R.B. WESTBROOK.
1707 Oxford Street,
Philadelphia.
[SKELETON KEYS TO SACERDOTAL SECRETS]
[CHAPTER I. THE WHOLE TRUTH]
“For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”—Luke 12: 2, 3.
THE assumption is general that if the faith of the common people should be unsettled as to some things which they have heretofore been taught regarding religion, they would immediately reject all truth, and fall into a most deplorable state of skepticism and infidelity, and that the existing institutions of religion would be destroyed, and public virtue so undermined as to endanger the very foundations of morality and civil government. This is not only the fear of conservative and timid clergymen, but many of our prominent statesmen seem anxious lest the enlightenment of the people in matters in which they have been cruelly deceived should so weaken the restraints of police and governmental authority as to result in universal anarchy and a general disregard of the rights of property, and even of the sacredness of human life.
These foolish fears show a great want of confidence in human nature, and falsely assume that moral character depends mainly upon an unquestioning faith in certain dogmas which, in point of fact, have no necessary connection with it.
The statistics of crime show that a very large majority of those who have been seized by the strong arm of the law as dangerous members of society are those who most heartily believe in those very dogmas of theology which we are warned not to criticise, though we may know them to be accretions of ignorance and superstition, and that some of them have a natural tendency to fetter the essential principles of true religion and that higher code of morality which alone can stand strong under all circumstances. It is safe to affirm that ninety-nine hundredths of the criminal class believe, or profess to believe, in the dogmas of the dominant theology, Romish and Protestant; which are essentially the same.
It is too often forgotten that the very first condition of good government is faith in human nature, confidence in the people. You always excite dishonor and dishonesty by treating men as if you think them all rogues, and as if you expect nothing good from them, but every conceivable evil, only as they may be restrained by the fear of pains and penalties in this life and after death.
One great fundamental mistake of theologians and dogmatic pietists is the baseless assumption that religion is something supernatural, not to say anti-natural; something external to human nature and of foreign origin; something to be received by transfusion as the result or consequence of faith in certain dogmas or the observance of external rites; something bottled up by the Church, like rare and precious medicines in an apothecary-shop, to be dealt out to those who are willing to follow priestly prescriptions and pay the required price.