book I
'm gone. I can blaspheme the multiplication table and deify the power of the wedge--in fact, the less I know the better my chance will be. I say that book is not inspired, and there is no infinitely good God who will damn one human soul. At the judgment, if I am mistaken I own up--I am here, I do not know where I came from, nor where I am going--I'll be honest about it. I am on a ship and not on speaking terms with the captain, but I propose to have a happy voyage, and the best way is to do what you can to make your fellow passengers happy. If we run into a good port, I'll be as happy an angel as you'll meet that day. Blasphemy is the cry of a defeated priest--the black flag of theology--it shows where argument stops and slander and persecution begin. I am told by Mr. Talmage that whoever contradicts this word is a fool, a howling wolf, one of the assassins of God. I presume the gentleman is honest. Take Mr. Talmage, now, he is a good man. Mr. Humboldt, he was another good man. What Humboldt knew and what Talmage didn't know would make a library.
The next charge is that I have said the universe was made of nothing, according to the bible. False in one thing, false in all, he says. Think of that rule. Let us apply that to man. If the world was created, what was it make of? and who made that? If the Lord created it, what did He make it of? Nothing. That's all He had. No sides, no top, nothing. Yet God had lived there forever. What did He think about? What did He do? Nothing. Nothing had ever happened. All at once He made something. What did He make it of? Mr. Talmage explains.
He says if I knew anything I would know that God made this world out of His omnipotence. He might just as well made it out of His memory. What is omnipotence? Is it a raw material? The weakest man in the world can lift as much nothing as God. Yet He made this world out of His omnipotence. It is so stated by a doctor of divinity, and I should think such divinity would need a doctor! I don't believe this. I believe this universe has existed throughout all eternity--everything. All that is, is God. I do not give to that universe a personality that wants man to get his knees into dust and his fingers in holy water; that wants some body to ring a bell or eat a wafer. I am a part of this universe, and I believe all there is, is all the God there is. I may be mistaken; I don't know. I just give my best opinion. If there's any heaven, I'll give it there. But there'll be no discussion in heaven. Hell is the only place where mental improvement will be possible.
I have said, it is charged, that the bible says the world was made in six days. He says I don't understand Hebrew. The bible says the world was made in six days. God didn't work nights--evening and morning were the first day. God rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it. That, they say, didn't mean days; it meant good whiles. He made the world in six good whiles. Adam was made, I think along about Saturday. If the account is correct, it's only 6,000 years since man made his appearance. We know that to be false. A few years ago a gentleman who was going to California in the cars met a minister. They came to the place called the Sink of the Humboldt, the most desolate place in the world. Just imagine perdition with the fire out. The traveler asked the minister whether God made the earth in six days, and the minister said he did. Then don't you think, said he, He could have put in another day's work to great advantage right here? I am charged, too, with saying that the sun was not made till the fourth day, whereas, according to the bible, vegetation began on the third day, before there was any light. But Mr. Talmage says there was light without the sun. They got light, he says, from the crystallization of rocks. A nice thing to raise a crop of corn by. There may have been volcanoes, he says. How'd you like to farm it, and depend on volcanic glare to raise a crop? That's what they call religious science. God won't damn a man for things like that. What else? The aurora borealis! A great cucumber country! It's strange He never thought of glow worms! Imagine it! a Presbyterian divine gravely saying vegetation could grow by the light of the crystallization of rocks--by the light of volcanoes in other worlds, probably now extinct.
He says of me, too in his pulpit, that I was in favor of the circulation of immoral literature. Let me tell you the truth. Several gentlemen, so-called, were trying to exclude from the mails, books called infidel. I said the law should be modified. It is impossible for anybody to reach the depth of one who will print or circulate obscene books. One of my objections to the bible is that it contains obscene stories. Any book, couched in decent language, should have the liberty of the United States mails. Where books are immoral and obscene, I say, burn them, and have always said it. Mr. Talmage said what he knew to be untrue. He said it out of hatred, and because he cannot answer the arguments I have urged. I believe in pure books and pure literature. But when a God writes there is no excuse for Him. In Shakespeare we say obscene things are impure--we do not say they are inspired. That I have falsified the records of the bible showing the period of Jewish slavery, is another of the charges against me. That slavery extended over a period of 215 years; and he proceeded to substantiate this statement by being through a long and somewhat complicated genealogical table. If I made any misstatement I was misled by the new testament. Mr. Talmage may settle with St. Paul. If you can depend on what my friend Paul says, the Jews, in 215 years, increased from seventy persons till they had 600,000 men of war. I know it isn't so, and so does any man who knows anything. For such an increase as this each woman must have borne somewhat over fifty-seven children, and every child lived.
The next charge is that I have laughed at holy things. Holy things! The priest always says: "Now don't laugh; look solemn; this is no laughing matter." There's nothing a priest hates like mirthfulness. He despises a smile. I read in the bible that God gave a recipe to Aaron for making hair-oil and said if anybody made any like it, kill him. Well, I don't believe it. The penalty for infringing on that patent was death. Do you believe an infinite God gave a recipe for hair-oil? Is it possible for absurdity to go beyond that? That's what they call a holy thing. And water for baptism! Do you believe God will look for this water-mark on the soul?
The next charge is that I misquote the scriptures. That's because I don't know Hebrew. Why didn't He write to me in English? If He wishes to hold a gentleman responsible, why doesn't He address him in his native tongue? Why write His word in such a way that hundreds of thousands make their living explaining it? If I'd only understood Hebrew I would have known God didn't make Eve out of a rib. He made her out of Adam's side. How did He get it out? Well, I suppose He cut it out with a kind of a splinter of His omnipotence! Then our mother was made from a rib. When you consider the material used it was the most successful job ever done. There's even a serpent in the bible that knows a language. It won't do. Sin, how did it come into the world? Where did the serpent come from? He was wicked. Adam's sin did not make him bad. Then there was sin in the world before Adam. There's no sense in it--not a particle. Then Talmage touches me upon the flood. His flood didn't come to America, because America was not discovered then. He says it was a partial flood. Then why did they have to take any birds in the ark? How did Noah get the animals in the ark? Talmage says it was through the instinct to get out of the rain. According to the bible they went in before the rain began. Dr. Scott says the angels helped carry them in. Imagine an angel with an animal under each wing. It must have rained 800 feet a day for forty days. Why does Talmage try to explain a miracle? The beauty of a miracle is it cannot be explained. The moment the church begins to explain the church is gone. All it's got to do is swear it is so. The ark landed on Ararat, which is 17,000 feet high. There was only one window, twenty-two inches square. Talmage says the window ran clear around the ark. The bible doesn't say so. That's Brooklyn; that's no bible.
If the bible account is true the ark must have struck bottom on the top of a mountain. Would any but a God of mercy and kindness people a world, and then drown them all? A God cruel enough to drown His own children ought not to have the impudence to tell me how to bring up mine. Why did He save eight of the same kind of people to take a fresh start? Why didn't He make a fresh lot, kill His snake, and give His children a fair show? It won't do.
Talmage says the bible does not favor polygamy and slavery. There was room enough on the table of stone for saying man should only have one wife and no slaves. If not, God might have written it on the other side. David and Solomon were pursued of God, but they had a pretty good time of it. Most anybody would be willing to be pursued that way. There is not a word in the old testament against slavery or polygamy. Frederick Douglas, a slave in Maryland, is the greatest man that state ever produced. He was enslaved by Christians. Why did God pay so much attention to blasphemers, and so little to slaveholders and robbers? I am opposed to any God that was ever in favor of slavery. The bible upholds polygamy, and that's the reason I don't uphold the bible. The most glorious temple ever erected is the home--that's my church. I've misquoted the story of Jonah, Talmage says. When somebody had been guilty of blasphemy the winds rose; they tried to get Jonah ashore, but couldn't do it. The sea waxed. He was swallowed by a whale. The people of Minerva wrapped all their cattle up in sack-cloth, and if anything would have pleased God I should think that would. Jonah sat under a gourd, and God made a worm out of some omnipotence he had left over, and set it work on the ground. Talmage doesn't think Jonah was in the whale's belly--he said in his mouth. Well, judging from the doctor's photograph, that explanation would be quite natural to him. He says he might have been in the whale's stomach, and avoided the
## action of the gastric juice by walking up and down. Imagine Jonah,
sitting on a back tooth, leaning against the upper jaw, longingly looking through the open mouth for signs of land! But that's scripture and you've got to believe it or be damned. Let me say his brother preachers will not thank Talmage for his explanations. I don't believe it, and if I am to be damned for it, I'll accept it cheerfully.
They say I was defeated for Governor of Illinois because I was an infidel, and that I am an infidel because I was defeated. That's logic. Now I'll tell you. They asked me whether I was an infidel, and I said I was! I was defeated. I preserved my manhood and lost an office. If everybody were as frank as I was, some men now in office would be private citizens. I would rather be what I am than hold any office in the world and be a slimy hypocrite.
Next they say I slandered my parents because I do not believe what they believed. My father at one time believed the bible to be the inspired word of God. He was an honorable man, and told me to read the bible for myself and be honest. He lived long enough to believe that the old testament was not the word of God. He had not in his life as much happiness as I have in one year. I hope my children will dishonor me by being nearer right than I am. If I have made a mistake, I want my children to correct it. My mother died when I was 2 years old. Were she living tonight, or if she does live, she would say, be absolutely true to yourself and preserve your manhood. If Talmage had been born in Constantinople he would have been a dervish. He is what he is because he can't help it. His head is just that shape. I am taking away the hope and consolation of the world, he says. His consolation is that ninety-nine out of every hundred are going to hell. His church was founded by John Calvin, a murderer. Better have no heaven than a hell. I would rather God would commit suicide this minute than that a single soul should go to hell. I want no Presbyterian consolation, I want no fore-ordination, no consolation, no damnation.
[Col. Ingersoll concluded with a few remarks about the bible women, saying that women today are as true to the gallows as Mary Magdalene was to the cross.]
Wherever there are women there are heroines. Shakespeare's women are vastly superior to the bible women. I am accused of putting out the light-houses on the shores of the other world. The Christians are trimming invisible wicks and pouring in allegorical oil. The Christian is willing wife, children and parents shall burn if only he can sing and have a harp. Mr. Talmage can see countless millions burn in hell without decreasing the length of his orthodox smile.
Ingersoll's Lecture on Talmagian Theology (Third lecture)
We must judge people somewhat by their creeds. Mr. Talmage is a Calvinist, and he therefore regards every human being who has been born only once as totally depraved. He thinks that God never made a single creature that didn't deserve to be damned the minute He finished him. So every one who opposes Mr. Talmage is infamous. The generosity of an agnostic is meanness, his honesty is larceny and his love is hate. Talmage is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox, and a consistent worshiper of the Jehovah of the ancient Jews. I oppose not him, but his creed, because it tends to crush out the natural tendencies in men to joyousness and goodness. There is something good in every human being, and there is something bad. There are no perfect saints and no totally bad persons. There is the seed of goodness in every human heart and the capacity for improvement in every human soul. Isn't it possible for a man who acts like Christ to be saved, whatever be his belief? Cannot a soul be infinitely generous? And can any God damn such a soul? If Mr. Talmage's creed be true, nearly all the great and glorious men of the past are burning today. If it be true, the greatest man England has produced in 100 years is in hell. The world is poorer since I spoke here last, for Darwin has passed away. He was a true child of nature--one who knew more about his mother than any other child she had. Yet he was not a Calvinist. He did not get his inspiration from any book, but from every star in the heavens, from the insect in the sunbeam, from the flowers in the meadows, and from the everlasting rocks.
If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true, what right had any one to ask an unbeliever to fight for his country in the civil war? What right has a believer to buy an unbelieving substitute, when some day he will look over the edge of heaven, and pointing downward, would say to a friend, "that is my substitute blistering there"?
Mr. Talmage says that my mind is poisoned, and that the reason why all infidels' minds are poisoned is that they don't believe the Jew bible. Let us see whether it is worth believing. I deny that an infinitely merciful God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy, which pollutes the sweetest words in language. I will not believe that God told men to exterminate their fellow-men, to plunge the sword into women's breasts and into the hearts of tender babes. I am opposed to the Jew bible because it is bad. I don't deny that there are many good passages in it, nor that among all the thorns there are some roses. I admit that many Christians are doing all they can to idealize the frightful things in the old testament. It is the protest of human nature. Now, they tell me that this book is inspired. Let us see what inspired means. If it means anything, it is that the thoughts of God, through the instrumentality of men, constitute this Jew bible, and that these thoughts were written. Now just suppose that some voice whispered in your ear, how would you know it was God's? How did these gentlemen of old know it was God who was talking to them? If anyone now told you that God whispered in his ear, you wouldn't believe him. Why? Because you know him. Why are we asked to believe those ancient gentlemen? Because we don't know them. Another reason, according to Mr. Talmage, why the Jew bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it have been fulfilled. How do we know that the prophecies were not fulfilled before they were written? They are so vague that you can't tell what was prophesied. If you will read the Jew bible carefully, you will see that there was not a line, not a word, prophesying the coming of Christ. Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible was to be kept in awe it must be kept from the people. Protestants are wrong in letting the people read it.
Another argument of Mr. Talmage for the inspiration of the bible is that the Jews have been kept as a wandering, persecuted race to fulfill the prophecies of the old testament. I don't believe an infinitely merciful God would persecute a race for thousands of years to use them as witnesses. Christian hate has not allowed the Jews to earn a [living?] or at least to practice a profession, and now, by a kind of poetic justice, the Jews control the money of the world. Emperors go to their bankers with hats in hand and beg them to discount their notes. This is because God has cursed the Jews. Only a little while ago Christians have robbed Hebrews, stripped them naked, turned them into the streets, and pointed to them as a fulfillment of divine prophecy. If you want to know the difference between some Jews and some Christians compare the address of Felix Adler with the sermon of the Rev. Dr. Talmage. Mr. Talmage thinks that the light of every burning Jewish home in Russia throws light upon the gospel. Every wound in a Jewish breast is to him a mouth to proclaim the divine inspiration of the bible. Every Jewish maiden violated is another fulfillment of God's holy word. What do these horrid persecutions prove, except the barbarity of Christians? Next it is said that martyrs prove the truth of the bible. Mr. Talmage affirms that no man ever died cheerfully for a lie. Why, men have gone cheerfully to their death for believing that a wafer was God's flesh. Thousands have died for their belief in Mohammed. Men have died because they believed in immersion. Either Mr. Talmage is a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Baptist, or else he believes that these thousands died for lies. Every religion has had its martyrs, and every religion cannot be true. Then it is said that miracles prove the inspiration of the bible. But it is impossible by the human senses to establish a violation of nature's laws. When the Hebrews threw down sticks before Pharaoh, and they became snakes, did he believe? No; because he was there. After the Jews had been lead through the desert and had been fed with bread rained from heaven, had been clothed in indestructible pantaloons, and had quenched their thirst with water that followed them over mountains and through sands; when they saw Jehovah wrapped in the smoke of Sinai they still had more faith in a calf that they could make than anything Jehovah could give them. It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not twenty people were converted by one of them. In fact, human testimony cannot substantiate a miracle. Take the miracle about the bears which ate the children who laughed at the bald-headed old prophet. What do you suppose Mr. Talmage would say that meant? Why, first, that children ought to respect preachers, and second, that God is kind to animals. Nearly every miracle in the old testament is wrought in the interest of slavery, polygamy, creed or lust. I wish by denying them to rescue the reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the bible.
Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives of the Jews' bible? Eusebius was one. He lived in the reign of Constantine, and said that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots could be seen--perfectly preserved in the sands of the Red sea. He was the man who forged the passage in Josephus which speaks about the coming of Christ. Good witness, isn't he. Another one was Polycarp. We don't know much about him. He suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and when the fire wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it, a heathen was so mad about it that he ran his sword through Polycarp. The blood gushed out and quenched the fire, while the martyr's soul flew up to heaven in the form of a dove. And that's all we know about Polycarp. To know how much reliance should be placed upon the judgment of such trustworthy witnesses, we should look at what some of their beliefs were. They thought that the world was flat; that the phoenix story was true; that the stars had souls and sinned; and one said there were four gospels because there were four winds and four corners of the earth. He might have added that it was also because a donkey has four legs.
So far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs is concerned, the speaker said that thousands upon thousands of men had died as cheerfully in defense of the koran as Christians had died in defense of the bible. Their heroic suffering simply proved that they were sinners in their beliefs, not that those beliefs were true. This argument, as advanced by Mr. Talmage, proves too much. Every religion on the face of the globe has had its martyrs, but all religions cannot be true. Men do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them to be true.
[The question of miracles was discussed at some length, and Col. Ingersoll declared it was impossible to establish by any human evidence that a miracle had ever been performed.]
Pharaoh was not convinced by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron, of turning a stick into a serpent. Why? Because he was there, and no such miracle was ever done. No twenty people were convinced by the reported miracles of Christ, and yet people of the nineteenth century were coolly asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are supposed to have seen them refuse to credit. It won't do. The laws of nature never have been interrupted, and they never will be. All the books in the universe will never convince a thinking man that miracles have been performed.
[The lecture was sprinkled throughout with the satirical wit for which Col. Ingersoll is famous, and concluded by the enumeration of a long list of "unscientific" facts and events recorded in the bible.]
Ingersoll's Lecture on Religious Intolerance
"How anybody ever came to the conclusion that there was any God who demanded that you should feel sorrowful and miserable and bleak one-seventh of the time is beyond my comprehension. Neither can I conceive how they can say that one-seventh of time is holy. That day is the most sacred day on which the most good has been done for mankind. Now, there was a time among the Jews, when, if a man violated the Sabbath, they would kill him. They said God told them to do it. I think they were mistaken. If not, if any God did tell them to kill him, then I think he was mistaken. I hope the time will come when every man can spend the Sabbath just as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with the happiness of others. I would fight just as earnestly that the Christian may go to church as that the infidel may have the right to spend the Sabbath as he wishes. Are the people who go to church the only good people? Are there not a great many bad people who go to church? Not a bank in Pittsburgh will lend a dollar to the man who belongs to the church, without security, quicker than to the man who don't go to church. Now, I believe that all laws upon the statute-book should be enforced. I do not blame anybody in this town. I am perfectly willing that every preacher in this town should preach. They are employed to preach, and to preach a certain doctrine, and if they don't preach that doctrine they will be turned out. I have no objection to that. But I want the same privilege to express my views, and what is the difference whether the man pays the day he goes in, or pays for it the week before by subscription.
What would the church people think if the theatrical people should attempt to suppress the churches? What harm would it do to have an opera here tonight? It would elevate us more than to hear ten thousand sermons on the world that never dies. There is more practical wisdom in one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all the sacred books ever written. What wrong would there be to see one of those grand plays on Sunday? There was a time when the church would not allow you to cook on Sunday. You had to eat your victuals cold. There was a time they thought the more miserable you feel the better God feels. There are sixty odd thousand preachers in the United States. Some people regard them as a necessary evil; some as an unnecessary evil. There are sixty odd thousand churches in the United States; and it does seem to me that with all the wealth on their side; with all the good people on their side; with Providence on their side; with all these advantages they ought to let us at least have the right to speak our thoughts.
The history of the world shows me that the right has not always prevailed. When you see innocent men chained to the stake and the flames licking their flesh, it is natural to ask, why does God permit this? If you see a man in prison with the chains eating into his flesh simply for loving God, you've got to ask why does not a just God interfere? You've got to meet this; it won't do to say that it will all come out for the best. That may do very well for God, but it's awful hard on the man. Where was the God that permitted slavery for two hundred years in these United States? The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it.
But there was a time when there was a drought, and this tribe of savages with their false notions of religion says somebody has been wicked. Somebody has been lecturing on Sunday. Then the tribe hunted out the wicked man. They said you've got to stop. We cannot allow you to continue your wickedness, which brings punishment upon the whole of us. What is the reason they allow me to speak tonight. Because the Christians are not as firm in their belief now as they were a thousand years ago. The luke warmness and hypocrisy of Christians now permit me to speak tonight. If they felt as they did a thousand years ago they would kill me. So religious persecution was born of the instinct of self-defense. Is there any duty we owe to God? Can we help him, can we add to his glory or happiness? They tell me this God is infinitely wise, I cannot add to his wisdom; infinitely happy--I cannot add to his happiness. What can I do? Maybe he wants me to make prayers that won't be answered. I cannot see any relation that can exist between the finite and the infinite. I acknowledge that I am under obligations to my fellow man. We owe duties to our fellow man. And what? Simply to make them happy.
The only good, is happiness; and the only evil, is misery, or unhappiness. Only those things are right that tend to increase the happiness of man; only those things are wrong which tend to increase the misery of man. That is the basis of right and wrong. There never would have been the idea of wrong except that man can inflict sufferings upon others. Utility, then, is the basis of the idea of right and wrong.
The church tells us that this world is a school to prepare us for another, that it is a place to build up character. Well, if that is the only way character can be developed it is bad for children who die before they get any character. What would you think of a school-master who would kill half his pupils the first day?
Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved this world that He made up His mind to damn the most of us. I have read this book, and what shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true, I know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--they don't tell their honest convictions about the bible. There are two great arguments of the church--the great man argument and the death-bed. They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should your father object to your inventing a better plow than he had. They say to one, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequence like a man. And so I object to paying for the support of another man's belief. I am in favor of the taxation of all church property. If that property belongs to God, He is able to pay the tax. If we exempt anything, let us exempt the home of the widow and orphan.
[A voice here interrupted the speaker.
Col. Ingersoll--What did the gentleman say? A voice--O, he's drunk.
Col. Ingersoll--I didn't think any Christian ought to get drunk and come here to disturb us.
The speaker resumed:]
The church has today $600,000,000 or $700,000,000 of property in this country. It must cost $2,000,000 a week, that is to say $500 a minute, to run these churches. You give me this money and if I don't do more good with it than four times as many churches I'll resign. Let them make the churches attractive and they'll get more hearers. They will have less empty pews if they have less empty heads in the pulpit. The time will come when the preacher will become a teacher.
Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that His only good job? Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now that bible would not have been written.
Col. Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, declared they left Holland to escape persecution and came came here to persecute others. He referred to the persecutions heaped upon those of other religious belief by the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to say that Maryland, which they ruled, was the first colony to enact a law tolerating religious views not held by themselves, and went on to explain that God was never mentioned in the constitution of the United States because each colony had a different religious belief, and each sect preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to having another religious belief than their own recognized.
"In 1876," said the speaker, "our forefathers retired God from politics. They said all power comes from the people. They kept God out of the constitution and allowed each state to settle the question for itself."
The present laws of different states were neatly reviewed, so far as they relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to religious intolerance in any way, and these features were all branded and discussed as a gigantic evil.
The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience from beginning to the end, and the speaker's most blasphemous fights were the most loudly applauded.
Ingersoll's Lecture on Hereafter
My Friends: I tell you tonight, as I have probably told many of you dozens of times, that the orthodox doctrine of eternal punishment in the hereafter is an infamous one! I have no respect for the man who preaches it, or pretends to you he believes it. Neither have I any respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of innocent childhood with that infamous lie! And I have no respect for the man who will deliberately add to the sorrows of this world with this terrible dogma; no respect for the man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud and shadow over the heart of humanity. I will be frank with you and say, I hate the doctrine; I despise it, I defy it; I loathe it--and what man of sense does not. The idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on the one side, and arrant cowardice on the other. In my judgment the American people are too brave, too generous, too magnanimous, too humane to believe in that outrageous doctrine of eternal damnation.
For a great many years the learned intellects of Christendom have been examining into the religions of other countries and other ages, in the world--the religions of the myriads who have passed away. They examined into the religions of Egypt, the religion of Greece, that of Rome and the Scandinavian countries. In the presence of the ruins of those religions, the learned men of Christendom insisted that those religions were baseless, false and fraudulent. But they have all passed away.
Now, while this examination was being made, the Christianity of our day applauded, and when the learned men got through with the religion of other countries, they turned their attention to our religion, and by the same methods, by the same mode of reasoning and the same arrangements that they used with the old religions they were overturning the religion of our day. How is that? Because every religion in this world is the work of man. Every book that was ever written was written by man. Man existed before books. If otherwise, we might reasonably admit that there was such a thing as a sacred bible.
I wish to call your attention to another thing. Man never had an original idea, and he never will have one, except it be supplied to him by his surroundings. Nature gave man every idea that he ever had in the world; and nature will continue to give man his ideas so long as he exists. No man can conceive of anything, the hint of which he has not received from the surroundings. And there is nothing on this earth, coming from any other sphere whatever.
As I have before said, man has produced every religion in the world. Why is this? Because each generation sends forth the knowledge and belief of the people at the time it was made, and in no book is there any knowledge formed, except just at the time it was written. Barbarians have produced barbarian religions, and always will produce them. They have produced, and always will produce, ideas and belief in harmony with their surroundings, and all the religions of the past were produced by barbarians. We are making religions every day; that is to say, we are constantly changing them, adapting them to our purposes, and the religion of today is not the religion of a few months or a year ago. Well, what changes these religions? Science does it, education does it; the growing heart of man does it. Some men have nothing else to do but produce religions; science is constantly changing them. If we are cursed with such barbarian religions today--for our religions are really barbarous--what will they be an hundred or a thousand years hence?
But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight? What will become of their endless hell--their doctrine of the future anguish of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending gnashing of teeth. Man will discard the idea of such a future--because there is now a growing belief in the justice of a Supreme Being.
Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth--each of the other.
Now, do you want to know why this is: Suppose Mr. Johnson should tell Mr. Jones that he saw a corpse rise from the grave, and that when he first saw it, it was covered with loathsome worms, and that while he was looking at it, it suddenly was re-clothed in healthy, beautiful flesh. And then, suppose Jones should say to Johnson, "Well, now, I saw that same thing myself. I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man rise and walk away as if nothing had ever happened to him!" Johnson opens wide his eyes and says to Jones, "Jones, you are a confounded liar!" And Jones says to Johnson, "You are an unmitigated liar!" "No, I'm not; you lie yourself." "No! I say you lie!" Each knew the other lied, because each man knew he lied himself. Thus when a man says: "I was upon Mount Sinai for the benefit of my health, and there I met God, who said to me, "Stand aside, you, and let me drown these people;" and the other man says to him, "I was upon a mountain, and there I met the Supreme Brahma." And Moses steps in and says, "That is not true!" and contends that the other man never did see Brahma, and the other man swears that Moses never saw God; and each man utters a deliberate falsehood, and immediately after speaks truth.
Therefore, each religion has charged every other religion with having been an unmitigated fraud. Still, if any man had ever seen a miracle himself, he would be prepared to believe that another man had seen the same or a similar thing. Whenever a man claims to have been cognizant of, or to have seen a miracle, he either utters a falsehood, or he is an idiot. Truth relies upon the unerring course of the laws of nature, and upon reason. Observe, we have a religion--that is, many people have. I make no pretensions to having a religion myself--possibly you do not. I believe in living for this beautiful world--in living for the present, today; living for this very hour, and while I do live to make everybody happy that I can. I cannot afford to squander my short life--and what little talent I am blessed with in studying up and projecting schemes to avoid that seething lake of fire and brimstone. Let the future take care of itself, and when I am required to pass over "on the other side," I am ready and willing to stand my chances with you howling Christians.
We have in this country a religion which men have preached for about eighteen hundred years, and men have grown wicked just in proportion as their belief in that religion has grown strong; and just in proportion as they have ceased to believe in it, men have become just, humane and charitable. And if they believed in it tonight as they believed, for instance, at the time of the immaculate Puritan fathers, I would not be permitted to talk here in the city of New York. It is from the coldness and infidelity of the churches that I get my right to preach; and I thank them for it, and I say it to their credit.
As I have said, we have a religion. What is it? In the first place, they say this vast universe was created by a God. I don't know, and you don't know, whether it was or not. Also, if it had not been for the first sin of Adam, they say there would never have been any Devil, in this world, and if there had been no Devil, there would have been no sin, and if no sin, no death. As for myself I am glad there is death in the world, for that gives me a chance. Somebody has to die to give me room, and when my turn comes I am willing to let some one else take my place. But if there is a Being who gave me this life, I thank Him from the bottom of my heart--because this life has been a joy and a pleasure to me. Further, because of this first sin of Adam, they say, all men are consigned to eternal perdition! But, in order to save man from that frightful hell of the hereafter, Christ came to this world and took upon himself flesh, and in order that we might know the road to eternal salvation. He gave us a book called the bible, and wherever that bible has been read men have immediately commenced throttling each other; and wherever that bible has been circulated they have invented inquisitions and instruments of torture, and commenced hating each other with all their hearts. Then we are told that this bible is the foundation of civilization, but I say it is the foundation of hell and damnation!, and we never shall get rid of that dogma until we get rid of the idea that the book is inspired. Now, what does the bible teach? I am not going to ask this preacher or that preacher what the bible teaches; but the question is, "Ought a man be sent to an eternal hell for not believing this bible to be the work of a merciful God?" A very few people read it now; perhaps they should read it, and perhaps not; if I wanted to believe it, I should never read a word of it--never look upon its pages, I would let it lie on its shelf, until it rotted! Still, perhaps, we ought to read it in order to see what is read in schools that our children might become charitable and good; to be read to our children that they may get ideas of mercy, charity humanity and justice! Oh, yes! Now read:
"I will make mine arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh."--Deut. xxxii, 42.
Very good for a merciful God!
"That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of the dogs in the same."--Psalms lxviii, 24.
Merciful Being! I will quote several more choice bits from this inspired book, although I have several times made use of them.
"But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
"And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them."--Deut. vii, 23, 24.
"And Joshua did unto them as the Lord bade him; he houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with fire. And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword; for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
"And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly destroyed them, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded.
"And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was not any left to breathe; and he burnt Hazor with fire."
(Do not forget that these things were done by the command of God!)
"But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, Israel burnt none of them, save Hazor only, that did Joshua burn.
"And all the spoil of those cities and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe." (As the moral and just God had commanded them.)
"As the Lord commanded Moses His servant, so did Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Joshua.
"So Joshua took all that land, the hills, and all the south country, and all the land of Goshen, and the valley, and the plain and mountain of Israel, and the valley of the same;
"Even from the Mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir, even unto Baalgad in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon; and all their kings he took, and smote theme and slew them.
"Joshua made war a long time on all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; all the others they took in battle.
"So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel, according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war."--Josh. xi, 7-23.
"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
"And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
"And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.
"And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword.
"But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shaft thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
"Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of those nations.
"But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shaft save alive nothing that breatheth.
"But thou shalt utterly destroy them."
(Neither the old man nor the woman, nor the beautiful maiden, nor the sweet dimpled babe, smiling upon the lap of its mother.)
"And He said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel (a merciful God, indeed), put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his neighbor."--Es. xxxii, 29.
(Now recollect, these instructions were given to an army of invasion, and the people who were slayed were guilty of the crime of fighting for their homes and their firesides. Oh, most merciful God! The old testament is full of curses, vengeance, jealousy and hatred, and of barbarity and brutality. Now, do you for one moment believe that these words were written by the most merciful God? Don't pluck from the heart the sweet flower of piety and crush it by superstition. Do not believe that God ever ordered the murder of innocent women and helpless babes. Do not let this superstition turn our heart into stone. When anything is said to have been written by the most merciful God, and the thing is not merciful, that I deny it, and say He never wrote it. I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason, rather than to heaven without it.)
Now, does this bible teach political freedom; or does it teach political tyranny? Does it teach a man to resist oppression? Does it teach a man to tear from the throne of tyranny the crowned thing and robber called king. Let us see.
"Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; For there is no power but God: the powers that be are ordained of God."--Rom. xiii, I.
"Therefore to must needs be subject not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake."--Rom. viii, 4, 4.
(I deny this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give men liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on the side of that rebellion.)
Does the bible give woman her rights? Does it treat woman as she ought to be treated, or is it barbarian? We will see:
"Let woman learn in silence with all subjection."--I Tim. ii, 11
(If a woman should know anything let her ask her husband. Imagine the ignorance of a lady who had only that source of information.)
"But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. (Indeed!)
"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression." (Poor woman!)
Here is something from the old testament:
"When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captives;
"And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to be thy wife;
"Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails."--Deut. xxi, 10, 11, 12.
(That is self-defense, I suppose!)
I need not go further in bible quotations to show that woman, throughout the old testament, is a degraded being, having no rights which her husband, father, brother, or uncle is bound to respect. Still, that is bible doctrine, and that bible is the word of a just and omniscient God!
Does the bible teach the existence of devils? Of course it does. Yes, it teaches not only the existence of a good being, but a bad being. This good being has to have a home; that home was heaven. This bad being had to have a home; and that home was hell. This hell is supposed to be nearer to earth than I would care to have it, and to be peopled with spirits, spooks, hobgoblins, and all the fiery shapes with which the imagination of ignorance and fear could people that horrible place; and the bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery. Does anybody believe it now?
"Then said Saul unto his servants, seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor."
In another place he declares that witchcraft is an abomination unto the Lord. He wants no rivals in this business. Now what does the new testament teach:
"Then was Jesus lead up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
"And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward a-hungered.
"And when the tempter came to him, he said if thou be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread.
"But He answered and said it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple;
"And saith unto him. If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
"Jesus said unto him, it is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."--Matt. iv, 1-7.
(Is it possible that anyone can believe that the devil absolutely took God Almighty, and put him upon the pinnacle of the temple, and endeavored to persuade him to jump down? Is it possible?)
"Again, the devil taketh him into an exceedingly high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
"And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
"Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."--Matthew iv, 8-11.
(Now only the devil must have known at that time that He was God, and God at that time must have known that the other was the devil, who had the impudence to promise God a world in which he did not have a tax-title to an inch of land.)
Now, what of the Sabbath--the Lord's day? Why is Sunday the Lord's day? If Sunday alone is the Lord's day, whose day is Monday, Tuesday, Friday, etc.? No matter! The idea, that God hates to hear your children laugh on Sunday! On Sunday let your children play games. I see a poor man who hasn't money enough to go to a big church, and he has too much independence to go to the little church which the big church built for charity. If he enters the portals of the big church with poor clothes on, the usher approaches him with a severe face, and "Brother, I'm sorry, but only high-toned servants of the living God congregate in this church for worship, and with that seedy suit on they cannot admit you. All the seats in this magnificent edifice are owned and represented by 'solid' men, by men of capital. We pay our pastor $5,000 a year--the annual eight weeks vacation thrown in--and it would not be profitable for us to seriously encourage the attendance of so insignificant a person as yourself. Just around the corner there is a little cheap church with a little cheap pastor, where they can dish up hell to you in an approved style--in a style more suitable to your needs and condition; and the dish will not be as expensive to you, either!"
If I had chanced to be that poor man in the seedy garments, and had been endeavoring to serve my Maker for even half a century, I would have felt like muttering audibly, "You go to hell!" (I am not much given to profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed in spirit, I declare to you that it is such a relief to me, such a solace to my troubled soul, and gives me such heavenly peace, to now and then allow a word or phrase to escape my lips which can serve the no other earthly purpose, seemingly, than to render emphatic my otherwise mildly expressed ideas. I make this confession parenthetically, and in a whisper, my friends, trusting you will not allow it to go further.)
Now, I tell you, if you don't want to go to church, go to the woods and take your wife and children and a lunch with you, and sit down upon the old log and let the children gather flowers, and hear the leaves whispering poems like memories of long ago! and when the sun is about going down, kissing the summits of the distant hills, go home with your hearts filled with throbs of joy and gladness, and the cheeks of your little ones covered with the rose-blushes of health! There is more recreation and solid enjoyment in that than putting on your Sunday clothes and going to a canal-boat with a steeple on top of it and listening to a man tell you that your chances are about ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to one for being eternally damned!
Oh, strike with a hand of fire, weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair! Fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ's keys! Blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering mid the vine-clad hills!--but know your sweetest strains are but discord compared with childhood's happy laugh--the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy! O, rippling river of laughter; thou art the blessed boundary line between beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O, Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheek to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief!
Do not make slaves of your children on Sunday. Don't place them in long, straight rows, like fence-posts, and "Sh! children, it's Sunday!" when by chance you hear a sound or rustle. Let winsome Johnny have light and air, and let him grow beautiful; let him laugh until his little sides ache, if he feels like it; let him pinch the cat's tail until the house is in an uproar with his yells--let him do anything that will make him happy. When I was a little boy, children went to bed when they were not sleepy, and always got up when they were? I would like to see that changed--we may see it some day. It is really easier to wake a child with a kiss than a blow; with kind words than with harshness and a curse. Another thing: let the children eat what they want to. Let them commence at whichever end of the dinner they please. They know what they want much better than you do. Nature knows perfectly well what she is about, and if you go a-fooling with her you may get into trouble. The crime charged to me is this: I insist that the bible is not the word of God; that we should not whip our children; that we should treat our wives as loving equals; that God never upheld polygamy and slavery; deny that God ever commanded his generals to slaughter innocent babes and tear and rip open women with the sword of war; that God ever turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt (although she might have deserved that fate); that God ever made a woman out of a man's, or any other animal's rib! And I emphatically deny that God ever signed or sealed a commission appointing his satanic majesty governor-general over an extensive territory popularly styled hell, with absolute power to torture, burn, maim, boil, or roast at his pleasure the victims of his master's displeasure! I deny these things, and for that I am assailed by the clergy throughout the United States. Now, you have read the bible romance of the fall of Adam? Yes, well, you know that nearly or quite all the religions of this world account for the existence of evil by such a story as that! Adam, the miserable coward, informed God that his wife was at the bottom of the whole business! "She did tempt me and I did eat!" And then commenced a row, and we have been engaged in it ever since! You know what happened to Adam and his wife for her transgressions?
In another account of what is said to have been the same transaction--which is the most sensible account of the two--the Supreme Brahma concluded, as he had a little leisure, that he would make a world, and a man and woman. He made the world, the man, and then the woman, and then placed the pair on the Island of Ceylon. (Bear in mind, there were no ribs used in this affair.) This island is said to be the most beautiful that the mind of man can conceive of. Such birds you never saw, such songs you never heard! and then such flowers, such verdure! The branches of the trees were so arranged that when the winds swept through, there floated out from every tree melodious strains of music from a thousand! Aeolian harps! After Brahma put them there, he said: "Let them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and will that true love should forever precede marriage." And with the nightingale singing, and the stars twinkling, and the little brooklets murmuring, and the flowers blooming, and the gentle breezes fanning their brows, they courted, and loved! What a sweet courtship. Then Brahma married the happy pair, and remarked: "Remain here; you can be happy on this island, and it is my will that you never leave it." Well, after a little while the man became uneasy, and said to the wife of his youth, "I believe I'll look about a little." He determined to seek greener pastures. He proceeded to the western extremity of the island, and discovered a little narrow neck of land connecting the island with the mainland, and the devil--they had a genuine devil in those days, too, it seems, who is always "playing the devil" with us--produced a mirage, and over on the mainland were such hills and vales, such dells and dales, such lofty mountains crowned with perpetual snow, such cataracts clad in bows of glory, that he rushed breathlessly back to his wife, exclaiming:--"O, Heva! the country over there is a thousand times better and lovelier than this; let us migrate." She, woman-like, said "Adami, we must let well enough alone; we have all we want; let us stay here." But he said: "No, we will go." She followed him, and when they came to this narrow neck of land, he took her upon his back and carried her across. But at the instant he put her down there was a crash, and looking back they discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had disappeared, and there was nothing but rocks and sand, and the Supreme Brahma cursed them to the lowest hell. Then Adami spoke--and it showed him to be every inch a man--"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it was mine." (Our Adam says, with a pusillanimous whine,--Curse her, for it is her fault: she tempted me and I did eat!" The world, today, is teeming with just such cowards!) Then said Brahma, "I will save her, but not thee." And then spoke his wife, out of the fullness of the love of a heart in which there was enough to make all her daughters rich in holy affection, "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; I do not wish to live without him. I love him." Then magnanimously said the Supreme Brahma, "I will spare you both, and watch over you and your children forever!"
Now, tell me truly, which is the grander story? The book containing this story is full of good things; and yet Christians style as heathens those who have adopted this book as their guide, and spend thousands of dollars annually in sending missionaries to convert them!
It has been too often conceded that because the new testament contains, in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature. But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water--it perverts and destroys that which it should nourish and strengthen.
Christianity makes an often fatal attack on a man's morality--if he happens to be blessed with any--by substituting for the sentiments of love and duty to our neighbors, a sense of obligation of blind obedience to an infinite, mysterious, revengeful, tyrannical God! The real principle of Christian morality, is servile obedience to a dangerous Power! Dispute the assertions of even your priest as to the requirements, dislikes, desires and wishes of the Almighty, and you might as well count yourself as lost, sulphurically lost! If you are one of God's chosen, or in other words, have been saved, and are even so fortunate as to attain to the glories and joys of the gold-paved streets of heaven, you are expected, in looking over the banisters of heaven down into the abyss of eternal torture, to view with complacency the agonized features of your mother, sister, brother, or infant child--who are writhing in hell--and laugh at their calamity! You are not allowed to carry them a drop of water to cool their parched tongue! And if you are a Christian, you at this moment believe you will enjoy the situation!
If a man in a quarrel cuts down his neighbor in his sins, the poor, miserable victim goes directly to hell! The murderer may reasonably count on a lease of a few weeks of life, interviews his pastor, confesses the crime, repents, accepts the grace of God, is forgiven, and then smoothly and gently slides from the rudely-constructed scaffold into a haven of joy and bliss, there to sing the praises of the Lamb of God forever and forever! Poor, unfortunate victim! Happy murderer!
Ah, what a beautiful religion humanitarianism and charity* might become!
[* The following incident, showing Col. Ingersoll's disposition to practice what he preaches whenever the opportunity presents itself, we have never before seen in print. One day, during the winter of 1863-4, when the colonel had a law office in Peoria. Ill.--and before the close of the late war of the rebellion--a thinly clad, middle-aged, lady-like woman came into his office and asked assistance, "My good woman, why do you ask it?" "Sir, my husband is a private in the --th Illinois infantry, and stationed somewhere in Virginia, but I do not know where as I have not heard from him for nearly six months, although previous to that time I seldom failed to get a letter from him as often as once a week, and whenever he received his pay the most of his money came to me. To tell the truth, I do not know whether he is living or not. But one thing I do know, I do not hear from him. I have seven children to provide for, but no money in the house, not a particle of bread in the pantry, nor a lump of coal in the shed, and the landlord threatening to turn us out in the storm. This city pledged itself to give wives a certain sum monthly, providing they consented to their husband's responding to the call of the President for troops, but, disregarding these pledges, we and our children are left to starve and freeze, and to be turned out of our houses and homes by relentless landlords. Now, sir, can you tell me what I am to do?
The Colonel drew his bandanna from his great coat pocket, lightly touched his eyes with it, and rising to his feet, pointed to a chair--"Sit down, madame, and remain till I return. I will be back in a few minutes." He picked up a half-sheet of legal-cap and a pencil, and departed for the law and other offices of the building--of which there were several. Entering the first that appeared, "Good morning, Smith, give me half-a-dollar." "Well, now, colonel, you are--" "Never mind if I am--I must have it!" It came. He entered another. "Hello! colonel, what's new?" "I want a half-dollar from you!" "What for?" "None of your business--I want the money." He got it. He entered a third. "Hello, Bob! Anything new on eter--" "Never mind, I must have fifty cents!" "But--" "But nothing, Jones, give me what I ask for." Of course he got what he asked for. So on through fourteen offices, from which he obtained $7. Returning to his office, he put his hand in his own pocket and drew forth a $5 note, and handed the woman $12. "Take this, my good woman, and make it go as far as you can. If you obtain relief from no other source, call on me again and I will do the best I can for you!" And still Col. Ingersoll is styled by hell-fire advocates an infidel, atheist, dog!]
To do so sweet a thing as to love our neighbors as we love ourselves; to strive to attain to as perfect a spirit as a Golden Rule would bring us into; to make virtue lovely by living it, grandly and nobly and patiently the outgrowth of a brotherhood not possible in this world where men are living away from themselves, and trampling justice and mercy and forgiveness under their feet!
Speaking of the different religions, of course they are represented by the different churches; and the best hold of the churches, and the surest way of giving totally depraved humanity a realizing sense of their utterly lost condition, is to talk and preach hell with all its horrible, terrible concomitants. True, the different priests advocate the doctrine, only when they see that it is the only thing to rouse the sinners from their lethargy; for where is the man who will not accept the grace of Jesus Christ, if he becomes convinced that his state in the hereafter is a terrible one! The ministers of the different churches know full well which side of their bread is buttered. A priest is a divinity among his people--a man around whom his parishioners throw a glamour of sanctity, and one who can do no wrong; albeit, his chief and growing characteristics are tyranny, arrogancy, self-conceit, deception, bigotry and superstition! Tyrannical do I call them? Most assuredly! Suppose, for example, the Methodist, or Presbyterian church had the power to decide whether you, or I, or any other man, should be a Methodist or Presbyterian, and we should decline to follow the path pointed out to us, or either of us, what I solemnly and candidly ask you, would be the result? Our fate would be more terrible than their endless hell! The inquisition would rise again in all its horrid blackness! Instruments of torture would darken our vision on every hand! But, thank God--not that terrible being whom Christians would have us believe is our Maker--this is a free land--free as the air we breathe; and you and I can partake of the orthodox waters of life freely, or we can let them alone! When I see a man perched upon a pedestal called a "pulpit" a man who is one of nature's noblemen, physically, and fully able to breast the storms of life and earn his honest living--telling his hearers with perspiring brow and all his might and main of the terrors of the seething cauldron of hell, and how certain it is that they are to be unceremoniously dumped therein to be boiled through all ages, yet never boiled done--unless they seek salvation--when I look upon that man, honor bright, I pity him, for I cannot help comparing him with the lower animals! Then there is a reaction, and I feel an utter contempt for him, for he may know, when he declares hell is a reality, that he is lying!
Now, of the deception of the preacher. At the close of a sermon in an orthodox church, Rev. Mr. Solemnface steps to the side of Bro. Everbright, who has been absent from the brimstone-mill for several months:
"Ah, Bro. Everbright, how do you do? Long time since I have seen you; how's your family? Quite well? Is it well with thee today? Rather lukewarm, eh? Sorry, sorry. Well, brother, can you do something for us financially, today? Our people think my pulpit is too common, and say a couple hundred will put it in good shape, and make it desirable and attractive. Can you contribute a few dollars to the fund?"
"Well, Bro. Solemnface, for four long months I have been ill; not a day's work have I done, and not a cent of money have I that I can call my own. Next year I trust I can do something for the cause of my Maker."
"Ah-h-h-h-h-h!" and Bro. S.'s face assumes a terrible look of disappointment, and he is gone in a moment. Out upon such a fraud! The pulpits of the land are full of them. The world is cursed with them! They possess all the elements of vagabonds, dead-beats, falsifiers, beggars, vultures, hyenas and jackals!
In past ages the cross has been in partnership with the sword, and the religion of Christ was established by murderers, tyrants and hypocrites. I want you to know that the church carried the black flag, and I ask you what must have been the civilizing influence of such a religion? Of all the selfish things in this world, it is one man wanting to get to heaven, caring nothing what becomes of the rest of mankind, saying: "If I can only get my little soul in!" I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved. Here is what we are taught by the church of today. We are taught by them that fathers and mothers can all be happy in heaven, no matter who may be in hell; that the husband could be happy there, with the wife that would have died for him at any moment of his life, in hell. But they say, "Hell, we don't believe in fire. I don't think you understand me. What we believe in now is remorse." What will you have remorse for? For the mean things you have done when you are in hell? Will you have any remorse for the mean things you have done when you are in heaven? Or will you be so good then that you won't care how you used to be? I tell you today, that no matter in what heaven you may be, no matter in what star you are spending the summer; if you meet another man whom you have wronged, you will drop a little behind in the tune. And, no matter in what part of hell you are, you will meet some one who has suffered, whose nakedness you have clothed, and the fire will cool up a little. According to this Christian doctrine, you won't care how mean you were once. Is it a compliment to an infinite God to say that every being He ever made deserved to be damned the minute He had got him done, and that He will damn everybody He has not had a chance to make over? Is it possible that somebody else can be good for me, and that this doctrine of the atonement is the only anchor for the human soul?
We sit by the fireside and see the flames and sparks fly up the chimney--everybody happy, and the cold wind and sleet beating on the window, and out on the doorstep a mother with a child on her breast freezing. How happy it makes a fire, that beautiful contrast. And we say God is good, and there we sit, and there she sits and moans, not one night, but forever. Or we are sitting at the table with our wives and children, everybody eating, happy and delighted, and Famine comes and pushes out its shriveled palms, and, with hungry eyes, implores us for a crust; how that would increase the appetite! And that is the Christian heaven. Don't you see that these infamous doctrines petrify the human heart? And I would have every one who hears me swear that he will never contribute another dollar to build another church, in which is taught such infamous lies. Let every man try to make every day a joy, and God cannot afford to damn such a man. Consequently humanity is the only real religion.
"Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless millions mourn."
Ingersoll's Lecture on the Review of His Reviewers
Ladies and Gentlemen: "What have I said?" "What has been my offense? I have been spoken of as if I were a wolf endeavoring to devour the entire fold of sheep in the absence of the shepherd." I believe in the trinity of observation, reason and science; the trinity of man, woman and child; the trinity of love, joy and hope; and thought that every man has a right to think for himself, and no other man has the right to debar him of this privilege by torture, by social ostracism, or any of the numerous other expedients resorted to by the enemies of advancement. I ask: "Does God wish the lip-worship of a slave? a sneak? of the man that dares not reason? If I were the infinite God, I would rather have the worship of one good man of brains than a world of such men. I am told that I am in danger of everlasting fire, and that I shall burn forever in hell: I tell you, my friends, if I were going to hell tonight I would take an overcoat with me. Do not tell me that the eternal future of a man may depend upon his belief, I deny it. That a man should be punished for having come to an honest conclusion, the honest production of his brain; that an honest conclusion should be deemed a crime and so declared, it is an infamous, monstrous assertion, and I would rather go to hell than to keep the company of a God who would damn his child for an honest belief.
"Next, I 'preached' that a woman was the equal of man, entitled to everything that he is entitled to, to be his partner, and to be cherished and respected because she is the weaker, to be treated as a splendid flower. I said that man should not be cross to her, but fill the house that she is in with such joy that it would burst out at the window. I have said that matrimony is the holiest of sacraments, and I have said that the bible took woman up thousands of years ago and handed her down to man as a slave, and I have said that the bible is a barbarous book for teaching that she is a slave, and I repeat it, and will prove later what I have said. I have pleaded for the right of man, of wife, and of the little child; I have said we can govern children by love and affection; I have asked for tender treatment for the child of crime; I have asked mothers to cease beating their children and take them to their hearts; and for this I am denounced by the religious press and men in the pulpits as a demon and a monster of heresy, who should be driven out from among you as an unclean thing.
"But I should not complain. Only a few years ago I should have been compelled to look at my denouncers through flame and smoke; but they dare not treat me so now or they would. One hundred years ago I should have been burned for claiming the right of reason; fifty years ago I should have been imprisoned and my wife and children would have been torn away from me, and twenty-five years ago I could not have made a living in the United States in my profession--the law. But I live now and can see through it all, and all is light. I delivered another lecture, on "Ghosts," in which I sought to show that man had been controlled in the past by phantoms created by his own imagination; in which the pencil of fear had drawn pictures for him on the canvass of superstition, and that men had groveled in they dirt before their own superstitious creations. I endeavored to show that man had received nothing from these ghosts but hatred, blood, ignorance and unhappiness, and that they had filled our world with woe and tears. This is what I endeavored to show--no more. Now, every one has as much right to differ with me as I with them, but it does not make the slightest difference for the purpose of argument whether I am a good man or a bad, whether I am ugly or handsome--although I would not object to resting my case on that issue; the only thing to be considered and discussed is, is what I have said true, or is it untrue?
"Now, I said that the bible came from the ghosts, and that they gave us the doctrine of immortality of the soul, which I deny. Now, the immortality of the soul, if there is such a thing, is a fact, and therefore no book could make it. If I am immortal, I am; if not, no
## book can make me so. The doctrine of immortality is based in the hope
of the human heart, and is not derived from any book or creed. It has its origin in the ebb and flow of the human affections, and will continue as long as affection, and is the rainbow in the sky of hope. It does not depend on a book, on ghosts, superstition of any kind; it is a flower of the human heart. I did say that these ghosts, or the book, taught that human slavery was right, that most monstrous of all crimes, that makes miserable the victim and debases the master, for a slave can have all the virtues while the master can not. I did say that it riveted the chains upon the oppressed, and that it counseled the robbing of that most precious of all boons--Liberty. I add that the book upheld all this, that it sustained and sanctified the institution of human slavery. I did also assert that this same book, which my critics claim was inspired by God, inculcated the doctrine of witchcraft, for which people, through its teaching were hanged and burned for bringing disease upon the regal persons of kings, and for souring beer. I did say that this book upheld that most of all infamies, polygamy, and that it did not teach political liberty or religious toleration, but political slavery and the most wretched intolerance. I did try to prove that these ghosts knew less than nothing about medicine, politics, legislation, astronomy, geology and astrology, but I am also aware that in saving these things I have done what my censors think I ought not to have done. But the victor ought not to feel malice, and I shall have none. As soon as I had said all these things, some gentlemen felt called upon to answer them, which they had a right to do. Now, I like fairness, am enamored with it, probably because I get so little of it. I can say a great many mean things, for I have read all the religious papers, and I ought to be able to account for every motive in a mean manner after.
"The first gentleman whom I shall call your attention to is the Rev. Dr. Woodbridge. It seems that when I delivered my lectures the conclusion had come to "that man does not believe in anything but matter and force--that man does not believe in spirit." Why not? If by spirit you mean that which thinks, I am one of them myself. If you mean by spirit that which hopes and reasons and loves and aspires, why, then, I am a believer in spirits; but whatever spirit there is in this universe I will take my oath is a natural product and not superimposed upon this world. All I will say is that whatever is, is natural, and there is as much goodness in my judgment, as much spirit here in this world as in any other, and you are just as near the heart of the universe here as you ever can be.
But, they say, "there is matter and force, and there is force and there is spirit." Well, what of it? There is no matter without force. What would keep it together unless there was force? Can you imagine matter without force? Honor bright, can you conceive of force without matter? And what is spirit? They say spirit is the first thing that ever was. It seems to me sometimes as though spirit was the blossom and fruit of all, and not the commencement. But they say spirit was first. What would that spirit do? No force--no matter--a spirit living in an infinite vacuum without side, edge or bottom. This spirit created the world; and if this spirit did, there must have been a time when it commenced to create, and back of that an eternity spent in absolute idleness. Can a spirit exist without matter or without force? I honestly say I do not know what matter is, what force is, what spirit is; but if you mean by matter anything that I can touch, or by force anything that we can overcome then I believe in them. If you mean by spirit anything that can think and love, I believe in spirits.
"The next critic who assailed me was the Rev. Mr. Kalloch. I am not going to show you what I can withstand. I am not going to say a word about the reputation of this man, although he took some liberties with mine. This gentleman says negation is a poor thing to die by. I would just as lief die by that as the opposite. He spoke of the last hours of Paine and Voltaire and the terrors of their death-beds; but the question arises, is there a word of truth in all he said? I have observed that the murderer dies with courage and firmness in many instances, but that does not make me think that it sanctified his crime; in fact, it makes no impression upon me one way or the other. When a man through old age or infirmity approaches death the intellectual faculties are dimmed, his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back the memories of childhood. And the great bard gave in the corrupt and besotted Falstaff--who prattled of babbling brooks and green fields--an instance of the retracing steps taken by the memory at the last gasp. It has been said that the bible was sanctified by our mothers. Every superstition in the world, from the beginning of all time, has had such a sanctification. The Turk dying on the Russian battlefield, pressing the Koran to his bosom, breathes his last thinking of the loving adjuration of his mother to guard it. Every superstition has been rendered sacred by the love of a mother. I know what it has cost the noble and the brave to throw to the winds these superstitions. Since the death of Voltaire, who was innocent of all else than a desire to shake off the superstitions of the past, the curse of Rome has pursued him, and ignorant protestants have echoed that curse. I like Voltaire. Whenever I think of him it is as a plumed knight coming from the fray with victory shining upon his brow. He was once in the Bastille, and while there he changed his name from Francis Marie Aloysius to Voltaire; and when the Bastille was torn down "Voltaire" was the battle cry of those who did it. He did more to bring about religious toleration than any man in the galaxy of those who strove for the privilege of free thought. He was always on the side of justice. He was full of faults and had many virtues. His doctrines have never brought unhappiness to any country. He died as serenely as anyone could. Speaking to his servant, he said, "Farewell my faithful friend." Could he have done a more noble act than to recognize him who had served him faithfully as a man? What more could he wished? And now let me say here, I will give a $1,000 in gold to any clergyman who can substantiate that the death of Voltaire was not as peaceful as the dawn. And of Thomas Paine, whom they assert died in fear and agony, frightened by the clanking chains of devils, in fact, frightened to death by God--I will give $1,000 likewise to anyone who can substantiate this absurd story--a story without a word of truth in it. And let me ask, who dies in the most fear, the man who, like the saint, exclaims: "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" or Voltaire, who peacefully and quietly bade his servant farewell? The question is not who died right, but who lived right. I look upon death as the most unimportant moment of life, and believe that not half the responsibility is attached to dying that is to living properly. This Rev. Mr. Kalloch is a baptist. He has a right to be a baptist. The first baptist, though was a heretic; but it is among the wonders that when a heretic gets fifteen or twenty to join him he suddenly begins to be orthodox. Roger Williams was a baptist, but how he, or anyone not destitute of good sense, could be one, passes my comprehension. Let me illustrate:
Suppose it was the Day of Judgment tonight and we were all assembled, as the ghosts say we will be, to be judged, and God should ask a man:
"Have you been a good man?"
"Yes."
"Have you loved your wife and children?"
"Yes."
"Have you taken good care of them and made them happy?"
"Yes."
"Have you tried to do right by your neighbors?"
"Yes."
"Paid all your debts?"
"Yes."
And then cap the climax by asking:
"Were you ever baptized?"
Could a solitary being hear that question without laughing? I think not. I once happened to be in the company of six or seven baptist elders (I never have been able to understand since how I got into such bad company), and they wanted to know what I thought of baptism. I answered that I had not given the matter any attention, in fact I had no special opinion upon the subject. But they pressed me and finally I told them that I thought, with soap baptism was a good thing.
The Rev. Mr. Guard has attacked me, and has described me, among other things, as a dog barking at a train. Of course he was the train. He said, first, the bible is not an immoral book, because I swore upon it when I joined the Free and Accepted Masons. That settles the question. Secondly, he says that Solomon had softening of the brain and fatty degeneration of the heart; thirdly, that the Hebrews had the right to slay all the inhabitants of Canaan according to the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. He says that the destruction of these Canaanites, the ripping open by the bloody sword of women with child was an act of sublime mercy. Think of that! He says that the Canaanites should have been driven from their homes, and not only driven, but that the men who simply were guilty of the crime of fighting for their native land--the old men with gray hairs; the old mothers, the young mothers, the little dimpled, prattling child--that it was an act of sublime mercy to plunge the sword of religious persecution into old and young. If that is mercy, let us have injustice. If there is that kind of a God I am sorry that I exist. Fourthly, Mr. Guard said God has the right to do as he pleases with the beings he has created; and, fifthly, that God, by choosing the Jews and governing them personally, spoiled them to that degree that they crucified Him the first opportunity they had. That shows what a good administration will do. Sixthly, He says polygamy is not a bad thing when compared with the picture of Anthony and Cleopatra, now on exhibition in this city. I will just say one word about art. I think this is one of the most beautiful words in our language, and do you know, it never seemed to me necessary for art to go into partnership with a rag? I like the paintings of Angelo, of Raphael--I like those splendid souls that are put upon canvas--all there is of human beauty. There are brave souls in every land who worship nature grand and nude, and who, with swift, indignant hand, tear off the fig leaves of the prude. Seventhly, it may be said that the bible sanctions slavery, but that it is not an immoral book if it does. Mr. Guard playfully says that he is a puppy nine days old; that he was only eight days old when I came here. I'm inclined to think he has over stated his age. I account for his argument precisely as he did for the sin of Solomon, softening of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart. It does seem to me that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man was going down to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony forever, I would try to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with epithet and invective, and drawing the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could to reclaim him and take him up in the arms of my affection.
The next gentleman is the Rev. Mr. Robinson, who delivered a sermon entitled 'Ghost against God, or Ingersoll against Honesty.' Of course he was honest. He apologized for attending an infidel lecture upon the ground that he hated to contribute to the support of a materialistic showman. I am willing to trade fagots for epithets, and the rack for anything that may be said in his sermon. I am willing to trade the instrument of torture with which they could pull the nails from my fingers for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent. When I saw that report--although I do not know that I ought to tell it--I felt bad. I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a snake in his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of a man as bad as I. I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev. Samuel Robinson, My Dear Sir. In order to relieve your conscience of the stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in Ghosts, I herewith enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture." I then gave him a little good advice to be charitable, and regretted exceedingly that any man could listen to me for an hour and a half and not go away satisfied that other men had the same right to think that he had.
The speaker went on to answer the argument of Mr. Robinson with regard to persecution, contending that protestants had been guilty of it no less than catholics; and showing that the first people to pass an act of toleration in the new world were the catholics in Maryland. The reverend gentleman has stated also that infidelity has done nothing for the world in the development of art and science. Has he ever heard of Darwin, of Tyndall, of Huxley, of John W. Draper, of Auguste Comte, of Descartes, Laplace, Spinoza, or any man who has taken a step in advance of his time? Orthodoxy never advances, when it does advance, it ceases to be orthodoxy.
A reply to certain strictures in the Occident led the lecturer up to another ministerial critic, namely, the Rev. W.E. Ijams.
I want to say that, so far as I can see, in his argument this gentleman has treated me in a kind and considerate spirit. He makes two or three mistakes, but I suppose they are the fault of the report from which he quoted. I am made to say in his sermon that there is no sacred place in the universe. What I did say was: There is no sacred place in all the universe of thought; there is nothing too holy to be investigated, nothing too sacred to be understood, and I said that the fields of thought were fenceless, that they should be without a wall. I say so tonight. He further said that I said that a man had not only the right to do right, but to do wrong. What I did say, was: "Liberty is the right to do right, and the right to think right, and the right to think wrong," not the right to do wrong. That is all I have to say in regard to that gentleman, except that, so far as I could see, he was perfectly fair, and treated me as though I was a human being as well as he.
The speaker sarcastically referred to the slurs thrown upon him by his reviewers, who have claimed that his theories have no foundation, his arguments no reason, and that his utterances are vapid, blasphemous, and unworthy a reply. He said that their statements and their actions were sadly at variance, for, while declaring him a senseless idiot, they spent hours in striving to prove themselves not idiots; in other words, in one breath they declare that his views were absolutely without point, and needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of this declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts to disprove the very things they called self-evident absurdities.
Turning from this subject, Mr. Ingersoll read numerous extracts from the bible, with interpolated comments. He claimed that the bible authorized slavery, and that many devoted believers in that book had turned the cross of Christ into a whipping post. He did not wish it understood that he could find no good in believers in creeds; far from it, for some of his dearest friends were most orthodox in their religious ideas, and there had been hundreds of thousands of good men among both clergy and laymen. History has shown no people more nobly self-sacrificing than the Jesuit Fathers who first visited this country to proselyte among the Indians. But these men and their like were better than their creeds; better than the book in which their faith was centered. The bible tells us distinctly that the world was made in six days--not periods, but actual, bona fide days--a statement which it iterates and reiterates. It also tells us that God lengthened the day for the benefit of a gentleman named Joshua, in other words, that he stopped the rotary motion of the earth. Motion is changed into heat by stoppage, and the world turns with such velocity that its sudden stoppage would create a heat of intensity beyond the wildest flight of our imagination, and yet this impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have longer time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites. The bible also upholds the doctrines of witchcraft and spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch of Endor, and she, after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit of Samuel, said spirit kindly joining in conversation with Saul, without requiring the aid of a trance medium. The speaker then quoted at length from Leviticus concerning wizards and evil spirits, described the temptation of Christ by Satan, and the driving of devils from man into swine. He sneered at the rights of children as biblically described, citing the law which sentenced them to be stoned to death for disobedience to parents, the almost sacrifice of Isaac by his father, and the actual murder of Jephthah's daughter, asking if a God who could demand such worship was worthy the love of man. He next referred to the conversation between God and Satan concerning the man Job, and of the reward given to the latter for his long continued patience. His three daughters and his seven sons had been taken from him merely to test his patience, and the merciful God gave him in exchange three other daughters and seven sons, but they were not the children whom he had loved and lost. The bible represents woman as vastly inferior to man, while he believed, with Robbie Burns, that God made man with a prentice-hand, and woman after He had learned the trade. Polygamy, also, was a doctrine supported by this pure and pious work; a doctrine so foul that language is not strong enough to express its infamy. The bible taught, as a religious creed, that if your wife, your sister, your brother, your dearest friend, tempted you to change from the religion of your fathers, your duty to God demanded that you should at once strike a blow at the life of your tempter. Let us suppose, then, that in truth God went to Palestine and selected the scanty tribes of Israel as his chosen people, and supposing that he afterward came to Jerusalem in the shape of a man and taught a different doctrine from the one prescribed by their book and their clergy, and that the chosen people, in obedience to the education he had prepared for them, struck at the life of him who tempted them. Were they to be cursed by God and man because the former had reaped the harvest of his own sowing?
Ingersoll's Lecture on "How the Gods Grow"
Ladies and Gentlemen: Priests have invented a crime called blasphemy. That crime is the breastwork behind which ignorance, superstition and hypocrisy have crouched for thousands of years, and shot their poisoned arrows at the pioneers of human thought. Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere in heaven who objects to a human being, thinking and expressing his thought. Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere who takes care of the people of this world; a God somewhere who watches over the widow and the orphan; a God somewhere who releases the slave; a God somewhere who visits the innocent man in prison; the same God that has allowed men for thousands of years to burn to ashes human beings simply for loving that God. We have been taught that it is dangerous to reason upon these subjects--extremely dangerous--and that of all crimes in the world, the greatest is to deny the existence of that God.
Redden your hands in innocent blood; steal the bread of the orphan, deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who has loved and trusted you, and for all this you may be forgiven; for all this you can have the clear writ of that bankrupt court of the gospel. But deny the existence of one of these gods, and the tearful face of mercy becomes lurid with eternal hate; the gates of heaven are shut against you, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, commence your wanderings as an immortal vagrant, as a deathless convict, as an eternal outcast. And we have been taught that the infinite has become enraged at the finite simply when the finite said: "I don't know!" Why, imagine it. Suppose Mr. Smith should hear a couple of small bugs in his front yard discussing the question as to the existence of Smith; and suppose one little red bug swore on the honor of a bug that, in his judgment, no such man as Smith lived. What would you think of Mr. Smith if he fell into a rage, and brought his heel down on this little atheist bug and said: "I will teach you that Smith is a diabolical fact!" And yet if there is an infinite God, there is infinitely a greater difference between that God and a human being than between Shakespeare and the smallest bug that ever crawled. It cannot be; there is something wrong in this thing somewhere.
I am told, also, that this being watches over us, takes care of us. And the other day I read a sermon (you will hardly believe it, but I did); I had nothing else to. I had read everything in that paper, including the advertisements; so I read the sermon. It was a sermon by Rev. Mr. Moody on prayer, in which he took the ground that our prayer should be "Thy will be done;" and he seemed to believe that if we prayed that prayer often enough we could induce God to have his own way. He gives an instance of a woman in Illinois who had a sick child, and she prayed that God would not take from her arms that babe. She did not pray "Thy will be done," but she prayed, according to Mr. Moody, almost a prayer of rebellion, and said: "I cannot give up my babe." God heard her prayer, and the child got well; and Mr. Moody says it was an idiot when it got well. For fifteen years that woman watched over and took care of that idiotic child; and Mr. Moody says how much better would it have been if she had allowed God to have had his own way. Think of a God who would punish a mother for speaking to Him from an agonizing heart and saying, "I cannot give up my babe," and making the child an idiot. What would the devil have done under the same circumstances? That is the God we are expected to worship. I range myself with the opposition. The next day I read another sermon preached by the Rev. De Witt Talmage, a man of not much fancy, but of great judgment. He preached a sermon on dreams, and went on to say that God often visited us in dreams, and that He often convinces men of His existence in that way. So far as I am concerned I had rather see something in the light. And, according to that sermon, there was a poor woman in England, a pauper who had the rheumatism, and there was another pauper who had not the rheumatism; and the pauper who had not the rheumatism used to take food to the pauper that had. After a while the pauper without rheumatism died, and then the pauper with the rheumatism began to think in her own mind, who will bring me food? That night God appeared to her in a dream. He did not cure her rheumatism though. He appeared to her in a dream, and he took her out of the house and pointed on the right hand to an immense mountain of bread, and on the left hand to an immense mountain of butter. And when I read that I said to myself, my Lord, what a place that would be to start a political party. And he said to her: "These belong to your father; do you think that he will allow one of his children to starve? What a place would Ireland be with that mountain of bread and butter! Until I read these two sermons I hardly believed that in this day and generation anybody believed that God would make a child an idiot simply because the mother had prayed for its sweet dear life, or that God's visits are only in dreams. But so it is.
Orthodoxy has not advanced upon the religion of the Fiji Islander. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. Now we are told that there is a god; and nearly every nation has had a god; generally a good many of them. You see the raw material was so cheap, and Gods were manufactured so easily, that heaven has always been crammed with the phantoms of these monsters. But they say there is a god, and every savage tribe believes in a God. It is an argument made to me every day. I concede to you that fact; I concede to you that all savages agree with you. I admit it takes a certain amount of civilization, a certain amount of thought, to rise above the idea that some personal being, for his own ends, for his own glory, made and governs this universe. I admit that it takes some thought to see the universe is good and all that is good, and every star that shines is a part of God, and I am something, no matter how little, and that the infinite cannot exist without me, and that therefore I am a part of the infinite. I admit that it takes a little civilization to get to that point.
Now every nation has made a god, and every man that has made a god has used himself for a pattern; and men have put into the mouth of their god all their mistakes in astronomy, in geography, in philosophy, in morality, and the god is never wiser or better than his creators. If they believe in slavery, so did he; if they believe in eating human flesh, he wanted his share; if they were polygamous, so was he; if they were cruel, so was he. And just to the extent that man has become civilized, he has civilized his god. You can hardly imagine the progress that our God has made in four thousand years.
Four thousand years ago He was a barbarian; tonight He is quite an educated gentleman. Four thousand years ago He believed in killing and butchering little babes at the breasts of their mothers; He has reformed. Four thousand years ago He did not believe in taking prisoners of war. He said, kill the old men; mingle their blood with the white hair. Kill the women. But what shall we do, O God, with the maidens? Give them to satisfy the lust of the soldiers and of the priests! If there is anywhere in the serene heaven a real God. I want him to write in the book of His eternal remembrance, opposite my name, that I deny that lie for Him.
Four thousand years ago our God was in favor of slavery; four thousand years ago our God would have a man beaten to death with rugged rocks for expressing his honest thought; four thousand years ago our God told the husband to kill his wife if she disagreed with him upon the important subject of religion; four thousand years ago our God was a monster; and if He is any better now, it is simply because we have made Him so. I am talking about the God of the Christian world. There may be, for aught I know, upon the shore of the eternal vast, some being whose very thought is the constellation of those numberless stars. I do not know; but if there is he has never written a bible; he has never been in favor of slavery; he has never advocated polygamy, and he never told the murderer to sheathe his dagger in the dimpled breast of a babe. But they say to me, our God has written a book. I am glad he did, and it is by that book that I propose to judge them. I find in that book that it was a crime to eat of the tree of knowledge. I find that the church has always been the enemy of education, and I find that the church still carries the flaming sword of ignorance and bigotry over the tree of knowledge.
And if that story is true, ought we not after all to thank the devil? He was the first school master; he was the first to whisper liberty in our ears; he was the author of modesty. He was the author of ambition and progress. And as for me, give me the storm and tempest of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Punish me when and how you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And there is one peculiar thing I might as well speak of here. While the world has made gods, it has also made devils; and as a rule the devils have been better friends to man than the gods. It was not a devil that drowned the world; it was not a devil that covered with the multitudinous waves of an infinite sea the corpses of men, women and children.
That was the good god. The devil never sent pestilence and famine; the devil never starved women and children; that was the good God. The meanest thing recorded of the devil is what happened concerning my servant Job. According to that book God met the devil and said: "Where have you been?" "Oh, been walking up and down." "Have you noticed my man Job; nobody like him!" "Well, who wouldn't be; you have given him everything; but take away what he has, and he will curse you to your face." And so the devil went to work and tried it. It was a mean thing. And that was all done to decide what you might call a wager on a difference of opinion between the serene highnesses. He took away his property, but Job didn't sin; and when God met the devil, he said: "Well, what did I tell you, smarty?" "Ah," he said, "that is all very well, but you touch his flesh and he will curse you; and he did, but Job didn't curse him. And then what did God do to help him! He gave him some other children better looking than the first ones. What kind of an idea is that for a God to kill our children and then give us better looking ones! If you have loved a child, I don't care if it is deformed, if you have held it in your arms and covered its face with kisses, you want that child back and no other.
I find in this bible that there was an old gentleman a little short of the article of hair. And as he was going through the town a number of little children cried out to him "Go up, thou bald head!" And this man of God turned and cursed them. A real good-humored old fellow! And two bears came out of the woods and tore in pieces forty-two children! How did the bears get there? Elisha could not control the bears. Nobody but God could control the bears in that way. Now just think of an infinite God making a shining star, having his attention attracted by hearing some children saying to an old gentlemen, "Go up, thou bald head!" and then speaking to his secretary or somebody else, "Bring in a couple of bears now!" What a magnificent God! What would the devil have done under the same circumstances? And yet that is the God they want to put into the constitution in order to make our children gentle and kind and loving.
You hate a God like that. I do; I despise him. And yet little children in the Sabbath-school are taught that infamous lie. Why, I have very little respect for an old man that will get mad about such a thing, anyway. What would the Christian world say of me if I should have a few children torn to pieces if they should make that remark in my face? What would the devil have done under the same circumstances? I tell you, I cannot worship a God who is no better than the devil! I cannot do it. And if you will just read the old testament with the bandage off your eyes and the cloud of fear from your heart, you will come to the conclusion that it was written not only by men, but by barbarians, by savages, and that it is totally unworthy of a civilized age. I believe in no God who believes in slavery. I will worship no God who ever said that one of His children should own another of His children. But they say to me, there must be a God somewhere! Well, I say I don't know. There may be. I hope there is more than one--one is so lonesome. Just think of an old bachelor, always alone! I want more than one. And they say, somebody must have made this! Well, I say I don't know. But it strikes me that the indestructible cannot be created. What would you make it of? "Oh, nothing!" Well, it strikes me that nothing, considered in the light of a raw material, is a decided failure. For my part, I cannot conceive of force apart from matter, and I cannot conceive of matter apart from force. I cannot conceive of force somewhere without acting upon something; because force must be active, or it is not force; and if it has no matter to act upon, it ceases to be force. I cannot conceive of the smallest atom of matter staying together without force. Beside, if some god made all this, there must have been some morning when he commenced! And if he has existed always, there is an eternity back of that when he never did anything; when he lived in an infinite hole, without side, top or bottom! He did not think, for there was nothing to think about. Certainly he did not remember, for nothing had ever happened. Now I cannot conceive of this! I do not say it is not so. I may be damned for my smartness, yet--I simply say I cannot conceive of it, that is all. But men tell me, you cannot conceive of eternity! That is just what I can conceive of. I cannot conceive of its stopping. They say I cannot conceive of infinite space! That is just what I can conceive of; because, let me imagine all I can, my imagination will stand upon the verge and see infinite space beyond. Infinite space is a necessity of the mind, because I cannot think of enough matter to fill it. Eternity is a necessity of the mind, because I cannot dream of the cessation of time. But they say there is a design in the world, consequently there must be a designer. Well, I don't know.
Paley says that the more wonderful a thing is, the greater the necessity for creation; that a watch is a wonderful thing, and that it must have had a creator; that the watchmaker is more wonderful than the watch, therefore he must have had a creator. Then we come to God; He is altogether more wonderful than the watchmaker, therefore He had no creator. There is a link out somewhere; I don't pretend to understand it. And so I say, that had the world been any other way, you would have seen the same evidence of design, precisely. We grow up with our conditions, and you cannot imagine of a first cause. Why? Every cause has an effect.
Strike your hands together; they feel warm. The effect becomes a cause instantly, and that cause produces another effect, and the effect another cause; and there could not have been a cause until there was an effect. Because until there was an effect, nothing had been caused; until something had been caused, I am positive there was no cause. Now you cannot conceive of a lost effect, because the lost effect of which you can think, will in turn become a cause and that cause produce another effect. And as you cannot think of a lost effect, you cannot think of a first cause; it is not thinkable by the human mind.
They say God governs this world. Why does He not govern Russia as well as He does Massachusetts? Why does He allow the Czar to send beautiful girls of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, simply for saying a word in favor of human liberty, to mines in Siberia, where they draw carts with knees bruised and bleeding, with hands scarred and swollen? What is that God worth that allows such things in the world He governs? Did He govern this country when it had four millions of slaves?--when it turned the cross of Christ into a whipping-post--when the holy bible was an auction-block on which the mother stood while her babe was sold from her breast?--when bloodhounds were considered apostles? Was God governing the world when the prisoners were confined in the Bastille? It seems to me, if there is a God, and someone would repeat the word "Bastille." it would cover almost his face with the blood of shame. But they say heaven will balance all the ills of life. Let us see: A large majority of us are sinners--at least a large majority with whom I am acquainted; and a majority of the Christians with whom I am acquainted are worse than sinners. And if their doctrine is true, you will be astonished at the gentlemen you will see in hell that day. You will know by the cast of their countenance that they used to preach here. They say that it may be that the sinners here have a very good time, and that the Christians don't have a very good time; that it is awful hard work to serve the Lord, and that you carry a cross when you deny yourself the delights of murder and forgery, and all manner of rascality that fills life with delight. But they say that while the rascals are having a good time, they will catch it in the other world. But, according to their account, ninety-nine out of a hundred will be damned, and I think it will be a close call for the hundredth. Like that dear old Scotch woman, when she was talking about the Presbyterian faith, some one said to her: "My dear woman, if your doctrine is true, nobody but you and your husband will be saved." "Ah," said she, "I'm na' sae sure about John." About one in a hundred will be saved, and the other ninety-nine will be in misery. So that on the average there will not be half as much happiness in the next world as in this. So, instead of God's plan getting better, it gets worse; and throughout all the ages of eternity there will be less happiness than in this world. This world is a school; this world is where we develop moral muscle. It may be that we are here simply because men cannot advance only through agony and pain. If it is necessary to have pain and agony to advance morally, then nobody can advance in heaven. Hell will be the only place offering opportunities to any gentleman who wishes to increase his moral muscle.
A gentleman once asked me if I could suggest any improvement on the present order of things, if I had the power. Well, said I, in the first place, I would make good health catching instead of disease. There will be no humanity until we get the orthodox God out of our religion. I want to do what little I can to put another one in God's name, so that we will worship a supreme human god, so that we will worship mercy, justice, love and truth, and not have the idea that we must sacrifice our brother upon the altar of fear to please some imaginary phantom. See what Christianity has done for the world! It has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand organ and Ireland to exile. That is what religion has done. Take every country in the whole world, and the country that has got the least religion is the most prosperous, and the country that has got the most religion is in the worst condition.
In the vast cemetery, called the past, are most of the religions of men and there, too, are nearly all their gods.
The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and cornice; over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms; Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more.
Broken are the circles and the cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but no naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the beautiful women can lure them back, and Danae lies unnoticed, naked to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are the voices of the prophets, and the lard once flowing with milk and honey is but a desert waste. One by one the myths have faded from the clouds; one by one the phantom host has disappeared, and, one by one, facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The supernatural has almost gone, but man is the natural remains. The gods have fled, but man is here. Nations, like individuals, have their periods of youth, of manhood and decay. Religions are the same. The same inexorable destiny awaits them all. The gods created with the nations must perish with their creators. They were created by men, and, like men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to empire, and Zeus put on the purple of authority. The earth trembled with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons, and Jove grasped with mailed hand the thunderbolts of heaven. Rome fell, and Christians from her territory, with the red sword of war, carved out the ruling nations of the world, and now Jehovah sits upon the old throne. Who will be His successor?
Ingersoll's lecture on The Religion of Our Day
Ladies and Gentlemen:--I am glad that I have lived long enough to see one gentleman in the pulpit brave enough to say that God would not be offended at one who speaks according to the dictates of his conscience; who does not believe that God will give wings to a bird, and then damn the bird for flying. I thank the pastor and I thank the church for allowing its pastor to be so brave.
I admit that thousands and thousands of church people, with their pastors and the deacons, are today advocating religious principles that they deem right and good. I honor these men, but I do not believe that their method is a good one. I do not want these people to forgive me for the views I entertain, but I want them so to act that I will not have to forgive them. I am the friend of every one who preaches the gospel of absolute intellectual liberty, and that man is my friend.
Is there a God who says that if man does so and so He will damn him? Can there be such a fiend? I am not responsible to man unless I injure him; nor to God unless I injure Him, but one cannot injure God, for "He is infinite."
When I was young I was told that the bible was inspired, written by God, that even the lids of the book were inspired. They say He is a personal God; if so, He has not revealed Himself to me. There may be many gods. As I look around I see that justice does not prevail, that innocence is not always effectual and a perfect shield. If there be a God these things could not be. If God made us all, why did He not make us all equally well. He had the power of an infinite god. Why did God people the earth with so many idiots? I admit that orthodoxy could not exist without them, but why did God make them? If we believe the bible then He should have made us all idiots, for the orthodox Christian says the idiots will not be damned, simply transplanted, while the sensible man, who believeth not, will be sent to eternal damnation? If there is any God that made us, what right had He to make idiots? Is a man with a head like a pin under any obligation to thank God? Is the black man, born in slavery, under any obligation to thank God for his badge of servitude?
What kind of a God is it that will allow men and women to be put in dungeons and chains simply because they loved Him and prayed to Him? And what kind of a God is it that will allow such men and women to be burned at the stake? If God won't love such men and women, then under what circumstances will he love?
Famine stalks over the land and millions die, not only the bad but the good, and there in the heavens above sits an infinite God who can do anything, can change the rocks and the stones, and yet these millions die. I do not say there is no God, but I do ask, what is God doing? Look at the agony, and wretchedness and woe all over the land. Is there goodness, is there mercy in this? I do not say there is not, but I want to know, and I want to know if a man is to be damned for asking the question?
(He eloquently recited the agonies that clustered around the French Bastille, where great men and heroic women suffered and died for loving liberty, and said: If there is a God, I think that one word, Bastille, would bring the blush of shame to His face.)
I find that the men who have received revelation are the worst; and that where the bible goes there go the sword and the fagot. If an infinite God makes a revelation to me He knows how I will understand it. If God wrote the bible he knew that no two people would understand it alike.
When I read the bible I found that God in His infinite wisdom couldn't control the people He had created and that He had to drown them. If I had infinite power and couldn't make a people that I could control and had to drown them, why I'd resign.
Then I read in the bible such cruel things, and I do not believe that God can be cruel. Such cruelty may make one afraid, but cannot inspire love. I can't love a god that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I won't.
The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell--tidings of great joy. When I confront them they--say I'm taking away their consolation. The old bible does not mention hell or heaven. Now God should have notified Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came to drown all those people He didn't tell a single one that He would drown him. He talked all about water--nothing about fire. When He came down on Mount Sinai, and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, He never said one word on the subject. When God gave Moses the ten commandments, engraved on stone, there He said not one word about hell. There was plenty of room on the stone; why did He not add: "If you don't keep these commandments you will be damned." Through all these ages, when God was talking all the time, and when every howling prophet had His ear, not one word did He utter of hell or heaven. For 4,000 years God got along without mentioning those places or even hinting of them. It seems to me that we ought to have been notified by Him.
(Here the orator recalled many stories from the old bible and subjected them to keen irony and ridicule. Reciting the story wherein the she bears came out of the woods and tore to pieces the forty children who mocked the prophet, he asked: If God did that, what would the devil have done under the same circumstances? Why; he said, did not God give a sure cure for leprosy, unless He wanted to have His chosen people to have that frightful disease?)
Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her brother-in-law refused to marry her to spit in his face? Do you believe any such nonsense from a god? I call that courting under difficulties. (Then Colonel Ingersoll dwelt pathetically on the sweet, innocent babes eaten up by the lions in the den, after Daniel was rescued from their jaws, and asked the question, what kind of a god was it that allowed such horrible deeds?)
They say that I pick out all the bad things in the bible. Well, God ought not to have put bad things in the book. If you only read the bible you will not believe it. Why, it is such a bad book that it has to be supported by legislation. In Maine and elsewhere they will send you to jail for two years if you deny the bible or the judgment day.
No, we are told we must not only believe in the God we have been talking about, but must also believe in another one.
Let us look at the church today. The orthodox church--that is, all but the Universalist. He is trying to be orthodox, but he can't get in. The God of the Universalists, to say the least, is a gentleman.
Now, what is this religion? To believe certain things that we may be saved, that we won't be damned. What are they? First, that the old and new testament are inspired. No matter how kind, how just a man may be, unless he believes in the inspiration, he will be damned.
Second, he must believe in the trinity. That there are three in one. That father and son are precisely of the same age, the son, possibly, a little mite older; that three times one is one, and that once one is three. It is a mercy you don't know how to understand it, but you must believe it or be damned. Therein you see the mercy of the Lord. This trinity doctrine was announced several hundred years after Christ was born: Do you believe such a doctrine will make a man good or honest? Will it make him more just? Is the man that believes any better than the man who does not believe? How is it with nations? Look at Spain, the last slave-holder in the civilized world; she's christian, she believes in the trinity! And Italy, the beggar of the world. Under the rule of priestcraft money streamed in from every land and yet she did not advance. Today she is reduced to a hand-organ. Take poor Ireland, groaning under the heel of British oppression; could she cast off her priests she would soon be one with America in freedom.
Protestantism is better than Catholicism, because there is less of it. Both dread education. They say they brought the arts and sciences out of the dark ages; why, they made the dark ages and what did they preserve? Nothing of value, only an account of events that never happened. What did they teach the world! Slavery!
The best country the sun ever shown upon is the northern part of the United States, and there you will find less religion than anywhere else on the face of the earth. You will find here more people that don't believe the bible, and you will find better husbands, better wives, happier homes, where the women are most respected and where the children get less blows and more huggings and kissings. We have improved just as we lost this religion and this superstition.
Great Britain is the religious nation par excellence, and there you will find the most cant and most hypocrisy. They are always thanking God that they have killed somebody. Look at the opium war with China. They forced the Chinese to open their ports and receive the deadly drug, and then had the impudence to send a lot of driveling idiots of missionaries into China.
Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there you will find the best men, the best women, the best children. Two powerful levers are at work; love and intelligence. The true test of a man is generosity, that covers a multitude of sins.
They have got so now they damn a man on a technicality. You must be baptized by immersion, sprinkling or pouring. If you come to the day of judgment and can't show the watermark, you're damned!
What more: That a fellow named Adam, whom you don't know and never voted for, is your representative. You are charged with his sins. Equally abused is the doctrine of atonement, that you are created with the sacrifice of another. If Christ had more virtue than Adam had meanness, then you are ahead.
Atonement is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. But there is one great objection. It saves the wrong man, and it is not honest. (In holding up the atonement to ridicule the orator said: "If Judas had failed to betray Christ, the mother of Christ would be in hell today." Then he ridiculed the miracles recorded in the new testament, pronounced them absurdities. He said that the four apostolic writers were very contradictory in their statements, and did not even agree as to the last word of this great man.)
The ascension was the most striking, the grandest of the miracles, if true, yet the ascension is only recorded by two of these writers. If He was God, I know he will forgive somebody for not believing the miracles, unless convinced.
Another contradiction in the book: in one gospel the condition of salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not be damned," and in another we are promised that if we forgive our enemies God will forgive us--and there's sense in this last promise. The first I believe a lie--it was never spoken by God.
Christ said: Love your enemies. Nobody can do that. The doctrine of Confucius is sound--to love one's friends and to do justice to one's enemies without any mixture of revenge.
If Christ was God, did He not know on His cross what crimes would be done in His name? Why didn't He settle all disputes about the trinity and about baptism? Why didn't He post His disciples? Because He could no more see into the future than I can. Only in this way can you acquit him of the crimes committed in His name. The way to save our own souls is to save another soul. God can't turn into hell a man who makes on this earth a little heaven for himself, wife and babes.
Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought to be ashamed. I want, if I can while I live, to put an end to all belief in this infamous doctrine. That doctrine has done incalculable harm, wrought incalculable injury. I despise it, and I defy it.
The orthodox church says that religion does good; that it restrains crime. It restrains a man from artificial, not from natural crimes. A man can be made so religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet he will steal.
Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and inquiring where the deacon of the Presbyterian church lived.
The bible says consider the lilies. What good would it do a naked man standing out in the bitter blasts of this night to consider the lilies.
What is the social position of a man in heaven who through all eternity remembers that if he had had a grain of courage he would never have been there.
The realization of our day does not satisfy the intelligence of the people--the people have outgrown it. It shocks us and we have got to have another religion. We must have a religion of charity; one that will do away with poverty, close the prisons and cover this world with homes.
Ingersoll's Lecture on Heretics and Heresies
"Liberty, a word without which--All other words are vain."
Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly expresses it, will be guilty of heresy. Heresy is what the minority believe; it is a name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak. This word was born of the hatred, arrogance, and cruelty of those who love their enemies, and who, when smitten on one cheek, turn the other. This word was born of intellectual slavery in the feudal ages of thought. It was an epithet used in the place of argument. From the commencement of the Christian era, every art has been exhausted, and every conceivable punishment inflicted to force all people to hold the same religious opinions. This effort was born of the idea that a certain belief was necessary to the salvation of the soul. Christ taught, and the church still teaches, that unbelief is the blackest of crimes. God is supposed to hate with an infinite and implacable hatred, every heretic upon the earth, and the heretics who have died are supposed, at this moment, to be suffering the agonies of the damned. The church persecutes the living, and her God burns the dead.
It is claimed that God wrote a book called the bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people. They infested every country, every city, town, hamlet, and family. They appealed to the worst passions of the human heart. They sowed the seeds of discord and hatred in every land. Brother denounced brother, wives informed against their husbands, mothers accused their children, dungeons were crowded with the innocent; the flesh of the good and true rotted in the clasp of chains, the flames devoured the heroic, and in the name of the most merciful God, his children were exterminated with famine, sword and fire. Over the wild waves of battle rose and fell the banner of Jesus Christ. For sixteen hundred years the robes of the church were red with innocent blood. The ingenuity of Christians was exhausted in devising punishment severe enough to be inflicted upon other Christians who honestly and sincerely differed with them upon any point whatever.
Give any orthodox church the power, and today they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deemed a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power. Why should the church pity a man whom her God hates? Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has been perpetrated by the church. Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted heretics to the extent of their power. Every nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched by the church. Toleration has increased only when and where the power of the church has diminished. From Augustine until now the spirit of the Christian has remained the same. There has been the same intolerance, the same undying hatred of all who think for themselves, the same determination to crush out of the human brain all knowledge inconsistent with the ignorant creed.
Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation--not from God--but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think, or investigate, in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.
The highest type of the orthodox christian does not forget. Neither does he learn. He neither advances nor recedes. He is a living fossil, imbedded in that rock called faith. He makes no effort to better his condition, because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object, he denounces all kinds of free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls heresy. When he had the power, heresy was the most terrible and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment, torture, and death.
In those days the cross and rack were inseparable companions. Across the open bible lay the sword and fagot. Not content with burning such heretics as were alive, they even tried the dead, in order that the church might rob their wives and children. The property of all heretics was confiscated, and on this account they charged the dead with being heretical--indicted, as it were, their dust--to the end that the church might clutch the bread of orphans. Learned divines discussed propriety of tearing out the tongues of heretics before they were burned, and the general opinion was that this ought to be done, so that the heretics should not be able, by uttering blasphemies, to shock the christians who were burning them. With a mixture of ferocity and christianity, the priests insisted that heretics ought to be burned at a slow fire, giving as a reason, that more time was given them for repentance.
No wonder that Jesus Christ said, "I came not to bring peace but a sword!"
Every priest regarded himself as the agent of God. He answered all questions by authority, and to treat him with disrespect was an insult offered to God. No one was asked to think, but all were commanded to obey.
In 1208 the inquisition was established. Seven years afterward; the fourth council of the Lateran enjoined all kings and rulers to swear an oath that they would exterminate heretics from their dominions. The sword of the church was unsheathed, and the world was at the mercy of ignorant and infuriated priests, whose eyes feasted upon the agonies they inflicted. Acting as they believed, or pretended to believe under the command of God, stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another world--hating heretics with every drop of their bastille blood--savage beyond description--merciless beyond conception--these infamous priests in a kind of frenzied joy, leaped upon the helpless victims of their rage. They crushed their bones in iron boots, tore their quivering flesh with iron hooks and pinchers, cut off their lips and eyelids, pulled out their nails, and into the bleeding quick thrust needles, tore out their tongues, extinguished their eyes, stretched them upon racks, flayed them alive, crucified them with their head downward, exposed them to wild beasts, burned them at the stake, mocked their cries and groans, ravished their wives, robbed their children, and then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell.
Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry. The Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Catholic; the Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the Episcopalian. Every denomination killed all it could of every other; and each Christian felt it duty bound to exterminate every other Christian who denied the smallest fraction of his creed.
In the reign of Henry the VIII., that pious and moral founder of the Apostolic Episcopal church, there was passed by the Parliament of England an act entitled, "An act for abolishing of diversity of opinion." And in this act was set forth what a good Christian was obliged to believe.
First, that in the sacrament was the real body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Second, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ was in the bread, and the blood and body of Jesus Christ was in the wine.
Third, that priests should not marry.
Fourth, that vows of chastity were of perpetual obligation.
Fifth, that private masses ought to be continued.
And sixth, that auricular confession to a priest must be maintained.
This creed was made by law, in order that all men might know just what to believe by simply reading the statute. The church hated to see the people wearing out their brains in thinking upon these subjects. It was thought far better that a creed should be made by Parliament, so that whatever might be lacking in evidence might be made up in force. The punishment for denying the first article was death by fire. For the denial of any other article, imprisonment, and for the second offense--death.
Your attention is called to these six articles, established during the reign of Henry VIII, and by the Church of England, simply because not one of these articles is believed by that church today. If the law then made by the church could be enforced now, every Episcopalian would be burned at the stake.
Similar laws were passed in most Christian countries, as all orthodox churches firmly believed that mankind could be legislated into heaven. According to the creed of every church, slavery leads to heaven, liberty leads to hell. It was claimed that God had founded the church, and that to deny the authority of the church was to be a traitor to God, and consequently an ally of the devil. To torture and destroy one of the soldiers of Satan was a duty no good Christian cared to neglect. Nothing can be sweeter than to earn the gratitude of God by killing your own enemies. Such a mingling of profit and revenge, of heaven for yourself and damnation for those you dislike, is a temptation that your ordinary Christian never resists.
According to the theologians, God, the father of us all wrote a letter to His children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest differences, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls, prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ. For more than fifty generations the church has carried the black flag. Her vengeance has been measured only by her power. During all these years of infamy no heretic has ever been forgiven. With the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the clutch of avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon she has devoured, pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with the conscience of a serpent. Such is the history of the church of God.
I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart. They have been true to their convictions, and with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none, have labored and suffered for the salvation of men. Imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, believing that by personal effort they could rescue at least a few souls from the infinite shadow of hell, they have cheerfully endured every hardship and scorned danger and death. And yet, notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error was a crime. They knew that the bible so declared, and they believed that all unbelievers would be eternally lost. They believed that religion was of God, and all heresy of the devil. They killed heretics in defense of their own souls and the souls of their children. They killed them, because, according to their idea, they were the enemies of God, and because the bible teaches that the blood of the unbeliever is a most acceptable sacrifice to heaven.
Nature never prompted a loving mother to throw her child into the Ganges. Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other for a difference of opinion concerning the baptism of infants. These crimes have been produced by religions filled with all that is illogical, cruel and hideous. These religions were produced for the most part by ignorance, tyranny, and hypocrisy. Under the impression that the infinite ruler and creator of the universe had commanded the destruction of heretics and infidels, the church perpetrated all these crimes.
Men and women have been burned for thinking that there was but one God; that there was none; that the Holy Ghost is younger than God; that God was somewhat older than his Son; for insisting that good works will save a man, without faith; that faith will do without good works; for declaring that a sweet babe will not be barred eternally, because its parents failed to have its head wet by a priest; for speaking of God as though He had a nose; for denying that Christ was His own father; for contending that three persons, rightly added together, make more than one; for believing in purgatory; for denying the reality of hell; for pretending that priests can forgive sins; for preaching that God is an essence; for denying that witches rode through the air on sticks; for doubting the total depravity of the human heart; for laughing at irresistible grace, predestination, and particular redemption; for denying that good bread could be made of the body of a dead man; for pretending that the Pope was not managing this world for God, and in place of God, for disputing the efficacy of a vicarious atonement; for thinking that the Virgin Mary was born like other people; for thinking that a man's rib was hardly sufficient to make a good sized woman; for denying that God used His finger for a pen; for asserting that prayers are not answered, that diseases are not set to punish unbelief; for denying the authority of the bible; for having a bible in their possession; for attending mass, and for refusing to attend, for wearing a surplice; for carrying a cross, and for refusing; for being a Catholic, and for being a Protestant, for being an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, and for being a Quaker. In short, every virtue has been a crime, and every crime a virtue. The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she did because it was commanded by a book--a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next.
The bible was the real persecutor. The bible burned heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties of men.
How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?
Unfortunately for the world, about the beginning of the sixteenth century a man by the name of Gerard Chauvin was married to Jeanne Lefranc, and still more unfortunately for the world, the fruit of this marriage was a son, called John Chauvin, who afterward became famous as John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian church.
This man forged five fetters for the brain. These fetters he called points. That is to say, predestination, particular redemption, total depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. About the neck of each follower he put a collar, bristling with these five iron points. The presence of all these points on the collar is still the test of orthodoxy in the church he founded. This man, when in the flush of youth, was elected to the office of preacher in Geneva. He at once, in union with Farel, drew up a condensed statement of the Presbyterian doctrine, and all the citizens of Geneva, on pain of banishment, were compelled to take an oath that they, believed this statement. Of this proceeding Calvin very innocently remarked, that it produced great satisfaction. A man by the name of Caroli had the audacity to dispute with Calvin. For this outrage he was banished.
To show you what great subjects occupied the attention of Calvin, it is only necessary to state, that he furiously discussed the question, as to whether the sacramental bread should be leavened or unleavened. He drew up laws regulating the cut of the citizens' clothes, and prescribed their diet, and all whose garments were not in the Calvin fashion were refused the sacrament. At last, the people becoming tired of this petty, theological tyranny, banished Calvin. In a few years, however, he was recalled and received with great enthusiasm. After this, he was supreme, and the will of Calvin became the law of Geneva. Under the benign administration of Calvin, James Gruet was beheaded because he had written some profane verses. The slightest word against Calvin or his absurd doctrine was punished as a crime.
In 1553, a man was tried at Vienne by the Catholic church for heresy. He was convicted and sentenced to death by burning. It was his good fortune to escape. Pursued by the sleuth hounds of intolerance he fled to Geneva for protection. A dove flying from hawks, sought safety in the nest of a vulture. This fugitive from the cruelty of Rome asked shelter from John Calvin, who had written a book in favor of religious toleration. Servetus had forgotten that this book was written by Calvin when in the minority; that it was written in weakness to be forgotten in power; that it was produced by fear instead of principle. He did not know that Calvin had caused his arrest at Vienne, in France, and had sent a copy of his work, which was claimed to be blasphemous to the archbishop. He did not then know that the Protestant, Calvin, was
## acting as one of the detectives of the Catholic church, and had been
instrumental in procuring his conviction for heresy. Ignorant of all this unspeakable infamy, he put himself in the power of this very Calvin. The maker of the Presbyterian creed caused the fugitive Servetus to be arrested for blasphemy. He was tried; Calvin was his accuser. He was convicted and condemned to death by fire. On the morning of the fatal day, Calvin saw him; and Servetus, the victim, asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer, for anything he might have said that had wounded his feelings. Servetus was bound to the stake, the fagots were lighted. The wind carried the flames somewhat away from his body, so that he slowly roasted for hours. Vainly he implored a speedy death. At last the flame climbed around his form; through smoke and fire his murderers saw a white, heroic face. And there they watched until a man became a charred and shriveled mass.
Liberty was banished from Geneva, and nothing but Presbyterianism was left; honor, justice, mercy, reason and charity were all exiled; but the five points of predestination, particular redemption, irresistible grace, total depravity, and the certain perseverance of the saints remained instead.
Calvin founded a little theocracy in Geneva, modeled after the old testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which it was copied.
Against all this intolerance, one man, a minister, raised his voice. The name of this man should never be forgotten. It was Castellio. This brave man had the goodness and the courage to declare the innocence of honest error. He was the first of the so-called reformers to take this noble ground. I wish I had the genius to pay a fitting tribute to his memory. Perhaps it would be impossible to pay him a grander compliment than to say, Castellio was in all things the opposite of Calvin. To plead for the right of individual judgment was considered as a crime, and Castellio was driven from Geneva by John Calvin. By him he was denounced as a child of the devil, as a dog of Satan, as a beast from hell, and as one who, by this horrid blasphemy of the innocence of honest error, crucified Christ afresh, and by him he was pursued until rescued by the hand of death.
Upon the name of Castellio, Calvin heaved every epithet, until his malice was satisfied and his imagination exhausted. It is impossible to conceive how human nature can become so frightfully perverted as to pursue a fellow-man with the malignity of a fiend, simply because he is good, just and generous.
Calvin was of a pallid, bloodless complexion, thin, sickly, irritable, gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, heartless and infamous. He was a strange compound of revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness, ferocious charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice. In other words, he was as near like the God of the old testament as his Health permitted.
The best thing, however, about the Presbyterians of Geneva was, that they denied the power of the Pope, and the best thing about the Pope was, that he was not a Presbyterian.
The doctrines of Calvin spread rapidly, and were eagerly accepted by multitudes on the continent. But Scotland, in a few years, became the real fortress of Presbyterianism. The Scotch rivaled the adherents of Calvin, and succeeded in establishing the same kind of theocracy that flourished in Geneva. The clergy took possession and control of everybody and everything. It is impossible to exaggerate the slavery, the mental degradation, the abject superstition of the people of Scotland during the reign of Presbyterianism. Heretics were hunted and devoured as though they had been wild beasts. The gloomy insanity of Presbyterianism took possession of a great majority of the people. They regarded their ministers as the Jews did Moses and Aaron. They believed that they were the especial agents of God, and that whatsoever they bound in Scotland would be bound in heaven. There was not one
## particle of intellectual freedom. No one was allowed to differ from
the church, or to even contradict a priest. Had Presbyterianism maintained its ascendancy, Scotland would have been peopled by savages today. The revengeful spirit of Calvin took possession of the Puritans and caused them to redden the soil of the new world with the brave blood of honest men. Clinging to the five points of Calvin, they, too, established governments in accordance with the teachings of the old testament. They, too, attached the penalty of death to the expression of honest thought. They, too, believed their church supreme, and exerted all their power to curse this continent with a spiritual despotism as infamous as it was absurd. They believed with Luther that universal toleration is universal error, and universal error is universal hell. Toleration was denounced as a crime. Fortunately for us, civilization has had a softening effect upon the Presbyterian church. To the ennobling influence of the arts and science the savage spirit of Calvinism has, in some slight degree, succumbed. True, the old creed remains substantially as it was written, but by a kind of tacit understanding it has come to be regarded as a relic of the past. The cry of "heresy" has been growing fainter and fainter, and, as a consequence, the ministers of that denomination have ventured now and then to express doubts as to the damnation of infants, and the doctrine of total depravity. The fact is, the old ideas became a little monotonous to the people. The fall of man, the scheme of redemption and irresistible grace, began to have a familiar sound. The preachers told the old stories while the congregation slept. Some of the ministers became tired of these stories themselves. The five points grew dull, and they felt that nothing short of irresistible grace could bear this endless repetition. The outside world was full of progress, and in every direction men advanced, while the church, anchored to a creed, idly rotted at the shore. Other denominations, imbued some little with the spirit of investigation, were springing up on every side, while the old Presbyterian ark rested on the Ararat of the past, filled with the theological monsters of another age.
Lured by the splendors of the outer world, tempted by the achievements of science, longing to feel the throw and beat of the mighty march of the human race, a few of the ministers of this conservative denomination were compelled by irresistible sense, to say a few words in harmony with the splendid ideas of today.
These utterances have upon several occasions so nearly awakened some of the members, that, rubbing their eyes, they have feebly inquired whether these grand ideas were not somewhat heretical? These ministers found that just in proportion as their orthodoxy decreased, their congregations increased. Those who dealt in the pure unadulterated article, found themselves demonstrating the five points to a less number of hearers than they had points. Stung to madness by this bitter truth, this galling contrast, this harassing fact, the really orthodox have raised the cry of heresy, and expect with this cry to seal the lips of honest men. One of these ministers, and one who has been enjoying the luxury of a little honest thought, and the real rapture of expressing it, has already been indicted, and is about to be tried by the Presbytery of Illinois.
He has been charged:
First. With speaking in an ambiguous language in relation to that dear old doctrine of the fall of man. With having neglected to preach that most comforting and consoling truth, the eternal damnation of the soul.
Surely, that man must be a monster who could wish to blot this blessed doctrine out and rob earth's wretched children of this blissful hope!
Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this most infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? Think of the lives it has blighted--of the tears it has caused--of the agony it has produced. Think of the millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel being in the universe. Compared with him, the most frightful deities of the most barbarous and degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy. There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a God. Lower than this the soul can never sink. If the doctrine of eternal damnation is true, let me have my portion in hell, rather than in heaven with a God infamous enough to inflict eternal misery upon any of the sons of men.
Second. With having spoken a few kind words of Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill.
I have the honor of a slight acquaintance with Robert Collyer. I have read with pleasure some of his exquisite productions. He has a brain full of the dawn, the head of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet, and the sincere heart of a child.
Is a minister to be silenced because he speaks fairly of a noble and candid adversary? Is it a crime to compliment a lover of justice, an advocate of liberty; one who devoted his life to the elevation of man, the discovery of truth, and the promulgation of what he believed to be right?
Can that tongue be palsied by a presbytery that praises a self-denying and heroic life? Is it a sin to speak a charitable word over the grave of John Stuart Mill? Is it heretical to pay a just and graceful tribute to departed worth? Must the true Presbyterian violate the sanctity of the tomb, dig open the grave, and ask his God to curse the silent dust? Is Presbyterianism so narrow that it conceives of no excellence, of no purity of intention, of no spiritual and moral grandeur outside of its barbaric creed? Does it still retain within its stony heart all the malice of its founder? Is it still warming its fleshless hands at the flames that consumed Servetus? Does it still glory in the damnation of infants, and does it still persist in emptying the cradle in order that perdition may be filled? Is it still starving the soul and famishing the heart? Is it still trembling and shivering, crouching and crawling, before its ignorant confession of faith? Had such men as Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they would have extinguished the flames with their tears. Had the Presbytery of Chicago been there, they would have quietly turned their backs, solemnly divided their coat-tails and warmed themselves.
Third. With having spoken disparagingly of the doctrine of predestination.
If there is any dogma that ought to be protected by law, predestination is that doctrine. Surely it is a cheerful, joyous thing to one who is laboring, struggling and suffering in this weary world, to think that before he existed, before the earth was, before a star had glittered in the heavens, before a ray of light had left the quiver of the sun, his destiny had been irrevocably fixed, and that for an eternity before his birth he had been doomed to bear eternal pain!
Fourth. With having failed to preach the efficacy of vicarious sacrifice.
Suppose a man had been convicted of murder, and was about to be hanged--the Governor acting as the executioner. And suppose just as the doomed man was to suffer death, some one in the crowd should step forward and say, "I am willing to die in the place of that murderer. He has a family, and I have none." And suppose further that the Governor should reply, "Come forward, young man, your offer is accepted. A murder has been committed, and somebody must be hung, and your death will satisfy the law just as well as the death of the murderer." What would you then think of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice?"
This doctrine is the consummation of two outrages--forgiving one crime and committing another.
Fifth. With having inculcated a phase of the doctrine commonly known as "Evolution" or "Development." The church believes and teaches the exact opposite of this doctrine. According to the philosophy of theology, man has continued to degenerate for six thousand years. To teach that there is that in Nature which impels to higher forms and grander ends, is heresy of course. The Deity will damn Spencer and his "Evolution," Darwin and his "Origin of Species," Bastin and his "Spontaneous Generation," Huxley and his "Protoplasm," Tyndall and his "Prayer Guage," and will save those, and those only who declare that the universe has been cursed from the smallest atom to the grandest star; that everything tends to evil, and to that only; and that the only perfect thing in Nature is the Presbyterian confession of faith.
Sixth. With having intimated that the reception of Socrates and Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the least, a trifle more cordial than that of Catherine II.
Penelope waiting patiently and trustfully for her lord's return, delaying her suitors, while sadly weaving and un-weaving the shroud of Laertes, is the most perfect type of wife and woman produced by the civilization of Greece.
Socrates, whose life was above reproach, and whose death was beyond all praise, stands today, in the estimation of every thoughtful man, at least the peer of Christ.
Catharine II assassinated her husband. Stepping upon his corpse, she mounted the throne. She was the murderess of Prince Ivan, the grand-nephew of Peter the Great, who was imprisoned for eighteen years, and who, during all that time, saw the sky but once. Taken all in all, Catharine was probably one of the most intellectual beasts that ever wore a crown.
Catharine, however, was the head of the Greek Church, Socrates was a heretic, and Penelope lived and died without having once heard of "particular redemption," or "irresistible grace."
Seventh. With repudiating the idea of a "call" to ministry, and pretending that men were "called," to preach as they were to the other avocations of life.
If this doctrine is true, God, to say the least of it, is an exceedingly poor judge of human nature. It is more than a century since a man of true genius has been found in an orthodox pulpit. Every minister is heretical just to the extent that his intellect is above the average. The Lord seems to be satisfied with mediocrity; but the people are not.
An old deacon, wishing to get rid of an unpopular preacher, advised him to give up the ministry, and turn his attention to something else. The preacher replied that he could not conscientiously desert the pulpit, as he had a "call" to the ministry. To which the deacon replied, "That may be so, but it's mighty unfortunate for you that when God called you to preach, He forgot to call anybody to hear you."
There is nothing more stupidly egotistic than the claim of the clergy that they are, in some divine sense, set apart to the service of the Lord; that they have been chosen and sanctified; that there is an infinite difference between them and persons employed in secular affairs. They teach us that all other professions must take care of themselves; that God allows anybody to be a doctor, a lawyer, statesman, soldier, or artist; that the Motts and Coopers--the Mansfields and Marshalls--the Wilberforces and Sumners--the Angelos and Raphaels--were never honored by a "call." These chose their professions and won their laurels without the assistance of the Lord. All these men were left free to follow their own inclinations while God was busily engaged selecting and "calling" priests, rectors, elders, ministers and exhorters.
Eighth. With having doubted that God was the author of the 109th Psalm.
The portion of that Psalm which carries with it the clearest and most satisfactory evidences of inspiration, and which has afforded almost unspeakable consolation to the Presbyterian church, is as follows:
"Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand.
"When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin.
"Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
"Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
"Let the extortioner catch all that he hated; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
"Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be none to favor his fatherless children.
"Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
"But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy name's sake; because Thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.... I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth."
Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer. Think of one infamous enough to answer it. Had this inspired Psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments.
No wonder that the author of this inspired Psalm coldly received Socrates and Penelope, and reserved his sweetest smiles for Catharine the Second!
Ninth. With having said that the battles in which the Israelites engaged with the approval and command of Jehovah surpassed in cruelty those of Julius Caesar.
Was it Julius Caesar who said, "And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain?"
Did Julius Caesar send the following report to the Roman Senate? "And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not from them, three-score city, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og, in Bashan. All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates and bars; besides unwalled towns a great many. And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city."
Did Caesar take the city of Jericho "and utterly destroy all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old?" Did he smite "all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings, and leave none remaining that breathed, as the Lord God had commanded?"
Search the records of the whole world, find out the history of every barbarous tribe, and you can find no crime that touched a lower depth of infamy than those the bible's God commanded and approved. For such a God I have no words to express my loathing and contempt, and all the words in all the languages of man would scarcely be sufficient. Away with such a God! Give me Jupiter rather, with Io and Europa, or even Siva with his skulls and snakes, or give me none.
Tenth. With having repudiated the doctrines of total depravity.
What a precious doctrine is that of the total depravity of the human heart! How sweet it is to believe that the lives of all the good and great were continual sins and perpetual crimes; that the love a mother bears her child is, in the sight of God, a sin; that the gratitude of the natural heart is simple meanness; that the tears of pity are impure; that for the unconverted to live and labor for others is an offense to heaven; that the noblest aspirations of the soul are low and groveling in the sight of God; that man should fall upon his knees and ask forgiveness, simply for loving his wife and child, and that even the act of asking forgiveness is in fact a crime.
Surely it is a kind of bliss to feel that every woman and child in the wide world, with the exception of those who believe the five points, or some other equally cruel creed, and such children as have been baptized, ought at this very moment to be dashed down to the lowest glowing gulf of the hell!
Take from the Christian the history of his own church; leave that entirely out of the question, and he has no argument left with which to substantiate the total depravity of man.
A minister once asked an old lady, a member of his church, what she thought of the doctrine of total depravity, and the dear old soul replied that she thought it a mighty good doctrine if the Lord would only give the people grace enough to live up to it?
Eleventh. With having doubted the "perseverance of the saints."
I suppose the real meaning of this doctrine is that Presbyterians are just as sure of going to heaven as all other folks are of going to hell. The real idea being, that it all depends upon the will of God, and not upon the character of the person to be damned or saved; that God has the weakness to send Presbyterians to Paradise, and the justice to doom the rest of mankind to eternal fire.
It is admitted that no unconverted brain can see the least of sense in this doctrine; that it is abhorrent to all who have not been the recipients of a "new heart;" that only the perfectly good can justify the perfectly infamous.
It is contended that the saints do not persevere of their own free will--that they are entitled to no credit for persevering; but that God forces them to persevere; while on the other hand, every crime is committed in accordance with the secret will of God, who does all things for His own glory. Compared with this doctrine, there is no other idea, that has ever been believed by man, that can properly be called absurd.
As to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, I wish with all my heart that it may prove to be a fact, I really hope that every saint, no matter how badly he may break on the first quarter, nor how many shoes he may cast at the half-mile pole, will foot it bravely down the long home-stretch, and win eternal heaven by at least a neck.
Twelfth. With having spoken and written somewhat lightly of the idea of converting the heathen with doctrinal sermons.
Of all the failures of which we have any history or knowledge the missionary effort is the most conspicuous. The whole question has been decided here, in our own country, and conclusively settled. We have nearly exterminated the Indians; but we have converted none. From the days of John Eliot to the execution of the last Modoc, not one Indian has been the subject of irresistible grace or particular redemption. The few red men who roam the Western wilderness have no thought or care concerning the five points of Calvin. They are utterly oblivious to the great and vital truths contained in the Thirty-nine articles, the Saybrook platform, and the resolutions of the Evangelical Alliance. No Indian has ever scalped another on account of his religious belief. This of itself shows conclusively that the missionaries have had no effect.
Why should we convert the heathen of China and kill our own? Why should we send missionaries across the seas, and soldiers over the plains? Why should we send bibles to the East and muskets to the West? If it is impossible to convert Indians who have no religion of their own; no prejudice for or against the "eternal procession of the Holy Ghost," how can we expect to convert a heathen who has a religion; who has plenty of gods and bibles and prophets and Christs, and who has a religious literature far grander than our own? Can we hope, with the story of Daniel in the lion's den, to rival the stupendous miracles of India? Is there anything in our bible as lofty and loving as the prayer of the Buddhist? Compare your "Confession of Faith" with the following:
"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation--never enter into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout all worlds. Until all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin, sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am."
Think of sending an average Presbyterian to convert a man who daily offers this tender, this infinitely generous and incomparable prayer! Think of reading the 109th Psalm to a heathen who has a bible of his own, in which is found this passage: "Blessed is that man, and beloved of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid!"
Why should you read even the new testament to a Hindoo, when his own Chrishna has said: "If a man strike thee, and in striking drop his staff, pick it up and hand it to him again?" Why send a Presbyterian to a Sufi, who says: "Better one moment of silent contemplation and inward love, than seventy thousand years of outward worship?" "Whosoever would carelessly tread one worm that crawls on earth, that heartless one is darkly alienate from God; but he that, living, embraceth all things in his love, to live with him God bursts all bounds above, below."
Why should we endeavor to thrust our cruel and heartless theology upon one who prays this prayer: "O God, show pity toward the wicked; for on the good thou hast already bestowed thy mercy by having created them virtuous?"
Compare this prayer with the curses and cruelties of the old testament--with the infamies commanded and approved by the being whom the are taught to worship as a God, and with the following tender product of Presbyterianism: "It may seem absurd to human wisdom that God should harden, blind, and deliver up some men to a reprobate sense; that He should first deliver them over to evil, and then condemn them for that evil; but the believing spiritual man sees no absurdity in all this, knowing that God would never be a whit less good, even though He should destroy all men."
Of all the religions that have been produced by the egotism, the malice, the ignorance and ambition of man, Presbyterianism is the most hideous.
But what shall I say more? for the time would fail me to tell of Sabellianism, of a "Model trinity" and the "eternal procession of the Holy Ghost."
Upon these charges a minister is to be tried, here in Chicago; in this city of pluck and progress--this marvel of energy, and this miracle of nerve. The cry of "heresy" here, sounds like a wail from the Dark Ages--a shriek from the Inquisition, or a groan from the grave of Calvin.
Another effort is being made to enslave a man. It is claimed that every member of the church has solemnly agreed never to outgrow the creed; that he has pledged himself to remain an intellectual dwarf. Upon this condition the church agrees to save his soul, and he hands over his brains to bind the bargain. Should a fact be found inconsistent with the creed, he binds himself to deny the fact and curse the finder. With scraps of dogmas and crumbs of doctrine, he agrees that his soul shall be satisfied forever. What an intellectual feast the confession of faith must be! It reminds one of the dinner described by Sidney Smith, where everything was cold except the water, and everything sour except the vinegar.
Every member of a church promises to remain orthodox, that is to say--stationary. Growth is heresy. Orthodox ideas are the feathers that have been molted by the eagle of progress. They are the dead leaves under the majestic palm; while heresy is the bud and blossom at the top.
Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at the other. The end that grows is heresy; the end that rots is orthodox. The dead are orthodox, and your cemetery is the most perfect type of a well regulated church. No thought, no progress, no heresy there. Slowly and silently, side by side, the satisfied members peacefully decay. There is only this difference--the dead do not persecute.
And what does a trial for heresy mean? It means that the church says to a heretic, "Believe as I do, or I will withdraw my support; I will not employ you; I will pursue you until your garments are rags; until your children cry for bread; until your cheeks are furrowed with tears. I will hunt you to the very portals of the tomb, and then my God will do the rest. I will not imprison you. I will not burn you. The law prevents my doing that. I helped make the law, not, however, to protect you, nor deprive me of the right to exterminate you, but in order to keep other churches from exterminating me."
A trial for heresy means that the spirit of persecution still lingers in the church; that it still denies the right of private judgment; that it still thinks more of creed than truth; that it is still determined to prevent the intellectual growth of man. It means that churches are shambles in which are bought and sold the souls of men. It means that the church is still guilty of the barbarity of opposing thought with force. It means that if it had the power, the mental horizon would be bounded by a creed, that it would bring again the whips, and chains, and dungeon keys, the rack and fagot of the past.
But let me tell the church it lacks the power. There has been, and still are, too many men who own themselves--too much thought, too much knowledge for the church to grasp again the sword of power. The church must abdicate. For the Eglon of superstition, science has a message from truth.
The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light. Not in vain did Voltaire, that great man, point from the foot of the Alps, the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Europe. Not in vain were the splendid utterances of the infidels, while beyond all price are the discoveries of science. The church has impeded, but it has not and it cannot stop the onward march of the human race. Heresy can not be burned, nor imprisoned, nor starved. It laughs at presbyteries and synods, at Ecumenical councils and the impotent thunders of Sinai. Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual new world; the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to new thoughts. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin.
Why should a man be afraid to think, and why should he fear to express his thoughts?
Is it possible that an infinite Deity is unwilling that man should investigate the phenomena by which he is surrounded?
Is it possible that a God delights in threatening and terrifying men? What glory, what honor and renown a God must win in such a field! The ocean raving at a drop; a star envious of a candle; the sun jealous of a firefly!
Go on, presbyteries and synods, go on! Thrust the heretics out of the church. That is to say, throw away your brains--put out your eyes. The Infidels will thank you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past; read the 109th Psalm; gloat over the slaughter of mothers and babes; thank God for total depravity; shower your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is touched with that heresy called genius.
Be true to your history. Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them all out. We want them all. Keep the ignorant, the superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and specifications. Keep them, and keep them all. Repeat your pious platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, and read your bible to heretics, as kings read some forgotten riot-act to stop and stay the waves of revolution. You are too weak to excite anger. We forgive your efforts as the sun forgives a cloud--as the air forgives the breath you waste.
How long, O how long will man listen to the threats of God, and shut his ears to the splendid promises of Nature? How long, O how long will man remain the cringing slave of a false and cruel creed.
By this time the whole world should know that the real bible has not yet been written; but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march or ceases to exist. The real bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christ. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or by signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity of fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appears to men in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf, and bud, and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.
Ingersoll's Lecture on The Bible
The true bible appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy or sacred, it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the external witnesses of its truth.
I will tell you what I mean by inspiration. I go and look at the sea, and the sea says something to me; it makes an impression upon my mind. That impression depends, first, upon my experience; secondly, upon my intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain, he has had a different experience, he has different memories and different hopes. The sea may speak to him of joy and to me of grief and sorrow. The sea cannot tell the same thing to two beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience. So, when I look upon a flower, or a star, or a painting, or a statue, the more I know about sculpture the more that statue speaks to me. The more I have had of human experience, the more I have read, the greater brain I have, the more the star says to me. In other words, nature says to me all that I am capable of understanding.
Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer in the 109th Psalm! Think of one infamous enough to answer it! Had this inspired Psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments.
Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved this world that he made up his mind to damn the most of us. I have read this book and what shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true, I know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--they don't tell their honest convictions about the bible.
The bible was the real persecutor. The bible burned heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties of men. How long, O how long, will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long, will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?
The believers in the bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of God. These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit or humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. For one, I cannot afford to soil my pages with extracts from them; and all such portions of the scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way by which they can extract honey from these flowers. Until these passages are expunged from the old testament, it is not a fit book to be read by either old or young. It contains pages that no minister in the United States would read to his congregation for any reward whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that no father would read to his child. There are narratives utterly unfit to be told; and the time will come when mankind will wonder that such a book was ever called inspired.
But as long as the bible is considered as the work of God, it will be hard to make all men too good and pure to imitate it; and as long as it is imitated there will be vile and filthy books. The literature of our country will not be sweet and clean until the bible ceases to be regarded as the production of a god.
In the days of Thomas Paine the church believed and taught that every word in the bible was absolutely true. Since his day it has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology, false in its history, and so far as the old testament is concerned, false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, scientific men who apprehend that the bible is literally true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the bible? The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of Thomas Paine!
I love any man who gave me, or helped to give me, the liberty I enjoy tonight. I love every man who helped put our flag in heaven. I love every man who has lifted his voice in all the ages for liberty, for a chainless body, and a fetterless brain. I love every man who has given to every other human being every right that he claimed for himself. I love every man who thought more of principle than he did of position. I love the men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something for mankind.
The best minds of the orthodox world, today, are endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and pay your pew-rent. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. These follies have passed away.
For my part, I would infinitely prefer to know all the results of scientific investigation than to be inspired as Moses was. Supposing the bible to be true; why is it any worse or more wicked for free-thinkers to deny it, than for priests to deny the doctrine of evolution, or the dynamic theory of heat? Why should we be damned for laughing at Samson and his foxes, while others, holding the nebular hypothesis in utter contempt, go straight to heaven?
Now when I come to a book, for instance, I read the writings of Shakespeare--Shakespeare, the greatest human being who ever existed upon this globe. What do I get out of him? All that I have sense enough to understand. I get my little cup full. Let another read him who knows nothing of the drama, who knows nothing of the impersonation of passion; what does he get from him? Very little. In other words, every man gets from a book, a flower, a star, or the sea, what he is able to get from his intellectual development and experience. Do you then believe that the bible is a different book to every human being that receives it? I do. Can God, then, through the bible, make the same revelation to two men? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is the man who inspires. Inspiration is in the man and not in the book.
The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the bible. That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy and fear.
Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most incredible, wicked and foolish of all the fables contained in that repository of the impossible, called the bible. To me it is a matter of amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent human being.
Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes and facts, and reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and pressure of its time?" If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly they were made by man. If there is anything contrary to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was never written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind.
It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real god could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind.
The man who now regards the old testament as, in any sense, a sacred or inspired book is, in my judgment, an intellectual and moral deformity. There is in it so much that is cruel, ignorant and ferocious that it is to me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to be the work of a most merciful deity.
Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that His only good job? Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying the scheme of salvation? When the bible was first written it was not believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now, that bible would not have been written.
Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed His will to man. To each reader the bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, He must have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, He must be responsible for all.
Paine thought the barbarities of the old testament inconsistent with what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder, massacre and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the Deity. He regarded much of the bible as childish, unimportant and foolish. The scientific world entertains the same spirit in which he had attacked the pretensions of kings. He used the same weapons. All the pomp in the world could not make him cower. His reason knew no "Holy of Holies," except the abode of Truth.
Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people.
According to the theologians, God, the Father of us all, wrote a letter to His children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest difficulties, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful girls and prattling babes have been exterminated in the name of Jesus Christ.
The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy. And all this, because it was commanded by a book--a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book--to examine it, even--was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next.
All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the bible is simply and purely of human invention--of barbarian invention--is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of you brain the cowled form of superstition--then read the holy bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and such atrocity.
Whether the bible is false or true, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race. Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable. As long as man believes the bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief--the result of free thought.
What man who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet our entire system of religion is based on that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few.
It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration.
The bible was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written entirely with consonants, and without being divided into chapters and verses, and there was no system of punctuation whatever. After you go home to-night write an English sentence or two with only consonants close together, and you will find that it will take twice as much inspiration to read it as it did to write it.
The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor prophets, nor evangelists, nor christs. The real bible has not been written, but is being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great book.
The bad passages in the bible are not inspired. No god ever ordered a soldier to sheathe his sword in the breast of a mother. No god ever ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god ever upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to the powers that be. No god endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There are thousands of good passages in the bible. Many of them are true. There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid things. And I do not care whether they are inspired or not, so they are true. But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired.
There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it was a pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement!
Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fire and clothing will. To prevent famine one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world.
Ingersoll's Lecture on Voltaire
Ladies and Gentlemen: The infidels of one age have often been the aureoled saints of the next.
The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes of old.
There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind by heretics.
To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.
For many years the sword and cross were allies. Together they attacked the rights of man. They defended each other.
The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg.
James I said: "No bishop; no king." He might have added: No cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls. One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by fear--both robbers, both beggars.
These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God, both were the agents of the infinite. With bowed backs the people carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the dogmas of the other. If the people aspired to be free, they were crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the children of the brain.
The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both. The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and He made me king; He made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey and me to command. Such is the justice of God," And the priest said: "God made you ignorant and vile; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; your fleeces belong to me. If you do not obey me here, God will punish you now and torment you forever in another world. Such is the mercy of God."
"You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not contradict--contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that has ears to hear let him hear. Heaven is a question of ears."
Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men of genius, who have given their lives to better the condition of their fellow-men.
It may be well enough here to ask the question: "What is greatness?" A great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains he gives to others. A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men. If the great had always kept their pearls, vast multitudes would be barbarians now.
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy. Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; they can give place and power, but not greatness. The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.
The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of many millions with love and song. They are the artists who have covered the bare walls of weary life with the triumphs of genius. They are the heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear, who have outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their thrones.
They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings of the useful who have civilized this world.
At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose memory we are honoring tonight. Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name, and from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a Niagara of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire was the greatest man of his century, and did more for the human race than ally other of the sons of men.
On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born; a babe exceedingly frail, whose breath hesitated about remaining. This babe became the greatest man of the eighteenth century.
When Voltaire came to this "great stage of fools," his country had been christianized--not civilized--for about fourteen hundred years. For a thousand years the religion of peace and good will had been supreme. The laws had been given by christian kings, sanctioned by "wise and holy men."
Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its chamber of torture, and every priest relied on the thumbscrew and rack. Such had been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was an outcast. To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow men, to investigate for yourself, to seek the truth, these were crimes, and the "Holy Mother Church" pursued the criminals with sword and flame.
The believers in a God of love--an infinite father--punished hundreds of offenses with torture and death. Suspected persons were tortured to make them confess. Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the names of their accomplices. Under the leadership of the church cruelty had become the only reforming power. In this blessed year 1694 all authors were at the mercy of king and priest. The most of them were cast into prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled or executed. The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was occupied in burning books. The courts of justice were traps in which the innocent were caught. The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as though they had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury, and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion or hearsay. The witnesses, being liable to torture, generally told what the judges wished to hear.
When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France. It was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly libertines, the judges cruel and venal. The royal palace was a house of prostitution. The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.
The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every noble and by every priest. They were germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they were being watered by the tears of agony; blows began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, deformed by want; looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days the witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of torture; the church was the arsenal of superstition; miracles, relics, angels, and devils were as common as lies.
Voltaire was of the people. In the language of that day, he had no ancestors. His real name was Francois Marie Arouet. His mother was Marguerite d'Aumard. This mother died when he was seven years of age. He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and exceedingly disagreeable. This brother used to present offerings to the church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as we know none of his ancestors were literary people. The Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe le Chaulieu was his godfather, and, although an abbe, was a deist who cared nothing about his religion except in connection with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of 10 he entered the college of Louis le Grand. This was a Jesuit school, and here he remained for seven years, leaving at 17, and never attending any other school. According to Voltaire he learned nothing at this school but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a vast amount of nonsense.
In this college of Louis le Grand they did not teach geography, history, mathematics, or any science. This was a Catholic institution, controlled by the Jesuits. In that day the religion was defended, was protected, or supported by the state. Behind the entire creed were the bayonet, the ax, the wheel, the fagot, and the torture chamber. While Voltaire was attending the college of Louis le Grand the soldiers of the king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the wheel or to burn at the stake.
There is but one use for law, but one excuse for government--the preservation of liberty--to give to each man his own, to secure to the farmer what he produces from the soil, the mechanic what he invents and makes, to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress. In France the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastille. It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the king walked the headsman; back of the throne was the chamber of torture. The church appealed to the rack, and faith relied on the fagot. Science was an outcast, and philosophy, so-called, was the pander of superstition. Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were vermin. Idleness sat at the banquet and industry gathered the crumbs and crusts.
At 17 Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature. The father said, speaking of his two sons, Armand and Francois: "I have a pair of fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose." In 1713 Voltaire, in a small way, became a diplomat. He went to The Hague attached to the French minister, and there he fell in love. The girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that she might visit him. Everything was discovered and he was dismissed. To this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the keynote of Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of your mother. You know what she is capable of. You have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it is your only chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate me; then after telling her, love me all the more." On account of this episode Voltaire was formally disinherited by his father. The father procured an order of arrest and gave his son the choice of going to prison or beyond the seas. He finally consented to become a lawyer, and says: "I have already been a week at work in the office of a solicitor learning the trade of a pettifogger." About this time he competed for a prize, writing a poem on the king's generosity in building the new choir in the cathedral Notre Dame. He did not win it. After being with the solicitor a little while, he hated the law, he began to write poetry and the outlines of tragedy. Great questions were then agitating the public mind, questions that throw a flood of light upon that epoch.
Louis XIV having died, the regent took possession; and then the prisons were opened. The regent called for a list of all persons then in the prisons sent there at the will of the king. He found that, as to many prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had been in prison. They had been forgotten. Many of the prisoners did not know themselves, and could not guess why they had been arrested. One Italian had been in the Bastille thirty-three years without ever knowing why. On his arrival to Paris thirty-three years before he was arrested and sent to prison. He had grown old. He had survived his family and friends. When the rest were liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived there the rest of his life.
The old prisoners were pardoned; but in a little while their places were taken by new ones. At this time Voltaire was not interested in the great world--knew very little of religion or of government. He was busy writing poetry, busy thinking of comedies and tragedies. He was full of life. All his fancies were winged, like moths. He was charged with having written some cutting epigrams. He was exiled to Tulle, three hundred miles away. From this place he wrote in the true vein: "I am at a chateau, a place that would be the most agreeable in the world if I had not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing wanting for my perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. It would be delicious to remain if I only were allowed to go." At last the exile was allowed to return. Again he was arrested; this time sent to the Bastille, where he remained for nearly a year. While in prison he changed his name from Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of the church of the creed. He found that the religion of his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures--the infallibility of the church--the dreams of insane hermits--the absurdities of the fathers--the mistakes and falsehoods of saints--the hysteria of nuns--the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor Constantine, who lifted christianity into power, murdered his wife Fansta and his eldest son Crispus the same year that he convened the council of Nice to decide whether Christ was a man or the son of God. The council decided, in the year 325, that Christ was consubstantial with the Father. He found that the church was indebted to a husband who assassinated his wife--a father who murdered his son--for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior. He found that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381 by which it was decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father--that Theodosius, the younger, assembled a council at Ephesus in 431 that declared the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God--that the Emperor Martian called another council at Chalcedon in 451 that decided that Christ had two wills--that Pognatius called another in 680 that declared that Christ had two natures to go with his two wills--and that in 1274, at the council of Lyons, the important fact was found that the Holy Ghost "proceeded" not only from the Father, but also from the Son at the same time.
So Voltaire has been called a mocker! What did he mock? He mocked kings that were unjust; kings who cared nothing for the sufferings of their subjects. He mocked the titled fools of his day. He mocked the corruption of courts; the meanness, the tyranny, and the brutality of judges. He mocked the absurd and cruel laws, the barbarous customs. He mocked popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, and all the hypocrites on the earth. He mocked historians who filled their books with lies, and philosophers who defended superstition. He mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their fellow-men. He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the impudence and the unspeakable baseness of his time.
He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy has always hated laughter, and always will. Absurdity detests humor and stupidity despises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the mythologies and the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints. He found pretense and mendacity crowned by credulity. He found the ignorant many controlled by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian, saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of the impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say." Voltaire had the instinct of the probable. He knew the law of average; the sea level; he had the idea of proportion; and so he ridiculed the mental monstrosities and deformities--the non sequiturs--of his day. Aristotle said women had more teeth than men. This was repeated again and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century. Voltaire counted the teeth. The rest were satisfied with "they say."
We may, however, get an idea of the condition of France from the fact that Voltaire regarded England as the land of liberty. While he was in England he saw the body of Sir Isaac Newton deposited in Westminster Abbey. He read the works of this great man and afterward gave to France the philosophy of the great Englishman. Voltaire was the apostle of common sense. He knew that there could have been no primitive or first language from which all other languages had been formed. He knew that every language had been influenced by the surroundings of the people. He knew that the language of snow and ice was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had been no miracle in language. He knew it was impossible that the story of the Tower of Babel should be true. That everything in the whole world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his philosophy in this regard. He says: "To transmute iron into gold two things are necessary. First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation of gold." Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness. He despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of the somber, of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied those who needed the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He had the courage to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what the future might bring. And yet for more than a hundred and fifty years the Christian world has fought this man and has maligned his memory. In every christian pulpit his name has been pronounced with scorn, and every pulpit has been an arsenal of slander. He is one man of whom no orthodox minister has ever told the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics and Protestants.
Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and popes have filled the world with slanders, with calm calumnies about Voltaire. I am amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an enemy of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than 1,000 years almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders were coined.
For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems, novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind. At the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with the scandals of priests. At the same time alive to all the discoveries of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this babel never forgetting for a moment to assail the monster of superstition. Sleeping and waking he hated the church. With the eyes of Argus he watched, and with the arms of Briarieius he struck. For sixty years he waged continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field, sometimes striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care during all this time to remain independent of all men. He was in the highest sense successful. He lived like a prince, became one of the powers of Europe, and in him, for the first time, literature was crowned. Voltaire, in spite of his surroundings, in spite of almost universal tyranny and oppression, was a believer in God and in what he was pleased to call the religion of nature. He attacked the creed of his time because it was dishonorable to his God. He thought of the Deity as a father, as the fountain of justice, intelligence and mercy, and the creed of the Catholic church made him a monster of cruelty and stupidity. He attacked the bible with all the weapons at his command. He assailed its geology, its astronomy, its idea of justice, its laws and customs, its absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders, its ignorance on all subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel threats, and its extravagant promises. At the same time he praised the God of nature, the God who gives us rain and light, and food and flowers, and health and happiness--he who fills the world with youth and beauty.
In 1755 came the earthquake at Lisbon. This frightful disaster became an immense interrogation. The optimist was compelled to ask, "What was my God doing? Why did the Universal Father crush to shapelessness thousands of his poor children, even at the moment when they were upon their knees returning thanks to Him?" What could be done with this horror? If earthquake there must be, why did it not occur in some uninhabited desert on some wide waste of sea? This frightful fact changed the theology of Voltaire. He became convinced that this is not the best possible of all worlds. He became convinced that evil is evil here, now and forever.
Who can establish the existence of an infinite being? It is beyond the conception--the reason--the imagination of man--probably or possibly--where the zenith and nadir meet this God can be found.
Voltaire, attacked on every side, fought with every weapon that wit, logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos and indignation could sharpen, form, devise or use. He often apologized, and the apology was an insult. He often recanted, and the recantation was a thousand times worse than the thing recanted. He took it back by giving more. In the name of eulogy he flayed his victim. In his praise there was poison. He often advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction. He did not intend to give priests the satisfaction of seeing him burn or suffer. Upon this very point of recanting, he wrote: "They say I must retract. Very willingly. I will declare the Pascal is always right. That if St. Luke and St. Mark contradict one another it is only another proof of the truth of religion to those who know how to understand such things; and that another lovely proof of religion is that it is unintelligible. I will even avow that all priests are gentle and disinterested; that Jesuits are honest people; that monks are neither proud nor given to intrigue, and that their odor is agreeable; that the Holy Inquisition is the triumph of humanity and tolerance. In a word, I will say all that may be desired of me, provided they leave me in repose, and will not prosecute a man who has done harm to none."
He gave the best years of his wondrous life to succor the oppressed, to shield the defenseless, to reverse infamous decrees, to rescue the innocent, to reform the laws of France, to do away with torture, to soften the hearts of priests, to enlighten judges, to instruct kings, to civilize the people, and to banish from the heart of man the love and lust of war. Voltaire was not a saint. He was educated by the Jesuits. He was never troubled about the salvation of his soul. All the theological disputes excited his laughter, the creeds his pity, and the conduct of bigots his contempt. He was much better than a saint. Most of the Christians in his day kept their religion not for everyday use but for disaster, as ships carry lifeboats to be used only in the stress of storm.
Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity--of good and generous deeds. For many centuries the church had painted virtue so ugly, sour and cold that vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty of the useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition. He was not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but he was the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend of freedom, and the deadliest foe of superstition. He wrote the best French plays--but they were not wonderful. He wrote verses polished and perfect in their way. He filled the air with painted moths--but not with Shakespearean eagles.
You may think that I have said too much; that I have placed this man too high. Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, and universality perfection, indeed, behold Voltaire."
Even Carlyle, the old Scotch terrier, with the growl of a grizzly bear, who attacked shams, as I have sometime thought, because he hated rivals, was forced to admit that Voltaire gave the death stab to modern superstition. It was the hand of Voltaire that sowed the seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of Jefferson, and of Thomas Paine.
Toulouse was a favored town. It was rich in relics. The people were as ignorant as wooden images, but they had in their possession the dried bodies of seven apostles--the bones of many of the infants slain by Herod--part of a dress of the Virgin Mary, and lots of skulls and skeletons of the infallible idiots known as saints.
In this city the people celebrated every year with great joy two holy events: The expulsion of the Huguenots and the blessed massacre of St. Bartholomew. The citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized by the church. A few Protestants, mild because in the minority, lived among these jackals and tigers. One of these Protestants was Jean Calas--a small dealer in dry goods. For forty years he had been in this business, and his character was without a stain. He was honest, kind and agreeable. He had a wife and six children, four sons and two daughters. One of the sons became a Catholic. The eldest son, Marc Antoine, disliked his father's business and studied law. He could not be allowed to practice unless he became a Catholic. He tried to get his license by concealing that he was a Protestant. He was discovered--grew morose. Finally he became discouraged and committed suicide by hanging himself one evening in his father's store. The bigots of Toulouse started the story that his parents had killed him to prevent his becoming a Catholic. On this frightful charge the father, mother, one son, a servant, and one guest at their house were arrested. The dead son was considered a martyr, the church taking possession of the body. This happened in 1761. There was what was called a trial. There was no evidence, not the slightest, except hearsay. All the facts were in favor of the accused. The united strength of the defendants could not have done the deed.
Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon the wheel. This was on the 9th of March, 1762, and the sentence was to be carried out the next day. On the morning of the 10th the father was taken to the torture room. The executioner and his assistants were sworn on the cross to administer the torture according to the judgment of the court. They bound him by the wrists to an iron ring in the stone wall four feet from the ground and his feet to another ring in the floor. Then they shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in his arms and legs were dislocated. Then he was questioned. He declared that he was innocent. Then the ropes were again shortened until life fluttered in the torn body; but he remained firm. This was called the question ordinaire. Again the magistrate exhorted the victim to confess, and again he refused, saying that there was nothing to confess. Then came the question extraordinaire. Into the mouth of the victim was placed a horn holding three pints of water. In this way thirty pints of water were forced into the body of the sufferer. The pain was beyond description, and yet Jean Calas remained firm. He was then carried to a scaffold in a tumbril. He was bound to a wooden cross that lay on the scaffold. The executioner then took a bar of iron, broke each leg and arm in two places, striking eleven blows in all. He was then left to die if he could. He lived for two hours, declaring his innocence to the last. He was slow to die and so the executioner strangled him. Then his poor lacerated, bleeding and broken body was chained to a stake and burned. All this was a spectacle--a festival for the savages of Toulouse. What would they have done if their hearts had not been softened by the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth and good will to men?
But this was not all. The property of the family was confiscated; the son was released on condition that he become a Catholic; the servant if she would enter a convent. The two daughters were consigned to a convent and the heart-broken widow was allowed to wander where she would.
Voltaire heard of this case. In a moment his soul was on fire. He took one of the sons under his roof. He wrote a history of the case. He corresponded with kings and queens, with chancellors and lawyers. If money was needed he advanced it. For years he filled Europe with the echoes of the groans of Jean Calas. He succeeded. The horrible judgment was annulled--the poor victim declared innocent and thousands of dollars raised to support the mother and family. This was the work of Voltaire.
Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three daughters. The housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the daughters a Catholic. The law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants from its parents for the sake of its soul. The little girl was so taken and placed in a convent. She ran away and came back to her parents. Her poor little body was covered with the marks of the convent whip. "Suffer little children to come unto me." The child was out of her mind; suddenly she disappeared; and three days after her little body was found in a well, three miles from home. The cry was raised that her folks had murdered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic. This happened only a little way from the christian city of Toulouse while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens knew that a trial would end in conviction. They fled. In their absence they were convicted, their property confiscated. The parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother and then to be exiled. The family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the mother died, and at last the father, reaching Switzerland, found himself without the means of support. They went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored to annul the sentence that had been pronounced against them for nine long and weary years. He appealed to kings for money, to Catherine II of Russia, and to hundreds of others. He was successful. He said of this case:--The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two hours in January, 1762, and now in January, 1772, after ten years of effort, they have been restored to their rights."
This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the worshipers of God hate the lovers of men?
Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the efforts of Voltaire, released and restored to his family.
This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to tell of the case of Gen. Lally, of the English Gen. Byng, of the niece of Corneille, of the Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time.
But I will tell another case: In 1765 at the town of Abbeville an old wooden cross on a bridge had been mutilated--whittled with a knife--a terrible crime. Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred than flesh and blood. Two young men were suspected--the Chevalier de la Barre and d'Ettalonde. D'Ettallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier. La Barre remained and stood his trial. He was convicted without the slightest evidence, and he and d'Ettallonde were both sentenced: First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary; second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of iron; third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the church; and fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned to death by a slow fire. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sentence by providing that their heads should be cut off before their bodies were given to the flames. The case was appealed to Paris; heard by a court composed of twenty-five judges learned in law, and the judgment was confirmed. The sentence was carried out on the 1st day of July, 1766.
Voltaire had fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art of flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact science. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He fought the army of hypocrisy and pretense, the army of faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who wished to gain the favors of priests, the patronage of nobles. Sometimes he allowed himself to be annoyed by these scorpions; sometimes he attacked them. And, but for these attacks, long ago they would have been forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved these insects, these tarantulas, these scorpions.
It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever. This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the christian world. Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of antiquity, and had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.
If he had only adopted the creed of his time--if he had asserted that a God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions of human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his glorious justice--that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning and cruel Italian pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress and send honest wives to hell--if he had given to the nostrils of this God the odor of burning flesh--the incense of the fagot--if he had filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured--the music of the rack, he would now be known as St. Voltaire.
Instead of doing these things he willfully closed his eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed. He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same, the same mysteries--the same miracles--the same impostures--the same temples and ceremonies--the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes--the same promises and threats--the same pretense of goodness and forgiveness and the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion made enemies--philosophy, friends--and that above the rites of gods were the rights of man. These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever--an infidel--one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse. For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this theory--this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of God. The theologians have insisted that crimes against men were, and are, as nothing compared with crimes against God. That, while kings and priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the scriptures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore the wretched soul.
There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being committed ever day--men are at this moment lying in wait for their human prey--wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death--little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers--sweet girls are deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things--no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you don't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost.
Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has appeared. Such men have denounced the superstition of their day. They have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and died naturally in their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died peacefully. That would show that religion was essential at the last moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the bible, refuse to kiss the cross; contend that humanity was greater than Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after he had burned Servetus, or as peacefully as King David after advising with his last breath one son to assassinate another.
The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the same falsehood can be used by both. Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grew eloquent. When describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever their eyes glitter with delight. It is a festival. They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They devour the dead. It is a banquet. Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies. They see them in flames--in oceans of fire--in gulfs of pain--in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.
It is an auto da fe, presided over by God. But let us come back to Voltaire--to the dying philosopher. He was an old man of 84. He had been surrounded with the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of great wealth, the richest writer that the world had known. Among the literary men of the earth he stood first. He was an intellectual monarch--one who had built his own throne and had woven the purple of his own power. He was a man of genius. The Catholic God had allowed him the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery--of almost worship. He stood at the summit of his age. The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of Voltaire. Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey. Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Surplice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them to his uncle's sick chamber, who, being informed that they were there, said: "Ah, well, give them my compliments and my thanks." The abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The cure of Saint Surplice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side: "Let me die in peace." The cure seemingly considered his person soiled and his coif dishonored by the touch of a philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brushing and went out with the Abbe Gautier. He expired, says Wagnierre, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about a quarter past 11 at night, with the most perfect tranquility. A few moments before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet de chambee, who was watching by him, pressed it, and said: "Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last words. Like a peaceful river, with green and shaded banks, he flowed without a murmur into the waveless sea, where life is rest.
From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and tender; so natural and peaceful; from these words so utterly destitute of cant or dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing utterances have been drawn and made. From these materials, and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, have been constructed by priests and clergymen and their dupes all the shameless lies about the death of this great and wonderful man. A man, compared with whom all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, but dust and vermin. Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the such of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels had never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.
In those days the philosophers--that is to say, the thinkers--were not buried in holy ground. It was feared that their principles might contaminate the ashes of the just. And they also feared that on the morning of the resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip into heaven. Some were burned and their ashes scattered; and the bodies of some were thrown naked to beasts, and others buried in unholy earth. Voltaire knew the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful actress, denied burial. After all, we do feel an interest in what is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made arrangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more than 100 miles from Paris. Sunday evening, on the last day of May, 1778, the body of Voltaire, clad in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed to simulate life, was placed in a carriage; at its side a servant, whose business it was to keep it in position. To this carriage were attached six horses, so that people might think a great lord was going to his estates. Another carriage followed in which were a grand-nephew and two cousins of Voltaire. All night they traveled, and on the following day arrived at the courtyard of the abbey. The necessary papers were shown, the mass was performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found burial. A few moments afterward the prior who "for charity had given a little earth" received from his bishop a menacing letter forbidding the burial of Voltaire. It was too late. He could not then be removed, and he was allowed to remain in peace until 1791.
Voltaire was dead. The foundations of State and throne had been sapped. The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and with the actual priests. Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose fathers and mothers had been pavement for the rich, were rising towards the light and their shadowy faces were emerging from darkness. Labor and thought became friends. That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized. The monsters of the night and the angels of dawn--the first thinking of revenge and the others dreaming of equality, liberty and fraternity. For 400 years the Bastille had been the outward symbol of oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a perpetual threat. It was the last and often the first argument of king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments of torture, denied the existence of God. In 1789, on the 14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering, stormed and captured the Bastille. The battlecry was, "Vive le Voltaire!"
In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles from Paris. Buried by stealth he was to be removed by a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles; every village with its flags and arches in his honor; all the people anxious to honor the philosopher of France--the savior of Calas--the destroyer of superstition! On reaching Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. Antoine. Here it paused, and for one night upon the ruins of the Bastille rested the body of Voltaire--rested in triumph, in glory--rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rusting chain, and bar and useless bolt--above the dungeons dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives of men and hope had died in breaking hearts. The conqueror resting upon the conquered. Throned upon the Bastille, the fallen fortress of night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the dawn.
For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more the face of the dead.
While the vast multitude were trembling with love and awe, a priest was heard to cry, "God shall be avenged!"
The grave of Voltaire was violated. The cry of the priest, "God shall be avenged!" had borne its fruit. Priests, skulking in the shadows, with faces sinister as night-ghouls--in the name of the gospel, desecrated the gave. They carried away the body of Voltaire. The tomb was empty. God was avenged! The tomb was empty, but the world is filled with Voltaire's fame. Man has conquered!
What cardinal, what bishop, what priest raised his voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the oppressed--of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victim of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint from which emerges one ray of light? If there be another life, a day of judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world a man who abolished torture in his. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, He should not imprison there those who broke the chain of slavery here. He cannot afford to make eternal convicts of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Paine, of Voltaire.
Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully, as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings--that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves--just where to touch--hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing "Edipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies, the accomplishment of a thousand lives.
Ingersoll's Lecture on Myth and Miracles
Ladies and Gentlemen: What, after all, is the object of life? What is the highest possible aim? The highest aim is to accomplish the only good. Happiness is the only good of which man by any possibility can conceive. The object of life is to increase human joy, and that means intellectual and physical development. The question, then, is: Shall we rely upon superstition or upon growth? Is intellectual development the highway of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? Must we rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous investigation, thought, and intellectual development? For thousands of years men have been talking about religious freedom. I am now contending for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom--for the freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few years ago our poor ancestors tried to account for what they saw. Noticing the running river, the shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit in the river, a spirit in the star, and another in the flower. Something makes this river run, something makes this star shine, something paints the blossom of that flower. They were all spirits. That was the first religion of mankind--fetichism--and in everything that lived, everything that produced an effect upon them, they said: "This is a spirit that lives within." That is called the lowest phase of religious thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of religious thought. One by one these little spirits died. One by one nonentities took their places, and last of all we have one infinite fetich that takes the place of all others. Now, what makes the river run? We say the attraction of gravitation, and we know no more about that than we do about this fetich. What makes the tree grow? The principle of life--vital forces. These are simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees grow, why the flowers burst and bloom--nobody knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever will know.
There are two horizons that have never been passed by man--origin and destiny. All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that circle. All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference of the absolutely known. What next? The next thing that came in the world--the next man--was the mythmaker. He gave to these little spirits human passions; he clothed ghosts in flesh; he warmed that flesh with blood, and in that blood he put desire--motive. And the myths were born, and were only produced through the fact of the impressions that nature makes upon the brain of man. They were every one a natural production, and let me say here, tonight, that what men call monstrosities are only natural productions. Every religion has grown just as naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced. All the Christs, all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies, all the mingling of the beastly and human, were all produced by the impressions of nature upon the brain of man--by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn, the golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the change of seasons, the lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow--all these produced within the brain of man all myths, and they are all natural productions.
There have been certain myths universal among men. Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal--the golden age, which is absolutely the same thing. And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston will tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest. Fifty years ago all people were sociable--there was no stuck-up aristocracy then. Neighbors were neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it business. Go back fifty years and you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time when all were honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find another sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to his youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is true of the whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally, will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us. There are more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the world today than ever before.
The myth of the Elysian fields--universally born of sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought it a vision of another land--a land without care or grief--a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the setting of the sun. A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods. Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had left its cards on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing of the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He did not dream of it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite foreheads to the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the land will be. The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, and it would save him in turn from his enemies. He did so, and put it into different receptacles until it grew so large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was large enough to take care of itself. The fish told him that there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of animals of use to man, and he would come along with an ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to its horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the ark to a tree. When the waters receded, they came out and followed them down until they reached the plain. There were the same number--eight--in this ark as there were with Noah.
I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal. The virgin mother is the earth. I find also in countries the idea of a trinity. In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus. This idea prevailed in Central America among the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment almost universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that they naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment somewhere. Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was a sun god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a wonderful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same place, near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When the sun went down under the earth, it was thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus came to be represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish, and so the mermaid was born. Another strange thing is that all the sun gods were born near Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes made by the product of the field were eaten, it was the body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the blood of Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There is nothing original in christianity. Holy water! Another myth. The Hindoos imagined that the water had its source in the throne of God. The Egyptians thought the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian colonies, and they carried with them the water of the Nile, and when any one died the water was sprinkled on him. Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is the myth of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, and I presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The cross is another universal symbol. There was once an ancient people in Italy before the Romans, before the Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history does not even know the name of that nation. We find where they buried the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, hundreds of years before Christ, the cross, a symbol of a hope of another life. We find the cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we find them in Central America. On the temples of the Aztecs we find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. Our cross was built in the middle ages.
When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to the garden of Eden. He told him he would have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left it. He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let him pass the door. He moved his wings so that he could see in, and he saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among them Cain, the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, and told him to put them in his father's mouth when he was buried and to watch the effect. The result was that these trees grew up--one pine, one cedar, and on cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in the temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it into the pool of Bethesda. When the soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ they took this tree and made a cross of it. Helen, the mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross. She found the two crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on. They could not tell which was which, so they called a sick woman who touched them, and when she touched the right one she was immediately made whole.
Such is myth and fable. The history of one religion is substantially the history of all religions. In embryo man lives all lives. The man of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows the history of all religions. The man of imagination, genius, having seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the mists rise, and the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking at a coat of mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions that produced it, and what it, in its turn, produced. He saw the castle, the moat, the drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled serfs, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life. The man of imagination has lived the life of all people, of all races. He has been a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager eloquence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea." He has seen Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of falsehood--was present when the great man drank hemlock and met the night of death tranquil as a star meets morning. He has followed the peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the sophists. He has watched Phidias, as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. He has lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knows the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx. He has heard great Memnon's morning song, has laid him down with the embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts--the children born of long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life. He has lived the life of savage men--has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate name of life or death has matched his thought against the instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative shade, rapt in Buddha's mighty thought, and he has dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. He has knelt with awe and dread at every prayer; has felt the consolation and the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, and felt the pangs of every hell. He has lived all lives, and through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate. The imagination hath a stage within the brain, whereon he sets all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, the careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life.
Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There is this difference between the miracle and the myth--a myth is an idealism of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is some difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference that there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury. Miracles are probably only in the far past or the very remote future. The present is the property of the natural. You say to a man: "The dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, that's reasonable." You say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says, "That is what I believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead this morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?" Miracles never convince at the time they were said to have been performed.
John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He was cast into prison. When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country." Afterward he returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he again departed from that country. There is no possible relation between the miraculous and the moral. The miracles of the middle ages are the children of superstition. In the middle ages men told everything but the truth, and believed everything but the facts. The middle ages--a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There is one thing about humanity. You see the faults of others, but not your own. A Catholic in India sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and thinks it absurd. Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin and some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant shut his eyes when he prays? The idea is a souvenir of sun worship. It is the most natural worship in the world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The doctrine of eternal torment today has become absurd, low, groveling, ignorant, barbaric, savage, devilish and no gentleman would preach it.
Science, thou art the great magician! Thou alone performest the true miracles. Thou alone workest the real wonders. Fire is thy servant, lightning thy messenger. The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the circuits of the wind. Thou art the great philanthropist. Thou hast freed the slave and civilized the master. Thou hast taught man to chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces of nature--forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat--forces that never know fatigue, that shed no tears--forces that have no hearts to break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper and the loom--thou hast fed and clothed the world. Thou art the great physician. Thy touch hath given sight. Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health. "Thou hast given thy beloved sleep"--a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing nerves of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man--preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every virtue, and the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of morals--the origin and office of conscience--and hast revealed the nature and measure of obligation. Thou hast taught that love is justice in its highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, embraces with loving arms the human race. Thou hast slain the monsters of the past. Thou hast discovered the one inspired book. Thou hast read the records of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and flame--records that even priestcraft cannot change--and in thy wondrous scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the stars. Thou art the founder of the only true religion. Thou art the very Christ, the only savior of mankind!
Theology has always been in the way of the advance of the human race. There is this difference between science and theology--science is modest and merciful, while theology is arrogant and cruel. The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few and the damnation of almost everybody. As I told you in the first place, I believe in the religion of freedom. O liberty! thou art the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only deity that hates the bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand erect. They do not bow or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth. Thy dust hast never borne the impress of lips, upon thy sacred altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes, nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things that good men hate, the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou hast no kings, no popes, no priests to stand between their fellow-men and thee. Thou hast no monks, no nuns, who, in the name of duty, murder joy. Thou carest not for forms nor mumbled prayers. At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, fear does not crouch, virtue does not tremble, superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but reason holds aloft her inextinguishable torch, while on the ever-broadening brow of science falls the ever coming morning of the ever better day.
Ingersoll on The Chinese God
Messrs. Wright, Dickey, O'Conner and Murch, of the select committee on the causes of the present depression of labor, presented the majority special report upon Chinese immigration.
These gentlemen are in great fear for the future of our most holy and perfectly authenticated religion, and have, like faithful watchmen from the walls and towers of Zion, hastened to give the alarm. They have informed Congress that "Joss has his temple of worship in the Chinese quarters, in San Francisco. Within the walls of a dilapidated structure is exposed to the view of the faithful the god of the Chinaman, and here are his altars of worship. Here he tears up his pieces of paper; here he offers up his prayers; here he receives his religious consolations, and here is his road to the celestial land." That "Joss is located in a long, narrow room, in a building in a back alley, upon a kind of altar;" that "he is a wooden image, looking as much like an alligator as like a human being;" that the Chinese "think there is such a place as heaven;" that "all classes of Chinamen worship idols;" that "the temple is open every day at all hours;" that "the Chinese have no Sunday;" that this heathen god has "huge jaws, a big red tongue, large white teeth, a half-dozen arms, and big, fiery eyeballs. About him are placed offerings of meat, and other eatables--a sacrificial offering."
No wonder that these members of the committee were shocked at such a god, knowing as they did that the only true God was correctly described by the inspired lunatic of Patmos in the following words:
"And there sat in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword; and his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength."
Certainly, a large mouth, filled with white teeth, is preferable to one used as the scabbard of a sharp, two-edged sword. Why should these gentlemen object to a god with big fiery eyeballs, when their own Deity has eyes like a flame of fire?
Is it not a little late in the day to object to people because they sacrifice meat and other eatables to their god? We all know that for thousands of years the "real" God was exceedingly fond of roasted meat; that He loved the savor of burning flesh, and delighted in the perfume of fresh, warm blood.
The following account of the manner in which the "living God" desired that His people should sacrifice tends to show the degradation and religious blindness of the Chinese--:
"Aaron therefore went unto the altar and slew the calf of the sin-offering which was for himself. And the sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him. And he dipped his fingers in the blood and put it upon the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar; but the fat and the kidneys and the caul above the liver of the sin-offering he burnt upon the altar, as the Lord commanded Moses, and the flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the camp. And he slew the burnt offering. And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he sprinkled round about the altar.... And he brought the meat offering and took a handful thereof and burnt upon the altar..... He slew also the bullock and the ram for a sacrifice of peace offering, which was for the people. And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he sprinkled upon the altar, round about, and the fat of the bullock and of the ram, the rump and that which covereth the inwards, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver, and they put the fat upon the breasts and he burnt the fat upon the altar. And the breasts and the right shoulder Aaron waved for a wave-offering before the Lord, as Moses had commanded."
If the Chinese only did something like this, we would know that they worshiped the "living" God. The idea that the supreme head of the "American system of religion" can be placated with a little meat and "ordinary eatables," is simply preposterous. He has always asked for blood, and has always asserted that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
The world is also informed by these gentlemen that "the idolatry of the Chinese produces a demoralizing effect upon our American youth by bringing sacred things into disrespect, and making religion a theme of disgust and contempt."
In San Francisco there are some three hundred thousand people. Is it possible that a few Chinese can bring "our holy religion" into disgust and contempt? In that city there are fifty times as many churches as joss-houses. Scores of sermons are uttered every week; religious books and papers are plentiful as leaves in autumn, and somewhat dryer; thousands of bibles are with in the reach of all. And there, too, is the example of a Christian city.
Why should we send missionaries to China if we cannot convert the heathen when they come here? When missionaries go to a foreign land, the poor, benighted people have to take their word for the blessings showered upon a Christian people; but when the heathen come here, they can see for themselves. What was simply a story becomes a demonstrated fact. They come in contact with people who love their enemies. They see that in a Christian land men tell the truth; that they will not take advantage of strangers; that they are just and patient; kind and tender; and have no prejudice on account of color, race, or religion; that they look upon mankind as brethren; that they speak of God as a universal Father, and are willing to work, and even to suffer, for the good, not only of their own countrymen, but of the heathen as well. All this the Chinese see and know, and why they still cling to the religion of their country is to me a matter of amazement.
We all know that the disciples of Jesus do unto others as they would that others should do unto them, and that those of Confucius do not unto others anything that they would not that others should do unto them. Surely, such peoples ought to live together in perfect peace. Rising with the subject, growing heated with a kind of holy indignation, these Christian representatives of a Christian people most solemnly declare that anyone who is really endowed with a correct knowledge of our religious system which acknowledges the existence of a living God and an accountability to Him, and a future state of reward and punishment, who feels that he has an apology for this abominable pagan worship, is not a fit person to be ranked as a good citizen of the American union. It is absurd to make any apology for its toleration. It must be abolished, and the sooner the decree goes forth by the power of this government, the better it will be for the interests of this land.
I take this the earliest opportunity to inform these gentlemen composing a majority of the committee that we have in the United States no "religious system;" that this is a secular government. That it has no religious creed; that it does not believe nor disbelieve in a future state of reward and punishment; that it neither affirms nor denies the existence of a "living God;" and that the only god, so far as this government is concerned; is the legally expressed will of a majority of the people. Under our flag the Chinese have the same right to worship a wooden god that you have to worship any other. The constitution protects equally the church of Jehovah and the house of Joss. Whatever their relative positions may be in heaven, they stand upon a perfect equality in the United States. This government is an infidel government. We have a constitution with man put in and God left out; and it is the glory of this country that we have such a constitution.
It may be surprising to you that I have an apology for pagan worship, yet I have. And it is the same one that I have for the writers of this report. I account for both by the word superstition. Why should we object to their worshiping God as they please? If the worship is improper, the protestation should come not from a committee of congress, but from God himself. If He is satisfied, that is sufficient.
Our religion can only be brought into contempt by the actions of those who profess to be governed by its teachings. This report will do more in that direction than millions of Chinese could do by burning pieces of paper before a wooden image. If you wish to impress the Chinese with the value of your religion, of what you are pleased to call "the American system," show them that Christians are better than heathens. Prove to them that what you are pleased to call the "living God" teaches higher and holier things, a grander and purer code of morals, than can be found upon pagan pages. Excel these wretches in industry, in honesty, in reverence for parents, in cleanliness, in frugality, and above all by advocating the absolute liberty of human thought.
Do not trample upon these people because they have different conception of things about which even this committee knows nothing.
Give them the same privilege you enjoy of making a god after their own fashion, and let them describe him as they will. Would you be willing to have them remain, if one of their race, thousands of years ago, had pretended to have seen God, and had written of Him as follows: "There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth; coals were kindled by it.... and he rode upon a cherub and did fly?" Why should you object to these people on account of their religion? Your objection has in it the spirit of hate and intolerance. Of that spirit the inquisition was born. That spirit lighted the fagot, made the thumbscrew, put chains upon the limbs, and lashes upon the backs of men. The same spirit bought and sold, captured and kidnapped human beings; sold babes, and justified all the horrors of slavery. Congress has nothing to do with the religion of the people. Its members are not responsible to God for the opinions of their constituents, and it may tend to the happiness of the constituents for me to state that they are in no way responsible for the religion of the members. Religion is an individual not a national matter, and where the nation interferes with the right of conscience, the liberties of the people are devoured by the monster, superstition.
If you wish to drive out the Chinese, do not make a pretext of religion. Do not pretend that you are trying to do God a favor. Injustice in His name is doubly detestable. The assassin cannot sanctify his dagger by falling on his knees, and it does not help a falsehood if it be uttered as a prayer. Religion, used to intensify the hatred of men toward men, under the pretense of pleasing God, has cursed this world.
A portion of this most remarkable report is Intensely religious. There is in it almost the odor of sanctity; and when reading it, one is impressed with the living piety of its authors. But on the twenty-fifth page, there are a few passages that must pain the hearts of true believers. Leaving their religious views, the members immediately betake themselves to philosophy and prediction. Listen:
"The Chinese race and the American citizen, whether native-born or who is eligible to our naturalization laws and becomes a citizen, are in a state of antagonism. They cannot, nor will not, ever meet upon common ground and occupy together the same so-called level. This is impossible. The pagan and the Christian travel different paths. This one believes in a living God; that one in the type of monsters and worship of wood and stone. Thus in the religion of the two races of men, they are as wide apart as the poles of the two hemispheres. They cannot now, nor never [sic] will, approach the same religious altar. The Christian will not recede to barbarism, nor will the Chinese advance to the enlightened belt [wherever it is] of civilization.... He cannot be converted to those modern ideas of religious worship which have been accepted by Europe, and which crown the American system."
Christians used to believe that through their religion all the nations of the earth were finally to be blest. In accordance with that belief missionaries have been sent to every land, and untold wealth has been expended for what has been called the spread of the gospel.
I am almost sure that I have read somewhere that "Christ died for all men," and that "God is no respecter persons." It was once taught that it was the duty of Christians to tell to all people the "tidings of great joy." I have never believed these things myself, but have always contended that an honest merchant was the best missionary. Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed. For myself, I have but little confidence in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.
But I am astonished that four Christian statesmen, four members of Congress in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, who seriously object to people on account of their religious convictions, should still assert that the very religion in which they believe--and the only religion established by the living God--head of the American system--is not adapted to the spiritual needs of one-third of the human race. It is amazing that these four gentlemen have, in the defense of the Christian religion, announced the discovery that it is wholly inadequate for the civilization of mankind that the light of the cross can never penetrate the darkness of China; "that all the labors of the missionary, the example of the good, the exalted character of our civilization, make no impression upon the pagan life of the Chinese;" and that even the report of this committee will not tend to elevate, refine and Christianize the yellow heathen of the Pacific Coast. In the name of religion these gentlemen have denied its power and mocked at the enthusiasm of its founder. Worse than this, they have predicted for the Chinese a future of ignorance and idolatry in this world, and, if the "American system"--of religion us true, hellfire in the next.
For the benefit of these four philosophers and prophets, I will give a few extracts from the writings of Confucius that will in my judgment, compare favorably with the best passages of their report:
"My doctrine is that man must be true to the principles of his nature, and the benevolent exercises of them toward others.
"With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and with my bended arm for a pillow, I still have joy.
"Riches and honor acquired by injustice are to me but floating clouds.
"The man who, in view of gain, thinks of righteousness; who, in view of danger, forgets life, and who remembers an old agreement, however far back it extends, such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
"Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness."
There is one Word which may serve as rule of practice for all one's life. Reciprocity is that word.
When the ancestors of the four Christian Congressmen were barbarians, when they lived in caves, gnawed bones, and worshiped dried snakes, the infamous Chinese were reading these sublime sentences of Confucius. When the forefathers of these Christian statesmen were hunting toads to get the jewels out of their heads to be used as charms, the wretched Chinese were calculating eclipses and measuring the circumference of the earth. When the progenitors of these representatives of the "American system of religion" were burning women charged with nursing devils, these people, "incapable of being influenced by the exalted character of our civilization," were building asylums for the insane.
Neither should it be forgotten that, for thousands of years, the Chinese have honestly practiced the great principle known as civil service reform--a something that even the administration of Mr. Hayes has reached only through the proxy of promise.
If we wish to prevent the immigration of the Chinese, let us reform our treaties with the vast empire from whence they came. For thousands of years the Chinese secluded themselves from the rest of the world. They did not deem the Christian nations fit to associate with. We forced ourselves upon them. We called, not with cards, but with cannon. The English battered down the door in the names of Opium and Christ. This infamy was regarded as another triumph for the gospel. At last, in self-defense, the Chinese allowed Christians to touch their shores. Their wise men, their philosophers protested, and prophesied that time would show that Christians could not be trusted. This report proves that the wise men were not only philosophers, but prophets.
Treat China as you would England. Keep a treaty while it is in force. Change it if you will, according to the laws of nations, but on no account excuse a breach of national faith by pretending that we are dishonest for God's sake.
Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin? (Colonel Ingersoll's First Letter)
I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or not. If it is, then there must be, on the average, more trouble, more sorrow, more failure, and, consequently, more people are driven to despair. In civilized life there is a great struggle, great competition, and many fall. To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the country a man has friends. He can get a little credit, a little help, but in the city it is different. The man is lost in the multitude. In the roar of the streets his cry is not heard. Death becomes his only friend. Death promises release from want, from hunger and pain, and so the poor wretch lays down his burden, dashes it from his shoulders and falls asleep.
To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so many endure and suffer to the natural end, that so many nurse the spark of life in huts and prisons, keep it and guard it through years of misery and want; support it by beggary; by eating the crust found in the gutter, and to whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and dread. Why should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all he had, the loved ones dead, friends lost, seek to lengthen, to preserve his life? What can the future have for him?
Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself. When life is of no value to him, when he can be of no real assistance to others, why should a man continue? When he is of no benefit, when he is a burden to those he loves, why should he remain? The old idea was that "God" made us and placed us here for a purpose, and that it was our duty to remain until He called us. The world is outgrowing this absurdity. What pleasure can it give "God" to see a man devoured by a cancer? To see the quivering flesh slowly eaten? To see the nerves throbbing with pain? Is this a festival for "God"? Why should the poor wretch stay and suffer? A little morphine would give him sleep--the agony would be forgotten and he would pass unconsciously from happy dreams to painless death.
If "God" determines all births and deaths, of what use is medicine, and why should doctors defy, with pills and powders, the decrees of "God"? No one, except a few insane, act now according to this childish superstition. Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of a burning building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a bullet through his brain or a dagger in his heart? Would it give "God" pleasure to see him burn? When did the man lose the right of self-defense?
So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why should he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears?
Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life hesitate to still his heart? The grave is better than the cell. Sleep is sweeter than the ache of toil. The dead have no masters.
So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of home closed against her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that will help, no eye that will soften with pity, the future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes of dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts like clouds broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the serpents of remorse, flying from horrors too great to bear, rushes with joy through the welcome door of death.
Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable suicide--cases in which not to end life would be a mistake, sometimes almost a crime.
As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself. And if a man honestly decides that death is best--best for him and others--and acts upon the decision, why should he be blamed?
Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical coward. He may have lacked moral courage, but not physical. It may be said that some men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between two fires--the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they take the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were, according to their belief, between two fires--the flames of the fagot that could burn but for a few moments and the fires of God, that were eternal. And they chose the flames of the fagot.
Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or that Seneca was. Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for. Cato was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of others who felt that they had reached the end--that the journey was done, the voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain that the man who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops all other deeds, that shackles accident and bolts up change," is not lacking in physical courage.
If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses, in hospitals, they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the stains of dishonor, they would not live in filth and want, in poverty and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this can be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."
Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom of every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger, Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said, "There is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death." To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.
Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became outcasts. If, however, they died before conviction, their children were saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly they were not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes, they had enough of honor, of manhood, left to save their innocent children. This was not cowardice.
Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart--the light fading from their lives--seek the refuge of death. Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways--who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take poisons that torture like the rack--such persons must be insane. But those who take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and against, and who decide that death is best--the only good--and then resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full possession of their minds.
Life is not the same to all--to some a blessing, to some a curse, to some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some with the keenest joy, and some with indifference.
Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number of suicides. The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such believers to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is no fear of the future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused parents to murder their children and many thousands to destroy themselves and others.
It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is forgotten, "God" and hell are out of their minds. I am satisfied that many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of insanity, and many are perfectly sane.
The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful suicides. When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man? A man seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take extra pains and precautions to make death certain.
This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and enforced by ignorance and cruelty.
When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of death, why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?
Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world. People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our sufferings and our duties are here. The law of New York about the attempt to commit suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal. Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who have lost all fear of death, care nothing for law and its penalties. Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.
We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of every suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each other. There is no space between--no room for chance. Given a certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary result. If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions. We must, by education, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the value of the average life. We must cultivate the brain and heart--do away with false pride and false modesty. We must become generous enough to help our fellows without degrading them. We must make industry useful work of all kinds--honorable. We must mingle a little affection with our charity--a little fellowship. We should allow those who have sinned to really reform. We should not think only of what the wicked have done, but we should think of what we have wanted to do. People do not hate the sick. Why should they despise the mentally weak--the diseased in brain?
Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances--of conditions--and we do as we must. This great truth should till the heart with pity for the failures of our race.
Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce the suicide; that in old times they buried him where the roads crossed, and drove a stake through his body. They took his property from his children and gave it to the State.
If Christians would only think, they would see the orthodox religion rests upon suicide--that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without suicide the whole world would have been lost.
If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed them to take his life.
If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not say that he committed suicide?
There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God and allowed the Jews to kill Him, then He consented to His own death--refused, though perfectly able, to defend and protect Himself, and was, in fact, a suicide.
We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and women will untie life's knot and seeks the peace of death.
To the hopelessly imprisoned--to the dishonored and despised--to those who have failed, who have no future, no hope--to the abandoned, the broken-hearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and women--how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!
And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome deliverer. Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed long--when we are weary--when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for the cool kisses of the night--when the senses are dull--when the pulse is faint and low--when the mists gather on the mirror of memory--when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived--when the future has but empty hands--death is as welcome as a strain of music.
After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and forever.
The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that so few of the miserable are brave enough to die--that so many are terrified by the "something after death"--by the specters and phantoms of superstition.
Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic snows--how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea--how they linger in famine--how they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope and courage.
But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are disheartened by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and give the earth their blood.
They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or blame--we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.
One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming and loving daughter, committed suicide. He was a man of generous impulses. His heart was loving and tender. He was conscientious, and so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he thought wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let us be merciful in our judgments.
All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances and conditions sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion's storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of insanity--raise their hands against themselves and desperately put out the light of life.
Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If they are insane they should, if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be reasoned with, calmed and assisted.
Ingersoll's Letter, The Right to One's Life Colonel Ingersoll's Eloquent Reply to His Critics
In the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that "under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."
This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and the writers of letters. These people contend that the right of self-destruction does not and can not exist. They insist that life is the gift of God, and that He only has the right to end the days of men; that it is our duty to beat the sorrows that He sends with grateful patience. Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes--worse than the murder of another.
The first question, then, is:
Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?
A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer--his agony is intense--his suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is slowly being taken. Is this the work of the good God? Did the compassionate God create the cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim?
This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his children, his friends or society. Day after day he is rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the brain to sleep. Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it proper for him to take refuge in sleep?
If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes pleasure in the sufferings of men--that He gloats over the agonies of His children. If there be a good God, He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the evils of life.
So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer--a burden to himself and others, useless in every way--has the right to end his pain and pass through happy sleep to dreamless rest.
But those who have answered me would say to this man: "It is your duty to be devoured. The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is the gift of God. You hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it. The cancer is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it with food."
Take another case: A man is on a burning ship; the crew and the rest of the passengers have escaped--gone in the lifeboats--and he is left alone. In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot swim. If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the ship he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.
Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no circumstances a man has the right to take his life, would say to this man on the deck, "Remain where you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly father that you be clothed in flame--that you slowly roast--that your eyes be scorched to blindness and that you die insane with pain. Your life is not your own, only the agony is yours."
I would say to this man: "Do as you wish. If you prefer drowning to burning, leap into the sea. Between inevitable evils you have the right of choice. You can help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by choosing the easier death."
Let us suppose another case.
A man has been captured by savages in central Africa. He is about to be tortured to death. His captors are going to thrust splinters of pure into his flesh and then set them on fire. He watches them as they make the preparations. He knows what they are about to do and what he is about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, of help. He has a vial of poison. He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass beyond their power, leaving to them only the dead body.
Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it until the savages by torture take it? Are the savages the agents of the good God? Are they the servants of the infinite? Is it the duty of this man to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has he no right to defend himself? Is it the will of God that he die by torture? What would any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this? Is there room for discussion?
If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?
Suppose another case. In the good old days, when the inquisition flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends, many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of pain.
Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man who had been convicted of heresy, "lay him upon the floor of a dungeon, secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten trim to the earth so that he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.
Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture had within his hand a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one quick stroke he found the protection of death?
To this question there can be but one answer.
In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have the right to destroy himself. It does not seem possible that the man was under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the ship and perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the church.
If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take their lives, then I was right when I said that "under many circumstances a man has a right to kill himself."
Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical cowards. They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward.
The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die, no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist. The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.
So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a coward, but a reasonable man. It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no physical cowardice.
Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer a coward?
Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is the man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages or "Christians" a coward?
Third, I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that they acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession of their minds.
Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right to take his life, and if, under such circumstances, he does take his life, then it cannot be said that he was insane.
Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it is the greatest of crimes. Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must have been sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal admit that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is incapable of committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who have passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that assertion admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.
They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."
It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to be true: First, that under some circumstances a man has the right to take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a physical coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide were at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.
Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the foundation of the Christian religion.
I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power to protect Himself without injuring His assailants--that having that power it was His duty to use it, and that failing to use it He consented to His own death and was guilty of suicide. To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and atonement are born of a belief in the "fall of man," on account of the sins of our "first parents," and of the declaration that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." The foundation has crumbled. No intelligent person now believes in the "fall of man"--that our first parents were perfect, and that their descendants grew worse and worse, at least until the coming of Christ.
Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage, whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries of suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery, invention, self-sacrifice and thought.
Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest. The idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death that He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the consequences of His own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and natural brain.
In no mythology can anything more monstrously Unbelievable be found.
But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of His times because it was cruel and absurd; if He endeavored to found a religion of kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what He believed to be right and true; He suffered death, then He was a noble man--a benefactor of His race. But if He were God there was no need of this. The Jews did not wish to kill God. If He had only made himself known, all knees would have touched the ground. If He were God it required no heroism to die. He knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of eternal life. If He were God, there was no self-sacrifice. He had no need to suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.
Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from these conclusions--from these arguments--and so, instead of attacking the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.
Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to commit suicide a crime.
It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished--helped rather than imprisoned.
A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of death. She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb and locked in a felon's cell.
To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages would enforce.
Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the hour of death. They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy, surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks, reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that meets the morning.
At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed meet him in heaven.
But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the creed of the church in power could not die in peace. God would see to it that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of fear--that with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry for pardon.
This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering me, declare that the atheists, the free-thinkers, have no fear of death--that to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said that infidels believe that death is the end--that it is a dreamless sleep--that it is without pain--that therefore they have no fear, care nothing for gods or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit, nothing for the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a burden they carelessly throw it down.
The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide. This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having forced the clergy to contradict themselves.
Seventh, the clergy take the position that the atheist, the unbeliever, has no standard of morality--that he can have no real conception of right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one to be moral or good unless he believes in some being far above himself.
In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he believes in some being superior to himself.
What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances. What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least. Happiness, in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral--that which decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.
It is not hard for an atheist--for an unbeliever--to keep his hands out of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.
So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence--so far as what he considers his own good is concerned. Sometimes he is swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance, but when he is really intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for him is good for others--for all the world.
It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong. Every man who has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of all morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this world, of the experience, the intelligence of mankind. Morality is not of supernatural origin. It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no belief in the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no supernatural heavens or hells to give it force and life. Subjects who are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves. They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by rewards, by alms.
Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder was just as criminal before as after the promulgation of the ten commandments.
Eighth, many of the clergy, some editors and some writers of letters who have answered me have said that suicide is the worst of crimes, that a man had better murder somebody else than himself. One clergyman gives as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in an act of sin, and therefore he had better kill another person. Probably he would commit a less crime if he would murder his wife or mother.
I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in sin. To say that it is not as wicked to murder another as yourself seems absurd. The man about to kill himself wishes to die. Why is it better for him to kill another man, who wishes to live?
To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than another. Better be a spendthrift than thief. Better throw away your own money than steal the money of another. Better kill yourself if you wish to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.
The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is one of the greatest possible crimes to rush into His presence. It is wonderful how much they know about God and how little about their fellow-men. Wonderful the amount of their information about other worlds and how limited their knowledge is of this.
There may or may not be an infinite being. I neither affirm nor deny. I am honest enough to say that I do not know. I am candid enough to admit that the question is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I think I know as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever knew, and that is--nothing.
I do not say that there is not another world, another life; neither do I say that there is. I say that I do not know. It seems to me that every sane and honest man must say the same. But if there is an infinitely good God and another world, then the infinitely good God will be just as good to us in that world as he is in this. If this infinitely good God loves His children in this world, He will love them in another. If He loves a man when he is alive, He will not hate him the instant he is dead. If we are the children of an infinitely wise and powerful God, He knew exactly what we would do--the temptations that we could and could not withstand--knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon us, knew under what circumstances we would take our lives--and produced such circumstances himself. It is perfectly apparent that there are many people incapable by nature of bearing the burdens of life, incapable or preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of disaster, disease and loss, and who by failure, by misfortune and want, are driven to despair and insanity, in whose darkened minds there comes like a flash of lightning in the night, the thought of death, a thought so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties, all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains except a fierce and wild desire to die. Thousands and thousands become moody, melancholy, brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until reason abdicates, and frenzy takes possession of the soul. If there be an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to Him from the beginning, and He so created things, established relations, put in operation causes and effects that all that has happened was the necessary result of his own acts.
Ninth, nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been exceeding careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I never uttered. They have declared that I have advised people who were in trouble, somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told men who have lost their money, who had failed in business, who were not good in health, to kill themselves at once, without taking into consideration any duty that they owed to wives, children, friends, or society.
No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he can stand between wife and misery, between child and want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty to remain.
I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny side of things, in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in struggling against adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter even in disaster, in having confidence in tomorrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints and shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even evil things to good. I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage and good-nature.
Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the world, of all that live. My anxieties are about this life, this world. About the phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no fear.
The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I wait. The immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor deny. I hope, hope for all of the children of men. I have never denied the existence of another world, nor the immortality of the soul. For many years I have said that the idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, 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.
What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.
After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong. People do not kill themselves on the advice of friends or enemies. All wish to be happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for friends, and as long as life gives joy the idea of self-destruction never enters the human mind.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain; these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless down to death.
It will not do to say that "God" has appointed a time for each to die. Of this there is, and there can be, no evidence. There is no evidence that any god takes any interest in the affairs of men--that any sides with the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues the oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God, through all ages, has allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered by His enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who sends plague, pestilence and famine? Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano to overwhelm?
Tenth, again I say that it is wonderful to me that so many men, so many women endure and carry their burdens to the natural end; that so many, in spite of "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands the spark of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last; that the helpless wretches in poor-houses and asylums cling to life; that the exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains, scarred with the knout, live on; that the incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom the future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp of death.
It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon, the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what he cannot bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness or in the calm of thought and choice the beleaguered soul finds the serenity of death.
Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We know nothing of any realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end of life. Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering, the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by grief and shame, by misery and want, by chance and fate until their only friend is death.