The professor of homiletics, who read and criticised all sermons before they were preached, rather took me to task for my bold attack upon Unitarianism, but he admitted to me that, although he had preached and taught it for more than a score of years, there were yearnings in his soul that it did not satisfy. The sermon was listened to with great respect and sympathy, especially by the more conservative students. About ten years later I received a letter from a young Unitarian minister in Massachusetts who referred to the sermon, and said he had never forgotten it, but was often reminded in his experience of how true it was, especially in what I said about the coldness and fruitlessness of Unitarianism.
Although the matter in this paper and sermon is largely the same as that in the previous chapter, I present it because, as the line of thought is out of the ordinary and somewhat difficult to the general reader, its repetition in this conversational style will help to get a better grasp of the deadly delusions of rationalism. Truth usually has to be repeated in various ways before it gets a thorough hold upon the average mind. Therefore "precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little" (Isa. 28:10).
A Religious Discussion Between Mr. Liberal, Mr. Orthodox and Mr. Freethinker.
SCENE.—Ocean of Life. STEAMBOAT.—Experience.
[The three above-named persons had made each other's acquaintance, and had engaged in discussions with each other on several occasions. They now seat themselves in a group on deck and enter upon the following discussion.]
Mr. Liberal—The great objection to your religion, Mr. Orthodox, is that it violates reason and conscience. To be more specific, let us consider a few instances. There is your doctrine of eternal punishment, in which you ascribe fiendish qualities to our dear heavenly Father such as the most savage human being could not be capable of. Then, take your doctrine of the Trinity, around which most of your dogmas cluster, and we see at once that it violates the simplest postulates of reason. I know that you will answer that these are all mysteries which are to be accepted on faith. But it is perfectly clear that there is no mystery about it. It is as clear as daylight that three cannot be one. You talk about mysteries which we must accept by faith, but all such talk is nonsense and ignores our sacred reason. The idea of getting over all difficulties by declaring them mysteries, and exhorting your opponents to leap over them by the exercise of faith, is truly, as some one has said, "a touchstone for whole classes of explanations based on no evidence." You orthodox people are the cause of all the infidelity that is afloat in the land. People come in contact with your irrational and ridiculous claims, and, taking them as religion itself, they throw overboard the whole business, the good with the bad. What we need is a pure and simple religion that will satisfy man's reason and conscience as well as his heart. And we do not have to go far for such a religion, for we find it in the liberal faith which it is my privilege to represent. Let us compare our grand, simple and rational beliefs with your irrational, absurd and mysterious products of the Dark Ages, and see what a contrast there is between them. Instead of your "Son is God, Father is God, Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods, but only one," we have the simple faith in one heavenly Father—all-powerful, all-wise and all-good. No mystery about it. It would be absurd to suppose that such a God could punish his children to eternity, or that He would require the suffering of the innocent to enable him to forgive the guilty. Then, of course, we reject all the absurd dogmas clustering around your conception of the Trinity. The simple belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is enough for us. Instead of your endless punishment, we have the reasonable belief that the Father punishes simply to bring us good, so that our joy may be greater. This is all perfectly simple, and can be understood by the uneducated man as well as by the philosopher.
Mr. Orthodox—It is an easy thing to make charges; and, as they are usually made in sweeping terms, it frequently requires hours of time and much explanation to answer the charges made in a few minutes, even when the charges are false. I shall endeavor to defend myself, but must beg you to give me sufficient time to make myself understood. In the first place, I claim, as you say, that you cannot understand all the mysteries about religious doctrines. They must, to a large extent, be accepted by faith. And I claim that it is more reasonable to accept them by faith than to reject them on the ground that you cannot understand them. This may seem ridiculous to you, but wait until I explain myself further. Take eternal punishment. You say that man is a free agent, and that through his free agency he is able to bring evil and punishment upon himself. You say that God has so ordained because it is best for man that he should be left free, even though he becomes liable to suffer because of it, as it will be for his final good. In other words, you claim that God does punish his children for their own good. It seems perfectly just to you that God should punish a person because he is a free agent, but when we say that man can bring eternal punishment upon himself through his free agency, then you think it ridiculous, although the principle is exactly the same and the only difference is that of degree. But I see that I must be more general in my statements or I will not get far. You bring a host of other charges against us, either directly or by implication. You say that yours is a pure and simple religion that can be understood by uneducated people as well as by philosophers. Here we get at the very heart of the difference between us. It is true that your doctrines are very simple, but that is their chief demerit. They are simple, but the facts that they attempt to deal with are very complex. To declare that religious problems are simple is to go counter to the expressed opinions of the great thinkers of all ages. Such questions as evil, good, life, immortality, free will, God, and a host of others, are decidedly complex.
They are largely inscrutable and have always been considered so. And yet all the complex realities of life and death which have defied the theologians and philosophers of all ages, you now tell us are very simple, and you carry the simple solution around with you only too glad to give it free to everybody. Why is it that all of the thousands of worried and distressed souls don't come flocking to you? Why is it that the philosophers and thinkers don't come rushing in from all directions, to get from you the truths they have so long sought after? Why is it that the uneducated masses do not come to you and accept your simple doctrines which they can so easily understand? I know that you are ready with a charge of ignorance, prejudice, self-interest, etc., but I claim that as a rule your charges do not charge. You, believing in an all-wise, all-good and all-powerful God, who is Truth itself, must believe in the triumph of truth; and here I agree with you. I believe that just as soon as truth is brought in contact with error the latter will have to vanish just as sure as the darkness vanishes when a light is brought into a room. Error may apparently linger because of peculiar circumstances which we are ignorant of, but as soon as truth has a fair chance of coming directly in contact with error, the victory is won. I claim, therefore, that the reason that your explanations are not accepted, is because they do not explain. Your doctrines offer protection to a small part of the man, but leave all the rest exposed to the cold and inclement weather. The uneducated do not accept your doctrines because they belie their own experiences.
Mr. Freethinker—I hope you will pardon me for interrupting you, Mr. Orthodox. You are getting too hot. I think it will be better for you to cool off before you continue, and in the meantime I will have my say. That is the greatest objection I have to you religionists—you are all fanatics. You get an idea into your head, and then think that the continuance of the world depends upon you thrusting it into everybody's face. Of course you are willing to suffer for your doctrines, and even to die for them if need be, but that is the way with all fanatics. Your foolish notions give occasion for amusement to cool-headed free thinkers, who see perfectly well that they are all the result of self-delusion. I believe in keeping perfectly cool; in always keeping the head as high above the heart as it is in the body. I don't believe in attacking a man from behind while he is engaged by another in front, but, during the time Mr. Orthodox is cooling off, I wish to show you, Mr. Liberal, wherein I differ from you. Your great appeal is to reason, and I agree with you entirely on that point; but I don't arrive at your conclusions. You have been fixing your eyes on the monstrous outrage of reason in your brother's position so steadfastly, and yours is so much more in accordance with reason, that it is not surprising that you should have failed to see the irrationality of your own position. Furthermore, you have had a great deal of inherited prejudice to overcome, and a man cannot be expected to get rid of all those at once, especially when they have reference to the heart or feelings. You say that your God is all-good, all-wise and all-powerful. The inevitable, logical conclusion from that is that such a God would give his children an infinitely small amount of evil and an infinitely large amount of good. But such is not the case; therefore, to keep that jewel of rationalism which is so dear to you, you must give up your belief in such a God. Just wait a minute! I know that you are ready to give a lot of quibbling that will satisfy some people who follow their prejudices and inherited feelings, but I defy the whole world of logicians to show that such a conclusion is less logical than the claim that there can be three in one. You say that it is in the nature of things that God must give us evil that we may enjoy good the more afterwards. But if you clear yourself from all prejudice, you will see that this is the old method of the ostrich of putting its head under the sand and imagining that its entire body is protected. Nay, even worse than that, you don't even protect your head. Any man that gives clear sweep to his reason will see that if God must comply with certain conditions, then he is not all-powerful If he is all-powerful, he can give us all good without any evil, and if he is all-good it would logically follow that he will do so. Then, again, while affirming that man is a free agent, you at the same time claim that every effect must have a cause, or that something cannot come out of nothing. Now, the reconciliation of these two facts has ever defied the reason of mankind. And those that have adopted the belief in free will have confessed that reason did not lead them to that conclusion, but experience. On the other hand, the logical conclusion is inevitable that man cannot be free. I know that people have endeavored to satisfy themselves to the contrary, and I know that some have really succeeded in deceiving themselves so far as to believe that they could logically hold to it; but I declare that they have never succeeded in convincing any unprejudiced mind, and I defy any logician to prove that the conclusion of free will as consistent with eternal causation, is less absurd than that two and two make five.
Again, you preach that what a man sows, that also shall he reap. If that is true, then no person can really give him anything; therefore philanthropy is a delusion. Now, then, Mr. Liberal, you want to be reasonable and drop the false position to which your inherited prejudices have held you, and adopt my views, which are thoroughly simple and entirely consistent and logical. Belief in God is the product of superstition, and belief in free will is a self-delusion. I know that you will appeal to intuition in this case, but that is only a scapegoat for deluded and illogical minds to hide behind. You see that my conclusion is not only simple and logical, but it is really more beautiful than your complex affair, and you will see it as such after you succeed in overcoming your inherited prejudices. There is no God. The universe is governed by blind law; at least, that is all we know about it. We are evolved from the lowest forms of organic life. What about conscience? Well, that is a matter of education. Of course we should follow it, because it is a safer guide than our present judgment, since it represents the judgment of all our ancestors. Utility is our only standard of right and wrong in morals, and we follow utility because we are not free and are therefore compelled to do so.