Christianity does not satisfy the brain and heart. It contains too many absurdities. It is unphilosophic, unnatural, impossible. Not to resist evil is moral suicide. To love your enemies is impossible. To desert wife and children for the sake of heaven is cowardly and selfish. To promise rewards for belief is dishonest. To threaten torture for honest unbelief is infamous. Christianity is declining because men and women are growing better.
The Governor was not satisfied with saying that Christianity had declined, but he added this: "Every good citizen knows that when the restraining influences of religion are withdrawn from a community, its decay, moral, mental and financial is swift and sure."
The restraining influences of religion have never been withdrawn from Spain or Portugal, from Austria or Italy. The "restraining influences" are still active in Russia. Emperor William relies on them in Germany, and the same influences are very busy taking care of Ireland. If these influences should be withdrawn from Spain there would be "mental, moral and financial decay." Is not this statement perfectly absurd?
The fact is that religion has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand organ and Ireland to exile. What are the restraining influences of religion? I admit that religion can prevent people from eating meat on Friday, from dancing in Lent, from going to the theatre on holy days and from swearing in public. In other words, religion can restrain people from committing artificial offences. But the real question is: Can religion restrain people from committing natural crimes?
The church teaches that God can and will forgive sins.
Christianity sells sin on a credit. It says to men and women, "Be good; do right; but no matter how many crimes you commit you can be forgiven." How can such a religion be regarded as a restraining influence! There was a time when religion had power; when the church ruled Christendom; when popes crowned and uncrowned kings. Was there at that time moral, mental and financial growth? Did the nations thus restrained by religion, prosper? When these restraining influences were weakened, when popes were humbled, when creeds were denied, did morality, intelligence and prosperity begin to decay?
What are the restraining influences of religion? Did anybody ever hear of a policeman being dismissed because a new church had been organized?
Christianity teaches that the man who does right carries a cross. The exact opposite of this is true. The cross is carried by the man who does wrong. I believe in the restraining influences of intelligence. Intelligence is the only lever capable of raising mankind. If you wish to make men moral and prosperous develop the brain. Men must be taught to rely on themselves. To supplicate the supernatural is a waste of time.
The only evils that have been caused by the decline of Christianity, as pointed out by the Governor, are that in some villages they hear no solemn bells, that the dead are buried without Christian ceremony, that marriages are contracted before Justices of the Peace, and that children go unchristened.
These evils are hardly serious enough to cause moral, mental and financial decay. The average church bell is not very musical—not calculated to develop the mind or quicken the conscience. The absence of the ordinary funeral sermon does not add to the horror of death, and the failure to hear a minister say, as he stands by the grave, "One star differs in glory from another star. There is a difference between the flesh of fowl and fish. Be not deceived. Evil communications corrupt good manners," does not necessarily increase the grief of the mourners. So far as children are concerned, if they are vaccinated, it does not make much difference whether they are christened or not.