The words of Paul are often quoted, that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God." Of course that could not have applied to anything written after that time. It could have applied only to the Scriptures then written and then known. It is perfectly clear that the four Gospels were not at that time written, and therefore this statement of Paul's does not apply to the four Gospels. Neither does it apply to anything written after that statement was written. Neither does it apply to that statement. If it applied to anything it was the Old Testament, and not the New.
Christ has been belittled by his worshipers. When stripped of the miraculous; when allowed to be, not divine but divinely human, he will have gained a thousandfold in the estimation of mankind. I think of him as I do of Buddha, as I do of Confucius, of Epictetus, of Bruno. I place him with the great, the generous, the self-denying of the earth, and for the man Christ, I feel only admiration and respect. I think he was in many things mistaken. His reliance upon the goodness of God was perfect. He seemed to believe that his father in heaven would protect him. He thought that if God clothed the lilies of the field in beauty, if he provided for the sparrows, he would surely protect a perfectly just and loving man. In this he was mistaken; and in the darkness of death, overwhelmed, he cried out: "Why hast thou forsaken me?"
I do not believe that Christ ever claimed to be divine; ever claimed to be inspired; ever claimed to work a miracle. In short, I believe that he was an honest man. These claims were all put in his mouth by others—by mistaken friends, by ignorant worshipers, by zealous and credulous followers, and sometimes by dishonest and designing priests. This has happened to all the great men of the world. All historical characters are, in part, deformed or reformed by fiction. There was a man by the name of George Washington, but no such George Washington ever existed as we find portrayed in history. The historical Cæsar never lived. The historical Mohammed is simply a myth. It is the task of modern criticism to rescue these characters, and in the mass of superstitious rubbish to find the actual man. Christians borrowed the old clothes of the Olympian gods and gave them to Christ. To me, Christ the man is far greater than Christ the god.
To me, it has always been a matter of wonder that Christ said nothing as to the obligation man is under to his country, nothing as to the rights of the people as against the wish and will of kings, nothing against the frightful system of human slavery—almost universal in his time. What he did not say is altogether more wonderful than what he did say. It is marvelous that he said nothing upon the subject of intemperance, nothing about education, nothing about philosophy, nothing about nature, nothing about art. He said nothing in favor of the home, except to offer a reward to those who would desert their wives and families. Of course, I do not believe that he said the words that were attributed to him, in which a reward is offered to any man who will desert his kindred. But if we take the account given in the four Gospels as the true account, then Christ did offer a reward to a father who would desert his children. It has always been contended that he was a perfect example of mankind, and yet he never married. As a result of what he did not teach in connection with what he did teach, his followers saw no harm in slavery, no harm in polygamy. They belittled this world and exaggerated the importance of the next. They consoled the slave by telling him that in a little while he would exchange his chains for wings. They comforted the captive by saying that in a few days he would leave his dungeon for the bowers of Paradise. His followers believed that he had said that "Whosoever believeth not shall be damned." This passage was the cross upon which intellectual liberty was crucified.
If Christ had given us the laws of health; if he had told us how to cure disease by natural means; if he had set the captive free; if he had crowned the people with their rightful power; if he had placed the home above the church; if he had broken all the mental chains; if he had flooded all the caves and dens of fear with light, and filled the future with a common joy, he would in truth have been the Savior of this world.
Question. How do you account for the difference between the Christian and other modern civilizations?
Answer. I account for the difference between men by the difference in their ancestry and surroundings—the difference in soil, climate, food, and employment. There would be no civilization in England were it not for the Gulf Stream. There would have been very little here had it not been for the discovery of Columbus. And even now on this continent there would be but little civilization had the soil been poor. I might ask: How do you account for the civilization of Egypt? At one time that was the greatest civilization in the world. Did that fact prove that the Egyptian religion was of divine origin? So, too, there was a time when the civilization of India was beyond all others. Does that prove that Vishnu was a God? Greece dominated the intellectual world for centuries. Does that fact absolutely prove that Zeus was the creator of heaven and earth? The same may be said of Rome. There was a time when Rome governed the world, and yet I have always had my doubts as to the truth of the Roman mythology. As a matter of fact, Rome was far better than any Christian nation ever was to the end of the seventeenth century. A thousand years of Christian rule produced no fellow for the greatest of Rome. There were no poets the equals of Horace or Virgil, no philosophers as great as Lucretius, no orators like Cicero, no emperors like Marcus Aurelius, no women like the mothers of Rome.
The civilization of a country may be hindered by a religion, but it has never been increased by any form of superstition. When America was discovered it had the same effect upon Europe that it would have, for instance, upon the city of Chicago to have Lake Michigan put the other side of it. The Mediterranean lost its trade. The centers of commerce became deserted. The prow of the world turned westward, and, as a result, France, England, and all countries bordering on the Atlantic became prosperous. The world has really been civilized by discoverers—by thinkers. The man who invented powder, and by that means released hundreds of thousands of men from the occupations of war, did more for mankind than religion. The inventor of paper—and he was not a Christian—did more than all the early fathers for mankind. The inventors of plows, of sickles, of cradles, of reapers; the inventors of wagons, coaches, locomotives; the inventors of skiffs, sail-vessels, steamships; the men who have made looms—in short, the inventors of all useful things—they are the civilizers taken in connection with the great thinkers, the poets, the musicians, the actors, the painters, the sculptors. The men who have invented the useful, and the men who have made the useful beautiful, are the real civilizers of mankind.
The priests, in all ages, have been hindrances—stumbling-blocks. They have prevented man from using his reason. They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people.
I account for the civilization of France by such men as Voltaire. He did good by assisting to destroy the church. Luther did good exactly in the same way. He did harm in building another church. I account, in part, for the civilization of England by the fact that she had interests greater than the church could control; and by the further fact that her greatest men cared nothing for the church. I account in part for the civilization of America by the fact that our fathers were wise enough, and jealous of each other enough, to absolutely divorce church and state. They regarded the church as a dangerous mistress—one not fit to govern a president. This divorce was obtained because men like Jefferson and Paine were at that time prominent in the councils of the people. There is this peculiarity in our country—the only men who can be trusted with human liberty are the ones who are not to be angels hereafter. Liberty is safe so long as the sinners have an opportunity to be heard.