I have now examined all the items of the curse—eight in number—said to have been visited upon Adam, Eve, and the serpent; and what do they all amount to? Not one of them has been realized as such; but most of those which were practically realized turned out to be real blessings. And yet they have been proclaimed to the world by the clergy as the missiles of wrath hurled upon a guilty world for the sin of rebellion against the divine government; and, whether any of these so-called "visitations of divine displeasure" were designed as penalties for disobedience or not, it is evident they have not in a moral sense been realized, or had any beneficial effect whatever. And we must conclude that it was rather short-sighted in Moses' God to attempt to bring his children into obedience by pronouncing curses upon them. He himself virtually acknowledges it; for, after having tried these expedients and found they availed nothing, he became so discouraged, that he said, "It grieved him to the heart" (see Gen. vi. 6) that he had made so rebellious a creature as man.
THE SECOND SCHEME OF REDEMPTION.
The God of Moses, after having tried the expedient of cursing his children,—the cunning workmanship of his hands,—and grieved over the failure for more than a thousand years,—he (the God of Moses) came to the conclusion to try another expedient. He concluded to select a few of the choicest specimens of the genus homo, in order to preserve the race and start anew with some of the best stock or material that could be found. Accordingly, old drunken Noah—the most righteous man that could be found amongst the millions of the inhabit ants of the globe—was chosen to build a schooner, yacht, canoe, or some kind of a vessel, called an arc into which he stowed millions of birds, bipeds, and insects of all species and all sizes, from the ostrich and condor down to fleas, flies, mosquitoes, spiders, and bed-bugs; and millions of animals and reptiles of all kinds and all sizes, from the mammoth and the mastodon down to skunks, lizards, snakes, gophers, and grasshoppers; together with himself and family of eight persons, and food sufficient to last them ten months while in the ark, and several years afterwards, as we must presume was done from the fact that it is declared that the waters destroyed every living thing upon the face of the earth. And it must have required several years to restock it with grass and animals to serve as food for the granivorous, herbivorous, and carnivorous species; and this would make a bulk sufficient to fill forty such vessels, and a weight sufficient to sink the whole British navy. And all this living mass of respiring and perspiring animals were dependent upon one little window twelve inches by fifteen for light and air, and which had to be kept shut most of the time to keep out the rain. If some giraffe or cameleopard had been disposed to monopolize the window by thrusting his head out, we can easily imagine what would have been the fatal consequence to this living, breathing cargo. And then we have to entertain the thought that lions and lambs, wolves and sheep, dogs and skunks, hawks and chickens, owls and doves, cats and mice, men and monkeys, all ate and slept together in immediate juxtaposition like a band of brothers. Perhaps more glorious times never were realized since "the sons of God shouted for joy." But it appears the whole thing turned out to be a failure. The drowning process was no more effectual in producing the desired reformation than the first scheme that had been tried; for, only a few hundred years after the culmination of this world-drowning experiment, Moses' God is represented as crying out in despair, "The imagination of man's heart is evil, and only evil continually." This was certainly a deplorable and disheartening state of things witnessed so soon after it had been presumed that all the bad folks had been drowned; but it appears, that, if all that class had been drowned, there would have been no human beings left. David, therefore, was probably right when he exclaims, "There is none that doeth good, no not one" (Ps. xiv. 3).
THE THIRD AND LAST PLAN OF SALVATION.
The atonement was the third and last resort. The third experiment in any case generally ends the siege whether successful or unsuccessful. After a few thousand years more had elapsed of grief, anger, and disappointment in the practical history of Moses' God, he ventured to try one more experiment in the effort to get his people in the right track,—not so much, however, to get them in the right way, as to have his own wrath appeased. In this way he sanctions the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the hand of man,—that of murder. God the "Father," in order to cancel the sins of his disobedient and rebellious children, and mitigate his own wrath, is represented as proposing to have his "only-begotten son" killed,—at least, as consenting to the act. This looks like "doing evil that good may come of it;" which is a very objectionable principle of moral ethics, according to Paul. How the commission of the greatest of all sins can do any thing towards reforming other sins, or how the punishment of an innocent being can do any thing towards atoning for the sins of the guilty, presents us with a moral problem, shocking both to our common sense and common reason. If the Father's anger could not be appeased or his vengeance satisfied without the perpetration of a horrible murder, and the knowledge that some victim had died a slow and agonizing death, we are forced to the conclusion that he is a cruel and revengeful God, and that his passions overrule his love of justice and his paternal regard for his son. But it appears that this last experiment, whether right or wrong, was attended with as complete a failure as the two preceding ones; and yet it assumes to be the best that "Infinite Wisdom" could devise. And the resources of divine knowledge and skill were apparently exhausted when this scheme culminated. And yet it also failed, according to the admission of its own friends and ardent supporters (the clergy); for they tell us, that, notwithstanding all the schemes and systems that Omniscience and Infinite Prescience could devise to save man, he does not get saved: at least but few are saved, and they have to "work out, their own salvation with fear and trembling." Nineteen-twentieths of the human family, the clergy tell us, are still traveling "the broad road," and are finally lost, notwithstanding all the labored experiments and expedients of omniscient or Jehovahistic wisdom to save them. With this view of the case, the thought is suggested that it was hardly worth while to have gone to the trouble and expense of fitting up a heaven for the few that are saved. It certainly "doesn't pay." And this conclusion is the more forcible in view of the fact that it must be rather a lonesome place, and consequently not a very desirable home or situation to live in; for we are told it is "a house of many mansions," "and yet few there be that find the strait and narrow road" leading to it. Hence we may conclude that many of the rooms or mansions are empty. Such a lonesome heaven could not be congenial or adapted to any class of saints but monks and hermits.
We have now briefly examined the three plans of salvation which lie at the foundation of the Christian religion, and shown that they are all failures according to their own witnesses. In view of this fact, we can not wonder that Moses' God is represented as saying that he repented for having made man, and that it grieved him to the heart (Gen. vi. 6). Such a series of signal failures is enough to discourage even a saint or a God.
True religion sees God in every thing, reads his scriptures on every page of Nature's open Bible, and feels him in the inspiration of the soul. It calls God father, not king; Christ a brother, not a redeemer. It loves all men, but fears no God. Its God is not a tyrant, but a loving father. It looks upon Jesus Christ as a truly good man, but not a God; as a noble, loving, benevolent being, but endowed with human frailties. It considers him a martyr to truth and right, but not a just victim to his father's wrath, or the just object of a bloody sacrifice. It regards the laws of nature as sufficient, if diligently studied and strictly observed, to serve as a guide for man's earthly life without any special revelation. It holds that man's natural love of goodness, justice, mercy, and honesty is capable of endless expansion and augmentation. It walks by the light of science. The many grand truths of the age, developed by the onward march of mind, form its infallible laws, and constitute its living virtues. It uses reason for a lamp, and an enlightened intellect for a guide. It ties no martyr to the stake, piles the faggots around no heretics. It issues no dogmas, no bulls, no canons, and hangs man's salvation upon no infallible revelation. Christians say, Give us a better revelation; Christ said, "Cease to do evil, and [then] learn to do well." All wrong and hurtful institutions should be pulled down or abandoned, and trust to finding better ones. Remove the weeds from the soil, and a healthy and useful vegetation will spring up in their place. The true religion grants perfect freedom to all human beings; leaves human thought as free and unfettered as the wind, as free as the rays of sunlight which fall upon every hill and every valley, and rest upon the bosom of the deep.