Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other Essays

Every theology ends in a creed. A creed is the night-cap of religion. It is a sign that the intellect is asleep. When faith is in, sense is out. A man with a creed has bought the coffin for his mind. The rest of his life will be a funeral service for the dead. A creed is the grave of thought. When a person subscribes to certain articles of belief, he has no further use for his brains. It does not require any mental exercise to believe. Belief does not signify any process of intellectual assimilation or digestion. When a man joins a church, he makes his last will and testament. When reason abdicates in favor of credulity, crime becomes a saint, and folly a martyr. Too much faith makes a Pocasset tragedy. The foolishness of trying to make God intelligible to human understanding is shown in the creeds of Christendom. The dogma of the trinity ought not to pass to any further generation. It is not the “likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

WHAT HAS JESUS DONE FOR THE WORLD

A great deal is said about “what Jesus has done for the world.” We wish some of those people who repeat this statement would take ten or fifteen minutes and tell us just what Jesus has done for the world. It would puzzle the most ardent admirer of the Galilean reformer to point out anything that Jesus ever did to help man in this life. There is too much of this thoughtless, senseless praise of Jesus. Not a Christian on this earth but what owes a thousand times more to his father and mother than he owes to Jesus, but who ever heard one acknowledge it? We could name hundreds of men who have lightened the labor of the world by their inventions. Did Jesus do anything of the kind? We can name hundreds of men who have made the homes of mankind brighter and more enjoyable by their genius and toil. Did Jesus do anything of the kind?

The imaginary service which this imaginary person did is of no consequence to the poor, to the workers, to the starvers. What the poor man wants is not a Savior for another world, but a helper for this world, and the person who lessens the poverty and misery of earth is worth a thousand times more to humanity than Jesus.

We are told that Jesus died for man. Well! What of it? Socrates died for man. Bruno died for man. Emmet died for man. John Brown died for the black man. Every day somebody is dying for man. Why emphasize the death of Jesus more than the death of another? The fact that Jesus died does not help you or me. He could have helped us far more by living, if he had lived wisely and well.

The great fact in regard to Jesus is this: He does not touch this age; its aspirations, its interests, its reforms, its work, its spirit. We are living contrary to Jesus, contrary to all he taught and did. He is left behind, outgrown, and, consequently, whatever he did is of no value to this age. His star is set. He has had his day. Instead of trying to bring about a kingdom of poverty, a millennium of idleness, the world is striving for a kingdom of plenty and a good time for everybody.

Everything connected with Jesus has been exaggerated. The man himself has been exaggerated, his words have been exaggerated, his performances have been exaggerated, and his importance has been exaggerated. He has been given a character that he is not entitled to, and his teachings have been clothed with a value which they do not possess. Jesus has been passed for more than he is worth. Let his name no longer bear the stamp of divinity. Let his deeds no longer be called miracles. The real Jesus of fact would be a very ordinary man.

THE AGNOSTIC’S POSITION

Some avowed Liberal writers are engaged in abusing the Agnostic. One looks upon him as a fool, while another considers him a hypocrite. One pities him for his ignorance, the other abuses him for confessing it. I side with the Agnostic. I sit down with the ignorant. I take my place in the class of “I-don’t-know.” The difference between people is this: Some don’t know, and some don’t know that they don’t know, and the rest won’t admit that they don’t know.

It seems to me that the Agnostic’s position is an honest one. He is asked the question; Is there a future life for man? What shall he answer? If he does not know whether there is not, why should he not say so? To say: I believe there is, is not an answer to the question. He must say, I know, or, I do not know. On this question are we not all Agnostics?

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The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.

ORTHODOXY

There is as much perfumery in petroleum as there is righteousness in orthodoxy. Its dead theology and make-believe piety have no value only to the priest. Orthodoxy survives only by right of possession. Turn it out of the churches and it would never re-enter them. The church to-day is a hospital for sick dogmas. Every Christian doctrine is a cripple; not one can walk or stand alone. Orthodoxy has put a false valuation on things. It calls a man good who goes to church, offers a prayer in public and accepts the Bible as the word of God; it calls a man bad who stays at home and enjoys himself with his family on Sunday, who eats without asking God to bless his food, and who does not expect to go to heaven on the vicarious railroad.

The thirty-nine articles of orthodoxy are only the ashes of the mind.

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Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence.

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A handsome bonnet covers a multitude of sins.

IDEAS OF JESUS

There is a vast difference between knowledge of the Bible and knowledge. A person may know all there is in the Bible, and not know but little. In fact, so much of the Bible is either pure fiction or doubtful history that one is not sure when he has got hold of what is reliable. Probably no person whose name appears in the Bible is less a historical figure than Jesus. As we see him in either gospel he is more the product of the artist than the work of the biographer. He is less a human being than the character of a drama.

Had Jesus been pictured as a man, who was born as men are born, who worked as men worked, who lived and died as men live and die, then there would be less divergence in the views entertained respecting him. To-day, the Jesus of Galilee is looked upon as either a God or a tramp; a divine Savior or an impostor; the perfect man or a lunatic.

The reason of this is that the gospels are found, as it were, photographs of all those characters labelled Jesus. A person with no fixed idea of what Jesus was, whether human or divine, whether a Christ or a madman, would be unable, after reading the gospels to come to any intelligent conclusion as to what he was. He certainly could not accept the statements of the authors and regard Jesus as a man.

We fail to understand how anyone can read the New Testament story of Jesus and not regard him as a myth. No being ever lived on earth and performed the miracles recorded in the gospels. That is just as sure as the light of the stars. Miracles are not evidence of divinity, but of falsehood. Where we read that a man was raised from the dead we know that somebody has written what is not true. How human beings, who are possessed of ordinary intelligence, can accept the accounts of miraculous events in the four gospels as records of actual facts surpasses our comprehension.

Those persons who see in the words of Jesus evidence of his divine character, see in such words, when in the mouth of any other person, proof of insanity.

There are contradictory ideas of Jesus contained in the gospels. He is spoken of as a man, as a Christ, as a son of God, and as God himself. Now, he could not have been all these. Which was he? Was he God? Was he the son of God? Was he the Christ or King of the Jews? Was he the son of Mary and Joseph? Was he a man? Or was he neither?

Our opinion is that Jesus is a myth, that no such being as is painted in the New Testament ever lived. This seems to be the only rational idea of Jesus.

THE SILENCE OF JESUS

A Christian minister not long ago spoke upon the subject: “When the Bible is Silent.” He said a great many silly things about his subject, but not one sensible one. This preacher wishes us to believe that when the Bible is silent it is because we cannot hear. He said the silence of Jesus before Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, shows that Jesus knew they would not have understood his words if he had answered them. He further said that Jesus “treated each with whom he came in contact according to the spirit that was in him.”

Is it not more likely that Jesus knew he could not impose upon these men as he could upon his ignorant, superstitious followers, and hence dared not speak? Is not his silence a confession of his weakness? Had he been able to answer Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, think you he would not have done so? Of course he would. It is a little singular that the most momentous questions ever put to Jesus were not answered by him. The very things the people wished to know he did not reveal. Why not? Why, because he could not.

Should we to-day pronounce a man wise and good who professed to possess knowledge that would benefit, if not save, the world, but who refused to impart that knowledge? We reckon not. We should either denounce him as the foe of man or else as a charlatan.

When Jesus was taken before the high priest, Caiaphas, and was asked about the charges against him, he “held his peace.”

When he was asked by Pilate. “What is truth?” Jesus was silent; and when

Pilate again asked, “Whence art thou?” Jesus “gave him no answer.”

When Herod “questioned with him in many words,” “he answered him nothing.”

What are we to infer from this silence? What the minister wishes us to infer, or that Jesus saw that he was unable to maintain his claim and so sought refuge in silence?

The silence of Jesus condemns him. He was in duty bound to prove that he was the Christ, the Son of God, as he claimed to be, or else have impostor written on his forehead.

The world will some day grow large enough not to be fooled by a minister. When it does, Jesus will take his place where he belongs,—in the graveyard of the gods.

DOES THE CHURCH SAVE

The church pretends to save man from a hell hereafter, but does it do so? How are we to know whether it does or not? We cannot take its word for it. We want the proof. We do not want to pay for work unless the work is done. We do not want to believe in order to be saved, unless we are sure that the church can deliver the salvation it takes pay for. The world has taken the promise to save long enough. It has not seen a single soul that has been saved, nor does it know for a fact that a single soul has been saved.

Is it not time that the church showed that it can do what it claims to do? We want salvation demonstrated. Let the church produce a specimen of its work; let it exhibit a soul that it has saved, or let it publish the affidavit, duly subscribed and affirmed, of a soul that has escaped the fate of hell through the efficacy of faith in Jesus. Anything less than this is deception, is imposition, is false pretense. Either this should be done by the church or else it should go out of the salvation-business altogether.

It is astonishing how long the priest has carried on his trade. Here is a man who claims to deal in the affairs of another world for which he demands pay in this world, but he does not show that he carries out his part of the agreement. Men have been paying the priest for thousands of years, for doing what it is impossible to prove has been, or can be, done. Can anything more stupid than this be imagined? The business of saving man’s soul is a cheat, a fraud. Every priest and minister who preaches that man can be saved from hell hereafter by believing in Jesus, or anybody else, is preaching what they know nothing about, and they are doing it for the money in it. The church is cheating man, defrauding him, practicing upon his ignorance, his superstition, his fear. Religion, as far as it relates to any other life than this, has no foundation. Its God no one knows anything about; its heaven and hell no one has ever seen, nor does anyone know where they are; its whole business is run on fictitious capital.

The only thing that the church has saved so far is itself.

Freethought Precepts

    The strong should be gentle to the weak.

    The rich should not oppress the poor.

    The prosperous should be generous to the unfortunate.

    The self-reliant should give a hand to the helpless.

    The educated should pity the ignorant.

    The virtuous should not be cruel to the vicious.

    The beautiful should be kind to the plain.

SAVE THE REPUBLIC

Which shall it be, Christianity or the Republic? It is apparent that the Christian church under a purely secular government, where justice is granted to all and where favors are allowed to none, cannot long survive. The Christian church in this country to-day is the worst foe of our free republic that exists within its borders. If the state survives it is plain to us that the church must perish, and the church can only flourish on the ruins of free institutions. We may have Christianity with a certain form of human government in America, but if the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the rights implied in the national constitution are to survive, then we cannot have Christianity in this land.

The next conflict in our nation is to be between secularism and ecclesiasticism, between men who love liberty and priests who uphold tyranny, between the lovers of our republic and the foes of secular institutions. This conflict is nearer than the public imagines; in fact, it is already going on, and the growth of sentiment in the next generation in favor of human freedom and human rights will determine whether secularism will be upheld in our nation, or whether the reign of ecclesiasticism is to be dethroned.

The work of the Christian church throughout the land is to prevent the spread of secular principles and to hinder the further secularization of the government. This is the only hope of saving Christianity. If the state will not continue to exempt church property from taxation, to uphold the Christian sabbath, to prescribe prayers and Bible-reading in the public schools, to enforce the oath in courts of justice, and to otherwise lend its aid and support to the Christian religion, there is no chance of this religion resisting the spread of science and the arguments of rationalism.

Every victory won by Christianity is a nail in the coffin of this republic. Our government at the present time is a travesty of free institutions. Where does the freethinker have equal rights with the Christian, equal freedom, equal justice? He is obliged to take a Christian oath or have his word discredited in court; he is taxed to help support Christian chaplains in the state prisons, in the legislatures, and in the army and navy; he is made by law to pay the taxes on church property which is no benefit to him; he has to send his children to schools where religious services are conducted that to him are false and foolish, and in many other ways help maintain a religion that he considers more injurious than beneficial to the world.

The church in this country is not working for the good of the nation; it is working to save itself. What they, who love our free land, should do, is to make the government secular in every part, and compel Christianity to take its grasp off of the nation’s life. We must destroy Christianity if we would save the republic.

A WOMAN’S RELIGION

The Christian church of to-day is the church of women. Woman is certainly the better-half of Christianity. She is the minister’s right bower. The Christian soldier is an Amazon. The first at the prayer-meeting, at the donation party, at the missionary convention, at the Sunday service, at the altar, at the Sunday school is woman, and the last is woman, too. Without its female members, adherents and workers the Christian church would be an abandoned wreck within a week. It is true that men give money to the church, but they do it generally to please the women or at their solicitation.

The Christian religion is a female religion. It is emotional piety. There is nothing robust, independent about it, nothing that appeals to strength, intellect, reason. It is a vine, not an oak. Even its chief idol was fashioned for female worship. The songs of Christianity were written for women to sing, rather than men. The God of Christianity is a father, its savior is a young man, and its angels are all of the masculine gender. The Christian heaven is a he-kingdom, as far as its administration is concerned—a sort of celestial harem—for certainly ten women go there to one man, if the membership of the church determines the election of candidates to heavenly bliss. The two favorite hymns at the prayer-meeting, the two that are sung with most feeling, are “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and “Nearer, my God, to thee.”

Religion was invented to catch women. The priest is the spider and woman the fly. Upon the altar of every faith woman has been the sacrifice. Religion claims its female victims in this age just as surely as when the Hindoo widow was sent to join her dead husband on wings of flame. Woman to-day is not killed to appease a God, but she is still made a fool of by the priest. The spirit of the offering is the same, the form, only, is different. The foundation of every Christian church is woman; the salary-raiser of every Christian minister is woman. Woman is the keystone in every arch of Christian endeavor that spans the earth. She is "the bright, particular star" of the church’s hope. Men are not so easily caught by the Christian scheme of salvation as women. They want to see some return for their money on earth. It is the woman who is caught in the religious toils; it is the woman who is the slave of God, the victim of priest and minister.

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The declaration that will kindle enthusiasm in the human breast most quickly is that a new way has been discovered to get rich.

THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS

A great deal has been written, preached and said about the great sacrifice which Jesus made for the world. We deny that he made any such sacrifice as is claimed for him by the Christian church. In fact, we cannot see, find or learn from any record of the New Testament that he made any sacrifice at all. This whole idea about the sacrifice of Jesus depends upon a theological assumption.

Jesus had no earthly honor, position or estate to sacrifice, even had he been disposed to offer such for the good of mankind. Not only is there no evidence of any tangible renunciation possible by Jesus, but there is no proof and no sign that Jesus possessed even the spirit of sacrifice. We challenge the Christian admirer of Jesus to point to a single act of this hero that can honestly be called a sacrifice. We know of no such act. We have studied the gospels to find such an act, and we have studied them in vain.

When a mother sees her boy pinned to the timbers of a wrecked car where the scalding steam must escape into his face and destroy his life, and to save her boy, voluntarily stands where this steam, with its hot breath, will take her life instead of her boy’s, this mother makes a sacrifice that is apparent, real. Such an act is sublime, grand, beyond heroism. Such an act wipes the Christian slander of total depravity from human nature. Such an act makes us almost worship the heart great enough to perform it.

Jesus did no such things as this. He braved no danger for another. He did not walk in the path of peril to save the life of friend or fellow. On the contrary, he seemed bent on a selfish mission, inspired by a purely personal ambition. He did not say: This world is suffering from oppression; I will lay down my life to make it free. He did not seek to destroy the throne and the sceptre that bear so heavily on the poor and weak; but he sought a throne and a sceptre for himself that he might rule the world.

Jesus sacrifice himself for the world! No! He demanded that the world sacrifice itself to exalt him! A poorer specimen of self-sacrifice could hardly be found in all the historical out-of-the-way places that we know anything about. Jesus had nothing to give up, nothing to renounce, nothing but his life to offer to the world, and this, even when it was taken, did the world no good.

The only incident in the whole career of Jesus which has been construed as a sacrifice was his crucifixion, but this was not voluntary on the part of the victim. Jesus, in dying, made no sacrifice. He surrendered his life at the command of a political power; he did not offer it for the world’s advancement. Jesus was the sport of circumstances, the victim of a cruel fate. He played for high stakes and lost. He was an adventurer, and suffered the penalty of failure. Taking the account of his career in the gospels as true, it is totally barren of any lofty, sublime action for the good of the human race. He did not throw his efforts into the public strife to elevate the condition of the majority, but he loaded himself on the shoulders of his followers to ride into divine greatness. Like hundreds of others, he threw the dice of political chance and was beaten.

In following the gospel steps of the deluded Nazarene we are not sure which are his and which are not, but take all the stories as true which his devoted disciples have told about him, they do not reveal a mind consecrated to any lofty purpose. He was working to establish the “kingdom of heaven,” but nobody knows what that is. He talked about his “father in heaven,” but nobody knows who he is. He had no practical ideas, he did no practical work. History would have written this man’s name among the unfortunate victims of political revolutions, if it had preserved it at all, which is doubtful, but Jesus was made by priestcraft to play a leading part in a theological drama, and religion has immortalized his name.

But it is a false part that Jesus has played. No such character has any reason for existing. The necessity for any human offering to God does not exist. The idea of an atoning sacrifice is a relic of at barbarous faith. It is time to take Christianity off the stage. It is an insult to the twentieth century.

The silly, sickly superstition of the sacrifice of Jesus should be left to die. It sprang from falsehood and has no basis in fact, in reason or in truth.

FASHIONABLE HYPOCRISY

There is nothing more inconsistent than for the rich to praise Jesus. There is dishonesty in every word that the wealthy speak in approbation of the poverty-preacher of Galilee. Jesus was poor, almost a beggar. He had no house, no home. But more than this, he did not see the good of such things. He did not tell his disciples to work and try to improve their earthly condition. There is no sound, sensible advice for a man to follow, who has to live and support his family, to be found in the so-called teachings of Jesus.

It is simply hypocrisy for a man who is rich or well-to-do, and who is living to add to his wealth or to increase his comforts, to pretend to honor Jesus. The truth is, Jesus did not do anything that deserves the honor of those who are trying to fill the earth with flowers of happiness, who are laboring to make brighter the homes they live in, and who are sowing the seeds of plenty and joy. Jesus did not do what this age regards as best for man, and he did not teach the philosophy which the wisest men to-day apply to human life.

Now, was Jesus right or wrong? That is the question. It is pure nonsense for the people of this country to claim to respect Jesus. We cannot respect a person who does what we think is foolish, or we cannot do so and have any self-respect. We are right or think we are, and Jesus was wrong; or else Jesus was right. Which is it?

The whole world, Christian and unbeliever alike, is living contrary to the precept and example of the New Testament preacher. Is every person on earth doing what he believes to be wrong; doing what he believes to be injurious to himself; doing what he considers will end in disaster and misery; doing what he feels will bring suffering and sorrow upon humanity? Not a bit of it. Every man is doing what he believes to be right when he is working to get out of poverty and degradation; when he is trying to better his condition in society; when he is improving his home and giving his family more blessings, more enjoyments.