Religion in the Heavens; Or, Mythology Unveiled in a Series of Lectures

by Logan Mitchell

Hardly one in ten thousand of such victims will escape mental slavery for life. Moreover, men dedicated to sacerdotal delusion, are bound by strong necessity to maintain their deceptions, or else give up not only their ease and luxury, but their very means of subsistence. Once enlisted in the cause, they must defend it; for should anyone of them, prompted by convictions from impartial research and rational experience, honestly avow opinions hostile to the national superstition, or decline to administer in the usual manner to your nursery-conceived prejudices and errors, would you not abandon him to obloquy and starvation? These things duly considered, you may ask yourselves whether you are not more likely to meet with truth from men who neither seek your money nor court your favor—who are actuated by no other motive or interest than that which the love of the principle of truth excites—who are unprostituted by hire—who, under the armour of reason, can resist and despise the venomous calumny which is cast upon every exposure of priestcraft; and who, having discharged a duty, feel it as a matter of indifference whether you shall be pleased or offended by the truth. You complain that the contemner of your religious opinions, at once tortures your feelings and arraigns your judgment; but has any judgment proceeding from your impartial investigation of that subject, ever had anything to do in the matter? Did you not fall heir to those absurd whims which you are pleased to call religious opinions, in right of your mother and other relations; and if these had happened to be followers of Mahommed, would not your blind zeal for the prophet of Mecca, have been as great as it now is for his alleged predecessor of Palestine?* Your answering this question in the negative would be the highest proof of folly and stupidity. Having sadly experienced for more than half a century the obstinate and angry nature of superstition, we are prepared to expect anything but your approbation when we repeat to you, that your faith has no other basis than traditional fables, legends, and allegories—that your attempt to prove their literal truth by prodigies and violations of Nature's laws, is far more inadmissible than the fables themselves; and that your understanding is so obscured by the pestilential fogs raised by these theological absurdities, that the rational truths of Nature can find no admittance.

The usual reply to such arguments and reasoning as the foregoing, is the hue and cry of infidel, atheist, etc.; but is it atheism to prefer the known to the unknown, and to consult experience and the evidence of our senses, in preference to dogmas drawn from books of unauthenticated legends, which are remarkable for nothing so much as the numerous libels they contain against the ruling power of the universe?** When the laws and institutions of a country become so corrupted by the usurpations of religion, and the political tyranny which it engenders, as are those of Great Britain,*** where the most grievous abuses in church and state are cherished and perpetuated to serve the ends of the aristocracy and the hierarchy, and where even the sciences are allowed to be seen only through the spectacles of superstition, are the men Atheists who seek a radical reform of them all?

* The minds of the great mass of mankind may be compared to
the glasses in a tavern, which bear about whatever may be
put into them. If the tavern be in Turkey, the sensual
potations of Mahommed's heaven will fly about; if at Rome,
the sparkling froth of Catholicism: if in any one of the
Protestant countries of Europe, your features will be
distorted by the acetous draughts of Calvin.
** By one Act of Henry VIII., it was high treason to have
the Bible in possession; by another it was permitted to
noblemen and gentlemen; and next, to countesses, ladies,
etc.; and lastly to grown people, but not to apprentices and
children. It was wise to allow the reading of such a book to
those alone who were interested in upholding it. Reason,
philosophy and science will ultimately bring it into
contempt.
*** All the ecclesiastical, and most of the other laws of
Great Britain, are in opposition to everything that is
salutary to man, or protective of his natural rights. To the
former class, every man of sound morality and virtue, ought
to make a point of denying jurisdiction and obedience. All
the laws and usages, without exception, that have relation
to the intercourse of the sexes, are so unnatural, cruel and
absurd, that they seem calculated to make them mutual snares
for each other.

If there be indeed any such thing as a post mortem judgment seat, to try the wicked and unrighteous for their immoralities and crimes, priests will have much to answer for at that tribunal, on the score of the complicated chain of calamities which their trade hath entailed on their brother man; for they alone

"Have dared to babble of a God of peace,
Even while their hands were red with guiltless blood—
Murdering the while—uprooting every germ
Of truth—exterminating—spoiling all—
Making the earth a slaughter-house."

As sanctioning precedents for the commission of almost every crime may be conveniently found in the Jew books, in like manner they hold forth examples of the coarsest obscenities, though false translation has hidden many of them. Where shall we find vices so lewd and unnatural as those which were practised, and seem to have been of ordinary occurrence, amongst the chosen people? Would the law relating to asses and he-goats have been made if the unnatural crime which it was intended to prevent had not been in practice? See in Judges xix. the infamous doings of the men of Gibeah and Benjamin, the descendants of the chosen son of Jacob. Would any man of ordinary decency read to the females of his household passages so outrageously—nay, so matchlessly obscene, as those we frequently meet with in the Bible? For instance, Ezekiel iv., 12, and nearly the whole of the chapters xix. and xxiii. of the same book. See also Hosea i., 2 and 3, and chapter iii. to the end. The Song of Solomon is evidently the lascivious* effusion of some devoted debauchee; yet such is the transcendent impudence of our priests, that these superlatively lecherous imaginings have been, by forged headings, called "Christ's love** to the church." The instances above cited are trivial when compared with the number which might be adduced, of obscenities altogether unequalled in any other book; and we would ask any Bible advocate, "Whether any young woman who should be detected in reading a book (not labelled The Holy Bible) which contained a fiftieth part of the foul and rank immodesties that pervade this 'Will of God,' would not lose her good reputation for ever?"

* In chapter v., 4, it is very significantly said, "my
beloved put his finger, etc.;" but to damp this plainly
libidinous expression, the inspired translators foisted in
"of the door". No forgery can be more barefaced. The words
are "Dilectus meus demittebat mânum suam a for ami ne, cum
visceribus meis frementibus in me." There is no mention
whatever of a door.—Lucian Redivivus.
** If they would call them typical of the Duke of York's
love for Mrs. Clarke, they would be much nearer the truth.
*** At a trial in London, for the imaginary crime of
blasphemy, the judge very ingenuously acknowledged the
revolting obscenities of the Jew books, by ordering the
women and boys to leave the court while the defendant, in an
able defence, was reading the Bible.

But these obscenities are of little ethical importance, compared with the mass of moral evil which in all ages of Christianity has arisen from, and been justified by precedents drawn from the conduct of those men called "Bible worthies," though they appear decidedly to have been the very worst characters portrayed even in that book. This is not surprising, when we know that the Jewish god was an abstract personification of the will and interests of the robber-in-chief, combined with the priesthood; and the interests of all priests being essentially different, or opposed to those of the industrious producers of wealth, the men who oppressed and plundered them, and stuck at no crime in serving the sacerdotal order, were of course the favorites of "the Lord." David afforded a full and prominent proof of this. Hickeringill, a learned Hebraist and clergyman of the English church, has let out the secret, that "David was a man after God's own heart," not in holiness, that is not meant, and would be unaccountable after his adultery, murders, his many other sins, and cursing his enemies to the lowest pit of hell; but, "after God's heart," is a Hebraism,* and in English signifies as much as, "a man for my turn" (or he is the man for my money), "he will kill and slay as the priest commands and directs."

* One of the most learned Hebraists of England, has declared
that, no two translators would agree in rendering any verb
from the Hebrew. Godfrey Higgins says:—"I am quite certain
that I shall be able to show—to prove—that every letter of
the Hebrew has four, and probably five meanings." What an
accommodating language for the priests, when their interests
require an alteration in their "Word of God!"

Here we have an exceedingly important confession from a learned churchman! That a person so profligate, wicked, and cruel, as the whole life of David shows him to have been, should acquire the above title, has no doubt astonished many people; but the exposition shows clearly that the priests bestowed it upon him, for his pre-eminence in the commission of every crime that promoted their interest and power. Many others of these "worthies" appear to have been the peculiar favorites of Jehovah, from possessing similar qualities (saints in subsequent times were always made out of the same sort of material), whilst with the good and virtuous few he was generally at enmity. This appears in contrasting the bloody and revengeful character of priest Samuel, with that of the plain, honest, and brave soldier, Saul; that of the cunning and deceitful Jacob, with his generous and amiable brother Esau. Amongst the numerous atrocious murders of David, do we not find that of Mephibosheth, the lame son, or brother of his peculiar friend and generous protector, Jonathan? The wholesale murders ordered by Moses, Joshua, David, and some others, are, if true, the most horrid imaginable. Blood was the order of the day among the Jews, so it flowed on all occasions. Exod. xiii., 2, shows that by their laws the first-born children were dedicated as sacrifices to the Jewish Moloch, as well as the first-born of other animals; but it is probable that the horror which this shocking barbarity excited in surrounding countries, at last induced the priests to accept of a lamb, or other victim that was equally good to eat, in redemption of the devoted child. The poor donkey, being rather a tough morsel for "the Lord" and his priests, was to be put to death, if not redeemed by something more tender and savory; mark the malignity of the priests! That the Jews offered such human sacrifices, is proved in Solomon's having built a temple to Moloch, which he would not have done with the intention of observing any other rites than those of the Ammonitish god. The Jew books have also furnished Christianity with examples of private assassination, which are nowhere else matched in cool atrocity: to give two instances only, see the base cowardly treachery by which those of Sisera, and of Eglon, king of Moab, were perpetrated.