The Profits of Religion Part 20

Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of Spirit? If not, then you should at once open one therewith.

For no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of spiritual funds with that Bank.

And how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:

Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire.

Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material supply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to be, in freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in earnest, will do.

I turn over the advertis.e.m.e.nts of this publication of the "'Now'

Folk". One offers "The Business Side of New Thought." Another offers "The Books Without an If", with your money back IF you are not satisfied!

Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. Another quotes Shakespeare: "Tis the mind that makes the body rich." Another offers two copies of the "Phrenological Era" for ten cents.

There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot find dupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice commands:

Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written ent.i.tled "Strands of Gold" or "from Darkness into Light!"

Another announces:

The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of G.o.d's Remembrance, the Akashic Records.

And here is an advertis.e.m.e.nt published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:

Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want to be? What would overcome your present and future difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology.

Understanding awaits you.

And looking in the body of the magazine, you find this Philosopher imparting some of this Understanding. Would you like, for example, to understand why America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels of the Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, which are numbered 2951561591, which added make 45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not at first see what that has to do with the War--until the Philosopher points out that "9 is the number of completion, indicating the end of a cosmic cycle." That, of course, explains everything.

And here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead science, Astrology. It is called "Lucky Hours for Everybody: A True System of Planetary Hours--by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar." It teaches you things like this:

Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to hire servants of both s.e.xes....

A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several vain attempts to transact important business in the hours ruled by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she was nearly always fortunate in what she began in the hours ruled by Saturn. Upon investigation I found her name was ruled by the Sun negative, and that she had Capricorn with Saturn therein as her ascendant at birth, which explains.

And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported in the "Weekly Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over two-horse power oil engines which fail to act. "Going a little apart, he came back in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all right now and will work satisfactorily.' and without any further difficulty it did." We are told how Dr. Rawson gave a demonstration of his method to a newspaper reporter the other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking into s.p.a.ce, he apparently became absorbed in deep contemplation and said aloud: "There is no danger; man is surrounded by divine love; there is no matter; all is spirit and manifestation of spirit."

You might at first find difficulty in believing what can be accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this; not merely are two-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic machine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may recall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons was taken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here is a New-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds of our Nonsense magazines:

London, Dec. 14.--Sh.e.l.l-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with "charmed lives" are being made every day, according to Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He calls it "audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the powers of G.o.d by right thinking," is the agency through which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly, and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of the statements of Dr. Rawson....

At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.

Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated them for an hour before they started, and not a man was knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of sh.e.l.ls and bullets which did not touch him.

The Graft of Grace

All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world of commercial compet.i.tion. It happens not merely to Christian Science and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?

The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that is not so. I am an economic scientist, a.n.a.lyzing the forces which operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the compet.i.tive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to swindle or to starve.

For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will find a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be dispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over his meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us, in the net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money, and in order to get it he has to impress those who already have it--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of parasitism and exploitation.

So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I care not how sincere, how pa.s.sionately proletarian a religious prophet may be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a compet.i.tive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools, conducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of a.s.sisi, John Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.

A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes to me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women, with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon their producing "phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should resort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud, and science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary power of the subconscious mind?

Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is seeking to communicate with me! The seance was a public one, a gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery accent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the various confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of a child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr. Holmes; and one of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall that the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all the papers a couple of months before!

And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in New York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the field of mental healing, and of all other "occult" forces and powers, whether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors, new moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new sculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental and moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself from economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing through it, made hard in their att.i.tude of materialism. How many men I know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new quackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I know--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all mankind and ended by fooling themselves!

In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere, self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can persuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am mocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.

All that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being trapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by exploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world without end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race, until justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with his fellows.

BOOK SEVEN

The Church of the Social Revolution

They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ-- Infidel hordes that believe not in man; Stable and stall for his birth sufficed, But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.

They have hedged him round with pomp and parade, They have buried him deep under steel and stone-- But we come leading the great Crusade To give our Comrade back to his own.

Waddell.

Christ and Caesar

In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common, except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.

But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church.

He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the subtle worm a.s.sumed the guise or no less a person than the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the greater glory of G.o.d. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.

How complete and swift was his success you may judge from the fact that fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian compelled to pa.s.s an edict limiting the donations of emotional females to the church in Rome!

From that time on Christianity has been what I have shown in this book, the chief of the enemies of social progress. From the days of Constantine to the days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and Caesar have been one, and the Church has been the shield and armor of predatory economic might. With only one qualification to be noted: that the Church has never been able to suppress entirely the memory of her proletarian Founder. She has done her best, of course; we have seen how her scholars twist his words out of their sense, and the Catholic Church even goes so far as to keep to the use of a dead language, so that her victims may not hear the words of Jesus in a form they can understand.

'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung Only by priests, and in the Latin tongue!

But in spite of this, the history of the Church has been one incessant struggle with upstarts and rebels who have filled themselves with the spirit of the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Mount, and of that bitterly cla.s.s-conscious proletarian, James, the brother of Jesus.

And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has given life to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on the hearts of men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and fervor which has been poured into it by generation after generation of poor men who live like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus as criminals, and are revered like Jesus as founders and saints. The greatest of the early Church fathers were bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their own time. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of office, exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by the Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor Theodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was exiled and finally martyred. In the same way, most of the heretics whom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were proletarian rebels; the saints whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders which gave it life for century after century, were men who sought to return to the example of the carpenter's son. Let us hear a Christian scholar on this point, Prof. Rauschenbusch:

The movement of Francis of a.s.sisi, of the Waldenses, of the Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest doctrinal reformer before the reformation; but his eyes, too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement against the alien domination and extortion of the Church.

The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Huss, was quite as much political and social as religious.