And even in the modified form of Protestant Christianity, that creed remains the rancorous enemy of Freethought. The doctrine of the Galilean Buddhist is essentially a doctrine of pessimism, of other-worldliness and Nature-hating renunciation of human reason and earthly prosperity, and therefore wholly irreconcilable with the promotion of progressive [[132]]science and secular happiness. Philosophers have for centuries assembled their scholars undisturbed by the songs and dances of pagan festivals; the exponents of secular science have enjoyed the good-will of health-loving Hebrews and Mohammedans, and will find a modus vivendi with the Spiritualists and Theosophists of the future; but Secularism, “the Science of Happiness on Earth,” can never hope to conciliate the dogmatists of a creed that denies the value of life itself, and wages war against Nature as well as against the claims of natural science.
D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
Wherever Reason surrenders to Dogma, the exponents of that dogma will claim unreasonable prerogatives. Irresponsible dogmatists have never failed to pursue the interests of their creed at the expense of the interests of mankind. The lessons of Science could not be reconciled with the doctrines of Antinaturalism, and in the interest of that doctrine the spiritual taskmasters of medieval Europe suppressed Science by methods that have retarded the progress of mankind for thirteen hundred years. The suppression of Freethought enabled the enemies of Nature to complete their triumph by the suppression of social and political liberty; and for ages the church has been the faithful ally of Despotism. The priest-ridden rulers of the expiring Roman empire and the priest-ridden rabble of the Roman provinces assisted in the persecution of Freethought, and that crime against reason was avenged by the development of a system of spiritual tyranny which at last forced even [[133]]princes to kiss the dust of Canossa and degraded the lot of peasants beneath that of savages and wild beasts. The war against natural science avenged itself in the neglect of agriculture, and the enormous spread of deserts, which the priests of the Galilean miracle-monger proposed to reclaim by prayer-meetings. The surrender of Freethought to faith sealed the fate of millions of heretics and “sorcerers,” who expiated an imaginary crime in the agonies of the stake. Not the abrogation of civil rights, not the intimidation of princes and commoners, but the eradication of Freethought, enabled the priests of an unnatural creed to enforce their hideous superstitions upon the prisoners of the numberless monasteries which for a series of centuries combined all the conditions for the systematic suppression of moral, intellectual, and personal freedom.
“I am not come to bring peace but the sword,” said the ingenuous founder of a creed which could not fail to produce an irrepressible conflict between the delusions of its doctrines and the inspirations of nature and science—and, of course, also between the would-be followers of its own preposterous precepts—and neither the lust of conquest nor the jealousy of rival nations has ever stained this earth with the torrents of blood shed by the bigots of that creed after its triumph over the protests of Freethought. The fatuous attempt to crush out dissent by substituting a roll of parchment for the book of Nature avenged itself by murderous wars about the interpretation of those same parchments. The dogmatists who had tried to perpetuate their power by the murder [[134]]of modest rationalists, were assailed by hordes of their own irrationalists, raging about the ceremonial details of the wafer-rite and the immersion rite. The bigots who had refused to heed the pleadings of Bruno and Campanella were forced to acknowledge the battle-axe logic of the Hussites.
E.—REFORM.
Truth that prevails against error also prevails against half truths, and the recognition of just claims cannot be furthered by unjust concessions. Uncompromising right is mightiest, and Freethinkers would have served their cause more effectually if they had contended, not for the favor to enjoy a privilege, but the right to fulfil a duty. The ministry of reason imposes obligations to posterity, and to the memory of its bygone martyrs, as well as to our help-needing contemporaries; and the defense of its rights is a truer religion than submission to the yoke of a mind-enslaving dogma. The Rishis, or sainted hermits of Brahmanism, used to devote themselves to the service of a forest temple, and guard its sanctuary against vermin and reptiles; and the believers in a personal God cannot devote their lives to a nobler task than by guarding his temples against the serpent of priestly despotism.
The disciples of Secularism should learn to value the right of Freethought as the palladium of their faith, as the basis of all other blessings—moral and material, as well as intellectual. They should learn to revere the memory of the martyrs of their faith, and recognize the importance of their services to the [[135]]cause of modern civilization and its sacred principles; but they should also learn to recognize the magnitude of the remaining task. It is no trifle that the prevalent system of ethics and the temporal and eternal hopes of millions of our brethren are still based on a lie. It is no trifle that the health and happiness of millions of our fellow-men are still sacrificed on the altar of that untruth by the suppression of public recreations on the only day when a large plurality of our working-men find their only chance of leisure. It is no trifle that honest men are still branded as “Infidels,” “renegades,” and “scoffers,” for refusing to kneel in the temple of a nature-hating fanatic. The struggle against the spirits of darkness is by no means yet decided in Italy, where the arch-hierarch is spinning restless intrigues to regain the power which for ages made Europe a Gehenna of misery and despotism. Nor in Spain, where a swarm of clerical vampires is still sucking the life-blood of an impoverished nation. Nor in Austria and southern Germany, where the alliance of church and state remains a constant menace to the scant liberties of the people.
Freethinkers need not underrate the influence of individual efforts to recognize the superior advantage of organized coöperation, so urgently needed for the reform of Sabbath laws, of press laws, and the educational system of the numerous colleges still intrusted to the control of the Jesuitical enemies of science. The strength-in-union principle should encourage the oft-debated projects for the establishment of Freethought colleges (as well as Freethought [[136]]communities); but still more decisive results could be hoped from that union of the powers of knowledge and of moral courage which has never yet failed to insure the triumph of social reforms. We should cease to plead for favors where we can claim an indisputable right. We should cease to admit the right of mental prostitutes to enforce the penalties of social ostracism against the champions of science; but we, in our turn, should deserve the prestige of that championship by scorning the expedients of the moral cowardice which strains at gnats and connives at beams, attacking superstition in the harmless absurdities of its ceremonial institutions, and sparing the ruinous dogmas that have drenched the face of earth with the blood of her noblest children, and turned vast areas of garden-lands into hopeless deserts. The skeptics who scoff at the inconsistencies of a poor clergyman who tries in vain to reconcile the instincts of his better nature with the demands of an anti-natural creed, should themselves be consistent enough to repudiate the worship of the fatal founder of that creed, and not let the hoary age of the Galilean doctrine palliate the tendencies of its life-blighting delusions. [[137]]