THE MORAL BENEFITS OF INFIDELITY.
An additional argument to prove the Bible is not a moral necessity to teach the practical duties of life is the fact that that class of persons known as "infidels," who entirely reject the book as a guide or as a moral instructor on account of its very defective and contradictory system of morals, are admitted by leading orthodox journals and representative men in the nation to possess better moral characters and habits, and to lead better moral lives, than Bible believers. As a proof of this statement, we will here present the most wonderful and humiliating concessions of that leading religious journal of the nation, "The New-York Evangelist." On this subject it speaks thus: "To the shame of the Church it must be confessed that the foremost men in all our philanthropic movements, in the interpretation of the spirit of the age, in the practical application of genuine Christianity, in the reformation of abuses in high and in low places, in the vindication of the rights of man and in practically redressing his wrongs, in the moral and intellectual regeneration of the race, are the so-called infidels in our land. The Church has pusillanimously left not only the working oar, but the very reins of salutary reform, in the hands of men she denounces as inimical to Christianity, and who are doing with all their might, for humanity's sake, that which the Church ought to be doing for Christ's sake; and if they succeed, as succeed they will, in abolishing slavery, banishing rum, restraining licentiousness, reforming abuses, and elevating the masses, then must the recoil upon Christianity be disastrous in the extreme. Woe! woe! woe to Christianity when infidels, by force of nature or the tendencies of the age, get ahead of the Church in morals, and in the practical work of Christianity. In some instances they are already far in advance. In the vindication of truth, righteousness, and liberty, they are the pioneers beckoning to a sluggish Church to follow in the rear." To this we will add the testimony of another orthodox writer (the eminent Catherine Beecher) as to the superior practical morality of infidels as compared with that of Christians. She says, in her "Appeal to the People" (p. 319), "It has come to pass that the world has been improving in practical virtue, while the Church has been deteriorating. The writer, in her very extensive travels and intercourse with the religious world, has had unusual opportunity to notice how surely and how extensively this fact has been observed and acknowledged by the best class of clergymen and laymen." She says one of the most laborious Episcopal bishops of the Western States declares, that "the world is growing better, and the Church is growing worse." She next cites the testimony of an eminent lawyer and church-member who is carrying on an extensive financial business throughout the country, and who makes the remarkable statement, that "the better class of worldly men are more honorable and reliable in business than the majority of church-members." (Let the reader mark this statement.) And this declaration was concurred in by another eminent lawyer, banker, and church-member, who is doing a more extensive business in the North-western States than any other man. And he states that the most extensive business-man in Central New York has arrived at the same conclusion as the result of his observation. And the greatest business-man in Boston is also referred to, whose experience led him to this conclusion. And other business-men in different parts of the country testify to the same effect. We may, then, set it down as the universal testimony of business-men that infidels and outsiders are more honest, more reliable, more truthful, and more honorable than church-members.
What a fatal argument these facts furnish against the religion and morality of the Christian Bible! They indicate that the religion and morality of nature and science are superior.