The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

There are some Humbugs, however, who merit our respect if not our reverence—men who are infinitely better than they would have the world believe. As the purest pearl is encased in an unseemly shell, so, too, is many a god-like soul enshrined in a breast of seeming adamant. Many a man swears because he's too proud to weep, hides a quivering soul behind the cynic's sneer, fronts the world like a savage beast at bay while his heart's a fathomless lake of tears. Tennyson tells us of a monstrous figure of complete steel and armed cap-a-pie, that guarded a castle gate, and by its awful name and warlike mien affrighted the fearful souls of men. But one day a dauntless knight unhorsed it and clove thro' the massy helm, when forth from the wreck there came not a demon armed with the seythe of death, but a beardless boy scarce old enough to break a pointless lance upon the village green. So, too, when with the sword Excalibur of human sympathy you shear down thro' the helm and harness of some rough- spoken man who seems to hate all human kind, you find the soul of a woman and the heart of a little child.

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Even our religion is ofttimes a Humbug, else why is it that the good Christian woman—who says her prayer as regularly as she looks under the bed for burglars—says to the caller whom she cordially detests, "I am delighted to see you;" when she's wondering why the meddlesome old gadabout don't stay at home when she's not wanted elsewhere? Why is it that when a good brother puts a five- dollar bill in the contribution box he flashes it up so all may see the figures, but when he drops a nickel in the slot to get a little grace he lets not his right hand know what his left hand doeth? Why is it that when you strike a devout deacon for the loan of ten dollars he will swear by all the gods he hasn't got it, when his pockets are fairly bursting with bills? If his religion is not hypocrisy—if he is not a Humbug—why doesn't he tell you in plain United States that he would rather have Uncle Sam's promise to pay than yours? Oh, people are becoming such incorrigible liars that I've about quit trying to borrow money.

Too many people presume that they are full of the grace of God when they're only bilious; that they are pious because they dislike to see other people enjoy themselves; that they are Christians because they conform to certain creeds, just as many men imagine themselves honest because they obey the laws of the land—for the purpose of keeping out of the penitentiary. They put up long prayers on Sunday; that's piety. They bamboozle a green gosling out of his birthright on Monday; that's business. They have one face with which to confront the Lord and another with which to beguile their brethren. They even acquire two voices—a brisk business accent and a Sunday whine that would make a cub wolf climb a tree. I am always suspicious of a man's piety when it makes him look as tho' he had cut a throat or scuttled a ship and was praying for a commutation of the death sentence. I could never understand why a man who can read his title clear to mansions in the skies—who holds a lien on a corner lot in the New Jerusalem—should allow that fact to hurt him.

I have great respect for true religion; but for the brand of holiness that's put on with the Sunday shirt—that makes a man cry ahmen with unction, but doesn't prevent him selling 5 and 10-cent cigars out of the same box, oleo- margarine and creamery butter out of the same bucket, benzine and bourbon whiskey out of the same barrel; which makes long prayers on Sunday and gives short weights on Monday; which worries over the welfare of good-looking young women, but gives the old grandames the go-by; which fathers the orphan only if he's rich and husbands the widow only if she's handsome—for that kind of Christianity I have no more use than for a mugwump governor who saddles his state with the expense of a legislative session to gratify a private grudge against a brother gambler.

That religion which sits up o'nights to agonize because a few naked niggers in equatorial Africa never heard Eve's snake story, how Job scratched himself with a broken pie- plate or the hog happened to be so full of the spirit of hades; that robs childhood of its pennies to send prayer- books to people whose redemption should begin with a bath, while in our own country every town from Cattaraugus to Kalamazoo—every city from the Arctic ocean to the Austral sea—is overrun with heathen who know naught of the grace of God or the mystery of a square meal; who prowl in the very shadow of our temples of justice, build their lairs in proximity to our public schools and within sound of the collect of our churches, is an arrant Humbug, a crime against man, an offense to God, a curse to the world.

. . .

People frequently say to me, "Brann, your attacks are too harsh. You should use more persuasion and less pizen." Perhaps so; but I have not yet mastered the esoteric of choking a bad dog to death with good butter. Persuasion is well enough is you're acourting—or in the hands of the vigilantes; but turning it loose on the average fraud were too much like a tenderfoot trying to move a string of freight steers with moral suasion. He takes up his whip, gently snaps it as tho' he feared it were loaded, and talks to his cattle like a Boston philanthropist to a poor relation. The steers look round at him, wonder, in a vague way, if he's worth eating, and stand at ease. An old freighter who's been over the "divide" and got his profanity down to a fine art, grabs that goad, cracks it like a rifled cannon reaching for a raw recruit and spills a string of cuss words calculated to precipitate the final conflagration. You expect to see him struck dead—but those steers don't. They're firmly persuaded that he's going to outlive 'em if they don't get down and paw gravel and they get a Nancy Hanks hustle on 'em. Never attempt to move an ox-team with moral suasion, or to drown the cohorts of the devil in the milk of human kindness. It won't work.

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Oh, it's possible that you may disagree with me on some minor points of doctrine. That's your blessed privilege and I wouldn't deprive you of it if I had the power. A pompous old fellow once called at the office of my religious monthly to inform me that I was radically wrong on every possible public question. He seemed to think that I had committed an unpardonable crime in daring to differ from him. I asked him to be seated and whistled for the devil—the printer's devil, the only kind we keep in the office of the ICONOCLAST. I told him to procure for me a six-shooter, a sledge hammer and a boat. My visitor became greatly alarmed.