Question. In your lecture on Voltaire you made a remark about the government of ministers, and you stated that if the ministers of the city of New York had to power to make the laws most people would prefer to live in a well regulated penitentiary. What do you mean by this?
Answer. Well, as a rule, ministers are quite severe. They have little patience with human failures. They are taught, and they believe and they teach, that man is absolutely master of his own fate. Besides, they are believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the laws of the Old Testament are exceedingly severe. Nearly every offence was punished by death. Every offence was regarded as treason against Jehovah.
In the Pentateuch there is no pity. If a man committed some offence justice was not satisfied with his punishment, but proceeded to destroy his wife and children. Jehovah seemed to think that crime was in the blood; that it was not sufficient to kill the criminal, but to prevent future crimes you should kill his wife and babes. The reading of the Old Testament is calculated to harden the heart, to drive the angel of pity from the breast, and to make man a religious savage. The clergy, as a rule, do not take a broad and liberal view of things. They judge every offence by what they consider would be the result if everybody committed the same offence. They do not understand that even vice creates obstructions for itself, and that there is something in the nature of crime the tendency of which is to defeat crime, and I might add in this place that the same seems to be true of excessive virtue. As a rule, the clergy clamor with great zeal for the execution of cruel laws.
Let me give an instance in point: In the time of George III., in England, there were two hundred and twenty-three offences punishable with death. From time to time this cruel code was changed by Act of Parliament, yet no bishop sitting in the House of Lords ever voted in favor of any one of these measures. The bishops always voted for death, for blood, against mercy and against the repeal of capital punishment. During all these years there were some twenty thousand or more of the established clergy, and yet, according to John Bright, no voice was ever raised in any English pulpit against the infamous criminal code.
Another thing: The orthodox clergy teach that man is totally depraved; that his inclination is evil; that his tendency is toward the Devil. Starting from this as a foundation, of course every clergyman believes every bad thing said of everybody else. So, when some man is charged with a crime, the clergyman taking into consideration the fact that the man is totally depraved, takes it for granted that he must be guilty. I am not saying this for the purpose of exciting prejudice against the clergy. I am simply showing what is the natural result of a certain creed, of a belief in universal depravity, or a belief in the power and influence of a personal Devil. If the clergy could have their own way they would endeavor to reform the world by law. They would re-enact the old statutes of the Puritans. Joy would be a crime. Love would be an offence. Every man with a smile on his face would be suspected, and a dimple in the cheek would be a demonstration of depravity.
In the trial of a cause it is natural for a clergyman to start with the proposition, "The defendant is guilty;" and then he says to himself, "Let him prove himself innocent." The man who has not been poisoned with the creed starts out with the proposition, "The defendant is innocent; let the State prove that he is guilty." Consequently, I say that if I were defending a man whom I knew to be innocent, I would not have a clergyman on the jury if I could help it.
—New York Advertiser, December 24, 1893.
SPIRITUALISM.
Question. Have you investigated Spiritualism, and what has been your experience?
Answer. A few years ago I paid some attention to what is called Spiritualism, and was present when quite mysterious things were supposed to have happened. The most notable seance that I attended was given by Slade, at which slate-writing was done. Two slates were fastened together, with a pencil between them, and on opening the slates certain writing was found. When the writing was done it was impossible to tell. So, I have been present when it was claimed that certain dead people had again clothed themselves in flesh and were again talking in the old way. In one instance, I think, George Washington claimed to be present. On the same evening Shakespeare put in an appearance. It was hard to recognize Shakespeare from what the spirit said, still I was assured by the medium that there was no mistake as to the identity.