The Christian Religion
A discussion with Jeremiah S. Black.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1881)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 6.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/the-christian-religion/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the
clouds.

A PROFOUND change has taken place in the world of thought. The pews are
trying to set themselves somewhat above the pulpit. The layman discusses
theology with the minister, and smiles. Christians excuse themselves
for belonging to the church, by denying a part of the creed. The idea
is abroad that they who know the most of nature believe the least about
theology. The sciences are regarded as infidels, and facts as scoffers.
Thousands of most excellent people avoid churches, and, with few
exceptions, only those attend prayer-meetings who wish to be alone. The
pulpit is losing because the people are growing.

Of course it is still claimed that we are a Christian people, indebted
to something called Christianity for all the progress we have made.
There is still a vast difference of opinion as to what Christianity
really is, although many warring sects have been discussing that
question, with fire and sword, through centuries of creed and crime.
Every new sect has been denounced at its birth as illegitimate, as
a something born out of orthodox wedlock, and that should have been
allowed to perish on the steps where it was found. Of the relative
merits of the various denominations, it is sufficient to say that
each claims to be right. Among the evangelical churches there is a
substantial agreement upon what they consider the fundamental truths of
the gospel. These fundamental truths, as I understand them, are:

That there is a personal God, the creator of the material universe; that
he made man of the dust, and woman from part of the man; that the man
and woman were tempted by the devil; that they were turned out of the
Garden of Eden; that, about fifteen hundred years afterward, God's
patience having been exhausted by the wickedness of mankind, he drowned
his children with the exception of eight persons; that afterward he
selected from their descendants Abraham, and through him the Jewish
people; that he gave laws to these people, and tried to govern them in
all things; that he made known his will in many ways; that he wrought a
vast number of miracles; that he inspired men to write the Bible; that,
in the fullness of time, it having been found impossible to reform
mankind, this God came upon earth as a child born of the Virgin Mary;
that he lived in Palestine; that he preached for about three years,
going from place to place, occasionally raising the dead, curing the
blind and the halt; that he was crucified—for the crime of blasphemy,
as the Jews supposed, but that, as a matter of fact, he was offered as
a sacrifice for the sins of all who might have faith in him; that he was
raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, where he now is, making
intercession for his followers; that he will forgive the sins of all who
believe on him, and that those who do not believe will be consigned to
the dungeons of eternal pain. These—it may be with the addition of the
sacraments of Baptism and the Last Supper—constitute what is generally
known as the Christian religion.

It is most cheerfully admitted that a vast number of people not only
believe these things, but hold them in exceeding reverence, and imagine
them to be of the utmost importance to mankind. They regard the Bible as
the only light that God has given for the guidance of his children; that
it is the one star in nature's sky—the foundation of all morality, of
all law, of all order, and of all individual and national progress. They
regard it as the only means we have for ascertaining the will of God,
the origin of man, and the destiny of the soul.

It is needless to inquire into the causes that have led so many people
to believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures. In my opinion, they
were and are mistaken, and the mistake has hindered, in countless ways,
the civilization of man. The Bible has been the fortress and defence of
nearly every crime. No civilized country could re-enact its laws, and in
many respects its moral code is abhorrent to every good and tender man.
It is admitted that many of its precepts are pure, that many of its laws
are wise and just, and that many of its statements are absolutely true.

Without desiring to hurt the feeling? of anybody, I propose to give
a few reasons for thinking that a few passages, at least, in the Old
Testament are the product of a barbarous people.

In all civilized countries it is not only admitted, but it is
passionately asserted, that slavery is and always was a hideous
crime; that a war of conquest is simply murder; that polygamy is the
enslavement of woman, the degradation of man, and the destruction of
home; that nothing is more infamous than the slaughter of decrepit men,
of helpless women, and of prattling babes; that captured maidens should
not be given to soldiers; that wives should not be stoned to death on
account of their religious opinions, and that the death penalty ought
not to be inflicted for a violation of the Sabbath. We know that
there was a time, in the history of almost every nation, when
slavery, polygamy, and wars of extermination were regarded as divine
institutions; when women were looked upon as beasts of burden, and when,
among some people, it was considered the duty of the husband to murder
the wife for differing with him on the subject of religion. Nations that
entertain these views to-day are regarded as savage, and, probably, with
the exception of the South Sea Islanders, the Feejees, some citizens
of Delaware, and a few tribes in Central Africa, no human beings can be
found degraded enough to agree upon these subjects with the Jehovah of
the ancient Jews. The only evidence we have, or can have, that a
nation has ceased to be savage is the fact that it has abandoned these
doctrines. To every one, except the theologian, it is perfectly easy to
account for the mistakes, atrocities, and crimes of the past, by
saying that civilization is a slow and painful growth; that the moral
perceptions are cultivated through ages of tyranny, of want, of crime,
and of heroism; that it requires centuries for man to put out the eyes
of self and hold in lofty and in equal poise the scales of justice;
that conscience is born of suffering; that mercy is the child of the
imagination—of the power to put oneself in the sufferer's place, and
that man advances only as he becomes acquainted with his surroundings,
with the mutual obligations of life, and learns to take advantage of the
forces of nature.

But the believer in the inspiration of the Bible is compelled to declare
that there was a time when slavery was right—when men could buy, and
women could sell, their babes. He is compelled to insist that there
was a time when polygamy was the highest form of virtue; when wars
of extermination were waged with the sword of mercy; when religious
toleration was a crime, and when death was the just penalty for having
expressed an honest thought. He must maintain that Jehovah is just as
bad now as he was four thousand years ago, or that he was just as
good then as he is now, but that human conditions have so changed that
slavery, polygamy, religious persecutions, and wars of conquest are now
perfectly devilish. Once they were right—once they were commanded by
God himself; now, they are prohibited. There has been such a change in
the conditions of man that, at the present time, the devil is in favor
of slavery, polygamy, religious persecution, and wars of conquest. That
is to say, the devil entertains the same opinion to-day that Jehovah
held four thousand years ago, but in the meantime Jehovah has remained
exactly the same—changeless and incapable of change.

We find that other nations beside the Jews had similar laws and ideas;
that they believed in and practiced slavery and polygamy, murdered women
and children, and exterminated their neighbors to the extent of their
power. It is not claimed that they received a revelation. It is admitted
that they had no knowledge of the true God. And yet, by a strange
coincidence, they practised the same crimes, of their own motion, that
the Jews did by the command of Jehovah. From this it would seem that man
can do wrong without a special revelation.

It will hardly be claimed, at this day, that the passages in the Bible
upholding slavery, polygamy, war and religious persecution are evidences
of the inspiration of that book. Suppose that there had been nothing
in the Old Testament upholding these crimes, would any modern Christian
suspect that it was not inspired, on account of the omission? Suppose
that there had been nothing in the Old Testament but laws in favor of
these crimes, would any intelligent Christian now contend that it was
the work of the true God? If the devil had inspired a book, will some
believer in the doctrine of inspiration tell us in what respect, on the
subjects of slavery, polygamy, war, and liberty, it would have differed
from some parts of the Old Testament? Suppose that we should now
discover a Hindu book of equal antiquity with the Old Testament,
containing a defence of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and
religious persecution, would we regard it as evidence that the writers
were inspired by an infinitely wise and merciful God? As most other
nations at that time practiced these crimes, and as the Jews would have
practiced them all, even if left to themselves, one can hardly see
the necessity of any inspired commands upon these subjects. Is there a
believer in the Bible who does not wish that God, amid the thunders and
lightnings of Sinai, had distinctly said to Moses that man should not
own his fellow-man; that women should not sell their babes; that men
should be allowed to think and investigate for themselves, and that the
sword should never be unsheathed to shed the blood of honest men? Is
there a believer in the world, who would not be delighted to find that
every one of these infamous passages are interpolations, and that the
skirts of God were never reddened by the blood of maiden, wife, or babe?
Is there a believer who does not regret that God commanded a husband to
stone his wife to death for suggesting the worship of the sun or moon?
Surely, the light of experience is enough to tell us that slavery is
wrong, that polygamy is infamous, and that murder is not a virtue.
No one will now contend that it was worth God's while to impart the
information to Moses, or to Joshua, or to anybody else, that the Jewish
people might purchase slaves of the heathen, or that it was their duty
to exterminate the natives of the Holy Land. The deists have contended
that the Old Testament is too cruel and barbarous to be the work of a
wise and loving God. To this, the theologians have replied, that nature
is just as cruel; that the earthquake, the volcano, the pestilence and
storm, are just as savage as the Jewish God; and to my mind this is a
perfect answer.

Suppose that we knew that after "inspired" men had finished the Bible,
the devil got possession of it, and wrote a few passages; what part of
the sacred Scriptures would Christians now pick out as being probably
his work? Which of the following passages would naturally be selected
as having been written by the devil—"Love thy neighbor as thyself," or
"Kill all the males among the little ones, and kill every woman; but all
the women children keep alive for yourselves."?

It may be that the best way to illustrate what I have said of the Old
Testament is to compare some of the supposed teachings of Jehovah with
those of persons who never read an "inspired" line, and who lived and
died without having received the light of revelation. Nothing can be
more suggestive than a comparison of the ideas of Jehovah—the inspired
words of the one claimed to be the infinite God, as recorded in the
Bible—with those that have been expressed by men who, all admit,
received no help from heaven.

In all ages of which any record has been preserved, there have been
those who gave their ideas of justice, charity, liberty, love and law.
Now, if the Bible is really the work of God, it should contain the
grandest and sublimest truths. It should, in all respects, excel the
works of man. Within that book should be found the best and loftiest
definitions of justice; the truest conceptions of human liberty; the
clearest outlines of duty; the tenderest, the highest, and the noblest
thoughts,—not that the human mind has produced, but that the human mind
is capable of receiving. Upon every page should be found the luminous
evidence of its divine origin. Unless it contains grander and more
wonderful things than man has written, we are not only justified in
saying, but we are compelled to say, that it was written by no being
superior to man. It may be said that it is unfair to call attention
to certain bad things in the Bible, while the good are not so much as
mentioned. To this it may be replied that a divine being would not put
bad things in a book. Certainly a being of infinite intelligence,
power, and goodness could never fall below the ideal of "depraved and
barbarous" man. It will not do, after we find that the Bible upholds
what we now call crimes, to say that it is not verbally inspired. If the
words are not inspired, what is? It may be said that the thoughts are
inspired. But this would include only the thoughts expressed without
words. If ideas are inspired, they must be contained in and expressed
only by inspired words; that is to say, the arrangement of the words,
with relation to each other, must have been inspired. For the purpose of
this perfect arrangement, the writers, according to the Christian world,
were inspired. Were some sculptor inspired of God to make a statue
perfect in its every part, we would not say that the marble was
inspired, but the statue—the relation of part to part, the married
harmony of form and function. The language, the words, take the place
of the marble, and it is the arrangement of these words that Christians
claim to be inspired. If there is one uninspired word,—that is, one
word in the wrong place, or a word that ought not to be there,—to that
extent the Bible is an uninspired book. The moment it is admitted that
some words are not, in their arrangement as to other words, inspired,
then, unless with absolute certainty these words can be pointed out, a
doubt is cast on all the words the book contains. If it was worth God's
while to make a revelation to man at all, it was certainly worth his
while to see that it was correctly made. He would not have allowed the
ideas and mistakes of pretended prophets and designing priests to become
so mingled with the original text that it is impossible to tell where he
ceased and where the priests and prophets began. Neither will it do to
say that God adapted his revelation to the prejudices of mankind. Of
course it was necessary for an infinite being to adapt his revelation to
the intellectual capacity of man; but why should God confirm a barbarian
in his prejudices? Why should he fortify a heathen in his crimes? If a
revelation is of any importance whatever, it is to eradicate prejudices
from the human mind. It should be a lever with which to raise the human
race. Theologians Have exhausted their ingenuity in finding excuses
for God. It seems to me that they would be better employed in finding
excuses for men. They tell us that the Jews were so cruel and ignorant
that God was compelled to justify, or nearly to justify, many of their
crimes, in order to have any influence with them whatever. They tell us
that if he had declared slavery and polygamy to be criminal, the Jews
would have refused to receive the Ten Commandments. They insist that,
under the circumstances, God did the best he could; that his real
intention was to lead them along slowly, step by step, so that, in a few
hundred years, they would be induced to admit that it was hardly fair to
steal a babe from its mother's breast. It has always seemed reasonable
that an infinite God ought to have been able to make man grand enough to
know, even without a special revelation, that it is not altogether right
to steal the labor, or the wife, or the child, of another. When the
whole question is thoroughly examined, the world will find that Jehovah
had the prejudices, the hatreds, and superstitions of his day.

If there is anything of value, it is liberty. Liberty is the air of the
soul, the sunshine of life. Without it the world is a prison and the
universe an infinite dungeon.

If the Bible is really inspired, Jehovah commanded the Jewish people to
buy the children of the strangers that sojourned among them, and ordered
that the children thus bought should be an inheritance for the children
of the Jews, and that they should be bondmen and bondwomen forever.
Yet Epictetus, a man to whom no revelation was made, a man whose soul
followed only the light of nature, and who had never heard of the Jewish
God, was great enough to say: "Will you not remember that your servants
are by nature your brothers, the children of God? In saying that you
have bought them, you look down on the earth, and into the pit, on the
wretched law of men long since dead, but you see not the laws of the
gods."

We find that Jehovah, speaking to his chosen people, assured them that
their bondmen and their bondmaids must be "of the heathen that were
round about them." "Of them," said Jehovah, "shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids." And yet Cicero, a pagan, Cicero, who had never been
enlightened by reading the Old Testament, had the moral grandeur to
declare: "They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens, but not
foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which
benevolence and justice would perish forever."

If the Bible is inspired, Jehovah, God of all worlds, actually said:
"And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under
his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he continue
a day or two, he shall not be punished, for he is his money." And yet
Zeno, founder of the Stoics, centuries before Christ was born, insisted
that no man could be the owner of another, and that the title was bad,
whether the slave had become so by conquest, or by purchase. Jehovah
ordered a Jewish general to make war, and gave, among others, this
command: "When the Lord thy God shall drive them before thee, thou shalt
smite them and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor show mercy unto them." And yet Epictetus, whom we have already
quoted, gave this marvelous rule for the guidance of human conduct:
"Live with thy inferiors as thou would'st have thy superiors live with
thee."

Is it possible, after all, that a being of infinite goodness and wisdom
said: "I will heap mischief upon them: I will spend mine arrows upon
them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat,
and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon
them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and
terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the
suckling also, with the man of gray hairs"; while Seneca, an uninspired
Roman, said: "The wise man will not pardon any crime that ought to be
punished, but he will accomplish, in a nobler way, all that is sought
in pardoning. He will spare some and watch over some, because of their
youth, and others on account of their ignorance. His clemency will not
fall short of justice, but will fulfill it perfectly."

Can we believe that God ever said of any one: "Let his children be
fatherless and his wife a widow; let his children be continually
vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate
places; let the extortioner catch all that he hath and let the stranger
spoil his labor; let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let
there be any to favor his fatherless children." If he ever said these
words, surely he had never heard this line, this strain of music, from
the Hindu: "Sweet is the lute to those who have not heard the prattle of
their own children."

Jehovah, "from the clouds and darkness of Sinai," said to the Jews:
"Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.... Thou shalt not bow down
thyself to them nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Contrast this with
the words put by the Hindu into the mouth of Brahma:

"I am the same to all mankind. They who honestly serve other gods,
involuntarily worship me. I am he who partaketh of all worship, and I am
the reward of all worshipers."

Compare these passages. The first, a dungeon where crawl the things
begot of jealous slime; the other, great as the domed firmament inlaid
with suns.

II.

WAIVING the contradictory statements in the various books of the New
Testament; leaving out of the question the history of the manuscripts;
saying nothing about the errors in translation and the interpolations
made by the fathers; and admitting, for the time being, that the books
were all written at the times claimed, and by the persons whose names
they bear, the questions of inspiration, probability, and absurdity
still remain.

As a rule, where several persons testify to the same transaction, while
agreeing in the main points, they will disagree upon many minor things,
and such disagreement upon minor matters is generally considered as
evidence that the witnesses have not agreed among themselves upon the
story they should tell. These differences in statement we account for
from the facts that all did not see alike, that all did not have the
same opportunity for seeing, and that all had not equally good memories.
But when we claim that the witnesses were inspired, we must admit that
he who inspired them did know exactly what occurred, and consequently
there should be no contradiction, even in the minutest detail. The
accounts should be not only substantially, but they should be actually,
the same. It is impossible to account for any differences, or any
contradictions, except from the weaknesses of human nature, and these
weaknesses cannot be predicated of divine wisdom. Why should there
be more than one correct account of anything? Why were four gospels
necessary? One inspired record of all that happened ought to be enough.

One great objection to the Old Testament is the cruelty said to have
been commanded by God, but all the cruelties recounted in the Old
Testament ceased with death. The vengeance of Jehovah stopped at the
portal of the tomb. He never threatened to avenge himself upon the dead;
and not one word, from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse
of Malachi, contains the slightest intimation that God will punish in
another world. It was reserved for the New Testament to make known the
frightful doctrine of eternal pain. It was the teacher of universal
benevolence who rent the veil between time and eternity, and fixed the
horrified gaze of man on the lurid gulfs of hell. Within the breast of
non-resistance was coiled the worm that never dies.

One great objection to the New Testament is that it bases salvation upon
belief. This, at least, is true of the Gospel according to John, and of
many of the Epistles. I admit that Matthew never heard of the atonement,
and died utterly ignorant of the scheme of salvation. I also admit that
Mark never dreamed that it was necessary for a man to be born again;
that he knew nothing of the mysterious doctrine of regeneration, and
that he never even suspected that it was necessary to believe anything.
In the sixteenth chapter of Mark, we are told that "He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be
damned"; but this passage has been shown to be an interpolation, and,
consequently, not a solitary word is found in the Gospel according to
Mark upon the subject of salvation by faith. The same is also true
of the Gospel of Luke. It says not one word as to the necessity of
believing on Jesus Christ, not one word as to the atonement, not one
word upon the scheme of salvation, and not the slightest hint that it is
necessary to believe anything here in order to be happy hereafter.

And I here take occasion to say, that with most of the teachings of the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke I most heartily agree. The miraculous
parts must, of course, be thrown aside. I admit that the necessity of
belief, the atonement, and the scheme of salvation are all set forth
in the Gospel of John,—a gospel, in my opinion, not written until long
after the others.

According to the prevailing Christian belief, the Christian religion
rests upon the doctrine of the atonement. If this doctrine is without
foundation, if it is repugnant to justice and mercy, the fabric falls.
We are told that the first man committed a crime for which all his
posterity are responsible,—in other words, that we are accountable,
and can be justly punished for a sin we never in fact committed. This
absurdity was the father of another, namely, that a man can be rewarded
for a good action done by another. God, according to the modern
theologians, made a law, with the penalty of eternal death for its
infraction. All men, they say, have broken that law. In the economy of
heaven, this law had to be vindicated. This could be done by damning the
whole human race. Through what is known as the atonement, the salvation
of a few was made possible. They insist that the law—whatever that
is—demanded the extreme penalty, that justice called for its victims,
and that even mercy ceased to plead. Under these circumstances, God, by
allowing the innocent to suffer, satisfactorily settled with the law,
and allowed a few of the guilty to escape. The law was satisfied with
this arrangement. To carry out this scheme, God was born as a babe into
this world. "He grew in stature and increased in knowledge." At the age
of thirty-three, after having lived a life filled with kindness, charity
and nobility, after having practiced every virtue, he was sacrificed as
an atonement for man. It is claimed that he actually took our place,
and bore our sins and our guilt; that in this way the justice of God was
satisfied, and that the blood of Christ was an atonement, an expiation,
for the sins of all who might believe on him.

Under the Mosaic dispensation, there was no remission of sin except
through the shedding of blood. If a man committed certain sins, he
must bring to the priest a lamb, a bullock, a goat, or a pair of
turtle-doves. The priest would lay his hands upon the animal, and the
sin of the man would be transferred. Then the animal would be killed in
the place of the real sinner, and the blood thus shed and sprinkled upon
the altar would be an atonement. In this way Jehovah was satisfied.
The greater the crime, the greater the sacrifice—the more blood, the
greater the atonement. There was always a certain ratio between the
value of the animal and the enormity of the sin. The most minute
directions were given about the killing of these animals, and about
the sprinkling of their blood. Every priest became a butcher, and every
sanctuary a slaughter-house. Nothing could be more utterly shocking to
a refined and loving soul. Nothing could have been better calculated to
harden the heart than this continual shedding of innocent blood. This
terrible system is supposed to have culminated in the sacrifice of
Christ. His blood took the place of all other. It is necessary to shed
no more. The law at last is satisfied, satiated, surfeited. The idea
that God wants blood is at the bottom of the atonement, and rests
upon the most fearful savagery. How can sin be transferred from men to
animals, and how can the shedding of the blood of animals atone for the
sins of men?

The church says that the sinner is in debt to God, and that the
obligation is discharged by the Savior. The best that can possibly be
said of such a transaction is, that the debt is transferred, not paid.
The truth is, that a sinner is in debt to the person he has injured.
If a man injures his neighbor, it is not enough for him to get the
forgiveness of God, but he must have the forgiveness of his neighbor.
If a man puts his hand in the fire and God forgives him, his hand will
smart exactly the same. You must, after all, reap what you sow. No god
can give you wheat when you sow tares, and no devil can give you tares
when you sow wheat.

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments—there are
consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force,
its heroism of benevolence.

To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to
make the suffering of the innocent a justification for the criminal? Why
should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? Does not
the willingness show that he is utterly unworthy of the sacrifice?
Certainly, no man would be fit for heaven who would consent that an
innocent person should suffer for his sin. What would we think of a
man who would allow another to die for a crime that he himself had
committed? What would we think of a law that allowed the innocent to
take the place of the guilty? Is it possible to vindicate a just law
by inflicting punishment on the innocent? Would not that be a second
violation instead of a vindication?

If there was no general atonement until the crucifixion of Christ, what
became of the countless millions who died before that time? And it must
be remembered that the blood shed by the Jews was not for other nations.
Jehovah hated foreigners. The Gentiles were left without forgiveness
What has become of the millions who have died since, without having
heard of the atonement? What becomes of those who have heard but have
not believed? It seems to me that the doctrine of the atonement is
absurd, unjust, and immoral. Can a law be satisfied by the execution
of the wrong person? When a man commits a crime, the law demands his
punishment, not that of a substitute; and there can be no law, human
or divine, that can be satisfied by the punishment of a substitute. Can
there be a law that demands that the guilty be rewarded? And yet, to
reward the guilty is far nearer justice than to punish the innocent.

According to the orthodox theology, there would have been no heaven had
no atonement been made. All the children of men would have been cast
into hell forever. The old men bowed with grief, the smiling mothers,
the sweet babes, the loving maidens, the brave, the tender, and the
just, would have been given over to eternal pain. Man, it is claimed,
can make no atonement for himself. If he commits one sin, and with
that exception lives a life of perfect virtue, still that one sin would
remain unexpiated, unatoned, and for that one sin he would be forever
lost. To be saved by the goodness of another, to be a redeemed debtor
forever, has in it something repugnant to manhood.

We must also remember that Jehovah took special charge of the Jewish
people; and we have always been taught that he did so for the purpose
of civilizing them. If he had succeeded in civilizing the Jews, he would
have made the damnation of the entire human race a certainty; because,
if the Jews had been a civilized people when Christ appeared,—a
people whose hearts had not been hardened by the laws and teachings of
Jehovah,—they would not have crucified him, and, as a consequence,
the world would have been lost. If the Jews had believed in religious
freedom,—in the right of thought and speech,—not a human soul could
ever have been saved. If, when Christ was on his way to Calvary, some
brave, heroic soul had rescued him from the holy mob, he would not
only have been eternally damned for his pains, but would have rendered
impossible the salvation of any human being, and, except for the
crucifixion of her son, the Virgin Mary, if the church is right, would
be to-day among the lost.

In countless ways the Christian world has endeavored, for nearly two
thousand years, to explain the atonement, and every effort has ended
in an admission that it cannot be understood, and a declaration that it
must be believed. Is it not immoral to teach that man can sin, that he
can harden his heart and pollute his soul, and that, by repenting
and believing something that he does not comprehend, he can avoid the
consequences of his crimes? Has the promise and hope of forgiveness ever
prevented the commission of a sin? Should men be taught that sin gives
happiness here; that they ought to bear the evils of a virtuous life in
this world for the sake of joy in the next; that they can repent between
the last sin and the last breath; that after repentance every stain
of the soul is washed away by the innocent blood of another; that the
serpent of regret will not hiss in the ear of memory; that the saved
will not even pity the victims of their own crimes; that the goodness
of another can be transferred to them; and that sins forgiven cease to
affect the unhappy wretches sinned against?

Another objection is that a certain belief is necessary to save the
soul. It is often asserted that to believe is the only safe way. If you
wish to be safe, be honest. Nothing can be safer than that. No matter
what his belief may be, no man, even in the hour of death, can regret
having been honest. It never can be necessary to throw away your reason
to save your soul. A soul without reason is scarcely worth saving. There
is no more degrading doctrine than that of mental non-resistance. The
soul has a right to defend its castle—the brain, and he who waives that
right becomes a serf and slave. Neither can I admit that a man, by doing
me an injury, can place me under obligation to do him a service. To
render benefits for injuries is to ignore all distinctions between
actions. He who treats his friends and enemies alike has neither love
nor justice. The idea of non-resistance never occurred to a man with
power to protect himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born
when resistance was impossible. To allow a crime to be committed when
you can prevent it, is next to committing the crime yourself. And yet,
under the banner of non-resistance, the church has shed the blood of
millions, and in the folds of her sacred vestments have gleamed the
daggers of assassination. With her cunning hands she wove the purple for
hypocrisy, and placed the crown upon the brow of crime. For a thousand
years larceny held the scales of justice, while beggars scorned the
princely sons of toil, and ignorant fear denounced the liberty of
thought.

If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him, like a
panorama, moved the history yet to be. He knew exactly how his words
would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies,
would be committed in his name. He knew that the fires of persecution
would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that brave
men would languish in dungeons, in darkness, filled with pain; that the
church would use instruments of torture, that his followers would appeal
to whip and chain. He must have seen the horizon of the future red with
the flames of the auto da fe. He knew all the creeds that would spring
like poison fungi from every text. He saw the sects waging war against
each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests,
building dungeons for their fellow-men. He saw them using instruments
of pain. He heard the groans, saw the faces white with agony, the tears,
the blood—heard the shrieks and sobs of all the moaning, martyred
multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with
swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition
would be born of teachings attributed to him. He saw all the
interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He
knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these burnings,
for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He
knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh, that
cradles would be robbed, and women's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet
he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not
tell his disciples, and through them the world, that man should not
persecute, for opinion's sake, his fellow-man? Why did he not cry, You
shall not persecute in my name; you shall not burn and torment those who
differ from you in creed? Why did he not plainly say, I am the Son of
God? Why did he not explain the doctrine of the Trinity? Why did he not
tell the manner of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not say
something positive, definite, and satisfactory about another world? Why
did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven to the glad knowledge
of another life? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to
misery and to doubt?

He came, they tell us, to make a revelation, and what did he reveal?
"Love thy neighbor as thyself"? That was in the Old Testament. "Love
God with all thy heart"? That was in the Old Testament. "Return good for
evil"? That was said by Buddha seven hundred years before he was born.
"Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you"? This was the
doctrine of Lao-tsze. Did he come to give a rule of action? Zoroaster
had done this long before: "Whenever thou art in doubt as to whether
an action is good or bad, abstain from it." Did he come to teach us of
another world? The immortality of the soul had been taught by Hindus,
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans hundreds of years before he was born. Long
before, the world had been told by Socrates that: "One who is injured
ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do
an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil
to any man, however much we may have suffered from him." And Cicero had
said:

"Let us not listen to those who think that we ought to be angry with
our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly: nothing is
more praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as
clemency and readiness to forgive."

Is there anything nearer perfect than this from Confucius: "For benefits
return benefits; for injuries return justice without any admixture of
revenge"?

The dogma of eternal punishment rests upon passages in the New
Testament. This infamous belief subverts every idea of justice. Around
the angel of immortality the church has coiled this serpent. A finite
being can neither commit an infinite sin, nor a sin against the
infinite. A being of infinite goodness and wisdom has no right,
according to the human standard of justice, to create any being destined
to suffer eternal pain. A being of infinite wisdom would not create
a failure, and surely a man destined to everlasting agony is not a
success.

How long, according to the universal benevolence of the New Testament,
can a man be reasonably punished in the next world for failing to
believe something unreasonable in this? Can it be possible that any
punishment can endure forever? Suppose that every flake of snow that
ever fell was a figure nine, and that the first flake was multiplied by
the second, and that product by the third, and so on to the last flake.
And then suppose that this total should be multiplied by every drop of
rain that ever fell, calling each drop a figure nine; and that total by
each blade of grass that ever helped to weave a carpet for the earth,
calling each blade a figure nine; and that again by every grain of sand
on every shore, so that the grand total would make a line of nines so
long that it would require millions upon millions of years for light,
traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles per
second, to reach the end. And suppose, further, that each unit in this
almost infinite total stood for billions of ages—still that vast and
almost endless time, measured by all the years beyond, is as one flake,
one drop, one leaf, one blade, one grain, compared with all the flakes
and drops and leaves and blades and grains. Upon love's breast the
church has placed the eternal asp. And yet, in the same book in which is
taught this most infamous of doctrines, we are assured that "The Lord is
good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works."

Iii

SO FAR as we know, man is the author of all books. If a book had been
found on the earth by the first man, he might have regarded it as the
work of God; but as men were here a good while before any books were
found, and as man has produced a great many books, the probability is
that the Bible is no exception.

Most nations, at the time the Old Testament was written, believed in
slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution;
and it is not wonderful that the book contained nothing contrary to such
belief. The fact that it was in exact accord with the morality of its
time proves that it was not the product of any being superior to man.
"The inspired writers" upheld or established slavery, countenanced
polygamy, commanded wars of extermination, and ordered the slaughter
of women and babes. In these respects they were precisely like the
uninspired savages by whom they were surrounded. They also taught and
commanded religious persecution as a duty, and visited the most trivial
offences with the punishment of death. In these particulars they were in
exact accord with their barbarian neighbors. They were utterly ignorant
of geology and astronomy, and knew no more of what had happened than of
what would happen; and, so far as accuracy is concerned, their history
and prophecy were about equal; in other words, they were just as
ignorant as those who lived and died in nature's night.

Does any Christian believe that if God were to write a book now, he
would uphold the crimes commanded in the Old Testament? Has Jehovah
improved? Has infinite mercy-become more merciful? Has infinite wisdom
intellectually-advanced? Will any one claim that the passages upholding
slavery have liberated mankind; that we are indebted for our modern
homes to the texts that made polygamy a virtue; or that religious
liberty found its soil, its light, and rain in the infamous verse
wherein the husband is commanded to stone to death the wife for
worshiping an unknown god?

The usual answer to these objections is that no country has ever been
civilized without the Bible.

The Jews were the only people to whom Jehovah made his will directly
known,—the only people who had the Old Testament. Other nations were
utterly neglected by their Creator. Yet, such was the effect of the Old
Testament on the Jews, that they crucified a kind, loving, and perfectly
innocent man. They could not have done much worse without a Bible. In
the crucifixion of Christ, they followed the teachings of his Father.
If, as it is now alleged by the theologians, no nation can be civilized
without a Bible, certainly God must have known the fact six thousand
years ago, as well as the theologians know it now. Why did he not
furnish every nation with a Bible?

As to the Old Testament, I insist that all the bad passages were written
by men; that those passages were not inspired. I insist that a being of
infinite goodness never commanded man to enslave his fellow-man, never
told a mother to sell her babe, never established polygamy, never
ordered one nation to exterminate another, and never told a husband to
kill his wife because she suggested the worshiping of some other God.

I also insist that the Old Testament would be a much better book with
all of these passages left out; and, whatever may be said of the rest,
the passages to which attention has been drawn can with vastly more
propriety be attributed to a devil than to a god.

Take from the New Testament all passages upholding the idea that belief
is necessary to salvation; that Christ was offered as an atonement for
the sins of the world; that the punishment of the human soul will go
on forever; that heaven is the reward of faith, and hell the penalty of
honest investigation; take from it all miraculous stories,—and I admit
that all the good passages are true. If they are true, it makes no
difference whether they are inspired or not. Inspiration is only
necessary to give authority to that which is repugnant to human reason.
Only that which never happened needs to be substantiated by miracles.
The universe is natural.

The church must cease to insist that the passages upholding the
institutions of savage men were inspired of God. The dogma of the
atonement must be abandoned. Good deeds must take the place of faith.
The savagery of eternal punishment must be renounced. Credulity is not
a virtue, and investigation is not a crime. Miracles are the children
of mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, unbroken,
sublime, and eternal procession of causes and effects.

Reason must be the final arbiter. "Inspired" books attested by miracles
cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. A religion that does not
command the respect of the greatest minds will, in a little while,
excite the mockery of all. Every civilized man believes in the liberty
of thought. Is it possible that God is intolerant? Is an act infamous in
man one of the virtues of the Deity? Could there be progress in heaven
without intellectual liberty? Is the freedom of the future to exist only
in perdition? Is it not, after all, barely possible that a man acting
like Christ can be saved? Is a man to be eternally rewarded for
believing according to evidence, without evidence, or against evidence?
Are we to be saved because we are good, or because another was virtuous?
Is credulity to be winged and crowned, while honest doubt is chained and
damned?

Do not misunderstand me. My position is that the cruel passages in
the Old Testament are not inspired; that slavery, polygamy, wars of
extermination, and religious persecution always have been, are, and
forever will be, abhorred and cursed by the honest, the virtuous, and
the loving; that the innocent cannot justly suffer for the guilty,
and that vicarious vice and vicarious virtue are equally absurd; that
eternal punishment is eternal revenge; that only the natural can happen;
that miracles prove the dishonesty of the few and the credulity of the
many; and that, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, salvation does not
depend upon belief, nor the atonement, nor a "second birth," but that
these gospels are in exact harmony with the declaration of the great
Persian: "Taking the first footstep with the good thought, the second
with the good word, and the third with the good deed, I entered
paradise."

The dogmas of the past no longer reach the level of the highest thought,
nor satisfy the hunger of the heart. While dusty faiths, embalmed and
sepulchered in ancient texts, remain the same, the sympathies of men
enlarge; the brain no longer kills its young; the happy lips give
liberty to honest thoughts; the mental firmament expands and lifts; the
broken clouds drift by; the hideous dreams, the foul, misshapen children
of the monstrous night, dissolve and fade.

Robert G. Ingersoll.

The Christian Religion, by Jeremiah S. Black

"Gratiano speaks of an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in
all Venice: his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of
chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them
they are not worth the search."—Merchant of Venice.

THE request to answer the foregoing paper comes to me, not in the form
but with the effect of a challenge, which I cannot decline without
seeming to acknowledge that the religion of the civilized world is an
absurd superstition, propagated by impostors, professed by hypocrites,
and believed only by credulous dupes.

But why should I, an unlearned and unauthorized layman, be placed in
such a predicament? The explanation is easy enough. This is no business
of the priests. Their prescribed duty is to preach the word, in the full
assurance that it will commend itself to all good and honest hearts by
its own manifest veracity and the singular purity of its precepts. They
cannot afford to turn away from their proper work, and leave willing
hearers uninstructed, while they wrangle in vain with a predetermined
opponent. They were warned to expect slander, indignity, and insult, and
these are among the evils which they must not resist.

It will be seen that I am assuming no clerical function. I am not out on
the forlorn hope of converting Mr. Ingersoll. I am no preacher exhorting
a sinner to leave the seat of the scornful and come up to the bench of
the penitents. My duty is more analogous to that of the policeman who
would silence a rude disturber of the congregation by telling him that
his clamor is false and his conduct an offence against public decency.

Nor is the Church in any danger which calls for the special vigilance
of its servants. Mr. Ingersoll thinks that the rock-founded faith
of Christendom is giving way before his assaults, but he is grossly
mistaken. The first sentence of his essay is a preposterous blunder. It
is not true that "a profound change has taken place in the world of
thought," unless a more rapid spread of the Gospel and a more faithful
observance of its moral principles can be called so. Its truths are
everywhere proclaimed with the power of sincere conviction, and accepted
with devout reverence by uncounted multitudes of all classes. Solemn
temples rise to its honor in the great cities; from every hill-top in
the country you see the church-spire pointing toward heaven, and on
Sunday all the paths that lead to it are crowded with worshipers. In
nearly all families, parents teach their children that Christ is God,
and his system of morality absolutely perfect. This belief lies so deep
in the popular heart that, if every written record of it were destroyed
to-day, the memory of millions could reproduce it to-morrow. Its
earnestness is proved by its works. Wherever it goes it manifests itself
in deeds of practical benevolence. It builds, not churches alone, but
almshouses, hospitals, and asylums. It shelters the poor, feeds the
hungry, visits the sick, consoles the afflicted, provides for the
fatherless, comforts the heart of the widow, instructs the ignorant,
reforms the vicious, and saves to the uttermost them that are ready to
perish. To the common observer, it does not look as if Christianity
was making itself ready to be swallowed up by Infidelity. Thus far,
at least, the promise has been kept that "the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it."

There is, to be sure, a change in the party hostile to religion—not "a
profound change," but a change entirely superficial—which consists, not
in thought, but merely in modes of expression and methods of attack. The
bad classes of society always hated the doctrine and discipline which
reproached their wickedness and frightened them by threats of punishment
in another world. Aforetime they showed their contempt of divine
authority only by their actions; but now, under new leadership, their
enmity against God breaks out into articulate blasphemy. They assemble
themselves together, they hear with passionate admiration the bold
harangue which ridicules and defies the Maker of the universe; fiercely
they rage against the Highest, and loudly they laugh, alike at the
justice that condemns, and the mercy that offers to pardon them. The
orator who relieves them by assurances of impunity, and tells them that
no supreme authority has made any law to control them, is applauded to
the echo and paid a high price for his congenial labor; he pockets their
money, and flatters himself that he is a great power, profoundly moving
"the world of thought."

There is another totally false notion expressed in the opening
paragraph, namely, that "they who know most of nature believe the least
about theology." The truth is exactly the other way. The more clearly
one sees "the grand procession of causes and effects," the more awful
his reverence becomes for the author of the "sublime and unbroken" law
which links them together. Not self-conceit and rebellious pride, but
unspeakable humility, and a deep sense of the measureless distance
between the Creator and the creature, fills the mind of him who looks
with a rational spirit upon the works of the All-wise One. The heart
of Newton repeats the solemn confession of David: "When I consider thy
heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast
ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man
that thou visitest him?" At the same time, the lamentable fact must be
admitted that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" to some persons.
The sciolist with a mere smattering of physical knowledge is apt to
mistake himself for a philosopher, and swelling with his own importance,
he gives out, like Simon Magus, "that himself is some great one." His
vanity becomes inflamed more and more, until he begins to think he
knows all things. He takes every occasion to show his accomplishments by
finding fault with the works of creation* and Providence; and this is an
exercise in which he cannot long continue without learning to disbelieve
in any Being greater than himself. It was to such a person, and not
to the unpretending simpleton, that Solomon applied his often quoted
aphorism: "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." These are
what Paul refers to as "vain babblings and the opposition of science,
falsely so called;" but they are perfectly powerless to stop or turn
aside the great current of human thought on the subject of Christian
theology. That majestic stream, supplied from a thousand unfailing
fountains, rolls on and will roll forever.

Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.

Mr. Ingersoll is not, as some have estimated him, the most formidable
enemy that Christianity has encountered since the time of Julian the
Apostate. But he stands at the head of living infidels, "by merit raised
to that bad eminence." His mental organization has the peculiar defects
which fit him for such a place. He is all imagination and no discretion.
He rises sometimes into a region of wild poetry, where he can color
everything to suit himself. His motto well expresses the character of
his argumentation—"mountains are as unstable as clouds:" a fancy is
as good as a fact, and a high-sounding period is rather better than a
logical demonstration. His inordinate self-confidence makes him at once
ferocious and fearless. He was a practical politician before he "took
the stump" against Christianity, and at all times he has proved his
capacity to "split the ears of the groundlings," and make the unskillful
laugh. The article before us is the least objectionable of all his
productions. Its style is higher, and better suited to the weight of
the theme. Here the violence of his fierce invective is moderated; his
scurrility gives place to an attempt at sophistry less shocking if not
more true; and his coarse jokes are either excluded altogether, or else
veiled in the decent obscurity of general terms. Such a paper from such
a man, at a time like the present, is not wholly unworthy of a grave
contradiction.

He makes certain charges which we answer by an explicit denial, and thus
an issue is made, upon which, as a pleader would say, we "put
ourselves upon the country." He avers that a certain "something called
Christianity" is a false faith imposed on the world without evidence;
that the facts it pretends to rest on are mere inventions; that its
doctrines are pernicious; that its requirements are unreasonable,
and that its sanctions are cruel. I deny all this, and assert, on the
contrary, that its doctrines are divinely revealed; its fundamental
facts incontestably proved; its morality perfectly free from all taint
of error, and its influence most beneficent upon society in general, and
upon all individuals who accept it and make it their rule of action.

How shall this be determined? Not by what we call divine revelation, for
that would be begging the question; not by sentiment, taste, or temper,
for these are as likely to be false as true; but by inductive reasoning
from evidence, of which the value is to be measured according to those
rules of logic which enlightened and just men everywhere have adopted to
guide them in the search for truth. We can appeal only to that rational
love of justice, and that detestation of falsehood, which fair-minded
persons of good intelligence bring to the consideration of other
important subjects when it becomes their duty to decide upon them. In
short, I want a decision upon sound judicial principles.

Gibson, the great Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, once said to certain
skeptical friends of his: "Give Christianity a common-law trial; submit
the evidence pro and con to an impartial jury under the direction of
a competent court, and the verdict will assuredly be in its favor." This
deliverance, coming from the most illustrious judge of his time, not at
all given to expressions of sentimental piety, and quite incapable of
speaking on any subject for mere effect, staggered the unbelief of those
who heard it. I did not know him then, except by his great reputation
for ability and integrity, but my thoughts were strongly influenced by
his authority, and I learned to set a still higher value upon all his
opinions, when, in after life, I was honored with his close and intimate
friendship.

Let Christianity have a trial on Mr. Ingersoll's indictment, and give
us a decision secundum allegata et probata. I will confine myself
strictly to the record; that is to say, I will meet the accusations
contained in this paper, and not those made elsewhere by him or others.

His first specification against Christianity is the belief of its
disciples "that there is a personal God, the creator of the material
universe." If God made the world it was a most stupendous miracle, and
all miracles, according to Mr. Ingersoll's idea are "the children of
mendacity." To admit the one great miracle of creation would be an
admission that other miracles are at least probable, and that would ruin
his whole case. But you cannot catch the leviathan of atheism with a
hook. The universe, he says, is natural—it came into being of its own
accord; it made its own laws at the start, and afterward improved itself
considerably by spontaneous evolution. It would be a mere waste of
time and space to enumerate the proofs which show that the universe was
created by a pre-existent and self-conscious Being, of power and wisdom
to us inconceivable. Conviction of the fact (miraculous though it
be) forces itself on every one whose mental faculties are healthy and
tolerably well balanced. The notion that all things owe their origin and
their harmonious arrangement to the fortuitous concurrence of atoms is
a kind of lunacy which very few men in these days are afflicted with. I
hope I may safely assume it as certain that all, or nearly all, who read
this page will have sense and reason enough to see for themselves that
the plan of the universe could not have been designed without a Designer
or executed without a Maker.

But Mr. Ingersoll asserts that, at all events, this material world had
not a good and beneficent creator; it is a bad, savage, cruel piece of
work, with its pestilences, storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes; and man,
with his liability to sickness, suffering, and death, is not a success,
but, on the contrary, a failure. To defend the Creator of the world
against an arraignment so foul as this would be almost as unbecoming
as to make the accusation. We have neither jurisdiction nor capacity
to rejudge the justice of God. Why man is made to fill this particular
place in the scale of creation—a little lower than the angels, yet far
above the brutes; not passionless and pure, like the former, nor mere
machines, like the latter; able to stand, yet free to fall; knowing the
right, and accountable for going wrong; gifted with reason, and impelled
by self-love to exercise the faculty—these are questions on which we
may have our speculative opinions, but knowledge is out of our reach.
Meantime, we do not discredit our mental independence by taking it for
granted that the Supreme Being has done all things well. Our ignorance
of the whole scheme makes us poor critics upon the small part that comes
within our limited perceptions. Seeming defects in the structure of
the world may be its most perfect ornament—all apparent harshness the
tenderest of mercies.
    "All discord, harmony not understood,
    All partial evil, universal good."

But worse errors are imputed to God as moral ruler of the world than
those charged against him as creator. He made man badly, but governed
him worse; if the Jehovah of the Old Testament was not merely an
imaginary being, then, according to Mr. Ingersoll, he was a prejudiced,
barbarous, criminal tyrant. We will see what ground he lays, if any, for
these outrageous assertions.

Mainly, principally, first and most important of all, is the unqualified
assertion that the "moral code" which Jehovah gave to his people "is
in many respects abhorrent to every good and tender man." Does Mr.
Ingersoll know what he is talking about? The moral code of the Bible
consists of certain immutable rules to govern the conduct of all men, at
all times and all places, in their private and personal relations with
one another. It is entirely separate and apart from the civil polity,
the religious forms, the sanitary provisions, the police regulations,
and the system of international law laid down for the special and
exclusive observance of the Jewish people. This is a distinction which
every intelligent man knows how to make. Has Mr. Ingersoll fallen into
the egregious blunder of confounding these things? or, understanding the
true sense of his words, is he rash and shameless enough to assert that
the moral code of the Bible excites the abhorrence of good men? In
fact, and in truth, this moral code, which he reviles, instead of being
abhorred, is entitled to, and has received, the profoundest respect of
all honest and sensible persons. The second table of the Decalogue is a
perfect compendium of those duties which every man owes to himself, his
family, and his neighbor. In a few simple words, which he can commit
to memory almost in a minute, it teaches him to purify his heart from
covetousness; to live decently, to injure nobody in reputation, person,
or property, and to give every one his own. By the poets, the prophets,
and the sages of Israel, these great elements are expanded into a volume
of minuter rules, so clear, so impressive, and yet so solemn and so
lofty, that no pre-existing system of philosophy can compare with it for
a moment. If this vain mortal is not blind with passion, he will see,
upon reflection, that he has attacked the Old Testament precisely where
it is most impregnable.

Dismissing his groundless charge against the moral code, we come to his
strictures on the civil government of the Jews, which he says was so bad
and unjust that the Lawgiver by whom it was established must have been
as savagely cruel as the Creator that made storms and pestilences; and
the work of both was more worthy of a devil than a God. His language
is recklessly bad, very defective in method, and altogether lacking
in precision. But, apart from the ribaldry of it, which I do not
feel myself bound to notice, I find four objections to the Jewish
constitution—not more than four—which are definite enough to admit
of an answer. These relate to the provisions of the Mosaic law on
the subjects of (1) Blasphemy and Idolatry; (2) War; (3) Slavery; (4)
Polygamy. In these respects he pronounces the Jewish system not only
unwise but criminally unjust.

Here let me call attention to the difficulty of reasoning about justice
with a man who has no acknowledged standard of right and wrong. What is
justice? That which accords with law; and the supreme law is the will of
God. But I am dealing with an adversary who does not admit that there is
a God. Then for him there is no standard at all; one thing is as right
as another, and all things are equally wrong. Without a sovereign
ruler there is no law, and where there is no law there can be no
transgression. It is the misfortune of the atheistic theory that it
makes the moral world an anarchy; it refers all ethical questions to
that confused tribunal where chaos sits as umpire and "by decision more
embroils the fray." But through the whole of this cloudy paper there
runs a vein of presumptuous egotism which says as plainly as words can
speak it that the author holds himself to be the ultimate judge of
all good and evil; what he approves is right, and what he dislikes is
certainly wrong. Of course I concede nothing to a claim like that. I
will not admit that the Jewish constitution is a thing to be condemned
merely because he curses it. I appeal from his profane malediction to
the conscience of men who have a rule to judge by. Such persons will
readily see that his specific objections to the statesmanship which
established the civil government of the Hebrew people are extremely
shallow, and do not furnish the shade of an excuse for the indecency of
his general abuse.

First. He regards the punishments inflicted for blasphemy and idolatry
as being immoderately cruel. Considering them merely as religious
offences,—as sins against God alone,—I agree that civil laws should
notice them not at all. But sometimes they affect very injuriously
certain social rights which it is the duty of the state to protect.
Wantonly to shock the religious feelings of your neighbor is a grievous
wrong. To utter blasphemy or obscenity in the presence of a Christian
woman is hardly better than to strike her in the face. Still, neither
policy nor justice requires them to be ranked among the highest crimes
in a government constituted like ours. But things were wholly different
under the Jewish theocracy, where God was the personal head of the
state. There blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance; idolatry
was an overt act of treason; to worship the gods of the hostile heathen
was deserting to the public enemy, and giving him aid and comfort. These
are crimes which every independent community has always punished with
the utmost rigor. In our own very recent history, they were repressed at
the cost of more lives than Judea ever contained at any one time.

Mr. Ingersoll not only ignores these considerations, but he goes the
length of calling God a religious persecutor and a tyrant because he
does not encourage and reward the service and devotion paid by his
enemies to the false gods of the pagan world. He professes to believe
that all kinds of worship are equally meritorious, and should meet the
same acceptance from the true God. It is almost incredible that such
drivel as this should be uttered by anybody. But Mr. Ingersoll not only
expresses the thought plainly—he urges it with the most extravagant
figures of his florid rhetoric. He quotes the first commandment, in
which Jehovah claims for himself the exclusive worship of His people,
and cites, in contrast, the promise put in the mouth of Brahma, that
he will appropriate the worship of all gods to himself, and reward all
worshipers alike. These passages being compared, he declares the first
"a dungeon, where crawl the things begot of jealous slime;" the other,
"great as the domed firmament, inlaid with suns." Why is the living God,
whom Christians believe to be the Lord of liberty and Father of lights,
denounced as the keeper of a loathsome dungeon? Because he refuses to
encourage and reward the worship of Mammon and Moloch, of Belial and
Baal; of Bacchus, with its drunken orgies, and Venus, with its wanton
obscenities; the bestial religion which degraded the soul of Egypt and
the "dark idolatries of alienated Judah," polluted with the moral filth
of all the nations round about.

Let the reader decide whether this man, entertaining such sentiments and
opinions, is fit to be a teacher, or at all likely to lead us in the way
we should go.

Second. Under the constitution which God provided for the Jews, they
had, like every other nation, the war-making power. They could not have
lived a day without it. The right to exist implied the right to repel,
with all their strength, the opposing force which threatened their
destruction. It is true, also, that in the exercise of this power they
did not observe those rules of courtesy and humanity which have been
adopted in modern times by civilized belligerents. Why? Because their
enemies, being mere savages, did not understand and would not practise,
any rule whatever; and the Jews were bound ex necessitate rei—not
merely justified by the lex talionis—to do as their enemies did. In
your treatment of hostile barbarians, you not only may lawfully, but
must necessarily, adopt their mode of warfare. If they come to conquer
you, they may be conquered by you; if they give no quarter, they
are entitled to none; if the death of your whole population be their
purpose, you may defeat it by exterminating theirs. This sufficiently
answers the silly talk of atheists and semi-atheists about the warlike
wickedness of the Jews.

But Mr. Ingersoll positively, and with the emphasis of supreme and
all-sufficient authority, declares that "a war of conquest is simply
murder." He sustains this proposition by no argument founded in
principle. He puts sentiment in place of law, and denounces aggressive
fighting because it is offensive to his "tender and refined soul;" the
atrocity of it is therefore proportioned to the sensibilities of his own
heart. He proves war a desperately wicked thing by continually vaunting
his own love for small children. Babes—sweet babes—the prattle of
babes—are the subjects of his most pathetic eloquence, and his idea
of music is embodied in the commonplace expression of a Hindu, that the
lute is sweet only to those who have not heard the prattle of their own
children. All this is very amiable in him, and the more so, perhaps,
as these objects of his affection are the young ones of a race in
his opinion miscreated by an evil-working chance. But his
philoprogenitiveness proves nothing against Jew or Gentile, seeing
that all have it in an equal degree, and those feel it most who make the
least parade of it. Certainly it gives him no authority to malign the
God who implanted it alike in the hearts of us all. But I admit that his
benevolence becomes peculiar and ultra when it extends to beasts as well
as babes. He is struck with horror by the sacrificial solemnities of
the Jewish religion. "The killing of those animals was," he says, "a
terrible system," a "shedding of innocent blood," "shocking to a
refined and sensitive soul." There is such a depth of tenderness in this
feeling, and such a splendor of refinement, that I give up without
a struggle to the superiority of a man who merely professes it. A
carnivorous American, full of beef and mutton, who mourns with indignant
sorrow because bulls and goats were killed in Judea three thousand
years ago, has reached the climax of sentimental goodness, and should
be permitted to dictate on all questions of peace and war. Let Grotius,
Vattel, and Pufendorf, as well as Moses and the prophets, hide their
diminished heads.

But to show how inefficacious, for all practical purposes, a mere
sentiment is when substituted for a principle, it is only necessary to
recollect that Mr. Ingersoll is himself a warrior who staid not behind
the mighty men of his tribe when they gathered themselves together for
a war of conquest. He took the lead of a regiment as eager as himself
to spoil the Philistines, "and out he went a-coloneling." How many
Amale-kites, and Hittites, and Amorites he put to the edge of the sword,
how many wives he widowed, or how many mothers he "unbabed" cannot
now be told. I do not even know how many droves of innocent oxen he
condemned to the slaughter.

But it is certain that his refined and tender soul took great pleasure
in the terror, conflagration, blood, and tears with which the war was
attended, and in all the hard oppressions which the conquered people
were made to suffer afterwards. I do not say that the war was either
better or worse for his participation and approval. But if his own
conduct (for which he professes neither penitence nor shame) was right,
it was right on grounds which make it an inexcusable outrage to call the
children of Israel savage criminals for carrying on wars of aggression
to save the life of their government. These inconsistencies are the
necessary consequence of having no rule of action and no guide for the
conscience. When a man throws away the golden metewand of the law which
God has provided, and takes the elastic cord of feeling for his measure
of righteousness, you cannot tell from day to day what he will think or
do.

Third. But Jehovah permitted his chosen people to hold the captives
they took in war or purchased from the heathen as servants for life.
This was slavery, and Mr. Ingersoll declares that "in all civilized
countries it is not only admitted, but it is passionately asserted, that
slavery is, and always was, a hideous crime," therefore he concludes that
Jehovah was a criminal. This would be a non sequitur, even if the
premises were true. But the premises are false; civilized countries have
admitted no such thing. That slavery is a crime, under all circumstances
and at all times, is a doctrine first started by the adherents of a
political faction in this country, less than forty years ago. They
denounced God and Christ for not agreeing with them, in terms very
similar to those used here by Mr. Ingersoll. But they did not constitute
the civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be told, a very
respectable portion of it. Politically, they were successful; I need not
say by what means, or with what effect upon the morals of the country.
Doubtless Mr. Ingersoll gets a great advantage by invoking their
passions and their interests to his aid, and he knows how to use it.
I can only say that, whether American Abolitionism was right or wrong
under the circumstances in which we were placed, my faith and my reason
both assure me that the infallible God proceeded upon good grounds when
he authorized slavery in Judea. Subordination of inferiors to superiors
is the groundwork of human society. All improvement of our race, in this
world and the next, must come from obedience to some master better and
wiser than ourselves. There can be no question that, when a Jew took
a neighboring savage for his bond-servant, incorporated him into his
family, tamed him, taught him to work, and gave him a knowledge of the
true God, he conferred upon him a most beneficent boon.

Fourth. Polygamy is another of his objections to the Mosaic
constitution. Strange to say, it is not there. It is neither commanded
nor prohibited; it is only discouraged. If Mr. Ingersoll were a
statesman instead of a mere politician, he would see good and sufficient
reasons for the forbearance to legislate directly upon the subject. It
would be improper for me to set them forth here. He knows, probably,
that the influence of the Christian Church alone, and without the aid
of state enactments, has extirpated this bad feature of Asiatic manners
wherever its doctrines were carried. As the Christian faith prevails in
any community, in that proportion precisely marriage is consecrated
to its true purpose, and all intercourse between the sexes refined
and purified. Mr. Ingersoll got his own devotion to the principle of
monogamy—his own respect for the highest type of female character—his
own belief in the virtue of fidelity to one good wife—from the example
and precept of his Christian parents. I speak confidently, because these
are sentiments which do not grow in the heart of the natural man without
being planted. Why, then, does he throw polygamy into the face of the
religion which abhors it? Because he is nothing if not political. The
Mormons believe in polygamy, and the Mormons are unpopular. They are
guilty of having not only many wives but much property, and if a war
could be hissed up against them, its fruits might be more "gaynefull
pilladge than wee doe now conceyve of." It is a cunning maneuver, this,
of strengthening atheism by enlisting anti-Mormon rapacity against the
God of the Christians. I can only protest against the use he would make
of these and other political interests. It is not argument; it is mere
stump oratory.

I think I have repelled all of Mr. Ingersoll's accusations against the
Old Testament that are worth noticing, and I might stop here. But I will
not close upon him without letting him see, at least, some part of the
case on the other side.

I do not enumerate in detail the positive proofs which support the
authenticity of the Hebrew Bible, though they are at hand in great
abundance, because the evidence in support of the new dispensation will
establish the verity of the old—the two being so connected together
that if one is true the other cannot be false.

When Jesus of Nazareth announced himself to be Christ, the Son of God,
in Judea, many thousand persons who heard his words and saw his works
believed in his divinity without hesitation. Since the morning of the
creation, nothing has occurred so wonderful as the rapidity with which
this religion spread itself abroad. Men who were in the noon of life
when Jesus was put to death as a malefactor lived to see him worshiped
as God by organized bodies of believers in every province of the Roman
empire. In a few more years it took complete possession of the general
mind, supplanted all other religions, and wrought a radical change in
human society. It did this in the face of obstacles which, according to
every human calculation, were insurmountable. It was antagonized by all
the evil propensities, the sensual wickedness, and the vulgar crimes of
the multitude, as well as the polished vices of the luxurious classes;
and was most violently opposed even by those sentiments and habits of
thought which were esteemed virtuous, such as patriotism and military
heroism. It encountered not only the ignorance and superstition, but
the learning and philosophy, the poetry, eloquence, and art of the time.
Barbarism and civilization were alike its deadly enemies. The priesthood
of every established religion and the authority of every government were
arrayed against it. All these, combined together and roused to ferocious
hostility, were overcome, not by the enticing words of man's wisdom, but
by the simple presentation of a pure and peaceful doctrine, preached
by obscure strangers at the daily peril of their lives. Is it Mr.
Ingersoll's idea that this happened by chance, like the creation of the
world? If not, there are but two other ways to account for it; either
the evidence by which the Apostles were able to prove the supernatural
origin of the gospel was overwhelming and irresistible, or else its
propagation was provided for and carried on by the direct aid of the
Divine Being himself. Between these two, infidelity may make its own
choice.

Just here another dilemma presents its horns to our adversary. If
Christianity was a human fabrication, its authors must have been either
good men or bad. It is a moral impossibility—a mere contradiction in
terms—to say that good, honest, and true men practised a gross and
willful deception upon the world. It is equally incredible that any
combination of knaves, however base, would fraudulently concoct a
religious system to denounce themselves, and to invoke the curse of God
upon their own conduct. Men that love lies, love not such lies as that.
Is there any way out of this difficulty, except by confessing that
Christianity is what it purports to be—a divine revelation?

The acceptance of Christianity by a large portion of the generation
contemporary with its Founder and his apostles was, under the
circumstances, an adjudication as solemn and authoritative as mortal
intelligence could pronounce. The record of that judgment has come down
to us, accompanied by the depositions of the principal witnesses. In
the course of eighteen centuries many efforts have been made to open
the judgment or set it aside on the ground that the evidence was
insufficient to support it. But on every rehearing the wisdom and virtue
of mankind have re-affirmed it. And now comes Mr. Ingersoll, to try
the experiment of another bold, bitter, and fierce reargument. I will
present some of the considerations which would compel me, if I were
a judge or juror in the cause, to decide it just as it was decided
originally.

First. There is no good reason to doubt that the statements of the
evangelists, as we have them now, are genuine. The multiplication of
copies was a sufficient guarantee against any material alteration of the
text. Mr. Ingersoll speaks of interpolations made by the fathers of the
Church. All he knows and all he has ever heard on that subject is
that some of the innumerable transcripts contained errors which were
discovered and corrected. That simply proves the present integrity of
the documents.

Second. I call these statements depositions, because they are
entitled to that kind of credence which we give to declarations made
under oath—but in a much higher degree, for they are more than sworn
to. They were made in the immediate prospect of death. Perhaps this
would not affect the conscience of an atheist,—neither would an
oath,—but these people manifestly believed in a judgment after death,
before a God of truth, whose displeasure they feared above all things.

Third. The witnesses could not have been mistaken. The nature of the
facts precluded the possibility of any delusion about them. For every
averment they had "the sensible and true avouch of their own eyes" and
ears. Besides, they were plain-thinking, sober, unimaginative men, who,
unlike Mr. Ingersoll, always, under all circumstances, and especially
in the presence of eternity, recognized the difference between mountains
and clouds. It is inconceivable how any fact could be proven by evidence
more conclusive than the statement of such persons, publicly given and
steadfastly persisted in through every kind of persecution, imprisonment
and torture to the last agonies of a lingering death.

Fourth. Apart from these terrible tests, the more ordinary claims to
credibility are not wanting. They were men of unimpeachable character.
The most virulent enemies of the cause they spoke and died for have
never suggested a reason for doubting their personal honesty. But there
is affirmative proof that they and their fellow-disciples were held by
those who knew them in the highest estimation for truthfulness. Wherever
they made their report it was not only believed, but believed with a
faith so implicit that thousands were ready at once to seal it with
their blood.

Fifth. The tone and temper of their narrative impress us with a
sentiment of profound respect. It is an artless, unimpassioned, simple
story. No argument, no rhetoric, no epithets, no praises of friends, no
denunciation of enemies, no attempts at concealment. How strongly these
qualities commend the testimony of a witness to the confidence of judge
and jury is well known to all who have any experience in such matters.

Sixth. The statements made by the evangelists are alike upon every
important point, but are different in form and expression, some of
them including details which the others omit. These variations make it
perfectly certain that there could have been no previous concert
between the witnesses, and that each spoke independently of the
others, according to his own conscience and from his own knowledge. In
considering the testimony of several witnesses to the same transaction,
their substantial agreement upon the main facts, with circumstantial
differences in the detail, is always regarded as the great
characteristic of truth and honesty. There is no rule of evidence
more universally adopted than this—none better sustained by general
experience, or more immovably fixed in the good sense of mankind. Mr.
Ingersoll, himself, admits the rule and concedes its soundness. The
logical consequence of that admission is that we are bound to take this
evidence as incontestably true. But mark the infatuated perversity
with which he seeks to evade it. He says that when we claim that the
witnesses were inspired, the rule does not apply, because the witnesses
then speak what is known to him who inspired them, and all must speak
exactly the same, even to the minutest detail. Mr. Ingersoll's notion
of an inspired witness is that he is no witness at all, but an
irresponsible medium who unconsciously and involuntarily raps out
or writes down whatever he is prompted to say. But this is a false
assumption, not countenanced or even suggested by anything contained in
the Scriptures. The apostles and evangelists are expressly declared
to be witnesses, in the proper sense of the word, called and sent to
testify the truth according to their knowledge. If they had all told
the same story in the same way, without variation, and accounted for its
uniformity by declaring that they were inspired, and had spoken without
knowing whether their words were true or false, where would have been
their claim to credibility? But they testified what they knew; and here
comes an infidel critic impugning their testimony because the impress of
truth is stamped upon its face.

Seventh. It does not appear that the statements of the evangelists
were ever denied by any person who pretended to know the facts. Many
there were in that age and afterward who resisted the belief that
Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and only Saviour of man; but his
wonderful works, the miraculous purity of his life, the unapproachable
loftiness of his doctrines, his trial and condemnation by a judge who
pronounced him innocent, his patient suffering, his death on the
cross, and resurrection from the grave,—of these not the faintest
contradiction was attempted, if we except the false and feeble story
which the elders and chief priests bribed the guard at the tomb to put
in circulation.

Eighth. What we call the fundamental truths of Christianity consist
of great public events which are sufficiently established by history
without special proof. The value of mere historical evidence increases
according to the importance of the facts in question, their general
notoriety, and the magnitude of their visible consequences. Cornwallis
surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, and changed the destiny of Europe
and America. Nobody would think of calling a witness or even citing an
official report to prove it. Julius Caesar was assassinated. We do not
need to prove that fact like an ordinary murder. He was master of the
world, and his death was followed by a war with the conspirators, the
battle at Philippi, the quarrel of the victorious triumvirs, Actium, and
the permanent establishment of imperial government under Augustus. The
life and character, the death and resurrection, of Jesus are just as
visibly connected with events which even an infidel must admit to be of
equal importance. The Church rose and armed herself in righteousness for
conflict with the powers of darkness; innumerable multitudes of the best
and wisest rallied to her standard and died in her cause; her enemies
employed the coarse and vulgar machinery of human government against
her, and her professors were brutally murdered in large numbers, her
triumph was complete; the gods of Greece and Rome crumbled on their
altars; the world was revolutionized and human society was transformed.
The course of these events, and a thousand others, which reach down to
the present hour, received its first propulsion from the transcendent
fact of Christ's crucifixion. Moreover, we find the memorial monuments
of the original truth planted all along the way. The sacraments of
baptism and the supper constantly point us back to the author and
finisher of our faith. The mere historical evidence is for these reasons
much stronger than what we have for other occurrences which are regarded
as undeniable. When to this is added the cumulative evidence given
directly and positively by eye-witnesses of irreproachable character,
and wholly uncontradicted, the proof becomes so strong that the
disbelief we hear of seems like a kind of insanity.
    "It is the very error of the moon,
    Which comes more near the earth than she was wont,
    And makes men mad!"

From the facts established by this evidence, it follows irresistibly
that the Gospel has come to us from God. That silences all reasoning
about the wisdom and justice of its doctrines, since it is impossible,
even to imagine that wrong can be done or commanded by that Sovereign
Being whose will alone is the ultimate standard of all justice.

But Mr. Ingersoll is still dissatisfied. He raises objections as false,
fleeting, and baseless as clouds, and insists that they are as stable as
the mountains, whose everlasting foundations are laid by the hand of the
Almighty. I will compress his propositions into plain words printed in
italics, and, taking a look at his misty creations, let them roll away
and vanish into air, one after another.

Christianity offers eternal salvation as the reward of belief alone.
This is a misrepresentation simple and naked. No such doctrine is
propounded in the Scriptures, or in the creed of any Christian church.
On the contrary, it is distinctly taught that faith avails nothing
without repentance, reformation, and newness of life.

The mere failure to believe it is punished in hell. I have never known
any Christian man or woman to assert this. It is universally agreed that
children too young to understand it do not need to believe it. And this
exemption extends to adults who have never seen the evidence, or, from
weakness of intellect, are incapable of weighing it. Lunatics and idiots
are not in the least danger, and for aught I know, this category may, by
a stretch of God's mercy, include minds constitutionally sound, but with
faculties so perverted by education, habit, or passion that they are
incapable of reasoning. I sincerely hope that, upon this or some other
principle, Mr. Ingersoll may escape the hell he talks about so much. But
there is no direct promise to save him in spite of himself. The plan
of redemption contains no express covenant to pardon one who rejects
it with scorn and hatred. Our hope for him rests upon the infinite
compassion of that gracious Being who prayed on the cross for the
insulting enemies who nailed him there.

The mystery of the second birth is incomprehensible. Christ
established a new kingdom in the world, but not of it. Subjects were
admitted to the privileges and protection of its government by a process
equivalent to naturalization. To be born again, or regenerated is to be
naturalized. The words all mean the same thing. Does Mr. Ingersoll want
to disgrace his own intellect by pretending that he cannot see this
simple analogy?

The doctrine of the atonement is absurd, unjust, and immoral. The
plan of salvation, or any plan for the rescue of sinners from the legal
operation of divine justice, could have been framed only in the councils
of the Omniscient. Necessarily its heights and depths are not easily
fathomed by finite intelligence. But the greatest, ablest, wisest,
and most virtuous men that ever lived have given it their profoundest
consideration, and found it to be not only authorized by revelation,
but theoretically conformed to their best and highest conceptions of
infinite goodness. Nevertheless, here is a rash and superficial man,
without training or habits of reflection, who, upon a mere glance,
declares that it "must be abandoned," because it seems to him "absurd,
unjust, and immoral." I would not abridge his freedom of thought or
speech, and the argumentum ad verecundiam would be lost upon him.
Otherwise I might suggest that, when he finds all authority, human and
divine, against him, he had better speak in a tone less arrogant.

_He does not comprehend how justice and mercy can be blended together in
the plan of redemption, and therefore it cannot be true_. A thing is
not necessarily false because he does not understand it: he cannot
annihilate a principle or a fact by ignoring it. There are many truths
in heaven and earth which no man can see through; for instance, the
union of man's soul with his body, is not only an unknowable but an
unimaginable mystery. Is it therefore false that a connection does exist
between matter and spirit?

_How, he asks, can the sufferings of an innocent person satisfy justice
for the sins of the guilty?_ This raises a metaphysical question, which
it is not necessary or possible for me to discuss here. As matter of
fact, Christ died that sinners might be reconciled to God, and in that
sense he died for them; that is, to furnish them with the means of
averting divine justice, which their crimes had provoked..

_What, he again asks, would we think of a man who allowed another to die
for a crime which he himself had committed?_ I answer that a man who, by
any contrivance, causes his own offence to be visited upon the head of
an innocent person is unspeakably depraved. But are Christians guilty of
this baseness because they accept the blessings of an institution which
their great benefactor died to establish? Loyalty to the King who
has erected a most beneficent government for us at the cost of his
life—fidelity to the Master who bought us with his blood—is not the
fraudulent substitution of an innocent person in place of a criminal.

_The doctrine of non-resistance, forgiveness of injuries, reconciliation
with enemies, as taught in the New Testament, is the child of weakness,
degrading and unjust_. This is the whole substance of a long, rambling
diatribe, as incoherent as a sick man's dream. Christianity does not
forbid the necessary defense of civil society, or the proper vindication
of personal rights. But to cherish animosity, to thirst for mere
revenge, to hoard up wrongs, real or fancied, and lie in wait for the
chance of paying them back; to be impatient, unforgiving, malicious,
and cruel to all who have crossed us—these diabolical propensities
are checked and curbed by the authority and spirit of the Christian
religion, and the application of it has converted men from low savages
into refined and civilized beings.

The punishment of sinners in eternal hell is excessive. The future of
the soul is a subject on which we have very dark views. In our present
state, the mind takes no idea except what is conveyed to it through the
bodily senses. All our conceptions of the spiritual world are derived
from some analogy to material things, and this analogy must necessarily
be very remote, because the nature of the subjects compared is so
diverse that a close similarity cannot be even supposed. No revelation
has lifted the veil between time and eternity; but in shadowy figures we
are warned that a very marked distinction will be made between the
good and the bad in the next world. Speculative opinions concerning the
punishment of the wicked, its nature and duration, vary with the temper
and the imaginations of men. Doubtless we are many of us in error; but
how can Mr. Ingersoll enlighten us? Acknowledge ing no standard of
right and wrong in this world, he can have no theory of rewards and
punishments in the next. The deeds done in the body, whether good or
evil, are all morally alike in his eyes, and if there be in heaven a
congregation of the just, he sees no reason why the worst rogue should
not be a member of it. It is supposed, however, that man has a soul as
well as a body, and that both are subject to certain laws, which cannot
be violated without incurring the proper penalty—or consequence, if he
likes that word better.

_If Christ was God, he knew that his followers would persecute and
murder men for their opinions; yet he did not forbid it_. There is
but one way to deal with this accusation, and that is to contradict it
flatly. Nothing can be conceived more striking than the prohibition, not
only of persecution, but of all the passions which lead or incite to
it. No follower of Christ indulges in malice even to his enemy without
violating the plainest rule of his faith. He cannot love God and hate
his brother: if he says he can, St. John pronounces him a liar. The
broadest benevolence, universal philanthropy, inexhaustible charity,
are inculcated in every line of the New Testament. It is plain that
Mr. Ingersoll never read a chapter of it; otherwise he would not have
ventured upon this palpable falsification of its doctrines. Who told him
that the devilish spirit of persecution was authorized, or encouraged,
or not forbidden, by the Gospel? The person, whoever it was, who imposed
upon his trusting ignorance should be given up to the just reprobation
of his fellow-citizens.

_Christians in modern times carry on wars of detraction and slander
against one another_. The discussions of theological subjects by men who
believe in the fundamental doctrines of Christ are singularly free from
harshness and abuse. Of course I cannot speak with absolute certainty,
but I believe most confidently that there is not in all the religious
polemics of this century as much slanderous invective as can be found
in any ten lines of Mr. Ingersoll's writings. Of course I do not include
political preachers among my models of charity and forbearance. They
are a mendacious set, but Christianity is no more responsible for their
misconduct than it is for the treachery of Judas Iscariot or the wrongs
done to Paul by Alexander the coppersmith.

_But, says he, Christians have been guilty of wanton and wicked
Persecution_. It is true that some persons, professing Christianity,
have violated the fundamental principles of their faith by inflicting
violent injuries and bloody wrongs upon their fellow-men. But the
perpetrators of these outrages were in fact not Christians: they were
either hypocrites from the beginning or else base apostates—infidels or
something worse—hireling wolves, whose gospel was their maw. Not one of
them ever pretended to find a warrant for his conduct in any precept
of Christ or any doctrine of his Church. All the wrongs of this nature
which history records have been the work of politicians, aided often by
priests and ministers who were willing to deny their Lord and desert to
the enemy, for the sake of their temporal interests. Take the cases most
commonly cited and see if this be not a true account of them. The
auto da fe of Spain and Portugal, the burnings at Smithfield, and the
whipping of women in Massachusetts, were the outcome of a cruel, false,
and antichristian policy. Coligny and his adherents were killed by
an order of Charles IX., at the instance of the Guises, who headed a
hostile faction, and merely for reasons of state. Louis XIV. revoked the
edict of Nantes, and banished the Waldenses under pain of confiscation
and death; but this was done on the declared ground that the victims
were not safe subjects. The brutal atrocities of Cromwell and the
outrages of the Orange lodges against the Irish Catholics were not
persecutions by religious people, but movements as purely political as
those of the Know-Nothings, Plug-Uglys, and Blood-Tubs of this country.
If the Gospel should be blamed for these acts in opposition to its
principles, why not also charge it with the cruelties of Nero, or the
present persecution of the Jesuits by the infidel republic of France?

Christianity is opposed to freedom of thought. The kingdom of Christ
is based upon certain principles, to which it requires the assent of
every one who would enter therein. If you are unwilling to own his
authority and conform your moral conduct to his laws, you cannot
expect that he will admit you to the privileges of his government. But
naturalization is not forced upon you if you prefer to be an alien. The
Gospel makes the strongest and tenderest appeal to the heart, reason,
and conscience of man—entreats him to take thought for his own highest
interest, and by all its moral influence provokes him to good works;
but he is not constrained by any kind of duress to leave the service or
relinquish the wages of sin. Is there anything that savors of tyranny in
this? A man of ordinary judgment will say, no. But Mr. Ingersoll thinks
it as oppressive as the refusal of Jehovah to reward the worship of
demons.

The gospel of Christ does not satisfy the hunger of the heart.
That depends upon what kind of a heart it is. If it hungers after
righteousness, it will surely be filled. It is probable, also, that if
it hungers for the filthy food of a godless philosophy it will get what
its appetite demands. That was an expressive phrase which Carlyle used
when he called modern infidelity "the gospel of dirt." Those who are
greedy to swallow it will doubless be supplied satisfactorily.

Accounts of miracles are always false. Are miracles impossible? No one
will say so who opens his eyes to the miracles of creation with which
we are surrounded on every hand. You cannot even show that they are
a priori improbable. God would be likely to reveal his will to the
rational creatures who were required to obey it; he would authenticate
in some way the right of prophets and apostles to speak in his name;
supernatural power was the broad seal which he affixed to their
commission. From this it follows that the improbability of a miracle is
no greater than the original improbability of a revelation, and that is
not improbable at all. Therefore, if the miracles of the New Testament
are proved by sufficient evidence, we believe them as we believe any
other established fact. They become deniable only when it is shown that
the great miracle of making the world was never performed. Accordingly
Mr. Ingersoll abolishes creation first, and thus clears the way to his
dogmatic conclusion that all miracles are "the children of mendacity."

_Christianity is pernicious in its moral effect, darkens the mind,
narrows the soul, arrests the progress of human society, and hinders
civilization_. Mr. Ingersoll, as a zealous apostle of "the gospel of
dirt," must be expected to throw a good deal of mud. But this is too
much: it injures himself instead of defiling the object of his assault.
When I answer that all we have of virtue, justice, intellectual liberty,
moral elevation, refinement, benevolence, and true wisdom came to us
from that source which he reviles as the fountain of evil, I am
not merely putting one assertion against the other; for I have
the advantage, which he has not, of speaking what every tolerably
well-informed man knows to be true. Reflect what kind of a world this
was when the disciples of Christ undertook to reform it, and compare it
with the condition in which their teachings have put it. In its mighty
metropolis, the center of its intellectual and political power, the best
men were addicted to vices so debasing that I could not even allude to
them without soiling the paper I write upon. All manner of unprincipled
wickedness was practiced in the private life of the whole population
without concealment or shame, and the magistrates were thoroughly and
universally corrupt. Benevolence in any shape was altogether unknown.
The helpless and the weak got neither justice nor mercy. There was
no relief for the poor, no succor for the sick, no refuge for the
unfortunate. In all pagandom there was not a hospital, asylum,
almshouse, or organized charity of any sort. The indifference to human
life was literally frightful. The order of a successful leader to
assassinate his opponents was always obeyed by his followers with the
utmost alacrity and pleasure. It was a special amusement of the populace
to witness the shows at which men were compelled to kill one another,
to be torn in pieces by wild beasts, or otherwise "butchered, to make a
Roman holiday." In every province paganism enacted the same cold-blooded
cruelties; oppression and robbery ruled supreme; murder went rampaging
and red over all the earth. The Church came, and her light penetrated
this moral darkness like a new sun. She covered the globe with
institutions of mercy, and thousands upon thousands of her disciples
devoted themselves exclusively to works of charity at the sacrifice
of every earthly interest. Her earliest adherents were killed without
remorse—beheaded, crucified, sawn asunder, thrown to the beasts, or
covered with pitch, piled up in great heaps, and slowly burnt to death.
But her faith was made perfect through suffering, and the law of love
rose in triumph from the ashes of her martyrs. This religion has come
down to us through the ages, attended all the way by righteousness,
justice, temperance, mercy, transparent truthfulness, exulting hope,
and white-winged charity. Never was its influence for good more plainly
perceptible than now. It has not converted, purified, and reformed all
men, for its first principle is the freedom of the human will, and there
are those who choose to reject it. But to the mass of mankind, directly
and indirectly, it has brought uncounted benefits and blessings. Abolish
it—take away the restraints which it imposes on evil passions—silence
the admonitions of its preachers—let all Christians cease their
labors of charity—blot out from history the records of its heroic
benevolence—repeal the laws it has enacted and the institutions it has
built up—let its moral principles be abandoned and all its miracles
of light be extinguished—what would we come to? I need not answer this
question: the experiment has been partially tried. The French nation
formally renounced Christianity, denied the existence of the Supreme
Being, and so satisfied the hunger of the infidel heart for a time.
What followed? Universal depravity, garments rolled in blood, fantastic
crimes unimagined before, which startled the earth with their sublime
atrocity. The American people have and ought to have no special desire
to follow that terrible example of guilt and misery.

It is impossible to discuss this subject within the limits of a review.
No doubt the effort to be short has made me obscure. If Mr. Ingersoll
thinks himself wronged, or his doctrines misconstrued, let him not lay
my fault at the door of the Church, or cast his censure on the clergy.

"Adsum qui feci, in me convertite ferrum."

J. S. Black.

The Christian Religion, by Robert G. Ingersoll

III.

"Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do, in
order to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and religious
folly." Kant.

"Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do, in
order to become acceptable to God, is mere superstition and religious
folly." Kant.

SEVERAL months ago, The North American Review asked me to write an
article, saying that it would be published if some one would furnish a
reply. I wrote the article that appeared in the August number, and by
me it was entitled "Is All of the Bible Inspired?" Not until the
article was written did I know who was expected to answer. I make this
explanation for the purpose of dissipating the impression that Mr. Black
had been challenged by me. To have struck his shield with my lance might
have given birth to the impression that I was somewhat doubtful as to
the correctness of my position. I naturally expected an answer from some
professional theologian, and was surprised to find that a reply had been
written by a "policeman," who imagined that he had answered my arguments
by simply telling me that my statements were false. It is somewhat
unfortunate that in a discussion like this any one should resort to the
slightest personal detraction. The theme is great enough to engage the
highest faculties of the human mind, and in the investigation of such a
subject vituperation is singularly and vulgarly out of place. Arguments
cannot be answered with insults. It is unfortunate that the intellectual
arena should be entered by a "policeman," who has more confidence in
concussion than discussion. Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often
mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius.
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and
important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm.
Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic.
Epithets are the arguments of malice. Candor is the courage of the soul.
Leaving the objectionable portions of Mr. Black's reply, feeling that so
grand a subject should not be blown and tainted with malicious words, I
proceed to answer as best I may the arguments he has urged.

I am made to say that "the universe is natural"; that "it came into
being of its own accord"; that "it made its own laws at the start, and
afterward improved itself considerably by spontaneous evolution."

I did say that "the universe is natural," but I did not say that "it
came into being of its own accord"; neither did I say that "it made its
own laws and afterward improved itself." The universe, according to my
idea, is, always was, and forever will be. It did not "come into being,"
it is the one eternal being,—the only thing that ever did, does, or can
exist. It did not "make its own laws." We know nothing of what we
call the laws of nature except as we gather the idea of law from the
uniformity of phenomena springing from like conditions. To make myself
clear: Water always runs down-hill. The theist says that this happens
because there is behind the phenomenon an active law. As a matter
of fact, law is this side of the phenomenon. Law does not cause the
phenomenon, but the phenomenon causes the idea of law in our minds; and
this idea is produced from the fact that under like circumstances the
same phenomenon always happens. Mr. Black probably thinks that the
difference in the weight of rocks and clouds was created by law; that
parallel lines fail to unite only because it is illegal that diameter
and circumference could have been so made that it would be a greater
distance across than around a circle; that a straight line could enclose
a triangle if not prevented by law, and that a little legislation could
make it possible for two bodies to occupy the same space at the same
time. It seems to me that law cannot be the cause of phenomena, but is
an effect produced in our minds by their succession and resemblance.
To put a God back of the universe, compels us to admit that there was a
time when nothing existed except this God; that this God had lived from
eternity in an infinite vacuum, and in absolute idleness. The mind of
every thoughtful man is forced to one of these two conclusions:
either that the universe is self-existent, or that it was created by a
self-existent being. To my mind, there are far more difficulties in the
second hypothesis than in the first.

Of course, upon a question like this, nothing can be absolutely known.
We live on an atom called Earth, and what we know of the infinite is
almost infinitely limited; but, little as we know, all have an equal
right to give their honest thought. Life is a shadowy, strange,
and winding road on which we travel for a little way—a few short
steps—-just from the cradle, with its lullaby of love, to the low and
quiet way-side inn, where all at last must sleep, and where the only
salutation is—Good-night.

I know as little as any one else about the "plan" of the universe; and
as to the "design," I know just as little. It will not do to say that
the universe was designed, and therefore there must be a designer. There
must first be proof that it was "designed." It will not do to say that
the universe has a "plan," and then assert that there must have been an
infinite maker. The idea that a design must have a beginning and that a
designer need not, is a simple expression of human ignorance. We find
a watch, and we say: "So curious and wonderful a thing must have had a
maker." We find the watch-maker, and we say: "So curious and wonderful
a thing as man must have had a maker." We find God, and we then say: "He
is so wonderful that he must not have had a maker." In other words,
all things a little wonderful must have been created, but it is possible
for something to be so wonderful that it always existed. One would
suppose that just as the wonder increased the necessity for a creator
increased, because it is the wonder of the thing that suggests the idea
of creation. Is it possible that a designer exists from all eternity
without design? Was there no design in having an infinite designer? For
me, it is hard to see the plan or design in earthquakes and pestilences.
It is somewhat difficult to discern the design or the benevolence in so
making the world that billions of animals live only on the agonies of
others. The justice of God is not visible to me in the history of this
world. When I think of the suffering and death, of the poverty and
crime, of the cruelty and malice, of the heartlessness of this "design"
and "plan," where beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering
flesh of weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is the
result of infinite wisdom, benevolence, and justice.

Most Christians have seen and recognized this difficulty, and have
endeavored to avoid it by giving God an opportunity in another world
to rectify the seeming mistakes of this. Mr. Black, however, avoids the
entire question by saying: "We have neither jurisdiction nor capacity to
rejudge the justice of God." In other words, we have no right to think
upon this subject, no right to examine the questions most vitally
affecting human kind. We are simply to accept the ignorant statements of
barbarian dead. This question cannot be settled by saying that "it would
be a mere waste of time and space to enumerate the proofs which show
that the Universe was created by a preexistent and self-conscious
Being." The time and space should have been "wasted," and the proofs
should have been enumerated. These "proofs" are what the wisest and
greatest are trying to find. Logic is not satisfied with assertion.
It cares nothing for the opinions of the "great,"—nothing for the
prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the
dead. In the world of Science, a fact is a legal tender. Assertions and
miracles are base and spurious coins. We have the right to rejudge the
justice even of a god. No one should throw away his reason—the fruit
of all experience. It is the intellectual capital of the soul, the only
light, the only guide, and without it the brain becomes the palace of an
idiot king, attended by a retinue of thieves and hypocrites.

Of course it is admitted that most of the Ten Commandments are wise and
just. In passing, it may be well enough to say, that the commandment,
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth," was the absolute death of Art,
and that not until after the destruction of Jerusalem was there a Hebrew
painter or sculptor. Surely a commandment is not inspired that drives
from the earth the living canvas and the breathing stone—leaves all
walls bare and all the niches desolate. In the tenth commandment we find
woman placed on an exact equality with other property, which, to say the
least of it, has never tended to the amelioration of her condition.

A very curious thing about these commandments is that their supposed
author violated nearly every one. From Sinai, according to the account,
he said: "Thou shalt not kill," and yet he ordered the murder of
millions; "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and yet he gave captured
maidens to gratify the lust of captors; "Thou shalt not steal," and yet
he gave to Jewish marauders the flocks and herds of others; "Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbor's house, nor his wife," and yet he allowed his
chosen people to destroy the homes of neighbors and to steal their
wives; "Honor thy father and thy mother," and yet this same God had
thousands of fathers butchered, and with the sword of war killed
children yet unborn; "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor," and yet he sent abroad "lying spirits" to deceive his own
prophets, and in a hundred ways paid tribute to deceit. So far as we
know, Jehovah kept only one of these commandments—he worshiped no other
god.

The religious intolerance of the Old Testament is justified upon the
ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance," that
"idolatry was an act of overt treason," and that "to worship the gods
of the hostile heathen was deserting to the public enemy, and giving him
aid and comfort." According to Mr. Black, we should all have liberty of
conscience except when directly governed by God. In that country where
God is king, liberty cannot exist. In this position, I admit that he
is upheld and fortified by the "sacred" text. Within the Old Testament
there is no such thing as religious toleration. Within that volume can
be found no mercy for an unbeliever. For all who think for themselves,
there are threatenings, curses, and anathemas. Think of an infinite
being who is so cruel, so unjust, that he will not allow one of his own
children the liberty of thought! Think of an infinite God acting as the
direct governor of a people, and yet not able to command their love!
Think of the author of all mercy imbruing his hands in the blood of
helpless men, women, and children, simply because he did not furnish
them with intelligence enough to understand his law! An earthly father
who cannot govern by affection is not fit to be a father; what,
then, shall we say of an infinite being who resorts to violence, to
pestilence, to disease, and famine, in the vain effort to obtain even
the respect of a savage? Read this passage, red from the heart of
cruelty:

"_If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or
the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice
thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which thou hast
not known, thou nor thy fathers,... thou shalt not consent unto him, nor
hearken unto him, neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou
spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him;
thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards
the hand of all the people; and thou shalt stone him with stones, that
he die_."

This is the religious liberty of the Bible. If you had lived in
Palestine, and if the wife of your bosom, dearer to you than your
own soul, had said: "I like the religion of India better than that of
Palestine," it would have been your duty to kill her.

"Your eye must not pity her, your hand must be first upon her, and
afterwards the hand of all the people." If she had said: "Let us worship
the sun—the sun that clothes the earth in garments of green—the
sun, the great fireside of the world—the sun that covers the hills and
valleys with flowers—that gave me your face, and made it possible for
me to look into the eyes of my babe—let us worship the sun," it was
your duty to kill her. You must throw the first stone, and when against
her bosom—a bosom filled with love for you—you had thrown the jagged
and cruel rock, and had seen the red stream of her life oozing from
the dumb lips of death, you could then look up and receive the
congratulations of the God whose commandment you had obeyed. Is it
possible that a being of infinite mercy ordered a husband to kill his
wife for the crime of having expressed an opinion on the subject of
religion? Has there been found upon the records of the savage world
anything more perfectly fiendish than this commandment of Jehovah? This
is justified on the ground that "blasphemy was a breach of political
allegiance, and idolatry an act of overt treason." We can understand
how a human king stands in need of the service of his people. We can
understand how the desertion of any of his soldiers weakens his army;
but were the king infinite in power, his strength would still remain the
same, and under no conceivable circumstances could the enemy triumph.

I insist that, if there is an infinitely good and wise God, he beholds
with pity the misfortunes of his children. I insist that such a God
would know the mists, the clouds, the darkness enveloping the human
mind. He would know how few stars are visible in the intellectual sky.
His pity, not his wrath, would be excited by the efforts of his
blind children, groping in the night to find the cause of things, and
endeavoring, through their tears, to see some dawn of hope. Filled with
awe by their surroundings, by fear of the unknown, he would know that
when, kneeling, they poured out their gratitude to some unseen power,
even to a visible idol, it was, in fact, intended for him. An infinitely
good being, had he the power, would answer the reasonable prayer of an
honest savage, even when addressed to wood and stone.

The atrocities of the Old Testament, the threatenings, maledictions, and
curses of the "inspired book," are defended on the ground that the Jews
had a right to treat their enemies as their enemies treated them; and
in this connection is this remarkable statement: "In your treatment
of hostile barbarians you not only may lawfully, you must necessarily,
adopt their mode of warfare. If they come to conquer you, they may be
conquered by you; if they give no quarter, they are entitled to none; if
the death of your whole population be their purpose, you may defeat it
by exterminating theirs."

For a man who is a "Christian policeman," and has taken upon himself to
defend the Christian religion; for one who follows the Master who said
that when smitten on one cheek you must turn the other, and who again
and again enforced the idea that you must overcome evil with good, it is
hardly consistent to declare that a civilized nation must of necessity
adopt the warfare of savages. Is it possible that in fighting, for
instance, the Indians of America, if they scalp our soldiers we should
scalp theirs? If they ravish, murder, and mutilate our wives, must we
treat theirs in the same manner? If they kill the babes in our cradles,
must we brain theirs? If they take our captives, bind them to the trees,
and if their squaws fill their quivering flesh with sharpened fagots and
set them on fire, that they may die clothed with flame, must our wives,
our mothers, and our daughters follow the fiendish example? Is this the
conclusion of the most enlightened Christianity? Will the pulpits of the
United States adopt the arguments of this "policeman"? Is this the last
and most beautiful blossom of the Sermon on the Mount? Is this the echo
of "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do"?

Mr. Black justifies the wars of extermination and conquest because the
American people fought for the integrity of their own country; fought to
do away with the infamous institution of slavery; fought to preserve the
jewels of liberty and justice for themselves and for their children.
Is it possible that his mind is so clouded by political and religious
prejudice, by the recollections of an unfortunate administration,
that he sees no difference between a war of extermination and one of
self-preservation? that he sees no choice between the murder of helpless
age, of weeping women and of sleeping babes, and the defence of liberty
and nationality?

The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war of extermination. They
did not seek to enslave their fellow-men. They did not murder trembling
age. They did not sheathe their swords in women's breasts. They gave
the old men bread, and let the mothers rock their babes in peace.
They fought to save the world's great hope—to free a race and put the
humblest hut beneath the canopy of liberty and law.

Claiming neither praise nor dispraise for the part taken by me in the
Civil war, for the purposes of this argument, it is sufficient to say
that I am perfectly willing that my record, poor and barren as it is,
should be compared with his.

Never for an instant did I suppose that any respectable American citizen
could be found willing at this day to defend the institution of slavery;
and never was I more astonished than when I found Mr. Black denying that
civilized countries passionately assert that slavery is and always was
a hideous crime. I was amazed when he declared that "the doctrine that
slavery is a crime under all circumstances and at all times was first
started by the adherents of a political faction in this country less
than forty years ago." He tells us that "they denounced God and Christ
for not agreeing with them," but that "they did not constitute the
civilized world; nor were they, if the truth must be told, a very
respectable portion of it. Politically they were successful; I need not
say by what means, or with what effect upon the morals of the country."

Slavery held both branches of Congress, filled the chair of the
Executive, sat upon the Supreme Bench, had in its hands all rewards, all
offices; knelt in the pew, occupied the pulpit, stole human beings in
the name of God, robbed the trundle-bed for love of Christ; incited
mobs, led ignorance, ruled colleges, sat in the chairs of professors,
dominated the public press, closed the lips of free speech, and
polluted with its leprous hand every source and spring of power. The
abolitionists attacked this monster. They were the bravest, grandest
men of their country and their century. Denounced by thieves, hated
by hypocrites, mobbed by cowards, slandered by priests, shunned by
politicians, abhorred by the seekers of office,—these men "of whom the
world was not worthy," in spite of all opposition, in spite of poverty
and want, conquered innumerable obstacles, never faltering for one
moment, never dismayed—accepting defeat with a smile born of infinite
hope—knowing that they were right—insisted and persisted until every
chain was broken, until slave-pens became schoolhouses, and three
millions of slaves became free men, women, and children. They did not
measure with "the golden metewand of God," but with "the elastic cord of
human feeling." They were men the latchets of whose shoes no believer
in human slavery was ever worthy to unloose. And yet we are told by
this modern defender of the slavery of Jehovah that they were not even
respectable; and this slander is justified because the writer is assured
"that the infallible God proceeded upon good grounds when he authorized
slavery in Judea."

Not satisfied with having slavery in this world, Mr. Black assures us
that it will last through all eternity, and that forever and forever
inferiors must be subordinated to superiors. Who is the superior man?
According to Mr. Black, he is superior who lives upon the unpaid labor
of the inferior. With me, the superior man is the one who uses his
superiority in bettering the condition of the inferior. The superior man
is strength for the weak, eyes for the blind, brains for the simple;
he is the one who helps carry the burden that nature has put upon the
inferior. Any man who helps another to gain and retain his liberty is
superior to any infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea. For my
part, I would rather be the slave than the master. It is better to be
robbed than to be a robber. I had rather be stolen from than to be a
thief.

According to Mr. Black, there will be slavery in heaven, and fast by
the throne of God will be the auction-block, and the streets of the New
Jerusalem will be adorned with the whipping post, while the music of
the harp will be supplemented by the crack of the driver's whip. If some
good Republican would catch Mr. Black, "incorporate him into his family,
tame him, teach him to think, and give him a knowledge of the true
principles of human liberty and government, he would confer upon him a
most beneficent boon."

Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the joint product of the
kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer, and hypocrite. It degrades labor and
corrupts leisure. To lacerate the naked back, to sell wives, to steal
babes, to breed bloodhounds, to debauch your own soul—this is slavery.
This is what Jehovah "authorized in Judea." This is what Mr. Black
believes in still. He "measures with the golden metewand of God." I
abhor slavery. With me, liberty is not merely a means—it is an end.
Without that word, all other words are empty sounds.

Mr. Black is too late with his protest against the freedom of his
fellow-man. Liberty is making the tour of the world. Russia has
emancipated her serfs; the slave trade is prosecuted only by thieves and
pirates; Spain feels upon her cheek the burning blush of shame; Brazil
with proud and happy eyes is looking for the dawn of freedom's day; the
people of the South rejoice that slavery is no more, and every good and
honest man (excepting Mr. Black), of every land and clime, hopes that
the limbs of men will never feel again the weary weight of chains.

We are informed by Mr. Black that polygamy is neither commanded nor
prohibited in the Old Testament—that it is only "discouraged." It seems
to me that a little legislation on that subject might have tended to its
"discouragement." But where is the legislation? In the moral code, which
Mr. Black assures us "consists of certain immutable rules to govern the
conduct of all men at all times and at all places in their private and
personal relations with others," not one word is found on the subject of
polygamy. There is nothing "discouraging" in the Ten Commandments, nor
in the records of any conversation Jehovah is claimed to have had with
Moses upon Sinai. The life of Abraham, the story of Jacob and Laban,
the duty of a brother to be the husband of the widow of his deceased
brother, the life of David, taken in connection with the practice of
one who is claimed to have been the wisest of men—all these things are
probably relied on to show that polygamy was at least "discouraged."
Certainly, Jehovah had time to instruct Moses as to the infamy of
polygamy. He could have spared a few moments from a description of the
patterns of tongs and basins, for a subject so important as this. A
few words in favor of the one wife and the one husband—in favor of the
virtuous and loving home—might have taken the place of instructions
as to cutting the garments of priests and fashioning candlesticks and
ouches of gold. If he had left out simply the order that rams' skins
should be dyed red, and in its place had said, "A man shall have but one
wife, and the wife but one husband," how much better would it have been.

All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express the filth
of polygamy. It makes man a beast, and woman a slave. It destroys the
fireside and makes virtue an outcast. It takes us back to the barbarism
of animals, and leaves the heart a den in which crawl and hiss the slimy
serpents of most loathsome lust. And yet Mr. Black insists that we owe
to the Bible the present elevation of woman. Where will he find in the
Old Testament the rights of wife, and mother, and daughter defined?
Even in the New Testament she is told to "learn in silence, with all
subjection;" that she "is not suffered to teach, nor to usurp any
authority over the man, but to be in silence." She is told that "the
head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the
head of Christ is God." In other words, there is the same difference
between the wife and husband that there is between the husband and
Christ.

The reasons given for this infamous doctrine are that "Adam was first
formed, and then Eve;" that "Adam was not deceived," but that "the woman
being deceived, was in the transgression." These childish reasons are
the only ones given by the inspired writers. We are also told that "a
man, indeed, ought to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and
glory of God;" but that "the woman is the glory of the man," and this is
justified from the fact, and the remarkable fact, set forth in the very
next verse—that "the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the
man." And the same gallant apostle says: "Neither was the man created
for the woman, but the woman for the man;" "Wives, submit yourselves
unto your husbands as unto the Lord; for the husband is the head of the
wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of
the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the
wives be subject to their own husbands in everything." These are the
passages that have liberated woman!

According to the Old Testament, woman had to ask pardon, and had to be
purified, for the crime of having borne sons and daughters. If in this
world there is a figure of perfect purity, it is a mother holding in her
thrilled and happy arms her child. The doctrine that woman is the slave,
or serf, of man—whether it comes from heaven or from hell, from God or
a demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem or from the very
Sodom of perdition—is savagery, pure and simple.

In no country in the world had women less liberty than in the Holy Land,
and no monarch held in less esteem the rights of wives and mothers than
Jehovah of the Jews. The position of woman was far better in Egypt than
in Palestine. Before the pyramids were built, the sacred songs of Isis
were sung by women, and women with pure hands had offered sacrifices to
the gods. Before Moses was born, women had sat upon the Egyptian throne.
Upon ancient tombs the husband and wife are represented as seated in
the same chair. In Persia women were priests, and in some of the oldest
civilizations "they were reverenced on earth, and worshiped afterward
as goddesses in heaven." At the advent of Christianity, in all pagan
countries women officiated at the sacred altars. They guarded the
eternal fire. They kept the sacred books. From their lips came the
oracles of fate. Under the domination of the Christian Church, woman
became the merest slave for at least a thousand years. It was claimed
that through woman the race had fallen, and that her loving kiss had
poisoned all the springs of life. Christian priests asserted that but
for her crime the world would have been an Eden still. The ancient
fathers exhausted their eloquence in the denunciation of woman, and
repeated again and again the slander of St. Paul. The condition of woman
has improved just in proportion that man has lost confidence in the
inspiration of the Bible.

For the purpose of defending the character of his infallible God, Mr.
Black is forced to defend religious intolerance, wars of extermination,
human slavery, and almost polygamy. He admits that God established
slavery; that he commanded his chosen people to buy the children of the
heathen; that heathen fathers and mothers did right to sell their girls
and boys; that God ordered the Jews to wage wars of extermination and
conquest; that it was right to kill the old and young; that God forged
manacles for the human brain; that he commanded husbands to murder their
wives for suggesting the worship of the sun or moon; and that every
cruel, savage passage in the Old Testament was inspired by him. Such is
a "policeman's" view of God.

Will Mr. Black have the kindness to state a few of his objections to the
devil?

Mr. Black should have answered my arguments, instead of calling me
"blasphemous" and "scurrilous." In the discussion of these questions
I have nothing to do with the reputation of my opponent. His character
throws no light on the subject, and is to me a matter of perfect
indifference. Neither will it do for one who enters the lists as the
champion of revealed religion to say that "we have no right to rejudge
the justice of God."

Such a statement is a white flag. The warrior eludes the combat when he
cries out that it is a "metaphysical question." He deserts the field and
throws down his arms when he admits that "no revelation has lifted the
veil between time and eternity." Again I ask, why were the Jewish people
as wicked, cruel, and ignorant with a revelation from God, as other
nations were without? Why were the worshipers of false deities as brave,
as kind, and generous as those who knew the only true and living God?

How do you explain the fact that while Jehovah was waging wars of
extermination, establishing slavery, and persecuting for opinion's sake,
heathen philosophers were teaching that all men are brothers, equally
entitled to liberty and life? You insist that Jehovah believed in
slavery and yet punished the Egyptians for enslaving the Jews. Was your
God once an abolitionist? Did he at that time "denounce Christ for not
agreeing with him"? If slavery was a crime in Egypt, was it a virtue
in Palestine? Did God treat the Canaanites better than Pharaoh did
the Jews? Was it right for Jehovah to kill the children of the people
because of Pharaoh's sin? Should the peasant be punished for the king's
crime? Do you not know that the worst thing that can be said of Nero,
Caligula, and Commodus is that they resembled the Jehovah of the Jews?
Will you tell me why God failed to give his Bible to the whole world?
Why did he not give the Scriptures to the Hindu, the Greek, and Roman?
Why did he fail to enlighten the worshipers of "Mammon" and Moloch, of
Belial and Baal, of Bacchus and Venus? After all, was not Bacchus as
good as Jehovah? Is it not better to drink wine than to shed blood?
Was there anything in the worship of Venus worse than giving captured
maidens to satisfy the victor's lust? Did "Mammon" or Moloch do anything
more infamous than to establish slavery? Did they order their soldiers
to kill men, women, and children, and to save alive nothing that had
breath? Do not answer these questions by saying that "no veil has been
lifted between time and eternity," and that "we have no right to rejudge
the justice of God."

If Jehovah was in fact God, he knew the end from the beginning. He knew
that his Bible would be a breastwork behind which tyranny and hypocrisy
would crouch; that it would be quoted by tyrants; that it would be the
defence of robbers, called kings, and of hypocrites called priests. He
knew that he had taught the Jewish people but little of importance. He
knew that he found them free and left them captives. He knew that he
had never fulfilled the promises made to them. He knew that while other
nations had advanced in art and science, his chosen people were savage
still. He promised them the world, and gave them a desert. He promised
them liberty, and he made them slaves. He promised them victory, and he
gave them defeat. He said they should be kings, and he made them
serfs. He promised them universal empire, and gave them exile. When one
finishes the Old Testament, he is compelled to say: Nothing can add to
to the misery of a nation whose king is Jehovah!

And here I take occasion to thank Mr. Black for having admitted that
Jehovah gave no commandment against the practice of polygamy, that he
established slavery, waged wars of extermination, and persecuted for
opinion's sake even unto death. Most theologians endeavor to putty,
patch, and paint the wretched record of inspired crime, but Mr. Black
has been bold enough and honest enough to admit the truth. In this age
of fact and demonstration it is refreshing to find a man who believes
so thoroughly in the monstrous and miraculous, the impossible and
immoral—who still clings lovingly to the legends of the bib and
rattle—who through the bitter experiences of a wicked world has kept
the credulity of the cradle, and finds comfort and joy in thinking about
the Garden of Eden, the subtle serpent, the flood, and Babel's tower,
stopped by the jargon of a thousand tongues—who reads with happy eyes
the story of the burning brimstone storm that fell upon the cities
of the plain, and smilingly explains the transformation of the
retrospective Mrs. Lot—who laughs at Egypt's plagues and Pharaoh's
whelmed and drowning hosts—eats manna with the wandering Jews, warms
himself at the burning bush, sees Korah's company by the hungry earth
devoured, claps his wrinkled hands with glee above the heathens'
butchered babes, and longingly looks back to the patriarchal days of
concubines and slaves. How touching when the learned and wise crawl back
in cribs and ask to hear the rhymes and fables once again! How charming
in these hard and scientific times to see old age in Superstition's lap,
with eager lips upon her withered breast!

Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible is in exact
harmony with the New Testament, and that the two are "connected
together;" and "that if one is true the other cannot be false."

If this is so, then he must admit that if one is false the other
cannot be true; and it hardly seems possible to me that there is a
right-minded, sane man, except Mr. Black, who now believes that a God of
infinite kindness and justice ever commanded one nation to exterminate
another; ever ordered his soldiers to destroy men, women, and babes;
ever established the institution of human slavery; ever regarded the
auction-block as an altar, or a bloodhound as an apostle.

Mr. Black contends (after having answered my indictment against the Old
Testament by admitting the allegations to be true) that the rapidity
with which Christianity spread "proves the supernatural origin of the
Gospel, or that it was propagated by the direct aid of the Divine Being
himself."

Let us see. In his efforts to show that the "infallible God established
slavery in Judea," he takes occasion to say that "the doctrine that
slavery is a crime under all circumstances was first started by the
adherents of a political faction in this, country less than forty years
ago;" that "they denounced God and Christ for not agreeing with them;"
but that "they did not constitute the civilized world; nor were they,
if the truth must be told, a very respectable portion of it." Let it be
remembered that this was only forty years ago; and yet, according to Mr.
Black, a few disreputable men changed the ideas of nearly fifty millions
of people, changed the Constitution of the United States, liberated
a race from slavery, clothed three millions of people with political
rights, took possession of the Government, managed its affairs for more
than twenty years, and have compelled the admiration of the civilized
world. Is it Mr. Black's idea that this happened by chance? If not, then
according to him, there are but two ways to account for it; either the
rapidity with which Republicanism spread proves its supernatural origin,
"or else its propagation was provided for and carried on by the direct
aid of the Divine Being himself." Between these two, Mr. Black may make
his choice. He will at once see that the rapid rise and spread of any
doctrine does not even tend to show that it was divinely revealed.

This argument is applicable to all religions. Mohammedans can use it as
well as Christians. Mohammed was a poor man, a driver of camels. He was
without education, without influence, and without wealth, and yet in a
few years he consolidated thousands of tribes, and made millions of
men confess that there is "one God, and Mohammed is his prophet."
His success was a thousand times greater during his life than that
of Christ. He was not crucified; he was a conqueror. "Of all men, he
exercised the greatest influence upon the human race." Never in the
world's history did a religion spread with the rapidity of his. It burst
like a storm over the fairest portions of the globe. If Mr. Black is
right in his position that rapidity is secured only by the direct aid of
the Divine Being, then Mohammed was most certainly the prophet of God.
As to wars of extermination and slavery, Mohammed agreed with Mr. Black,
and upon polygamy, with Jehovah. As to religious toleration, he was
great enough to say that "men holding to any form of faith might be
saved, provided they were virtuous." In this, he was far in advance both
of Jehovah and Mr. Black.

It will not do to take the ground that the rapid rise and spread of a
religion demonstrates its divine character. Years before Gautama
died, his religion was established, and his disciples were numbered by
millions. His doctrines were not enforced by the sword, but by an
appeal to the hopes, the fears, and the reason of mankind; and more than
one-third of the human race are to-day the followers of Gautama. His
religion has outlived all that existed in his time; and according to Dr.
Draper, "there is no other country in the world except India that
has the religion to-day it had at the birth of Jesus Christ." Gautama
believed in the equality of all men; abhorred the spirit of caste, and
proclaimed justice, mercy, and education for all.

Imagine a Mohammedan answering an infidel; would he not use the
argument of Mr Black, simply substituting Mohammed for Christ, just as
effectually as it has been used against me? There was a time when India
was the foremost nation of the world. Would not your argument, Mr.
Black, have been just as good in the mouth of a Brahmin then, as it is
in yours now? Egypt, the mysterious mother of mankind, with her pyramids
built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, was once the first in
all the earth, and gave to us our Trinity, and our symbol of the cross.
Could not a priest of Isis and Osiris have used your arguments to prove
that his religion was divine, and could he not have closed by saying:
"From the facts established by this evidence it follows irresistibly
that our religion came to us from God"? Do you not see that your
argument proves too much, and that it is equally applicable to all the
religions of the world?

Again, it is urged that "the acceptance of Christianity by a large
portion of the generation contemporary with its founder and his
apostles was, under the circumstances, an adjudication as solemn and
authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce." If this is true,
then "the acceptance of Buddhism by a large portion of the generation
contemporary with its founder was an adjudication as solemn and
authoritative as mortal intelligence could pronounce." The same could
be said of Mohammedanism, and, in fact, of every religion that has
ever benefited or cursed this world. This argument, when reduced to its
simplest form, is this: All that succeeds is inspired.

The old argument that if Christianity is a human fabrication its authors
must have been either good men or bad men, takes it for granted that
there are but two classes of persons—the good and the bad. There is at
least one other class—the mistaken, and both of the other classes may
belong to this. Thousands of most excellent people have been deceived,
and the history of the world is filled with instances where men have
honestly supposed that they had received communications from angels and
gods.

In thousands of instances these pretended communications contained the
purest and highest thoughts, together with the most important truths;
yet it will not do to say that these accounts are true; neither can they
be proved by saying that the men who claimed to be inspired were good.
What we must say is, that being good men, they were mistaken; and it is
the charitable mantle of a mistake that I throw over Mr. Black, when
I find him defending the institution of slavery. He seems to think it
utterly incredible that any "combination of knaves, however base, would
fraudulently concoct a religious system to denounce themselves, and to
invoke the curse of God upon their own conduct." How did religions
other than Christianity and Judaism arise? Were they all "concocted by
a combination of knaves"? The religion of Gautama is filled with most
beautiful and tender thoughts, with most excellent laws, and hundreds of
sentences urging mankind to deeds of love and self-denial. Was Gautama
inspired?

Does not Mr. Black know that thousands of people charged with witchcraft
actually confessed in open court their guilt? Does he not know that
they admitted that they had spoken face to face with Satan, and had sold
their souls for gold and power? Does he not know that these admissions
were made in the presence and expectation of death? Does he not know
that hundreds of judges, some of them as great as the late lamented
Gibson, believed in the existence of an impossible crime?

We are told that "there is no good reason to doubt that the statements
of the Evangelists, as we have them now, are genuine." The fact is, no
one knows who made the "statements of the Evangelists."

There are three important manuscripts upon which the Christian world
relies. "The first appeared in the catalogue of the Vatican, in 1475.
This contains the Old Testament. Of the New, it contains the four
gospels,—the Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, nine of the Pauline
Epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, as far as the fourteenth verse
of the ninth chapter,"—and nothing more. This is known as the Codex
Vatican. "The second, the Alexandrine, was presented to King Charles
the First, in 1628. It contains the Old and New Testaments, with
some exceptions; passages are wanting in Matthew, in John, and in II.
Corinthians. It also contains the Epistle of Clemens Romanus, a letter
of Athanasius, and the treatise of Eusebius on the Psalms." The last
is the Sinaitic Codex, discovered about 1850, at the Convent of St.
Catherine's, on Mount Sinai. "It contains the Old and New Testaments,
and in addition the entire Epistle of Barnabas, and a portion of the
Shepherd of Hermas—two books which, up to the beginning of the fourth
century, were looked upon by many as Scripture." In this manuscript,
or codex, the gospel of St. Mark concludes with the eighth verse of the
sixteenth chapter, leaving out the frightful passage: "Go ye into all
the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be
damned."

In matters of the utmost importance these manuscripts disagree, but even
if they all agreed it would not furnish the slightest evidence of
their truth. It will not do to call the statements made in the gospels
"depositions," until it is absolutely established who made them, and the
circumstances under which they were made. Neither can we say that "they
were made in the immediate prospect of death," until we know who made
them. It is absurd to say that "the witnesses could not have been
mistaken, because the nature of the facts precluded the possibility of
any delusion about them." Can it be pretended that the witnesses could
not have been mistaken about the relation the Holy Ghost is alleged
to have sustained to Jesus Christ? Is there no possibility of delusion
about a circumstance of that kind? Did the writers of the four gospels
have "'the sensible and true avouch of their own eyes' and ears" in
that behalf? How was it possible for any one of the four Evangelists
to know that Christ was the Son of God, or that he was God? His mother
wrote nothing on the subject. Matthew says that an angel of the Lord
told Joseph in a dream, but Joseph never wrote an account of this
wonderful vision. Luke tells us that the angel had a conversation with
Mary, and that Mary told Elizabeth, but Elizabeth never wrote a word.
There is no account of Mary or Joseph or Elizabeth or the angel, having
had any conversation with Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John in which one word
was said about the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. The persons who
knew did not write, so that the account is nothing but hearsay. Does Mr.
Black pretend that such statements would be admitted as evidence in any
court? But how do we know that the disciples of Christ wrote a word of
the gospels? How did it happen that Christ wrote nothing? How do we know
that the writers of the gospels "were men of unimpeachable character"?

All this is answered by saying "that nothing was said by the most
virulent enemies against the personal honesty of the Evangelists." How
is this known? If Christ performed the miracles recorded in the New
Testament, why would the Jews put to death a man able to raise their
dead? Why should they attempt to kill the Master of Death? How did
it happen that a man who had done so many miracles was so obscure, so
unknown, that one of his disciples had to be bribed to point him out? Is
it not strange that the ones he had cured were not his disciples? Can
we believe, upon the testimony of those about whose character we know
nothing, that Lazarus was raised from the dead? What became of Lazarus?
We never hear of him again. It seems to me that he would have been an
object of great interest. People would have said: "He is the man who was
once dead." Thousands would have inquired of him about the other world;
would have asked him where he was when he received the information that
he was wanted on the earth. His experience would have been vastly
more interesting than everything else in the New Testament. A returned
traveler from the shores of Eternity—one who had walked twice through
the valley of the shadow—would have been the most interesting of human
beings. When he came to die again, people would have said: "He is not
afraid; he has had experience; he knows what death is." But, strangely
enough, this Lazarus fades into obscurity with "the wise men of the
East," and with the dead who came out of their graves on the night of
the crucifixion. How is it known that it was claimed, during the life of
Christ, that he had wrought a miracle? And if the claim was made, how
is it known that it was not denied? Did the Jews believe that Christ was
clothed with miraculous power? Would they have dared to crucify a man
who had the power to clothe the dead with life? Is it not wonderful that
no one at the trial of Christ said one word about the miracles he had
wrought? Nothing about the sick he had healed, nor the dead he had
raised?

Is it not wonderful that Josephus, the best historian the Hebrews
produced, says nothing about the life or death of Christ; nothing about
the massacre of the infants by Herod; not one word about the wonderful
star that visited the sky at the birth of Christ; nothing about the
darkness that fell upon the world for several hours in the midst of day;
and failed entirely to mention that hundreds of graves were opened, and
that multitudes of Jews arose from the dead, and visited the Holy
City? Is it not wonderful that no historian ever mentioned any of these
prodigies? and is it not more amazing than all the rest, that Christ
himself concealed from Matthew, Mark, and Luke the dogma of the
atonement, the necessity of belief, and the mystery of the second birth?

Of course I know that two letters were said to have been written by
Pilate to Tiberius, concerning the execution of Christ, but they have
been shown to be forgeries. I also know that "various letters were
circulated attributed to Jesus Christ," and that one letter is said to
have been written by him to Abgarus, king of Edessa; but as there was
no king of Edessa at that time, this letter is admitted to have been a
forgery. I also admit that a correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul
was forged.

Here in our own country, only a few years ago, men claimed to have found
golden plates upon which was written a revelation from God. They founded
a new religion, and, according to their statement, did many miracles.
They were treated as outcasts, and their leader was murdered. These men
made their "depositions" "in the immediate prospect of death." They were
mobbed, persecuted, derided, and yet they insisted that their prophet
had miraculous power, and that he, too, could swing back the hingeless
door of death. The followers of these men have increased, in these
few years, so that now the murdered prophet has at least two hundred
thousand disciples. It will be hard to find a contradiction of these
pretended miracles, although this is an age filled with papers,
magazines, and books. As a matter of fact, the claims of Joseph Smith
were so preposterous that sensible people did not take the pains to
write and print denials. When we remember that eighteen hundred years
ago there were but few people who could write, and that a manuscript did
not become public in any modern sense, it was possible for the gospels
to have been written with all the foolish claims in reference to
miracles without exciting comment or denial. There is not, in all the
contemporaneous literature of the world, a single word about Christ
or his apostles. The paragraph in Josephus is admitted to be an
interpolation, and the letters, the account of the trial, and several
other documents forged by the zeal of the early fathers, are now
admitted to be false.

Neither will it do to say that "the statements made by the Evangelists
are alike upon every important point." If there is anything of
importance in the New Testament, from the theological standpoint, it is
the ascension of Jesus Christ. If that happened, it was a miracle great
enough to surfeit wonder. Are the statements of the inspired witnesses
alike on this important point? Let us see.

Matthew says nothing upon the subject. Either Matthew was not there, had
never heard of the ascension,—or, having heard of it, did not believe
it, or, having seen it, thought it too unimportant to record. To this
wonder of wonders Mark devotes one verse: "So then, after the Lord
had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the
right-hand of God." Can we believe that this verse was written by one
who witnessed the ascension of Jesus Christ; by one who watched his
Master slowly rising through the air till distance reft him from his
tearful sight? Luke, another of the witnesses, says: "And it came to
pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried
up into heaven." John corroborates Matthew by saying nothing on the
subject. Now, we find that the last chapter of Mark, after the eighth
verse, is an interpolation; so that Mark really says nothing about the
occurrence. Either the ascension of Christ must be given up, or it must
be admitted that the witnesses do not agree, and that three of them
never heard of that most stupendous event.

Again, if anything could have left its "form and pressure" on the
brain, it must have been the last words of Jesus Christ. The last words,
according to Matthew, are: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world." The last words, according to the inspired witness known as Mark,
are: "And these signs shall follow them that believe: in my name shall
they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take
up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Luke tells us
that the last words uttered by Christ, with the exception of a blessing,
were: "And behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you; but
tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from
on high." The last words, according to John, were: "Peter, seeing Him,
saith to Jesus: Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him,
If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou
me."

An account of the ascension is also given in the Acts of the Apostles;
and the last words of Christ, according to that inspired witness, are:
"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you;
and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea,
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." In this
account of the ascension we find that two men stood by the disciples in
white apparel, and asked them: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing
up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven,
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."
Matthew says nothing of the two men. Mark never saw them. Luke may have
forgotten them when writing his gospel, and John may have regarded them
as optical illusions.

Luke testifies that Christ ascended on the very day of his resurrection.
John deposes that eight days after the resurrection Christ appeared to
the disciples and convinced Thomas. In the Acts we are told that
Christ remained on earth for forty days after his resurrection. These
"depositions" do not agree. Neither do Matthew and Luke agree in their
histories of the infancy of Christ. It is impossible for both to be
true. One of these "witnesses" must have been mistaken.

The most wonderful miracle recorded in the New Testament, as having been
wrought by Christ, is the resurrection of Lazarus. While all the writers
of the gospels, in many instances, record the same wonders and the
same conversations, is it not remarkable that the greatest miracle is
mentioned alone by John?

Two of the witnesses, Matthew and Luke, give the genealogy of Christ.
Matthew says that there were forty-two generations from Abraham to
Christ. Luke insists that there were forty-two from Christ to David,
while Matthew gives the number as twenty-eight. It may be said that
this is an old objection. An objection-remains young until it has been
answered. Is it not wonderful that Luke and Matthew do not agree on a
single name of Christ's ancestors for thirty-seven generations?

There is a difference of opinion among the "witnesses" as to what the
gospel of Christ is. If we take the "depositions" of Matthew, Mark, and
Luke, then the gospel of Christ amounts simply to this: That God will
forgive the forgiving, and that he will be merciful to the merciful.
According to three witnesses, Christ knew nothing of the doctrine of the
atonement; never heard of the second birth; and did not base salvation,
in whole nor in part, on belief. In the "deposition" of John, we find
that we must be born again; that we must believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ; and that an atonement was made for us. If Christ ever said these
things to, or in the hearing of, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they forgot to
mention them.

To my mind, the failure of the evangelists to agree as tu what is
necessary for man to do in order to insure the salvation of his soul, is
a demonstration that they were not inspired.

Neither do the witnesses agree as to the last words of Christ when he
was crucified. Matthew says that he cried: "My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?" Mark agrees with Matthew. Luke testifies that his
last words were: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." John
states that he cried: "It is finished."

Luke says that Christ said of his murderers: "Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do." Matthew, Mark, and John do not record these
touching words. John says that Christ, on the day of his resurrection,
said to his disciples: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted
unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained."

The other disciples do not record this monstrous passage. They did not
hear the abdication of God. They were not present when Christ placed
in their hands the keys of heaven and hell, and put a world beneath the
feet of priests.

It is easy to account for the differences and contradictions in these
"depositions" (and there are hundreds of them) by saying that each one
told the story as he remembered it, or as he had heard it, or that the
accounts have been changed, but it will not do to say that the witnesses
were inspired of God. We can account for these contradictions by the
infirmities of human nature; but, as I said before, the infirmities of
human nature cannot be predicated of a divine being.

Again, I ask, why should there be more than one inspired gospel? Of
what use were the other three? There can be only one true account of
anything. All other true accounts must simply be copies of that. And
I ask again, why should there have been more than one inspired
gospel? That which is the test of truth as to ordinary witnesses is a
demonstration against their inspiration. It will not do at this late day
to say that the miracles worked by Christ demonstrated his divine origin
or mission. The wonderful works he did, did not convince the people
with whom he lived. In spite of the miracles, he was crucified. He was
charged with blasphemy. "Policemen" denounced the "scurrility" of his
words, and the absurdity of his doctrines. He was no doubt told that
it was "almost a crime to utter blasphemy in the presence of a Jewish
woman;" and it may be that he was taunted for throwing away "the golden
metewand" of the "infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea," and
taking the "elastic cord of human feeling."

Christians tell us that the citizens of Mecca refused to believe on
Mohammed because he was an impostor, and that the citizens of Jerusalem
refused to believe on Jesus Christ because he was not an impostor.

If Christ had wrought the miracles attributed to him—if he had cured
the maimed, the leprous, and the halt—if he had changed the night of
blindness into blessed day—if he had wrested from the fleshless hand
of avaricious death the stolen jewel of a life, and clothed again with
throbbing flesh the pulseless dust, he would have won the love and
adoration of mankind. If ever there shall stand upon this earth the king
of death, all human knees will touch the ground.

We are further informed that "what we call the fundamental truths of
Christianity consist of great public events which are sufficiently
established by history without special proof."

Of course, we admit that the Roman Empire existed; that Julius Caesar
was assassinated; and we may admit that Rome was founded by Romulus and
Remus; but will some one be kind enough to tell us how the assassination
of Caesar even tends to prove that Romulus and Remus were suckled by
a wolf? We will all admit that, in the sixth century after Christ,
Mohammed was born at Mecca; that his victorious hosts vanquished half
the Christian world; that the crescent triumphed over the cross upon a
thousand fields; that all the Christians of the earth were not able to
rescue from the hands of an impostor the empty grave of Christ. We will
all admit that the Mohammedans cultivated the arts and sciences; that
they gave us our numerals; taught us the higher mathematics; gave us our
first ideas of astronomy, and that "science was thrust into the brain of
Europe on the point of a Moorish lance;" and yet we will not admit that
Mohammed was divinely inspired, nor that he had frequent conversations
with the angel Gabriel, nor that after his death his coffin was
suspended in mid-air.

A little while ago, in the city of Chicago, a gentleman addressed a
number of Sunday-school children. In his address, he stated that some
people were wicked enough to deny the story of the deluge; that he was
a traveler; that he had been to the top of Mount Ararat, and had brought
with him a stone from that sacred locality. The children were then
invited to form in procession and walk by the pulpit, for the purpose of
seeing this wonderful stone. After they had looked at it, the lecturer
said: "Now, children, if you ever hear anybody deny the story of the
deluge, or say that the ark did not rest on Mount Ararat, you can tell
them that you know better, because you have seen with your own eyes a
stone from that very mountain."

The fact that Christ lived in Palestine does not tend to show that he
was in any way related to the Holy Ghost; nor does the existence of the
Christian religion substantiate the ascension of Jesus Christ. We all
admit that Socrates lived in Athens, but we do not admit that he had a
familiar spirit. I am satisfied that John Wesley was an Englishman, but
I hardly believe that God postponed a rain because Mr. Wesley wanted
to preach. All the natural things in the world are not sufficient to
establish the supernatural. Mr. Black reasons in this way: There was a
hydra-headed monster. We know this, because Hercules killed him. There
must have been such a woman as Proserpine, otherwise Pluto could not
have carried her away. Christ must have been divine, because the Holy
Ghost was his father. And there must have been such a being as the Holy
Ghost, because without a father Christ could not have existed. Those who
are disposed to deny everything because a part is false, reason exactly
the other way. They insist that because there was no hydra-headed
monster, Hercules did not exist. The true position, in my judgment, is
that the natural is not to be discarded because found in the company
of the miraculous, neither should the miraculous be believed because
associated with the probable. There was in all probability such a man
as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been
crucified, but that he was the Son of God, or that he was raised from
the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the
nature of things, can never be, substantiated.

Apparently tired with his efforts to answer what I really said, Mr.
Black resorted to the expedient of "compressing" my propositions and
putting them in italics. By his system of "compression" he was enabled
to squeeze out what I really said, and substitute a few sentences of his
own. I did not say that "Christianity offers eternal salvation as the
reward of belief alone," but I did say that no salvation is offered
without belief. There must be a difference of opinion in the minds of
Mr. Black's witnesses on this subject. In one place we are told that
a man is "justified by faith without the deeds of the law;" and in
another, "to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly, his faith is counted to him for righteousness;" and the
following passages seem to show the necessity of belief:

"_He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not
is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of
the only begotten Son of God." "He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abideth on him." "Jesus said unto her, I am the
resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead,
yet shall he live." "And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall
never die." "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God." "Not of works, lest any man should boast."
"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in
him, and he in God." "Whosoever believeth not shall be damned._"

I do not understand that the Christians of to-day insist that simple
belief will secure the salvation of the soul. I believe it is stated in
the Bible that "the very devils believe;" and it would seem from this
that belief is not such a meritorious thing, after all. But Christians
do insist that without belief no man can be saved; that faith is
necessary to salvation, and that there is "none other name under heaven
given among men whereby we can be saved," except that of Christ. My
doctrine is that there is only one way to be saved, and that is to act
in harmony with your surroundings—to live in accordance with the facts
of your being. A Being of infinite wisdom has no right to create a
person destined to everlasting pain. For the honest infidel, according
to the American Evangelical pulpit, there is no heaven. For the upright
atheist, there is nothing in another world but punishment. Mr. Black
admits that lunatics and idiots are in no danger of hell. This being
so, his God should have created only lunatics and idiots. Why should the
fatal gift of brain be given to any human being, if such gift renders
him liable to eternal hell? Better be a lunatic here and an angel there.
Better be an idiot in this world, if you can be a seraph in the next.

As to the doctrine of the atonement, Mr. Black has nothing to offer
except the barren statement that it is believed by the wisest and the
best. A Mohammedan, speaking in Constantinople, will say the same of the
Koran. A Brahmin, in a Hindu temple, will make the same remark, and so
will the American Indian, when he endeavors to enforce something upon
the young of his tribe. He will say: "The best, the greatest of our
tribe have believed in this." This is the argument of the cemetery, the
philosophy of epitaphs, the logic of the coffin. Who are the greatest
and wisest and most virtuous of mankind? This statement, that it has
been believed by the best, is made in connection with an admission that
it cannot be fathomed by the wisest. It is not claimed that a thing is
necessarily false because it is not understood, but I do claim that
it is not necessarily true because it cannot be comprehended. I still
insist that "the plan of redemption," as usually preached, is absurd,
unjust, and immoral.

For nearly two thousand years Judas Iscariot has been execrated by
mankind; and yet, if the doctrine of the atonement is true, upon his
treachery hung the plan of salvation. Suppose Judas had known of this
plan—known that he was selected by Christ for that very purpose, that
Christ was depending on him. And suppose that he also knew that only
by betraying Christ could he save either himself or others; what ought
Judas to have done? Are you willing to rely upon an argument that
justifies the treachery of that wretch?

I insisted upon knowing how the sufferings of an innocent man could
satisfy justice for the sins of the guilty. To this, Mr. Black replies
as follows: "This raises a metaphysical question, which it is not
necessary or possible for me to discuss here." Is this considered an
answer? Is it in this way that "my misty creations are made to roll away
and vanish into air one after another?" Is this the best that can be
done by one of the disciples of the infallible God who butchered babes
in Judea? Is it possible for a "policeman" to "silence a rude disturber"
in this way? To answer an argument, is it only necessary to say that
it "raises a metaphysical question"? Again I say: The life of Christ
is worth its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence. And
again I say: The effort to vindicate a law by inflicting punishment on
the innocent is a second violation instead of a vindication.

Mr. Black, under the pretence of "compressing," puts in my mouth the
following: "The doctrine of non-resistance, forgiveness of injuries,
reconciliation with enemies, as taught in the New Testament, is the
child of weakness, degrading and unjust."

This is entirely untrue. What I did say is this: "The idea of
non-resistance never occurred to a man who had the power to protect
himself. This doctrine was the child of weakness, born when resistance
was impossible." I said not one word against the forgiveness of
injuries, not one word against the reconciliation of enemies—not
one word. I believe in the reconciliation of enemies. I believe in a
reasonable forgiveness of injuries. But I do not believe in the doctrine
of non-resistance. Mr. Black proceeds to say that Christianity forbids
us "to cherish animosity, to thirst for mere revenge, to hoard up wrongs
real or fancied, and lie in wait for the chance of paying them back; to
be impatient, unforgiving, malicious, and cruel to all who have crossed
us." And yet the man who thus describes Christianity tells us that it is
not only our right, but our duty, to fight savages as savages fight us;
insists that where a nation tries to exterminate us, we have a right
to exterminate them. This same man, who tells us that "the diabolical
propensities of the human heart are checked and curbed by the spirit of
the Christian religion," and that this religion "has converted men from
low savages into refined and civilized beings," still insists that the
author of the Christian religion established slavery, waged wars of
extermination, abhorred the liberty of thought, and practiced the divine
virtues of retaliation and revenge. If it is our duty to forgive our
enemies, ought not God to forgive his? Is it possible that God will hate
his enemies when he tells us that we must love ours? The enemies of
God cannot injure him, but ours can injure us. If it is the duty of the
injured to forgive, why should the uninjured insist upon having revenge?
Why should a being who destroys nations with pestilence and famine
expect that his children will be loving and forgiving?

Mr. Black insists that without a belief in God there can be no
perception of right and wrong, and that it is impossible for an atheist
to have a conscience. Mr. Black, the Christian, the believer in God,
upholds wars of extermination. I denounce such wars as murder. He
upholds the institution of slavery. I denounce that institution as the
basest of crimes. Yet I am told that I have no knowledge of right and
wrong; that I measure with "the elastic cord of human feeling," while
the believer in slavery and wars of extermination measures with "the
golden metewand of God."

What is right and what is wrong? Everything is right that tends to the
happiness of mankind, and everything is wrong that increases the sum of
human misery. What can increase the happiness of this world more than to
do away with every form of slavery, and with all war? What can increase
the misery of mankind more than to increase wars and put chains
upon more human limbs? What is conscience? If man were incapable of
suffering, if man could not feel pain, the word "conscience" never would
have passed his lips. The man who puts himself in the place of another,
whose imagination has been cultivated to the point of feeling the
agonies suffered by another, is the man of conscience. But a man who
justifies slavery, who justifies a God when he commands the soldier
to rip open the mother and to pierce with the sword of war the child
unborn, is controlled and dominated, not by conscience, but by a cruel
and remorseless superstition.

Consequences determine the quality of an action. If consequences are
good, so is the action. If actions had no consequences, they would be
neither good nor bad. Man did not get his knowledge of the consequences
of actions from God, but from experience and reason. If man can, by
actual experiment, discover the right and wrong of actions, is it not
utterly illogical to declare that they who do not believe in God can
have no standard of right and wrong? Consequences are the standard by
which actions are judged. They are the children that testify as to the
real character of their parents. God or no God, larceny is the enemy of
industry—industry is the mother of prosperity—prosperity is a good,
and therefore larceny is an evil. God or no God, murder is a crime.
There has always been a law against larceny, because the laborer wishes
to enjoy the fruit of his toil. As long as men object to being killed,
murder will be illegal.

According to Mr. Black, the man who does not believe in a supreme being
acknowledges no standard of right and wrong in this world, and therefore
can have no theory of rewards and punishments in the next. Is it
possible that only those who believe in the God who persecuted for
opinion's sake have any standard of right and wrong? Were the greatest
men of all antiquity without this standard? In the eyes of intelligent
men of Greece and Rome, were all deeds, whether good or evil, morally
alike? Is it necessary to believe in the existence of an infinite
intelligence before you can have any standard of right and wrong? Is it
possible that a being cannot be just or virtuous unless he believes in
some being infinitely superior to himself? If this doctrine be true, how
can God be just or virtuous? Does he believe in some being superior to
himself?

It may be said that the Pagans believed in a god, and consequently had
a standard of right and wrong. But the Pagans did not believe in the
"true" God. They knew nothing of Jehovah. Of course it will not do to
believe in the wrong God. In order to know the difference between right
and wrong, you must believe in the right God—in the one who established
slavery. Can this be avoided by saying that a false god is better than
none?

The idea of justice is not the child of superstition—it was not born of
ignorance; neither was it nurtured by the passages in the Old Testament
upholding slavery, wars of extermination, and religious persecution.
Every human being necessarily has a standard of right and wrong; and
where that standard has not been polluted by superstition, man abhors
slavery, regards a war of extermination as murder, and looks upon
religious persecution as a hideous crime. If there is a God, infinite
in power and wisdom, above him, poised in eternal calm, is the figure of
Justice. At the shrine of Justice the infinite God must bow, and in her
impartial scales the actions even of Infinity must be weighed. There
is no world, no star, no heaven, no hell, in which gratitude is not a
virtue and where slavery is not a crime.

According to the logic of this "reply," all good and evil become mixed
and mingled—equally good and equally bad, unless we believe in the
existence of the infallible God who ordered husbands to kill their
wives. We do not know right from wrong now, unless we are convinced
that a being of infinite mercy waged wars of extermination four thousand
years ago. We are incapable even of charity, unless we worship the being
who ordered the husband to kill his wife for differing with him on the
subject of religion.

We know that acts are good or bad only as they effect the actors, and
others. We know that from every good act good consequences flow, and
that from every bad act there are only evil results. Every virtuous deed
is a star in the moral firmament. There is in the moral world, as in
the physical, the absolute and perfect relation of cause and effect. For
this reason, the atonement becomes an impossibility. Others may suffer
by your crime, but their suffering cannot discharge you; it simply
increases your guilt and adds to your burden. For this reason happiness
is not a reward—it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment—it
is a result.

It is insisted that Christianity is not opposed to freedom of thought,
but that "it is based on certain principles to which it requires the
assent of all." Is this a candid statement? Are we only required to
give our assent to certain principles in order to be saved? Are the
inspiration of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, and the
Trinity, principles? Will it be admitted by the orthodox world that good
deeds are sufficient unto salvation—that a man can get into heaven by
living in accordance with certain principles? This is a most excellent
doctrine, but it is not Christianity. And right here, it may be well
enough to state what I mean by Christianity. The morality of the world
is not distinctively Christian. Zoroaster, Gautama, Mohammed, Confucius,
Christ, and, in fact, all founders of religions, have said to their
disciples: You must not steal; You must not murder; You must not bear
false witness; You must discharge your obligations. Christianity is the
ordinary moral code, plus the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ, his
crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, the inspiration of the
Bible, the doctrine of the atonement, and the necessity of belief.
Buddhism is the ordinary moral code, plus the miraculous illumination
of Buddha, the performance of certain ceremonies, a belief in the
transmigration of the soul, and in the final absorption of the human
by the infinite. The religion of Mohammed is the ordinary moral code,
plus the belief that Mohammed was the prophet of God, total abstinence
from the use of intoxicating drinks, a harem for the faithful here and
hereafter, ablutions, prayers, alms, pilgrimages, and fasts.

The morality in Christianity has never opposed the freedom of thought.
It has never put, nor tended to put, a chain on a human mind, nor a
manacle on a human limb; but the doctrines distinctively Christian—the
necessity of believing a certain thing; the idea that eternal punishment
awaited him who failed to believe; the idea that the innocent can suffer
for the guilty—these things have opposed, and for a thousand years
substantially destroyed, the freedom of the human mind. All religions
have, with ceremony, magic, and mystery, deformed, darkened, and
corrupted the soul. Around the sturdy oaks of morality have grown and
clung the parasitic, poisonous vines of the miraculous and monstrous.

I have insisted, and I still insist, that it is impossible for a finite
man to commit a crime deserving infinite punishment; and upon this
subject Mr. Black admits that "no revelation has lifted the veil between
time and eternity;" and, consequently, neither the priest nor the
"policeman" knows anything with certainty regarding another world. He
simply insists that "in shadowy figures we are warned that a very marked
distinction will be made between the good and bad in the next world."
There is "a very marked distinction" in this; but there is this rainbow
on the darkest human cloud: The worst have hope of reform. All I insist
is, if there is another life, the basest soul that finds its way to that
dark or radiant shore will have the everlasting chance of doing right.
Nothing but the most cruel ignorance, the most heartless superstition,
the most ignorant theology, ever imagined that the few days of human
life spent here, surrounded by mists and clouds of darkness, blown over
life's sea by storms and tempests of passion, fixed for all eternity the
condition of the human race. If this doctrine be true, this life is but
a net, in which Jehovah catches souls for hell.

The idea that a certain belief is necessary to salvation unsheathed the
swords and lighted the fagots of persecution. As long as heaven is the
reward of creed instead of deed, just so long will every orthodox church
be a bastile, every member a prisoner, and every priest a turnkey.

In the estimation of good orthodox Christians, I am a criminal, because
I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters,
husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally arising from
a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to tear, break, and
scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of
innocent pleasure—a God made of sticks, called creeds, and of old
clothes, called myths. I have tried to take from the coffin its horror,
from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by
the savages of the past. Is it necessary that heaven should borrow its
light from the glare of hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty,
endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler
hardens, debases, and pollutes the soul. While there is one sad and
breaking heart in the universe, no perfectly good being can be perfectly
happy. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and
generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in any
heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and redeemed drown with
merry shouts the cries and sobs of hell—in which happiness forgets
misery—where the tears of the lost increase laughter and deepen the
dimples of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality,
fear, cowardice, and revenge. This idea tends to show that our remote
ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves—only
from mouths filled with cruel fangs—only from hearts of fear and
hatred—only from the conscience of hunger and lust—only from the
lowest and most debased, could come this most cruel, heartless, and
absurd of all dogmas.

Our ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too astonished
to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea that
everything happened with reference to them; that they caused storms and
earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind; that on
account of something they had done, or omitted to do, the lightning of
vengeance leaped from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that
at least two vast and powerful beings presided over this world; that
one was good and the other bad; that both of these beings wished to get
control of the souls of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal
foes; that both welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that one offered
rewards in this world, and the other in the next. Man saw cruelty and
mercy in nature, because he imagined that phenomena were produced to
punish or to reward him. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that
he loved to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing
made him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above
all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and regarded
investigation as rebellion. Each community felt it a duty to see that
the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to
live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil—every
misfortune—was accounted for by something the community had permitted
or done. When epidemics appeared, brought by ignorance and welcomed by
filth, the heretic was brought out and sacrificed to appease the anger
of God. By putting intention behind what man called good, God was
produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the Devil was
created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils fade away. If
not a human being existed, the sun would continue to shine, and tempest
now and then would devastate the earth; the rain would fall in pleasant
showers; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, the
earthquake would devour, birds would sing and daisies bloom and roses
blush, and volcanoes fill the heavens with their lurid glare; the
procession of the seasons would not be broken, and the stars would shine
as serenely as though the world were filled with loving hearts and happy
homes. Do not imagine that the doctrine of eternal revenge belongs
to Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a
corner-stone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built. Over
the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was
regarded as one of trial. Here, a God of infinite wisdom experimented
with man. Between the outstretched paws of the Infinite, the
mouse—man—was allowed to play. Here, man had the opportunity of
hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here, he could read, and hear
read, the sacred books. Here, he could have the example of the pious and
the counsels of the holy. Here, he could build churches and cathedrals.
Here, he could burn incense, fast, wear hair-cloth, deny himself all the
pleasures of life, confess to priests, construct instruments of torture,
bow before pictures and images, and persecute all who had the courage
to despise superstition, and the goodness to tell their honest thoughts.
After death, if he died out of the church, nothing could be done to make
him better. When he should come into the presence of God, nothing was
left except to damn him. Priests might convert him here, but God could
do nothing there. All of which shows how much more a priest can do for
a soul than its creator. Only here, on the earth, where the devil is
constantly active, only where his agents attack every soul, is there
the slightest hope of moral improvement. Strange! that a world cursed by
God, filled with temptations, and thick with fiends, should be the only
place where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible!

Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves got a
kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The imprisoned
imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this place for the
strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished for their victors;
the priest for the thinker; religion for reason; superstition for
science. All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all
the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is
capable, grew, blossomed, and bore fruit in this one word—Hell. For
the nourishment of this dogma, cruelty was soil, ignorance was rain, and
fear was light.

Why did Mr. Black fail to answer what I said in relation to the doctrine
of inspiration? Did he consider that a "metaphysical question"? Let us
see what inspiration really is. A man looks at the sea, and the sea says
something to him. It makes an impression on his mind. It awakens memory,
and this impression depends upon his experience—upon his intellectual
capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain;
he has a different experience. The sea may speak to him of joy, to the
other of grief and tears. The sea cannot tell the same thing to any two
human beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience.
One may think of wreck and ruin, and another, while listening to the
"multitudinous laughter of the sea," may say: Every drop has visited
all the shores of earth; every one has been frozen in the vast and icy
North, has fallen in snow, has whirled in storms around the mountain
peaks, been kissed to vapor by the sun, worn the seven-hued robe of
light, fallen in pleasant rain, gurgled from springs, and laughed in
brooks while lovers wooed upon the banks. Everything in nature tells a
different story to all eyes that see and to all ears that hear. So, when
we look upon a flower, a painting, a statue, a star, or a violet, the
more we know, the more we have experienced, the more we have thought,
the more we remember, the more the statue, the star, the painting,
the violet has to tell. Nature says to me all that I am capable of
understanding—gives all that I can receive. As with star, or flower,
or sea, so with a book. A thoughtful man reads Shakespeare. What does he
get? All that he has the mind to understand. Let another read him, who
knows nothing of the drama, nothing of the impersonations of passion,
and what does he get? Almost nothing. Shakespeare has a different
story for each reader. He is a world in which each recognizes his
acquaintances. The impression that nature makes upon the mind, the
stories told by sea and star and flower, must be the natural food
of thought. Leaving out for the moment the impressions gained from
ancestors, the hereditary fears and drifts and trends—the natural food
of thought must be the impressions made upon the brain by coming in
contact through the medium of the senses with what we call the outward
world. The brain is natural; its food is natural; the result, thought,
must be natural. Of the supernatural we have no conception. Thought may
be deformed, and the thought of one may be strange to, and denominated
unnatural by, another; but it cannot be supernatural. It may be weak, it
may be insane, but it is not supernatural. Above the natural, man cannot
rise. There can be deformed ideas, as there are deformed persons.
There may be religions monstrous and misshapen, but they were naturally
produced. The world is to each man according to each man. It takes the
world as it really is and that man to make that man's world.

You may ask, And what of all this? I reply, As with everything in
nature, so with the Bible. It has a different story for each reader. Is,
then, the Bible a different book to every human being who reads it? It
is. Can God, through the Bible, make precisely the same revelation to
two persons? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is not inspired.
God should inspire readers as well as writers.

You may reply: God knew that his book would be understood differently by
each one, and intended that it should be understood as it is understood
by each. If this is so, then my understanding of the Bible is the
real revelation to me. If this is so, I have no right to take the
understanding of another. I must take the revelation made to me through
my understanding, and by that revelation I must stand. Suppose then,
that I read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through am
compelled to say, "The book is not true." If this is the honest result,
then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to
me, or that the revelation that it is not true is the revelation made to
me, and by which I am bound. If the book and my brain are both the work
of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and brain do
not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or
should have made my brain to fit his book. The inspiration of the Bible
depends on the credulity of him who reads. There was a time when
its geology, its astronomy, its natural history, were thought to be
inspired; that time has passed. There was a time when its morality
satisfied the men who ruled the world of thought; that time has passed.

Mr. Black, continuing his process of compressing my propositions,
attributes to me the following statement: "The gospel of Christ does not
satisfy the hunger of the heart." I did not say this. What I did say
is: "The dogmas of the past no longer reach the level of the highest
thought, nor satisfy the hunger of the heart." In so far as Christ
taught any doctrine in opposition to slavery, in favor of intellectual
liberty, upholding kindness, enforcing the practice of justice and
mercy, I most cheerfully admit that his teachings should be followed.
Such teachings do not need the assistance of miracles. They are not in
the region of the supernatural. They find their evidence in the glad
response of every honest heart that superstition has not touched and
stained. The great question under discussion is, whether the immoral,
absurd, and infamous can be established by the miraculous. It cannot be
too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle. That
which actually happens sets in motion innumerable effects, which, in
turn, become causes producing other effects. These are all "witnesses"
whose "depositions" continue. What I insist on is, that a miracle cannot
be established by human testimony. We have known people to be mistaken.
We know that all people will not tell the truth. We have never seen the
dead raised. When people assert that they have, we are forced to weigh
the probabilities, and the probabilities are on the other side. It will
not do to assert that the universe was created, and then say that such
creation was miraculous, and, therefore, all miracles are possible. We
must be sure of our premises. Who knows that the universe was created?
If it was not; if it has existed from eternity; if the present is the
necessary child of all the past, then the miraculous is the impossible.
Throw away all the miracles of the New Testament, and the good teachings
of Christ remain—all that is worth preserving will be there still. Take
from what is now known as Christianity the doctrine of the atonement,
the fearful dogma of eternal punishment, the absurd idea that a certain
belief is necessary to salvation, and with most of the remainder the
good and intelligent will most heartily agree.

Mr. Black attributes to me the following expression: "Christianity is
pernicious in its moral effect, darkens the mind, narrows the soul,
arrests the progress of human society, and hinders civilization." I said
no such thing. Strange, that he is only able to answer what I did
not say. I endeavored to show that the passages in the Old Testament
upholding slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious
intolerance had filled the world with blood and crime. I admitted
that there are many wise and good things in the Old Testament. I also
insisted that the doctrine of the atonement—that is to say, of moral
bankruptcy—the idea that a certain belief is necessary to salvation,
and the frightful dogma of eternal pain, had narrowed the soul, had
darkened the mind, and had arrested the progress of human society. Like
other religions, Christianity is a mixture of good and evil. The church
has made more orphans than it has fed. It has never built asylums enough
to hold the insane of its own making. It has shed more blood than light.

Mr. Black seems to think that miracles are the most natural things
imaginable, and wonders that anybody should be insane enough to deny the
probability of the impossible. He regards all who doubt the miraculous
origin, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, as afflicted
with some "error of the moon," and declares that their "disbelief seems
like a kind of insanity."

To ask for evidence is not generally regarded as a symptom of a brain
diseased. Delusions, illusions, phantoms, hallucinations, apparitions,
chimeras, and visions are the common property of the religious and the
insane. Persons blessed with sound minds and healthy bodies rely on
facts, not fancies—on demonstrations instead of dreams. It seems to me
that the most orthodox Christians must admit that many of the miracles
recorded in the New Testament are extremely childish. They must see that
the miraculous draught of fishes, changing water into wine, fasting for
forty days, inducing devils to leave an insane man by allowing them to
take possession of swine, walking on the water, and using a fish for a
pocket-book, are all unworthy of an infinite being, and are calculated
to provoke laughter—to feed suspicion and engender doubt.

Mr. Black takes the ground that if a man believes in the creation of the
universe—that being the most stupendous miracle of which the mind can
conceive—he has no right to deny anything. He asserts that God created
the universe; that creation was a miracle; that "God would be likely to
reveal his will to the rational creatures who were required to obey it,"
and that he would authenticate his revelation by giving his prophets and
apostles supernatural power.

After making these assertion, he triumphantly exclaims: "It therefore
follows that the improbability of a miracle is no greater than the
original improbability of a revelation, and that is not improbable at
all."

How does he know that God made the universe? How does he know what God
would be likely to do? How does he know that any revelation was made?
And how did he ascertain that any of the apostles and prophets were
entrusted with supernatural power? It will not do to prove your premises
by assertions, and then claim that your conclusions are correct, because
they agree with your premises.

If "God would be likely to reveal his will to the rational creatures
who were required to obey it," why did he reveal it only to the Jews?
According to Mr. Black, God is the only natural thing in the universe.

We should remember that ignorance is the mother of credulity; that
the early Christians believed everything but the truth, and that
they accepted Paganism, admitted the reality of all the Pagan
miracles—taking the ground that they were all forerunners of their own.
Pagan miracles were never denied by the Christian world until late in
the seventeenth century. Voltaire was the third man of note in Europe
who denied the truth of Greek and Roman mythology. "The early Christians
cited Pagan oracles predicting in detail the sufferings of Christ. They
forged prophecies, and attributed them to the heathen sibyls, and they
were accepted as genuine by the entire church."

St. Irenaeus assures us that all Christians possessed the power of
working miracles; that they prophesied, cast out devils, healed the
sick, and even raised the dead. St. Epiphanius asserts that some rivers
and fountains were annually transmuted into wine, in attestation of the
miracle of Cana, adding that he himself had drunk of these fountains.
St. Augustine declares that one was told in a dream where the bones
of St. Stephen were buried, that the bones were thus discovered, and
brought to Hippo, and that they raised five dead persons to life, and
that in two years seventy miracles were performed with these relics.
Justin Martyr states that God once sent some angels to guard the human
race, that these angels fell in love with the daughters of men, and
became the fathers of innumerable devils.

For hundreds of years, miracles were about the only things that
happened. They were wrought by thousands of Christians, and testified
to by millions. The saints and martyrs, the best and greatest, were the
witnesses and workers of wonders. Even heretics, with the assistance
of the devil, could suspend the "laws of nature." Must we believe
these wonderful accounts because they were written by "good men," by
Christians, "who made their statements in the presence and expectation
of death"? The truth is that these "good men" were mistaken. They
expected the miraculous. They breathed the air of the marvelous. They
fed their minds on prodigies, and their imaginations feasted on effects
without causes. They were incapable of investigating. Doubts were
regarded as "rude disturbers of the congregation." Credulity and
sanctity walked hand in hand. Reason was danger. Belief was safety.
As the philosophy of the ancients was rendered almost worthless by the
credulity of the common people, so the proverbs of Christ, his religion
of forgiveness, his creed of kindness, were lost in the mist of miracle
and the darkness of superstition.

If Mr. Black is right, there were no virtue, justice, intellectual
liberty, moral elevation, refinement, benevolence, or true wisdom,
until Christianity was established. He asserts that when Christ came,
"benevolence, in any shape, was altogether unknown."

He insists that "the infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea"
established a government; that he was the head and king of the Jewish
people; that for this reason heresy was treason. Is it possible that God
established a government in which benevolence was unknown? How did it
happen that he established no asylums for the insane? How do you account
for the fact that your God permitted some of his children to become
insane? Why did Jehovah fail to establish hospitals and schools? Is it
reasonable to believe that a good God would assist his chosen people to
exterminate or enslave his other children? Why would your God people
a world, knowing that it would be destitute of benevolence for four
thousand years? Jehovah should have sent missionaries to the heathen.
He ought to have reformed the inhabitants of Canaan. He should have sent
teachers, not soldiers—missionaries, not murderers. A God should not
exterminate his children; he should reform them.

Mr. Black gives us a terrible picture of the condition of the world at
the coming of Christ; but did the God of Judea treat his own children,
the Gentiles, better than the Pagans treated theirs? When Rome enslaved
mankind—when with her victorious armies she sought to conquer or to
exterminate tribes and nations, she but followed the example of Jehovah.
Is it true that benevolence came with Christ, and that his coming
heralded the birth of pity in the human heart? Does not Mr. Black know
that, thousands of years before Christ was born, there were hospitals
and asylums for orphans in China? Does he not know that in Egypt, before
Moses lived, the insane were treated with kindness and wooed back to
natural thought by music's golden voice? Does he not know that in all
times, and in all countries, there have been great and loving souls who
wrought, and toiled, and suffered, and died that others might enjoy? Is
it possible that he knows nothing of the religion of Buddha—a religion
based upon equality, charity and forgiveness? Does he not know that,
centuries before the birth of the great Peasant of Palestine, another,
upon the plains of India, had taught the doctrine of forgiveness; and
that, contrary to the tyranny of Jehovah, had given birth to the sublime
declaration that all men are by nature free and equal? Does he not know
that a religion of absolute trust in God had been taught thousands of
years before Jerusalem was built—a religion based upon absolute special
providence, carrying its confidence to the extremest edge of human
thought, declaring that every evil is a blessing in disguise, and that
every step taken by mortal man, whether in the rags of poverty or the
royal robes of kings, is the step necessary to be taken by that soul in
order to reach perfection and eternal joy? But how is it possible for
a man who believes in slavery to have the slightest conception of
benevolence, justice or charity? If Mr. Black is right, even Christ
believed and taught that man could buy and sell his fellow-man. Will
the Christians of America admit this? Do they believe that Christ from
heaven's throne mocked when colored mothers, reft of babes, knelt by
empty cradles and besought his aid?

For the man Christ—for the reformer who loved his fellow-men—for the
man who believed in an Infinite Father, who would shield the innocent
and protect the just—for the martyr who expected to be rescued from the
cruel cross, and who at last, finding that his hope was dust, cried out
in the gathering gloom of death: "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken
me?"—for that great and suffering man, mistaken though he was, I have
the highest admiration and respect. That man did not, as I believe,
claim a miraculous origin; he did not pretend to heal the sick nor raise
the dead. He claimed simply to be a man, and taught his fellow-men
that love is stronger far than hate. His life was written by reverent
ignorance. Loving credulity belittled his career with feats of jugglery
and magic art, and priests, wishing to persecute and slay, put in his
mouth the words of hatred and revenge. The theological Christ is the
impossible union of the human and divine—man with the attributes of
God, and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man.

After giving a terrible description of the Pagan world, Mr. Black says:
"The church came, and her light penetrated the moral darkness like a new
sun; she covered the globe with institutions of mercy."

Is this true? Do we not know that when the Roman empire fell, darkness
settled on the world? Do we not know that this darkness lasted for a
thousand years, and that during all that time the church of Christ held,
with bloody hands, the sword of power? These years were the starless
midnight of our race. Art died, law was forgotten, toleration ceased
to exist, charity fled from the human breast, and justice was unknown.
Kings were tyrants, priests were pitiless, and the poor multitude were
slaves. In the name of Christ, men made instruments of torture, and the
auto da fe took the place of the gladiatorial show. Liberty was in
chains, honesty in dungeons, while Christian superstition ruled mankind.
Christianity compromised with Paganism. The statues of Jupiter were used
to represent Jehovah. Isis and her babe were changed to Mary and the
infant Christ. The Trinity of Egypt became the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. The simplicity of the early Christians was lost in heathen rites
and Pagan pomp. The believers in the blessedness of poverty became rich,
avaricious, and grasping, and those who had said, "Sell all, and give to
the poor," became the ruthless gatherers of tithes and taxes. In a
few years the teachings of Jesus were forgotten. The gospels were
interpolated by the designing and ambitious. The church was infinitely
corrupt. Crime was crowned, and virtue scourged. The minds of men were
saturated with superstition. Miracles, apparitions, angels, and devils
had possession of the world. "The nights were filled with incubi and
succubi; devils', clad in wondrous forms, and imps in hideous shapes,
sought to tempt or fright the soldiers of the cross. The maddened
spirits of the air sent hail and storm. Sorcerers wrought sudden death,
and witches worked with spell and charm against the common weal."
In every town the stake arose. Faith carried fagots to the feet of
philosophy. Priests—not "politicians"—fed and fanned the eager flames.
The dungeon was the foundation of the cathedral.

Priests sold charms and relics to their flocks to keep away the wolves
of hell. Thousands of Christians, failing to find protection in the
church, sold their poor souls to Satan for some magic wand. Suspicion
sat in every house, families were divided, wives denounced husbands,
husbands denounced wives, and children their parents. Every calamity
then, as now, increased the power of the church. Pestilence supported
the' pulpit, and famine was the right hand of faith. Christendom was
insane.

Will Mr. Black be kind enough to state at what time "the church covered
the globe with institutions of mercy"? In his reply, he conveys the
impression that these institutions were organized in the first century,
or at least in the morning of Christianity. How many hospitals for the
sick were established by the church during a thousand years? Do we not
know that for hundreds of years the Mohammedans erected more hospitals
and asylums than the Christians? Christendom was filled with racks
and thumbscrews, with stakes and fagots, with chains and dungeons, for
centuries before a hospital was built. Priests despised doctors. Prayer
was medicine. Physicians interfered with the sale of charms and relics.
The church did not cure—it killed. It practiced surgery with the sword.
The early Christians did not build asylums for the insane. They charged
them with witchcraft, and burnt them. They built asylums, not for the
mentally diseased, but for the mentally developed. These asylums were
graves.

All the languages of the world have not words of horror enough to
paint the agonies of man when the church had power. Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus were not as cruel, false, and
base as many of the Christians Popes. Opposite the names of these
imperial criminals write John the XII., Leo the VIII., Boniface the
VII., Benedict the IX., Innocent the III., and Alexander the VI.

Was it under these pontiffs that the "church penetrated the moral
darkness like a new sun," and covered the globe with institutions of
mercy? Rome was far better when Pagan than when Catholic. It was better
to allow gladiators and criminals to fight than to burn honest men.
The greatest of the Romans denounced the cruelties of the arena. Seneca
condemned the combats even of wild beasts. He was tender enough to say
that "we should have a bond of sympathy for all sentient beings, knowing
that only the depraved and base take pleasure in the sight of blood
and suffering." Aurelius compelled the gladiators to fight with blunted
swords. Roman lawyers declared that all men are by nature free and
equal. Woman, under Pagan rule in Rome, became as free as man. Zeno,
long before the birth of Christ, taught that virtue alone establishes a
difference between men. We know that the Civil Law is the foundation
of our codes. We know that fragments of Greek and Roman art—a few
manuscripts saved from Christian destruction, some inventions and
discoveries of the Moors—were the seeds of modern civilization.
Christianity, for a thousand years, taught memory to forget and reason
to believe. Not one step was taken in advance. Over the manuscripts of
philosophers and poets, priests with their ignorant tongues thrust out,
devoutly scrawled the forgeries of faith. For a thousand years the torch
of progress was extinguished in the blood of Christ, and his disciples,
moved by ignorant zeal, by insane, cruel creeds, destroyed with flame
and sword a hundred millions of their fellow-men. They made this world
a hell. But if cathedrals had been universities—if dungeons of the
Inquisition had been laboratories—if Christians had believed in
character instead of creed—if they had taken from the Bible all the
good and thrown away the wicked and absurd—if domes of temples had been
observatories—if priests had been philosophers—if missionaries had
taught the useful arts—if astrology had been astronomy—if the black
art had been chemistry—if superstition had been science—if religion
had been humanity—it' would have been a heaven filled with love, with
liberty, and joy.

We did not get our freedom from the church. The great truth, that all
men are by nature free, was never told on Sinai's barren crags, nor by
the lonely shores of Galilee.

The Old Testament filled this world with tyranny and crime, and the New
gives us a future filled with pain for nearly all the sons of men. The
Old describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell of the future.
The Old tells us the frightful things that God has done—the New the
cruel things that he will do. These two books give us the sufferings of
the past and future—the injustice, the agony, the tears of both
worlds. If the Bible is true—if Jehovah is God—if the lot of countless
millions is to be eternal pain—better a thousand times that all the
constellations of the shoreless vast were eyeless darkness and eternal
space. Better that all that is should cease to be. Better that all the
seeds and springs of things should fail and wither from great Nature's
realm. Better that causes and effects should lose relation and become
unmeaning phrases and forgotten sounds. Better that every life should
change to breathless death, to voiceless blank, and every world to blind
oblivion and to moveless naught.

Mr. Black justifies all the crimes and horrors, excuses all the tortures
of all the Christian years, by denouncing the cruelties of the French
Revolution. Thinking people will not hasten to admit that an infinitely
good being authorized slavery in Judea, because of the atrocities of the
French Revolution. They will remember the sufferings of the Huguenots.
They will remember the massacre of St. Bartholomew. They will not forget
the countless cruelties of priest and king. They will not forget the
dungeons of the Bastile. They will know that the Revolution was an
effect, and that liberty was not the cause—that atheism was not the
cause. Behind the Revolution they will see altar and throne—sword and
fagot—palace and cathedral—king and priest—master and slave—tyrant
and hypocrite. They will see that the excesses, the cruelties, and
crimes were but the natural fruit of seeds the church had sown. But the
Revolution was not entirely evil. Upon that cloud of war, black with
the myriad miseries of a thousand years, dabbled with blood of king and
queen, of patriot and priest, there was this bow: "Beneath the flag of
France all men are free." In spite of all the blood and crime, in spite
of deeds that seem insanely base, the People placed upon a Nation's brow
these stars:—Liberty, Fraternity, Equality—grander words than ever
issued from Jehovah's lips.

Robert G. Ingersoll.
