MOD.—In modelling his deity it was evidently the intention of Moses to preserve his unity; but his followers being the most barbarous of human beings, he was under the necessity of adapting his god to their ignorant and rude notions of things; and, therefore, not blameable for the tricks and deceptions he used, since these were the only means of governing them. Why, then, should not similar means be used in the nineteenth century to answer the same purpose? The ignorance and credulity of the mass of mankind are at all times the sufficient warrant of theological frauds. It is not at all necessary that men of learning, and the rulers of nations, should believe in the irrational fictions of any scheme of supematuralism; but experience seems to point out the utility of their yielding them a pretended belief, and a real support, for the sake of governing the multitude.
LUCIAN.—As an initiated Pagan priest, the conduct of Moses towards his followers was quite in character; and the religion which he manufactured was, no doubt, well suited to the extreme savageness of the Jews.* But it is wonderful that this religion, blasphemous and absurd in the highest degree, and contrived solely for the purpose of over-awing and governing a horde of plundering banditti, should maintain a sacred influence over nations where history and science abound. The grovelling credulity of uninstructed man is such, that all despotic rulers, aided by their iniquitous connexion with subservient priesthoods, have during centuries of darkness, shackled the necks of mankind with great success in the way you mention. But the wicked stratagem of keeping men in ignorance, in order that they may be misgoverned by theological fables, is now meeting a stumbling-block in the increasing light of reason and useful knowledge among the people. This wretched policy has already produced revolutions; and others of yet brighter aspect seem rising on the political horizon, still farther to weaken, and ultimately to overthrow, the church-contaminated governments of Europe. Superstition, though still leagued with political rule, is utterly unable to be its mainstay any longer, because of the reasonable hostility of the people whose eyes begin to be opened to the evil tendency in regard to morality, as well as to the prodigious expense entailed upon industry, in support of the voracious hydra of superstition.
"An inhuman and uncultured race, who
Howl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God'."
* To establish a religion upon the wild reveries of an
ignorant people, whose legends are in all cases filled with
miraculous events against the order of Nature, and bearing
on their very front the most glaring marks of imposture, is
the very acme of human folly—the pestilent mania which has
convulsed nations, and deluged the world with blood.
MOD.—That all rational and unprejudiced minds find an insuperable repugnance at the idea of reconciling, or identifying the Supreme power, with the deity of Moses, as depicted in the Bible, is a point which I readily concede. When the man of free reflection meditates on a boundless universe, governed in the most consummate order and harmony, nothing appears to him so shocking as the impious comparison of the incomprehensible Being, the creator and ruler of millions of worlds, with the impotent, puerile, and inconsistent deity of the Jews—the contrast is, beyond all expression, revolting and abhorrent. This immutable order of all things (we are forced to the conclusion) could not exist without the guidance of an infinite Being who is not only independent of matter, or Nature, but regulates that principle.
LUCIAN.—Matter and motion alone constitute what we call Nature, which, you allow, is the essential principle, therefore, there is no room left for supposing any anterior existence; because, as the essential principle, it could have no antecedent—no cause; and must in consequence be self-existent and eternal. If invariable order and harmony evince the design of an artificer, surely the transcendent intellect of your supreme artificer (the demiourgos) evinces still more the necessity of a greater designer, in his production. We know that harmony and adaptation exist in the energies of matter, from which spring all animal organization; is it not then quite as satisfactory, and far more easy, to suppose that Nature—her harmony and intelligence—have existed eternally, than it is to suppose a time when boundless matter was not in being; and that it derived its existence from an immaterial personage, of whom the mind cannot form the slightest conception? As material Nature is the infinite Being, it cannot be an effect; it is the principle of principles, whose innate energies produce within itself the eternal routine of cause and effect.* Of this necessitated process ad infinitum, man cannot know or describe even the surface; yet has the folly to pretend to look beyond the boundless plenum!
* To become a Materialist under existing modes of education,
is no easy attainment; it is the fruit of much impartial
research and knowledge, arising from independent and
fearless thought.
MOD.—But may not such an infinite spiritual power as the Platonists, and after them the Christians, figured to themselves, exist and rule the universe, although the mind of man can form no definite idea of this Being?
LUCIAN.—Man has nothing to do with that which he can neither know nor comprehend;* and it is impossible for him to believe in that which is beyond his comprehension. Materialists maintain the existence of an all-ruling POWER; but every attempt to personify that Power,—and all pretensions to any knowledge of it beyond that which is gathered from the process of Nature, in her works, they hold as deceitful and pernicious; regarding all pretended revelations said to be supernaturally made to man, as the work of the most dangerous and wicked impostors: and their revelations as the direst curses that were ever entailed upon mankind. It would be a perversion of terms to speak of more than one infinite Being: whether then is it most rational to suppose it to be that which we know to exist, or that which we do not know** to exist? So far is it from being difficult to suppose the eternity of matter, it is hardly possible to imagine anything but its eternity. Previous to what you call its creation by your immaterial artificer, was he a vacuum living in a vacuum?*** As the Christian's definition of his deity confounds all language, it is its own best refutation. With a face of gravity, he talks of his body spiritual that has no body; an incorporeal something that is essentially nothing; an immaterial substance that is non-substantial; and though this body is immaterial, it possesses the form and likeness, together with the bodily members, of a man! These are the pestilent offspring of theology—your distracting chimeras, which
"Turns them to a shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
* Man neither can nor ought to have anything to do with that
which is confessedly inconceivable; if he pretends to know
or say anything of such a being, he immediately falls into
contradictions. When did a theologian understand himself
when speaking of his deity or deities?—Never.
** We have five witnesses in favor of the existence of
matter, viz., seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and
tasting; but where is the proof of the existence of anything
that is immaterial? It is fancy alone that creates such a
chimera.
*** The old fact that nature abhors a vacuum is still
unrefuted; we may indeed go farther and say that she will
not allow it, for the art of man has never produced a space
where there was nothing.
"Your imagination bodies forth
In forms of things unknown;—"
Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term God was used only as being expressive of an effect, whose cause is Nature.