Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays Part 22

If some are saved, others are lost, for all do not accept the Christian faith, all do not find Jesus. The Christian can be happy while others are miserable; he can rejoice while knowing that others are in peril; he can exult over his own salvation while seeing others going to destruction.

This is a fiendish happiness, a devilish joy. For one to be happy while knowing that a brother or sister is lost shows a hard, selfish, cruel heart.

Think of the Christian mother being happy for having been rescued from her burning home in whose fatal flames her children all perished! Think of the Christian father filled with joy at his escape from the sinking ship in which his wife and babe sailed to the port of death! Think of a Christian man or woman exulting over their good fortune in not having a disease which took away those who were nearest and dearest! Such joy, such happiness, as this is not human, it is brutish.

The Christian is welcome to all the happiness his heartless religion affords him. I want none of it. Such a religion would drive me mad.

The loving heart is happiest in the joy of those it loves; it is happy in seeing others happy, but there could be no joy for it to be saved while those it loved were lost. Christianity is a heartless religion, a cruel faith, a selfish scheme, and it is for those who care more about being saved than saving others.

The highest freedom is the freedom to say what we believe to be right.

It was a childless woman who said: The happiest woman is she whose bosom pillows the sweet head of a child.

WHAT G.o.d KNOWS

We see in Christian papers a great deal about what G.o.d knows. How does any one know what G.o.d knows? It has been the habit, where man lacked any particular knowledge, of saying, "G.o.d knows." But what is the good of G.o.d knowing anything if he keeps his knowledge to himself? If he will not tell what he knows, how is man improved or benefited by all the wisdom in the divine cranium? What is known by the inhabitants of Venus does the inhabitants of earth no good. But let us come down to facts. Is there any proof that G.o.d knows anything? Let men own up, and not try to deceive themselves or others any longer. What G.o.d knows n.o.body else knows.

There is no evidence that G.o.d knows what man does not, and it is bare a.s.sumption only to ascribe knowledge to deity. It is first necessary for man to know that there is a G.o.d, before endowing him with mental wealth or attributes. The Christian practice of saying that "G.o.d loves man," and that "G.o.d cares for man" has no basis of facts to stand upon, and it is only pious conceit that indulges in such statements.

There is nothing in the universe but the universe itself; nothing in the universe that reveals a G.o.d. The earth does not, the sun does not, the moon does not, and not a planet or star reveals the existence of a G.o.d.

All these reveal their own existence; so of a flower, of a tree, of a man.

It is only divinity that can reveal the existence of divinity. Who has seen or heard this divinity? No one. Men have said, or men have made other men say, that they have seen G.o.d, heard G.o.d, and talked with G.o.d. But they lied. No human eye ever saw the divine form or features; no human ear ever heard the divine voice; no human being ever had any knowledge of a divine being.

It is a waste of words to talk about G.o.d and what he knows and what he does. No man knows that G.o.d does anything, that G.o.d knows anything, or that there is a G.o.d.

Blessings on the man who first dared to doubt.

The improvement in ways of travel and methods of labor has altered our reverence.

Every kiss of love imprinted by a mother's lips on the face of her babe gives the lie to the Christian doctrine of total depravity, and every gift which the heart of pity lays in the hand of misfortune brands this doctrine as false and a libel on our human nature.

THE MEANING OF THE WORD G.o.d

I do not deny that the word "G.o.d" has today a moral and religious meaning which is derived from his supposed beneficence, but this idea is not the one that I find at the bottom of the Christian faith. I object very seriously to the attempt, which is being made by certain interested parties, to represent the G.o.d of Christianity better than he is. This word loses its terror when we realize that it stands for an unknown quant.i.ty.

It is the attempt to account for what we cannot understand; the effort to explain the universe. The word "G.o.d" is a definition of human ignorance.

It represents what we do not know. This word does not stand for a person, an object, or a thing. It is an idea that we can have no idea of, a thought of what one cannot think. People who use the word "G.o.d" do not know what they are talking about. The word fits nothing that has yet been discovered. Theology is the science of what no one knows anything about.

It does not belong to the family of knowledge. When the hands of theology are laid on a man's head his brains are consecrated to do nothing. Every time a minister is made, a man is lost. Nothing disgraces American civilization more than the theology preached in Christian churches. It is worse than childish; it is old-womanish. The dark ages cast their shadows across the bright skies of the twentieth century, and the relics of that benighted time, the priests, are still walking the streets, like ghosts of bad deeds.

Every theology ends in a creed. A creed is the night-cap of religion. It is a sign that the intellect is asleep. When faith is in, sense is out. A man with a creed has bought the coffin for his mind. The rest of his life will be a funeral service for the dead. A creed is the grave of thought.

When a person subscribes to certain articles of belief, he has no further use for his brains. It does not require any mental exercise to believe.

Belief does not signify any process of intellectual a.s.similation or digestion. When a man joins a church, he makes his last will and testament. When reason abdicates in favor of credulity, crime becomes a saint, and folly a martyr. Too much faith makes a Poca.s.set tragedy. The foolishness of trying to make G.o.d intelligible to human understanding is shown in the creeds of Christendom. The dogma of the trinity ought not to pa.s.s to any further generation. It is not the "likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

WHAT HAS JESUS DONE FOR THE WORLD

A great deal is said about "what Jesus has done for the world." We wish some of those people who repeat this statement would take ten or fifteen minutes and tell us just what Jesus _has_ done for the world. It would puzzle the most ardent admirer of the Galilean reformer to point out anything that Jesus ever did to help man in this life. There is too much of this thoughtless, senseless praise of Jesus. Not a Christian on this earth but what owes a thousand times more to his father and mother than he owes to Jesus, but who ever heard one acknowledge it? We could name hundreds of men who have lightened the labor of the world by their inventions. Did Jesus do anything of the kind? We can name hundreds of men who have made the homes of mankind brighter and more enjoyable by their genius and toil. Did Jesus do anything of the kind?

The imaginary service which this imaginary person did is of no consequence to the poor, to the workers, to the starvers. What the poor man wants is not a Savior for another world, but a helper for this world, and the person who lessens the poverty and misery of earth is worth a thousand times more to humanity than Jesus.

We are told that Jesus died for man. Well! What of it? Socrates died for man. Bruno died for man. Emmet died for man. John Brown died for the black man. Every day somebody is dying for man. Why emphasize the death of Jesus more than the death of another? The fact that Jesus died does not help you or me. He could have helped us far more by living, if he had lived wisely and well.

The great fact in regard to Jesus is this: He does not touch this age; its aspirations, its interests, its reforms, its work, its spirit. We are living contrary to Jesus, contrary to all he taught and did. He is left behind, outgrown, and, consequently, whatever he did is of no value to this age. His star is set. He has had his day. Instead of trying to bring about a kingdom of poverty, a millennium of idleness, the world is striving for a kingdom of plenty and a good time for everybody.

Everything connected with Jesus has been exaggerated. The man himself has been exaggerated, his words have been exaggerated, his performances have been exaggerated, and his importance has been exaggerated. He has been given a character that he is not ent.i.tled to, and his teachings have been clothed with a value which they do not possess. Jesus has been pa.s.sed for more than he is worth. Let his name no longer bear the stamp of divinity.

Let his deeds no longer be called miracles. The real Jesus of fact would be a very ordinary man.

THE AGNOSTIC'S POSITION

Some avowed Liberal writers are engaged in abusing the Agnostic. One looks upon him as a fool, while another considers him a hypocrite. One pities him for his ignorance, the other abuses him for confessing it. I side with the Agnostic. I sit down with the ignorant. I take my place in the cla.s.s of "I-don't-know." The difference between people is this: Some don't know, and some don't know that they don't know, and the rest won't admit that they don't know.

It seems to me that the Agnostic's position is an honest one. He is asked the question; Is there a future life for man? What shall he answer? If he does not know whether there is not, why should he not say so? To say: I believe there is, is not an answer to the question. He must say, I know, or, I do not know. On this question are we not all Agnostics?

The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.