Byzantine Empire was pre-eminently the age of treachery. Its vices were the vices of men who ceased to be brave without learning to be virtuous.
* * * The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingrat.i.tude, of perpetual fratricides." In speaking of the condition of the Western Empire the same author proceeds:--"A boundless intolerance of all divergence of opinion was united with an equally boundless toleration of all falsehood and deliberate fraud, that could favor received opinions. Credulity being taught as a virtue, and all conclusions dictated by authority, a deadly torpor sank upon the human mind, which for many centuries almost suspended its action, and was only broken by the scrutinizing, innovating and free-thinking habits that accompanied the rise of the industrial republics in Italy. Few men who are not either priests or monks would not have preferred to live in the best days of the Athenian or of the Roman republics, in the age of Augustus, or in the age of the Antonines rather than in any period that elapsed between the _triumph of Christianity and the fourteenth century_."
The same historian, whose accuracy Archbishop Lynch will scarcely attempt to impeach, thus judicially and impartially sums up the influences of Catholic Christianity both in the Eastern and Western Empires during many centuries when it had the fullest sway:--
"When we remember that in the Byzantine Empire the renovating power of theology was tried in a new capital, free from Pagan traditions, and for more than one thousand years unsubdued by barbarians, and that in the west, the Church, for at least seven hundred years after the shocks of the invasion had subsided, exercised a control more absolute than any other moral or intellectual agency has ever attained, it will appear, I think, that the experiment was very sufficiently tried. It is easy to make a catalogue of the glaring vices of antiquity, and to contrast them with the pure morality of Christian writings; but, if we desire to form a just estimate of the realized improvement, we must compare the cla.s.sical and ecclesiastical civilizations as wholes, and must observe in each case not only the vices that were repressed but also the degree and variety of positive excellence attained."
Before the art of printing was discovered, the Church had less difficulty in keeping the people in ignorance, but after the invention of that boon to mankind she found herself ominously confronted with the tree of life from which the people would soon learn to pluck the fruit of knowledge. Hence the establishment, by Pope Paul IV., about the middle of the sixteenth century, of the _Index Expurgatorius_, whose functions, we are told, was "to examine books and ma.n.u.scripts intended for publication, and to decide whether the people may be permitted to read them." This is what his Grace of St. Michael"s Palace, in Toronto, proposes to do for the good Catholics of that city--decide what they shall read and what they shall not read, as though they were ninnies and not able to decide that matter for themselves! The fact is, however, that, in this priestly arrogance and a.s.sumption, the Archbishop is consistent enough; for, although such mediaeval tyranny is altogether inconsistent with the spirit of this age, and ludicrously out of place in 1880, in the City of Toronto, it, nevertheless, perfectly accords with the tenets and spirit as well as the antecedents of his Church; which, while it accuses Freethinkers of "barbarism," allows not an inch of lat.i.tude of private judgment in matters of religion, and tolerates no freedom of conscience: And what is this but barbarism? All freedom of conscience was fiercely denounced by Gregory XVI. as insane folly, and the Archbishop of Toronto reiterates this unsavory stigma on civilization. And why shouldn"t he? Theology never learns. The Church changes not. How can she when she is infallible? Yet an infallible Pope of an infallible Church, not long since, found himself, while encompa.s.sed with many difficulties, spiritual and temporal, to be about like other weak mortals in flesh and blood; and, though infallible, remember, and with the power of miracles and all that, he succ.u.mbs and whiningly complains to a vulgar world that he is "a prisoner in his own palace in Rome!" And the heretical and sceptical world--the "outside barbarians"--with a contemptuous leer, gape at the queer spectacle of the "Vicegerent on Earth" of an all-powerful G.o.d being obliged so easily to succ.u.mb to heresy--to a little temporal power. Such, however, is life--or rather the "mysterious ways of providence," which "ways" always seem though, as Cromwell observed, to be on the side of the heaviest artillery,--not the artillery of heaven, but the base artillery of earth. Indeed, this worldly artillery--the artillery of science and civilization--has, in this nineteenth century, been making such havoc with creeds, confessions, and dogmas, that the crowning dogma of all--this fundamental pillar of the Vatican, the dogma of infallibility--was, it would seem, fast becoming a _dead dog_; when the Holy Catholic Church finds it imperatively inc.u.mbent upon her to attempt a resuscitation. This happened in Rome in "_anno domini_" 1870, at that great Ec.u.menical Council--that unique anachronism of the nineteenth century. I know not whether that mediaeval a.s.sembly of Holy "Fathers in G.o.d" was honored by the presence of his Grace of St. Michael"s Palace, in Toronto, or not; but, be that as it may, his reverence"s entire loyalty to the notorious Encyclical and Syllabus of that Council is not to be questioned or doubted. The miniature Toronto _bull_ of May 9th, 1880, has the true Vatican ring of the big _bull_ of the Council in Rome in 1870. It, too, denounced, with its usual, though harmless, _anathema_, Atheism, Pantheism, Naturalism, Rationalism and every other ism that failed to square with Papal dogma. By the fulmination of that Syllabus the world learned among many other things, that "No one may interpret the Sacred Scriptures contrary to the sense in which they are interpreted by Holy Mother Church, to whom such interpretation belongs."
It was further decreed that "All the Christian faithful are not only forbidden to defend, as legitimate conclusions of science, those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, especially when condemned by the Church, but are rather absolutely bound to hold them for errors wearing the deceitful appearance of truth."
As examples of the holy canons which were actually fulminated and promulgated by that Ec.u.menical Council in the latter part of this 19th century, here are a few:--
"Who shall refuse to receive, for sacred and canonical, the books of Holy Scripture in their integrity, with all their parts, according as they were enumerated by the Holy Council of Trent, or shall deny that they are inspired by G.o.d, _Let him be anathema_."
"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their a.s.sertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine, _Let him be anathema_."
"Who shall say that it may at any time come to pa.s.s, in the progress of science, that the doctrines set forth by the Church must be taken in another sense than that in which the Church has ever received and yet receives them, _Let him be anathema_."
These are the modest a.s.sumptions of the Church of Rome in this age; and a prelate of that Church breathes the same noxious vapors forth into the intellectual atmosphere of the City of Toronto! It remains to be seen whether in Toronto there are such slaves or fools as will submit to this worse than Egyptian bondage. Will intelligent Catholics put their necks in a yoke so galling? None but slaves or barbarians would do it. The Archbishop would thus fain make barbarians of his own people, and then he would have the pagans at home without hunting among Freethinkers for them. In his lecture in Napanee, in April last, Col. Ingersoll gave it as his opinion that any man--no matter what Church he belonged to, or what country he lived in--who claimed rights for himself which he denied to others, is a barbarian! Now, according to this definition, who are the barbarians? The Freethinkers, or the Archbishop himself and those he ignominiously holds in mental bondage?
In conclusion, we thank Archbishop Lynch for his timely "bull." As a propagandist doc.u.ment for the spread of Freethought, and really in the interests of those "foolish" and "brutalized" Freethinkers against whom it was directed, it must prove a great success. It is another ill.u.s.tration of the essentially bigoted and intolerant spirit of Christianity in general.*
* I am well aware that the Protestant sects of Christianity repudiate this charge of the intolerant and persecuting spirit of Christianity in general, and vainly attempt to shift the whole onus and odium upon the Church of Rome. They tell us that Christianity itself is not persecuting--that it is not responsible for having reddened the earth with blood --but that this was all done contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christianity by men who were not really Christians. We deny it. We take the position that Christianity itself is essentially intolerant and persecuting in spirit; and, we take the New Testament itself to prove it. We take Christ"s alleged words as reported there, and Paul"s alleged words as reported there, and can thereby abundantly sustain our charge. "He that believeth not shall be d.a.m.ned." "A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition, reject." What is that but the quintessence of bigotry and intolerance? "I would they were even cut off which trouble you." How kind! "Think not that I come to send peace on earth, etc., etc" Scores of pa.s.sages could be quoted from the New Testament of similar import, and the Old Testament is worse yet, for it recommends putting even your wives or brothers to death should they try to persuade you to worship their G.o.d.--See Deut. 13, 6, 7 and 8.
REPLY TO "BYSTANDER."
I approach this part of my prescribed duty with some hesitation, and not a little reluctance. _Bystander_ is brilliant, learned, independent, and honest; and for these qualities, though differing from him on some important subjects, I entertain a respect and esteem amounting to affection. I hope, therefore, that I may not write a word here having even the semblance of discourtesy; for of that sort of treatment the gentleman in question has had a full share since he honored Canadians by casting his lot amongst us.
For the benefit of some readers who, possibly, may not have seen it, I may say that _The Bystander_ is a "Monthly Review of Current Events,"
published in Toronto by Messrs. Hunter, Rose & Co., and written by a certain distinguished literary gentleman, as referred to above, whose name I would like to give here only that I feel in courtesy bound to respect the "impersonality of journalism," the protection of which the gentleman in question has the right, and with good reason, to claim.
The last three issues of _The Bystander_ (for April, May and June) have each a paper on Col. Ingersoll, his lectures, and cognate subjects; the general tone of which is very liberal, but, at the same time, containing strictures upon Mr. Ingersoll and his teachings which I consider unfair and unjust (unintentionally no doubt), and to which I here propose briefly to reply.
Having heard Mr. Ingersoll lecture but once I am not in a position from personal knowledge to speak fully as to the alleged "blasphemy," and his general "tone" on the platform; but this much I can say, that _Bystander"s_ a.s.sertion that "he" (Ingersoll) "repels all decent men, whatever their convictions; for no decent man likes blasphemy any more than he likes obscenity," is certainly not true of the one lecture I heard, or of the score of others of his I have read. I humbly claim to be myself a "decent man," and I did not find myself "repelled" on listening to Ingersoll"s lecture, but rather attracted. I also saw many decent people at the lecture (some from a distance), and they did not seem repelled; but, like myself, well-pleased. In Toronto, according to the reports in the _Evening Telegram_, there were large audiences of decent, intelligent people: and instead of being repelled, they greeted the lecturer with the most enthusiastic approbation and applause, repeated over and over again. The same reception was accorded him in Montreal, Belleville and Napanee.
Bystander contrasts Ingersoll"s "offensive tone" on the platform with the "gentleness and sympathy of the Christian preacher on Mars" Hill,"
who, he tells us, "delivered the truths he bore at once with the dignity of simple earnestness, and with perfect tenderness towards the beliefs which he came to supersede." Let us, for a moment, examine this claim of "simple earnestness," and "perfect tenderness" in behalf of Paul the great preacher of the New Testament. Paul says, (Roman iii. 7) "For if the truth of G.o.d hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" He also tells us (2nd Cor. 12: 16) that "being _crafty_, I caught you with guile," and likewise a.s.sures us that he was "all things to all men;" to the Jews he "became as a Jew,"
etc. What "simple earnestness" this is truly! And the Church of Christ has nearly always acted in accordance with this Scriptural doctrine that in _lying_ for G.o.d"s sake the "end justifies the means." Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, tells us that in the early ages of the Christian Church, "It was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interest of the church might be promoted."
As to Paul"s "perfect tenderness toward the beliefs which he came to supersede," let us look a little into that. In writing to the Galatians he says [tenderly] "As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be _accursed_." (Gal. 1:9.) That is tender toleration for you! Again, "A man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition, reject"
(t.i.tus 4:9.) "I would they were even cut off which trouble you" (Gal.
5: 12.) We, Freethinkers, would stand a poor chance to-day if Paul"s precepts were carried out! Again, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be _Anathema Maranatha_" (1 Cor. 16: 22.)-What "perfect tenderness" this is! With a vengeance are these curses and maledictions tender! _Bystander_ may search in vain in Ingersoll"s lectures, or any Freethinkers" writings, for such consummate bigotry, intolerance, and even cruelty as this "Christian preacher" pours out upon all who venture to differ from him in belief. And what "perfect tenderness" in Paul to denounce and stigmatize even those of his own church--his co-religionists--as "_false apostles, deceitful workers, dogs, and liars!_" Did _Bystander_ or anybody else ever hear such language from Ingersoll or any other Freethinker? Is it not "offensive to any sensible and right-minded man?" Does it not "repel all decent men?"
_Bystander_ admits that when Ingersoll "attacks dogmatic orthodoxy he is in the right." What more does he attack? This is exactly what he does attack, and _Bystander_ admits that in so doing he is doing right, thus showing that he himself does not believe in dogmatic orthodoxy. Now, if the Christian"s G.o.d, as described in the Bible, is included in "dogmatic orthodoxy" (and He surely must be) is Ingersoll blasphemous in attacking Him? Surely not, according to _Bystander_ himself. _Bystander_ may say, however, that he does not mean to include the Christian"s G.o.d in the "irrational and obsolete orthodoxy," against which he admits "Ingersoll"s arguments are really telling." But does _Bystander_ himself believe in the G.o.d of the Bible? From the tenor of his language he surely cannot. Does he believe in the G.o.d of whom the Bible itself gives the following description? (For want of time to refer to, and s.p.a.ce to insert chapter and verse, they are not given, but every Bible reader will recognize the pa.s.sages given as substantially correct):--
"He burns with anger; his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire." "His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him." "The Lord awaketh as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine." "Smoke came out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth, so that coals were kindled by it."
"He had horns coming out of his hand." "Out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." "The Lord shall roar from on high. He roareth from his habitation. He shall shout as they that tread the grapes." "He is a jealous G.o.d." "He stirred up jealousy." "He was jealous to fury."
"He rides upon horses." "The Lord is a man of war." "His anger will be accomplished, and his fury rest upon them, and then he will be _comforted!_" "His arrows shall be drunken with blood." "He is angry with the wicked every day." "A fire is kindled in mine anger and shall burn unto the lowest h.e.l.l. I will heap mischief upon them; I will spend my arrows upon them I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, and the poison of the serpents... both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also, and the man of gray hairs." [What did the "suckling" do to merit this?] "He reserveth wrath for his enemies." "He became angry and swore." "He cried and roared."
Does _Bystander_ believe in a G.o.d like that? whom it is "blasphemy," it seems, for Ingersol to attack! It is true there are good qualities and attributes ascribed to G.o.d by the Bible as well as bad; but that does not affect the fact that these are ascribed to him; while the co-existence of two diametrically opposite sets of attributes in the same Being is simply absurd. Why is it blasphemy to attack such a conception of G.o.d, any more than to attack any of the other Pagan G.o.ds of antiquity? As he is represented in the Bible, He is certainly no better than they; and _Bystander_ himself would have little hesitancy in making an onslaught on the Pagan G.o.ds. When primitive Judaism and Christianity set up a G.o.d for _our_ worship and adoration, and at the same time tells us, "by the book," that He commanded the cruel, fiendish, and indiscriminate murder of men, women, and innocent children, we beg to decline to worship, or adore, or believe in any such Being; and we do not think it "blasphemy" to attack the false belief and the false G.o.d. When we read in the "word of G.o.d" that the Lord commanded one of his prophets to diet on excrement; that the Lord met Moses at a tavern and tried to kill him (see Exodus, 4, 24); that the sun and moon stood still; that it rained forty days and nights, and that nearly the whole world was drowned; that the first man--Adam--was made of clay, and Eve of a rib, about 6000 years ago; that the world was made in six days, and that vegetation flourished before there was any sun,--when we read of all these wonderful things, we beg to be excused from believing them, and claim the right to ridicule them to our heart"s content. If this is "disrespect," or "insult," or an "ign.o.ble spirit of irreverence," then we plead guilty to the charge, and are willing to abide by it.
We do not deny that there may be a G.o.d; we only deny the existence of such a one as the Bible sets forth. We attack only the G.o.ds whom barbarous peoples have fashioned in their own imaginations and set up for our worship, and not any high or n.o.ble conception of a Deity. We fully admit the existence of a great and mysterious power or force in the universe which we cannot understand or comprehend. We believe with Spencer in the great _Unknown_ and _Unknowable_, and have no "attack"
to make upon this power, no word of ridicule, no blasphemy; but, like Tyndall, stand in its presence with reverence and awe, acknowledging our ignorance.
While, however, acknowledging this unseen Power, we decline to anthropomorphise it--to call it a _person_ or _being_, and invest it with mental and moral functions similar to our own, differing only in degree not in kind. It is only the anthropomorphism we attack--only the superst.i.tions, a.s.sumptions and dogmas. We only attack that which is incredible and absurd--that which "shocks reason." We believe in religion--the Religion of Humanity--to do right--a religion of _works_ instead of faith and creeds, and _Bystander_ himself admits that "religion is carrying a weight which it cannot bear," and that, "unless the credible can be separated from the incredible, the reasonable from that which shocks reason, there will be a total eclipse of faith."
"The Cosmogony of Moses," says _Bystander_, "will, of course not bear the scrutiny of modern science; few probably are now so bigoted as to maintain that it will." If it will not bear such scrutiny, is it blasphemy to attack it, or its author? for the G.o.d of the Bible is the alleged author of that Cosmogony, inspiring Moses or whoever wrote it.
But _Bystander_ further remarks that the Mosaic Cosmogony "need not fear comparison with the Cosmogony of any other race." We thank him for that favor. It is exactly what we claim, to wit, that the Cosmogony of Moses, like all the others, is simply a human production, for it would be absurd to talk of "comparing" an _inspired_ Cosmogony of _divine origin_ with _human_ Cosmogonies. Hence, according to _Bystander_ himself, the Mosaic Cosmogony is simply, like the rest, human: only he thinks it a little better than the others. It will not, however, "bear the scrutiny of modern science." Very likely not! What then, becomes of the "fall of man," the "redemption" the "Ideal Man," and the whole Christian Superstructure which rests upon the Mosaic Cosmogony? If the pillars are taken away the building _must_ come down.
It is also admitted by _Bystander_ that "The moral code of Moses is tribal and primeval; it is alien to us who live under the ethical conditions of high civilization and the Religion of Humanity." Precisely so! And for this magnificent favor also, we again thank _Bystander_. No materialist or utilitarian could have possibly put it better; albeit a Christian would experience some moral obfuscation in trying to make out why, if the "moral code of Moses" is from heaven, it should be "alien to us" and to these times? He would be hardly able to understand why he should be comparing his _Divine_ code with _Pagan_ codes to see whether it is "worse or better than other codes framed in the same stage of human progress?" Let the Freethinkers take courage. _Bystander_, to all appearances, will soon be squarely on our side; and then we can truthfully say, that though the Christians have the greatest scientist, probably, in Canada (Prof. Dawson, of Montreal,) on their side, we will have the greatest scholar, historian and _literateur_ in Canada on _our_ side. Three cheers in the Liberal camp for _Bystander!_ Indeed, we have some hopes, too, even of Prof. Dawson, whose Mosaic orthodoxy seems to be relaxing a little of late; and he evidently feels his isolation, his scientific brethren all being on our side.
While writing this, the Montreal _Daily Witness_ of June 15th, 1880, comes to hand from a Freethought octogenarian friend in Port Hope (Wm.
Sisson, Esq.) with the familiar pencil mark, drawing my attention to a report of the proceedings of "The Congregational Union," at present in session in Montreal. From it I learn that Rev. Hugh Pedley, B. A., made an address before the _Union_ on "The Freethought of the Age," from which I cull the following, as reported in the _Witness_:--