Now, as to the next branch of your question, Christianity.
The question arises, What is Christianity? I have no objection to the morality taught as a part of Christianity, no objection to its charity, its forgiveness, its kindness; no objection to its hope for this world and another, not the slightest, but all these things do not make Christianity. Mohammed taught certain doctrines that are good, but the good in the teachings of Mohammed is not Mohammedism. When I speak of Christianity I speak of that which is distinctly Christian. For instance, the idea that the Infinite God was born in Palestine, learned the carpenter's trade, disputed with the parsons of his time, excited the wrath of the theological bigots, and was finally crucified; that afterward he was raised from the dead, and that if anybody believes this he will be saved and if he fails to believe it, he will be lost; in other words, that which is distinctly Christian in the Christian system, is its supernaturalism, its miracles, its absurdity. Truth does not need to go into partnership with the supernatural. What Christ said is worth the reason it contains. If a man raises the dead and then says twice two are five, that changes no rule in mathematics. If a multiplication table was divinely inspired, that does no good. The question is, is it correct? So I think that in the world of morals, we must prove that a thing is right or wrong by experience, by analogy, not by miracles. There is no fact in physical science that can be supernaturally demonstrated. Neither is there any fact in the moral world that could be substantiated by miracles. Now, then, keeping in mind that by Christianity I mean the supernatural in that system, of course I am just as far away from it as I can get. For the man Christ I have respect. He was an infidel in his day, and the ministers of his day cried out blasphemy, as they have been crying ever since, against every person who has suggested a new thought or shown the worthlessness of an old one.
Now, as to the third part of the question, the Bible. People say that the Bible is inspired. Well, what does inspiration mean? Did God write it? No; but the men who did write it were guided by the Holy Spirit. Very well. Did they write exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted them to write? Well, religious people say, yes. At the same time they admit that the gentlemen who were collecting, or taking down in shorthand what was said, had to use their own words. Now, we all know that the same words do not have the same meaning to all people. It is impossible to convey the same thoughts to all minds by the same language, and it is for that reason that the Bible has produced so many sects, not only disagreeing with each other, but disagreeing among themselves.
We find, then, that it is utterly impossible for God (admitting that there is one) to convey the same thoughts in human language to all people. No two persons understand the same language alike. A man's understanding depends upon his experience, upon his capacity, upon the particular bent of his mind—in fact, upon the countless influences that have made him what he is. Everything in nature tells everyone who sees it a story, but that story depends upon the capacity of the one to whom it is told. The sea says one thing to the ordinary man, and another thing to Shakespeare. The stars have not the same language for all people. The consequence is that no book can tell the same story to any two persons. The Jewish Scriptures are like other books, written by different men in different ages of the world, hundreds of years apart, filled with contradictions. They embody, I presume, fairly enough, the wisdom and ignorance, the reason and prejudice, of the times in which they were written. They are worth the good that is in them, and the question is whether we will take the good and throw the bad away. There are good laws and bad laws. There are wise and foolish sayings. There are gentle and cruel passages, and you can find a text to suit almost any frame of mind; whether you wish to do an act of charity or murder a neighbor's babe, you will find a passage that will exactly fit the case. So that I can say that I am still for the reasonable, for the natural; and am still opposed to the absurd and supernatural.
Question. Is there any better or more ennobling belief than Christianity; if so, what is it?
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.