Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)

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Foote George William. Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)

LUSCIOUS PIETY

THE JEWISH SABBATH

PROFESSOR STOKES ON IMMORTALITY

PAUL BERT1

BRADLAUGH'S GHOST

CHRIST AND BROTHERHOOD

THE SONS OF GOD

MELCHIZEDEK

S'W'ELP ME GOD

INFIDEL HOMES.3

ARE ATHEISTS CRUEL?4

ARE ATHEISTS WICKED?

RAIN DOCTORS

PIOUS PUERILITIES

"THUS SAITH THE LORD."

BELIEVE OR BE DAMNED

CHRISTIAN CHARITY

RELIGION AND MONEY

CLOTTED BOSH

LORD BACON ON ATHEISM

CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY.5

CHRIST UP TO DATE

SECULARISM AND CHRISTIANITY

ALTAR AND THRONE.6

MARTIN LUTHER

THE PRAISE OF FOLLY

HAPPY IN HELL

THE ACT OF GOD

KEIR HARDIE ON CHRIST

BLESSED BE YE POOR

CONVERTED INFIDELS

MRS. BOOTH'S GHOST

TALMAGE ON THE BIBLE

MRS. BESANT ON DEATH AND AFTER

THE POETS AND LIBERAL THEOLOGY.8

CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR.9

AN EASTER EGG FOR CHRISTIANS.10

DUELLING.11

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN.12

SMIRCHING A HERO

KIT MARLOWE AND JESUS CHRIST.13

JEHOVAH THE RIPPER.14

THE PARSONS' LIVING WAGE.15

DID BRADLAUGH BACKSLIDE?16

FREDERIC HARRISON ON ATHEISM.17

SAVE THE BIBLE!18

FORGIVE AND FORGET.19

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

THE GREAT GHOSTS21

ATHEISM AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.22

PIGOTTISM.23

JESUS AT THE DERBY.24

ATHEIST MURDERERS.25

A RELIGION FOR EUNUCHS.26

ROSE-WATER RELIGION.27

Отрывок из книги

Lord Tennyson's poem, Locksley Hall: Sixty Years After, is severe on what he evidently regards as the pornographic tendency of our age.

The great French masters of fiction do not write merely for boys and girls. They believe that other literature is required besides that which is fit for bread-and-butter misses. Yet they are not therefore vicious. They paint nature as it is, idealising without distorting, leaving the moral to convey itself, as it inevitably will. As James Thomson said, "Do you dread that the Satyr will be preferred to Hyperion, when both stand imaged in clear light before us?"

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The origin of a periodical day of rest from labor is simple and natural. It has everywhere been placed under the sanction of religion, but it arose from secular necessity. In the nomadic state, when men had little to do at ordinary times except watching their flocks and herds, the days passed in monotonous succession. Life was never laborious, and as human energies were not taxed there was no need for a period of recuperation, We may therefore rest assured that no Sabbatarian law was ever given by Moses to the Jews in the wilderness. Such a law first appears in a higher stage of civilisation. When nomadic tribes settle down to agriculture and are welded into nations, chiefly by defensive war against predatory barbarians; above all, when slavery is introduced and masses of men are compelled to build and manufacture; the ruling and propertied classes soon perceive that a day of rest is absolutely requisite. Without it the laborer wears out too rapidly – like the horse, the ox, or any other beast of burden. The day is therefore decreed for economic reasons. It is only placed under the sanction of religion because, in a certain stage of human development, there is no other sanction available. Every change in social organisation has then to be enforced as an edict of the gods. This is carried out by the priests, who have unquestioned authority over the multitude, and who, so long as their own privileges and emoluments are secured, are always ready to guard the interest of the temporal powers.

Such was the origin of the day of rest in Egypt, Assyria, and elsewhere. But it was lost sight of in the course of time, even by the ruling classes themselves; and the theological fiction of a divine ordinance became the universally accepted explanation. This fiction is still current in Christendom. We are gravely asked to believe that men would work themselves to death, and civilised nations commit economical suicide, if they were not taught that a day of rest was commanded by Jehovah amidst the lightnings and thunders of Sinai. In the same way, we are asked to believe that theft and murder would be popular pastimes without the restraints of the supernatural decalogue fabled to have been received by Moses. As a matter of fact, the law against theft arose because men object to be robbed, and the law against murder because they object to be assassinated. Superstition does not invent social laws; it merely throws around them the glamor of a supernatural authority.

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