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

by Logan Mitchell

MOD.—This watery theory of yours seems not very objectionable; but I can neither agree in the Mosaic account of the first man, nor in the opinion of Ocellus, who says, "he had no original production from the earth," but was always upon it, his power of propagation existing in himself. Man is an animal so transcendent above all others in his intellectual organisation, and reasoning powers, as to warrant our inference that the supreme ruler of the world had some particular design in his production, such as giving him dominion over all others, none of whom are possessed of immortal souls, that distinguishing proof of excellence which is found in man alone.

LUCIAN.—You may perhaps be able to tell me in what part of him it is to be "found" and what it consists of; but until that is done demonstrably, Nature, experience, reason, and all analogy, will flatly deny that man is possessed of any immortal part that is not common to every other animal. Man is immortal and universal in his materiality alone; as the matter which composes his body belongs to the immortal whole called Nature, or the infinite all-in-all; and he is annihilable in his personal identity only. That which you call design in the production of man, the Materialists, we repeat, ascribe to the energies, adaptations, and affinities in matter, whereby all organic structure in Nature is effected. We cannot trace the effects which these and other motions of matter produce, to anything above its own powers; and therefore the deceptive arrogance of the theologian, in pretending to look beyond these powers, has been pernicious in the highest degree, in preventing a more full development of Nature's secret arcanum. The non-existence of the abstract immaterial something, which priests have set up as the supernatural ruler of the universe, is best demonstrated by all they have yet said of it—that all being downright contradiction.

The physical organisation of man is by no means superior to that of many other animals, except in his extraordinary allowance of brain, which, if cultivated for his advantage and happiness, would certainly set him above most of the others, in intellectual qualities; but hitherto these have been developed only to be perverted by a total departure from the laws of his nature, in everything wherein that happiness is concerned. Completely estranged at all points from the salutary paths which the mother of all things intended for his walks, he beggars himself in keeping hireling priests, who conjure up before his bewildered mind's-eye those chimerical nonentities which decoy him, like an ignis fatuus, madly to dance after them through life.

MOD.—With all your hostility to priests, you cannot do without them, as our laws and society are at present constructed: from your birth to the day of your death, the church has got something to do or say in every step you take of importance.

LUCIAN.—That is the chief evil afflicting society. There is hardly a bad law, custom, or institution amongst men, that has not been priest-procured in some age ancient or modern. They have not left even a vestige of the natural rights of women, and very few of those of men; from the water sorcery called baptism, in infancy, to the funeral incantation of the priest, they are misled, abused, and cheated systematically, by the lawgiver and the theologian; whilst every natural right is sacrificed on their altar of oppression. In room of the birthright liberties, of which man is thus robbed from childhood, supernatural excellencies (such as soul), and peculiar favors from a place called heaven, are falsely bestowed upon him, without which he cannot be sufficiently donkified to answer the purposes of priestcraft; and the selfish and contemptible falsehood is palmed upon him, that the ruler of this ideal region ycleped heaven, created everything for his particular use and service. This stupid arrogance would be matchable only in the vegetables declaring that all animals were made for their sustenance.

MOD.—The pride of man will for ever prevent your convincing him that he is not the most favored creature of the Supreme Being, who has fitted him out with a soul, and given him such other qualities of mind and body, as show indisputably his vast superiority over the brute creation, to whom souls have been refused. Your appeal to the miseries of his life, which are greater than those of any other animal, or even the frightful number of chances recorded by his priests against him, on the score of damnation, will not shake his belief in these preternatural distinctions in his favor. You complain that soul-saving in England and Ireland is too expensive; but by a late Transatlantic calculation, the average per head for saving heathen souls, in the Australian Archipelago, by the missionaries of the United States, costs the old women of both sexes, children, and fools of these States, the sum of £82 sterling. Now, reckoning the population of China and India at 450,000,000, which is nearly the half of all the human species on this globe, without including the ourang outang species of homo, in whom souls have not yet been detected (probably owing to their keeping no priests), the total expense of saving the whole, at the rate of £82 per soul, would cost the above description of persons among the Christian godly, the enormous sum of £36,900,000,000. We cannot for a moment suppose that these holy disinterested missionaries would charge a farthing; above the prime cost in pursuing their "glorious work."

LUCIAN.—The grand support of missionaries abroad and of established priesthoods at home, is the female sex of Christendom, without whose sustaining zeal no one of all the great stocks of superstition which now infest the world would stand for another century. Whatever may be the origin or absurdity of any system of theology, set up in any country, the timidity of the female sex stimulates them generally to cling to it with fervor and devotedness, without the slightest examination. And while the priest "harrows up their souls" through the fears of his mysterious futurity, a subtle influence is exercised by them over the weaker and more uninformed portion of the male sex, whose apathy gives a tacit assent to the endless string of inconceiveables, for the sake of domestic quiet. Here the double battery of the wife and priest is irresistible. A learned clergyman, in writing to a female friend, makes this remark:—"if, indeed, your sex should enter into the irreligious notions, which now prevail too much among men, the next generation would be irrecoverably lost." This amounts to a plain confession that, should the priest lose his deep-rooted impulsive power over the female mind, his trade would be "irrecoverably lost." Women have been, in all ages and countries, the upholders of superstition, owing, in the first place, to their nature, which, according to Hippocrates, "is more weak and fearful than the nature and disposition of men"; secondly, to the delusive and mischievous theological dogma about the superintendence of what are called spiritual powers; to which may be added, the gaudy and imposing pomp of ceremonies; all of which, taken together, readily operate upon the female mind, it being, as it were, a softer and more pliant wax than that of man, to receive the unnatural impression of the priest. Before Christianity was known, Strabo made the following strong remark:—"It is a thing universally taken for granted, that women are the ringleaders of superstition; they tease their husbands into all sorts of worship of the gods, into the observation of feasts and fasts; but it is a rare thing that any man, leading a single life, is found to be such a person." I shall close my authorities on this subject, with a quotation from Selden. "When priests come into a family, they do as a man that would set fire to a house,—he does not put fire to the brick wall, but puts it into the thatch; they work upon the women, and let the men alone."

THE END.