The continuance of existence beyond the grave has been made to depend on belief in certain dogmas, or at least the condition of that life has been made thus dependent by the religious systems of the world. Now that science encroaches on the realm of faith, and these dogmas are questioned, and immortality which seemingly rests on and is supported by them, becomes doubtful; yet, if it be a fact that man has a spirit, which is immortal, this is the most over-shadowing fact in the universe; one of profoundest interest and most consonant with the desires of the human heart. Around it gather our fondest hopes and brightest dreams; by it the seeming disparity and injustice of this life are compensated; the tearful eye is dried; the broken heart finds balm, and the burdens of time and place cast aside, and the possibilities of the aspiring spirit may be realized. It is an unfailing staff in the hands of those who mourn the loved and lost, offering the only adequate consolation in the cruel hour when we stand by the couch of death, feeling that, beyond, darkness gathers thick and broods over a sea of eternal silence, from which only echo responds to our call of the name of the departed. Then it is that hope lifts our hearts from despair, and a positive assurance of the continuity of life is worth all else in the world.
The Belief in Immortality has been made a Curse.—This belief, so full of delight and rainbowed with anticipations, has been made, from the dawn of man’s religious nature, the means of inflicting unspeakable tortures, both of mind and body. Selfishness thrust the priest between man and the invisible world of spirit, and made immortality the instrument wherewith it could rule with diabolical despotism over mankind. Even when the rain-maker shook his rattling calabash at the sky, and beseeched the moisture-giving clouds to send down rain, the priestly order had fast hold on the superstitious savage; and in all the transformations of history, surging with the coming and going of countless generations and the ebb and flow of empires, never for a moment has this grip been loosened. The power of the temporal ruler has been second to that of the class who held the keys of life beyond the grave. What if the king could cast into a dungeon, condemn to the cross or the flames? That were pain for a moment, or, at most, for the few years of this life; and of what insignificance these short years, or the most terrible tortures human ingenuity could invent, to the infinite tortures extending through an eternal existence? Pharaoh might command Egypt to-day, but, to-night, his spirit would be summoned before the tribunal of the Dead; and those austere priestly judges would decide whether he be cast to the crocodiles of the Nile to become extinct, or again, clad in his mummified body, resurrected and purified, a companion of the gods.
What a position for an ignorant man! Immortality is the Promethean curse, enabling the vultures to inflict never-ending torments. The sweetest boon is oblivion, and that is denied. The sun may fade from the heavens and the stars cease to shine; but the spirit can not escape its doom, and will not have experienced even then the first pangs of its sufferings. Is it strange that men went wild with this dreadful belief? Ignorant men, who feared the unseen, intangible spirits of the air more than the accumulated tortures that human ruler might inflict, saw in the priests who claimed the power to control this intangible world, who held the keys of the Great Unseen, the only hope of escape. How well that order has seized its vantage, and, fanning the flames of superstition, stifled reason and led poor Humanity over the quaking bog-lands and reeking marshes of myth-theology!
This life is nothing compared with that which is to come. Its most innocent pleasures are sins; for the body itself is sinful, and by sin man came into the world. Pressed down beneath the weight of universal disaster, the doctrine of Jesus was the wail of despair. Take no heed of the morrow. Live only for to-day. Give all to the poor. Resist not the tyrant wrong. This life is a vale of tears, and the eye that weeps most shall be the brightest in glory in the life which is to come. O Jesus, on thy cross, what infinite misery has come from this misconception of thy teachings! Men, believing that their immortal spirits were chained to sinful bodies, rushed in herds to the mountain cave or lonely desert, and, by fasting and thirst, by hair-cloth garments wearing through the flesh to the bone, by flagellation and daily crucifixion, sought to expiate the sins of the body, and enter the next life purified.
Believing in an immortal life, they sought to force their belief on others, and proselyte by sword and torture. Dogmatism grew rankly luxuriant in this hot-bed of ignorance and superstition. Humanity was bound to the wheel; and ingenuity exhausted its skill in demoniacal inventions whereby severer pangs might be evoked, that through physical suffering the spirit might gain purification. Poor humanity might well exclaim, “Blessed be oblivion to this curse of Immortality!”
Not to lead a happy and perfect life, but to avoid the pangs of hell, to escape the consequences of original sin, was the object to which all energies were directed. And there was obligation to propagate this belief until received by all the world. Out of this doctrine came centuries of persecution, such as the heathen world never dreamed of. If your relative or friend accepted what you regarded erroneous dogmas, which would send him to eternal torment would it not be plain duty for you to use every means to persuade and convince him, even if necessary, by force? For should you, in last extremity, destroy his body, what fleeting consequence, if you saved thereby his soul!
The savage, having killed his enemy, trembles at the thought that the spirit has escaped, and may work untold mischief. He sits down at the cannibal feast, that, by eating the body, he may absorb the spirit, and thus be doubly avenged, by blotting out his foe, by making his body and spirit a part of himself.
Noble and spotless lives have grown out of Christianity, as out of other systems of religion, as beautiful lilies grow out of the slime; but they grew in defiance of its teachings, which make this life of no value compared with the next. As all religions rest on the foundation of belief in a future life, so all the religious wars which have cursed mankind are referable to it; all persecutions; all the unutterable sufferings, physical and spiritual, which have made the centuries one long night of agony. It has blotted the star of hope from the heavens, and filled the vaulted darkness with the bitter wails of despair.
Humanity rolling onward in a vast river, to plunge over the crags of death into a bottomless pit of eternal agony, and the best that Christianity has offered, or can offer, is eternal psalm-singing to golden harps. “Saving souls” has been the theme of the Christian world for nearly two thousand years, and various have been the means employed. Dungeon, rack, the flames, social ostracism—how shall I find space to catalogue the endless names of methods which curdle the blood at bare mention! The cannibal, feasting on his foe, is engaged in the honorable effort of saving a soul, and the priestly torturer is doing the same. The Brunos were chained amid the fagots’ flame, to save their souls and the souls of others led astray by their doctrines. Go down into the dimly lighted tribunal hall, where God’s vicegerents sit in judgment. Before them stands one gone astray in belief. There is no argument of words. On the table is a little thimble with a screw at one side. The heretic places his fingers therein, and the judges turn the screws down into the tender nails. The compressed lips grow white, the veins knot on the temples, beaded sweat gathers on the brow, as slowly down pierces the relentless steel, until at last, human endurance yields, and the trembling lips gasp, “Dear Christ, I believe!” Then turn back the screws, ring the bells, and rejoice with great joy; for a soul is saved!
From that hall, go down a flight of stone steps to another in the bowels of the earth, where the walls are reeking with mold, and the lamp darkens in the foul vapor. Tread with care on the slippery floors, for the slime of years has gathered; and now we have reached a great stone, which we can turn back like a trap-door, and reach an opening. Lower your lamp, feebly burning in the fetid atmosphere. There are walls of stone, there is stone for a floor. It is like a jug without an outlet, except at the top. At the bottom is something moving, living! Hush! It moans and has speech! An iron ring wears the bleeding ankle to the bone, to the ring is a chain, and the other end of the chain is fastened to the floor. What monstrous crime has this man committed that he should thus suffer? Nothing, except he has thought for himself—is lost; and his judges are making the desperate attempt to save his soul!