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Title: The Christian Religion
       An Enquiry

Author: Robert G. Ingersoll

Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38093]
Last Updated: January 25, 2013

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION ***




Produced by David Widger
 









THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.  

AN ENQUIRY  




By R. G. Ingersoll  









Contents  

INTRODUCTION.

BOUQUET GARNI.

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

I.

II.









INTRODUCTION.  


ENGLAND is now for the first time offering to the toiling portion of its  people a fair modicum of the education which was in old time the exclusive  privilege of the rich. In doing so it has acted with a keen eye to  self-preservation, for the history of every fallen nation shows that the  unaided ignorance of the masses has been a principal and fatal element in  its downfall.  
This truth would seem to be not yet fully realized by all of higher  education in the country; for the teaching that many of them counsel for  the poor is clogged with ignorance and clouded with error from which their  own higher culture has long been free. It is distressing to see men who no  longer regard the Bible as anything more than a curious and interesting  record, a compound of reflections of ancient myths and poetry, commingled  with a considerable amount of fabulous history and absurd theology—to  see any such man still arguing that for the poor and for the young it is a  necessary subject of study, and (for them) a useful article of belief!  
Do those who argue thus deem the light of reason too clear, too pure, too  delightful, for mankind at large; or is it that they trust that the useful  ignorance of the workers will continue to supply them with unmerited or  unworthy luxuries?  
In neither case can the position endure. The refinement of Rome might  loftily echo  
 
     Odi profanum vulgus et arceo:

but Rome has herself fallen; and not on the portals of future science or  of humanity shall any such motto be written. Freedom of Knowledge is the  corollary to Freedom of Thought: in the society of the future no hierarchy  or oligarchy of intellect will close its doors upon the masses; none will  find delight in either sensuous or intellectual pleasure obtained at the  cost of the baser condition of others.  
The following Reprint will be found a clear exposition of the  incongruities of creed and record and dogma taught to the poor as a system  of ethics for the whole of their life; and held as a convenient thing up  to a certain age for the young, and especially the female young, of the  moneyed classes.  
It is time that such warfare as this should be aggressive; that such books  as the present should be part of the food of our children. Our truest  feelings and our tenderest years have been enslaved to blind faith,  unreasoning credulity and degrading fear; our infant lips have been  trained to link in loving accents the gentle and holy names of Mother and  of Father with that of a God of jealousy, of vengeance, and brutality; our  growing mind has been warned to look to a Hebrew ascetic as the noblest  type of the divine, and to a Hebrew profligate and murderer as the highest  type of the human. As the opening thought of youth has striven to turn to  the light of reason, it has been constantly threatened back and thrust  back into the dark of superstition. It has been told that eternal misery  is the doom of those who leave the paths of dogma; and it has been falsely  and persistently taught that Free-thinkers are evil and unclean, men  without care for right, scoffers at every good thing.  
But it is not scoffers who wage this war of the rational against the  supernatural: let none deceive themselves with that vain thought, or  perpetuate the incorrect assertion. Of such books as the present, such  writings as the present, some at least are the words of men and women who  have been born to, and striven toward a godly life, with intense effort,  with groanings not to be uttered: who, nursed in the bosom of the Church,  and partakers in all her most sacred ordinances, crushed down as unholy  the first and the repeated breathings of doubt and of reasoning their  minds; who held to the falseness of their early teachings,—till  there came that final struggle, when they wrestled with God,—to hold  him,—not to lose him; gasping with fevered lips and shut teeth and  scalding eyelids, "I will not let thee go ": and who won a blessing they  knew not of in that they proved the Jehovah of Hebraism, the God of  Christianity, to be an Apollyon of Superstition: who cast him off in  disgust, in loathing, in half despair; who lay faint and bleeding through  a night of darkness: but to whom, with the dawn, has come the free and  bracing air of reason, and then the deep warm glow of true life, and  humanity, and universal love,—love given this time not to a fetish,  but to every fellow being, to man and beast, to tree and moss, to stone  and star.  
With a great price obtained we this freedom, and we will that our Sons and  that our Daughters be free born. To such a liberator as Robert G.  Ingersoll the thanks of present parents are lovingly offered; his name  will be cherished by our children, and his memory hallowed in the  gratitude of generations yet unborn.  
B. E.  
Rudyard:  
9th Month, 1881.  








BOUQUET GARNI.   

     It is the curse of England that its intellect can see truths
     which its heart will not embody.
     —Laurence Oliphant

     The root of all tyranny and oppression, of all social and
     human ills, is found in witholding from the masses of each
     community mental culture, or knowledge that may be conferred
     on all.
     —Rd. Carlile.

     Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety,
     laws, reputation, and every thing that can serve to conduct
     him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and
     erects itself into tyranny over the understandings of men.
     —Bacon.

     A healthy poetic nature wants, as you yourself say, no Moral
     Law, no Rights of Man, no Political Metaphysics. You might
     have added as well, it wants no Deity, no Immortality, to
     stay and uphold itself withal.
     —Letter from Schiller to Goethe.

     Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the
     meanest thing that feels.
     —Wordsworth.

          * A Bouquet Garni is a little bundle of herbs, some bitter
          some sweet, but all salutary.













THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION  








I.  


A PROFOUND change has taken place in the world of thought, The pews are  trying to set themselves somewhat above the pulpit. The layman discusses  theology with the minister, and smiles. Christians excuse  themselves for belonging to the Church, by denying a part of the creed.  The idea is abroad that they who know the most of nature believe the least  about theology. The sciences are regarded as infidels, and facts as  scoffers. Thousands of most excellent people avoid churches, and, with few  exceptions, only those attend prayer-meetings who wish to be alone. The  pulpit is losing because the people are growing.  
Of course it is still claimed that we are a Christian people,  indebted to something called Christianity for all the progress we  have made. There is still a vast difference of opinion as to what Christianity  really is, although many warring sects have been discussing that question,  with fire and sword, through centuries of creed and crime. Every new sect  has been denounced at its birth as illegitimate, as a something born out  of orthodox wedlock and that should have been allowed to perish on the  steps where it was found. Of the relative merits of the various  denominations, it is sufficient to say that each claims to be right Among  the evangelical churches there is a substantial agreement upon what they  consider the fundamental truths of the Gospel. These﹃fundamental  truths,﹄as I understand them, are:  
That there is a personal God, the creator of the material universe;  that he made man of the dust, and woman from part of the man; that the man  and woman were tempted by the Devil; that they were turned out of  the garden of Eden; that, about fifteen hundred years afterward, God's  patience having been exhausted by the wickedness of mankind, he drowned  his children with the exception of eight persons; that afterward he  selected from their descendants Abraham, and through him the Jewish  people; that he gave laws to these people, and tried to govern them in all  things; that he made known his will in many Ways; that he wrought a vast  number of miracles; that he inspired men to write the Bible; that,  in the fulness of time, it having been found impossible to reform man,  this God came upon earth as a child born of the Virgin Mary;  that he lived in Palestine; that he preached for about three years,  going from place to place, Occasionally raising the dead, curing the blind  and the halt; that he was crucified—for the crime of blasphemy, as  the Jews supposed, but that, as a matter of fact, he was offered as  a sacrifice for the sins of all who might have faith in him; that he was  raised from the dead and ascended into heaven where he now is, making  intercession for his followers; that he will forgive the sins of all who  believe on him, and that those who do not believe will be consigned to the  dungeons of eternal pain. These—it may be with the addition of the  sacraments of Baptism and the Last Supper—constitute  what is generally known as the Christian religion.  
It is most cheerfully admitted that a vast number of people not only  believe these things, but hold them in exceeding reverence, and imagine  them to be of the utmost importance to mankind. They regard the Bible as  the only light that God has given for the guidance of his children; that  it is the one star in nature's sky—the foundation of all morality,  of all law, of all order, and of all individual and national progress.  They regard it as the only means we have for ascertaining the will of God,  the origin of man, and the destiny of the soul.  
It is needless to enquire into the causes that have led so many people, to  believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures. In my opinion, they were and  are mistaken, and the mistake has hindered, in countless ways, the  civilization of man. The Bible has been the fortress and defence of nearly  every crime. No civilized country could re-enact its laws, and in many  respects its moral code is abhorrent to every good and tender man. It is  admitted that many of its precepts are pure, that many of its laws are  wise and just, and that many of its statements are absolutely true.  
Without desiring to hurt the feelings of anybody, I propose to give a few  reasons for thinking that a few passages, at least, in the Old  Testament are the product of a barbarous people, In all civilized  countries it is not only admitted, but it is passionately asserted, that  slavery is and always was a hideous crime; that a war of conquest is  simply murder; that polygamy is the enslavement of woman, the degradation  of man, and the destruction of home; that nothing is more infamous than  the slaughter of decrepit men, of helpless women, and of prattling babes;  that captured maidens should not be given to soldiers; that wives should  not be stoned to death on account of their religious opinions, and that  the death penalty ought not to be inflicted for a violation of the Sabbath.  We know that there was a time, in the history of almost every nation, when  slavery, polygamy, and wars of extermination were regarded as divine  institutions; when women were looked upon as beasts of burden, and when,  among some people, it was considered the duty of the husband to murder the  wife for differing with him on the subject of religion. Nations that  entertain these views to-day are regarded as savage, and, probably, with  the exception of the South Sea Islanders, the Feejees, some  citizens of Delaware, and a few tribes in Central Africa, no  human beings can be found degraded enough to agree upon these subjects  with the Jehovah of the ancient Jews. The only evidence we  have, or can have, that a nation has ceased to be savage is the fact that  it has abandoned these doctrines. To every one, except the theologian, it  is perfectly easy to account for the mistakes, atrocities, and crimes of  the past, by saying that civilization is a slow and painful growth; that  the moral perceptions are cultivated through ages of tyranny, of want, of  crime, and of heroism; that it requires centuries for man to put out the  eyes of self and hold in lofty and in equal poise the scales of justice;  that conscience is born of suffering; that mercy is the child of the  imagination—-of the power to put oneself in the sufferer's place,  and that man advances only as he becomes acquainted with his surroundings,  with the mutual obligations of life, and learns to take advantage of the  forces of nature.  
But the believer in the inspiration of the Bible is compelled to declare  that there was a time when slavery was right—when men could buy, and  women could sell, their babes. He is compelled to insist that there was a  time when polygamy was the highest form of virtue; when wars of  extermination were waged with the sword of mercy; when religious  toleration was a crime, and when death was the just penalty for having  expressed an honest thought. He must maintain that Jehovah is just as bad  now as he was four thousand years ago, or that he was just as good then as  he is now, but that human conditions have so changed that slavery,  polygamy, religious persecutions, and wars of conquest are now perfectly  devilish. Once they were right—once they were commanded by God  himself; now, they are prohibited. There has been such a change in the  conditions of man that, at the present time, the Devil is in favour of  slavery, polygamy, religious persecution, and wars of conquest. That is to  say, the Devil entertains the same opinion to-day that Jehovah held four  thousand years ago, but in the meantime Jehovah has remained exactly the  same—changeless and incapable of change.  
We find that other nations beside the Jews had similar laws and ideas;  that they believed in and practised slavery and polygamy, murdered women  and children, and exterminated their neighbours to the extent of their  power. It is not claimed that they received a revelation. It is admitted  that they had no knowledge of the true God. And yet, by a strange  coincidence, they practised the same crimes, of their own motion, that the  Jews did by the command of Jehovah. From this it would seem that man can  do wrong without a special revelation. It will hardly be claimed, at this  day, that the passages in the Bible upholding slavery, polygamy, war, and  religious persecution are evidences of the inspiration of that book.  Suppose that there had been nothing in the Old Testament upholding these  crimes, would any modern Christian suspect that it was not inspired, on  account of the omission? Suppose that there had been nothing in the Old  Testament but laws in favour of these crimes, would any intelligent  Christian now contend that it was the work of the true God? If the Devil  had inspired a book, will some believer in the doctrine of inspiration  tell us in what respect, on the subjects of slavery, polygamy, war, and  liberty, it would have differed from some parts of the Old Testament?  Suppose that we should now discover a Hindu book of equal antiquity with  the Old Testament, containing a defence of slavery, polygamy, wars of  extermination, and religious persecution, would we regard it as evidence  that the writers were inspired by an infinitely wise and merciful God? As  most other nations at that time practised these crimes, and as the Jews  would have practised them all, even if left to themselves, one can hardly  see the necessity of any inspired commands upon these subjects. Is there a  believer in the Bible who does not wish that God, amid the thunders and  lightnings of Sinai, had distinctly said to Moses that man should not own  his fellow-man; that women should not sell their babes; that men should be  allowed to think and investigate for themselves, and that the sword should  never be unsheathed to shed the blood of honest men? Is there a believer  in the world, who would not be delighted to find that every one of these  infamous passages are interpolations, and that the skirts of God were  never reddened by the blood of maiden, wife, or babe? Is there a believer  who does not regret that God commanded a husband to stone his wife to  death for suggesting the worship of the sun or moon? Surely, the light of  experience is enough to tell us that slavery is wrong, that polygamy is  infamous, and that murder is not a virtue. No one will now contend that it  was worth God's while to impart the information to Moses or to Joshua, or  to anybody else, that the Jewish people might purchase slaves of the  heathen, or that it was their duty to exterminate the natives of the Holy  Land. The deists have contended that the Old Testament is too cruel and  barbarous to be the work of a wise and loving God, To this, the  theologians have replied, that nature is just as cruel; that the  earthquake, the volcano, the pestilence and storm, are just as savage as  the Jewish God; and to my mind this is a perfect answer.  
Suppose that we knew that after "inspired" men had finished the Bible, the  Devil got possession of it, and wrote a few passages; what part of the  sacred Scriptures would Chris-tians now pick out as being probably his  work? Which of the following passages would naturally be selected as  having been written by the Devil—"Love thy neighbour as thyself,"  or, "Kill all the males among the little ones, and kill every woman; but  all the women children keep alive for yourselves"?  
It may be that the best way to illustrate what I have said of the Old  Testament is to compare some of the supposed teachings of Jehovah with  those of persons who never read an "inspired" line, and who lived and died  without having received the light of revelation. Nothing can be more  suggestive than a comparison of the ideas of Jehovah—the inspired  words of the one claimed to be the infinite God, as recorded in the Bible—with  those that have been expressed by men who, all admit, received no help  from heaven.  
In all ages of which any record has been preserved, there have been those  who gave their ideas of justice, charity, liberty, love, and law. Now, if  the Bible is really the work of God, it should contain the grandest and  sublimest truths. It should, in all respects, excel the works of man.  Within that book should be found the best and loftiest definitions of  justice; the truest conceptions of human liberty; the clearest outlines of  duty; the tenderest, the highest, and the noblest thoughts,—not that  the human mind has produced, but that the human mind is capable of  receiving. Upon every page should be found the luminous evidence of its  divine origin. Unless it contains grander and more wonderful things than  man has written, we are not only justified in saying, but we are compelled  to say, that it was written by no being superior to man. It may be said  that it is unfair to call attention to certain bad things in the Bible,  while the good are not so much as mentioned. To this it may be replied  that a divine being would not put bad things in a book. Certainly a being  of infinite intelligence, power, and goodness could never fall below the  ideal of "depraved and barbarous" man. It will not do, after we find that  the Bible upholds what we now call crimes, to say that it is not verbally  inspired. If the words are not inspired, what is? It may be said that the  thoughts are inspired. But this would include only the thoughts expressed  without words If ideas are inspired they must be contained in and  expressed only by inspired words; that is, to say, the arrangement of the  words, with relation, to each other, must have been inspired For the  purpose of this perfect; arrangement, the writers, according to the  Christian world, were inspired. Were some sculptor inspired, of God to  make a statue perfect in its every part, we would not say that the marble  was inspired, but the statue—the relation of part to part, the  married; harmony of form and function. The language, the words, take the  place of the marble, and it is the arrangement of these words that  Christians claim to be inspired. If there is one uninspired word,—that  is, one word in the wrong place, or a word that ought not to be there,—to  that extent the Bible is an uninspired book. The moment it is admitted  that some words are not, in their arrangement as to other words, inspired,  then, unless with absolute certainty these words can be pointed out, a  doubt is cast on all the words the book contains. If it was worth God's  while to make a revelation to man at all, it was certainly worth his while  to see to it that it was correctly made. He would not have allowed the  ideas and mistakes of pretended prophets and designing priests to become  so mingled with the original text that it is impossible to tell where he  ceased and where the priests and prophets began. Neither will it do to say  that God adapted his revelation to the prejudices of mankind. Of course it  was necessary for an infinite being to adapt his revelation to the  intellectual capacity of man; but why should God confirm a barbarian in  his prejudices? Why should he fortify a heathen in his crimes? If a  revelation is of any importance whatever, it is to eradicate prejudices  from the human mind. It should be a lever with which to raise the human  race. Theologians have exhausted their ingenuity in finding excuses for  God. It seems to me that they would be better employed in finding excuses  for men. They tell us that the Jews were so cruel and ignorant that God  was compelled to justify, or nearly to justify, many of their crimes, in  order to have any influence with them whatever. They tell us that if he  had declared slavery and polygamy to be criminal, the Jews would have  refused to receive the ten commandments. They insist that, under the  circumstances, God did the best he could; that his real intention was to  lead them along slowly, step by step, so that, in a few hundred years,  they would be induced to admit that it was hardly fair to steal a babe  from its mother's breast. It has always seemed reasonable that an infinite  God ought to have been able to make man grand enough to know, even without  a Special revelation, that it is not altogether right to steal the labour,  or the wife, or the child, of another. When the whole question is  thoroughly examined, the world will find that Jehovah had the prejudices,  the hatreds and the superstitions of his day.  
If there is anything of value, it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the  soul, the sunshine of life, Without it the world is a prison and the  universe an infinite dungeon.  
If the Bible is really inspired Jehovah commanded the Jewish people to buy  the children of the strangers that sojourned among them, and ordered that  the children thus bought should be an inheritance for the children of the  Jews, and that they should be bondmen and bondwomen forever. Yet  Epictetus, a man to whom no revelation was ever made, a man whose soul  followed only the light of nature, and who had never heard of the Jewish  God, was great enough to say: "Will you not remember that your servants  are by nature your brothers, the children of God? In saying that you have  bought them, you look down on the earth, and into the pit, on the wretched  law of men long since dead, but you see not the laws of the gods."  
We find that Jehovah, speaking to his chosen people, assured them that  their bondmen and their bondmaids must be﹃of the heathen that were round  about them.﹄"Of them," said Jehovah, "shall ye buy bondman and bondmaid."  And yet Cicero, a pagan, Cicero, who had never been enlightened by reading  the Old Testament, had the moral grandeur to declare: "They who say that  we should love our fellow-citizens, but not foreigners, destroy the  universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would  perish forever."  
If the Bible is inspired, Jehovah God of all worlds, actually said:﹃And  if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die-under his  hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he continue a day  or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money.﹄And yet Zeno,  founder of the Stoics, centuries before Christ was born, insisted that no  man could be the owner of another, and that the title was bad, whether the  slave had become so by conquest, or by purchase. Jehovah ordered a Jewish  general to make war, and gave, among others, this command:﹃When the Lord  thy God shall drive them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly  destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto  them.﹄And yet Epictetus whom we have already quoted, gave this marvellous  rule for the guidance of human conduct: "Live with thy inferiors as thou  wouldst have thy superiors live with thee."  
Is it possible, after all, that a being of infinite goodness and wisdom  said:﹃I will heap mischief upon them; I will send my arrows upon them;  they shall be burned with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with  bitter destruction. I will send the tooth of beasts among them, with the  poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within,  shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling, also, with  the man of grey hairs;﹄while Seneca, an uninspired Roman, said: "The wise  man will not pardon any crime that ought to be punished, but he will  accomplish, in a nobler way, all that is sought in pardoning. He will  spare some and watch over some, because of their youth, and others on  account of their ignorance. His clemency will not fall short of justice,  but will fulfil it perfectly."  
Can we believe that God ever said of any one:﹃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 hath and let the stranger  spoil his labour; let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let  there be any to favour his fatherless children.﹄If he ever said these  words, surely he had never heard this line, this strain of music, from the  Hindu: "Sweet is the lute to those who have not heard the prattle of their  own children."  
Jehovah, "from the clouds and darkness of Sinai" said to the Jews:﹃Thou  shalt have no other gods before me.... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to  them nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting  the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth  generation of them that hate me.﹄Contrast these with the words put by the  Hindu in the mouth of Brahma: "I am the same to all mankind. They who  honestly serve other gods, involuntarily worship me. I am he who partaketh  of all worship, and I am the reward of all worshippers."  
Compare these passages. The first, a dungeon where crawl the things begot  of jealous slime; the other, great as the domed firmament inlaid with  suns.  






II.  


WAIVING the contradictory statements in the various books of the New  Testament; leaving out of the question the history of the manuscripts;  saying nothing about the errors in translation and the interpolations made  by the fathers; and admitting, for the time being, that the books were all  written at the times claimed, and by the persons whose names they bear,  the questions of inspiration, probability, and absurdity still remain.  
As a rule, where several persons testify to the same transaction, while  agreeing in the main points, they will disagree upon many minor things,  and such disagreement upon minor matters is generally considered as  evidence that the witnesses have not agreed among themselves upon the  story they should tell. These differences in statement we account for from  the facts that all did not see alike, that all did not have the same  opportunity for seeing, and that all had not equally good memories. But  when we claim that the witnesses were inspired, we must admit that he who  inspired them did know exactly what occurred, and consequently there  should be no contradiction, even in the minutest detail. The accounts  should be not only substantially, but they should be actually, the same.  It is impossible to account for any differences, or any contradictions,  except from the weaknesses of human nature, and these weaknesses cannot be  predicated of divine wisdom. Why should there be more than one correct  account of anything? Why were four gospels necessary? One inspired record  of all that happened ought to be enough.  
One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have been  commanded by God, but all the cruelties recounted in the Old Testament  ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the portal of the  tomb. He never threatened to avenge himself upon the dead; and not one  word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse of Malachi,  contains the slightest intimation that God will punish in another world.  It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the frightful doctrine  of eternal pain. It was the teacher of universal benevolence who rent the  veil between time and eternity, and fixed the horrified gaze of man on the  lurid gulfs of hell. Within the breast of non-resistance was coiled the  worm that never dies.  
One great objection to the New Testament is that it bases salvation upon  belief. This, at least, is true of the Gospel according to John, and of  many of the epistles. I admit that Matthew never heard of the Atonement,  and died utterly ignorant of the scheme of salvation. I also admit that  Mark never dreamed that it was necessary for a man to be born again; that  he knew nothing of the mysterious doctrine of Regeneration, and that he  never even suspected that it was necessary to believe anything. In the  sixteenth chapter of Mark, we are told that "He that believeth and is  baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned"; but  this passage has been shown to be an interpolation, and, consequently, not  a solitary word is found in the Gospel according to Mark upon the subject  of salvation by faith. The same is also true of the Gospel of Luke. It  says not one word as to the necessity of believing on Jesus Christy not  one word as to the Atonement, not one word upon the scheme of salvation,  and not the slightest hint that it is necessary to believe anything here  in order to be happy hereafter.  
And I here take occasion to say, that with most of the teachings of the  Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke I most heartily agree. The miraculous  parts must, of course, be thrown aside. I admit that the necessity of  Belief, the Atonement, and the scheme of salvation are all set forth in  the Gospel of John,—a Gospel, in my opinion, not written until long  after the others.  
According to the prevailing Christian belief, the Christian religion rests  upon the doctrine of the Atonement. If this doctrine is without  foundation, if it is repugnant to justice and mercy, the fabric falls. We  are told that the first man committed a crime for which all his posterity  are responsible,—in other words, that we are accountable, and can be  justly punished for a sin we never in fact committed. This absurdity was  the father of another, namely, that a man can be rewarded for a good  action done by another. God, according to the modern theologians, made a  law, with the penalty of eternal death for its infraction. All men, they  say, have broken that law. In the economy of heaven, this law had to be  vindicated. This could be done by damning the whole human race. Through  what is known as the Atonement, the salvation of a few was made possible.  They insist that the law—whatever that is—demanded the extreme  penalty, that justice called for its victims, and that even mercy ceased  to plead. Under these circumstances God, by allowing the innocent to  suffer, satisfactorily settled with the law, and allowed a few of the  guilty to escape. The law was satisfied with this arrangement. To carry  out this scheme, God was born as a babe into this world.﹃He grew in  stature and increased in knowledge.﹄At the age of thirty-three, after  having lived a life filled with kindness, charity, and nobility, after  having practised every virtue, he was sacrificed as an atonement for man.  It is claimed that he actually took our place, and bore our sins and our  guilt; that in this way the justice of God was satisfied, and that the  blood of Christ was an atonement, an expiation, for the sins of all who  might believe on him.  
Under the Mosaic dispensation, there was no remission of sin except  through the shedding of blood. If a man committed certain sins, he must  bring to the priest a lamb, a bullock, a goat, or a pair of turtle-doves.  The priest would lay his hands upon the animal, and the sin of the man  would be transferred. Then the animal would be killed in the place of the  real sinner, and the blood thus shed and sprinkled upon the altar would be  an atonement. In this way Jehovah was satisfied. The greater the crime,  the greater the sacrifice—the more blood, the greater the atonement.  There was always a certain ratio between the value of the animal and the  enormity of the sin. The most minute directions were given about the  killing of these animals, and about the sprinkling of their blood. Every  priest became a butcher, and every sanctuary a slaughter-house. Nothing  could be more utterly shocking to a refined and loving soul. Nothing could  have been better calculated to harden the heart than this continual  shedding of innocent blood. This terrible system is supposed to have  culminated in the sacrifice of Christ. His blood took the place of all  other. It is necessary to shed no more. The law at last is satisfied,  satiated, surfeited. The idea that God wants blood is at the bottom of the  Atonement, and rests upon the most fearful savagery. How can sin be  transferred from men to animals, and how can the shedding of the blood of  animals atone for the sins of men?  
The Church says that the sinner is in debt to God, and that the obligation  is discharged by the Saviour. The best that can possibly be said of such a  transaction is, that the debt is transferred, not paid. The truth is, that  a sinner is in debt to the person he has injured. If a man injures his  neighbour, it is not enough for him to get the forgiveness of God, but he  must have the forgiveness of his neighbour. If a man puts his hand in the  fire and God forgives him, his hand will smart exactly the same. You must,  after all, reap what you sow. No god can give you wheat when you sow  tares, and no devil can give you tares when you sow wheat.  
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments—there are  consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force,  its heroism of benevolence.  
To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to  make the suffering of the innocent a justification for the criminal? Why  should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? Does not the  willingness show that he is utterly unworthy of the sacrifice? Certainly,  no man would be fit for heaven who would consent that an innocent person  should suffer for his sin. What would we think of a man who would allow  another to die for a crime that he himself had committed? What would we  think of a law that allowed the innocent to take the place of the guilty?  Is it possible to vindicate a just law by inflicting punishment on the  innocent? Would not that be a second violation instead of a vindication?  
If there was no general Atonement until the crucifixion of Christ, what  became of the countless millions who died before that time? And it must be  remembered that the blood shed by the Jews was not for other nations.  Jehovah hated foreigners. The Gentiles were left without forgiveness. What  has become of the millions who have died since, without having heard of  the Atonement? What becomes of those who have heard but have not believed?  It seems to me that the doctrine of the Atonement is absurd, unjust, and  immoral. Can a law be satisfied by the execution of the wrong person? When  a man commits a crime, the laws demands his punishment, not that of a  substitute; and there can be no law, human or divine, that can be  satisfied by the punishment of a substitute. Can there be a Jaw that  demands that the guilty be rewarded? And yet, to reward the guilty is far  nearer justice than to punish the innocent.  
According to the orthodox theology, there would have been no heaven had no  Atonement been made. All the children of men would have been cast into  hell forever. The old men bowed with grief, the smiling mothers, the sweet  babes, the loving maidens, the brave, the tender, and the just, would have  been given over to eternal pain. Man, it is claimed, can make no Atonement  for himself. If he commits one sin, and with that exception lives a life  of perfect virtue, still that one sin would remain unexpiated, unatoned,  and for that one sin he would be forever lost To be saved by the goodness  of another, to be a redeemed debtor forever, has in it something repugnant  to manhood.  
We must also remember that Jehovah took special charge of the Jewish  people; and we have always been taught that he did so for the purpose of  civilizing them. If he had succeeded in civilizing the Jews, he would have  made the damnation of the entire human race a certainty; because, if the  Jews had been a civilized people when Christ appeared,—a people  whose hearts had not been hardened by the laws and teachings of Jehovah,—they  would not have crucified him, and, as a consequence, the world would have  been lost. If the Jews had believed in religious freedom,—in the  right of thought and speech,—not a human soul could ever have been  saved. If, when Christ was on his way to Calvary\ some brave, heroic soul  had rescued him from the holy mob, he would not only have been eternally  damned for his pains, but would have rendered impossible the salvation of  any human being; and, except for the crucifixion of her son, the Virgin  Mary, if the church is right, would be to-day among the lost.  
In countless ways the Christian world has endeavoured, for nearly two  thousand years, to explain the Atonement, and every effort has ended in an  admission that it cannot be understood, and a declaration that it must be  believed. Is it not immoral to teach that man can sin, that he can harden  his heart and pollute his soul, and that, by repenting and believing  something that he does not comprehend, he can avoid the consequences of  his crimes? Has the promise and hope of forgiveness ever prevented the  commission of a sin? Should men be taught that sin gives happiness here;  that they ought to bear the evils of a virtuous life in this world for the  sake of joy in the next; that they can repent between the last sin and the  last breath; that after repentance every stain of the soul is washed away  by the innocent blood of another; that the serpent of regret: will not  hiss in the ear of memory; that the saved will not even pity the victims  of their own crimes; that the goodness of another can be transferred to  them; and that sins forgiven cease to affect the unhappy wretches sinned  against?  
Another objection is that a certain belief is necessary to save the soul  It is often asserted that to believe is the only safe way. If you wish to  be safe, be honest. Nothing can be safer than that. No matter what his  belief may be, no man, even in the hour of death, can regret having been  honest. It never can be necessary to throw away your reason to save your  soul. A soul without reason is scarcely worth saving. There is no more  degrading doctrine than that of mental non-resistance. The soul has a  right to defend its castle—the brain, and he who waives that right  becomes a serf and slave. Neither can I admit that a man, by doing me an  injury, can place me under obligation to do him a service. To render  benefits for injuries is to ignore all distinctions between actions. He  who treats his friends and enemies alike has neither love nor justice. The  idea of non-resistance never occurred to a man with power to protect  himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born when resistance was  impossible. To allow a crime to be committed when you can prevent it, is  next to committing the crime yourself. And yet, under the banner of  non-resistance, the Church has shed the blood of millions, and in the  folds of her sacred Vestments have gleamed the daggers of assassination.  With her cunning hands she wove the purple for hypocrisy, and placed the  crown upon the brow of crime. For a thousand years larceny held the scales  of justice, while beggars scorned the princely sons of toil, and ignorant  fear denounced the liberty of thought.  
If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him, like a  panorama, moved the history yet to be. He knew exactly how his words would  be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies would be  committed in his name. He knew that the fires of persecution would climb  around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that brave men would  languish in dungeons, in darkness, filled with pain; that the Church would  use instruments of torture, that his followers would appeal to whip and  chain. He must have seen the horizon of the future red with the flames of  the Auto-da-Fe. He knew all the creeds that would spring like poison fungi  from every text. He saw the sects waging war against each other. He saw  thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building dungeons for their  fellow-men. He saw them using instruments of pain. He heard the groans,  saw the faces white with agony, the tears, the blood—heard the  shrieks and sobs of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that  commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the  light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of  teachings attributed to him. He saw all the interpolations and falsehoods  that hypocrisy would write and tell. He knew that above these fields of  death, these dungeons, these burnings, for a thousand years would float  the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that in his name his followers  would trade in human flesh, that cradles would be robbed, and women's  breasts unbabed for gold, and yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he  fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the  world, that man should not persecute, for opinion's sake, his fellow-man?  Why did he not cry, You shall not persecute in my name; you shall not burn  and torment those who differ from you in creed? Why did he not plainly  say, I am the Son of God? Why did he not explain the doctrine of the  Trinity? Why did he not tell the manner of baptism that was pleasing to  him? Why did he not say something positive, definite, and satisfactory  about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven  to the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he go dumbly to his death,  leaving the world to misery and to doubt?  
He came, they tell us, to make a revelation, and what did he reveal? "Love  thy neighbour as thyself"? That was in the Old Testament, "Love God with  all thy heart"? That was in the Old Testament, "Return good for evil "?  That was said by Buddha seven hundred years before he was born, "Do  unto others as ye would that they should do unto you"? This was the  doctrine of Laotse. Did he come to give a rule of action? Zoroaster  had done this, long before:﹃Whenever thou art in doubt as to whether an  action is good or bad, abstain from it.﹄Did he come to teach us of  another world? The immortality of the soul had been taught by Hindus,  Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans hundreds of years before he was born.  Long before, the world had been told by Socrates that:﹃One who is  injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right  to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil  to any man, however much we may have suffered from him.﹄And Cicero  had said: "Let us not listen to those who think that we ought to be angry  with our enemies and who believe this to be great and manly: nothing is  more praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as  clemency and readiness to forgive."  
Is there anything nearer perfect than this from Confucius: "For  benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any  admixture of revenge"?  
The dogma of eternal punishment rests upon passages in the New  Testament, This infamous belief subverts every idea of justice. Around  the angel of immortality the Church has coiled this serpent. A finite  being can neither commit an infinite sin, nor a sin against the infinite.  A being of infinite goodness and wisdom has no right, according to the  human standard of justice, to create any being destined to suffer eternal  pain. A being of infinite wisdom would not create a failure, and surely a  man destined to everlasting agony is not a success.  
How long, according to the universal benevolence of the New Testament, can  a man be reasonably punished in the next world for failing to believe  something unreasonable in this? Can it be possible that any punishment can  endure forever? Suppose that every flake of snow that ever fell was a  figure nine, and that the first flake was multiplied by the second, and  that product by the third, and so on to the last flake. And then suppose  that this total should be multiplied by every drop of rain that ever fell,  calling each drop a figure nine; and that total by each blade of grass  that ever helped to weave a carpet for the earth, calling each blade a  figure nine, and that again by every grain of sand on every shore, so that  the grand total would make a line of nines so long that it would require  millions upon millions of years for light, travelling at the rate of one  hundred and eighty-five thousand miles per second, to reach the end. And  suppose, further, that each unit in this almost infinite total stood for  billions of ages—still that vast and almost endless time, measured  by all the years beyond, is as one flake, one drop, one leaf, one blade,  one grain, compared with all the flakes, and drops, and leaves, and  blades, and grains.  
Upon love's breast the Church has placed the eternal asp. And yet, in the  same book in which is taught this most infamous of doctrines, we are  assured that "The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all  his works."  
SO FAR as we know, man is the author of all books. If a book had been  found on the earth by the first man, he might have regarded it as the work  of God; but as men were here a good while before any books were found, and  as man has produced a great many books, the probability is that the Bible  is no exception.  
Most nations, at the time the Old Testament was written, believed in  slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution; and  it is not wonderful that the book contained nothing contrary to such  belief. The fact that it was in exact accord with the morality of its time  proves that it was not the product of any being superior to man.﹃The  inspired writers﹄upheld or established slavery, countenanced polygamy,  commanded wars of extermination, and ordered the slaughter of women and  babes. In these respects they were precisely like the uninspired savages  by whom they were surrounded. They also taught and commanded religious  persecution as a duty, and visited the most trivial offences with the  punishment of death. In these particulars they were in exact accord with  their barbarian neighbours. They were utterly ignorant of geology and  astronomy, and knew no more of what had happened than of what would  happen; and, so far as accuracy is concerned, their history and prophecy  were about equal; in other words, they were just as ignorant as those who  lived and died in Nature's night.  
Does any Christian believe that if God were to write a book now, he would  uphold the crimes commanded in the Old Testament? Has, Jehovah improved?  Has infinite mercy become more merciful? Has infinite wisdom  intellectually advanced? Will any one claim that the passages upholding  slavery have liberated mankind; that we are indebted for our modern homes  to the texts that made polygamy a virtue; or that religious liberty found  its soil, its light, and rain, in the infamous verse wherein the husband  is commanded to stone to death the wife for worshipping an unknown God?  
The usual answer to these objection is that no country has ever been  civilized without the Bible.  
The Jews were the only people to whom Jehovah made his will directly  known,—the only people who had the Old Testament. Other nations were  utterly neglected by their Creator. Yet, such was the effect of the Old  Testament on the Jews, that they crucified a kind, loving, and perfectly  innocent man. They could not have done much worse without a Bible. In the  crucifixion of Christ, they followed the teachings of his Father. If, as  it is now alleged by the theologians, no nation can be civilized without a  Bible, certainly God must have known the fact six thousand years ago, as  well as the theologians know it now. Why did he not furnish every nation  with a Bible?  
As to the Old Testament, I insist that all the bad passages were written  by men; that those passages were not inspired. I insist that a being of  infinite goodness never commanded man to enslave his fellow-man, never  told a mother to sell her babe, never established polygamy, never ordered  one nation to exterminate another, and never told a husband to kill his  wife because she suggested the worshipping of some other God.  
I also insist that the Old Testament would be a much better book with all  of these passages left out; and, whatever may be said of the rest, the  passages to which attention has been drawn can with vastly more propriety  be attributed to a Devil than to a God.  
Take from the New Testament all passages upholding the idea that belief is  necessary to salvation; that Christ was offered as an atonement for the  sins of the world; that the punishment of the human soul will go on  forever; that heaven is the reward of faith, and hell the penalty of  honest investigation; take from it all miraculous stories,—and I  admit that all the good passages are true. If they are true, it makes no  difference whether they are Inspired or not. Inspiration is only necessary  to give authority to that which is repugnant to human reason.  
Only that which never happened needs to be substantiated by miracles. The  universe is natural.  
The Church must cease to insist that the passages upholding the  institutions of savage men were inspired of God, The dogma of the  Atonement must be abandoned. Good deeds must take the place of faith. The  savagery of eternal punishment must be renounced. Credulity is not a  virtue, and investigation is not a crime. Miracles are the children of  mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, unbroken,  sublime, and eternal procession of causes and effects.  
Reason must be the final arbiter, "Inspired" books attested by miracles  cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. A religion that does not command  the respect of the greatest minds will, in a little while, excite the  mockery of all. Every civilized man believes in the liberty of thought. Is  it possible that God is intolerant? Is an act infamous in man one of the  virtues of the Deity? Could there be progress in heaven without  intellectual liberty? Is the freedom of the future to exist only in  perdition? Is it not, after all, barely possible that a man acting like  Christ can be saved? Is a man to be eternally rewarded for believing  according to evidence, with out evidence, or against evidence? Are we to  be saved because we are good, or because another was virtuous? Is  credulity to be winged and crowned, while honest doubt is chained ana  damned?  
Do not misunderstand me. My position is that the cruel passages in the Old  Testament are not inspired; that slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination,  and religious persecution, always have been, are, and forever will be,  abhorred and cursed by the honest, the virtuous, and the loving; that the  innocent cannot justly suffer for the guilty, and that vicarious vice and  vicarious virtue are equally absurd; that eternal punishment is eternal  revenge; that only the natural can happen; that miracles prove the  dishonesty of the few and the credulity of the many; and that, according  to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, salvation does not depend upon belief, nor the  Atonement, nor a "second birth," but that these gospel are in exact  harmony with the declaration of the great Persian: "Taking the first  footstep with the good thought, the second with the good word, and the  third with the good deed, I entered paradise."  
The dogmas of the past no longer reach the level of the highest thought,  nor satisfy the hunger of the heart. While dusty faiths, embalmed and  sepulchered in ancient texts, remain the same, the sympathies of men  enlarge; the brain no longer kills its young; the happy lips give liberty  to honest thoughts; the mental firmament expands and lifts; the broken  clouds drift by; the hideous dreams, the foul, misshapen children of the  monstrous night, dissolve and fade.  
 












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