Читать книгу The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets - Westbrook Richard Brodhead - Страница 3

THE assumption is general that if the faith of the common people should be unsettled as to some things which they have heretofore been taught regarding religion, they would immediately reject all truth, and fall into a most deplorable state of skepticism and infidelity, and that the existing institutions of religion would be destroyed, and public virtue so undermined as to endanger the very foundations of morality and civil government. This is not only the fear of conservative and timid clergymen, but many of our prominent statesmen seem anxious lest the enlightenment of the people in matters in which they have been cruelly deceived should so weaken the restraints of police and governmental authority as to result in universal anarchy and a general disregard of the rights of property, and even of the sacredness of human life.

These foolish fears show a great want of confidence in human nature, and falsely assume that moral character depends mainly upon an unquestioning faith in certain dogmas which, in point of fact, have no necessary connection with it.

The statistics of crime show that a very large majority of those who have been seized by the strong arm of the law as dangerous members of society are those who most heartily believe in those very dogmas of theology which we are warned not to criticise, though we may know them to be accretions of ignorance and superstition, and that some of them have a natural tendency to fetter the essential principles of true religion and that higher code of morality which alone can stand strong under all circumstances. It is safe to affirm that ninety-nine hundredths of the criminal class believe, or profess to believe, in the dogmas of the dominant theology, Romish and Protestant; which are essentially the same.

It is too often forgotten that the very first condition of good government is faith in human nature, confidence in the people. You always excite dishonor and dishonesty by treating men as if you think them all rogues, and as if you expect nothing good from them, but every conceivable evil, only as they may be restrained by the fear of pains and penalties in this life and after death.

One great fundamental mistake of theologians and dogmatic pietists is the baseless assumption that religion is something supernatural, not to say anti-natural; something external to human nature and of foreign origin; something to be received by transfusion as the result or consequence of faith in certain dogmas or the observance of external rites; something bottled up by the Church, like rare and precious medicines in an apothecary-shop, to be dealt out to those who are willing to follow priestly prescriptions and pay the required price.

The fact is, churches and scriptures and dogmas are the outcome of that religious element which is inherent in human nature. It cannot be too often or too strongly urged that the religious principle is innate and ineradicable in mankind, and that you might as well try to destroy man’s love of the beautiful, his desire for knowledge, his love of home and kindred, or even his appetite for food, as to try to destroy it. It is as natural to feel the want of religion as it is to be hungry. You cannot^ destroy the foundations of religion. They rest in *nature and antedate all creeds and churches, and will survive them.

Even Professor Tyndall says: “The facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the facts of physics.”

… “The world will have religion of some kind.”… “You who have escaped from these religions into the high and dry light of intellect may deride them, but in doing so you deride accidents of form merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems at this hour.”

Renan also writes thus: “All the symbols which serve to give shape to the religious sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be one after another rejected. But nothing is more remote from the truth than the dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected humanity without religion.”… “Devotion is as natural as egoism to a true-born man. The organization of devotion is religion. Let no one hope, therefore, to dispense with religion or religious associations. Each progression of modern society will render this want more imperious.”

We use the word religion as it was used by Cicero, in the sense of scruple, implying the consciousness of a natural obligation wholly irrespective of what one may believe concerning the gods. Religion in its true meaning is the great fact of duty, of oughtness, consisting in an honest and persistent effort to realize ideal excellence and to transform it into actual character and practical life. Religion as a spirit and a life is objected to by none, but is admired and commended by all. It is superstition, bigotry, credulity, and dogma that are detestable. The religious instinct has been perverted, turned into wrong channels, made subservient to priestcraft and kingcraft, but its basic principle remains for ever firm. If it could have been destroyed, the machinations of priests would have annihilated it long ago. Give yourselves no anxiety about the corner-stone of religion, but look well to the rotten superstructures that have been reared upon it. Its professed friends are often its real enemies. It is the false prophet who is afraid to have his oracles subjected to tests of reason and history. It is the evil-doer who is afraid of the light, the conscious thief who objects to being searched. An honest man would say, “Let the truth be published, though the heavens fell.”

The whole truth should be published, as a matter of common honesty, if nothing more. We have no moral right to conceal the truth, any more than we have to proclaim falsehood. He who deliberately does the one will not hesitate long about doing the other. And this is one of the most serious aspects of this subject. He who can bring himself to practise deceit regarding religion will soon be a villain at heart, even if worldly prudence is strong enough to keep him out of the penitentiary.

As a rule, the unfaithful teacher inflicts a greater evil upon his own soul than upon his unsuspecting dupe. The deceiver is sure to be overtaken by his own deceit. Mean men become more mean, and liars come to believe their own oft-repeated falsehoods. This principle may in part account for the fact that in all ages dishonest, mercenary, designing priests have been most corrupt citizens and ready tools in the hands of tyrants to oppress and enslave the people.

Every deceptive act blunts the moral sense, defiles and sears the conscience, until at last the hypocrite degenerates into a slimy, subtle human serpent that always crawls upon its belly and eats dust. Secretiveness and deceitfulness become a second nature, and show themselves continually even in the ordinary affairs of life. The reflex influence of deception upon the deceiver himself is its most bitter condemnation.

But modern preachers have a way of justifying their evasions and prevarications by saying that even Jesus himself withheld from his own disciples some things, for the reason that they were “not able to bear them,” quite overlooking the fact that he is also reported to have said, “When the Spirit of truth has come, he will teach you all things,” and that other passage (Luke 12: 2), where Jesus is represented as saying, “For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

If after eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching the time has not yet come to proclaim the whole truth, it is not likely to come for many ages in the future. If religion is a mystery too great to be comprehended, too sacred for reverent but untrammelled investigation, something that can only exist with a blind, unreasoning credulity and the utter stultification of the natural faculties of a true manhood, then religion is not worth what it costs and should be exposed as a delusion and a snare.

The time for the religious Kabala has passed, and ambiguities, concealments, and evasions are no longer to be tolerated. Martin Luther builded better than he knew when he proclaimed the right of private judgment in matters of religion. It has taken two hundred years for this fundamental principle to become thoroughly accepted by the people; but so firmly is it now established that bigoted ecclesiastics might as well attempt to resist the trend of an earthquake, stop the rising of the sun, and turn the light of noonday into the darkness of midnight as to attempt to arrest the progress of a true religious rationalism. The mad ravings of fanatics will have no more influence than the pope’s bull had on the comet. Learning is no longer monopolized by a few monks and ministers. For every five clergymen who are abreast with the times, the progress of modern thought, and the conclusions of science, there are fifty laymen who are familiar with the writings of Humboldt, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, and scores of other scientists, to whom the world is more indebted for true progress than to all the lazy monks and muttering priests who have lived since the world began. The fact is, the old delusion that men must look to the sacerdotal class exclusively, or even mainly, for religious truth, has been for ever banished from the minds of intelligent men. The literature of the day is full of free thought and downright rationalism, and even the secular newspaper is a missionary of religious progress and reform, and brings stirring messages of intellectual progress every day to our breakfast-tables. The world moves, and those who attempt to stop it are sure to be crushed.

The pretence that anything is too sacred for investigation and publication will not stand the light of this wide-awake nineteenth century.

It is often said that the common people are not ready for the whole truth. In 1873, Dr. J. G. Holland, then editor of Scribner’s Monthly, wrote to Dr. Augustus Blauvelt declining to publish an article on “The Divine and Infallible Inspiration of the Bible,” and added, “I believe you are right. I should like to speak your words to the world; but if I do speak them it will pretty certainly cost me my connection with the magazine. This sacrifice I am willing to make if duty requires it. I am afraid of nothing but doing injury to the cause I love.... In short, you see that I sincerely doubt whether the Christian world is ready for this article.... Instead of the theologians the people would howl.... I cannot yet carry my audience in such a revolution. Perhaps I shall be able to do so by and by, but as I look at it to-day it seems impossible.... My dear friend, I believe in you. You are in advance of your time. You have great benefits in your hands for your time. You are free and true. And I mourn sadly and in genuine distress that I cannot speak your words with a tongue which all my fellow-Christians can hear. They will not hear them yet. They will some time....”

Dr. Holland has passed away and cannot reply to criticism. Let us be kind and charitable. He intended to be right, but he was mistaken. The people do not howl when the truth is published, even though their prejudices may be aroused; and no tedious preparation is now necessary to be able to hear the whole truth. The masses of the people are hungry for knowledge, and it is high time that they be honestly fed. They now more than half suspect that they have been deceived by those some of whom they have educated by their charities and liberally paid to teach them the truth. When, in 1875, Scribner’s Monthly did publish Dr. Blauvelt’s articles on “Modern Skepticism,” it was not the people that “howled.” It was the clergy. Some of them demanded a new editor; others warned the people from the pulpit not to patronize Scribner; and one distinguished man declared that the magazine must be “stamped out,” and at once organized a most powerful ecclesiastical combination against the freedom of the press; and yet the North American Review and other similar magazines are today doing more to settle long-mooted religious questions than all the pulpits in Christendom; and the people do not howl. No respectable enterprising publisher now hesitates to publish a book of real merit, however much its doctrines may differ from the dominant faiths. The masses of the people are determined to know all that can be known of the history, philosophy, and principles of religion; and the greater the effort to conceal and suppress the truth the stronger will be the demand for its full and undisguised proclamation.

That there is a general drifting away from the old formulas of religious doctrine everybody knows, and yet there is more practical religion in the world to-day than in any previous age. It does not consist in fastings and attendance upon ecclesiastical rites and ordinances; but it takes the form of universal education, of providing homes for friendless infancy and old age, of the prevention of cruelty to children and even to brute animals, of the more rational and humane treatment of lunatics, paupers, and criminals, ameliorating the miseries of prisons and hospitals,—in short, of elevating and improving the condition of universal humanity. These truly religious works do not depend upon any particular statement of religious belief, for all sects and persons of no sect are equally engaged in them.

Charities would not cease if all creeds should be abandoned or should be so revised as not to be recognized by the disciples of Calvin and Wesley, and if every priest in the land should henceforth give up the mummeries and puerilities of the Dark Ages.

Religion, as the “enthusiasm of humanity,” the cultivation of all the virtues, and the practice of the highest morality growing out of the inalienable rights of man in all the relations of life, is a fixed fact. It is a natural endowment, coeval with humanity in its development and progress, and is as absolutely indestructible as manhood itself.

So far from being true is the assumption that religion would be imperilled by the exposure of the false dogmas of theology and the heathenish rites and superstitious ceremonies of ecclesiasticism, it is clear to many minds that the myths of dogmatic theology and the absurdities of primitive ages are the chief obstacles in the way of the free course of true religion; and it may safely be affirmed that the distinguishing dogmas of the dominant theology, Catholic and Protestant, as will hereafter be shown, are essentially demoralizing and logically tend to undermine and corrupt public virtue. It is not intended to affirm that churches and theologians do no good and that their entire influence is bad. They teach much that is humane in principle and moral in practice, and so do good for society. Nevertheless, it is true that much of the rotten morality of the times can be philosophically traced to the influence of a false theology. The main dogmas of Romish and orthodox Protestant creeds are false, and it is absurd to suppose that a pure system of public virtue can be founded upon ignorance, superstition, and falsehood.

But, after all, we are asked, Does it make any odds what one believes if he is only sincere in his faith?

The obvious answer is, that the more sincerely you believe a lie the more dangerous is your faith. The more trustfully you build upon a sandy foundation the sooner and greater will be the fall and ruin of the superstructure. The more implicitly you confide in a dishonest partner or agent the more successful will be his robbery. There is no safety in error and falsehood. The Westminster divines well said, “Truth is in order to righteousness.” There can be no true righteousness inherent in a system of superstition and falsehood. The failure of the Church to reach the masses and to establish a condition of public honesty superior to the ancient heathen morality shows that there must be some serious defect in its methods.

But the crushing objection to theological agitation and free discussion is the common one that “it is unwise to unsettle and destroy the faith of the people in the dominant theology unless there is something better to offer them as a substitute.”

There is something better. Truth is always better and safer than falsehood. In the discussions which are to follow an attempt will be made to show that there is a natural religion which accords with enlightened reason, and which cannot fail to furnish a firm scientific foundation for the highest morality. The common saying, that “it is better to have a false religion than no religion,” contains two groundless assumptions—viz. that it is possible for a man to have no religion, and that that which is false may be dignified with the name religion. It is about time that things should be called by their right names, and that superstition and falsehood should not be deemed necessary to public morality.

For a religion (so called) of superstition and falsehood there must be a religion of natural science*that cannot be overthrown, and which cannot fail to make its way among men as knowledge shall increase and the principles of true religious philosophy shall be better understood. We should not be frightened at the cowardly cry of “destructive criticism.” We *must pull down before we can reconstruct.

CONCLUSIONS.

To imitate the example of the early Christian Fathers in fraud, falsehood, and forgery for the promotion of religion is a policy that is too shocking to the moral sense of civilized men everywhere to be tolerated. To withhold or suppress the truth is a crime against humanity and contrary to the spirit of this age; and those who do it are the enemies of progress and unworthy to be recognized as the authoritative teachers of the world.

Those who publish that which is false or suppress what is true not only do a great wrong to the people, but, if possible, do a greater wrong to their own souls, and must suffer the consequences. They must have an awful reckoning with eternal, retributive justice.

It is a most egregious mistake to suppose that the people cannot be trusted with the whole truth—that their sense of right is so dull and flimsy that on the slightest discovery of the errors in which they have been instructed from infancy they would lose confidence in all truth and rightfulness and rush riotously to ruin. If the people must be hoodwinked for ever, then the distinguishing principle of the Protestant Reformation and the basic principles of our American Declaration of Independence and republican government are false and delusive, and we should return to mediæval times and to feudal and autocratic government in Church and State.

It is high time that men should see that dogma is not religion; that blind faith is more to be feared than rational skepticism and scientific investigation; that whatever is opposed to reason and science in theology can be spared, not only without any loss, but greatly to the advantage of true religion and sound morality. All the religion that is worth having is natural and rational, and corresponds with the facts of the universe as they are demonstrated by the crucibles of science and the inductions of a sound philosophy. The principal moral obligations of men grow out of their relations to each other in life, and nothing can be more complete than the Golden Rule, emphasized in the Sermon on the Mount, but as clearly taught in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud, and in the twenty-fourth Maxim of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, and many others centuries before the Christian era.

Instead of loading down religion with Oriental myths and fables, instead of a gorgeous ritualism and surpliced priests, borrowed literally from the ancient paganism, instead of dogmas and creeds and unquestioning faith and blind submission to ecclesiastical dictation and rule, we want sound moral instruction in the great fundamental truths of nature and of science, which will always be found to strengthen and confirm the principles of true religion. These are the sources from which to gain light. We want less creed and more ethical culture, less profession and paraphernalia in religious worship and more practical philosophy and common sense.

The man who in scientific matters would make false representations and conceal the real truth would be deemed an impostor, and the time has come when hypocrites and cowards in theology should be made to feel their degradation and be forced into an open abandonment of “ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.” If we would scorn delusions in natural philosophy, if we would correct errors in oceanic charts, astronomical diagrams, and geographical maps, why should we hesitate to correct the most egregious blunders regarding those things which are infinitely more important? Can we with any proper sense of propriety and right connive at falsehood and uphold and strengthen it by our silence and cowardly negligence in failing to expose it? Are not all delusions debasing and opposed to the progress of truth and the elevation of mankind? In all the departments of human knowledge religion and morality are most imperative in their demands for pure and unadulterated truth; and he who does not recognize this fact sins grievously against his own soul, against the human family, and against the truth and its eternal Author, the God of all truth.

Finally, let it not be overlooked that it will not, for many reasons, be possible much longer to keep the people in ignorance, and to palm off upon them myths for veritable history and a system of theology plainly at variance with the conclusions of science, the facts of history, and the spiritual and moral consciousness of every true and well-developed man. The schoolmaster is abroad, and the spirit of fearless investigation is in the air, and men will, sooner or later, find out what is true; and when they come to understand how they have been imposed upon by their cowardly teachers, a fearful reaction will be the result; and woe to the hypocrite and time-server when that time comes! It is therefore not only good principle, but good policy, to tell the whole truth now. The following copy of a book-notice well describes the prevalent policy regarding matters of faith:

“A theory of religious philosophy which is much commoner among us than most of us think, but which has never been expressed so fully or so attractively as in the story of Marius.

“‘Submit,’ it seems to say, ‘to the religious order about you, accept the common beliefs, or at least behave as if you accepted them, and live habitually in the atmosphere of feeling and sensation which they have engendered and still engender; surrender your feeling while still maintaining the intellectual citadel intact; pray, weep, dream with the majority while you think with the elect; only so will you obtain from life all it has to give, its most delicate flavor, its subtlest aroma.’” Against such a sham the writer heartily protests, as against the villainous maxim, quoted from memory, accredited to Aristotle: “Think with the sages and philosophers, but talk like the common people.” Come what may, let us cease to profess what we have ceased to believe.

“The two learned people of the village,” says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, telling of his fanciful Arrowhead Village, “were the rector and the doctor. These two worthies kept up the old controversy between the professions which grows out of the fact that one studies nature from below upward, and the other from above downward. The rector maintained that physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes upward become palsied. The doctor retorted that theological students developed a third eyelid—the nictitating membrane, which is so well known in birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all the light they do not want.”

The Presbyterians have provided for a revision of their creed, though they have stultified themselves by certain restrictions, shutting out the light they do not want! Let us hope that the time will soon come when men will be honest enough and brave enough to follow the truth wherever it may lead. Let there be perfect veracity above all things, more especially in matters of religion. It is not a question of courtesies which deceive no one. To profess what is not believed is immoral. Immorality and untruth can never lead to morality and virtue; all language which conveys untruth, either in substance or appearance, should be amended so that words can be understood in their recognized meanings, without equivocal explanations or affirmations. Let historic facts have their true explanation.