"If our people are wicked nowadays because they lack religion, what shall be said of the Puritans who were far more wicked, though they lived, moved, and had their being in an atmosphere so surcharged with religion that children and grown persons lay awake all night, sobbing and rolling on the floor in search of secret sins that they could not remember well enough to repent? It is well to remember that there has perhaps never been in history a community in which Christianity had so perfect a laboratory in which to experiment.
"The very purpose of the Colony was announced as the propagation of the Gospel. The Bible was the law book. The Colony lacked all the things on which preachers lay the blame for ungodliness; yet, every infamy known to history, from fiendish torture to luxurious degeneracy flourished amazingly. This ancient and impregnable fact has been ignored. The records have been studiously veiled in a cloud of misty reverence, and concealed under every form of rhetoric known to apologists."
We can only conclude that religion does not seem to act as an effectual check against sexual immorality. Furthermore, high moral principles can be inculcated without any religious background, and have been in spite of religion. A man who is moral because of his reason and his sensibilities, and his comprehension of the necessary social structure of the world is a far better citizen than the man who feebly attempts a moral life because he expects a mythical existence in a delusional heaven or wishes to avoid hell-fire. A secular code of morals based upon the best experiences of communal and national life would place its highest obligation not to a deity but to the welfare of all fellowmen.
CHAPTER XIV
CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
"Instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it; we may look in vain for any period since Constantine in which the clergy as a body exerted themselves to repress the military spirit, or to prevent or abridge a particular war with an energy at all comparable to that which they displayed in stimulating the fanaticism of the Crusades, in producing the atrocious massacres of the Albigenses, in embittering the religious contests that followed the Reformation." (Lecky.)
Any institution that can sanction war is the most immoral institution that the mind of man can imagine. That an institution which claims to have under its guidance the moral activity of this earth, has instituted and condoned war is a known historical fact. That the Church has blessed the banners of opposing factions, and has gloried in the butchering of innocent heretics, no manner of present disregard for the facts and apology can refute and redeem. The religious and civil wars, the massacre of the Albigenses and other sects, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are still alive in the memories of historians and still rankle. The Crusades were a bloody blot in the none too peaceful times of the Middle Ages. Christianity hurled itself at Mohammedanism in expedition after expedition for nearly three centuries. Millions of men perished in battle, hunger, and disease, and every atrocity the imagination can conceive of disgraced the warriors of the cross. When one crusade failed, a papal bull instigated the next. Taxes were imposed to defray the expenses, and Europe was so drained of men and money that it was threatened with social bankruptcy and annihilation.
The Inquisition between 1481 and 1808 had punished 340,000 persons, and of these, nearly 32,000 had been burnt. This was the result of the declaration that "The Inquisition is an urgent necessity in view of the unbelief of the present age." The Church forgot to mention the vast amount of wealth that accrued to her by these means. But we need not turn to the dead ages for material, for the present still firmly holds its war memories.