An honest God is the Noblest Work of Man.
Each nation has created a god, and the god has always
resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he
was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely
patriotic, and detested all nations but his own. All these gods demanded
praise, flattery, and worship. Most of them were pleased with sacrifice, and
the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. All
these gods have insisted upon having a vast number of priests, and the priests
have always insisted upon being supported by the people, and the principal
business of these priests has been to boast about their god, and to insist that
he could easily vanquish all the other gods put together.
These gods have been manufactured after numberless models,
and according to the most grotesque fashions. Some have a thousand arms, some a
hundred heads, some are adorned with necklaces of living snakes, some are armed
with clubs, some with sword and shield, some with bucklers, and some have wings
as a cherub; some were invisible, some would show themselves entire, and some
would only show their backs; some were jealous, some were foolish, some turned
themselves into men, some into swans, some into bulls, some into doves, and
some into Holy Ghosts, and made love to the beautiful daughters of men. Some
were married -- all ought to have been -- and some were considered as old
bachelors from all eternity. Some had children, and the children were turned
into gods and worshiped as their fathers had been. Most of these gods were
revengeful, savage, lustful, and ignorant. As they generally depended upon
their priests for information, their ignorance can hardly excite our
astonishment.
These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they
had created, but supposed them perfectly flat. Some thought the day could be
lengthened by stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns
could throw down the walls of a city, and all knew so little of the real
nature of the people they had created, that they commanded the people to love
them. Some were so ignorant as to suppose that man could believe just as he
might desire, or as they might command, and that to be governed by observation,
reason, and experience was a most foul and damning sin. None of these gods
could give a true account of the creation of
this little earth. All were woefully deficient in geology and astronomy. As a
rule, they were most miserable legislators, and as executives, they were far
inferior to the average of American presidents.
These deities have demanded the most abject and degrading
obedience. In order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of
course, they have always been partial to the people who created them, and have
generally shown their partiality by assisting those people to rob and destroy
others, and to ravish their wives and daughters.
Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of
unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have someone deny their existence.
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods
were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god
market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms. These gods
not only attended to the skies, but were supposed to interfere in all the
affairs of men. They presided over everybody and everything. They attended to
every department. All was supposed to be under their immediate control. Nothing
was too small -- nothing too large; the falling of sparrows and the motions of
the planets were alike attended to by these industrious and observing deities.
From their starry thrones they frequently came to earth for the purpose of
imparting information to man. It is related of one that he came amid
thunderings and lightnings in order to tell the people that they should not
cook a kid in its mother's milk. Some left their shining abodes to tell women that
they should, or should not, have children, to inform a priest how to cut and
wear his apron, and to give directions as to the proper manner of cleaning the
intestines of a bird.
When the people failed to worship one of these gods, or
failed to feed and clothe his priests, (which was much the same thing,) he
generally visited them with pestilence and famine. Sometimes he allowed some
other nation to drag them into slavery -- to sell their wives and children; but
generally he glutted his vengeance by murdering their firstborn. The priests
always did their whole duty, not only in predicting these calamities, but in
proving, when they did happen, that they were brought upon the people because
they had not given quite enough to them.
These gods differed just as the nations differed; the
greatest and most powerful nations had the most powerful gods, while the weaker
ones were obliged to content themselves with the very off- scourings of the
heavens. Each of these gods promised happiness here and hereafter to all his
slaves, and threatened to eternally punish all who either disbelieved in his
existence or suspected that some other god might be his superior; but to deny
the existence of all gods was, and is, the crime of crimes. Redden your hands
with human blood; blast by slander the fair fame of the innocent; strangle the
smiling child upon its mother's knees; deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful
girl who loves and trusts you, and your case is not hopeless. For all this, and for all these you may be forgiven. For all this,
and for all these, that bankrupt court established by the gospel, will give you
a discharge; but deny the existence of these divine ghosts, of these gods, and
the sweet and tearful face of Mercy becomes livid with eternal hate. Heaven's golden
gates are shut, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, with the
brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless wanderings in the lurid
gloom of hell -- an immortal vagrant -- an eternal outcast -- a deathless
convict.
One of these gods, and one who demands our love, our
admiration and our worship, and one who is worshiped, if mere heartless
ceremony is worship, gave to his chosen people for their guidance, the
following laws of war: "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against
it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be if it make
thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people
that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve
thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee,
then thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into
thy hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But
the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city,
even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and thou shalt eat
the spoil of thine enemies which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt
thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of
the cities of these nations. But of the cities of
these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou
shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."
Is it possible for man to conceive of anything more
perfectly infamous? Can you believe that such directions were given by any
being except an infinite fiend? Remember that the army receiving these
instructions was one of invasion. Peace was offered upon condition that the
people submitting should be the slaves of the invader; but if any should have
the courage to defend their homes, to fight for the love of wife and child,
then the sword was to spare none -- not even the prattling, dimpled babe.
And we are called upon to worship such a God; to get upon
our knees and tell him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love. We are asked to stifle every noble
sentiment of the soul, and to trample under foot all the sweet charities of the
heart. Because we refuse to stultify ourselves -- refuse to become liars -- we
are denounced, hated, traduced and ostracized here, and this same god threatens
to torment us in eternal fire the moment death allows him to fiercely clutch
our naked helpless souls. Let the people hate, let the god threaten -- we will
educate them, and we will despise and defy the god.
The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages
equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools
in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they
wish to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and
justice!
Strange! that no one has ever
been persecuted by the church for believing God bad, while hundreds of millions
have been destroyed for thinking him good. The orthodox church never will forgive the Universalist for saying "God is
love." It has always been considered as one of the very highest evidences
of true and undefiled religion to insist that all men, women and children
deserve eternal damnation. It has always been heresy, to say, "God will at
last save all"
We are asked to justify these frightful passages, these
infamous laws of war, because the Bible is the word of God. As a matter of
fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument even tending to
prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive
evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the
very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we
admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are
mental serfs. It is infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would Address a
communication to intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in
eternal flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of
understanding his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we
certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the
right to punish us for such action.