DECAY OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY

Nature has no need of a Holy Ghost.—Lemuel K. Washburn.

All progress has been due to the Devil. He was the first investigator.—Ingersoll.

God takes care of the weed. Man must take care of the corn.

HERE is a great deal of exaggerated rhetoric employed in praising what is called "Christian Morality." I have examined with considerable care everything that may justly come within the meaning of this expression, and I am bound to say, out of respect for the truth, that such morality does not deserve praise and can not be praised by the honest lips of an honest person.

I am perfectly aware that I have made a statement which challenges the sincerity of the Christian pulpit, but every one knows that there is not a minister in Christendom whose practise agrees with his preaching.

While it is common to hear a clergyman in pious ecstasy exhaust the vocabulary of laudation in his praises of the beautiful morals of the "Sermon on the Mount," it is exceedingly rare to see one of these parsons sacrifice his commonsense to the nonsense of Jesus.

We are learning that the theological morality of the Christian faith is not the right kind of morality to make manhood and womanhood. The great weakness of Christian morality is this: It depends upon the Christian idea of Jesus, and when the world has outgrown the superstition about this person, all of his moral precepts will lose their value and their splendor.

Men and women of any intellectual penetration know that the New Testament story is founded upon unreliable tradition; that its heart is a myth.

Where men live independent of the foolish faith of the Gospels, there is a character of self-reliance which towers like a mountain-peak above the dead level of Christian endeavor. The person who accepts the Christian theology is no more in sympathy with the best thought of the age than is the man who wanders about the streets, begging his food and sleeping wherever he can, in harmony with the highest comforts of our civilization.

There is a nobler purpose in a train of cars carrying grain and produce across the continent than in a conference of clergymen trying to keep alive a theology which teaches that God was born of a Jewish maiden who lived and died in Palestine, and devising ways to make the people believe the ridiculous superstition.

Truth is born where men are allowed to think and speak their thoughts. Error can not be maintained where man is permitted to ask questions. The only way to preserve Christianity is to put it in a tin can and have it hermetically sealed.

We are getting a new examination of the universe as a basis for our philosophy. The telescope has afforded man visions far beyond the seventh heaven of the Apocalypse. The genesis of things is found to lie millions of years back of the Genesis of the Bible. The chaos out of which this world was made has been discovered to be a previous state of existence.

Science is laying the new foundation for our faith, and knowledge is building the new temple of the mind.

Men and women everywhere are stating their opinions, and the world recognizes that there is to be a religious controversy upon this earth which will shake to its base everything that is not true. Not one stone of falsehood will be left standing upon another. Every dogma of superstition must find a grave, and truth alone be reverenced by man.

The world has taken a step forward of Christianity, and in its march of advancement has left behind the Christian God, the Christian Savior, the Christian Bible, and the Christian Faith. But the world will not stop here. It must go further. The question which the human mind wants answered today is this: Is the decay of Christian theology to be followed by the decay of Christian morality?

I think that it is, and I also think that this morality is about as near dead now as it can be.

It is true that the author of this morality is painted in divine colors for human adoration Sunday after Sunday, and that his other-world ethics are inculcated by the pulpit; but beyond these attempts to give the peculiar moral teachings of Jesus the show of life, there is absolutely no sign of them in the world of man.

The morality of the Christian system is not designed for humanity in its present condition, nor does it possess the elements necessary to make man into the image of any higher virtue. It is, in fact, an unreal, unnatural morality which Jesus taught, and the notion that men and women do not practise it because it is too far above them, depends upon an estimate of this morality which we are not willing to allow.

I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point. I want to say that the general moral duties of man, as they have been taught for ages by teachers of every race and of every religion, are not Christian, and that Christian ethics are found in the code of moral duties taught by Jesus which are different from the recognized standard of morality adopted by mankind generally. Christian morals are Christian only wherein they differ from all other morals.

It is because they are peculiar to Christianity that they are Christian.

Because I do not believe in Christianity—in the Christian theology and in Christian morals—I do not wish it said that I do not believe in morality, for I do. I believe that man can be good and true and that he can do right, and I believe that he ought to do right.

I do not say that every one can reach the same moral altitude. I do not even say that every individual can be good and true. Some persons do not seem to be morally adjusted. I think, however, that we do not trespass beyond the domain of truth when we predicate the power of man to be moral.

The notion that man can not be good has been the apology of half the criminals of the world. It is the creed of all crime. If we affirm the idea of human depravity, we may as well erase our statutes, for, if man can not be good, it is the height of folly to expect him to be so.

The healthy faith of man is faith in man.

The theology which has been preached for the past few centuries is not calculated to make men moral. Those ministers who have shouted themselves hoarse for the salvation of the soul, and who have made no account of man's behavior in their scheme to save the race, are the ones who have rubbed humanity in the dirt and undermined the moral foundations of the world.

Every ethical principle that supports our social structure is independent of ecclesiastical relations, and it is not essential that we recognize any theology in order to comprehend the necessity of moral obedience.

There is no sympathy between right, truth and justice, and the "Apostles' Creed." We may go so far as to say that the attempt to establish a perpetual union between Christianity and morality would result in an absolute divorce of these two forces.

I wish to make it plain beyond a question that the Christian faith, in itself, is entirely distinct from all moral effort on the part of man.

To believe that Jesus was the Christ does not carry any obligation to do right; does not make it incumbent upon the believer to do a single moral action.

It is sufficient to establish our predication that not a single church in Christendom makes moral character the condition of membership, or good behavior the way to Heaven.

There is a code of Christian morals which has been taught, but never practised. The special duties which Jesus enjoined upon his followers have never been reduced to conduct. It is not too much to say that the moral precepts of Jesus, if carried into action, would cause social revolutions beyond precedent, and produce a state of existence compared with which anarchy would be government, and confusion would be order.

But, before we undertake to examine the Christian morals, let us shed a few tears of rejoicing upon the grave of Orthodox theology. We do not ask to have a coroner's jury decide what caused the death of this theology. We bless the cause, whatever it was. We only wish to feel assured that it is really, truly dead, and the fact that "not a single treatise written by a New England Puritan is a living and authoritative book" seems to prove it beyond a question. The persons who still preach this theology and profess to believe it are only "sitting up with the corpse."

While it is asserted that a wrong interpretation of this theology sent it out of the world, it is pretty evident that a right understanding of it inspires no wish to have it back. Much of the superstition in morals sprang from fear of God, which the Christian church has inculcated as the highest incentive to right doing.

The truth, broadly and frankly stated, is this: God is no longer the inspiration of morality. Fear of God does not check the actions of man today, nor is the attempt to make human and divine interests identical sufficient to insure obedience to moral laws. The ancient basis of morals is gone, and another and better one must be found to inspire a freer life, a fuller life, a better life, and a higher.

We who have rejected the Christian theology are looked upon as orphans. But, if I understand the position of freethinkers, the question of a supreme power is neither affirmed nor denied by those who wish to have no further business with the God of Orthodoxy.

We read that, "the fool hath said in his heart there is no God," but we prefer to say nothing about the matter. Theologies may come, and theologies may go, but humanity goes on forever, and so we do not deem it as important to worship the fleeting shadows of the universe which are cast upon the minds of men as it is to hold fast to those realities which make human existence a blessing and "a joy forever."

We are called "infidels" and denounced as "unbelievers" because we will not march in the ranks of hypocrisy, and dance to the music of Orthodoxy. We believe no statement which our reason can not approve; we accept no doctrine which is contrary to commonsense; we have confidence in human nature; we believe in truth, justice and love; we accept life as a blessing, and try to make it so; we believe in taking care of ourselves, in helping others and in being just and kind to all, and we say to the Christian Church, "If this be Infidelity, make the most of it."

It is suggested by some that if man's exact relation to the Deity were understood, the whole question of morals would be settled at once. But would it not be truer to say that if man's exact relation to his fellowmen were understood and respected, the highest individual welfare, no less than the general good, would dictate the morality which the world needs? And is not this the grand task for the human race, to rightly interpret the effect of human action upon the individual and the community, and to deduce from human experience the rules for human conduct?

I do not know that I owe to God any duty. I do know that I owe a duty to my neighbor. I plead total indifference to the demands of divine ethics, but I trust that I am not completely callous to the wants of my fellow-beings. I owe it to myself to be moral. I owe it to my race, to every man and woman that I meet in life, to be as honest, as true, as upright, as my nature will permit. I can comprehend and appreciate obligations to humanity, but moral indebtedness to the Deity I know nothing about.

The Christian morals are founded upon the assumption that the work of man here is to do something that he may escape punishment hereafter, and hence the morality of the Christian Church has had little reference to the concerns of the present life.

Christian morality is based upon the Christian faith that the human race is under the curse of God, and that, to evade the penalty pronounced upon him, man must perform certain duties—these duties being taught as paramount to all we owe to self, to family, to society, and to the world.

But an almost universal disbelief of the Christian dogmas prevails today, and, consequently, a new morality, with man's welfare for its supreme object, is fast supplanting the outworn and valueless performances of Christian duties.

The moral teaching of the New Testament may be the highest and purest of its kind of teaching, but it is not the kind which is needed today. It is a false morality, yea, a dead morality for the most part, which the Christian Church demands of men. The general conviction is that no salvation is needed by man, and that all the virtues advertised as requisite for such safety as the Church is prepared to secure, are spurious virtues.

Those actions which advance man along the way of general prosperity, which make it easier to live and get a living on the earth, which have their value determined by their respect for human beings, are what the world needs.

The generally acknowledged author of Christian morals offers no salient points for criticism, as he can not be regarded as a historical person whose career has been carefully followed and marked by the biographer. He is a mythological man, with a little less of the fabulous and a little more of the real than attaches to the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome.

The name of Jesus adorns an anatomy of words. It pictures a person, not of flesh and blood, but of faith and fancy. Jesus is a man of the imagination; but mythical as he is, certain men and women believe in him in their own way, and are not over-tolerant of those who are disposed to ask for the proofs of his life and works.

This person has left no more marks of his living upon the earth than have the birds the marks of their flight through the air. The New Testament is no more history than is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. We can not make any positive assertions in regard to the life and character of a man when we do not know who was his father, where or when he was born, with whom he lived, nor when he died. The only historical fact connected with Jesus which is not disputed is that Mary was his mother. This is a very important point in his history, but it is not sufficient to constitute a biography.

Notwithstanding the fact that the entire narrative of Jesus is without a single chronological date, and the vastly more significant fact that not a single incident connected with the career of Jesus is mentioned in contemporaneous history, we must perforce speak of him as a person whose life was watched and noted from his miraculous advent to his miraculous ascension, and look upon his disciples as so many Boswells ready to mirror to the world his every speech and act.

We must do this—Why? Because the world will not candidly and critically study the gospel-story.

For the present, then, we will speak of Jesus as a man, and accept him as the author of the moral code in the New Testament. But a word or two about the man. The Christian world sets him apart as the model of the race, as the masterpiece of Nature, as the utmost which earth can produce. Every man must here fetch his word of praise, and every word be a mountain to meet the demand of the Christian Church for reverence of Jesus.

I do not believe in the infallibility of any man, but I believe in the improvability of all men. Is man no longer heir to the virtues of life, that he must erect monuments of praise forever over the name of Jesus? I shall take the liberty to express my dissent from the common expressions of admiration for this man. I can not praise everything which he did, nor can I think that every word he uttered is a star of wisdom. He said some good things,but much of what he said is good for nothing. His theology will do for Sunday Schools, but it will not stand half a dozen questions by commonsense. His Hell is barbarous, his Heaven childish, and his ideas of humanity show but a superficial knowledge of human nature. His life can not be imitated with advantage to the race, and his notions of human existence are wholly inadequate to the complex, varied civilization of this age.

Let us see what he did. He paid no filial respect to his parents; he refused to acknowledge his mother and his brothers; he lived a roving, wandering life; he paid no heed to the laws of his country; he placed no value upon industry, and even went so far as to tell men and women that God would feed and clothe them; he helped himself to the property and possessions of other people without paying for them, and destroyed what belonged to others without offering an equivalent; he had no property, no home, not a place to lay his head; he hated the rulers, yet sought to establish a kingdom for himself; he failed to reach the throne he sought, and died upon the malefactor's cross.

Is this the man for the Twentieth Century to honor? Is this the man for men to follow in this age? Is this the man whose life all should strive to imitate?

The man who took the life of Jesus for a model would hate father and mother, brother and sister; he would have neither wife nor child; he would live from place to place; he would be a lawbreaker and an idler; he would live the life of a wanderer and die the death of a criminal.

Have I put a false color in this picture which I have painted? Have I misrepresented the life of Jesus? Read the four Gospels and see. I find this character sketched in the New Testament, and it is there called Jesus, and it is this character which we are adjured to imitate if we would be perfect.

To the man or woman who declares that the life of Jesus is the way to salvation, I have only this to say, "Why then do you not imitate it?"

Now, I wish to ask, "What kind of morals would such a man as we have sketched naturally teach?"

You will answer, "The morals he lived." At least, we find such morals taught in the New Testament.

My point here is: If the life of Jesus was an honest, faithful exponent of his moral teachings, then such a morality as he practised is not wanted today—and that such a morality is not wanted is shown by the fact that no one practises it.

I know that it is considered respectable and pious to profess great admiration for the doctrines taught by Jesus, and the world has paid them the outward compliment of profession, saying that the moral code of the New Testament was the despair of man; but it has never seriously set to work to reduce this code to practise, which proves that such profession is only a part of the universal accomplishment of fashionable hypocrisy.

Do not understand me as saying that there is no moral precept contained in the Gospels which is worthy of being practised. I make no such declaration, and wish no such construction put upon my words. What I desire to enforce is this: That the morality of Jesus sprang from a philosophy which has passed away, and therefore, that it is, for the greater part, obsolete and worthless. That Jesus shared the general belief of his age that the world was soon to be destroyed, is shown by his estimate of earthly things; and that a morality founded upon such a belief should survive and outlast the faith which inspired it reveals a condition of things that is not flattering to our intellectual perception or to our moral sense.

The morals of the New Testament are founded upon a theory of the universe which is found now only in creeds—those epitaphs of religion. The most superficial observation is sufficient to enable us to perceive that theology can no longer be the basis of morality, and that the authority of the New Testament can not be accepted on this question.

There is nothing more firmly impressed upon the mind of man than the fact of the stability of the universe, notwithstanding an occasional earthquake; and the value of earthly things has a higher moral significance consequent upon the assurance of material existence.

Morality must have a physical basis; that is, the moral code which man can practise to his safety and his honor must not contradict human nature. The defeat of the New Testament morals is assured by their antagonism to the nature of man. The morals of Jesus were designed to fit man for what he called the "Kingdom of Heaven," but the only morality which is worth the name is that which fits man for living his life on earth.

Jesus constantly urged men to the performance of moral duties that they might be rewarded by their "Father in Heaven." Such a motive for good behavior is offensive to the rational mind, and moral commandments which are enforced with a Heaven and a Hell do not spring from an opinion of human nature which deserves our respect.

The most comprehensive criticism which one can make upon the morals of the New Testament is, that they are not practicable. Is the character of Christians fashioned by the power and influence of the words which Jesus left in the world? This question should be pressed to an answer, and honesty would answer it in a way which would shake every church-building in the land and tear the mask from the face of every Christian worshiper on the globe.

Jesus taught that men and women were to love him more than father or mother, son or daughter. Imagine human beings loving a man whom they know nothing about, and consequently can care nothing about, and who has no more claim to their affections than has the ghost in Hamlet, better than they love parent or child! Such morality as this is not fit for a Hottentot.

If any command is implanted in our nature and is a part of the bone and fiber of our very being, it is to love beyond all else those who have borne us and cared for us through infancy and childhood, and those whose existence depends upon us, and to whom we stand pledged by the holiest ties of our beings, to watch over and protect, to care for and love, to the last days of our lives. It is love of parent and child which is alike the supreme obligation and the supreme benefaction of our humanity. No being has walked this earth who had the moral right to demand a greater love than is due to father and mother, son and daughter; and if Jesus claimed such affection, his claim is an impertinence which we are bound to treat with indignation and scorn.

For the Christian Church to make of the words of Jesus commands to the world is to deserve the severest condemnation. Jesus taught that men were not to make for themselves a home, not to cultivate those virtues which blossom into the family, and not to save the fruits of their toil to make old age with its tottering form and feeble limbs less liable to the hardships of the world, but he summed up all the duties of life in these words: "Sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow me."

To obey such teaching as this would overturn every monument of prosperity upon the earth, blight every feeling of happiness that gladdens the heart of man, and convert the busy, working, loving world into one vast army of tramps, following a king without a kingdom, a leader without a purpose, a commander with nothing to give those who followed his command.

Jesus taught that we were not to resist evil; that is, that if a thief stole our watch and chain, we were bound to run after him and give him our purse also; that if a man took away our coat, we should wrong him if we did not send him the balance of the suit; that if a man struck us on one side of the face, we were to invite him to strike us on the other side also; that if, as it were, the armies of some foreign powers were to invade our land, and burn and destroy our cities and towns, pillage our homes and murder our families, we were in duty bound to look upon them as benefactors and thank them for their work of destruction, and ask them to come and do it again.

Such moral teaching as this would make a nation of cowards and slaves.

It is our duty to punish thieves and robbers, not to reward them; to resist wrong and injustice, not to submit to them like cravens; to protect our country from foes, even though we are obliged to shed their blood and our own in so doing.

Is there a Christian on the globe who pays the least heed to a single one of the moral commands of Jesus? You all know there is not.

I need not tell the Christian Church that the morality taught by Jesus is decaying when every church is its coffin, and every minister its grave-digger.

If you wish to see how much respect for the moral teachings of Jesus one of his professed followers has, just steal his coat, and if he gives you his cloak also, as he is commanded to do by his Lord and Master, please publish his name in the daily papers—for the benefit of others who wish to get a cloak.

We find among the express commands of Jesus this advice: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." The most liberal translation of this counsel can not make it anything but poor advice. Every material blessing of mankind has come from the savings of human labor, and the value of laying up treasures upon earth is more evident than that of laying up treasures in Heaven, whatever this saying may mean. When every Christian tries as hard to be poor as he tries now to get rich, we shall think that he has some regard for the moral teachings of Jesus.

It must be apparent to all that what may be claimed as Christian morality is not only decaying, but that it ought to decay. There is no sense in it. Imagine a man telling people in the Twentieth Century to "take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," and endeavoring to prove that because the fowls of the air do not have to broil a beefsteak for their breakfast or make biscuit for tea, human beings will be fed whether they provide anything for their appetites or not.

Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father will feed us because we are better than the fowls of the air, and that he will clothe us because he clothes the grass of the field. Our earthly fathers seem to have done more in the way of providing food and clothing for us before we were able to take care of ourselves than any Heavenly Father. Others may put their trust in God for something to eat and drink and wear, if they wish to, but I prefer to give the matter a little thought myself.

Jesus concludes these admonitions by saying, "Take no thought for the morrow." This is bad counsel, and it shows the good sense of mankind that it has never been followed. The whole world lives in what one of our poets called, "The bright tomorrow of the mind."

We will refer to only one more of the peculiar moral injunctions of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, in the forty-fourth verse, we read, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

If we were to do as herein commanded, we should have an inverted morality which would place the crown of virtue upon the forehead of vice.

Let us see if the preacher of this doctrine practised it.

Did Jesus bless the Scribes and Pharisees when they refused to acknowledge his claim to be the Messiah? This is the blessing which he pronounced upon them: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" That is not a very sweet blessing!

And these men did not curse Jesus. They only did not agree with his opinions. Jesus, also, in his wrath against his enemies, calls them, in the seventeenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, "Ye fools and blind," forgetting, doubtless, that he had previously declared, when preaching on the Mount, "Whosoever shall say, 'Thou Fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire."

The moral teachings of Jesus were inspired by a false estimate of all earthly things. There is no doubt that Jesus believed the world was coming to an end in his generation. How to get into the Kingdom of Heaven was of more consequence than how to reform mankind, or improve the world, since the end of earthly things was near at hand. This appears to have been the thought of Jesus, and explains much of his language.

But today we do not believe that the earth has run its course, and that the end of all material things is near at hand. We are living without fear of failure on the part of the universe, and are giving our attention more to human wants than to divine commands.

Not fear of offending God, but fear of wronging man, is the highest basis of morals. We have reached a time when apologies are not respected, when repentance is looked upon as the mask of villainy, when the stature of life is most shorn of manliness by prancing in the garb of humility, when a brave facing of life's trials and demands counts for more than cowardly surrender in the name of God. In fact, we have come to say to the world of humanity, "Be moral, and you need not be religious." Work for man is coming to be a sufficient excuse for neglect of God.

But we want no cheap moral duties held up for man to perform. It is serious business to live this life of ours and live it well, and it is hard work to do it. Morality sets us as high a task as we are able to perform, and a higher task than has yet been performed by most of mankind. The effort of this age is to expose the sham of what is called holiness, and make sacred the surroundings of human beings. We must throw off the past, and stand upon that sunlit height where we can feel that "somehow life is bigger after all than any painted angel, could we see the man that is within us."

This is the moral duty of the world: to respect the man that is within us. We ought to rear on the earth a range of moral Alps that would stand and command the admiration of the world as long as eye could see and heart could feel. We need a rational hope and a burning purpose in this century, something noble to live for and the courage of nobility to work and win it.

The improvement of the world is the only object of life worthy of man. Do and say nothing that will not improve mankind. Were this simple admonition heeded, we should have the key to the kingdom of the only heaven that man needs in our own pocket.

It is time for the reign of commonsense to begin on earth; time for men to elevate morality above religion; and time for us to say, "Millions for the world, not a cent for the Church." The battle between Freedom and Christianity has begun, and I believe that when it ends Christianity will be buried beneath the ruins of its own dogmas, there to remain forever. It possesses no spirit that can rise again from its ashes and mount on wings of flame to a higher life. When superstition dies, it dies to the root.

The Christian minister can not arrest the march of liberty by crying, "Infidelity!" and threatening with everlasting cremation all those who refuse to heed his words.

But let there be no base understanding of freedom. The new John the Baptist must not be a cowboy, saying, "The kingdom of highwaymen is at hand." As a person when in perfect bodily health knows not from any intimation from the respective parts that he has a stomach, a brain, or a heart, so a person when living in perfect freedom is unconscious of law, of creed, of custom. The healthy man physically is the free man physically; the healthy man mentally is the free man mentally; the healthy man morally is the free man morally; liberty of the individual is health of the individual, and a free man means a man who is true and obedient to all natural laws.

There is a misunderstanding of freedom upon the one side, and a misrepresentation of it upon the other, that make it hazardous for one to employ the word. To connect this word with morality in the eyes of many is to confound the Madonna with Mary Magdalene. It is to start the ghost of Don Juan.

The conservatism of society has ever regarded liberty as the black flag of the moral marauder, the emblem of a piratical intention upon the casket of the world that contains the jewels of honor, justice, virtue and social order.

So persistently and malignantly has freedom been represented as a wrecker's light, kindled only to lure to destruction, that to represent it as worthy to be trusted is to arouse the spirit which pursued Voltaire to his grave with a lie, erected a shaft of calumny over the tomb of Paine, and which now, with the coward's weapon of slander, attacks the living who refuse to acknowledge that the voice of the Church is the voice of God.

But nevertheless we believe with Burns that:

Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit,

Its virtues a' can tell, man;

It raises man aboon the brute,

It maks him ken himsel', man;

Gif ance the peasant taste a bite,

He's greater than a lord, man,

And ni' the beggar shares a mite

Of a' he can afford, man.

And so we exclaim in the words of one of our own true poets:

Always in thine eyes, O Liberty!

Shines that high light whereby the world is saved,

And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.

You have all heard of the man who refused to open his eyes for a year, and who declared that during that time nothing could be seen on account of the darkness. But the endeavor to perpetuate old errors by keeping the eyes closed to the facts of science, the truths of philosophy, and the progress of the human race, has not been crowned with success. The further attempt to convert the world to what James Parton calls a "kitchen religion" is merely waste of power.

The preaching of Christianity is making "much ado about nothing." What we want is manhood and womanhood.

It is said by the Church that the man who lives for his family and brings all that he can win of what is fair and bright and glad to those he loves, may be a good man, but he is not a Christian, and therefore has no religion.

Give me then the man who is not a Christian, and who has no religion, for if the man who loves his wife and children, who gives to them the strength of his arm, the thought of his brain, the warmth of his heart, has not religion, the world is better off without it, for these are the highest and holiest things which man can do.

There is only one thing worth praying for: to be in the line of evolution.—Elbert Hubbard.

Jesus as Savior of the world is a theological creation, and not a historical character.

SO HERE THEN ENDETH THAT GREAT AND GOOD BOOK "I DON'T KNOW—DO YOU?" WRITTEN BY MARILLA M. RICKER, AND PRINTED AND BOUND FOR HER BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY AND STATE OF NEW YORK, MCMXVI.