The Divided Household of Faith
Essay.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1888)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/the-divided-household-of-faith/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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"Let determined things to destiny hold unbewailed their way." THERE is
a continual effort in the mind of man to find the harmony that he knows
must exist between all known facts. It is hard for the scientist to
implicitly believe anything that he suspects to be inconsistent with a
known fact. He feels that every fact is a key to many mysteries—that
every fact is a detective, not only, but a perpetual witness. He knows
that a fact has a countless number of sides, and that all these sides
will match all other facts, and he also suspects that to understand one
fact perfectly—like the fact of the attraction of gravitation—would
involve a knowledge of the universe.

It requires not only candor, but courage, to accept a fact. When a new
fact is found it is generally denied, resisted, and calumniated by the
conservatives until denial becomes absurd, and then they accept it with
the statement that they always supposed it was true.

The old is the ignorant enemy of the new. The old has pedigree and
respectability; it is filled with the spirit of caste; it is associated
with great events, and with great names; it is intrenched; it has an
income—it represents property. Besides, it has parasites, and the
parasites always defend themselves.

Long ago frightened wretches who had by tyranny or piracy amassed great
fortunes, were induced in the moment of death to compromise with God
and to let their money fall from their stiffening hands into the greedy
palms of priests. In this way many theological seminaries were endowed,
and in this way prejudices, mistakes, absurdities, known as religious
truths, have been perpetuated. In this way the dead hypocrites have
propagated and supported their kind.

Most religions—no matter how honestly they originated—have been
established by brute force. Kings and nobles have used them as a
means to enslave, to degrade and rob. The priest, consciously and
unconsciously, has been the betrayer of his followers.

Near Chicago there is an ox that betrays his fellows. Cattle—twenty or
thirty at a time—are driven to the place of slaughter. This ox leads
the way—the others follow. When the place is reached, this Bishop
Dupanloup turns and goes back for other victims.

This is the worst side: There is a better.

Honest men, believing that they have found the whole truth—the real
and only faith—filled with enthusiasm, give all for the purpose of
propagating the "divine creed." They found colleges and universities,
and in perfect, pious, ignorant sincerity, provide that the creed, and
nothing but the creed, must be taught, and that if any professor teaches
anything contrary to that, he must be instantly dismissed—that is to
say, the children must be beaten with the bones of the dead.

These good religious souls erect guide-boards with a provision to the
effect that the guide-boards must remain, whether the roads are changed
or not, and with the further provision that the professors who keep and
repair the guide-boards must always insist that the roads have not been
changed.

There is still another side.

Professors do not wish to lose their salaries. They love their families
and have some regard for themselves. There is a compromise between their
bread and their brain. On pay-day they believe—at other times they have
their doubts. They settle with their own consciences by giving old words
new meanings. They take refuge in allegory, hide behind parables,
and barricade themselves with oriental imagery. They give to the most
frightful passages a spiritual meaning—and while they teach the old
creed to their followers, they speak a new philosophy to their equals.

There is still another side.

A vast number of clergymen and laymen are perfectly satisfied. They have
no doubts. They believe as their fathers and mothers did. The "scheme of
salvation" suits them because they are satisfied that they are embraced
within its terms. They give themselves no trouble. They believe because
they do not understand. They have no doubts because they do not think.
They regard doubt as a thorn in the pillow of orthodox slumber. Their
souls are asleep, and they hate only those who disturb their dreams.
These people keep their creeds for future use. They intend to have them
ready at the moment of dissolution. They sustain about the same relation
to daily life that the small-boats carried by steamers do to ordinary
navigation—they are for the moment of shipwreck. Creeds, like
life-preservers, are to be used in disaster.

We must also remember that everything in nature—bad as well as
good—has the instinct of self-preservation. All lies go armed, and
all mistakes carry concealed weapons. Driven to the last corner, even
non-resistance appeals to the dagger.

Vast interests—political, social, artistic, and individual—are
interwoven with all creeds. Thousands of millions of dollars have been
invested; many millions of people obtain their bread by the propagation
and support of certain religious doctrines, and many millions have been
educated for that purpose and for that alone. Nothing is more natural
than that they should defend themselves—that they should cling to a
creed that gives them roof and raiment.

Only a few years ago Christianity was a complete system. It included
and accounted for all phenomena; it was a philosophy satisfactory to the
ignorant world; it had an astronomy and geology of its own; it answered
all questions with the same readiness and the same inaccuracy; it had
within its sacred volumes the history of the past, and the prophecies of
all the future; it pretended to know all that was, is, or ever will be
necessary for the well-being of the human race, here and hereafter.

When a religion has been founded, the founder admitted the truth of
everything that was generally believed that did not interfere with his
system. Imposture always has a definite end in view, and for the sake of
the accomplishment of that end, it will admit the truth of anything and
everything that does not endanger its success.

The writers of all sacred books—the inspired prophets—had no reason
for disagreeing with the common people about the origin of things, the
creation of the world, the rising and setting of the sun, and the
uses of the stars, and consequently the sacred books of all ages have
indorsed the belief general at the time. You will find in our sacred
books the astronomy, the geology, the philosophy and the morality of
the ancient barbarians. The religionist takes these general ideas as his
foundation, and upon them builds the supernatural structure. For many
centuries the astronomy, geology, philosophy and morality of our Bible
were accepted. They were not questioned, for the reason that the world
was too ignorant to question.

A few centuries ago the art of printing was invented. A new world was
discovered. There was a complete revolution in commerce. The arts
were born again. The world was filled with adventure; millions became
self-reliant; old ideas were abandoned—old theories were put aside—and
suddenly, the old leaders of thought were found to be ignorant, shallow
and dishonest. The literature of the classic world was discovered
and translated into modern languages. The world was circumnavigated;
Copernicus discovered the true relation sustained by our earth to the
solar system, and about the beginning of the seventeenth century many
other wonderful discoveries were made. In 1609, a Hollander found that
two lenses placed in a certain relation to each other magnified objects
seen through them. This discovery was the foundation of astronomy. In
a little while it came to the knowledge of Galileo; the result was a
telescope, with which man has read the volume of the skies.

On the 8th day of May, 1618, Kepler discovered the greatest of his three
laws. These were the first great blows struck for the enfranchisement of
the human mind. A few began to suspect that the ancient Hebrews were not
astronomers. From that moment the church became the enemy of science.
In every possible way the inspired ignorance was defended—the lash, the
sword, the chain, the fagot and the dungeon were the arguments used by
the infuriated church.

To such an extent was the church prejudiced against the new philosophy,
against the new facts, that priests refused to look through the
telescope of Galileo.

At last it became evident to the intelligent world that the inspired
writings, literally translated, did not contain the truth—the Bible was
in danger of being driven from the heavens.

The church also had its geology. The time when the earth was created had
been definitely fixed and was certainly known. This fact had not only
been stated by inspired writers, but their statement had been indorsed
by priests, by bishops, cardinals, popes and ecumenical councils; that
was settled.

But a few men had learned the art of seeing. There were some eyes not
always closed in prayer. They looked at the things about them; they
observed channels that had been worn in solid rock by streams; they saw
the vast territories that had been deposited by rivers; their attention
was called to the slow inroads upon continents by seas—to the deposits
by volcanoes—to the sedimentary rocks—to the vast reefs that had been
built by the coral, and to the countless evidences of age, of the
lapse of time—and finally it was demonstrated that this earth had been
pursuing its course about the sun for millions and millions of ages.

The church disputed every step, denied every fact, resorted to every
device that cunning could suggest or ingenuity execute, but the conflict
could not be maintained. The Bible, so far as geology was concerned, was
in danger of being driven from the earth.

Beaten in the open field, the church began to equivocate, to evade, and
to give new meanings to inspired words. Finally, falsehood having failed
to harmonize the guesses of barbarians with the discoveries of genius,
the leading churchmen suggested that the Bible was not written to teach
astronomy, was not written to teach geology, and that it was not a
scientific book, but that it was written in the language of the people,
and that as to unimportant things it contained the general beliefs of
its time.

The ground was then taken that, while it was not inspired in its
science, it was inspired in its morality, in its prophecy, in its
account of the miraculous, in the scheme of salvation, and in all that
it had to say on the subject of religion.

The moment it was suggested that the Bible was not inspired in
everything within its lids, the seeds of suspicion were sown. The priest
became less arrogant. The church was forced to explain. The pulpit had
one language for the faithful and another for the philosophical, i. e.,
it became dishonest with both.

The next question that arose was as to the origin of man.

The Bible was being driven from the skies. The testimony of the stars
was against the sacred volume. The church had also been forced to admit
that the world was not created at the time mentioned in the Bible—so
that the very stones of the earth rose and united with the stars in
giving testimony against the sacred volume.

As to the creation of the world, the church resorted to the artifice
of saying that "days" in reality meant long periods of time; so that
no matter how old the earth was, the time could be spanned by six
periods—in other words, that the years could not be too numerous to be
divided by six.

But when it came to the creation of man, this evasion, or artifice, was
impossible. The Bible gives the date of the creation of man, because
it gives the age at which the first man died, and then it gives the
generations from Adam to the flood, and from the flood to the birth of
Christ, and in many instances the actual age of the principal ancestor
is given. So that, according to this account—according to the inspired
figures—man has existed upon the earth only about six thousand years.
There is no room left for any people beyond Adam.

If the Bible is true, certainly Adam was the first man; consequently,
we know, if the sacred volume be true, just how long man has lived and
labored and suffered on this earth.

The church cannot and dare not give up the account of the creation of
Adam from the dust of the earth, and of Eve from the rib of the man. The
church cannot give up the story of the Garden of Eden—the serpent—the
fall and the expulsion; these must be defended because they are vital.
Without these absurdities, the system known as Christianity cannot
exist. Without the fall, the atonement is a non sequitur. Facts
bearing upon these questions were discovered and discussed by the
greatest and most thoughtful of men. Lamarck, Humboldt, Haeckel, and
above all, Darwin, not only asserted, but demonstrated, that man is not
a special creation. If anything can be established by observation, by
reason, then the fact has been established that man is related to all
life below him—that he has been slowly produced through countless
years—that the story of Eden is a childish myth—that the fall of man
is an infinite absurdity.

If anything can be established by analogy and reason, man has existed
upon the earth for many millions of ages. We know now, if we know
anything, that people not only existed before Adam, but that they
existed in a highly civilized state; that thousands of years before the
Garden of Eden was planted men communicated to each other their ideas
by language, and that artists clothed the marble with thoughts and
passions.

This is a demonstration that the origin of man given in the Old
Testament is untrue—that the account was written by the ignorance, the
prejudice and the egotism of the olden time.

So, if anything outside of the senses can be known, we do know that
civilization is a growth—that man did not commence a perfect being, and
then degenerate, but that from small beginnings he has slowly risen, to
the intellectual height he now occupies.

The church, however, has not been willing to accept these truths,
because they contradict the sacred word. Some of the most ingenious
of the clergy have been endeavoring for years to show that there is no
conflict—that the account in Genesis is in perfect harmony with the
theories of Charles Darwin, and these clergymen in some way manage to
retain their creed and to accept a philosophy that utterly destroys it.

But in a few years the Christian world will be forced to admit that
the Bible is not inspired in its astronomy, in its geology, or in its
anthropology—that is to say, that the inspired writers knew nothing of
the sciences, knew nothing of the origin of the earth, nothing of the
origin of man—in other words, nothing of any particular value to the
human race.

It is, however, still insisted that the Bible is inspired in its
morality. Let us examine this question.

We must admit, if we know anything, if we feel anything, if conscience
is more than a word, if there is such a thing as right and such a thing
as wrong beneath the dome of heaven—we must admit that slavery is
immoral. If we are honest, we must also admit that the Old Testament
upholds slavery. It will be cheerfully admitted that Jehovah was opposed
to the enslavement of one Hebrew by another. Christians may quote the
commandment "Thou shalt not steal" as being opposed to human slavery,
but after that commandment was given, Jehovah himself told his chosen
people that they might "buy their bondmen and bondwomen of the heathen
round about, and that they should be their bondmen and their bondwomen
forever." So all that Jehovah meant by the commandment "Thou shalt not
steal" was that one Hebrew should not steal from another Hebrew, but
that all Hebrews might steal from the people of any other race or creed.

It is perfectly apparent that the Ten Commandments were made only for
the Jews, not for the world, because the author of these commandments
commanded the people to whom they were given to violate them nearly all
as against the surrounding people.

A few years ago it did not occur to the Christian world that slavery was
wrong. It was upheld by the church. Ministers bought and sold the very
people for whom they declared that Christ had died. Clergymen of the
English church owned stock in slave-ships, and the man who denounced
slavery was regarded as the enemy of morality, and thereupon was duly
mobbed by the followers of Jesus Christ. Churches were built with the
results of labor stolen from colored Christians. Babes were sold from
mothers and a part of the money given to send missionaries from America
to heathen lands with the tidings of great joy. Now every intelligent
man on the earth, every decent man, holds in abhorrence the institution
of human slavery.

So with the institution of polygamy. If anything on the earth is
immoral, that is. If there is anything calculated to destroy home, to do
away with human love, to blot out the idea of family life, to cover
the hearthstone with serpents, it is the institution of polygamy. The
Jehovah of the Old Testament was a believer in that institution.

Can we now say that the Bible is inspired in its morality? Consider for
a moment the manner in which, under the direction of Jehovah, wars were
waged. Remember the atrocities that were committed. Think of a war where
everything was the food of the sword. Think for a moment of a deity
capable of committing the crimes that are described and gloated over in
the Old Testament. The civilized man has outgrown the sacred cruelties
and absurdities.

There is still another side to this question.

A few centuries ago nothing was more natural than the unnatural.
Miracles were as plentiful as actual events. In those blessed days, that
which actually occurred was not regarded of sufficient importance to
be recorded. A religion without miracles would have excited derision.
A creed that did not fill the horizon—that did not account for
everything—that could not answer every question, would have been
regarded as worthless.

After the birth of Protestantism, it could not be admitted by the
leaders of the Reformation that the Catholic Church still had the power
of working miracles. If the Catholic Church was still in partnership
with God, what excuse could have been made for the Reformation? The
Protestants took the ground that the age of miracles had passed.
This was to justify the new faith. But Protestants could not say
that miracles had never been performed, because that would take the
foundation not only from the Catholics but from themselves; consequently
they were compelled to admit that miracles were performed in the
apostolic days, but to insist that, in their time, man must rely upon
the facts in nature. Protestants were compelled to carry on two kinds of
war; they had to contend with those who insisted that miracles had never
been performed; and in that argument they were forced to insist upon the
necessity for miracles, on the probability that they were performed, and
upon the truthfulness of the apostles. A moment afterward, they had to
answer those who contended that miracles were performed at that time;
then they brought forward against the Catholics the same arguments that
their first opponents had brought against them.

This has made every Protestant brain "a house divided against itself."
This planted in the Reformation the "irrepressible conflict."

But we have learned more and more about what we call Nature—about
what we call facts. Slowly it dawned upon the mind that force is
indestructible—that we cannot imagine force as existing apart from
matter—that we cannot even think of matter existing apart from
force—that we cannot by any possibility conceive of a cause without an
effect, of an effect without a cause, of an effect that is not also
a cause. We find no room between the links of cause and effect for a
miracle. We now perceive that a miracle must be outside of Nature—that
it can have no father, no mother—that is to say, that it is an
impossibility.

The intellectual world has abandoned the miraculous.

Most ministers are now ashamed to defend a miracle. Some try to explain
miracles, and yet, if a miracle is explained, it ceases to exist. Few
congregations could keep from smiling were the minister to seriously
assert the truth of the Old Testament miracles.

Miracles must be given up. That field must be abandoned by the religious
world. The evidence accumulates every day, in every possible direction
in which the human mind can investigate, that the miraculous is simply
the impossible.

Confidence in the eternal constancy of Nature increases day by day. The
scientist has perfect confidence in the attraction of gravitation—in
chemical affinities—in the great fact of evolution, and feels
absolutely certain that the nature of things will remain forever the
same.

We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood;
that there is nothing mysterious about them; that they are simply
transparent falsehoods.

The real miracles are the facts in nature. No one can explain the
attraction of gravitation. No one knows why soil and rain and light
become the womb of life. No one knows why grass grows, why water runs,
or why the magnetic needle points to the north. The facts in nature are
the eternal and the only mysteries. There is nothing strange about the
miracles of superstition. They are nothing but the mistakes of ignorance
and fear, or falsehoods framed by those who wished to live on the labor
of others.

In our time the champions of Christianity, for the most part, take the
exact ground occupied by the Deists. They dare not defend in the open
field the mistakes, the cruelties, the immoralities and the absurdities
of the Bible. They shun the Garden of Eden as though the serpent was
still there. They have nothing to say about the fall of man. They are
silent as to the laws upholding slavery and polygamy. They are ashamed
to defend the miraculous. They talk about these things to Sunday schools
and to the elderly members of their congregations; but when doing battle
for the faith, they misstate the position of their opponents and then
insist that there must be a God, and that the soul is immortal.

We may admit the existence of an infinite Being; we may admit the
immortality of the soul, and yet deny the inspiration of the Scriptures
and the divine origin of the Christian religion. These doctrines, or
these dogmas, have nothing in common. The pagan world believed in God
and taught the dogma of immortality. These ideas are far older than
Christianity, and they have been almost universal.

Christianity asserts more than this. It is based upon the inspiration
of the Bible, on the fall of man, on the atonement, on the dogma of the
Trinity, on the divinity of Jesus Christ, on his resurrection from the
dead, on his ascension into heaven.

Christianity teaches not simply the immortality of the soul—not simply
the immortality of joy—but it teaches the immortality of pain,
the eternity of sorrow. It insists that evil, that wickedness, that
immorality and that every form of vice are and must be perpetuated
forever. It believes in immortal convicts, in eternal imprisonment and
in a world of unending pain. It has a serpent for every breast and a
curse for nearly every soul. This doctrine is called the dearest hope of
the human heart, and he who attacks it is denounced as the most infamous
of men.

Let us see what the church, within a few years, has been compelled
substantially to abandon,—that is to say, what it is now almost ashamed
to defend.

First, the astronomy of the sacred Scriptures; second, the geology;
third, the account given of the origin of man; fourth, the doctrine
of original sin, the fall of the human race; fifth, the mathematical
contradiction known as the Trinity; sixth, the atonement—because it was
only on the ground that man is accountable for the sin of another,
that he could be justified by reason of the righteousness of another;
seventh, that the miraculous is either the misunderstood or the
impossible; eighth, that the Bible is not inspired in its morality, for
the reason that slavery is not moral, that polygamy is not good, that
wars of extermination are not merciful, and that nothing can be more
immoral than to punish the innocent on account of the sins of the
guilty; and ninth, the divinity of Christ.

All this must be given up by the really intelligent, by those not afraid
to think, by those who have the courage of their convictions and the
candor to express their thoughts. What then is left?

Let me tell you. Everything in the Bible that is true, is left; it still
remains and is still of value. It cannot be said too often that the
truth needs no inspiration; neither can it be said too often that
inspiration cannot help falsehood. Every good and noble sentiment
uttered in the Bible is still good and noble. Every fact remains. All
that is good in the Sermon on the Mount is retained. The Lord's
Prayer is not affected. The grandeur of self-denial, the nobility of
forgiveness, and the ineffable splendor of mercy are with us still. And
besides, there remains the great hope for all the human race.

What is lost? All the mistakes, all the falsehoods, all the absurdities,
all the cruelties and all the curses contained in the Scriptures.
We have almost lost the "hope" of eternal pain—the "consolation" of
perdition; and in time we shall lose the frightful shadow that has
fallen upon so many hearts, that has darkened so many lives.

The great trouble for many years has been, and still is, that the clergy
are not quite candid. They are disposed to defend the old creed.
They have been educated in the universities of the Sacred
Mistake—universities that Bruno would call "the widows of true
learning." They have been taught to measure with a false standard; they
have weighed with inaccurate scales. In youth, they became convinced of
the truth of the creed. This was impressed upon them by the solemnity of
professors who spoke in tones of awe. The enthusiasm of life's morning
was misdirected. They went out into the world knowing nothing of value.
They preached a creed outgrown. Having been for so many years
entirely certain of their position, they met doubt with a spirit of
irritation—afterward with hatred. They are hardly courageous enough to
admit that they are wrong.

Once the pulpit was the leader—it spoke with authority. By its side
was the sword of the state, with the hilt toward its hand. Now it is
apologized for—it carries a weight. It is now like a living man to
whom has been chained a corpse. It cannot defend the old, and it has not
accepted the new. In some strange way it imagines that morality cannot
live except in partnership with the sanctified follies and falsehoods of
the past.

The old creeds cannot be defended by argument. They are not within
the circumference of reason—they are not embraced in any of the facts
within the experience of man. All the subterfuges have been exposed; all
the excuses have been shown to be shallow, and at last the church must
meet, and fairly meet, the objections of our time.

Solemnity is no longer an argument. Falsehood is no longer sacred.
People are not willing to admit that mistakes are divine. Truth is more
important than belief—far better than creeds, vastly more useful than
superstitions. The church must accept the truths of the present, must
admit the demonstrations of science, or take its place in the mental
museums with the fossils and monstrosities of the past.

The time for personalities has passed; these questions cannot be
determined by ascertaining the character of the disputants; epithets
are no longer regarded as arguments; the curse of the church produces
laughter; theological slander is no longer a weapon; argument must be
answered with argument, and the church must appeal to reason, and by
that standard it must stand or fall. The theories and discoveries of
Darwin cannot be answered by the resolutions of synods, or by quotations
from the Old Testament.

The world has advanced. The Bible has remained the same. We must go back
to the book—it cannot come to us—or we must leave it forever. In order
to remain orthodox we must forget the discoveries, the inventions,
the intellectual efforts of many centuries; we must go back until our
knowledge—or rather our ignorance—will harmonize with the barbaric
creeds.

It is not pretended that all the creeds have not been naturally
produced. It is admitted that under the same circumstances the same
religions would again ensnare the human race. It is also admitted that
under the same circumstances the same efforts would be made by the great
and intellectual of every age to break the chains of superstition.

There is no necessity of attacking people—we should combat error.
We should hate hypocrisy, but not the hypocrite—larceny, but not the
thief—superstition, but not its victim. We should do all within our
power to inform, to educate, and to benefit our fellow-men.

There is no elevating power in hatred. There is no reformation in
punishment. The soul grows greater and grander in the air of kindness,
in the sunlight of intelligence.

We must rely upon the evidence of our senses, upon the conclusions of
our reason.

For many centuries the church has insisted that man is totally depraved,
that he is naturally wicked, that all of his natural desires are
contrary to the will of God. Only a few years ago it was solemnly
asserted that our senses were originally honest, true and faithful, but
having been debauched by original sin, were now cheats and liars; that
they constantly deceived and misled the soul; that they were traps and
snares; that no man could be safe who relied upon his senses, or upon
his reason;—he must simply rely upon faith; in other words, that the
only way for man to really see was to put out his eyes.

There has been a rapid improvement in the intellectual world. The
improvement has been slow in the realm of religion, for the reason that
religion was hedged about, defended and barricaded by fear, by prejudice
and by law. It was considered sacred. It was illegal to call its truth
in question. Whoever disputed the priest became a criminal; whoever
demanded a reason, or an explanation, became a blasphemer, a scoffer, a
moral leper.

The church defended its mistakes by every means within its power.

But in spite of all this there has been advancement, and there are
enough of the orthodox clergy left to make it possible for us to measure
the distance that has been traveled by sensible people.

The world is beginning to see that a minister should be a teacher, and
that "he should not endeavor to inculcate a particular system of dogmas,
but to prepare his hearers for exercising their own judgments."

As a last resource, the orthodox tell the thoughtful that they are not
"spiritual"—that they are "of the earth, earthy"—that they cannot
perceive that which is spiritual. They insist that "God is a spirit, and
must be worshiped in spirit."

But let me ask, What is it to be spiritual? In order to be really
spiritual, must a man sacrifice this world for the sake of another?
Were the selfish hermits, who deserted their wives and children for
the miserable purpose of saving their own little souls, spiritual? Were
those who put their fellow-men in dungeons, or burned them at the state*
on account of a difference of opinion, all spiritual people? Did John
Calvin give evidence of his spirituality by burning Servetus? Were
they spiritual people who invented and used instruments of torture—who
denied the liberty of thought and expression—who waged wars for the
propagation of the faith? Were they spiritual people who insisted that
Infinite Love could punish his poor, ignorant children forever? Is it
necessary to believe in eternal torment to understand the meaning of the
word spiritual? Is it necessary to hate those who disagree with you,
and to calumniate those whose argument you cannot answer, in order to be
spiritual? Must you hold a demonstrated fact in contempt; must you deny
or avoid what you know to be true, in order to substantiate the fact
that you are spiritual?

What is it to be spiritual? Is the man spiritual who searches for the
truth—who lives in accordance with his highest ideal—who loves his
wife and children—who discharges his obligations—who makes a happy
fireside for the ones he loves—who succors the oppressed—who gives his
honest opinions—who is guided by principle—who is merciful and just?

Is the man spiritual who loves the beautiful—who is thrilled by music,
and touched to tears in the presence of the sublime, the heroic and the
self-denying? Is the man spiritual who endeavors by thought and deed to
ennoble the human race?

The defenders of the orthodox faith, by this time, should know that the
foundations are insecure.

They should have the courage to defend, or the candor to abandon. If the
Bible is an inspired book, it ought to be true. Its defenders must admit
that Jehovah knew the facts not only about the earth, but about the
stars, and that the Creator of the universe knew all about geology and
astronomy even four thousand years ago.

The champions of Christianity must show that the Bible tells the truth
about the creation of man, the Garden of Eden, the temptation, the
fall and the flood. They must take the ground that the sacred book is
historically correct; that the events related really happened; that the
miracles were actually performed; that the laws promulgated from Sinai
were and are wise and just, and that nothing is upheld, commanded,
indorsed, or in any way approved or sustained that is not absolutely
right. In other words, if they insist that a being of infinite goodness
and intelligence is the author of the Bible, they must be ready to show
that it is absolutely perfect. They must defend its astronomy, geology,
history, miracle and morality.

If the Bible is true, man is a special creation, and if man is a special
creation, millions of facts must have conspired, millions of ages ago,
to deceive the scientific world of to-day.

If the Bible is true, slavery is right, and the world should go back to
the barbarism of the lash and chain. If the Bible' is true, polygamy is
the highest form of virtue. If the Bible is true, nature has a master,
and the miraculous is independent of and superior to cause and effect.
If the Bible is true, most of the children of men are destined to suffer
eternal pain. If the Bible is true, the science known as astronomy is a
collection of mistakes—the telescope is a false witness, and light is
a luminous liar. If the Bible is true, the science known as geology is
false and every fossil is a petrified perjurer.

The defenders of orthodox creeds should have the courage to candidly
answer at least two questions: First, Is the Bible inspired? Second,
Is the Bible true? And when they answer these questions, they should
remember that if the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and that if
not true, inspiration can do it no good.—North American Review, August,
1888.

Why Am I an Agnostic

I.

"With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls."

THE same rules or laws of probability must govern in religious questions
as in others. There is no subject—and can be none—concerning which any
human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence. Neither
is there any intelligent being who can, by any possibility, be flattered
by the exercise of ignorant credulity. The man who, without prejudice,
reads and understands the Old and New Testaments will cease to be an
orthodox Christian. The intelligent man who investigates the religion of
any country without fear and without prejudice will not and cannot be a
believer.

Most people, after arriving at the conclusion that Jehovah is not God,
that the Bible is not an inspired book, and that the Christian religion,
like other religions, is the creation of man, usually say: "There must
be a Supreme Being, but Jehovah is not his name, and the Bible is not
his word. There must be somewhere an over-ruling Providence or Power."

This position is just as untenable as the other. He who cannot harmonize
the cruelties of the Bible with the goodness of Jehovah, cannot
harmonize the cruelties of Nature with the goodness and wisdom of a
supposed Deity. He will find it impossible to account for pestilence and
famine, for earthquake and storm, for slavery, for the triumph of the
strong over the weak, for the countless victories of injustice. He will
find it impossible to account for martyrs—for the burning of the good,
the noble, the loving, by the ignorant, the malicious, and the infamous.

How can the Deist satisfactorily account for the sufferings of women and
children? In what way will he justify religious persecution—the flame
and sword of religious hatred? Why did his God sit idly on his throne
and allow his enemies to wet their swords in the blood of his friends?
Why did he not answer the prayers of the imprisoned, of the helpless?
And when he heard the lash upon the naked back of the slave, why did he
not also hear the prayer of the slave? And when children were sold from
the breasts of mothers, why was he deaf to the mother's cry?

It seems to me that the man who knows the limitations of the mind, who
gives the proper value to human testimony, is necessarily an Agnostic.
He gives up the hope of ascertaining first or final causes, of
comprehending the supernatural, or of conceiving of an infinite
personality. From out the words Creator, Preserver, and Providence, all
meaning falls.

The mind of man pursues the path of least resistance, and the
conclusions arrived at by the individual depend upon the nature and
structure of his mind, on his experience, on hereditary drifts and
tendencies, and on the countless things that constitute the difference
in minds. One man, finding himself in the midst of mysterious phenomena,
comes to the conclusion that all is the result of design; that back of
all things is an infinite personality—that is to say, an infinite man;
and he accounts for all that is by simply saying that the universe was
created and set in motion by this infinite personality, and that it is
miraculously and supernaturally governed and preserved. This man
sees with perfect clearness that matter could not create itself, and
therefore he imagines a creator of matter. He is perfectly satisfied
that there is design in the world, and that consequently there must
have been a designer. It does not occur to him that it is necessary to
account for the existence of an infinite personality. He is perfectly
certain that there can be no design without a designer, and he is
equally certain that there can be a designer who was not designed. The
absurdity becomes so great that it takes the place of a demonstration.
He takes it for granted that matter was created and that its creator was
not. He assumes that a creator existed from eternity, without cause,
and created what is called matter out of nothing; or, whereas there was
nothing, this creator made the something that we call substance.

Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of an infinite
personality? Can it imagine a beginningless being, infinitely powerful
and intelligent? If such a being existed, then there must have been an
eternity during which nothing did exist except this being; because, if
the Universe was created, there must have been a time when it was not,
and back of that there must have been an eternity during which nothing
but an infinite personality existed. Is it possible to imagine an
infinite intelligence dwelling for an eternity in infinite nothing?
How could such a being be intelligent? What was there to be intelligent
about? There was but one thing to know, namely, that there was nothing
except this being. How could such a being be powerful? There was nothing
to exercise force upon. There was nothing in the universe to suggest an
idea. Relations could not exist—except the relation between infinite
intelligence and infinite nothing.

The next great difficulty is the act of creation. My mind is so that I
cannot conceive of something being created out of nothing. Neither can
I conceive of anything being created without a cause. Let me go one
step further. It is just as difficult to imagine something being created
with, as without, a cause. To postulate a cause does not in the least
lessen the difficulty. In spite of all, this lever remains without a
fulcrum.

We cannot conceive of the destruction of substance. The stone can be
crushed to powder, and the powder can be ground to such a fineness that
the atoms can only be distinguished by the most powerful microscope, and
we can then imagine these atoms being divided and subdivided again
and again and again; but it is impossible for us to conceive of the
annihilation of the least possible imaginable fragment of the least
atom of which we can think. Consequently the mind can imagine neither
creation nor destruction. From this point it is very easy to reach the
generalization that the indestructible could not have been created.

These questions, however, will be answered by each individual according
to the structure of his mind, according to his experience, according
to his habits of thought, and according to his intelligence or his
ignorance, his prejudice or his genius.

Probably a very large majority of mankind believe in the existence of
supernatural beings, and a majority of what are known as the civilized
nations, in an infinite personality. In the realm of thought majorities
do not determine. Each brain is a kingdom, each mind is a sovereign.

The universality of a belief does not even tend to prove its truth. A
large majority of mankind have believed in what is known as God, and an
equally large majority have as implicitly believed in what is known as
the Devil. These beings have been inferred from phenomena. They were
produced for the most part by ignorance, by fear, and by selfishness.
Man in all ages has endeavored to account for the mysteries of life and
death, of substance, of force, for the ebb and flow of things, for earth
and star. The savage, dwelling in his cave, subsisting on roots
and reptiles, or on beasts that could be slain with club and stone,
surrounded by countless objects of terror, standing by rivers, so far as
he knew, without source or end, by seas with but one shore, the prey of
beasts mightier than himself, of diseases strange and fierce, trembling
at the voice of thunder, blinded by the lightning, feeling the earth
shake beneath him, seeing the sky lurid with the volcano's glare,—fell
prostrate and begged for the protection of the Unknown.

In the long night of savagery, in the midst of pestilence and famine,
through the long and dreary winters, crouched in dens of darkness,
the seeds of superstition were sown in the brain of man. The savage
believed, and thoroughly believed, that everything happened in reference
to him; that he by his actions could excite the anger, or by his worship
placate the wrath, of the Unseen. He resorted to flattery and prayer. To
the best of his ability he put in stone, or rudely carved in wood, his
idea of this god. For this idol he built a hut, a hovel, and at last a
cathedral. Before these images he bowed, and at these shrines, whereon
he lavished his wealth, he sought protection for himself and for
the ones he loved. The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They
pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between
the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of
truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon
the labor of the deceived they lived.

The Christian of to-day wonders at the savage who bowed before his idol;
and yet it must be confessed that the god of stone answered prayer and
protected his worshipers precisely as the Christian's God answers prayer
and protects his worshipers to-day.

My mind is so that it is forced to the conclusion that substance is
eternal; that the universe was without beginning and will be without
end; that it is the one eternal existence; that relations are transient
and evanescent; that organisms are produced and vanish; that forms
change,—but that the substance of things is from eternity to eternity.
It may be that planets are born and die, that constellations will fade
from the infinite spaces, that countless suns will be quenched,—but the
substance will remain.

The questions of origin and destiny seem to be beyond the powers of the
human mind.

Heredity is on the side of superstition. All our ignorance pleads
for the old. In most men there is a feeling that their ancestors were
exceedingly good and brave and wise, and that in all things pertaining
to religion their conclusions should be followed. They believe that
their fathers and mothers were of the best, and that that which
satisfied them should satisfy their children. With a feeling of
reverence they say that the religion of their mother is good enough
and pure enough and reasonable enough for them. In this way the love of
parents and the reverence for ancestors have unconsciously bribed the
reason and put out, or rendered exceedingly dim, the eyes of the mind.

There is a kind of longing in the heart of the old to live and die where
their parents lived and died—a tendency to go back to the homes of
their youth. Around the old oak of manhood grow and cling these vines.
Yet it will hardly do to say that the religion of my mother is good
enough for me, any more than to say the geology or the astronomy or
the philosophy of my mother is good enough for me. Every human being is
entitled to the best he can obtain; and if there has been the slightest
improvement on the religion of the mother, the son is entitled to that
improvement, and he should not deprive himself of that advantage by
the mistaken idea that he owes it to his mother to perpetuate, in a
reverential way, her ignorant mistakes.

If we are to follow the religion of our fathers and mothers, our fathers
and mothers should have followed the religion of theirs. Had this been
done, there could have been no improvement in the world of thought. The
first religion would have been the last, and the child would have died
as ignorant as the mother. Progress would have been impossible, and on
the graves of ancestors would have been sacrificed the intelligence of
mankind.

We know, too, that there has been the religion of the tribe, of the
community, and of the nation, and that there has been a feeling that
it was the duty of every member of the tribe or community, and of every
citizen of the nation, to insist upon it that the religion of that
tribe, of that community, of that nation, was better than that of any
other. We know that all the prejudices against other religions, and
all the egotism of nation and tribe, were in favor of the local
superstition. Each citizen was patriotic enough to denounce the
religions of other nations and to stand firmly by his own. And there
is this peculiarity about man: he can see the absurdities of other
religions while blinded to those of his own. The Christian can see
clearly enough that Mohammed was an impostor. He is sure of it, because
the people of Mecca who were acquainted with him declared that he was
no prophet; and this declaration is received by Christians as a
demonstration that Mohammed was not inspired. Yet these same Christians
admit that the people of Jerusalem who were acquainted with Christ
rejected him; and this rejection they take as proof positive that Christ
was the Son of God.

The average man adopts the religion of his country, or, rather, the
religion of his country adopts him. He is dominated by the egotism of
race, the arrogance of nation, and the prejudice called patriotism. He
does not reason—he feels. He does not investigate—he believes. To him
the religions of other nations are absurd and infamous, and their gods
monsters of ignorance and cruelty. In every country this average man is
taught, first, that there is a supreme being; second, that he has made
known his will; third, that he will reward the true believer; fourth,
that he will punish the unbeliever, the scoffer, and the blasphemer;
fifth, that certain ceremonies are pleasing to this god; sixth, that
he has established a church; and seventh, that priests are his
representatives on earth. And the average man has no difficulty in
determining that the God of his nation is the true God; that the will of
this true God is contained in the sacred scriptures of his nation;
that he is one of the true believers, and that the people of other
nations—that is, believing other religions—are scoffers; that the only
true church is the one to which he belongs; and that the priests of his
country are the only ones who have had or ever will have the slightest
influence with this true God. All these absurdities to the average man
seem self-evident propositions; and so he holds all other creeds in
scorn, and congratulates himself that he is a favorite of the one true
God.

If the average Christian had been born in Turkey, he would have been a
Mohammedan; and if the average Mohammedan had been born in New England
and educated at Andover, he would have regarded the damnation of the
heathen as the "tidings of great joy."

Nations have eccentricities, peculiarities, and hallucinations, and
these find expression in their laws, customs, ceremonies, morals, and
religions. And these are in great part determined by soil, climate, and
the countless circumstances that mould and dominate the lives and
habits of insects, individuals, and nations. The average man believes
implicitly in the religion of his country, because he knows nothing of
any other and has no desire to know. It fits him because he has been
deformed to fit it, and he regards this fact of fit as an evidence of
its inspired truth.

Has a man the right to examine, to investigate, the religion of his own
country—the religion of his father and mother? Christians admit that
the citizens of all countries not Christian have not only this right,
but that it is their solemn duty. Thousands of missionaries are sent to
heathen countries to persuade the believers in other religions not only
to examine their superstitions, but to renounce them, and to adopt
those of the missionaries. It is the duty of a heathen to disregard the
religion of his country and to hold in contempt the creed of his father
and of his mother. If the citizens of heathen nations have the right
to examine the foundations of their religion, it would seem that the
citizens of Christian nations have the same right. Christians, however,
go further than this; they say to the heathen: You must examine your
religion, and not only so, but you must reject it; and, unless you do
reject it, and, in addition to such rejection, adopt ours, you will be
eternally damned. Then these same Christians say to the inhabitants of
a Christian country: You must not examine; you must not investigate; but
whether you examine or not, you must believe, or you will be eternally
damned.

If there be one true religion, how is it possible to ascertain which
of all the religions the true one is? There is but one way. We must
impartially examine the claims of all. The right to examine involves the
necessity to accept or reject. Understand me, not the right to accept
or reject, but the necessity. From this conclusion there is no possible
escape. If, then, we have the right to examine, we have the right to
tell the conclusion reached. Christians have examined other religions
somewhat, and they have expressed their opinion with the utmost
freedom—that is to say, they have denounced them all as false and
fraudulent; have called their gods idols and myths, and their priests
impostors.

The Christian does not deem it worth while to read the Koran. Probably
not one Christian in a thousand ever saw a copy of that book. And yet
all Christians are perfectly satisfied that the Koran is the work of an
impostor, No Presbyterian thinks it is worth his while to examine the
religious systems of India; he knows that the Brahmins are mistaken, and
that all their miracles are falsehoods. No Methodist cares to read the
life of Buddha, and no Baptist will waste his time studying the ethics
of Confucius. Christians of every sort and kind take it for granted that
there is only one true religion, and that all except Christianity are
absolutely without foundation. The Christian world believes that all
the prayers of India are unanswered; that all the sacrifices upon the
countless altars of Egypt, of Greece, and of Rome were without effect.
They believe that all these mighty nations worshiped their gods in vain;
that their priests were deceivers or deceived; that their ceremonies
were wicked or meaningless; that their temples were built by ignorance
and fraud, and that no God heard their songs of praise, their cries of
despair, their words of thankfulness; that on account of their religion
no pestilence was stayed; that the earthquake and volcano, the flood
and storm went on their ways of death—while the real God looked on and
laughed at their calamities and mocked at their fears.

We find now that the prosperity of nations has depended, not upon their
religion, not upon the goodness or providence of some god, but on soil
and climate and commerce, upon the ingenuity, industry, and courage
of the people, upon the development of the mind, on the spread of
education, on the liberty of thought and action; and that in this
mighty panorama of national life, reason has built and superstition has
destroyed.

Being satisfied that all believe precisely as they must, and that
religions have been naturally produced, I have neither praise nor blame
for any man. Good men have had bad creeds, and bad men have had good
ones. Some of the noblest of the human race have fought and died for the
wrong. The brain of man has been the trysting-place of contradictions.

Passion often masters reason, and "the state of man, like to a little
kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection."

In the discussion of theological or religious questions, we have almost
passed the personal phase, and we are now weighing arguments instead of
exchanging epithets and curses. They who really seek for truth must be
the best of friends. Each knows that his desire can never take the place
of fact, and that, next to finding truth, the greatest honor must be won
in honest search.

We see that many ships are driven in many ways by the same wind. So
men, reading the same book, write many creeds and lay out many roads to
heaven. To the best of my ability, I have examined the religions of many
countries and the creeds of many sects. They are much alike, and the
testimony by which they are substantiated is of such a character that to
those who believe is promised an eternal reward. In all the sacred books
there are some truths, some rays of light, some words of love and
hope. The face of savagery is sometimes softened by a smile—the human
triumphs, and the heart breaks into song. But in these books are also
found the words of fear and hate, and from their pages crawl serpents
that coil and hiss in all the paths of men.

For my part, I prefer the books that inspiration has not claimed. Such
is the nature of my brain that Shakespeare gives me greater joy than all
the prophets of the ancient world. There are thoughts that satisfy the
hunger of the mind. I am convinced that Humboldt knew more of geology
than the author of Genesis; that Darwin was a greater naturalist than he
who told the story of the flood; that Laplace was better acquainted with
the habits of the sun and moon than Joshua could have been, and that
Haeckel, Huxley, and Tyndall know more about the earth and stars, about
the history of man, the philosophy of life—more that is of use, ten
thousand times—than all the writers of the sacred books.

I believe in the religion of reason—the gospel of this world; in the
development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to
the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end
that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe
the world.

Let us be honest with ourselves. In the presence of countless mysteries;
standing beneath the boundless heaven sown thick with constellations;
knowing that each grain of sand, each leaf, each blade of grass, asks
of every mind the answer-less question; knowing that the simplest thing
defies solution; feeling that we deal with the superficial and the
relative, and that we are forever eluded by the real, the absolute,—let
us admit the limitations of our minds, and let us have the courage and
the candor to say: We do not know.

North American Review, December, 1889.

II.

THE Christian religion rests on miracles. There are no miracles in the
realm of science. The real philosopher does not seek to excite wonder,
but to make that plain which was wonderful. He does not endeavor to
astonish, but to enlighten. He is perfectly confident that there are
no miracles in nature. He knows that the mathematical expression of the
same relations, contents, areas, numbers and proportions must forever
remain the same. He knows that there are no miracles in chemistry; that
the attractions and repulsions, the loves and hatreds, of atoms are
constant. Under like conditions, he is certain that like will always
happen; that the product ever has been and forever will be the
same; that the atoms or particles unite in definite, unvarying
proportions,—so many of one kind mix, mingle, and harmonize with just
so many of another, and the surplus will be forever cast out. There are
no exceptions. Substances are always true to their natures. They have no
caprices, no prejudices, that can vary or control their action. They are
"the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."

In this fixedness, this constancy, this eternal integrity, the
intelligent man has absolute confidence. It is useless to tell him that
there was a time when fire would not consume the combustible, when water
would not flow in obedience to the attraction of gravitation, or that
there ever was a fragment of a moment during which substance had no
weight.

Credulity should be the servant of intelligence. The ignorant have not
credulity enough to believe the actual, because the actual appears to be
contrary to the evidence of their senses. To them it is plain that the
sun rises and sets, and they have not credulity enough to believe in the
rotary motion of the earth—that is to say, they have not intelligence
enough to comprehend the absurdities involved in their belief, and the
perfect harmony between the rotation of the earth and all known facts.
They trust their eyes, not their reason. Ignorance has always been
and always will be at the mercy of appearance. Credulity, as a rule,
believes everything except the truth. The semi-civilized believe in
astrology, but who could convince them of the vastness of astronomical
spaces, the speed of light, or the magnitude and number of suns and
constellations? If Hermann, the magician, and Humboldt, the philosopher,
could have appeared before savages, which would have been regarded as a
god?

When men knew nothing of mechanics, nothing of the correlation of force,
and of its indestructibility, they were believers in perpetual motion.
So when chemistry was a kind of sleight-of-hand, or necromancy,
something accomplished by the aid of the supernatural, people talked
about the transmutation of metals, the universal solvent, and the
philosopher's stone. Perpetual motion would be a mechanical miracle; and
the transmutation of metals would be a miracle in chemistry; and if we
could make the result of multiplying two by two five, that would be a
miracle in mathematics. No one expects to find a circle the diameter of
which is just one fourth of the circumference. If one could find such a
circle, then there would be a miracle in geometry.

In other words, there are no miracles in any science. The moment we
understand a question or subject, the miraculous necessarily disappears.
If anything actually happens in the chemical world, it will, under like
conditions, happen again.

No one need take an account of this result from the mouths of others:
all can try the experiment for themselves. There is no caprice, and no
accident.

It is admitted, at least by the Protestant world, that the age of
miracles has passed away, and, consequently, miracles cannot at present
be established by miracles; they must be substantiated by the testimony
of witnesses who are said by certain writers—or, rather, by uncertain
writers—to have lived several centuries ago; and this testimony is
given to us, not by the witnesses themselves, not by persons who say
that they talked with those witnesses, but by unknown persons who did
not give the sources of their information.

The question is: Can miracles be established except by miracles? We know
that the writers may have been mistaken. It is possible that they may
have manufactured these accounts themselves. The witnesses may have told
what they knew to be untrue, or they may have been honestly deceived,
or the stories may have been true as at first told. Imagination may have
added greatly to them, so that after several centuries of accretion a
very simple truth was changed to a miracle.

We must admit that all probabilities must be against miracles, for
the reason that that which is probable cannot by any possibility be
a miracle. Neither the probable nor the possible, so far as man is
concerned, can be miraculous. The probability therefore says that the
writers and witnesses were either mistaken or dishonest.

We must admit that we have never seen a miracle ourselves, and we must
admit that, according to our experience, there are no miracles. If we
have mingled with the world, we are compelled to say that we have known
a vast number of persons—including ourselves—to be mistaken, and many
others who have failed to tell the exact truth. The probabilities are on
the side of our experience, and, consequently, against the miraculous;
and it is a necessity that the free mind moves along the path of least
resistance.

The effect of testimony depends on the intelligence and honesty of
the witness and the intelligence of him who weighs. A man living in a
community where the supernatural is expected, where the miraculous is
supposed to be of almost daily occurrence, will, as a rule, believe that
all wonderful things are the result of supernatural agencies. He will
expect providential interference, and, as a consequence, his mind will
pursue the path of least resistance, and will account for all phenomena
by what to him is the easiest method. Such people, with the best
intentions, honestly bear false witness. They have been imposed upon by
appearances, and are victims of delusion and illusion.

In an age when reading and writing were substantially unknown, and when
history itself was but the vaguest hearsay handed down from dotage to
infancy, nothing was rescued from oblivion except the wonderful, the
miraculous. The more marvelous the story, the greater the interest
excited. Narrators and hearers were alike ignorant and alike honest. At
that time nothing was known, nothing suspected, of the orderly course of
nature—of the unbroken and unbreakable chain of causes and effects. The
world was governed by caprice. Everything was at the mercy of a being,
or beings, who were themselves controlled by the same passions that
dominated man. Fragments of facts were taken for the whole, and the
deductions drawn were honest and monstrous.

It is probably certain that all of the religions of the world have been
believed, and that all the miracles have found credence in countless
brains; otherwise they could not have been perpetuated. They were not
all born of cunning. Those who told were as honest as those who heard.
This being so, nothing has been too absurd for human credence.

All religions, so far as I know, claim to have been miraculously
founded, miraculously preserved, and miraculously propagated. The
priests of all claimed to have messages from God, and claimed to have
a certain authority, and the miraculous has always been appealed to for
the purpose of substantiating the message and the authority.

If men believe in the supernatural, they will account for all phenomena
by an appeal to supernatural means or power. We know that formerly
everything was accounted for in this way except some few simple things
with which man thought he was perfectly acquainted. After a time men
found that under like conditions like would happen, and as to those
things the supposition of supernatural interference was abandoned; but
that interference was still active as to all the unknown world. In other
words, as the circle of man's knowledge grew, supernatural interference
withdrew and was active only just beyond the horizon of the known.

Now, there are some believers in universal special providence—that is,
men who believe in perpetual interference by a supernatural power,
this interference being for the purpose of punishing or rewarding, of
destroying or preserving, individuals and nations.

Others have abandoned the idea of providence in ordinary matters, but
still believe that God interferes on great occasions and at critical
moments, especially in the affairs of nations, and that his presence
is manifest in great disasters. This is the compromise position. These
people believe that an infinite being made the universe and impressed
upon it what they are pleased to call "laws," and then left it to run in
accordance with those laws and forces; that as a rule it works well,
and that the divine maker interferes only in cases of accident, or at
moments when the machine fails to accomplish the original design.

There are others who take the ground that all is natural; that there
never has been, never will be, never can be any interference from
without, for the reason that nature embraces all, and that there can be
no without or beyond.

The first class are Theists pure and simple; the second are Theists
as to the unknown, Naturalists as to the known; and the third are
Naturalists without a touch or taint of superstition.

What can the evidence of the first class be worth? This question
is answered by reading the history of those nations that believed
thoroughly and implicitly in the supernatural. There is no conceivable
absurdity that was not established by their testimony. Every law or
every fact in nature was violated. Children were bom without parents;
men lived for thousands of years; others subsisted without food,
without sleep; thousands and thousands were possessed with evil spirits
controlled by ghosts and ghouls; thousands confessed themselves guilty
of impossible offences, and in courts, with the most solemn forms,
impossibilities were substantiated by the oaths, affirmations, and
confessions of men, women, and children.

These delusions were not confined to ascetics and peasants, but they
took possession of nobles and kings; of people who were at that time
called intelligent; of the then educated. No one denied these wonders,
for the reason that denial was a crime punishable generally with death.
Societies, nations, became insane—victims of ignorance, of dreams, and,
above all, of fears. Under these conditions human testimony is not and
cannot be of the slightest value. We now know that nearly all of the
history of the world is false, and we know this because we have arrived
at that phase or point of intellectual development where and when
we know that effects must have causes, that everything is naturally
produced, and that, consequently, no nation could ever have been great,
powerful, and rich unless it had the soil, the people, the intelligence,
and the commerce. Weighed in these scales, nearly all histories are
found to be fictions.

The same is true of religions. Every intelligent American is satisfied
that the religions of India, of Egypt, of Greece and Rome, of the
Aztecs, were and are false, and that all the miracles on which they rest
are mistakes. Our religion alone is excepted. Every intelligent Hindoo
discards all religions and all miracles except his own. The question
is: When will people see the defects in their own theology as clearly as
they perceive the same defects in every other?

All the so-called false religions were substantiated by miracles, by
signs and wonders, by prophets and martyrs, precisely as our own. Our
witnesses are no better than theirs, and our success is no greater. If
their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature was the same in
India and in Palestine.

One of the corner-stones of Christianity is the miracle of inspiration,
and this same miracle lies at the foundation of all religions. How can
the fact of inspiration be established? How could even the inspired man
know that he was inspired? If he was influenced to write, and did write,
and did express thoughts and facts that to him were absolutely new, on
subjects about which he had previously known nothing, how could he know
that he had been influenced by an infinite being? And if he could know,
how could he convince others?

What is meant by inspiration? Did the one inspired set down only the
thoughts of a supernatural being? Was he simply an instrument, or did
his personality color the message received and given? Did he mix his
ignorance with the divine information, his prejudices and hatreds with
the love and justice of the Deity? If God told him not to eat the flesh
of any beast that dieth of itself, did the same infinite being also tell
him to sell this meat to the stranger within his gates?

A man says that he is inspired—that God appeared to him in a dream, and
told him certain things. Now, the things said to have been communicated
may have been good and wise; but will the fact that the communication
is good or wise establish the inspiration? If, on the other hand, the
communication is absurd or wicked, will that conclusively show that the
man was not inspired? Must we judge from the communication? In other
words, is our reason to be the final standard?

How could the inspired man know that the communication was received from
God? If God in reality should appear to a human being, how could this
human being know who had appeared? By what standard would he judge? Upon
this question man has no experience; he is not familiar enough with the
supernatural to know gods even if they exist. Although thousands have
pretended to receive messages, there has been no message in which there
was, or is, anything above the invention of man. There are just as
wonderful things in the uninspired as in the inspired books, and the
prophecies of the heathen have been fulfilled equally with those of the
Judean prophets. If, then, even the inspired man cannot certainly know
that he is inspired, how is it possible for him to demonstrate his
inspiration to others? The last solution of this question is that
inspiration is a miracle about which only the inspired can have the
least knowledge, or the least evidence, and this knowledge and this
evidence not of a character to absolutely convince even the inspired.

There is certainly nothing in the Old or the New Testament that could
not have been written by uninspired human beings. To me there is nothing
of any particular value in the Pentateuch. I do not know of a solitary
scientific truth contained in the five books commonly attributed to
Moses. There is not, as far as I know, a line in the book of Genesis
calculated to make a human being better. The laws contained in Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are for the most part puerile and
cruel. Surely there is nothing in any of these books that could not have
been produced by uninspired men. Certainly there is nothing calculated
to excite intellectual admiration in the book of Judges or in the wars
of Joshua; and the same may be said of Samuel, Chronicles, and Kings.
The history is extremely childish, full of repetitions of useless
details, without the slightest philosophy, without a generalization bom
of a wide survey. Nothing is known of other nations; nothing imparted of
the slightest value; nothing about education, discovery, or invention.
And these idle and stupid annals are interspersed with myth and miracle,
with flattery for kings who supported priests, and with curses and
denunciations for those who would not hearken to the voice of the
prophets. If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the
memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost.

Is it possible that the writer or writers of First and Second Kings
were inspired, and that Gibbon wrote "The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" without supernatural assistance? Is it possible that the author
of Judges was simply the instrument of an infinite God, while John W.
Draper wrote "The Intellectual Development of Europe" without one ray
of light from the other world? Can we believe that the author of Genesis
had to be inspired, while Darwin experimented, ascertained, and reached
conclusions for himself.

Ought not the work of a God to be vastly superior to that of a man? And
if the writers of the Bible were in reality inspired, ought not that
book to be the greatest of books? For instance, if it were contended
that certain statues had been chiselled by inspired men, such statues
should be superior to any that uninspired man has made. As long as it is
admitted that the Venus de Milo is the work of man, no one will believe
in inspired sculptors—at least until a superior statue has been found.
So in the world of painting. We admit that Corot was uninspired. Nobody
claims that Angelo had supernatural assistance. Now, if some one should
claim that a certain painter was simply the instrumentality of God,
certainly the pictures produced by that painter should be superior to
all others.

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to
conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the
tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man. We are all liable to
be mistaken, but the Iliad seems to me a greater work than the Book of
Esther, and I prefer it to the writings of Haggai and Hosea. AEschylus is
superior to Jeremiah, and Shakespeare rises immeasurably above all the
sacred books of the world.

It does not seem possible that any human being ever tried to establish a
truth—anything that really happened—by what is called a miracle. It
is easy to understand how that which was common became wonderful by
accretion,—by things added, and by things forgotten,—and it is easy
to conceive how that which was wonderful became by accretion what was
called supernatural. But it does not seem possible that any intelligent,
honest man ever endeavored to prove anything by a miracle.

As a matter of fact, miracles could only satisfy people who demanded no
evidence; else how could they have believed the miracle? It also appears
to be certain that, even if miracles had been performed, it would be
impossible to establish that fact by human testimony. In other words,
miracles can only be established by miracles, and in no event could
miracles be evidence except to those who were actually present; and in
order for miracles to be of any value, they would have to be perpetual.
It must also be remembered that a miracle actually performed could by
no possibility shed any light on any moral truth, or add to any human
obligation.

If any man has, ever been inspired, this is a secret miracle, known to
no person, and suspected only by the man claiming to be inspired. It
would not be in the power of the inspired to give satisfactory evidence
of that fact to anybody else.

The testimony of man is insufficient to establish the supernatural.
Neither the evidence of one man nor of twelve can stand when
contradicted by the experience of the intelligent world. If a book
sought to be proved by miracles is true, then it makes no difference
whether it was inspired or not; and if it is not true, inspiration
cannot add to its value.

The truth is that the church has always—unconsciously, perhaps—offered
rewards for falsehood. It was founded upon the supernatural, the
miraculous, and it welcomed all statements calculated to support
the foundation. It rewarded the traveller who found evidences of the
miraculous, who had seen the pillar of salt into which the wife of Lot
had been changed, and the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots on the sands of
the Red Sea. It heaped honors on the historian who filled his pages with
the absurd and impossible. It had geologists and astronomers of its own
who constructed the earth and the constellations in accordance with the
Bible. With sword and flame it destroyed the brave and thoughtful men
who told the truth. It was the enemy of investigation and of reason.
Faith and fiction were in partnership.

To-day the intelligence of the world denies the miraculous. Ignorance
is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has
crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural
is true. The miraculous is false.

North American Review, March, 1890.

HUXLEY AND AGNOSTICISM.
