But the Rationalist is also charged with being negative and not positive. We are told in sonorous language that man cannot live on negations. But it is Orthodoxy that is negative, not Rationalism. The first commandment in the Bible God ever gave man was a negative one: "Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." It denied man freedom, and science. It denied him the right to progress. And ever since the one aim of the church has been to keep man "poor in spirit". Rationalism, on the contrary, removes the angel with the flaming sword at the gates of Eden, and invites everyone who hungers for knowledge to enter and eat of the tree of life.
To know that a thing is not true, is also truth. The mind, like the ground, must be plowed and cleared before it can receive the truth. There can be no truth without the destruction of error.
"Your doctrine is well enough for the strong, but the weak must have crutches to walk at all, and you take away from them their crutches," is another criticism often advanced against the Rationalist. It is related that Mr. Ingersoll, when he called one day to see his friend, Mr.
————, who was an invalid, was confronted with an argument he was unable to meet. "As I was sitting in my invalid's chair," began his friend, "and was looking out of the window, I saw a feeble, old man, struggling up the hill yonder, upon his crutches. Evidently, he was in pain, for he moved with extreme care and leaned heavily upon his crutches. I could tell that his crutches were all that sustained him from utter collapse. Then I saw a young man run after him, and when he came up to where the old man was, he kicked off his crutches, and the poor fellow rolled down the hill, a perfect wreck."
"That was an outrage," Ingersoll exclaimed, jumping to his feet and walking toward the window. "Where is he?" he asked, impatient with indignation.
"You are that man," returned his friend. "I was once a believer; my beliefs comforted me. You came into my life, kicked off my crutches, and now I sit here in this chair, a desolate and hopeless soul, waiting for the flame to blow out."
There is no more comparison between a tottering man leaning upon his wooden crutches, and a religion claiming to appeal to the intellect of man, than there is between a watch and a universe, to quote Paley's famous argument for the existence of a God. But, at any rate, is it not cruel to knock an old man's crutches from under him? Let us see. If the old man with the crutches represents the feeble-minded believers, the question to be answered is, how did they come to depend upon the use of crutches in the first place? Was it not more cruel to teach them to depend upon crutches? Are not those who prevent the healthy development of the limbs to enhance the sale of crutches even more cruel than those who despise their use? To bring a man to a state of dependence; to terrorize him into fear; to fetter his faculties so that he cannot train them into service; to arrest his evolution; to keep him a dwarf, clinging like a scared child to the apron strings of his lords; to place in his hands an icon or a crucifix as his only hope—and then to denounce the teachers who rob these poor people of their crutches, is an argument which is bound to recoil with fearful force upon the venders of such artificial helps. It is like depriving a man of house and goods, and then providing a tattered tent for his shelter, and then saying to us: Would you be so cruel as to pull down the only thing that protects his poor head from the elements? Yes! in order that we may awaken in him a sense of the wrong and the oppression and the deprivation of which he is the unconscious victim. Sir Henry Main, in his Popular Government, says, that, if it had been put to a vote whether machinery, when it was first invented, should be introduced into the factories, there would have been recorded an overwhelming vote against its use. It was taking away from the poor man his crutches to compel him to compete with the iron and steel. And, actually, laborers of the time, suffered much and were driven to the wall, by the invention of machinery. But the temporary mischief caused by the introduction of machinery has been fully compensated by its lasting benefits to all classes. Likewise, this or that believer may fall and hurt himself when his theological crutches have been taken away from him, but if thereby his children and the future race can be taught to dispense with the use of so clumsy a contrivance, altogether—who would hesitate to knock them off? Was man meant to be an invalid all his life? Must all the generations of the future limp and hobble, to support the crutch industry?
Moreover, if any invalid can be made to give up his crutches, that very fact shows that he did not need them. Grandma, or grandpa, must not be disturbed in their beliefs, we hear people argue. We cannot disturb them, however hard we may try, unless they are intellectually virile enough to keep themselves together without crutches. The very fact that we can shake a man, shows he is strong enough to stand the strain. We cannot induce an invalid to give up his crutches; when we can, then, he is not an invalid. And what do we give in place of the crutches?—the ability to do without them.
I have often been asked "Why do we not as a Rationalist Society do works of charity, such as establishing neighborhood guilds, sewing and bathing clubs for the poor, free dispensaries, and hospitals?" There are many who are already doing this kind of work whatever its value may be, but very few who are even attempting to do the work which we have set out to do, namely, to help men to use freely and wisely the noblest of all their gifts—Reason. Is that a work that can be dispensed with? And can public baths, and evening classes do more for a man than they will for an animal if his Reason is still fettered. The emigrant from Russia, or Italy, or Ireland, may join all the guilds and frequent all the night schools, and still remain a mental slave. But he can not take a course in Rationalism, and continue to cling to his chains. Of course, to make men free and enlightened is not enough. They must also be helped to develop the humanities which are the salt of life, but we must first wake him up, for he can not be saved in his sleep.