The church Christianity has also progressed somewhat, and there can be no possible excuse for the priests of to-day affirming these pretended cures of Christ. They ought to know that the notions of these things are due to feebleness of intellect in the uncultured brain, to the lack of understanding and the gullibility of the masses. Christ and his disciples were as ignorant as the masses concerning medicine or the healing art. They knew absolutely nothing about it. At 325 A.D., later 318, fathers of the then existing Christian organizations approved of the entire contents. Nay, a large part of it may have been manufactured by them.
At this day there is no reason that men should not know better. Every man, whether priest or layman, ought to understand that so-called miraculous cures can be performed only by men, priests or others, that premeditatedly, with intent, cheat, swindle, and defraud some portion of the public, in consequence of the ignorance of the one, and the superior knowledge, shrewdness, and cunning of the other.
It is a flagrant abuse of authority, a miserable condition of our laws, a stupendous piece of bigotry, an outrage, that a man can be punished for speaking the truth, and it is an actual miracle that people are still so wonderfully stupid as to believe in the scandalous deception of the healing qualities of an old rag, a coat, pretended to have belonged to Christ or some one else. Recently we read in the daily paper, the Sun: “Berlin, Sept. 26.—In Treves, Herr Reichar has been sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment for ridiculing the holy coat and for attacking the Roman Catholic prelates because they encouraged the people to believe that it had healing qualities. His publisher, Herr Sonnenburg, was sentenced to three weeks’ imprisonment. The chief charge against them was blasphemy.”
Even in this city, some miserable cheat or cheats attempted to perpetrate the same sort of scoundrelism in one of the Catholic churches.
During the recent cholera desolation in Hamburg, we read: “In all the churches services of prayer for the abatement of the plague have been held. They have been attended by crowds which have filled the buildings” (Sun).
In ancient times plagues were regarded as visitations from God; to-day we know that they are the products of filth and starvation. Sanitary measures and food for the starving are needed, instead of prayer. The churches would answer a far better purpose converted into soup-kitchens and healthy lodging-houses for the poor and homeless.
In Russia the condition is still worse. The degradation of the masses is extreme. Of the dreadful doings there we hear but the slightest echo. The Russian priest is an ignorant, intolerant, selfish, tyrannical brute. In time of cholera the clergy walk in procession through the streets in church garb, with banners, crosses, candles, chanting and praying, while the dirt, filth, and cholera poison lie all around them.
The pilgrimages to Lourdes are another ecclesiastical swindle. The poor, miserable dupes are enticed in order to be plundered. From the Tribune, “Zola at Lourdes,” we quote: “Nothing could be more truly sensational than the annual pilgrimage thither, the flocking to that shrine of tens of thousands of devotees, dozens of special trains running to it daily; the daily processions, with thousands of priests and tens of thousands of the laity; the fervent prayers of the supplicants, and the wild exaltation of those that are miraculously healed—or who believe themselves to be healed.… So M. Zola, accompanied by Mme. Zola, were at Lourdes, and following the crowd, proceeded at once to the holy grotto. He found it surrounded by more than twenty thousand people, of both sexes and of all ages and conditions. Indeed in none of his novels is a more striking scene portrayed than that. In the afternoon the daily procession occurred. At its head marched no less than two thousand priests, monks, and nuns. Then came the holy sacrament, borne beneath a silken canopy. After it came the sick and the suffering who had come thither to be cured. These were cripples on crutches or leaning on the arms of friends; the blind, led by their friends or fellow-pilgrims; sick and deformed infants in their mothers’ arms; here and there a cripple and a blind man arm in arm, relying upon each other, the one for support, the other for guidance. Behind these thousands came other thousands of suppliants, sightseers, perhaps some scoffers, while yet other thousands stood by and gazed upon the scene.”
It is indeed a miracle that we have so many such persons at this stage of progressive civilization. But the church and its priests have exerted every influence to prevent its advance.
Fortunately the world at large has outgrown this childish nonsense to some extent. The development of our civil laws, with a greater knowledge of the natural laws, keep the church and priestly fanatics in subjection.