* Mr. Thaddeus B. Wakeman, an eminent representative of the
"Religion of Humanity," writes me that he has not found this
phrase in any work earlier than Paine's Crisis, vii.
At the close of the American Revolution there appeared little need for a religious reformation. The people were happy, prosperous, and, there being no favoritism toward any sect under the new state constitutions, but perfect equality and freedom, the Religion of Humanity meant sheathing of controversial swords also. It summoned every man to lend a hand in repairing the damages of war, and building the new nationality. Paine therefore set about constructing his iron bridge of thirteen symbolic ribs, to overleap the ice-floods and quicksands of rivers. His assistant in this work, at Bordentown, New Jersey, John Hall, gives us in his journal, glimpses of the religious ignorance and fanaticism of that region. But Paine showed no aggressive spirit towards them. "My employer," writes Hall (1786), "has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself." In all of his intercourse with Hall (a Unitarian just from England), and his neighbors, there is no trace of any disposition to deprive any one of a belief, or to excite any controversy. Humanity did not demand it, and by that direction he left the people to their weekly toils and Sunday sermons.
But when (1787) he was in England, Humanity gave another command. It was obeyed in the eloquent pages on religious liberty and equality in "The Rights of Man." Burke had alarmed the nation by pointing out that the Revolution in France had laid its hand on religion. The cry was raised that religion was in danger. Paine then uttered his impressive paradox:
"Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope armed with fire and faggot, the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.... Toleration by the same assumed authority by which it tolerates a man to pay his worship, presumptuously and blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.... Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes, by whatever name thou art called, whether a king, a bishop, a church or a state, a parliament or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and his maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believeth, and there is no earthly power can determine between you.... Religion, without regard to names, as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the divine object of all adoration, is man bringing to his maker the fruits of his heart; and though these fruits may differ like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted."
This, which I condense with reluctance, was the affirmation which the Religion of Humanity needed in England. But when he came to sit in the French Convention a new burden rolled upon him. There was Marat with the Bible always before him, picking out texts that justified his murders; there were Robespierre and Couthon invoking the God of Nature to sanction just such massacres as Marat found in his Bible; and there were crude "atheists" consecrating the ferocities of nature more dangerously than if they had named them Siva, Typhon, or Satan. Paine had published the rights of man for men; but here human hearts and minds had been buried under the superstitions of ages. The great mischief had ensued, to use his own words, "by the possession of power before they understood principles: they earned liberty in words but not in fact" Exhumed suddenly, as if from some Nineveh, resuscitated into semi-conscious strength, they remembered only the methods of the allied inquisitors and tyrants they were overthrowing; they knew no justice but vengeance; and when on crumbled idols they raised forms called "Nature" and "Reason," old idols gained life in the new forms. These were the gods which had but too literally created, by the slow evolutionary force of human sacrifices, the new revolutionary priesthood. Their massacres could not be questioned by those who acknowledged the divine hand in the slaughter of Canaanites.*
* On August 10, 1793, there was a sort of communion of the
Convention around the statue of Nature, whose breasts were
fountains of water. Hérault de Séchelles, at that time
president, addressed the statue: "Sovereign of the savage
and of the enlightened nations, O Nature, this great people,
gathered at the first beam of day before thee, is free! It
is in thy bosom, it is in thy sacred sources, that it has
recovered its rights, that it has regenerated itself after
traversing so many ages of error and servitude: it must
return to the simplicity of thy ways to rediscover liberty
and equality. O Nature! receive the expression of the
eternal attachment of the French people for thy laws; and
may the teeming waters gushing from thy breasts, may this
pure beverage which refreshed the first human beings,
consecrate in this Cup of Fraternity and Equality the vows
that France makes thee this day,—the most beautiful that
the sun has illumined since it was suspended in the
immensity of space." The cup passed around from lip to lip,
amid fervent ejaculations. Next year Nature's breasts
issued Hérault's blood.
The Religion of Humanity again issued its command to its minister. The "Age of Reason" was written, in its first form, and printed in French. "Couthon," says Lanthenas, "to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me for having translated it"* Couthon raged against the priesthood, but could not tolerate a work which showed vengeance to be atheism, and compassion—not merely for men, but for animals—true worship of God.
* The letter of Lanthenas to Merlin de Thîonville, of which
the original French is before me, is quoted in an article in
Scribner, September, 1880, by Hon. E. B. Washbarne (former
Minister to France); it is reprinted in Remsburg's
compilation of testimonies: "Thomas Paine, the Apostle of
Religions and Political Liberty" (1880). See also p. 135
of this volume.
On the other hand, Paine's opposition to atheism would appear to have brought him into danger from another quarter, in which religion could not be distinguished from priestcraft. In a letter to Samuel Adams Paine says that he endangered his life by opposing the king's execution, and "a second time by opposing atheism." Those who denounce the "Age of Reason" may thus learn that red-handed Couthon, who hewed men to pieces before his Lord, and those who acknowledged no Lord, agreed with them. Under these menaces the original work was as I have inferred, suppressed. But the demand of Humanity was peremptory, and Paine re-wrote it all, and more. When it appeared he was a prisoner; his life was in Couthon's hands. He had personally nothing to gain by its publication—neither wife, child, nor relative to reap benefit by its sale. It was published as purely for the good of mankind as any work ever written. Nothing could be more simply true than his declaration, near the close of life:
"As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an elevated sense of his own character, and free him from the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary government, so, in my publications on religious subjects, my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, and mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures; and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation, in his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to be the word of God."