In these days of enlightenment and higher thought, the vestiges are everywhere seen of our fifteen centuries of misdirection. Almost every Christian life bears the impress of these cruel Hebrew traditions. The commander of a battleship in the war with Spain, after his slaughter of numbers of the enemy, assembles his men to give “thanks to the Lord,” and the next moment cautions them not to cheer because “the poor fellows are dying,” illustrates, that mingling of Jewish superstition with the teaching and example of the Master, to be observed everywhere in our present civilization. The inherent religious impulses of mankind—natural religion—some of which, finding no more congenial quarters, is attracted to the churches, regard war with feelings of greater repulsion than does orthodox theology, indoctrinated in the belief of its divine sanction, and consequently, the success of the American arms, so plainly due to natural causes, was celebrated by the churches in the usual ancient Hebraic method by “thanks to the Lord.” The supreme intolerance of Christianity which has wrought such havoc with mankind, is plainly due to the suggestions of Hebrew scripture, and it is only the natural religion within the churches, and that large portion outside of them, which is forcing Christianity into a purer worship, and destroying its superstitions. It demands for all things, holy as well as unholy, the right of critical examination, and it sees but little else in our Sacred Book worth preserving, outside the sermon on the mount, and its extensions. It is this natural religion of conscience, encouraging and encouraged by science and reason, which has wrested the control of civilization from ecclesiasticism. Its intellectual strength prevails at last over the intellectual strength of theology; but the unthinking of the multitude are many, and the battle commencing four centuries ago still lingers, theology backed by its weak numbers, its old weapons destroyed, and science by its strong men with searchlights.
But the searchlights of science can not disturb the heart of Christianity. Its doctrine of atonement, destroyed by the established truth of evolution; its account of the creation and the deluge, proved to be fables; its miracles discredited, and many of them demonstrated by science to be untrue, it still holds within itself, an element which is in harmony with the aspirations of mankind for the coming betterment on earth and hereafter. All these things that it has lost are but perverted offrisings from its body, not a part of the body itself. “Love one another. Do unto others as you would that others shall do unto you,” are the golden words that have established it in the world as a living moving power. Of these its soul and life are composed, and these no arrow of science can reach. Its dogmas aside, every human being within the precincts of civilization is born a Christian, and but for its early perversion at the hands of a crafty priesthood, its intolerant and cruel career from forced and unworthy association, all men, learned as well as unlearned, would be working in its ranks.
It came into the world and entered society, making its way from below upward. Like all movements coming out of the lower levels, it was socialistic. Its originator, for he cannot be called its leader, was the first person who had ever appeared in the world as the instigator of a great reform movement benefitting the whole of mankind without some apparent or suspected motive, in denial of his absolute unselfishness, and the movement in its early stages, partaking and wholly composed of his inspiration, was a pure unselfish socialism. Its members were bound together by the closest brotherhood, loving and caring for each other by divine command; declared equal by a mandate of Heaven, in an age when three-fourths of mankind were outcasts, uncared, neglected, and abused by a cruel oligarchy, slaves and dependents, among whom it was a misfortune and misery to have been born, and having a religion so purposeless and unpromising as to afford nothing but a momentary spectacular display. To these people the new religion was as congenial and welcome as the warm sunshine and verdure of summer after a long sojourn in the Arctic. Its doctrines touched society where it had most need of their humane precepts and uprising. For nearly a century no system of dogmas, no doctrine of atonement, no extensive church authority had been determined, and the whole stress of religious teaching was directed toward the worship of a moral ideal, and the cultivation of moral qualities. Its numbers, which had been looked upon until then, by the higher and governing class with either contemptuous silence, or occasional argumentative opposition, were become so increased that their political weight gave promise of a new field for the exercise of authority and power, and from thence on began that addition of intellectual forces which have so completely changed its character.
Every change instituted by its new leaders was with the sole purpose of increasing its numbers and of augmenting its political weight. They began by making a compromise with paganism in adopting some of its rituals, pandering to the imaginations of the uncultivated multitude by spectacular display, inventing a system of church government with an executive head, adopting the Jewish annals for its organic laws and modes of thought, cultivating a belief in miracles and increasing them on every opportune occasion, until with the one end in view of overcoming the world as Cæsar did with his legions, more bloody than Cæsar, taking into their hands a movement full of humanity, instituted by men in the lower walks of life to soften their hard lines and give them new hopes, and to increase their sympathies and feelings of brotherhood, it became, and in many parts of the world remains to this day, under its attached dispensation of ecclesiastical dogma and control, a handmaid of kings and emperors in oppression, an upholder of deadly superstition, an intimidator of free thought and free learning, an unconcerned looker-on upon the miseries of life beyond its proselyting interest, careless of the whole world and its affairs, except so far as it can profit by its theory of exclusive salvation, and the mouth piece in cant phrases, which have long since lost their force and meaning, of a lingering barbarism.
And yet the world was never so much in need of a pure Christianity. An expanded benevolence cherished and assisted as much by skepticism as the churches is one of the characteristics of modern society. Although the physically strong do not prey upon the physically weak as pitylessly as in the olden time, the financially strong are preying upon the financially weak with as little conscience, and the intellectually strong are preying upon the intellectually weak with as much cunning, as they were in barbaric times. Civilization has increased the two last mentioned evils. The straggling masses under a load of grinding wealth, in their better knowledge are no longer appeased by the promises of an adulterated and composite Christianity, whose chief business for centuries has been to set before them an awaiting paradise, in recompense for their earthly wrongs; but now, the multitude impressed with a knowledge belonging to these times, is proof against these allurements. The toiling millions who make easy places for the few, and increase their wealth, and who have carried out to a successful end the brilliant material advancement which surrounds us, is the world proper, all the rest are merely dependants. Into this world and down among these quarters from whence it came Christianity must prepare itself to re-enter, and of this the shadow is already to be seen. It must discard its dogmas and superstitions, which it has even now consigned to partial obscurity and silence, and in place of them, take on the things of the world. It must go among the money changers of the temples, and into the halls and by-ways of legislation, giving battle everywhere with evil; for it is through these that the world is given or denied its betterment, and it must set science on its right hand, recognizing it as an attribute of the Deity. Christianity with this companion, its pure ideal recovered from its ecclesiastical mists, setting out on its new journey through the world, blazing the way for truth instead of suppressing it, conforming itself in all ways to the natural religion of mankind, would become to humanity what the sun is to the earth, comforting the souls of men by its hopes, enlarging their charities by its precepts, and warming into life many a germ of virtue and goodness, which else, would never have blossomed, to shed its moral fragrance on the earth.
The foregoing was written to indicate that line of thought, whose convictions are briefly expressed, here and there, through the pages of this little book, now offered to the public in its third edition. It is always safer and pleasanter to deal with received theology in the spirit of reverence, usually found in literature; thus offending no one, and meeting the approval of a worthy and influential class; but, there are other reasons why an adverse criticism of theological methods and beliefs, are not so often publicly exploited as their importance to society deserves. In the first place experience has shown that errors of religious belief, fixed upon the mind in infancy and youth, are seldom removed by discussion. We are not yet arrived at that stage, when the love of truth so predominates in the minds of men, that they will sacrifice every prejudice, and reject all opposing influence to obtain it. Christianity has imposed an elaborate system of prejudices on every young mind within its jurisdiction and they have become entwined with all the most hallowed associations of childhood, appealing so strongly to the affections, that any expressed denial of their exact truth excites, in most cases, a feeling of resentment, and often stirs to petty persecution. A large majority of the human race accept their opinions from authority, and all authority heretofore has encouraged beliefs, which appear so inseparably connected with the moral well being of society, and which hold in continued supremacy, institutions and modes of thought whose subversion it is alleged would be in many ways dangerous. Yet, the fact remains that it is mostly through its inroads upon these old beliefs that the world has arrived at its present stage of progress, and the opinion of orthodox theologians that they should be retained in their entirety, or of others that they should be abolished, cuts no figure; because, whether for good or evil in the opinions of men, Providence has ordained, that those only which represent the truth shall live, and knowing this of a certainty, it becomes of the greatest interest to discover what society is likely to lose or gain by that modification of religious beliefs, wherein only the truth shall remain. If we cannot foretell this future condition with certainty, it is largely foreshadowed by past and present experience. What the world has lost in the modification of religious beliefs, would be hard to find, what it has gained would take volumes to recount. In the most important of all human interests, liberty of person, liberty of conscience, and liberty of speech, there has been, as yet, no adequate acknowledgement by mankind of the great services of the silent and avowed skepticism which brought about the consummation of these blessings. The writings of Moses, the recorded wisdom of Solomon, the encyclicals of popes, and the sermons of bishops and priests, both Protestant and Catholic, in their rising up of the lowly, in their encouragement of brotherhood, and in that exact and even justice to all men, so far as their practical services to humanity in these directions can be measured, sink into an empty insignificance, when compared with those organic declarations and laws, upon which this great republic was founded, and which were the outcome and product of a then recent enlightenment, due to the combined efforts of European skeptical writers, who by their genius of sarcasm and incisive argument, were disturbing the old theological modes of thought, and awaking the world to wide strides in rationalism. That these new American rules of political equality, beacons of liberty for men to follow and admire, obtained their inspiration and incentive from those new lights in literature, which, at that time, were stirring the world of thought, there can be no question. In these famous American documents, were embodied the practical carrying out of principles, enunciated, and suggested by the European writers, and the most active of the men engaged in the noble work of forming the new government, are known to have been disciples of these leaders of anti-theologic thought. Our Declaration of Independence and Federal Constitution, stand, to-day, grand achievements of modern scientific thought, and conspicuous triumphs of rationalism, over old methods, foreshadowing in these, its great works, a better wisdom to govern the affairs of men, than all the ages guided by Hebrew tradition. Yet, in these documents will be seen an overflowing of natural religion, and the spirit of the Master. “Do unto others as ye would that others shall do unto you.”
If we have for more than fifteen centuries, yielded ourselves to doctrines, conveyed to us through all the highways of life, so assiduously, that neither infancy, youth, manhood or old age, have escaped their tireless importunities for acceptance; doctrines, which consign seven-eighths of humanity to eternal torture for no faults to most of them but a lack of opportunity, which under Providence has been denied, it is not unreasonable to conclude, with this experience of the mutability of human understanding, that there are other beliefs fastened on our minds by ages of custom and mistaken thought, equally untenable, which may be as justly placed in our catalogue of errors. Where then shall we look for truth? Authority, as we have seen, is not an infallible guide. We shall never know how much the industrious promulgation of error is due to the selfish love of corporate power, how much to a pure benevolence. Neither are the brightest minds safe monitors in all things of thought. Aristotle defended slavery, Hobbes persecution, Johnson witchcraft, and Gladstone religious superstition; but, for all that, we shall never arrive at the extremity of despair; for a cultivation of the mind, the deductive use of positive knowledge, and the untrammeled exercise of reason, lead to truth, as directly, as the line of gravity points to the center of the earth, and only by these will its reign be established in the world.
W. S.