Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other Essays

To be a freethinker is to search for truth without fear. Where there is love of freedom there is no reverence for authority. There is no faith in God as sacred as love of man.

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There may be lots of Providence in the world, but no man seems to know just where it can be found.

THE BROTHERHOOD AND FREEDOM OF MAN

From the fall of Rome a new era marks the history of man; a new soul was born out of human experience. The idea which had been prophesied by the philosophers of India, Egypt and Greece now appeared in life, and what had been hoped for seemed about to be realized. Born in an age of slaughter and inhumanity the thought of the brotherhood of man fell upon the world like a star out of the night’s sky. Though the power of this idea was not fully comprehended by the people upon whom it blazed forth, still the promise it contained was able to kindle enthusiasm in the hearts of the few, who bequeathed it to the world as the destiny of mankind. Human life was inspired with a new purpose under the power of this grand and noble sentiment. Although it was not understood and the subject of much misapprehension, the thought of uniting man in one great endeavor grew and endowed nations with a feeling that never before had moved their hearts. Its advent gave the world a new ambition and the mind was enlisted in the great cause of love and fellowship of man.

There was another sentiment not less true or beautiful but more revolutionary, which about the same time began to assume likeness in human affairs, which must be considered of larger importance in the new social movement, which, during the first century of the so-called Christian era, commenced to be felt. The declaration of the sovereignty of man was more prophetic of change in government and society than the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. No government taught that man ought to judge for himself what is right, and no church preached that man should love his neighbor as himself.

Political and religious organizations then as now were arrayed against individual rights. The state and the church controlled the person. Man was crucified between these two thieves. One robbed him of his body, the other of his soul. Our history assigns the origin of these two great principles—man’s right to judge for himself and his duty to help his fellow-being—to Christianity. But one was born before the beginning of the Christian era and the other long after the Christian church was established. One represents man as opposed to authority; the other the soul resisting tradition.

There is more or less talk about the freedom and brotherhood of man, but they exist as ideas yet more than as facts. It is true that man enjoys a certain measure of liberty in many directions, but the victory of freedom has not yet been won. So too is there a kind of human sympathy in society, but the broad and magnificent destiny which dwells in the bosom of human brotherhood is more a dream than a reality.

There has been too much time wasted in disputing who was the human author of these great and sublime conceptions, and too little expended in trying to plant them in human hearts and cultivate them in human lives. It is unimportant who first stood against the world of tyranny and demanded his right of independence, or who first felt indignation for the wrongs inflicted upon his race and pity for the victims of cruelty, and pleaded for more humanity towards man. The secret can never be wrested from the silent past, and we can gain nothing by fighting over graves.

The world seems nearer the full realization of human freedom and brotherhood than ever before. What is needed now to hasten the fruition of the glad promise of a better destiny for the world is to take authority from the priest and selfishness from man.

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Prayer is a hook that never caught any fish. It is a gun that never brought down any game.

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No man ever got an answer to prayer that he could show to another person.

WHATEVER IS IS RIGHT

There are a great many familiar sayings, that are in the mouths of nearly everybody, which are perfect nonsense, and one of these many sayings is the one we have chosen for the subject of this article. One would imagine that falsehood became sacred by repetition, judging from the way that certain untruths live in the literature and language of mankind. Many a holy text is only holy by being with what is true, as we pay respect to many a man whom we know to be unworthy because he is related to respectable people.

The saying that “whatever is is right,” is a dogma of the philosophy of indifference. To anyone who works for the right and suffers wrong, such a dogma is impertinent. Is the deed that sinks a man to the realm of brutes, and the deed that lifts him to heights where virtue in her high estate dwells alone, both right? The worst light for a human soul is that light in which a bad act looks like a good one. We cannot afford to trifle with things pure and true. To succeed grandly in life we must side with what is right.

There is a class of people that hold a don’t-care philosophy. These people don’t care what they say or do; they don’t care what takes place in the world or what the world suffers or endures. The tent in which they dwell is pitched above the plane of human wants and sufferings. They look from their serene abode upon the troubled elements below, and, in contemplation of what is beneath them, pronounce with pious gravity the highest text of their system of philosophy: “Whatever is is right.”

To those who have never seen the bitter tear start under the infliction of injury; to those who have never heard the sigh that disappointment and deception have wrung from a breaking heart; to those who have never witnessed the sufferings which tyranny imposes upon its victims; to those who have never felt the miseries which selfishness heaps upon human beings, this doctrine may seem true; but to those who have beheld the consequences of evil doing, and felt the hard hand of injustice upon their lives; to those who have been the victims of deception, and realized the terrible fate of disappointment; to those who have been trodden upon and denied the rights of men; to those who have been the slaves of the world’s cruel masters, how false it is!

We cannot disguise the fact that there is wrong in the world. It haunts every dwelling-place of man. It follows man to his business, to his work. It goes with him when he seeks his pleasure. It does not leave him when he enters his home.

Every harsh word is wrong, every unjust judgment is wrong, every cruel act is wrong, every deception is wrong, every wicked or impure thought is wrong. Go where we will we shall meet the ugly face of wrong. On the street its presence will bring shame into the face; in our dealings with the world it will come before our eyes in all its hideous reality. Even when alone we cannot keep this phantom away.

Is it right that a human being should cause another pain and anguish that will leave their marks on the heart and brow for life? Is it right to make a man suffer unjustly, to add to misfortune the weight of cruelty? Is it right to deprive one of honor, of fortune, of life? Is it right to bear false witness against a brother-man, to abuse a neighbor, to slander and malign a human soul? Is wrong right?

Go to the garret of the poor wretch where want stares him in the face, where extortion robs his family of every joy and every comfort, where the day is made dark from no ray of human love coming into the heart, and the night darker from the absence of warmth and light. Go to the home rent asunder by vice and see the broken promises once so fair and bright, now blushing with shame; hear curses from lips that once spoke in love; see the skeletons of vows beautiful when breathed by the lips of the holiest passion on earth, but now hideous in their ruin. Go to the den of wickedness, to the house of crime supported by lust and greed; look upon the pictures of wretchedness and sorrow, of sin and guilt painted by the hand of wrong; behold the wrecked human lives that are floating on the sea of existence, only drifting until some sudden wave shall overwhelm them and sink them out of sight, leaving behind a memory that man should contemplate with pity and which kindness would blot out forever. See the world in its vice, in its suffering, in its misery, in its tears and its shame and let your lips say, if they can, that “Whatever is is right.”

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It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.

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I believe that if God dwelt above the earth in the twelfth century of the Christian era, and witnessed the cruelty of priests and heard the cries of their poor victims when their bones were broken upon the rack or their flesh was burning in the wicked flames, and these priests should have lifted up their voices to this God and given him the glory of the awful sacrifice, he would have said to them: You lie; I never commanded one of my children to murder another. You are no ministers of mine, and your victims, with their heresies, are a thousand times holier in my sight than are you with your pious dogmas and holy sacraments.

THE OBJECT OF LIFE

Men live for less than their advancement. The object of life is not human improvement. Ambition has not self-denial for a mark but self-gratification. A thousand pander to one. Passion, instead of principle, is the power that guides. We do not save to help save the world, to aid progress and truth, but to have means to satisfy selfish desires. The highest consideration of mankind is self. Everything is done for one. Humanity is a word of little meaning. It is not often regarded as a great, living, suffering being, which demands of every person his or her best life. Man is not loved as the supreme fact of Nature. When not a beast of burden, he is too often a beast of pleasure.

As long as self is to be preferred to all, it matters little what is employed to promote it. Self is alone sacred to selfishness. General interest is sacrificed to individual possession. Every man thinks the world his first. It is regarded as magnanimous to leave what you cannot take.

The world no longer permits the stronger to kill the weaker, but it allows the wealthy to oppress the poor. Money is holier than man. Human life is less sacred than property. To save a dollar is regarded as a more necessary virtue than to save a human heart. Society cares more for fortune than for truth. It is easier to win your way with hypocrisy than with honesty. The world does not ask: What are you worth morally? but, what are you worth financially? Self-interest has made it the object of life to injure our fellows. To get an advantage over another is the victory man seeks. One must fall that another may rise.

Those who are at the bottom support those who are on top. The toilers are the foundation of society. We need to be more careful of what is beneath us than of what is above us. “I write not these things to shame you, but to warn you.”

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When you are falling, you cannot stop where you wish to.

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The power that conquers men to-day must be the power of enlightened opinion.

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Two dollars given to the son do not atone for one stolen from the father.

MAN

The Hebrew psalmist sings of man:—“Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.” A modern psalmist writing on this subject says:—“Man was made a little higher than the brutes.” Man is a rare animal; he is the only animal that can make a fire, but he is more than a brute. We do not know how much less than an angel he is, for we do not know the dimensions of an angel.

What we do know is, that this strange, rare being, called man, is capable of doing a good deed, but is prone to do a bad one; that he has developed virtues above the brute and vices below the brute; that he is better in public than in private, and yet take him all in all he might be worse. We have had the weakness of human nature preached until we have almost come to expect man to be immoral and vicious, and are surprised if anyone asserts that man is strong enough to resist temptation, and disappointed if he does not come up, or down, to our expectations of vileness and wickedness.

While we have faith in man in the minority rather than in the majority, still we are inclined to think that most men are bad from circumstance more than from choice. We trust to better conditions for better men, and depend upon our best men to establish such conditions.

There is some criticism of virtue that vice offers which is as pertinent as the censure of vice which virtue indulges in. We admit that there are a great many sinners that are preferable to some kinds of saints, who are no more to blame for their sins than their more fortunate fellow-beings are for their saintliness. But we do not mean to say that every good man is a villain in disguise, nor every rogue a righteous man who has not been found out.

There are men and women whose goodness is looked upon as “flat, stale, and unprofitable” because it is that kind that is good from favorable circumstances, and not from the exercise of any strength of their own, but such virtue is better than vice. We cannot afford to lose any power that protects the world from evil, and we rejoice in all the favorable circumstances that guard human beings.

Men are educated into bad habits through the constant assertion of human weakness, and the publicity which is given to bad deeds. We can never build man very high on the foundation of “total depravity.” It is to be regretted that we think so meanly of mankind. We must start with a better assumption of human nature than that held by Christianity.

We ought to emphasize man’s strength and give prominence to the good deeds of men. It is not necessary to lie about human nature one way more than another. Man has been painted worse than he is. We do not ask to have him painted better than he is. We want a true likeness. Man will make the best picture without any fictitious coloring.

We are aware that we have not yet outgrown our animal inheritance, that we are still fettered to earthly things. Man can more easily deny his soul than he can his stomach, but for all this there is greatness in him. While man can fall to the lowest depths from which he sprung, he can rise to the height which is visible in his purest hours. What we ought to do is to encourage, all we can, the conditions most favorable to the development of the noblest part of man. Every temptation to vice should be driven from the public gaze. If man must fall, let him fall out of sight.

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People who rely most on God rely least on themselves.

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The original sin was not in eating of the forbidden fruit, but in planting the tree that bore the fruit.

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The people who boast the loudest of carrying their cross are never around when man cries for help.

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An audience composed of the best-dressed people in a town stands for "pure religion and undefiled" to-day.

THE DOGMA OF THE DIVINE MAN

There are growing indications all along the Christian line that the dogma of the divinity of Jesus is being abandoned. It is seen that such a dogma involves confusion and misapprehension. When the question, “How can a God who is infinite exist in a form that is finite?” is pressed to an answer, no satisfactory reply is forthcoming. There is apparent absurdity in this doctrine. The general definition of God, as put forth to-day by the Christian Church, is irreconcilable with the dogma of the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus was God he was not a man; if he was a man, he was not God. To talk about his divinity is to talk nonsense, if Joseph was his father and Mary his mother. Man is not divine; God is not human. The mixing up of these two terms is done simply to impose upon the credulous and superstitious. We cannot think that any man of real good sense believes this Orthodox dogma. It seems impossible for intelligence to so contradict itself. The brain stoops that accepts this dogma. For a man to confess his faith in Jesus as divine is to admit that his hat is not full. The evidence adduced to prove the divinity of Jesus proves the divinity of Apollo, of Hercules, of Prometheus, of hundreds of mythological heroes. Are Christians prepared to admit this? If not, then they are called upon to tell the world why not. What is meant by divine? What kind of a man is a divine man? Let us see. Divine means superhuman, supernatural, God-like; hence a divine man is a superhuman man, a supernatural man, a God-like man. Does anyone know what these definitive terms mean? Does a person know what he is talking about when he says a man is superhuman? Can a man be more than man, more than human, more than natural?

The dogma of a divine man is a dogma of deception. It is a theological cobweb. It is spread to catch flies.

The idea prevailed in the past that what could not be understood must necessarily be profound, as though muddy water was deep water.

Does anyone comprehend the dogma of the Trinity? It is believed because it cannot be comprehended. The tribute of faith has been paid to occult nonsense long enough.

How does anyone know what is superhuman? What is human? The fact is, Jesus has had his day. His reign is drawing to a close. He is being seen for what he is,—a myth. Faith in him as a God is dying. The belief that Jesus was divine is a blot on the intelligence of this century. But the blot is growing smaller.

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Lots of men who would not associate with infidels for fear of contaminating their characters are not yet out of jail.

THE RICH MAN’S GOSPEL

The presence of numberless rich men in Christian pews leads one to wonder if the gospel of Jesus has been kicked out of the church. Such men do not, and cannot, respect the person to whom every church is dedicated. The gospel of Jesus is not the gospel of the rich, but of the poor; not of the banker, but of the beggar. It is impossible for the wealthy man to be a Christian. If he had any faith in the doctrines of Jesus he would “sell what he has and give to the poor.” And not only this, but he would be poor himself.

Jesus never said a kind word of the rich. He never uttered a word that contains any consolation for the millionaire. He never gave any command that encourages the “laying up treasures upon earth.” What is a rich man in the Christian church for? He has no business there, if he is an honest man. He is living exactly opposite to the life Jesus commanded. He is doing what Jesus told men not to do. He refuses to do what Jesus said a man must do in order to be his disciple.

Either the rich man who joins the church is a hypocrite, or the minister, that receives such a man into the church, is. There is a hypocrite somewhere. You do not find that Jesus went into the temple to flatter the money-changers; he went in there to drive them out with a whip.

The rich man’s gospel is not found in the New Testament. That is sure. It may be preached from a Christian pulpit by a so-called Christian minister, but the man who preaches this gospel denies his professed Lord and Master. Jesus did not say, “Lay up treasures upon earth.” Take all you can from the poor. Form trusts and combinations to enrich yourselves. Worship Mammon. There is a misunderstanding evidently on the part of the rich man who joins the Christian church. If he would read the New Testament he would learn his mistake, and see that he was in the wrong place. He does not seem to be aware what Jesus preached. There is one thing certain, the Christian church that receives into fellowship a millionaire, has more reverence for the millionaire than for Jesus.

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The beating of humanity’s heart cannot be felt by placing the finger on the church’s pulse.

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What a queer thing is Christian salvation! Believing in firemen will not save a burning house; believing in doctors will not make one well, but believing in a savior saves men. Fudge!

SPEAK WELL OF ONE ANOTHER

There is nothing that will make this world brighter and happier than to speak well of one another. We sometimes wonder how a mean story about a fellow-mortal gets started, and how it is kept going. Surely no base report ever had birth in a kind intention, and no mouth ever repeated it with the wish to make the world better.

Envy, malice and ill-will can make no decent defence of themselves. Now, it costs no more to say a good word of a brother or sister than to say a bad one, and there is no obligation on the part of a person to blacken human reputation. It is a mean heart that cannot do justice to another. If we must speak of our neighbors, let us speak kindly. Let us refer to those things that are pleasant, and discuss that in their characters that is worthy of praise. It hurts us to say bad things of other people, and it may hurt them. There is certainly some part of everyone’s life that can be commended. What we know of others that is not good, let us not refer to. Silence is never more charitable than when it spares a human heart.

There are many of our friends who are striving to make a success in life. Nothing will aid them more than to speak well of them. Everybody can be generous with kind words, and yet they are worth more than gold. They are the diamonds of speech, which the poorest can wear.

Don’t be afraid to speak well of men, to praise good deeds. No one will think worse of you for speaking kindly of others. It is not necessary that we speak well only of those deeds that men sing in words of song. There are scores of little every-day acts, that give the perfume of self-denial, of sacrifice, and that deserve praise. If we were to give any advice to a man or woman, who wished to help the world as they passed through it, it would be this, Speak well of men and women.

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A receipt for bringing up a child will not apply to a whole family.

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To build one house for man is better than to build a dozen houses to God.

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We often hear a man say that the world owes him a living. So it does, if he earns it. But man owes the world something. The debt is on both sides, and it is only by giving what is due to others that we get what is due to ourselves. We receive assistance when we render it, and it is by a law of our nature that the world turns from a man who turns from the world.

DISGRACEFUL PARTNERSHIPS

Six marriages out of ten are disgraceful partnerships. The ones to question our assertion will be the married men, and the very ones, too, responsible for the disgrace. Marriage is a union where the two partners should share alike the profits and the losses. There should be no head of the firm in the sense of making one subservient in any way to the other. The wife has just the same right to handle the money of the firm as the husband. The family purse should not be carried in the husband’s pocket unless he is willing to pass it out whenever his partner requests it, and no questions asked.

Most men treat their wives worse than servants. If a wife asks for some money, the husband, in most instances, wants to know what she is going to do with it and how much she wants, instead of giving her what is her right. Married men do not recognize their wives as equal partners in the family concern. They think they should have what they want and their wives what they are pleased to give them. How many homes have been broken up by carrying out such a principle as this? More than men will confess.

This state of things is not confined to the homes of poverty. Not at all. It exists where there is plenty. Many a proud woman is almost daily humiliated by a man to whom she is obliged to go for what money she needs. The pain that niggardly husbands inflict upon sensitive wives is only known by themselves. Many a woman has said: “I would rather go without the money than have so much trouble to get it from my husband.” What must a woman have suffered to be forced to make such a confession as that!