1279. The language of Christ held to his apostles, showing that he considered them as thirsting for temporal honours, and his aspiration for the throne of his glory, situated, of course, in the same mundane region, may warrant the surmise that his views did not differ from those of Mohammed as to the ultimate object, however much he may have found it necessary, under the Roman despotism, to fight with the tongue instead of the sword.
1280. But how can this sentiment be justified in which he makes devotion to himself irreconcilable with the holy ties between the child and his parents, or the parents and their children? The God of Spiritualism would view parental and filial love as the truest piety. He asks only that love. He has not constituted us to have that sort of love for him. Had he wished it, he would have made us so, as to be thus actuated.
1281. “He that believeth in me shall have eternal life.” “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” These allegations produced a change in the world at large. That bigotry and animosity which led the Jews to consider that all who did not agree with them in creed, were objects of spoliation, massacre, rape, enslavement, were now extended to other parts of the world.
1282. No doubt the success of this exclusive notion, on the part of Christ, led to its adoption by Mohammed, and thus some hundred millions have been actuated by this mischievous impression, which is now at work on the Russian territory. It has been already suggested that this idea always begets persecution to the extent of the power to exercise it. While seeing the horrid consequences of this error in the persecution of the French Calvinists, Calvin could not avoid the diabolic impulse in the instance of Servetus. It cannot be necessary to recall to our readers the many bloody persecutions and religious wars which have disgraced Christendom far more than any other part of the globe, nor to allude to the tyranny reciprocally employed by any sect having complete ascendancy. Yet with these consequences before the mind—the facts which I have adduced to prove that the morality of Christendom is not due to Scripture—the tocsin is sounded wherever any effort is made to get rid of the crimes and indecencies of the Old Testament, or the error of making bigoted belief, under the name of faith, a primary consideration on the part of the New Testament. People are taught that every thing good is due to Scripture; that thence alone can we get any correct notions of morality, any knowledge of a future state. The idea is entertained that Christianity made a great change for the better as soon as it prevailed, and that without it we should sink into a state of demoralization.
1283. Consistently with my experience of the effect of a confident belief in a future state of existence on my own mind, as already suggested, I was always under the impression, prior to my conversion, that those who believed in a future state must be happier; and if that belief were not associated with mischievous error, that it should not be assailed. The idea that what I considered as bigotry, should be a counterpoise for sin, I did consider a mischievous error, tending to substitute devotion for good works, and as I saw, too, made nations selfish. The love of hoarding was very commonly coupled with this selfishness, which operated at once to produce efforts to lay up treasure on earth by close dealing, and in heaven by strict sectarianism, bigotry, and intolerance. But, nevertheless, I was restrained from any effort to cure these errors, from the conviction that religion, unaccompanied by the expectation of a future state, can never take hold of the human heart.
1284. In a dialogue between the spirit of Wm. Penn and that of Thos. Paine, the former points out this error: “You strove to take from your readers one of their greatest comforts under the afflictions of mortal life.” Foreseeing this would have prevented me from writing the Age of Reason. Any set of skeptics who should only coincide in disbelieving, could never adhere together nor make many converts. The prospect of future life must be promised confidently, or there would be few proselytes.
1285. But the spiritual manifestations, and the intellectual, the heartfelt intercommunion with my relatives, friends, and the immortal, great, and good Washington, now enable me to assert that there is not, nor can be upon any record of the past, any evidence so complete, as that presented to my senses, concurrently with a multitude of observers. I now, therefore, feel myself warranted to speak out what my reason justifies and my conscience dictates; and have not hesitated to express the opinions which are spread out upon the pages immediately preceding that which contains this exposition.
1286. With a view to show how much more happy was the state of reciprocal sectarian feeling in the world before this idea of making belief an object of vital importance, I will quote here, first a passage from Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. i., and will subjoin some pages from “Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;” following these up with quotations from Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont: