WHAT I KNOW ABOUT SOME CHURCHES AND WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC
The ignorance of the masses insures abundant contributions to the clergy and to religion.—Ralph W. Chainey.
The mother who teaches her child to pray makes a mistake.
WHY I AM AN AGNOSTIC
HE Millerites—or Second Adventists, as they now call themselves—are the first sect that I remember. They are a people of remarkable vigor: they have been at work for seventy years to bring this world to an end, and although they have been wrong in their arithmetic all these years, they rub out the slate and begin again.
And they prove everything by the Bible, as all other denominations do. The "time" has been set at least twenty times since I can remember. I recollect having awful palpitations in the kneepans upon one of the eventful days, and crawling under the barn so as not to be in the way. They used to congregate on the height of land near my father's, "to go up," and one man climbed upon an old shed, and fell and broke his hip; he fainted, and they thought he was dead. As soon as he had revived a little, they asked him if he had any requests to make before he died. He replied, "I want you to work in 'durn fool' somewhere on my tombstone." He recovered, and lived many years, but he was cured of Millerism.
A large share of the students of the Second Advent doctrine came into this world, not only naked, but without any brains, nor any place suitable to put any; and the first business they do is to wonder about their souls and talk about being "born again." They never seem to realize that to be well born is much more essential than to be "born again." I never knew immortality to be secured at the second birth.
I attended one of their meetings this year, and asked one of the sisters for their creed. She said, "Our creed is the whole Bible, from the first book of Genesis to the last word of the last chapter of Revelations."
I thought of what a boy said when the Baptist Elder came and took tea at his home, and asked a "blessing."
The boy said: "Is that the way you ask a blessing? My father doesn't ask it that way."
"How does he ask it?"
"Oh, he sat down to the table the other evening, and looked it all over, and said, 'My God, what a supper!'"
And I thought, "My God, what a creed!"
I was tempted to ask the Millerite sister what she thought of the discrepancy between the first and the second chapter of Genesis. In the first chapter Man and Woman were a simultaneous creation. In the second chapter, Woman was an afterthought. But I had the deep sagacity to hold my tongue, and leave her and her creed in peace.
The second church that I remember anything about is the Free-Will Baptist. My mother was a devout member of that church. I have heard thousands of times, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the Kingdom of God." And man included woman—it always did, so far as pains and penalties were concerned.
I remember distinctly a sermon I heard on Hell. You younger people can not have the faintest idea of the terrific sermons that were preached in those days.
That sermon commenced in this wise:
"Now we will look into Hell and see what we can see. It is all red-hot like red-hot iron. Streams of burning pitch and sulphur run through it. The floor blazes up to the roof. Look at the walls—the enormous stones are red-hot. Sparks of fire are always falling down from them. Lift up your eyes to the roof of Hell. It is like a sheet of blazing fire. Hell is filled with a fog of fire. In Hell, torrents not of water, but of fire and brimstone, are rained down. You may have seen a house on fire, but you never saw a house made of fire. Hell is a house made of fire. The fire of Hell burns the devils, who are spirits, for it was prepared for them. But it will burn the body as well as the soul. Take a little spark out of Hell—less than the size of a pin-head—and throw it into the ocean, and it will not go out. In one moment it would dry up all the waters of the ocean, and set the whole world in a blaze! Listen to the terrific noise of Hell—to the horrible uproar of countless millions of tormented creatures, mad with the fury of Hell! Oh, the screams of fear, the groanings of horror, the yells of rage, the cries of pain, the shouts of agony, the shrieks of despair, from millions on millions. You hear them roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons! And above all, you hear the roaring of the thunder of God's anger, which shakes Hell to its foundations. Little children, if you go to Hell, there will be a devil at your side to strike you. How will you feel after you have been struck every minute for a hundred millions of years? Look into this inner room of Hell, and see a girl of about sixteen. She stands in the middle of a red-hot floor; her feet are bare; sleep can never come to her; she can never forget for one moment in all the eternity of years."
And so this description of Hell went on for nearly two hours. Do you wonder that I, a child of ten years, said to my father, who was a freethinker, infidel, atheist, or whatever else you please to call him: "I hate my mother's church. I will not go there again!"
The next church I became acquainted with was the Calvin Baptist Church. That church seemed to think that the most of us were born to be damned anyway!
The great Ingersoll had it right when he said it was the damned-if-you-do-and-the-damned-if-you-don't church.
The only difference between the Free-Will Baptists and the Calvin Baptists that I can see, is, that you are allowed to exercise your will. The Free-Will Baptists will damn you if you wish to be, and the Calvinists will damn you anyway!
The next church to which I was introduced was the Congregationalist, alias the Orthodox. Their creed is rather complex from a mathematical standpoint. They seem to think that three Gods are one God, and one God is three Gods.
I, having been taught that figures don't lie, couldn't understand it, until I thought of a boy who said to his teacher when she explained to him that figures didn't lie: "You should see my sisters at home, and then on the street. You will find that figures do lie."
I then went to Italy, and became conversant with the outside doings of the Roman Catholic Church. I visited many of them, saw the beggars eating crusts at the doors, and the well-fed priests saying masses inside; saw the white hand of famine always extended, in bitter contrast to the magnificent cathedrals; saw well-dressed, intelligent-looking men and women going upstairs on their hands and knees, and saw hundreds of them kissing the toe of the bronze statue of Saint Peter; saw monks of every shade and description; and all begging for the Holy Catholic Church!
I attended a church festival at Rome at the Ara Cœli, where the most "Holy Bambino" is kept, a little wooden doll about two feet long. It is said to be the image of Jesus. It had a crown of gold on its head and was fairly ablaze with diamonds. It has great power to heal the sick. It is taken to visit patients in great style—that is, if the patients are rich. The Bambino is placed in a coach accompanied by priests in full dress. The Great Festival of the Bambino is celebrated annually. Military bands and the Soldiers of the Guard dance attendance. Saint Gennaro is held to be the guardian saint of Naples. The alleged miracle by which the blood of this holy person, contained in a glass tube, changes from a solid to a liquid state, is well known. Thousands go to see the miracle performed. When the priest first held up the sacred vial with its clotted contents we could hear all about us: "Holy Gennaro, save and protect us! Bless the City of Naples, and keep it free from plagues and earthquakes and other ills. Do this miracle so that we can see that thy power and thy favor are still with us." And so it went on for an hour or more, until the great throng was nearly hysterical.
At last the priest stepped forward, showing that the blood flowed freely in the tube, and then such a shout went up from the big crowd as one hears only in Southern climes.
I have never been introduced to the Church of England, alias, the Episcopalian, but I've always thought if a man had a good voice, and understood the mysteries of the corkscrew, he would make a good rector.
I became acquainted with a High-Church Episcopalian woman not long ago, and she showed me a prayer-rug and praying-costume imported from Paris. I told her that she looked like an angel in it, as she ought after going to all that expense and trouble; if she didn't, dressmakers might as well give it up and wait for Gabriel. The attitude of prayer threw the back breadths of the skirt into graceful prominence, and hence the necessity (which will be at once recognized by all the truly pious) of increased attention to the frills and embroidery required by the religious attitude of prayer.
An old farmer in Indiana said he was a "Piscopal."
"To what parish do you belong?"
"I don't know nothing about parishes."
"Who confirmed you?"
"Nobody."
"Then how do you belong to the Episcopalian Church?"
"Well, last Winter I went down to Arkansas visiting, and while I was there, I went to a church and it was called 'Piscopal,' and I heard them say that they had done the things they ought not to have done, and left undone the things they ought to have done, and I says to myself, 'That is my fix exactly,' and ever since then I've considered myself a 'Piscopal'!"
And I came to the conclusion that that is why the membership of that church is so large!
I know but little about the Methodists, but I do know that John Wesley, one of the founders of that church, believed in witchcraft, and was one of the latest of its supporters.
History tells us that Brother Wesley preached a sermon entitled, The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes. He said that earthquakes were caused by sin, and the only way to stop them was to believe in his theology and teachings, thus showing great knowledge of seismology; but people who bank on gullibility are usually safe. I know the Methodists make a great hullabaloo about their religion, and appear to think their God is deaf.
The Methodist Conference has refused to allow women to be delegates to the General Conference. The Methodist sisters should discipline the Church.
What I know about the Universalists I like. They seem to think that we are all in the same boat, and that one stands as good a chance as another, of which I approve. When I was a child, Sylvanus Cobb, at that time the great Universalist preacher, preached in the adjoining town. One Sunday, my father and I went to hear him. His sermon caused a great commotion, and the Baptist who preached that terrific sermon about Hell said to my mother, "There is a wicked man about here preaching that everybody is to be saved; but, Sister Young, let us hope for better things!"
I believe that the Unitarians, as a class, think for themselves. I approve of that, and the Evangelical Alliance disapproves of them. That is in their favor.
I taught school at Lee, New Hampshire, fifty years ago. One of the committee was a Unitarian, and one was a Quaker. I was tired of selecting suitable reading matter from that obscene old book, the Bible, and I suggested that we read from some other book, which we did for two mornings, when the Unitarian materialized at the schoolhouse, and with much suavity suggested that we read from the Bible every morning, and recite the Lord's Prayer; and I, teaching school for my bread and butter, bowed to the suggestion, and the next morning said: "Pupils, Mr. Smith prefers that we read from the Bible. Therefore, we will this morning read the startling and authentic account of Jonah whilst he was stopping at the submarine hotel." That is the most narrow-minded thing I ever knew about a Unitarian; but I always thought Mr. Smith voiced the opinion of the parents of the pupils rather than his own.
I am somewhat acquainted with the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, alias the Mormons. They are a prudent, industrious, painstaking people, and only about two per cent of them ever did practise polygamy, and that is a very small proportion for any Christian church. Brigham Young never did have but seventeen wives, but Solomon had five hundred wives, and one thousand other lady friends, and David, whose honor and humility show greater in his psalms than in the history of his ordinary, every-day life, was, as the Bible says, a man after God's own heart.
I am sure that Brigham Young compared favorably with David. And if God interviewed Moses, why shouldn't he have interviewed Joe Smith?
There are more than one thousand religions. They are founded mostly on fraud. All their saviors had virgins for mothers, and gods for fathers.
The churches own more than thirteen billions of property, and they are all too dishonest to pay honest taxes. Many of the churches couldn't be run three weeks without the women. They do all the work, for which they get no credit.
The churches claim all the distinguished people, especially after they are dead and hence can not deny their claims. They have many times claimed that Abraham Lincoln was a churchman. The Honorable H. C. Deming, of Connecticut, an old friend of Lincoln, said it is false. Lincoln belonged to no church, and at one time said, "I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent without mental reservation to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine, which characterize their articles of belief, and confessions of faith." But still they claim him. Honest, very!
No institution in modern civilization is so tyrannical and so unjust to women as is the Christian church. The history of the Church does not contain a single suggestion for the equality of woman with man, and still the Church claims that woman owes her advancement to the Bible. She owes it much more to the dictionary.
History, both ancient and modern, tells us that the condition of women is most degraded in those countries where Church and State are in closest affiliation (such as, Spain, Italy, Russia and Ireland), and most advanced in nations where the power of ecclesiasticism is markedly on the wane. It has been proved that, whatever progress woman has made in any department of effort, she has accomplished independent of, and in opposition to, the so-called inspired and infallible Word of God; and that the Bible has been of more injury to her than has any other book ever written in the history of the world.
William Root Bliss, in his Side Glimpses From the Colonial Meetinghouse, tells us many startling truths concerning the Puritans, and reminds me of what Chauncey M. Depew said—that the first thing the Puritans did, after they landed at Plymouth, was to fall on their knees, and the second thing was to fall on the Aborigines.
The business of trading in slaves was not immoral by the estimate of public opinion in Colonial times. A deacon of the church in Newport esteemed the slave trade, with its rum accessories, as home missionary work. It is said that on the first Sunday after the arrival of his slaves he was accustomed to offer thanks that an overruling Providence had been pleased to bring to this land of freedom another cargo of benighted heathen to enjoy the blessings of a Gospel dispensation.
At a Bridgewater town meeting of the year Sixteen Hundred Seventy-six, a vote was called to see what should be done with the money that was made from selling the Indians.
John Bacon of Barnstable directed in his will that his Indian slave Dinah be sold and the proceeds used "by my executors in buying Bibles." By men who sat in the Colonial meetinghouse, the first fugitive-slave law was formed. This law became a part of the Articles of Confederation between all the New England Colonies.
The affinity between rum and the religion of Colonial times was exemplified in the license granted John Vyall to keep a house of entertainment in Boston. He must keep it near the meetinghouse of the Second Church, where he extended his invitation to thirsty sinners who were going to hear John Mayo or Increase Mather preach.
The importation of slaves began early. The first arrival at Boston was by the ship Desire, on February Twenty-sixth, Sixteen Hundred Thirty-seven, bringing negroes, tobacco and cotton from Barbados. She had sailed from Boston eleven months before, carrying Indian captives to the Bermudas to be sold as slaves, and thus she became noted as the first New England slave-ship.
In time, slaves were brought to Boston direct from Africa.
Advertisements of just-arrived negroes to be sold may be seen in the Boston News Letter of the years Seventeen Hundred Twenty-six and Seventeen Hundred Twenty-seven. The pious Puritans did not hesitate to sell slaves on the auction-block. I find in the Boston News Letter of September Nineteenth, Seventeen Hundred Fifteen, a notice of an auction-sale at Newport, Rhode Island, of several Indians, men and boys, and a very likely negro man. They were treated in all respects as merchandise, and were rated with horses and cattle.
Peter Faneuil, to whom Boston is indebted for its Cradle of Liberty, was deep in the business. In an inventory of the property of Parson Williams of Deerfield, in Seventeen Hundred Twenty-nine, his slaves were rated with his horses and cows. "Believe and be baptized" is all that was essential. I think many of them would have been improved by anchoring them out overnight.
A negro preacher whom I knew came to me when I was in Florida, and said: "What shall I preach about tomorrow? I'se done preached myself 'plumb out.' I'se worked on election sanctification and damnation predestination till I can't say another word to save my life."
I said, "Preach a sermon on 'Thou shalt not steal' for a text."
"Yes," he said, "that certainly is a good text, but I am monstros 'fraid it will produce a coolness in my congregation!"
Doubtless it would produce a coolness in many a congregation today.
Now I want to talk a little about law and its penalty. We want to consider the invariable laws of Nature. Let us look at it in the way in which we became acquainted with it—through experience.
To the child, law is an educator; he plays with fire and is burned. Law and its penalty have done their work. A burnt child dreads the fire. On that point his education is complete. He cuts himself with a knife; again the law works. Do not play with edged tools is the lesson. And so, whenever he comes in contact with external objects, he learns something very definite from them; and if he has any sense, he soon conforms to the order which he sees in force all around him. He does what he can to act in such a way as not to run counter to Nature's laws; or, at least, Nature teaches him to do so by repeated suffering when he acts otherwise. The law thus far is all in favor of life, and is teaching the child to preserve it. He must eat not to starve; he must be clothed not to freeze; he must not be burned, or cut, or crushed. In one word, he must take care of himself, and be careful of external objects, or he must be hurt.
But his education has another connection with law. If he has proper parents he learns that he can not lie, or steal, or do many other things without suffering a penalty. If he has no home education in this matter, the reform-school and the jail step in and take up the lesson.
And so the law teaches him that his actions must be of a certain quality, both with respect to external Nature and his fellowmen, or that he must pay a penalty.
Thus he comes to man's estate, and law has been to him an educator and a good one. He has learned that Nature's law means punishment every time it is violated, and that man's law, whatever it may attain to, aims at the same object as Nature's law.
But neither his education nor his contact with law ends with his youth. Hitherto he has obeyed blindly for fear of the penalty. He now obeys intelligently, and connected with the penalty to be incurred by disobedience is the reward to be obtained through obedience. He finds that every act, every thought, of his brings him in direct contact with law. He can not elude it by standing still, for no man can stand still. He must go forward, or backward. This is an inexorable law; with progress, improvement; without progress, what? Rest? Repose? No! Deterioration. No man can stand still in this universe for a day without losing something. The man who means to do anything in life must go forward; if he falters, another goes ahead; and then he learns that the penalty of faltering is failure.
Nature works no special miracles in any one's favor. Nature works no miracles, anyway. The sun and the moon did not stand still at Joshua's command!
No riches and influence can buy exemption from Nature.
Law says to the poor man who is dependent on his daily toil: "You have only yourself to rely upon. Take care of your health; be temperate, honest and industrious, for sickness, imprisonment, idleness, mean to you death."
It says to the rich man: "Inherited wealth has exempted you from daily labor of body, but it has not earned for you rest. Go to work; do something, or your mind and body will be enfeebled; your sympathies will disappear; you will become dry as the summer's dust; you will sink into a nonentity."
The whole cry of Nature's law is onward and upward. Evolution is the word—there is no God about it. It is not alone the survival of the fittest—that is only a part of the process. It is the fittest of one generation becoming something better and higher for the next.
It is the fashion now to say that the struggle for existence becomes yearly more fierce, but that is not so. The truth is that those who struggle become with each survival fitter to struggle, and that for which they struggle is placed one step forward. Men used to want thousands and hundreds of thousands; now, they want millions and hundreds of millions. They used to want general knowledge; now, they are all specialists, and cry out that life is too short. Steam used to content them; now, electricity does not satisfy them, and they are grasping at the possibilities of the mighty currents of air caused by the revolutions of the earth itself.
The law of progress is not limited to the mind. The body shares in it. Men are stronger, larger, longer-lived than they have ever been. Even with the animals, finer, better breeds are constantly producing themselves under law.
This law of the survival of the fittest and the elevation of the type of the fittest pronounced against slavery, and a nation paid the penalty in blood, as Spain has, and other nations will pay it. It has pronounced against the subjection of women, and let those who stand in the way, beware, lest some ruin crush them as it falls!
The type of sympathy has become higher and tenderer. Sweet hands of mercy are now stretched down even to the brutes. Let those lovers of the past who can see no progress in the present, who would question this onward tendency, and the result of law, let them remember that they must run rapidly to keep from being overwhelmed by the expansionists.
Nature's law teaches us that like begets like. You plant a grain of wheat, and you reap wheat. You breed Morgan stock and the foal is of Morgan blood. The child is the offspring of certain parents, and it inherits their blood. If parents choose to unfit themselves to be healthy parents, who shall be blamed?
Shall gravitation cease as I go by? Teach children that no amount of so-called religion will compensate for rheumatism; that Christianity has nothing to do with morality; that "vicarious atonement" is a fraud, and a lie; that to be born well and strong is the highest birth; that to be honest and pay one's debts spells peace of mind; that the Bible is no more inspired than the dictionary; that sin is a transgression of the laws of life, and that the blood of all the bulls and goats and lambs of ancient times, and the blood of Christ or any other man, never had, and never can have, the least effect in making a life what it would have been had it obeyed the laws of life. If you have marred your life, you must bear the consequences. If you have made a mistake, be more careful in the future. Let the thought that the past is irretrievable make you more careful in the present and for the future.
And, above all, teach children that prayer is idiotic. There may be one God or twenty. I do not know or care. I am not afraid, and no priest or parson can make me believe that my title to a future life, if there be one, is defective. And the great and good man Thomas Paine, who wrote the Age of Reason, and said, "The world is my country, and to do good my religion," is a good enough god for me. And the great Ingersoll, who said, "I belong to the great Church that holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul," is in my opinion an excellent god—as good as any that ever lived, from Confucius to Christ. A friend of mine said to me, "Ingersoll should have been a Christian." I replied, "The dog-collar of Christianity did not belong on his neck: he preached the truth; he preferred that to the Bible. I can not imagine the great Ingersoll preaching from II Kings xiv: 35."
When I was a child I heard very little about Christmas and nothing about Lent and Easter. I was taught to be honest and truthful and to pay one hundred cents on a dollar. In my opinion there is no Bible extant so good as Ingersoll's Complete Works.