Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and the doctrine of evolution is now an accepted fact. His light has broken in on some of the early clergy, and the greatest man who today occupies the pulpit is a believer in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin--and that is Henry Ward Beecher--a man of more brains than the entire clergy of that entire church put together. And yet we are told in this little creed that orthodox religion is about to conquer the world. It will be driven to the wilds of Africa. It must go to some savage country; it has lost its hold upon civilization, and I tell you it is unfortunate to have a religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect of a nation. It is unfortunate to have a religion against which every good and n.o.ble heart protests. Let us have a good one or none. O! my pity has been excited by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp and twist the pa.s.sages of scripture to fit some demonstration in science. These pious evasions! These solemn pretenses! When they are caught in one way they give a different meaning to the words and say the world was not made in seven days. They say "good whiles"--epochs. And in this same confession here of faith and creeds they believe the Lord"s day is holy--every seventh day. Suppose you lived near the north pole, where the day is three months long. Then which day will you keep? Suppose you could get to the north pole, you could prevent Sunday from ever overtaking you. You could walk around the other way faster than the world could revolve. How would you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever invent any thing that can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just chase Sunday clear around the globe. Is there anything that can be more perfectly absurd than that a s.p.a.ce of time can be holy! You might as well talk about a pious vacuum. These pious evasions. I heard the other night of an old man. He was not very well educated, you know, and he got into the notion that he must have reading of the bible and have family worship; and there was a bad boy in the family--a pretty smart boy--and they were reading the bible by course, and in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this pa.s.sage: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be changed."
And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the "changed." So next night the old man got on his specs and got down his bible and said: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be hanged." The old lady said, "Father, I don"t think it reads that way."
He says, "Who is reading this?" "Yes, mother, it says be hanged, and, more than that, I see the sense of it. Pride is the besetting sin of the human heart, and if there is anything calculated to take the pride out of a man it is hanging."
I keep going back to this book; I keep going back to the miracles, to the prophecies, to the fables, and people ask me, if I take away the bible, what are we going to do? How can we get along without the revelation that no one understands? What are we going to do if we have no bible to quarrel about? What are we to do without h.e.l.l? What are we going to do with our enemies? What are we going to do with the people we love but don"t like? They tell me that there never would have been any civilization if it had not been for this bible. Um! The Jews had a bible; the Romans had not. Which had the greater and the grander government? Let us be honest. Which of those nations produced the greatest poets, the greatest soldiers, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the greatest sculptors? Rome had no bible. G.o.d cared nothing for the Roman Empire. He let the men come up by chance.
His time was taken up by the Jewish people. And yet Rome conquered the world, and even conquered G.o.d"s chosen people. The people that had the bible were defeated by the people who had not. How was it possible for Lucretius to get along without the bible? How did the great and glorious of that empire? And what shall we say of Greece? No bible.
Compare Athens with Jerusalem. From Athens comes the beauty and intellectual grace of the world. Compare the mythology of Greece with the mythology of Judea. One covering the earth with beauty, and the other filling heaven with hatred and injustice. The Hindoos had no bible; they had been forsaken by the creator, and yet they became the greatest metaphysicians of the world. Egypt had no bible. Compare even Egypt with Judea. What are we to do without the bible? What became of the Jews who had no bible; their temple was destroyed and their city was taken; and, as I said before, they never found real prosperity until their G.o.d deserted them. Do without the bible?
Now I come again to the new testament. There are a few things in there, I give you my word, I cannot believe. I cannot--I cannot believe in the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. I believe He was the son of Joseph and Mary; that Joseph and Mary had been duly and legally married; that He was the legitimate offspring of that marriage, and n.o.body ever believed the contrary until He had been dead 150 years.
Neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke ever dreamed that He was of divine origin. He did not say to either Matthew, Mark or Luke, or to any one in their hearing, that He was the son of G.o.d, or that He was miraculously conceived. He did not say it. The angel Gabriel, who, they say, brought the news, never wrote a word upon the subject. His mother never wrote a word upon the subject. His father never wrote a word upon the subject. We are lacking in the matter of witnesses. I would not believe it now! I cannot believe it then. I would not believe people I know, much less would I believe people I don"t know.
I say that at that time Matthew, Mark and Luke believed that He was the son of Joseph and Mary. And why? They say He descended from the blood of David, and in order to show that He was of the blood of David they gave the genealogy of Joseph. And if Joseph was not his father, why not give the genealogy of Pontius Pilate or Herod? Could they, by giving the genealogy of Joseph, show that He was of the blood of David if Joseph was in no way related to David; and yet that is the position into which the Christian world is now driven. It says the son of Joseph, and then interpolated the words "as was supposed." Why, then, do they give a supposed genealogy. It will not do. And that is a thing that cannot in any way, by any human testimony, be established; and if it is important for us to know that He was the Son of G.o.d, I say then that it devolves upon G.o.d to give us evidence. Let Him write it across the face of the heavens, in every language of mankind. If it is necessary for us to believe it, let it grow on every leaf next year.
No man should be d.a.m.ned for not believing unless the evidence is overwhelming. And he ought not to be made to depend upon say-so. He should have it directly for himself. A man says G.o.d told him so and so, and he tells me, and I haven"t anyone"s word but that fellow"s. He may have been deceived. If G.o.d has a message for me He ought to tell it to me, and not somebody that has been dead 4,000 or 5,000 years, and in another language; G.o.d may have changed His mind on many things; He has on slavery at least, and polygamy; and yet His church now wants to go out here and destroy polygamy in Utah with a sword. Why don"t they send missionaries there with copies of the old testament? By reading the lives of Abraham, and Isaac, and Lot, and a few other fellows that ought to have been in the penitentiary, they can soften their hearts.
Now, there is another miracle I do not believe. I want to speak about it as we would about any ordinary transaction in the world. In the first place, I do not believe that any miracle was ever performed, and if there was, you can"t prove it. Why? Because it is altogether more reasonable that the people lied about it than that it happened. And why? Because, according to human experience, we know that people will not always tell the truth, and we never saw a miracle, and we have got to be governed by our experience, and if we go by our experience, it is in favor that the thing never happened; that the man is mistaken. Now, I want you to remember it. Here is a man that comes into Jerusalem, and the first thing he does he cures the blind. He lets the light of day visit the darkness of blindness. The eyes are opened and the whole world is again pictured upon the brain. Another man is clothed with leprosy. He touches him, and the disease falls from him, and he stands pure, and clean, and whole. Another man is deformed, wrinkled, bent.
He touches him and throws upon him again the garment of youth. A man is in his grave, and He says, "Come forth!" and he again walks in life, feeling his heart throb and beat, and his blood going joyously through his veins. They say that happened. I don"t know. There is one wonderful thing about the dead people that were raised--we don"t hear of them any more. What became of them? Why, if there was a man in this town that had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him tonight. I would say, "Where were you when you got the notice to come back? What kind of country is it? What kind of opening there for a young man? How did you like it?" But n.o.body ever paid the slightest attention to them there. They didn"t even excite interest when they died the second time. n.o.body said, "Why, that man isn"t afraid. He has been there." Not a word. They pa.s.s away quietly. You see I don"t believe it. There is something wrong somewhere about that business.
And then there is another trouble in my mind. Now, you know I may suffer eternal punishment for all this.
Here is a man that does all these things, and thereupon they crucify Him. Now, then, let us be honest. Suppose a man came into Chicago and he should meet a funeral procession, and he should say, "Who is dead?"
and they should say, "The son of a widow; her only support," and he should say to the procession, "Halt!" And to the undertaker, "Take out that coffin, unscrew that lid." "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!"
And the latter should step from the coffin, and in one moment after hold his mother in his arms. Suppose he should go to your cemetery and should find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, "Who lies buried here?" and she should reply, "My husband," and he should say, "I say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead," and the husband should rise and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife"s, and the little children with their arms around his neck. Suppose that it is so. Do you think that the people of Chicago would kill him? Do you think any one would wish to crucify him? Do you not rather believe that every one who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon their knees, and beg him and implore him to give back their dead? Do you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of death? Let me tell you tonight if there shall ever appear on this earth the master, the monarch of death, all human knees will touch the earth; he will not be crucified, he will not be touched. All the living who fear death; all the living who have lost a loved one will stand and cling to him. And yet we are told that this worker of miracles, this worker of wonders, this man who could clothe the dead in the throbbing flesh of life, was crucified by the Jewish people. It was never dreamed that he did a miracle until 100 years after he was dead.
There is another miracle I do not believe, I cannot believe it, and that is the resurrection. And why? If it was the fact, if the dead got out of the grave, why did He not show himself to his enemies? Why did He not again visit Pontius Pilate? Why did He not call upon Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did He not again enter the temple and dispute with the doctors? Why didn"t He say to the mult.i.tude: "Here are the wounds in My feet, and in My hands, and in My side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but Death is My slave." Why didn"t He? Simply because the thing never happened. I cannot believe it. But recollect, it makes no difference with its teachings. They are exactly as good whether He wrought miracles or not. Twice two are four; that needs no miracle. Twice two are five--a miracle would not help that. Christ"s teachings are worth their effect upon the human race. It makes no difference about miracle or about wonder, but you must remember in that day every one believed in miracles. n.o.body had any standing as a teacher, a philosopher, a governor, or a king, about whom there was not a something miraculous. The earth was then covered with the sons and daughters of the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. That was believed in Greece, in Rome, in Egypt, in Hindustan; everybody, nearly, believed in such things.
Then there is another miracle that I cannot believe in, and that is the ascension--the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ. Where was He going?
Since the telescope has been pointed at the stars, where was He going?
The New Jerusalem is not there. The abode of the G.o.ds is not there.
Where was He going? Which way did He go? That depends upon the time of day that He left. If He left in the night He went exactly the opposite way from what He would in the day. Who saw this miracle?
They say the disciples. Let us see what they say about it. Matthew did not think it was worth mentioning. He doesn"t speak of it at all.
On the contrary, he says that the last words of Christ were: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." That is what he says. Mark, he saw it. "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them He was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of G.o.d." That is all he has to say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed human vision--about a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet we have one poor, little meagre verse. So, then, after He had quit speaking, He was caught up and sat on the right hand of G.o.d. How does he know He was on the right hand? Did he see Him after He had sat down? Luke says: "And it came to pa.s.s while He blessed them He was parted from them and was carried up into heaven."
But John does not mention it. He gives as His last words this address to Peter: "Follow thou Me." Of course He did not say that as He ascended. In the Acts we have another account. A conversation is given not spoken of in any of the others, and we find there two men clad in white apparel, who said: "Men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus that was taken up into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go up into Heaven."
Matthew didn"t see that; Mark forgot it; Luke didn"t think it was worth mentioning, and John didn"t believe it; and yet upon that evidence we are led to believe that the most miraculous of all miracles actually occurred. I cannot believe it.
I may be mistaken; but the church is now trying to parry, and when they come to the little miracles of the new testament all they say is: "Christ didn"t cast out devils; these men had fits." He cured fits.
Then I read in another place about the fits talking. Christ held a dialogue with the fits, and the fits told Him his name, and the fits at that time were in a crazy man. And the fits made a contract that they would go out of the man provided they would be permitted to go into swine. How can fits that attack a man take up a residence in swine?
The church must not give up the devil. He is the right bower. No devil, no h.e.l.l; no h.e.l.l, no preacher; no fire, no insurance. I read another miracle--that this devil took Christ and put him on the pinnacle of a temple. Was that fits, too? Why is not the theological world honest? Why do they not come up and admit what they know the book means? They have not the courage. Now, their next doctrine is the absolute necessity of belief. That depends upon this: Can a man believe as he wants to? Can you? Can anybody? Does belief depend at all upon the evidence? I think it does somewhat in some cases. How is it that when a jury is sworn to try a case, hearing all the evidence--hearing both sides, hearing the charge of the judge, hearing the law, and upon their oaths, are equally divided, six for the plaintiff and six for the defendant? It is because evidence does not have the same effect upon all people. Why? Our brains are not alike--not the same shape; we have not the same intelligence or the same experience, the same sense. And yet I am held accountable for my belief. I must believe in the Trinity--three times one is one, once one is three--and my soul is to be eternally d.a.m.ned for failing to guess an arithmetical conundrum. And that is the poison part of Christianity--that salvation depends upon belief--that is the poison part, and until that dogma is discarded religion will be nothing but superst.i.tion. No man can control his belief. If I hear certain evidence I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to hear it I may never believe it. If it is adapted to my mind I may accept it; if it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have from nature, and if there be a G.o.d, it is the only torch that this G.o.d has given me by which to find my way through the darkness and the night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the word of any other man, nor get upon my knees before a book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and consult the G.o.d--that is to say, my reason--and the oracle speaks to me, and I obey the oracle. What should I obey? Another man"s oracle? Shall I take another man"s word and not what he thinks, but what G.o.d said to him?
I would not know a G.o.d if I should see one. I have said before, and I say again, the brain thinks in spite of me, and I am not responsible for my thought. No more can I control the beating of my heart, the expansion and contraction of my lungs for a moment; no more can I stop the blood that flows through the rivers of the veins. And yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then why does not the G.o.d give me the evidence? They say He has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do not understand it as they do. Must I be false to my understanding?
They say: "When you come to die you will be sorry you did not." Will I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? G.o.d cannot forgive me for that. They say when He was in Jerusalem, He forgave His murderers. Now He won"t forgive an honest man for differing with Him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that G.o.d says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "All right, I do;" but he says, "I will d.a.m.n mine." G.o.d should be consistent. If He wants me to forgive my enemies, He should forgive His. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me.
G.o.d is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt Him. He certainly ought to be as generous as He asks us to be. And I want no G.o.d to forgive me unless I do forgive others. All I ask, if that be true, is that this G.o.d should live according to His own doctrine. If I am to forgive my enemies I ask Him to forgive His. That is justice, that is right. Here are these millions today who say: "We are to be saved by belief, by faith; but what are we to believe?"
In St. Louis last Sunday I read an interview with a Christian minister--one who is now holding a revival. They call him the boy preacher--a name that he has borne for fifty or sixty years. The question was whether in these revivals, when they were trying to rescue souls from eternal torture, they would allow colored people to occupy seats with white people, and that revivalist, preaching the unsearchable richness of Christ, said he would not allow the colored people to sit with white people; they must go to the back of the church. The same people go and sit right next to them in heaven, swap harps with them, and yet this man, believing as he says he does, that if he did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ he would eternally perish, was not willing that the colored man should sit by a white man while he heard the gospel of everlasting peace. He was not willing that the colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, although those white men might be totally depraved, and if they had justice done them, according to his doctrine. would be eternally d.a.m.ned--and yet he has the impudence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally d.a.m.ned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine of religion, the color line, has not my respect. I believe in the religion of humanity, and it is far better to love our fellow-men than to love G.o.d, because we can help them, and we cannot help Him. You had better do what you can than to be always pretending to do what you cannot.
Now I come to the last part of the bible--this creed--and that is, eternal punishment, and I have concluded; and I have said I will never deliver a lecture that I do not give the full benefit of its name.
That part of the Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The man who now, in the nineteenth century, preaches the doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of eternal h.e.l.l, has lived in vain. Think of that doctrine! The eternity of punishment! Why, I find in that same creed that Christ is finally going to triumph in this world and establish His kingdom; but if their doctrine is true, He will never triumph in the other world. He will have billions in h.e.l.l forever. In this world we never will be perfectly civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow upon the earth. As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls of which a human being is immured, we are not a civilized people. We will never be perfectly civilized until we do away with crime and criminals. And yet, according to this Christian religion, G.o.d is to have an eternal penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an everlasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and He is going to keep prisoners there, not for the purpose of reforming them--because they are never going to get any better, only getting worse--just for the purpose of punishing them. And what for? For something they did in this world; born in ignorance, educated it may be in poverty, and yet responsible through the countless ages of eternity. No man can think of a greater horror; no man can think of a greater absurdity.
For the growth of that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was rain.
That doctrine came from the fanged mouths of wild beasts, and yet it is the "glad tidings of great joy."
"G.o.d so loved the world" He is going to d.a.m.n most everybody, and, if this Christian religion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest, and best who ever lived upon this earth, are suffering its torments tonight. It don"t appear to make much difference, however, with this church. They go right on enjoying themselves as well as ever. If their doctrine is true, Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest, and best of men, who did so much to give us here a free government, is suffering the tyranny of G.o.d tonight, while he endeavored to establish freedom among men. If the churches were honest, their preachers would tell their hearts, "Benjamin Franklin is in h.e.l.l, and we warn any and all the youth not to imitate Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident truths, has been d.a.m.ned these many years." That is what all the ministers ought to have the courage to say. Talk as you believe. Stand by your creed or change it. I want to impress it upon your mind, because the thing I wish to do in this world is to put out the fires of h.e.l.l I want to keep at it just as long as there is one little coal red in the bottomless pit. As long as the ashes are warm, I shall denounce this infamous doctrine.
I want you to know that the men who founded this great and glorious government are there. The most of the men who fought in the Revolutionary War and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this continent; have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of G.o.d. The old Revolutionary soldiers are in h.e.l.l by the thousands. Let the preachers have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 1812, and gave to the United States the freedom of the seas, nearly all of them have been d.a.m.ned since 1815--all that were killed. The greatest of heroes, they are there. The greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among the d.a.m.ned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, and who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing, who almost created the German language--all gone! All suffering the wrath of G.o.d tonight, and every time an angel thinks of one of those men he gives his harp an extra tw.a.n.g.
La Place, who read the heaven like an open book--he is there. Robert Burns, the poet of human love--he is there because he wrote the "Prayer of Holy Willie;" because he fastened upon the cross the Presbyterian creed, and made a lingering crucifixion. And yet that man added to the tenderness of human heart. d.i.c.kens, who put a shield of pity before the flesh of childhood G.o.d is getting even with him. Our own Ralph Waldo Emerson, although he had a thousand opportunities to hear Methodist clergymen, scorned the means of grace, and the Holy Ghost is delighted that he is in h.e.l.l tonight.
Longfellow refined hundreds and thousands of homes, but he did not believe in the miraculous origin of the Savior. No, sir; he doubted the report of Gabriel. He loved his fellow-men; he did what he could to free the slaves; he did what he could to make mankind happy; but G.o.d was just waiting for him. He had His constable right there. Thomas Paine, the author of the "Rights of Man," offering his life in both hemispheres for the freedom of the human race, and one of the founders of the Republic--it has often seemed to me that if we could get G.o.d"s attention long enough to point Him to the American flag, He would let him out. Compte, the author of the "Positive Philosophy," who loved his fellow-men to that degree that he made of humanity a G.o.d, who wrote his great work in poverty, with his face covered with tears--they are getting their revenge on him now. Voltaire, who abolished torture in France; who did more for human liberty than any other man, living or dead; who was the a.s.sa.s.sin of superst.i.tion, and whose dagger still rusts in the heart of Catholicism--all the priests who have been translated have their happiness increased by looking at Voltaire.
Glorious country where the princ.i.p.al occupation is watching the miseries of the lost. Geordani Bruno, Benedict Spinoza, Diderot, the encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowledge in a small compa.s.s so that he could put the peasant on an equality with the prince intellectually; the man who wished to sow all over the world the seeds of knowledge; who loved to labor for mankind. While the priests wanted to burn, he did all he could to put out the fire--he has been lost long, long ago. His cry for water has, become so common that his voice is now recognized through all the realms of h.e.l.l, and they say to one another, "That is Diderot." David Hume, the philosopher, he is there with the rest.
Beethoven, the Shakespeare of music, he has been lost, and Wagner, the master of melody, and who has made the air of this world rich forever, he is there, and they have better music in h.e.l.l than in heaven.
Sh.e.l.ley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged joy--he has been d.a.m.ned for many, many years; and Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race, who has done more to elevate mankind than all the priests who ever lived and died--he is there; and all the founders of Inquisitions, the builders of dungeons, the makers of chains, the inventors of instruments of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders of human flesh, stealers of babes and sellers of husbands, and wives, and children, the drawers of the swords, of persecution, and they who kept the horizon lurid with the f.a.got"s flame for a thousand years--they are in heaven tonight. Well, I wish heaven joy of such company.
And that is the doctrine with which we are polluting the souls of children. That is the doctrine that puts a fiend by their dying bed and a prophesy of h.e.l.l over every cradle. That is "glad tidings of great joy." Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling in the world and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down, and on its top a human being; and a few men went out to the rescue in a little boat, and they found there a mother, a woman, and they wanted to rescue her, and she said: "No, I am going to stay where I am. I have three dead babes in this house."
Think of a love so limitless, stronger and deeper than despair and death, and yet the Christian religion says that if that woman did not happen to believe in their creed, G.o.d would send that mother"s soul to eternal fire. If there is another world, and if in heaven they wear hats, when such a woman climbs up the opposite bank of the Jordan, Christ should lift His to her.
That is the trouble I had with this Christian religion--its infinite heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly willing the men should go to h.e.l.l, provided they could stay at home.
You see they are not honest in it; they do not believe it, or, as the people say, "They don"t sense it;" they have not religion enough to conceive what it is they believe and what a terrific falsehood they a.s.sert. And I beg of every one who hears me tonight, I beg, I implore, I beseech you never give another dollar to build a church in which that lie is preached. Never give another cent to send a missionary with his mouth stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, they say, the heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let them alone; what is the use of sending them to h.e.l.l by enlightening them. Let them alone. The idea of going and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe he will be d.a.m.ned, when the chances are ten to one that he won"t believe it. Don"t tell him, and as quick as he gets to the other world and finds it necessary to believe, he will say "yes." Give him a chance.
My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys human love, and tells you and me that the love of your dear-ones is not necessary in this world to make a heaven in the next. No matter about your wife, your children, your brother, your sister--no matter about all the affections of the human heart--when you get there you will be alone with the angels. I don"t know whether I would like the angels. I don"t know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by the folks who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no heaven without the love of this earth. That is the trouble with the Christian religion; leave your father, leave your mother, leave your wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I will not. I will stay with the folks. I will not sacrifice on the altar of a selfish fear all the grandest and n.o.blest promptings of my heart. You do away with human love, and what are we without it? What would we be in another world, and what would we be here without it?
Can any one conceive of music without human love? Human love builds every home--human love is the author of all the beauty in this world.
Love paints every picture, and chisels every statue; love, I tell you, builds every fireside. What would heaven be without love? And yet that is what we are promised--a heaven with your wife lost, your mother lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be made happy by falling in with some angel.
Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to get there? On the efforts of another. You are to be perpetually a heavenly pauper, and you will have to admit through all eternity that you never would have got here if you hadn"t got frightened. "I am here," you will say, "I have these wings, I have this musical instrument, because I was scared." What a glorious world; and then think of it! No reformation in the next world--not the slightest. If you die in Arkansas that is the end of you. At the end you will be told that being born in Arkansas you had a fair chance. Think of telling a boy in the next world, who lived and died in Delaware, that he had a fair show! Can anything be more infamous? All on an equality--the rich and the poor, those with parents loving them, those with every opportunity for education, on an equality with the poor, the abject, and the ignorant--and the little ray called life, this little moment with a shadow and a tear, this little s.p.a.ce between your mother"s arms and the grave, that balances an entire eternity. And G.o.d can do nothing for you when you get there. A little Methodist preacher can do no more for the soul here than its creator can when you get there. The soul goes to heaven, where there is nothing but good society; no bad examples; and they are all there, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet they can do nothing for that poor unfortunate except to d.a.m.n him. Is there any sense in that? Why should this be a period of probation? It says in the bible, I believe, "Now is the accepted time." When does that mean?
That means whenever the pa.s.sage is p.r.o.nounced. Now is the accepted time. It will be the same tomorrow, won"t it? And just as appropriate then as today, and if appropriate at any time, appropriate through all eternity. What I say is this: There is no world--there can be no world--in which every human being will not have an opportunity of doing right. That is my objection to this Christian religion, and if the love of earth is not the love of heaven, if those who love us here are to be separated there, then I want eternal sleep. Give me a good cold grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah"s wrath. Gabriel, don"t blow!
Let me alone! If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep on. Rather than that the doctrine of endless punishment should be tried, I would like to see the fabric of our civilization crumble and fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and where even memory forgets.
I would rather a Samson of some unprisoned force, released by chance, should so wreck and strain the mighty world that man in stress and strain of want and fear should shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. I would rather that every planet would in its...o...b..t wheel a barren star rather than that the Christian religion should be true.
I think it is better to love your children than to love G.o.d, a thousand times better, because you can help them, and I am inclined to think that G.o.d can get along without you. I believe in the religion of the family. I believe that the roof-tree is sacred from the smallest fibre held in the soft, moist clasp of the earth to the little blossom on the topmost bough that gives its fragrance to the happy air. The family where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire--the fairest flower in all this world. And I tell you G.o.d cannot afford to d.a.m.n a man in the next world who has made a happy family in this. G.o.d cannot afford to cast over the battlements of heaven the man who has built a happy home here. G.o.d cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart capable of pity. G.o.d cannot clothe with fire the man who has clothed the naked here; and G.o.d cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man.
If he can, I had rather go to h.e.l.l than to heaven and keep the company of such a G.o.d.
They tell me the next terrible thing I do is to take away the hope of immortality. I do not, I would not, I could not. Immortality was first dreamed of by human love, and yet the church is going to take human love out of immortality. We love it; therefore we wish to love. A loved ones dies, and we wish to meet again, and from the affection of the human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality. And around that oak has climbed the poisonous vine, superst.i.tion.
Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken all that hope, and they have had the impudence to stand by the grave and prophesy a future of pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway to the other world, and have collected money from the poor people on the way, and they have collected it from their fear. The church did not give us the idea of immortality; the bible did not give us the idea of immortality. Let me tell you now that the old testament tells you how you lost immortality; it does not say another word about another world from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse in Malachi. There is not in the old testament one burial service.
No man in the old testament stands by the bed and says, "I will meet them again"--not one word. From the top of Sinai came no hope of another world. And when we get to the new testament, what do we find there? Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection of the dead. As though some would be counted unworthy to obtain the resurrection of the dead. And, in another place: "Seek for honor, glory, immortality." If you have got it, why seek for it? And in another place: "G.o.d, who alone hath immortality;" and yet they tell us that we get our ideas of immortality from the bible. I deny it. If Christ was in fact G.o.d, why didn"t He plainly say there was another life? Why didn"t He tell us something about it? Why didn"t He turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He was a man and didn"t know.
I would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we got our idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long before Moses existed. We find it symbolized through all Egypt, through all India. Wherever man has lived, his religion has made another world in which to meet the lost. It is not born of the bible. The idea of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, beating with its countless waves against the rocks and sands of fate and time. It was not born of the bible. It was born of the human heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave the dead with nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope.
Under the seven-hued arch let the dead sleep. "Ah, but you take the consolation of religion." What consolation has religion for the widow of the unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead?
What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting heart of that woman? What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the aching hearts of the little orphans as they kneel by the grave of that father, if that father didn"t happen to be an orthodox Christian? What consolation have they? I find that when a Christian loses a friend the tears spring from his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others.
Their tears are as bitter as ours. Why? The echo of the promises spoken eighteen hundred years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods upon the coffin so loud, the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. That is the reason. And they find no consolation there. I say honestly we do not know; we cannot say. We cannot say whether death is a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the spreading of pinions too soar or the folding forever of wings; whether it is the rising or the setting of sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one--we do not know; we can not say.
There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eurydice had been captured and taken to the infernal regions, and Orpheus went after her, taking with him his harp and playing as he went; and when he came to the infernal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down upon the stone that he had been heaving up the side of the mountain so many years, and which continually rolled back upon him. Ixion paused upon his wheel of fire; Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the daughters of the Danaidae left off trying to fill their sieves with water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history of h.e.l.l the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears; monsters relented and they said, "Eurydice may go with you, but you must not look back." So he again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he again reached the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eurydice, and he looked back and in a moment she was gone. This old fable gives to us the idea of the perpetual effort to rescue truth from the churches of monsters.
Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some day Eurydice will reach the blessed light, and at some time there will fade from the memory of men the superst.i.tion of religion.
Ingersoll"s Lecture on "Blasphemy"