Answer. There are many good things, of course, in every religion, or they would not have existed; plenty of good precepts in Christianity, but the thing that I object to more than all others is the doctrine of eternal punishment, the idea of hell for many and heaven for the few. Take from Christianity the doctrine of eternal punishment and I have no particular objection to what is generally preached. If you will take that away, and all the supernatural connected with it, I have no objection; but that doctrine of eternal punishment tends to harden the human heart. It has produced more misery than all the other doctrines in the world. It has shed more blood; it has made more martyrs. It has lighted the fires of persecution and kept the sword of cruelty wet with heroic blood for at least a thousand years. There is no crime that that doctrine has not produced. I think it would be impossible for the imagination to conceive of a worse religion than orthodox Christianity—utterly impossible; a doctrine that divides this world, a doctrine that divides families, a doctrine that teaches the son that he can be happy, with his mother in perdition; the husband that he can be happy in heaven while his wife suffers the agonies of hell. This doctrine is infinite injustice, and tends to subvert all ideas of justice in the human heart. I think it would be impossible to conceive of a doctrine better calculated to make wild beasts of men than that; in fact, that doctrine was born of all the wild beast there is in man. It was born of infinite revenge.
Think of preaching that you must believe that a certain being was the son of God, no matter whether your reason is convinced or not. Suppose one should meet, we will say on London Bridge, a man clad in rags, and he should stop us and say, "My friend, I wish to talk with you a moment. I am the rightful King of Great Britain," and you should say to him, "Well, my dinner is waiting; I have no time to bother about who the King of England is," and then he should meet another and insist on his stopping while the pulled out some papers to show that he was the rightful King of England, and the other man should say, "I have got business here, my friend; I am selling goods, and I have no time to bother my head about who the King of England is. No doubt you are the King of England, but you don't look like him." And then suppose he stops another man, and makes the same statement to him, and the other man should laugh at him and say, "I don't want to hear anything on this subject; you are crazy; you ought to go to some insane asylum, or put something on your head to keep you cool." And suppose, after all, it should turn out that the man was King of England, and should afterward make his claim good and be crowned in Westminster. What would we think of that King if he should hunt up the gentlemen that he met on London Bridge, and have their heads cut off because they had no faith that he was the rightful heir? And what would we think of a God now who would damn a man eighteen hundred years after the event, because he did not believe that he was God at the time he was living in Jerusalem; not only damn the fellows that he met and who did not believe him, but gentlemen who lived eighteen hundred years afterward, and who certainly could have known nothing of the facts except from hearsay?
The best religion, after all, is common sense; a religion for this world, one world at a time, a religion for to-day. We want a religion that will deal in questions in which we are interested. How are we to do away with crime? How are we to do away with pauperism? How are we to do away with want and misery in every civilized country? England is a Christian nation, and yet about one in six in the city of London dies in almshouses, asylums, prisons, hospitals and jails. We, I suppose, are a civilized nation, and yet all the penitentiaries are crammed; there is want on every hand, and my opinion is that we had better turn our attention to this world.
Christianity is charitable; Christianity spends a great deal of money; but I am somewhat doubtful as to the good that is accomplished. There ought to be some way to prevent crime; not simply to punish it. There ought to be some way to prevent pauperism, not simply to relieve temporarily a pauper, and if the ministers and good people belonging to the churches would spend their time investigating the affairs of this world and let the New Jerusalem take care of itself, I think it would be far better.
The church is guilty of one great contradiction. The ministers are always talking about worldly people, and yet, were it not for worldly people, who would pay the salary? How could the church live a minute unless somebody attended to the affairs of this world? The best religion, in my judgment, is common sense going along hand in hand with kindness, and not troubling ourselves about another world until we get there. I am willing for one, to wait and see what kind of a country it will be.
Question. Does the question of the inspiration of Scriptures affect the beauty and benefits of Christianity here and hereafter?
Answer. A belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures has done, in my judgment, great harm. The Bible has been the breastwork for nearly everything wrong. The defenders of slavery relied on the Bible. The Bible was the real auction block on which every negro stood when he was sold. I never knew a minister to preach in favor of slavery that did not take his text from the Bible. The Bible teaches persecution for opinion's sake. The Bible—that is the Old Testament—upholds polygamy, and just to the extent that men, through the Bible, have believed that slavery, religious persecution, wars of extermination and polygamy were taught by God, just to that extent the Bible has done great harm. The idea of inspiration enslaves the human mind and debauches the human heart.
Question. Is not Christianity and the belief in God a check upon mankind in general and thus a good thing in itself?
Answer. This, again, brings up the question of what you mean by Christianity, but taking it for granted that you mean by Christianity the church, then I answer, when the church had almost absolute authority, then the world was the worst.
Now, as to the other part of the question, "Is not a belief in God a check upon mankind in general?" That is owing to what kind of God the man believes in. When mankind believed in the God of the Old Testament, I think that belief was a bad thing; the tendency was bad. I think that John Calvin patterned after Jehovah as nearly as his health and strength would permit. Man makes God in his own image, and bad men are not apt to have a very good God if they make him. I believe it is far better to have a real belief in goodness, in kindness, in honesty and in mankind than in any supernatural being whatever. I do not suppose it would do any harm for a man to believe in a real good God, a God without revenge, a God that was not very particular in having a man believe a doctrine whether he could understand it or not. I do not believe that a belief of that kind would do any particular harm.