Trial of C. B. Reynolds for Blasphemy
Address to the Jury, Morristown, New Jersey, 1887.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1887)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/trial-of-c-b-reynolds-for-blasphemy/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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Address to the Jury.
  • Within thirty miles of New York, in the city of
    Morristown, New Jersey, a man was put on trial yesterday for
    distributing a pamphlet argument against the infallibility
    of the Bible. The crime which the Indictment alleges Is
    Blasphemy, for which the statutes of New Jersey provide a
    penalty of two hundred dollars fine, or twelve months
    imprisonment, or both. It is the first case of the kind ever
    tried in New Jersey, although the law dates back to colonial
    days. Charles B. Reynolds is the man on trial, and the State
    of New Jersey, through the Prosecuting Attorney of Morris
    County, is the prosecutor. The Circuit Court, Judge Francis
    Child, assisted by County Judges Munson and Quimby, sit upon
    the case. Prosecutor Wilder W. Cutler represents the State,
    and Robert G. Ingersoll appears for the defendant.
    Mr. Reynolds went to Boonton last summer to hold "free-
    thought" meetings. Announcing his purpose without any
    flourish, he secured a piece of ground, pitched a tent upon
    it, and invited the towns-people to come and hear him. It
    was understood that he had been a Methodist minister: that,
    finding it impossible to reconcile his mind to some of the
    historical parts of the Bible, and unable to accept it in
    its entirety as a moral guide, he left the church and set
    out to proclaim his conclusions. The churches in Boonton
    arrayed themselves against him. The Catholics and Methodists
    were especially active. Taking this opposition as an excuse,
    one element of the town invaded his tent. They pelted
    Reynolds with ancient eggs and vegetables. They chopped away
    the guy ropes of the tent and slashed the canvas with their
    knives. When the tent collapsed, the crowd rushed for the
    speaker to inflict further punishment by plunging him in the
    duck pond They rummaged the wrecked tent, but in vain. He
    had made his way ont in the confusion and was no more seen
    in Boonton.
    But what he had said did not leave Boonton with him, and the
    pamphlets he had distributed were read by many who probably
    would not have looked between their covers had his visit
    been attended by no unusual circumstances. Boonton was still
    agitated up on the subject when Mr. Reynolds appeared in
    Morristown. This time he did not try to hold meetings, but
    had his pamphlets with him.
    Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown with the pamphlets on
    October thirteenth. A Boonton delegation was there,
    clamoring for his indictment for blasphemy. The Grand Jury
    heard of his visit and found two indictments against him;
    one for blasphemy at
    Boonton and the second for blasphemy at Morristown. He
    furnished a five hundred dollar bond to appear for trial. On
    account of Colonel Ingersoll's throat troubles the case was
    adjourned several times through the winter and until Monday
    last, when it was set peremptorily for trial yesterday.
    The public feeling excited at Boonton was overshadowed by
    that at Morristown and the neighboring region. For six
    months no topic was so interesting to the public as this. It
    monopolized attention at the stores, and became a fruitful
    subject of gossip in social and church circles. Under such
    circumstances it was to be expected that everybody who could
    spare the time would go to court yesterday. Lines of people
    began to climb the court house hill early in the morning. At
    the hour of opening court the room set apart for the trial
    was packed, and distaffs had to be stationed at the foot of
    the stairs to keep back those who were not early enough.
    From nine thirty to eleven o'clock the crowd inside talked
    of blasphemy in all the phases suggested by this case, and
    the outsiders waited patiently on the lawn and steps and
    along the dusty approaches to the gray building.
    Eleven o'clock brought the train from New York and on it
    Colonel Ingersoll. His arrival at the court house with his
    clerk opened a new chapter in the day's gossip. The event
    was so absorbing indeed, that the crowd failed entirely to
    notice an elderly man wearing a black frock snit, a silk
    hat, with an army badge pinned to his coat, and looking like
    a merchant of means, who entered the court house a few
    minutes behind the famous lawyer. The last comer was the
    defendant.
    All was ready for the case. Within five minutes five jurors
    were in the box. Then Colonel Ingersoll asked what were his
    rights about challenges. He was informed that he might make
    six peremptory challenges and must challenge before the
    jurors took their seats. The only disqualification the Court
    would recognize would be the inability of a juror to change
    his opinion in spite of evidence. Colonel Ingersoll induced
    the Court to let him examine the five in the box and
    promptly ejected two Presbyterians.
    Thereafter Colonel Ingersoll examined every juror as soon as
    presented. He asked particularly about the nature of each
    man's prejudice, if he had one. To a juror who did not know
    that he understood the word, the Colonel replied: "I may not
    define the word legally, but my own idea is that a man is
    prejudiced when he has made up his mind on a case without
    knowing anything about it." This juror thought that he came
    under that category.
    Presbyterians had a rather hard time with the examiner.
    After twenty men had been examined and the defence had
    exercised five of its peremptory challenges, the following
    were sworn as jurymen.    
    The jury having been sworn, Prosecutor Cutler announced that
    he would try only the indictment for the offence in
    Morristown. He said that Reynolds was charged with
    distributing pamphlets containing matter claimed to be
    blasphemous under the law. If the charge could be proved he
    asked a verdict of guilty. Then he called sixteen towns-
    people, to most of whom Reynolds had given a pamphlet.
    Colonel Ingersoll tried to get the Presbyterian witnesses to
    say that they had read the pamphlet. Not one of them
    admitted it. Further than this he attempted no
    cross-examination.
    "I do not know that I shall have any witnesses one way or
    the other," Colonel Ingersoll said, rising to suggest a
    recess. "Perhaps after dinner I may feel like making a few
    remarks."
    "There will be great disappointment if you do not" Judge
    Child responded, in a tone that meant a word for himself as
    well as for the other listeners. The spectators nodded
    approval to this sentiment. At 4:20 o'clock Col. Ingersoll
    having spoken since 2 o'clock, Judge Child adjourned court
    until this morning.
    As Colonel Ingersoll left the room a throng pressed after
    him to offer congratulations. One old man said: "Colonel
    Ingersoll I am a Presbyterian pastor, but I must say that
    was the noblest speech in defence of liberty I ever heard!
    Your hand, sir; your hand,"—The Times, New York, May
    20,1887.

GENTLEMEN of the Jury: I regard this as one of the most important cases
that can be submitted to a jury. It is not a case that involves a little
property, neither is it one that involves simply the liberty of one man.
It involves the freedom of speech, the intellectual liberty of every
citizen of New Jersey.

The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to
express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of
greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for
me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could
take a greater—a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live
in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to
others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.

I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of
any State, to put a padlock on the lips—to make the tongue a convict.
I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the
children of the brain. A man has a right to work with his hands, to
plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the
harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who
take these rights from their fellow-men. If you have the right to
work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your
children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the
right to read, to observe, to investigate—and when you have so read and
so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what
is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have
ascertained—simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.

If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy
of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without
that, we are simply painted clay; without that, we are poor, miserable
serfs and slaves. If you have not the right to express your opinions,
if the defendant has not this right, then no man ever walked beneath
the blue of heaven that had the right to express his thought. If others
claim the right, where did they get it? How did they happen to have it,
and how did you happen to be deprived of it? Where did a church or a
nation get that right?

Are we not all children of the same Mother? Are we not all compelled to
think, whether we wish to or not? Can you help thinking as you do? When
you look out upon the woods, the fields,—when you look at the solemn
splendors of the night—these things produce certain thoughts in your
mind, and they produce them necessarily. No man can think as he desires.
No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the
action of his heart. The blood pursues its old accustomed ways in spite
of you. The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear,
if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain
thinks in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you
should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He
who takes it from you is a robber.

For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people
to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why?
Because brute force is not an argument. You can stand with the lash over
a man, or you can stand by the prison door, or beneath the gallows, or
by the stake, and say to this man: "Recant or the lash descends, the
prison door is locked upon you, the rope is put about your neck, or the
torch is given to the fagot." And so the man recants. Is he convinced?
Not at all. Have you produced a new argument? Not the slightest. And
yet the ignorant bigots of this world have been trying for thousands of
years to rule the minds of men by brute force. They have endeavored to
improve the mind by torturing the flesh—to spread religion with the
sword and torch. They have tried to convince their brothers by putting
their feet in iron boots, by putting fathers, mothers, patriots,
philosophers and philanthropists in dungeons. And what has been the
result? Are we any nearer thinking alike to-day than we were then?

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make
people think its way by force and flame. And yet every church that
ever was established commenced in the minority, and while it was in the
minority advocated free speech—every one. John Calvin, the founder
of the Presbyterian Church, while he lived in France, wrote a book on
religious toleration in order to show that all men had an equal right to
think; and yet that man afterward, clothed in a little authority, forgot
all his sentiments about religious liberty, and had poor Servetus burned
at the stake, for differing with him on a question that neither of them
knew anything about. In the minority, Calvin advocated toleration—in
the majority, he practiced murder.

I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men
to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who
wants us to think alike, he would have made us alike. Why did he not do
so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility
be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a
Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an
unbeliever—why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan—if
he wanted us all to believe alike?

After all, may be Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad
enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. May be, after all, it
would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world,
if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.

The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than
food or clothes—more important than gold or houses or lands—more
important than art or science—more important than all religions, is the
liberty of man.

If civilization tends to do away with liberty, then I agree with
Mr. Buckle that civilization is a curse. Gladly would I give up the
splendors of the nineteenth century—gladly would I forget every
invention that has leaped from the brain of man—gladly would I see all
books ashes, all works of art destroyed, all statues broken, and all
the triumphs of the world lost—gladly, joyously would I go back to
the abodes and dens of savagery, if that were necessary to preserve the
inestimable gem of human liberty. So would every man who has a heart and
brain.

How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself?
Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free
speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book
that it was in, and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who
passed it. Never. By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the
church sought to prevent discussion—sought to prevent argument—sought
to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma,
a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your
speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives
because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves.

If I understand myself, I advocate only the doctrines that in my
judgment will make this world happier and better. If I know myself,
I advocate only those things that will make a man a better citizen, a
better father, a kinder husband—that will make a woman a better wife,
a better mother—doctrines that will fill every home with sunshine and
with joy. And if I believed that anything I should say to-day would have
any other possible tendency, I would stop. I am a believer in liberty.
That is my religion—to give to every other human being every right
that I claim for myself, and I grant to every other human being, not the
right—because it is his right—but instead of granting I declare that
it is his right, to attack every doctrine that I maintain, to answer
every argument that I urge—in other words, he must have absolute
freedom of speech.

I am a believer in what I call "intellectual hospitality." A man comes
to your door. If you are a gentleman and he appears to be a good man,
you receive him with a smile. You ask after his health. You say: "Take
a chair; are you thirsty, are you hungry, will you not break bread with
me?" That is what a hospitable, good man does—he does not set the dog
on him. Now, how should we treat a new thought? I say that the brain
should be hospitable and say to the new thought: "Come in; sit down; I
want to cross-examine you; I want to find whether you are good or bad;
if good, stay; if bad, I don't want to hurt you—probably you think you
are all right,—but your room is better than your company, and I will
take another idea in your place." Why not? Can any man have the egotism
to say that he has found it all out? No. Every man who has thought,
knows not only how little he knows, but how little every other human
being knows, and how ignorant, after all, the world must be.

There was a time in Europe when the Catholic Church had power. And I
want it distinctly understood with this jury, that while I am opposed
to Catholicism I am not opposed to Catholics—while I am opposed to
Presbyterianism I am not opposed to Presbyterians. I do not fight
people,—I fight ideas, I fight principles, and I never go
into personalities. As I said, I do not hate Presbyterians, but
Presbyterianism—that is, I am opposed to their doctrine. I do not hate
a man that has the rheumatism—I hate the rheumatism when it has a man.
So I attack certain principles because I think they are wrong, but I
always want it understood that I have nothing against persons—nothing
against victims.

There was a time when the Catholic Church was in power in the Old World.
All at once there arose a man called Martin Luther, and what did the
dear old Catholics think? "Oh," they said, "that man and his followers
are going to hell." But they did not go. They were very good people.
They may have been mistaken—I do not know. I think they were right in
their opposition to Catholicism—but I have just as much objection to
the religion they founded as I have to the church they left. But they
thought they were right, and they made very good citizens, and it turned
out that their differing from the Mother Church did not hurt them.
And then after awhile they began to divide, and there arose Baptists;
and-the other gentlemen, who believed in this law that is now in New
Jersey, began cutting off their ears so that they could hear better;
they began putting them in prison so that they would have a chance to
think. But the Baptists turned out to be good folks—first rate—good
husbands, good fathers, good citizens. And in a little while, in
England, the people turned to be Episcopalians, on account of a little
war that Henry VIII. had with the Pope,—and I always sided with the
Pope in that war—but it made no difference; and in a little while
the Episcopalians turned out to be just about like other folks—no
worse—and, as I know of, no better.

After awhile arose the Puritan, and the Episcopalian said, "We don't
want anything of him—he is a bad man;" and they finally drove some of
them away and they settled in New England, and there were among
them Quakers, than whom there never were better people on the
earth—industrious, frugal, gentle, kind and loving—and yet these
Puritans began hanging them. They said: "They are corrupting our
children; if this thing goes on, everybody will believe in being kind
and gentle and good, and what will become of us?" They were honest about
it. So they went to cutting off ears. But the Quakers were good people
and none of the prophecies were fulfilled.

In a little while there came some Unitarians and they said, "The world
is going to ruin, sure;"—but the world went on as usual, and the
Unitarians produced men like Channing—one of the tenderest spirits that
ever lived—they produced men like Theodore Parker—one of the greatest
brained and greatest hearted men produced upon this continent—a good
man—and yet they thought he was a blasphemer—they even prayed for his
death—on their bended knees they asked their God to take time to kill
him. Well, they were mistaken. Honest, probably.

After awhile came the Universalists, who said: "God is good. He will not
damn anybody always, just for a little mistake he made here. This is
a very short life; the path we travel is very dim, and a great many
shadows fall in the way, and if a man happens to stub his toe, God will
not burn him forever." And then all the rest of the sects cried
out, "Why, if you do away with hell, everybody will murder just for
pastime—everybody will go to stealing just to enjoy themselves." But
they did not. The Universalists were good people—just as good as any
others. Most of them much better. None of the prophecies were fulfilled,
and yet the differences existed.

And so we go on until we find people who do not believe the Bible at
all, and when they say they do not, they come within this statute.

Now, gentlemen, I am going to try to show you, first, that this statute
under which Mr. Reynolds is being tried is unconstitutional—that it is
not in harmony with the constitution of New Jersey; and I am going to
try to show you in addition to that, that it was passed hundreds of
years ago, by men who believed it was right to burn heretics and tie
Quakers to the end of a cart; men and even modest women—stripped
naked—and lash them from town to town. They were the men who originally
passed that statute, and I want to show you that it has slept all this
time, and I am informed—I do not know how it is—that there never has
been a prosecution in this State for blasphemy.

Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course nobody knows what it is,
unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in
one country would be a religious exhortation, in another. It is owing to
where you are and who is in authority. And let me call your attention
to the impudence and bigotry of the American Christians. We send
missionaries to other countries. What for? To tell them that their
religion is false, that their gods are myths and monsters, that their
saviors and apostles were impostors, and that our religion is true.
You send a man from Morristown—a Presbyterian, over to Turkey. He goes
there, and he tells the Mohammedans—and he has it in a pamphlet and he
distributes it—that the Koran is a lie, that Mohammed was not a prophet
of God, that the angel Gabriel is not so large that it is four hundred
leagues between his eyes—that it is all a mistake—there never was an
angel so large as that. Then what would the Turks do? Suppose the Turks
had a law like this statute in New Jersey. They would put the Morristown
missionary in jail, and he would send home word, and then what would the
people of Morristown say? Honestly—what do you think they would say?
They would say, "Why, look at those poor, heathen wretches. We sent a
man over there armed with the truth, and yet they were so blinded
by their idolatrous religion, so steeped in superstition, that they
actually put that man in prison." Gentlemen, does not that show the need
of more missionaries? I would say, yes.

Now, let us turn the tables. A gentleman comes from Turkey to
Morristown. He has got a pamphlet. He says, "The Koran is the inspired
book, Mohammed is the real prophet, your Bible is false and your Savior
simply a myth." Thereupon the Morristown people put him in jail.
Then what would the Turks say? They would say, "Morristown needs more
missionaries," and I would agree with them.

In other words, what we want is intellectual hospitality. Let the
world talk. And see how foolish this trial is. I have no doubt that the
prosecuting attorney-agrees with me to-day, that whether this law is
good or bad, this trial should not have taken place. And let me tell you
why. Here comes a man into your town and circulates a pamphlet. Now,
if they had just kept still, very few would ever have heard of it. That
would have been the end. The diameter of the echo would have been a few
thousand feet. But in order to stop the discussion of that question,
they indicted this man, and that question has been more discussed in
this country since this indictment than all the discussions put together
since New Jersey was first granted to Charles II.'s dearest brother
James, the Duke of York.. And what else? A trial here that is to be
reported and published all over the United States, a trial that will
give Mr. Reynolds a congregation of fifty millions of people. And yet
this was done for the purpose of stopping a discussion of this subject.
I want to show you that the thing is in itself almost idiotic—that it
defeats itself, and that you cannot crush out these things by force. Not
only so, but Mr. Reynolds has the right to be defended, and his counsel
has the right to give his opinions on this subject.

Suppose that we put Mr. Reynolds in jail. The argument has not been sent
to jail. That is still going the rounds, free as the winds. Suppose you
keep him at hard labor a year—all the time he is there, hundreds and
thousands of people will be reading some account, or some fragment, of
this trial. There is the trouble. If you could only imprison a thought,
then intellectual tyranny might succeed. If you could only take an
argument and put a striped suit of clothes on it—if you could only
take a good, splendid, shining fact and lock it up in some dungeon of
ignorance, so that its light would never again enter the mind of man,
then you might succeed in stopping human progress. Otherwise, no.

Let us see about this particular statute. In the first place, the State
has a constitution. That constitution is a rule, a limitation to the
power of the Legislature, and a certain breastwork for the protection
of private rights, and the constitution says to this sea of passions
and prejudices: "Thus far and no farther." The constitution says to each
individual: "This shall panoply you; this is your complete coat of mail;
this shall defend your rights." And it is usual in this country to make
as a part of each constitution several general declarations—called the
Bill of Rights. So I find that in the old constitution of New Jersey,
which was adopted in the year of grace 1776, although the people at that
time were not educated as they are now—the spirit of the Revolution at
that time not having permeated all classes of society—a declaration in
favor of religious freedom. The people were on the eve of a revolution.
This constitution was adopted on the third day of July, 1776, one day
before the immortal Declaration of Independence. Now, what do we find
in this—and we have got to go by this light, by this torch, when we
examine the statute.

I find in that constitution, in its Eighteenth Section, this: "No person
shall ever in this State be deprived of the inestimable privilege
of worshiping God, in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own
conscience; nor under any pretence whatever be compelled to attend any
place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall he
be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rates for the purpose
of building or repairing any church or churches, contrary to what he
believes to be true." That was a very great and splendid step. It was
the divorce of church and state. It no longer allowed the State to levy
taxes for the support of a particular religion, and it said to every
citizen of New Jersey: All that you give for that purpose must be
voluntarily given, and the State will not compel you to pay for the
maintenance of a church in which you do not believe. So far so good.

The next paragraph was not so good. "There shall be no establishment of
any one religious sect in this State in preference to another, and no
Protestant inhabitants of this State shall be denied the enjoyment of
any civil right merely on account of his religious principles; but all
persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who
shall demean themselves peaceably, shall be capable of being elected to
any office of profit or trust, and shall fully and freely enjoy every
privilege and immunity enjoyed by other citizens."

What became of the Catholics under that clause, I do not know—whether
they had any right to be elected to office or not under this Act. But
in 1844, the State having grown civilized in the meantime, another
constitution was adopted. The word Protestant was then left out.
There was to be no establishment of one religion over another. But
Protestantism did not render a man capable of being elected to office
any more than Catholicism, and nothing is said about any religious
belief whatever. So far, so good.

"No religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office
of public trust. No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil
right on account of his religious principles."

That is a very broad and splendid provision. "No person shall be denied
any civil right on account of his religious principles." That was
copied from the Virginia constitution, and that clause in the Virginia
constitution was written by Thomas Jefferson, and under that clause men
were entitled to give their testimony in the courts of Virginia whether
they believed in any religion or not, in any bible or not, or in any god
or not.

That same clause was afterward adopted by the State of Illinois, also by
many other States, and wherever that clause is, no citizen can be denied
any civil right on account of his religious principles. It is a broad
and generous clause. This statute, under which this indictment is drawn,
is not in accordance with the spirit of that splendid sentiment. Under
that clause, no man can be deprived of any civil right on account of his
religious principles, or on account of his belief. And yet, on account
of this miserable, this antiquated, this barbarous and savage statute,
the same man who cannot be denied any political or civil right, can be
sent to the penitentiary as a common felon for simply expressing his
honest thought. And before I get through I hope to convince you that
this statute is unconstitutional.

But we will go another step: "Every person may freely speak, write, or
publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse
of that right."

That is in the constitution of nearly every State in the Union, and the
intention of that is to cover slanderous words—to cover a case where a
man under pretence of enjoying the freedom of speech falsely assails or
accuses his neighbor. Of course he should be held responsible for that
abuse.

Then follows the great clause in the constitution of 1844—more
important than any other clause in that instrument—a clause that shines
in that constitution like a star at night.—

"No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or
of the press."

Can anything be plainer—anything be more forcibly stated?

"No law shall be passed to abridge the liberty of speech."

Now, while you are considering this statute, I want you to keep in mind
this other statement:

"No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or
of the press."

And right here there is another thing I want to call your attention to.
There is a constitution higher than any statute. There is a law higher
than any constitution. It is the law of the human conscience, and no man
who is a man will defile and pollute his conscience at the bidding of
any legislature. Above all things, one should maintain his selfrespect,
and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance
with your highest ideal.

There is a law higher than men can make. The facts as they exist in this
poor world—the absolute consequences of certain acts—they are
above all. And this higher law is the breath of progress, the very
outstretched wings of civilization, under which we enjoy the freedom
we have. Keep that in your minds. There never was a legislature great
enough—there never was a constitution sacred enough, to compel a
civilized man to stand between a black man and his liberty. There never
was a constitution great enough to make me stand between any human being
and his right to express his honest thoughts. Such a constitution is an
insult to the human soul, and I would care no more for it than I would
for the growl of a wild beast. But we are not driven to that necessity
here. This constitution is in accord with the highest and noblest
aspirations of the heart—"No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge
the liberty of speech."

Now let us come to this old law—this law that was asleep for a hundred
years before this constitution was adopted—this law coiled like a
snake beneath the foundations of the Government—this law, cowardly,
dastardly—this law passed by wretches who were afraid: to discuss—this
law passed by men who could not, and who knew they could not, defend
their creed—and so they said: "Give us the sword of the State and we
will cleave the heretic down." And this law was made to control the
minority. When the Catholics were in power they visited that law upon
their opponents. When the Episcopalians were in power, they tortured and
burned the poor Catholic who had scoffed and who had denied the truth of
their religion. Whoever was in power used that, and whoever was out of
power cursed that—and yet, the moment he got in power he used it: The
people became civilized—but that law was on the statute book. It simply
remained. There it was, sound asleep—its lips drawn over its long and
cruel teeth. Nobody savage enough to waken it. And it slept on, and New
Jersey has flourished. Men have done well. You have had average health
in this country. Nobody roused the statute until the defendant in this
case went to Boonton, and there made a speech in which he gave his
honest thought, and the people not having an argument handy, threw
stones. Thereupon Mr. Reynolds, the defendant, published a pamphlet on
Blasphemy and in it gave a photograph of the Boonton Christians. That is
his offence. Now let us read this infamous statute:

"_If any person shall willfully blaspheme the holy name of God by
denying, cursing, or contumeliously reproaching his being_"—

I want to say right here—many a man has cursed the God of another man.
The Catholics have cursed the God of the Protestant. The Presbyterians
have cursed the God of the Catholics—charged them with idolatry—cursed
their images, laughed at their ceremonies. And these compliments have
been interchanged between all the religions of the world. But I say here
to-day that no man, unless a raving maniac, ever cursed the God in whom
he believed. No man, no human being, has ever lived who cursed his own
idea of God. He always curses the idea that somebody else entertains. No
human being ever yet cursed what he believed to be infinite wisdom and
infinite goodness—and you know it. Every man on this jury knows that.
He feels that that must be an absolute certainty. Then what have they
cursed? Some God they did not believe in—that is all. And has a man
that right? I say, yes. He has a right to give his opinion of Jupiter,
and there is nobody in Morristown who will deny him that right. But
several thousands years ago it would have been very dangerous for him to
have cursed Jupiter, and yet Jupiter is just as powerful now as he was
then, but the Roman people are not powerful, and that is all there was
to Jupiter—the Roman people.

So there was a time when you could have cursed Zeus, the god of the
Greeks, and like Socrates, they would have compelled you to drink
hemlock. Yet now everybody can curse this god. Why? Is the god dead? No.
He is just as alive as he ever was. Then what has happened? The Greeks
have passed away. That is all. So in all of our churches here. Whenever
a church is in the minority it clamors for free speech. When it gets in
the majority, no. I do not believe the history of the world will show
that any orthodox church when in the majority ever had the courage to
face the free lips of the world. It sends for a constable. And is it
not wonderful that they should do this when they preach the gospel of
universal forgiveness—when they say, "if a man strike you on one cheek
turn to him the other also—but if he laughs at your religion, put him
in the penitentiary"? Is that the doctrine? Is that the law?

Now, read this law. Do you know as I read it I can almost hear John
Calvin laugh in his grave. That would have been a delight to him. It
is written exactly as he would have written it. There never was an
inquisitor who would not have read that law with a malicious smile. The
Christians who brought the fagots and ran with all their might to be at
the burning, would have enjoyed that law. You know that when they used
to burn people for having said something against religion, they used
to cut their tongues out before they burned them. Why? For fear that if
they did not, the poor, burning victims might say something that would
scandalize the Christian gentlemen who were building the fire. All these
persons would have been delighted with this law.

Let us read a little further:

"—Or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ."

Why, whoever did, since the poor man, or the poor God, was crucified?
How did they come to crucify him? Because they did not believe in free
speech in Jerusalem. How else? Because there was a law against blasphemy
in Jerusalem—a law exactly like this. Just think of it. Oh, I tell
you we have passed too many mile-stones on the shining road of human
progress to turn back and wallow in that blood, in that mire.

No: Some men have said that he was simply a man. Some believed that he
was actually a God. Others believed that he was not only a man, but that
he stood as the representative of infinite love and wisdom. No man ever
said one word against that Being for saying "Do unto others as ye would
that others should do unto you." No man ever raised his voice against
him because he said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy." And are they the "merciful" who when some man endeavors to
answer their argument, put him in the penitentiary? No. The trouble is,
the priests—the trouble is, the ministers—the trouble is, the people
whose business it was to tell the meaning of these things, quarreled'
with each other, and they put meanings upon human expressions by malice,
meanings that the words will not bear. And let me be just to them.
I believe that nearly all that has been done in this world has been
honestly done. I believe that the poor savage who kneels down and prays
to a stuffed snake—prays that his little children may recover from the
fever—is honest, and it seems to me that a good God would answer his
prayer if he could, if it was in accordance with wisdom, because the
poor savage was doing the best he could, and no one can do any better
than that.

So I believe that the Presbyterians who used to think that nearly
everybody was going to hell, said exactly what they believed. They were
honest about it, and I would not send one of them to jail—would never
think of such a thing—even if he called the unbelievers of the world
"wretches," "dogs," and "devils." What would I do? I would simply answer
him—that is all; answer him kindly. I might laugh at him a little, but
I would answer him in kindness.

So these divisions of the human mind are natural. They are a necessity.
Do you know that all the mechanics that ever lived—take the best
ones—cannot make two clocks that will run exactly alike one hour, one
minute? They cannot make two pendulums that will beat in exactly the
same time, one beat. If you cannot do that, how are you going to make
hundreds, thousands, billions of people, each with a different quality
and quantity of brain, each clad in a robe of living, quivering flesh,
and each driven by passion's storm over the wild sea of life—how are
you going to make them all think alike? This is the impossible thing
that Christian ignorance and bigotry and malice have been trying to do.
This was the object of the Inquisition and of the foolish Legislature
that passed this statute.

Let me read you another line from this ignorant statute:—

"Or the Christian religion."

Well, what is the Christian religion? "If you scoff at the Christian
religion—if you curse the Christian religion." Well what is it?
Gentlemen, you hear Presbyterians every day attack the Catholic
Church. Is that the Christian religion? The Catholic believes it is the
Christian religion, and you have to admit that it is the oldest one, and
then the Catholics turn round and scoff at the Protestants. Is that the
Christian religion? If so, every Christian religion has been cursed
by every other Christian religion. Is not that an absurd and foolish
statute?

I say that the Catholic has the right to attack the Presbyterian and
tell him, "Your doctrine is all wrong." I think he has the right to say
to him, "You are leading thousands to hell." If he believes it, he not
only has the right to say it, but it is his duty to say it; and if the
Presbyterian really believes the Catholics are all going to the devil,
it is his duty to say so. Why not? I will never have any religion that
I cannot defend—that is, that I do not believe I can defend. I may be
mistaken, because no man is absolutely certain that he knows. We all
understand that. Every one is liable to be mistaken. The horizon of each
individual is very narrow, and in his poor sky the stars are few and
very small.

"Or the Word of God—"

What is that?

"_The canonical Scriptures contained in the books of the Old and New
Testaments_."

Now, what has a man the right to say about that? Has he the right to
show that the book of Revelation got into the canon by one vote, and one
only? Has he the right to show that they passed in convention upon what
books they would put in and what they would not? Has he the right
to show that there were twenty-eight books called "The Books of the
Hebrew's"? Has he the right to show that? Has he the right to show that
Martin Luther said he did not believe there was one solitary word of
gospel in the Epistle to the Romans? Has he the right to show that some
of these books were not written till nearly two hundred years afterward?
Has he the right to say it, if he believes it? I do not say whether this
is true or not, but has a man the right to say it if he believes it?

Suppose I should read the Bible all through right here in Morristown,
and after I got through I should make up my mind that it is not a true
book—what ought I to say? Ought I to clap my hand over my mouth and
start for another State, and the minute I got over the line say, "It is
not true, It is not true"? Or, ought I to have the right and privilege
of saying right here in New Jersey, "My fellow-citizens, I have read
the book—I do not believe that it is the word of God"? Suppose I read
it and think it is true, then I am bound to say so. If I should go to
Turkey and read the Koran and make up my mind that it is false, you
would all say that I was a miserable poltroon if I did not say so.

By force you can make hypocrites—men who will agree with you from the
teeth out, and in their hearts hate you. We want no more hypocrites.
We have enough in every community. And how are you going to keep from
having more? By having the air free,—by wiping from your statute books
such miserable and infamous laws as this.

"The Holy Scriptures."

Are they holy? Must a man be honest? Has he the right to be sincere?
There are thousands of things in the Scriptures that everybody believes.
Everybody believes the Scriptures are right when they say, "Thou shalt
not steal"—everybody. And when they say "Give good measure, heaped up
and running over," everybody says, "Good!" So when they say "Love your
neighbor," everybody applauds that. Suppose a man believes that, and
practices it, does it make any difference whether he believes in the
flood or not? Is that of any importance? Whether a man built an ark or
not—does that make the slightest difference? A man might deny it and
yet be a very good man. Another might believe it and be a very mean
man. Could it now, by any possibility, make a man a good father, a good
husband, a good citizen? Does it make any difference whether you believe
it or not? Does it make any difference whether or not you believe that a
man was going through town, and his hair was a little short, like mine,
and some little children laughed at him, and thereupon two bears from
the woods came down and tore to pieces about forty of these children? Is
it necessary to believe that? Suppose a man should say, "I guess that is
a mistake; they did not copy that right; I guess the man that reported
that was a little dull of hearing and did not get the story exactly
right." Any harm in saying that? Is a man to be sent to the penitentiary
for that? Can you imagine an infinitely good God sending a man to hell
because he did not believe the bear story?

So I say if you believe the Bible, say so; if you do not believe it, say
so. And here is the vital mistake, I might almost say, in Protestantism
itself. The Protestants when they fought the Catholics said: "Read the
Bible for yourselves—stop taking it from your priests—read the sacred
volume with your own eyes; it is a revelation from God to his children,
and you are the children." And then they said: "If after you read it you
do not believe it, and you say anything against it, we will put you in
jail, and God will put you in hell." That is a fine position to get a
man in. It is like a man who invited his neighbor to come and look at
his pictures, saying: "They are the finest in the place, and I want your
candid opinion. A man who looked at them the other day said they were
daubs, and I kicked him downstairs—now I want your candid judgment." So
the Protestant Church says to a man, "This Bible is a message from your
Father,—your Father in heaven. Read it. Judge for yourself. But if
after you have read it you say it is not true, I will put you in the
penitentiary for one year."

The Catholic Church has a little more sense about that—at least more
logic. It says: "This Bible is not given to everybody. It is given to
the world, to be sure, but it must be interpreted by the church. God
would not give a Bible to the world unless he also appointed some one,
some organization, to tell the world what it means." They said: "We do
not want the world filled with interpretations, and all the interpreters
fighting each other." And the Protestant has gone to the infinite
absurdity of saying: "Judge for yourself, but if you judge wrong you
will go to the penitentiary here and to hell hereafter.".

Now, let us see further:

"Or by profane scoffing expose them to ridicule"

Think of such a law as that, passed under a constitution that says, "No
law shall abridge the liberty of speech." But you must not ridicule
the Scriptures. Did anybody ever dream of passing a law to protect
Shakespeare from being laughed at? Did anybody ever think of such a
thing? Did anybody ever want any legislative enactment to keep people
from holding Robert Burns in contempt? The songs of Burns will be sung
as long as there is love in the human heart. Do we need to protect him
from ridicule by a statute? Does he need assistance from New Jersey?
Is any statute needed to keep Euclid from being laughed at in this
neighborhood? And is it possible that a work written by an infinite
Being has to be protected by a legislature? Is it possible that a book
cannot be written by a God so that it will not excite the laughter of
the human race?

Why, gentlemen, humor is one of the most valuable things in the human
brain. It is the torch of the mind—it sheds light. Humor is the
readiest test of truth—of the natural, of the sensible—and when you
take from a man all sense of humor, there will only be enough left
to make a bigot. Teach this man who has no humor—no sense of
the absurd—the Presbyterian creed, fill his darkened brain with
superstition and his heart with hatred—then frighten him with the
threat of hell, and he will be ready to vote for that statute. Such men
made that law.

Let us read another clause:—

"_And every person so offending shall, on conviction, be fined nor
exceeding two hundred dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor not exceeding
twelve months, or both_."

I want you to remember that this statute was passed in England hundreds
of years ago—just in that language. The punishment, however, has
been somewhat changed. In the good old days when the king sat on the
throne—in the good old days when the altar was the right-bower of
the throne—then, instead of saying: "Fined two hundred dollars and
imprisoned one year," it was: "All his goods shall be confiscated; his
tongue shall be bored with a hot iron, and upon his forehead he shall
be branded with the letter B; and for the second offence he shall suffer
death by burning." Those were the good old days when people maintained
the orthodox religion in all its purity and in all its ferocity.

The first question for you, gentlemen, to decide in this case is: Is
this statute constitutional? Is this statute in harmony with, the part
of the constitution of 1844 which says: "The liberty of speech shall not
be abridged"? That is for you to say. Is this law constitutional, or
is it simply an old statute that fell asleep, that was forgotten, that
people simply failed to repeal? I believe I can convince you, if you
will think a moment, that our fathers never intended to establish a
government like that. When they fought for what they believed to be
religious liberty—when they fought for what they believed to be liberty
of speech, they believed that all such statutes would be wiped from the
statute books of all the States.

Let me tell you another reason why I believe this. We have in this
country naturalization laws. People may come here irrespective of their
religion. They must simply swear allegiance to this country—they must
forswear allegiance to every other potentate, prince and power—but they
do not have to change their religion. A Hindoo may become a citizen of
the United States, and the Constitution of the United States, like the
constitution of New Jersey, guarantees religious liberty. That Hindoo
believes in a God—in a God that no Christian does believe in.
He believes in a sacred book that every Christian looks upon as a
collection of falsehoods. He believes, too, in a Savior—in Buddha. Now,
I ask you,—when that man comes here and becomes a citizen—when the
Constitution is about him, above him—has he the right to give his ideas
about his religion? Has he the right to say in New Jersey: "There is
no God except the Supreme Brahm—there is no Savior except Buddha, the
Illuminated, Buddha the Blest"? I say that he has that right—and you
have no right, because in addition to that he says, "You are mistaken;
your God is not God; your Bible is not true, and your religion is a
mistake," to abridge his liberty of speech. He has the right to say it,
and if he has the right to say it, I insist before this Court and before
this jury, that he has the right to give his reasons for saying it; and
in giving those reasons, in maintaining his side, he has the right, not
simply to appeal to history, not simply to the masonry of logic, but
he has the right to shoot the arrows of wit, and to use the smile of
ridicule. Anything that can be laughed out of this world ought not to
stay in it.

So the Persian—the believer in Zoroaster, in the spirits of Good and
Evil, and that the spirit of Evil will finally triumph forever—if that
is his religion—has the right to state it, and the right to give his
reasons for his belief. How infinitely preposterous for you, one of the
States of this Union, to invite a Persian or a Hindoo to come to your
shores. You do not ask him to renounce his God. You ask him to renounce
the Shah. Then when he becomes a citizen, having the rights of every
other citizen, he has the right to defend his religion and to denounce
yours.

There is another thing. What was the spirit of our Government at that
time? You must look at the leading men. Who were they? What were their
opinions? Were most of them as guilty of blasphemy as is the defendant
in this case? Thomas Jefferson—and there is, in my judgment, only one
name on the page of American history greater than his—only one name
for which I have a greater and tenderer reverence—and that is Abraham
Lincoln, because of all men who ever lived and had power, he was the
most merciful. And that is the way to test a man. How does he use power?
Does he want to crush his fellow citizens? Does he like to lock somebody
up in the penitentiary because he has the power of the moment? Does he
wish to use it as a despot, or as a philanthropist—like a devil,
or like a man? Thomas Jefferson entertained about the same views
entertained by the defendant in this case, and he was made President of
the United States. He was the author of the Declaration of Independence,
founder of the University of Virginia, writer of that clause in the
constitution of that State, that made all the citizens equal before the
law. And when I come to the very sentences here charged as blasphemy, I
will show you that these were the common sentiments of thousands of very
great, of very intellectual and admirable men.

I have no time, and it may be this is not the place and the occasion,
to call your attention to the infinite harm that has been done in almost
every religious nation by statutes such as this. Where that statute is,
liberty can not be; and if this statute is enforced by this jury and
by this Court, and if it is afterwards carried out, and if it could be
carried out in the States of this Union, there would be an end of all
intellectual progress. We would go back to the Dark Ages. Every man's
mind, upon these subjects at least, would become a stagnant pool,
covered with the scum of prejudice and meanness.

And wherever such laws have been enforced, have the people been friends?
Here we are to-day in this blessed air—here amid these happy fields.
Can we imagine, with these surroundings, that a man for having been
found with a crucifix in his poor little home, had been taken from his
wife and children and burned—burned by Protestants? You cannot conceive
of such a thing now. Neither can you conceive that there was a time when
Catholics found some poor Protestant contradicting one of the dogmas of
the church, and took that poor honest wretch—while his wife wept—while
his children clung to his hands—to the public square, drove a stake in
the ground, put a chain or two about him, lighted the fagots, and let
the wife whom he loved and his little children see the flames climb
around his limbs—you cannot imagine that any such infamy was ever
practiced. And yet I tell you that the same spirit made this detestable,
infamous, devilish statute.

You can hardly imagine that there was a time when the same kind of men
that made this law said to another man: "You say this world is round?"
"Yes, sir; I think it is, because I have seen its shadow on the moon."
"You have?"—Now, can you imagine a society, outside of hyenas and
boa-constrictors, that would take that man, put him in the penitentiary,
in a dungeon, turn the key upon him, and let his name be blotted from
the book of human life? Years afterward some explorer amid ruins finds
a few bones. The same spirit that did that, made this statute—the same
spirit that did that, went before the grand jury in this case—exactly.
Give the men that had this man indicted, the power, and I would not want
to live in that particular part of the country. I would not willingly
live with such men. I would go somewhere else, where the air is free,
where I could speak my sentiments to my wife, to my children, and to my
neighbors.

Now, this persecution differs only in degree from the infamies of the
olden times. What does it mean? It means that the State of New Jersey
has all the light it wants. And what does that mean? It means that the
State of New Jersey is absolutely infallible—that it has got its growth
and does not propose to grow any more. New Jersey knows enough, and it
will send teachers to the penitentiary.

It is hardly possible that this State has accomplished all that it is
ever going to accomplish. Religions are for a day. They are the clouds.
Humanity is the eternal blue. Religions are the waves of the sea. These
waves depend upon the force and direction of the wind—that is to say,
of passion; but Humanity is the great sea. And so our religions change
from day to day, and it is a blessed thing that they do. Why? Because we
grow, and we are getting a little more civilized every day,—and any
man that is not willing to let another man express his opinion, is not a
civilized man, and you know it. Any man that does not give to everybody
else the rights he claims for himself, is not in honest man.

Here is a man who says, "I am going to join the Methodist Church." What
right has he? Just the same right to join it that I have not to join
it—no more, no less. But if you are a Methodist and I am not, it simply
proves that you do not agree with me, and that I do not agree with
you—that is all. Another man is a Catholic. He was born a Catholic, or
is convinced that Catholicism is right. That is his business, and any
man that would persecute him on that account, is a poor barbarian—a
savage; any man that would abuse him on that account, is a barbarian—a
savage.

Then I take the next step. A man does not wish to belong to any church.
How are you going to judge him? Judge him by the way he treats his wife,
his children, his neighbors. Does he pay his debts? Does he tell the
truth? Does he help the poor? Has he got a heart that melts when he
hears grief's story? That is the way to judge him. I do not care what
he thinks about the bears, or the flood, about bibles or gods. When some
poor mother is found wandering in the street with a babe at her breast,
does he quote Scripture, or hunt for his pocket-book? That is the way
to judge. And suppose he does not believe in any bible whatever? If
Christianity is true, that is his misfortune, and everybody should pity
the poor wretch that is going down the hill. Why kick him? You will get
your revenge on him through all eternity—is not that enough?

So I say, let us judge each other by our actions, not by theories, not
by what we happen to believe—because that depends very much on where we
were born.

If you had been born in Turkey, you probably would have been a
Mohammedan. If I had been born among the Hindoos, I might have been a
Buddhist—I can't tell. If I had been raised in Scotland, on oatmeal, I
might have been a Covenanter—nobody knows. If I had lived in Ireland,
and seen my poor wife and children driven into the street, I think I
might have been a Home-ruler—no doubt of it. You see it depends on
where you were born—much depends on our surroundings.

Of course, there are men born in Turkey who are not Mohammedans, and
there are men born in this country who are not Christians—Methodists,
Unitarians, or Catholics, plenty of them, who are unbelievers—plenty of
them who deny the truth of the Scriptures—plenty of them who say:

"I know not whether there be a God or not." Well, it is a thousand times
better to say that honestly than to say dishonestly that you believe in
God.

If you want to know the opinion of your neighbor, you want his honest
opinion. You do not want to be deceived. You do not want to talk with a
hypocrite. You want to get straight at his honest mind—and then you are
going to judge him, not by what he says but by what he does. It is very
easy to sail along with the majority—easy to sail the way the boats are
going—easy to float with the stream; but when you come to swim against
the tide, with the men on the shore throwing rocks at you, you will get
a good deal of exercise in this world.

And do you know that we ought to feel under the greatest obligation to
men who have fought the prevailing notions of their day? There is not a
Presbyterian in Morristown that does not hold up for admiration the
man that carried the flag of the Presbyterians when they were in the
minority—not one. There is not a Methodist in this State who does not
admire John and Charles Wesley and Whitefield, who carried the banner
of that new and despised sect when it was in the minority. They glory
in them because they braved public opinion, because they dared to oppose
idiotic, barbarous and savage statutes like this. And there is not a
Universalist that does not worship dear old Hosea Ballou—I love him
myself—because he said to the Presbyterian minister: "You are going
around trying to keep people out of hell, and I am going around trying
to keep hell out of the people." Every Universalist admires him and
loves him because when despised and railed at and spit upon, he stood
firm, a patient witness for the eternal mercy of God. And there is not a
solitary Protestant who does not honor Martin Luther—who does not honor
the Covenanters in poor Scotland, and that poor girl who was tied out
on the sand of the sea by Episcopalians, and kept there till the rising
tide drowned her, and all she had to do to save her life was to say,
"God save the king," but she would not say it without the addition of
the words, "If it be God's will." No one, who is not a miserable,
contemptible wretch, can fail to stand in admiration before such
courage, such self-denial—such heroism. No matter what the attitude of
your body may be, your soul falls on its knees before such men and such
women.

Let us take another step. Where would we have been if authority had
always triumphed? Where would we have been if such statutes had always
been carried out? We have now a science called astronomy. That science
has done more to enlarge the horizon of human thought than all things
else. We now live in an infinite universe. We know that the sun is a
million times larger than our earth, and we know that there are other
great luminaries millions of times larger than our sun. We know that
there are planets so far away that light, traveling at the rate of
one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles a second, requires fifteen
thousand years to reach this grain of sand, this tear, we call the
earth—and we now know that all the fields of space are sown thick with
constellations. If that statute had been enforced, that science would
not now be the property of the human mind. That science is contrary to
the Bible, and for asserting the truth you become a criminal. For
what sum of money, for what amount of wealth, would the world have the
science of astronomy expunged from the brain of man? We learned the
story of the stars in spite of that statute.

The first men who said the world was round were scourged for scoffing at
the Scriptures. And even Martin Luther, speaking of one of the greatest
men that ever lived, said: "Does he think with his little lever to
overturn the Universe of God?" Martin Luther insisted that such men
ought to be trampled under foot. If that statute had been carried into
effect, Galileo would have been impossible. Kepler, the discoverer of
the three laws, would have died with the great secret locked in his
brain, and mankind would have been left ignorant, superstitious, and
besotted. And what else? If that statute had been carried out, the
world would have been deprived of the philosophy of Spinoza; of the
philosophy, of the literature, of the wit and wisdom, the justice and
mercy of Voltaire, the greatest Frenchman that ever drew the breath of
life—the man who by his mighty pen abolished torture in a nation, and
helped to civilize a world.

If that statute had been enforced, nearly all the books that enrich the
libraries of the world could not have been written. If that statute had
been enforced, Humboldt could not have delivered the lectures now known
as "The Cosmos." If that statute had been enforced, Charles Darwin would
not have been allowed to give to the world his discoveries that have
been of more benefit to mankind than all the sermons ever uttered. In
England they have placed his sacred dust in the great Abbey. If he had
lived in New Jersey, and this statute could have been enforced, he would
have lived one year at least in your penitentiary. Why? That man went
so far as not simply to deny the truth of your Bible, but absolutely
to deny the existence of your God. Was he a good man? Yes, one of the
noblest and greatest of men. Humboldt, the greatest German who ever
lived, was of the same opinion.

And so I might go on with the great men of to-day. Who are the men
who are leading the race upward and shedding light in the intellectual
world? They are the men declared by that statute to be criminals. Mr.
Spencer could not publish his books in the State of New Jersey. He would
be arrested, tried, and imprisoned; and yet that man has added to the
intellectual wealth of the world.

So with Huxley, so with Tyndall, so with Helmholtz—so with the greatest
thinkers and greatest writers of modern times.

You may not agree with these men—and what does that prove? It simply
proves that they do not agree with you—that is all. Who is to blame?
I do not know. They may be wrong, and you may be right; but if they had
the power, and put you in the penitentiary simply because you differed
with them, they would be savages; and if you have the power and imprison
men because they differ from you, why then, of course, you are savages.

No; I believe in intellectual hospitality. I love men that have a little
horizon to their minds—a little sky, a little scope. I hate anything
that is narrow and pinched and withered and mean and crawling, and that
is willing to live on dust. I believe in creating such an atmosphere
that things will burst into blossom. I believe in good will, good
health, good fellowship, good feeling—and if there is any God on the
earth, or in heaven, let us hope that he will be generous and grand. Do
you not see what the effect will be? I am not cursing you because you
are a Methodist, and not damning you because you are a Catholic, or
because you are an Infidel—a good man is more than all of these. The
grandest of all things is to be in the highest and noblest sense a man.

Now let us see the frightful things that this man, the defendant in this
case, has done. Let me read the charges against him as set out in this
indictment.

I shall insist that this statute does not cover any publication—that
it covers simply speech—not in writing, not in book or pamphlet. Let us
see:

"_This Bible describes God as so loving that he drowned the whole world
in his mad fury_."

Well, the great question about that is, is it true? Does the Bible
describe God as having drowned the whole world with the exception of
eight people? Does it, or does it not? I do not know whether there is
anybody in this county who has really read the Bible, but I believe the
story of the flood is there. It does say that God destroyed all flesh,
and that he did so because he was angry. He says so, himself, if the
Bible be true.

The defendant has simply repeated what is in the Bible. The Bible says
that God is loving, and says that he drowned the world, and that he was
angry. Is it blasphemy to quote from the "Sacred Scriptures"?

"_Because it was so much worse than he, knowing all things, ever
supposed it could be._"

Well, the Bible does say that he repented having made man. Now, is
there any blasphemy in saying that the Bible is true? That is the only
question. It is a fact that God, according to the Bible, did drown
nearly everybody. If God knows all things, he must have known at the
time he made them that he was going to drown them. Is it likely that
a being of infinite wisdom would deliberately do what he knew he must
undo? Is it blasphemy to ask that question? Have you a right to think
about it at all? If you have, you have the right to tell somebody what
you think—if not, you have no right to discuss it, no right to think
about it. All you have to do is to read it and believe it—to open your
mouth like a young robin, and swallow—worms or shingle nails—no matter
which.

The defendant further blasphemed and said that:—

"_An all-wise, unchangeable God, who got out of patience with a world
which was just what his own stupid blundering had made it, knew no
better way out of the muddle than to destroy it by drowning!_"

Is that true? Was not the world exactly as God made it? Certainly. Did
he not, if the Bible is true, drown the people? He did. Did he know he
would drown them when he made them? He did. Did he know they ought to
be drowned when they were made? He did. Where then, is the blasphemy
in saying so? There is not a minister in this world who could explain
it—who would be permitted to explain it—under this statute. And yet
you would arrest this man and put him in the penitentiary. But after you
lock him in the cell, there remains the question still. Is it possible
that a good and wise God, knowing that he was going to drown them, made
millions of people? What did he make them for? I do not know. I do not
pretend to be wise enough to answer that question. Of course, you cannot
answer the question. Is there anything blasphemous in that? Would it
be blasphemy in me to say I do not believe that any God ever made men,
women and children—mothers, with babes clasped to their breasts, and
then sent a flood to fill the world with death?

A rain lasting for forty days—the water rising hour by hour, and the
poor wretched children of God climbing to the tops of their houses—then
to the tops of the hills. The water still rising—no mercy. The people
climbing higher and higher, looking to the mountains for salvation—the
merciless rain still falling, the inexorable flood still rising.
Children falling from the arms of mothers—no pity. The highest hills
covered—infancy and old age mingling in death—the cries of women, the
sobs and sighs lost in the roar of waves—the heavens still relentless.
The mountains are covered—a shoreless sea rolls round the world, and on
its billows are billions of corpses.

This is the greatest crime that man has imagined, and this crime is
called a deed of infinite mercy.

Do you believe that? I do not believe one word of it, and I have the
right to say to all the world that this is false.

If there be a good God, the story is not true. If there be a wise
God, the story is not true. Ought an honest man to be sent to the
penitentiary for simply telling the truth?

Suppose we had a statute that whoever scoffed at science—whoever
by profane language should bring the rule of three into contempt, or
whoever should attack the proposition that two parallel lines will never
include a space, should be sent to the penitentiary—what would you
think of it? It would be just as wise and just as idiotic as this.

And what else says the defendant?

"_The Bible-God says that his people made him jealous." "Provoked him to
anger._"

Is that true? It is. If it is true, is it blasphemous?

Let us read another line—

"_And now he will raise the mischief with them; that his anger bums like
hell_."

That is true. The Bible says of God—"My anger burns to the lowest
hell." And that is all that the defendant says. Every word of it is
in the Bible. He simply does not believe it—and for that reason is a
"blasphemer."

I say to you now, gentlemen,—and I shall argue to the Court,—that
there is not in what I have read a solitary blasphemous word—not a word
that has not been said in hundreds of pulpits in the Christian world.
Theodore Parker, a Unitarian, speaking of this Bible-God said: "Vishnu
with a necklace of skulls, Vishnu with bracelets of living, hissing
serpents, is a figure of Love and Mercy compared to the God of the Old
Testament." That, we might call "blasphemy," but not what I have read.

Let us read on:—

"_He would destroy them all were it not that he feared the wrath of the
enemy_."

That is in the Bible—word for word. Then the defendant in astonishment
says:

"The Almighty God afraid of his enemies!"

That is what the Bible says. What does it mean? If the Bible is true,
God was afraid.

"Can the mind conceive of more horrid blasphemy?"

Is not that true? If God be infinitely good and wise and powerful, is
it possible he is afraid of anything? If the defendant had said that God
was afraid of his enemies, that might have been blasphemy—but this man
says the Bible says that, and you are asked to say that it is blasphemy.
Now, up to this point there is no blasphemy, even if you were to enforce
this infamous statute—this savage law.

"_The Old Testament records for our instruction in morals, the most foul
and bestial instances of fornication, incest, and polygamy, perpetrated
by God's own saints, and the New Testament indorses these lecherous
wretches as examples for all good Christians to follow_.".

Now, is it not a fact that the Old Testament does uphold polygamy?
Abraham would have gotten into trouble in New Jersey—no doubt of that.
Sarah could have obtained a divorce in this State—no doubt of that.
What is the use of telling a falsehood about it? Let us tell the truth
about the patriarchs.

Everybody knows that the same is true of Moses. We have all heard of
Solomon—a gentleman with five or six hundred wives, and three or four
hundred other ladies with whom he was acquainted. This is simply what
the defendant says. Is there any blasphemy about that? It is only the
truth. If Solomon were living in the United States to-day, we would put
him in the penitentiary. You know that under the Edmunds Mormon law
he would be locked up. If you should present a petition signed by his
eleven hundred wives, you could not get him out.

So it was with David. There are some splendid things about David, of
course. I admit that, and pay my tribute of respect to his courage—but
he happened to have ten or twelve wives too many, so he shut them up,
put them in a kind of penitentiary and kept them there till they died.
That would not be considered good conduct even in Morristown. You know
that. Is it any harm to speak of it? There are plenty of ministers here
to set it right—thousands of them all over the country, every one with
his chance to talk all day Sunday and nobody to say a word back. The pew
cannot reply to the pulpit, you know; it has just to sit there and
take it. If there is any harm in this, if it is not true, they ought to
answer it. But it is here, and the only answer is an indictment.

I say that Lot was a bad man. So I say of Abraham, and of Jacob. Did you
ever know of a more despicable fraud practiced by one brother on another
than Jacob practiced on Esau? My sympathies have always been with Esau.
He seemed to be a manly man. Is it blasphemy to say that you do not like
a hypocrite, a murderer, or a thief, because his name is in the Bible?
How do you know what such men are mentioned for? May be they are
mentioned as examples, and you certainly ought not to be led away and
induced to imagine that a man with seven hundred wives is a pattern
of domestic propriety, one to be followed by yourself and your sons. I
might go on and mention the names of hundreds of others who committed
every conceivable crime, in the name of religion—who declared war, and
on the field of battle killed men, women and babes, even children yet
unborn, in the name of the most merciful God. The Bible is filled with
the names and crimes of these sacred savages, these inspired beasts. Any
man who says that a God of love commanded the commission of these crimes
is, to say the least of it, mistaken. If there be a God, then it is
blasphemous to charge him with the commission of crime.

But let us read further from this indictment:

"The aforesaid printed document contains other scandalous, infamous and
blasphemous matters and things, to the tenor and effect following, that
is to say—"

Then comes this particularly blasphemous line:

"Now, reader, take time and calmly think it over ."

Gentlemen, there are many things I have read that I should not have
expressed in exactly the same language used by the defendant, and many
things that I am going to read I might not have said at all, but the
defendant had the right to say every word with which he is charged in
this indictment. He had the right to give his honest thought, no matter
whether any human being agreed with what he said or not, and no matter
whether any other man approved of the manner in which he said these
things. I defend his right to speak, whether I believe in what he spoke
or not, or in the propriety of saying what he did. I should defend a man
just as cheerfully who had spoken against my doctrine, as one who had
spoken against the popular superstitions of my time. It would make
no difference to me how unjust the attack was upon my belief—how
maliciously ingenious; and no matter how sacred the conviction that
was attacked, I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no
attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow,
or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the
argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement
stands.

The defendant in this case has attacked certain beliefs, thought by the
Christian world to be sacred. Yet, after all, nothing is sacred but the
truth, and by truth I mean what a man sincerely and honestly believes.
The defendant says:

"_Take time to calmly think it over: Was a Jewish girl the mother of
God, the mother of your God?_"

The defendant probably asked this question, supposing that it must
be answered by all sensible people in the negative. If the Christian
religion is true, then a Jewish girl was the mother of Almighty God.
Personally, if the doctrine is true, I have no fault to find with the
statement that a Jewish maiden was the mother of God.—Millions believe,
that this is true—I do not believe,—but who knows? If a God came from
the throne of the universe, came to this world and became the child of
a pure and loving woman, it would not lessen, in my eyes, the dignity or
the greatness of that God.

There is no more perfect picture on the earth, or within the imagination
of man, than a mother holding in her thrilled and happy arms a child,
the fruit of love.

No matter how the statement is made, the fact remains the same. A Jewish
girl became the mother of God. If the Bible is true, that is true, and
to repeat it, even according to your law, is not blasphemous, and to
doubt it, or to express the doubt, or to deny it, is not contrary to
your constitution.

To this defendant it seemed improbable that God was ever born of woman,
was ever held in the lap of a mother; and because he cannot believe
this, he is charged with blasphemy. Could you pour contempt on
Shakespeare by saying that his mother was a woman,—by saying that he
was once a poor, crying, little, helpless child? Of course he was; and
he afterwards became the greatest human being that ever touched the
earth,—the only man whose intellectual wings have reached from sky to
sky; and he was once a crying babe. What of it? Does that cast any scorn
or contempt upon him? Does this take any of the music from "Midsummer
Night's Dream"?—any of the passionate wealth from "Antony and
Cleopatra," any philosophy from "Macbeth," any intellectual grandeur
from "King Lear"? On the contrary, these great productions of the brain
show the growth of the dimpled babe, give every mother a splendid
dream and hope for her child, and cover every cradle with a sublime
possibility.

The defendant is also charged with having said that: "_God cried and
screamed_."

Why not? If he was absolutely a child, he was like other children,—like
yours, like mine. I have seen the time, when absent from home, that I
would have given more to have heard my children cry, than to have heard
the finest orchestra that ever made the air burst into flower. What if
God did cry? It simply shows that his humanity was real and not assumed,
that it was a tragedy, real, and not a poor pretence. And the defendant
also says that if the orthodox religion be true, that the

"_God of the Universe kicked, and flung about his little arms, and made
aimless dashes into space with his little fists_."

Is there anything in this that is blasphemous? One of the best pictures
I ever saw of the Virgin and Child was painted by the Spaniard, Murillo.
Christ appears to be a truly natural, chubby, happy babe. Such a
picture takes nothing from the majesty, the beauty, or the glory of the
incarnation.

I think it is the best thing about the Catholic Church that it lifts
up for adoration and admiration, a mother,—that it pays what it calls
"Divine honors" to a woman. There is certainly goodness in that, and
where a church has so few practices that are good, I am willing to point
this one out. It is the one redeeming feature about Catholicism, that it
teaches the worship of a woman.

The defendant says more about the childhood of Christ. He goes so far as
to say, that:

"He was found staring foolishly at his own little toes."

And why not? The Bible says, that "he increased in wisdom and stature."
The defendant might have referred to something far more improbable. In
the same verse in which St. Luke says that Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature, will be found the assertion that he increased in favor with God
and man. The defendant might have asked how it was that the love of God
for God increased.

But the defendant has simply stated that the child Jesus grew, as other
children grow; that he acted like other children, and if he did, it is
more than probable that he did stare at his own toes. I have laughed
many a time to see little children astonished with the sight of their
feet. They seem to wonder what on earth puts the little toes in motion.
Certainly there is nothing blasphemous in supposing that the feet of
Christ amused him, precisely as the feet of other children have amused
them. There is nothing blasphemous about this; on the contrary, it is
beautiful. If I believed in the existence of God, the Creator of this
world, the Being who, with the hand of infinity, sowed the fields of
space with stars, as a farmer sows his grain, I should like to think of
him as a little, dimpled babe, overflowing with joy, sitting upon the
knees of a loving mother. The ministers themselves might take a lesson
even from the man who is charged with blasphemy, and make an effort to
bring an infinite God a little nearer to the human heart.

The defendant also says, speaking of the infant Christ, "_He was nursed
at Mary's breast._"

Yes, and if the story be true, that is the tenderest fact in it. Nursed
at the breast of woman. No painting, no statue, no words can make a
deeper and a tenderer impression upon the heart of man than this: The
infinite God, a babe, nursed at the holy breast of woman.

You see these things do not strike all people the same. To a man
that has been raised on the orthodox desert, these things are
incomprehensible. He has been robbed of his humanity. He has no humor,
nothing but the stupid and the solemn. His fancy sits with folded wings.

Imagination, like the atmosphere of spring, woos every seed of earth
to seek the blue of heaven, and whispers of bud and flower and fruit.
Imagination gathers from every field of thought and pours the wealth
of many lives into the lap of one. To the contracted, to the cast-iron
people who believe in heartless and inhuman creeds, the words of the
defendant seem blasphemous, and to them the thought that God was a
little child is monstrous.

They cannot bear to hear it said that he nursed at the breast of a
maiden, that he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, that he had the joys
and sorrows of other babes. I hope, gentlemen, that not only you,
but the attorneys for the prosecution, have read what is known as the
"Apocryphal New Testament," books that were once considered inspired,
once admitted to be genuine, and that once formed a part of our New
Testament. I hope you have read the books of Joseph and Mary, of the
Shepherd of Hermes, of the Infancy and of Mary, in which many of the
things done by the youthful Christ are described—books that were once
the delight of the Christian world; books that gave joy to children,
because in them they read that Christ made little birds of clay, that
would at his command stretch out their wings and fly with joy above his
head. If the defendant in this case had said anything like that, here
in the State of New Jersey, he would have been indicted; the orthodox
ministers would have shouted "blasphemy," and yet, these little stories
made the name of Christ dearer to children.

The church of to-day lacks sympathy; the theologians are without
affection. After all, sympathy is genius. A man who really sympathizes
with another understands him. A man who sympathizes with a religion,
instantly sees the good that is in it, and the man who sympathizes with
the right, sees the evil that a creed contains.

But the defendant, still speaking of the infant Christ, is charged with
having said:

"_God smiled when he was comfortable. He lay in a cradle and was rocked
to sleep._"

Yes, and there is no more beautiful picture than that. Let some great
religious genius paint a picture of this kind—of a babe smiling with
content, rocked in the cradle by the mother who bends tenderly and
proudly above him. There could be no more beautiful, no more touching,
picture than this. What would I not give for a picture of Shakespeare as
a babe,—a picture that was a likeness,—rocked by his mother? I would
give more for this than for any painting that now enriches the walls of
the world.

The defendant also says, that:

"God was sick when cutting his teeth."

And what of that? We are told that he was tempted in all points, as we
are. That is to say, he was afflicted, he was hungry, he was thirsty,
he suffered the pains and miseries common to man. Otherwise, he was not
flesh, he was not human.

"_He caught the measles, the mumps, the scarlet fever and the whooping
cough_."

Certainly he was liable to have these diseases, for he was, in fact,
a child. Other children have them. Other children, loved as dearly by
their mothers as Christ could have been by his, and yet they are taken
from the little family by fever; taken, it may be, and buried in the
snow, while the poor mother goes sadly home, wishing that she was lying
by its side. All that can be said of every word in this address, about
Christ and about his childhood, amounts to this; that he lived the
life of a child; that he acted like other children. I have read you
substantially what he has said, and this is considered blasphemous.

He has said, that:

"_According to the Old Testament, the God of the Christian world
commanded people to destroy each other._"

If the Bible is true, then the statement of the defendant is true. Is it
calculated to bring God into contempt to deny that he upheld polygamy,
that he ever commanded one of his generals to rip open with the sword
of war, the woman with child? Is it blasphemy to deny that a God of
infinite love gave such commandments? Is such a denial calculated to
pour contempt and scorn upon the God of the orthodox?

Is it blasphemous to deny that God commanded his children to murder each
other? Is it blasphemous to say that he was benevolent, merciful and
just?

It is impossible to say that the Bible is true and that God is good.
I do not believe that a God made this world, filled it with people and
then drowned them. I do not believe that infinite wisdom ever made a
mistake. If there be any God he was too good to commit such an infinite
crime, too wise, to make such a mistake. Is this blasphemy? Is it
blasphemy to say that Solomon was not a virtuous man, or that David was
an adulterer?

Must we say when this ancient King had one of his best generals placed
in the front of the battle—deserted him and had him murdered for the
purpose of stealing his wife, that he was "a man after God's own heart"?
Suppose the defendant in this case were guilty of something like that?
Uriah was fighting for his country, fighting the battles of David, the
King. David wanted to take from him his wife. He sent for Joab, his
commander-in-chief, and said to him:

"Make a feint to attack a town. Put Uriah at the front of the attacking
force, and when the people sally forth from the town to defend its gate,
fall back so that this gallant, noble, patriotic man may be slain."

This was done and the widow was stolen by the King. Is it blasphemy to
tell the truth and to say exactly what David was? Let us be honest with
each other; let us be honest with this defendant.

For thousands of years men have taught that the ancient patriarchs were
sacred, that they were far better than the men of modern times, that
what was in them a virtue, is in us a crime. Children are taught in
Sunday schools to admire and respect these criminals of the ancient
days. The time has come to tell the truth about these men, to call
things by their proper names, and above all, to stand by the right, by
the truth, by mercy and by justice. If what the defendant has said is
blasphemy under this statute then the question arises, is the statute in
accordance with the constitution? If this statute is constitutional, why
has it been allowed to sleep for all these years? I take this position:
Any law made for the preservation of a human right, made to guard a
human being, cannot sleep long enough to die; but any law that deprives
a human being of a natural right—if that law goes to sleep, it never
wakes, it sleeps the sleep of death.

I call the attention of the Court to that remarkable case in England
where, only a few years ago, a man appealed to trial by battle. The law
allowing trial by battle had been asleep in the statute book of England
for more than two hundred years, and yet the court held that, in spite
of the fact that the law had been asleep—it being a law in favor of a
defendant—he was entitled to trial by battle. And why? Because it was
a statute at the time made in defence of a human right, and that statute
could not sleep long enough or soundly enough to die. In consequence
of this decision, the Parliament of England passed a special act, doing
away forever with the trial by battle.

When a statute attacks an individual right, the State must never let it
sleep. When it attacks the right of the public at large and is allowed
to pass into a state of slumber, it cannot be raised for the purpose of
punishing an individual.

Now, gentlemen, a few words more. I take an almost infinite interest
in this trial, and before you decide, I am exceedingly anxious that you
should understand with clearness the thoughts I have expressed upon this
subject I want you to know how the civilized feel, and the position now
taken by the leaders of the world.

A few years ago almost everything spoken against the grossest possible
superstition was considered blasphemous. The altar hedged itself about
with the sword; the Priest went in partnership with the King. In those
days statutes were leveled against all human speech. Men were convicted
of blasphemy because they believed in an actual personal God; because
they insisted that God had body and parts. Men were convicted of
blasphemy because they denied that God had form. They have been
imprisoned for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and they
have been torn in pieces for defending that doctrine. There are but few
dogmas now believed by any Christian church that have not at some time
been denounced as blasphemous.

When Henry VIII. put himself at the head of the Episcopal Church a
creed was made, and in that creed there were five dogmas that must,
of necessity, be believed. Anybody who denied any one, was to be
punished—for the first offence, with fine, with imprisonment, or
branding, and for the second offence, with death. Not one of these five
dogmas is now a part of the creed of the Church of England.

So I could go on for days and weeks and months, showing that hundreds
and hundreds of religious dogmas, to deny which was death, have been
either changed or abandoned for others nearly as absurd as the old ones
were. It may be, however, sufficient to say, that wherever the church
has had power it has been a crime for any man to speak his honest
thought. No church has ever been willing that any opponent should give
a transcript of his mind. Every church in power has appealed to brute
force, to the sword, for the purpose of sustaining its creed. Not one
has had the courage to occupy the open field. The church has not been
satisfied with calling Infidels and unbelievers blasphemers. Each church
has accused nearly every other church of being a blasphemer. Every
pioneer has been branded as a criminal. The Catholics called Martin
Luther a blasphemer, and Martin Luther called Copernicus a blasphemer.
Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. Some
of the greatest men of the world, some of the best, have been put to
death for the crime of blasphemy, that is to say, for the crime of
endeavoring to benefit their fellow-men.

As long as the church has the power to close the lips of men, so long
and no longer will superstition rule this world.

"Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ear of the
few."

After every argument of the church has been answered, has been refuted,
then the church cries, "blasphemy!"

Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.

Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.

Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice.

Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless.

And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this
statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit
blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or
a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.

In the olden time, in the days of savagery and superstition, when some
poor man was struck by lightning, or when a blackened mark was left on
the breast of a wife and mother, the poor savage supposed that some god,
angered by something he had done, had taken his revenge. What else did
the savage suppose? He believed that this god had the same feelings,
with regard to the loyalty of his subjects, that an earthly chief had,
or an earthly king had, with regard to the loyalty or treachery of
members of his tribe, or citizens of his kingdom. So the savage said,
when his country was visited by a calamity, when the flood swept the
people away, or the storm scattered their poor houses in fragments:
"We have allowed some Freethinker to live; some one is in our town or
village who has not brought his gift to the priest, his incense to the
altar; some man of our tribe or of our country does not respect our
god." Then, for the purpose of appeasing the supposed god, for the
purpose of again winning a smile from heaven, for the purpose of
securing a little sunlight for their fields and homes, they drag the
accused man from his home, from his wife and children, and with all
the ceremonies of pious brutality, shed his blood. They did it in
self-defence; they believed that they were saving their own lives and
the lives of their children; they did it to appease their god. Most
people are now beyond that point. Now when disease visits a community,
the intelligent do not say the disease came because the people were
wicked; when the cholera comes, it is not because of the Methodists, of
the Catholics, of the Presbyterians, or of the Infidels. When the wind
destroys a town in the far West, it is not because somebody there had
spoken his honest thoughts. We are beginning to see that the wind
blows and destroys without the slightest reference to man, without the
slightest care whether it destroys the good or the bad, the irreligious
or the religious. When the lightning leaps from the clouds it is just as
likely to strike a good man as a bad man, and when the great serpents of
flame climb around the houses of men, they burn just as gladly and just
as joyously, the home of virtue, as they do the den and lair of vice.

Then the reason for all these laws has failed. The laws were made on
account of a superstition. That superstition has faded from the minds
of intelligent men, and, as a consequence, the laws based on the
superstition ought to fail.

There is one splendid thing in nature, and that is that men and nations
must reap the consequences of their acts—reap them in this world, if
they live, and in another if there be one. The man who leaves this
world a bad man, a malicious man, will probably be the same man when
he reaches another realm, and the man who leaves this shore good,
charitable and honest, will be good, charitable and honest, no matter
on what star he lives again. The world is growing sensible upon these
subjects, and as we grow sensible, we grow charitable.

Another reason has been given for these laws against blasphemy, the most
absurd reason that can by any possibility be given. It is this: There
should be laws against blasphemy, because the man who utters blasphemy
endangers the public peace.

Is it possible that Christians will break the peace? Is it possible
that they will violate the law? Is it probable that Christians will
congregate together and make a mob, simply because a man has given an
opinion against their religion? What is their religion? They say, "If
a man smites you on one cheek, turn the other also." They say, "We must
love our neighbors as we love ourselves." Is it possible then, that you
can make a mob out of Christians,—that these men, who love even their
enemies, will attack others, and will destroy life, in the name of
universal love? And yet, Christians themselves say that there ought to
be laws against blasphemy, for fear that Christians, who are controlled
by universal love, will become so outraged, when they hear an honest man
express an honest thought, that they will leap upon him and tear him in
pieces.

What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my
thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy?

To live on the unpaid labor of other men—that is blasphemy.

To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body—that is
blasphemy.

To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks
upon the lips—that is blasphemy.

To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you
believe to be a lie—that is blasphemy.

To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the
applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob—that is blasphemy.

To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant
many—that is blasphemy.

To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men—that is
blasphemy.

To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain—that is
blasphemy.

To violate your conscience—that is blasphemy.

The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an
unjust sentence, are blasphemers.

The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and
against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer.

Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have
the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all
the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?

I have been giving you my real ideas. I have spoken freely, and yet
the sun rose this morning, just the same as it always has. There is no
particular change visible in the world, and I do not see but that we are
all as happy to-day as though we had spent yesterday in making somebody
else miserable. I denounced on yesterday the superstitions of the
Christian world, and yet, last night I slept the sleep of peace. You
will pardon me for saying again that I feel the greatest possible
interest in the result of this trial, in the principle at stake. This is
my only apology, my only excuse, for taking your time. For years I
have felt that the great battle for human liberty, the battle that has
covered thousands of fields with heroic dead, had finally been won. When
I read the history of this world, of what has been endured, of what has
been suffered, of the heroism and infinite courage of the intellectual
and honest few, battling with the countless serfs and slaves of kings
and priests, of tyranny, of hypocrisy, of ignorance and prejudice, of
faith and fear, there was in my heart the hope that the great battle had
been fought, and that the human race, in its march towards the dawn, had
passed midnight, and that the "great balance weighed up morning." This
hope, this feeling, gave me the greatest possible joy. When I thought
of the many who had been burnt, of how often the sons of liberty had
perished in ashes, of how many o! the noblest and greatest had stood
upon scaffolds, and of the countless hearts, the grandest that ever
throbbed in human breasts, that had been broken by the tyranny of church
and state, of how many of the noble and loving had sighed themselves
away in dungeons, the only consolation was that the last bastile had
fallen, that the dungeons of the Inquisition had been torn down and that
the scaffolds of the world could no longer be wet with heroic blood.

You know that sometimes, after a great battle has been fought, and one
of the armies has been broken, and its fortifications carried, there
are occasional stragglers beyond the great field, stragglers who know
nothing of the fate of their army, know nothing of the victory, and for
that reason, fight on. There are a few such stragglers in the State of
New Jersey. They have never heard of the great victory. They do not know
that in all civilized countries the hosts of superstition have been put
to flight. They do not know that Freethinkers, Infidels, are to-day the
leaders of the intellectual armies of the world.

One of the last trials of this character, tried in Great Britain,—and
that is the country that our ancestors fought in the sacred name of
liberty,—one of the last trials in that country, a country ruled by a
state church, ruled by a woman who was born a queen, ruled by dukes and
nobles and lords, children of ancient robbers—was in the year 1843.
George Jacob Holyoake, one of the best of the human race, was imprisoned
on a charge of Atheism, charged with having written a pamphlet and
having made a speech in which he had denied the existence of the British
God. The judge who tried him, who passed sentence upon him, went down
to his grave with a stain upon his intellect and upon his honor. All the
real intelligence of Great Britain rebelled against the outrage. There
was a trial after that to which I will call your attention. Judge
Coleridge, father of the present Chief Justice of England, presided at
this trial. A poor man by the name of Thomas Pooley, a man who dug wells
for a living, wrote on the gate of a priest, that, if people would burn
their Bibles and scatter the ashes on the lands, the crops would be
better, and that they would also save a good deal of money in tithes. He
wrote several sentences of a kindred character. He was a curious man. He
had an idea that the world was a living, breathing animal. He would not
dig a well beyond a certain depth for fear he might inflict pain upon
this animal, the earth. He was tried before Judge Coleridge, on that
charge. An infinite God was about to be dethroned, because an honest
well-digger had written his sentiments on the fence of a parson. He
was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Afterward, many
intelligent people asked for his pardon, on the ground that he was in
danger of becoming insane. The judge refused to sign the petition. The
pardon was refused. Long before his sentence expired, he became a raving
maniac. He was removed to an asylum and there died. Some of the greatest
men in England attacked that judge, among these, Mr. Buckle, author of
"The History of Civilization in England," one of the greatest books in
this world. Mr. Buckle denounced Judge Coleridge. He brought him before
the bar of English opinion, and there was not a man in England, whose
opinion was worth anything, who did not agree with Mr. Buckle, and did
not with him, declare the conviction of Thomas Pooley to be an infamous
outrage. What were the reasons given? This, among others: The law was
dead; it had been asleep for many years; it was a law passed during the
ignorance of the Middle Ages, and a law that came out of the dungeon
of religious persecution; a law that was appealed to by bigots and by
hypocrites, to punish, to imprison an honest man.

In many parts of this country, people have entertained the idea that New
England was still filled with the spirit of Puritanism, filled with
the descendants of those who killed Quakers in the name of universal
benevolence, and traded Quaker children in the Barbadoes for rum, for
the purpose of establishing the fact that God is an infinite father.

Yet, the last trial in Massachusetts on a charge like this, was when
Abner Kneeland was indicted on a charge of Atheism. He was tried for
having written this sentence: "The Universalists believe in a God which
I do not." He was convicted and imprisoned. Chief Justice Shaw upheld
the decision, and upheld it because he was afraid of public opinion;
upheld it, although he must have known that the statute under which
Kneeland was indicted was clearly and plainly in violation of the
Constitution. No man can read the decision of Justice Shaw without
being convinced that he was absolutely dominated, either by bigotry,
or hypocrisy. One of the judges of that court, a noble man, wrote a
dissenting opinion, and in that dissenting opinion is the argument of
a civilized, of an enlightened jurist. No man can answer the dissenting
opinion of Justice Morton. The case against Kneeland was tried more
than fifty years ago, and there has been none since in the New England
States; and this case, that we are now trying, is the first ever
tried in New Jersey. The fact that it is the first, certifies to my
interpretation of this statute, and it also certifies to the toleration
and to the civilization of the people of this State. The statute is
upon your books. You inherited it from your ignorant ancestors, and they
inherited it from their savage ancestors. The people of New Jersey were
heirs of the mistakes and of the atrocities of ancient England.

It is too late to enforce a law like this. Why has it been allowed to
slumber? Who obtained this indictment? Were they actuated by good and
noble motives? Had they the public weal at heart, or were they simply
endeavoring to be revenged upon this defendant? Were they willing to
disgrace the State, in order that they might punish him?

I have given you my definition of blasphemy, and now the question
arises, what is worship? Who is a worshiper? What is prayer? What is
real religion? Let me answer these questions.

Good, honest, faithful work, is worship. The man who ploughs the fields
and fells the forests; the man who works in mines, the man who battles
with the winds and waves out on the wide sea, controlling the commerce
of the world; these men are worshipers. The man who goes into the
forest, leading his wife by the hand, who builds him a cabin, who makes
a home in the wilderness, who helps to people and civilize and cultivate
a continent, is a worshiper.

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers; it is the only prayer that
deserves an answer,—good, honest, noble work.

A woman whose husband has gone down to the gutter, gone down to
degradation and filth; the woman who follows him and lifts him out of
the mire and presses him to her noble heart, until he becomes a man once
more, this woman is a worshiper. Her act is worship.

The poor man and the poor woman who work night and day, in order that
they may give education to their children, so that they may have a
better life than their father and mother had; the parents who deny
themselves the comforts of life, that they may lay up something to help
their children to a higher place—they are worshipers; and the children
who, after they reap the benefit of this worship, become ashamed of
their parents, are blasphemers.

The man who sits by the bed of his invalid wife,—a wife prematurely old
and gray,—the husband who sits by her bed and holds, her thin, wan hand
in his as lovingly, and kisses it as rapturously, as passionately, as
when it was dimpled,—that is worship; that man is a worshiper; that is
real religion.

Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to
the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.

Gentlemen, you can never make me believe—no statute can ever convince
me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an
honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or
can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to
express his thought. Neither can the whole world convince me that any
man should be punished, either in this world or in the next, for being
candid with his fellow-men. If you send men to the penitentiary for
speaking their thoughts, for endeavoring to enlighten their fellows,
then the penitentiary will become a place of honor, and the victim will
step from it—not stained, not disgraced, but clad in robes of glory.

Let us take one more step.

What is holy, what is sacred? I reply that human happiness is holy,
human rights are holy. The body and soul of man—these are sacred. The
liberty of man is of far more importance than any book; the rights of
man more sacred than any religion—than any Scriptures, whether inspired
or not.

What we want is the truth, and does any one suppose that all of the
truth is confined in one book—that the mysteries of the whole world are
explained by one volume?

All that is—all that conveys information to man—all that has been
produced by the past—all that now exists—should be considered by an
intelligent man. All the known truths of this world—all the philosophy,
all the poems, all the pictures, all the statues, all the entrancing
music—the prattle of babes, the lullaby of mothers, the words of honest
men, the trumpet calls to duty—all these make up the bible of the
world—everything that is noble and true and free, you will find in this
great book.

If we wish to be true to ourselves,—if we wish to benefit our
fellow-men—if we wish to live honorable lives—we will give to every
other human being every right that we claim for ourselves.

There is another thing that should be remembered by you. You are the
judges of the law, as well as the judges of the facts. In a case like
this, you are the final judges as to what the law is; and if you acquit,
no court can reverse your verdict. To prevent the least misconception,
let me state to you again what I claim:

First. I claim that the constitution of New Jersey declares that:

"The liberty of speech shall not be abridged." Second. That this
statute, under which this indictment is found, is unconstitutional,
because it does abridge the liberty of speech; it does exactly that
which the constitution emphatically says shall not be done.

Third. I claim, also, that under this law—even if it be
constitutional—the words charged in this indictment do not amount to
blasphemy, read even in the light, or rather in the darkness, of this
statute.

Do not, I pray you, forget this point. Do not forget, that, no matter
what the Court may tell you about the law—how good it is, or how bad
it is—no matter what the Court may instruct you on that subject—do not
forget one thing, and that is: That the words charged in the indictment
are the only words that you can take into consideration in this case.
Remember that no matter what else may be in the pamphlet—no matter what
pictures or cartoons there may be of the gentlemen in Boonton who mobbed
this man in the name of universal liberty and love—do not forget that
you have no right to take one word into account except the exact words
set out in this indictment—that is to say, the words that I have
read to you. Upon this point the Court will instruct you that you have
nothing to do with any other line in that pamphlet; and I now claim,
that should the Court instruct you that the statute is constitutional,
still I insist that the words set out in this indictment do not amount
to blasphemy.

There is still another point. This statute says: "Whoever shall
willfully speak against." Now, in this case, you must find that the
defendant "willfully" did so and so—that is to say, that he made the
statements attributed to him knowing that they were not true. If you
believe that he was honest in what he said, then this statute does not
touch him. Even under this statute, a man may give his honest opinion.
Certainly, there is no law that charges a man with "willfully" being
honest—"willfully" telling his real opinion—"willfully" giving to his
fellow-men his thought.

Where a man is charged with larceny, the indictment must set out that
he took the goods or the property with the intention to steal—with
what the law calls the animus furandi. If he took the goods with
the intention to steal, then he is a thief; but if he took the goods
believing them to be his own, then he is guilty of no offence. So in
this case, whatever was said by the defendant must have been "willfully"
said. And I claim that if you believe that what the man said was
honestly said, you cannot find him guilty under this statute.

One more point: This statute has been allowed to slumber so long, that
no man had the right to awaken it. For more than one hundred years it
has slept; and so far as New Jersey is concerned, it has been sound
asleep since 1664. For the first time it is dug out of its grave. The
breath of life is sought to be breathed into it, to the end that some
people may wreak their vengeance on an honest man.

Is there any evidence—has there been any—to show that the defendant
was not absolutely candid in the expression of his opinions? Is there
one particle of evidence tending, to show that he is not a perfectly
honest and sincere man? Did the prosecution have the courage to
attack his reputation? No. The State has simply proved to you that he
circulated that pamphlet—that is all.

It was claimed, among other things, that the defendant circulated this
pamphlet among children. There was no such evidence—not the slightest.
The only evidence about schools, or school-children was, that when the
defendant talked with the bill-poster,—whose business the defendant was
interfering with,—he asked him something about the population of the
town, and about the schools. But according to the evidence, and as a
matter of fact, not a solitary pamphlet was ever given to any child, or
to any youth. According to the testimony, the defendant went into two or
three stores,—laid the pamphlets on a show case, or threw them upon a
desk—put them upon a stand where papers were sold, and in one instance
handed a pamphlet to a man. That is all.

In my judgment, however, there would have been no harm in giving this
pamphlet to every citizen of your place.

Again I say, that a law that has been allowed to sleep for all these
years—allowed to sleep by reason of the good sense and by reason of
the tolerant spirit of the State of New Jersey, should not be allowed
to leap into life because a few are intolerant, or because a few lacked
good sense and judgment. This snake should not be warmed into vicious
life by the blood of anger.

Probably not a man on this jury agrees with me about the subject of
religion. Probably not a member of this jury thinks that I am right in
the opinions that I have entertained and have so often expressed. Most
of you belong to some church, and I presume that those who do, have the
good of what they call Christianity at heart. There maybe among you some
Methodists. If so, they have read the history of their church, and they
know that when it was in the minority, it was persecuted, and they know
that they can not read the history of that persecution without becoming
indignant. They know that the early Methodists were denounced as
heretics, as ranters, as ignorant pretenders.

There are also on this jury, Catholics, and they know that there is a
tendency in many parts of this country to persecute a man now because he
is a Catholic. They also know that their church has persecuted in
times past, whenever and wherever it had the power; and they know that
Protestants, when in power, have always persecuted Catholics; and they
know, in their hearts, that all persecution, whether in the name of law,
or religion, is monstrous, savage, and fiendish.

I presume that each one of you has the good of what you call
Christianity at heart. If you have, I beg of you to acquit this man. If
you believe Christianity to be a good, it never can do any church any
good to put a man in jail for the expression of opinion. Any church that
imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will
simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.

Christianity will never reap any honor, will never reap any profit,
from persecution. It is a poor, cowardly, dastardly way of answering
arguments. No gentleman will do it—no civilized man ever did do it—no
decent human being ever did, or ever will.

I take it for granted that you have a certain regard, a certain
affection, for the State in which you live—that you take a pride in the
Commonwealth of New Jersey. If you do, I beg of you to keep the record
of your State clean. Allow no verdict to be recorded against the freedom
of speech. At present there is not to be found on the records of any
inferior court, or on those of the Supreme tribunal—any case in which a
man has been punished for speaking his sentiments. The records have not
been stained—have not been polluted—with such a verdict.

Keep such a verdict from the Reports of your State—from the Records of
your courts. No jury has yet, in the State of New Jersey, decided that
the lips of honest men are not free—that there is a manacle upon the
brain.

For the sake of your State—for the sake of her reputation throughout
the world—for your own sakes—and those of your children, and their
children yet to be—say to the world that New Jersey shares in the
spirit of this age,—that New Jersey is not a survival of the Dark
Ages,—that New Jersey does not still regard the thumbscrew as an
instrument of progress,—that New Jersey needs no dungeon to answer the
arguments of a free man, and does not send to the penitentiary, men who
think, and men who speak. Say to the world, that where arguments are
without foundation, New Jersey has confidence enough in the brains of
her people to feel that such arguments can be refuted by reason.

For the sake of your State, acquit this man. For the sake of something
of far more value to this world than New Jersey—for the sake of
something of more importance to mankind than this continent—for the
sake of Human Liberty, for the sake of Free Speech, acquit this man.

What light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the
soul of man. Without it, there come suffocation, degradation and death.

In the name of Liberty, I implore—and not only so, but I insist—that
you shall find a verdict in favor of this defendant. Do not do the
slightest thing to stay the march of human progress. Do not carry us
back, even for a moment, to the darkness of that cruel night that good
men hoped had passed away forever.

Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains
only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.

If another man has not the right to think, you have not even the right
to think that he thinks wrong. If every man has not the right to think,
the people of New Jersey had no right to make a statute, or to adopt a
constitution—no jury has the right to render a verdict, and no court to
pass its sentence.

In other words, without liberty of thought, no human being has the right
to form a judgment. It is impossible that there should be such a thing
as real religion without liberty. Without liberty there can be no such
thing as conscience, no such word as justice. All human actions—all
good, all bad—have for a foundation the idea of human liberty, and
without Liberty there can be no vice, and there can be no virtue.

Without Liberty there can be no worship, no blasphemy—no love, no
hatred, no justice, no progress.

Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become
poor, withered, meaningless sounds—but with that word realized—with
that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.

Understand me. I am not blaming the people. I am not blaming the
prosecution, or the prosecuting attorney. The officers of the court
are simply doing what they feel to be their duty. They did not find the
indictment. That was found by the grand jury. The grand jury did not
find the indictment of its own motion. Certain people came before the
grand jury and made their complaint—gave their testimony, and upon that
testimony, under this statute, the indictment was found.

While I do not blame these people—they not being on trial—I do ask you
to stand on the side of right.

I cannot conceive of much greater happiness than to discharge a public
duty, than to be absolutely true to conscience, true to judgment, no
matter what authority may say, no matter what public opinion may demand.
A man who stands by the right, against the world, cannot help applauding
himself, and saying: "I am an honest man."

I want your verdict—a verdict born of manhood, of courage; and I want
to send a dispatch to-day to a woman who is lying sick. I wish you to
furnish the words of this dispatch—only two words—and these two words
will fill an anxious heart with joy. They will fill a soul with light.
It is a very short message—only two words—and I ask you to furnish
them: "Not guilty."

You are expected to do this, because I believe you will be true to your
consciences, true to your best judgment, true to the best interests of
the people of New Jersey, true to the great cause of Liberty.

I sincerely hope that it will never be necessary again, under the flag
of the United States—that flag for which has been shed the bravest and
best blood of the world—under that flag maintained by Washington, by
Jefferson, by Franklin and by Lincoln—under that flag in defence of
which New Jersey poured out her best and bravest blood—I hope it will
never be necessary again for a man to stand before a jury and plead for
the Liberty of Speech.
    Note: The jury in this case brought in a verdict of guilty.
    The Judge imposed a fine of twenty-five dollars and costs
    amounting in all to seventy-five dollars, which Colonel
    Ingersoll paid, giving his services free.—C. P. Farrell.
