THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS
A great deal has been written, preached and said about the great sacrifice which Jesus made for the world. We deny that he made any such sacrifice as is claimed for him by the Christian church. In fact, we cannot see, find or learn from any record of the New Testament that he made any sacrifice at all. This whole idea about the sacrifice of Jesus depends upon a theological assumption.
Jesus had no earthly honor, position or estate to sacrifice, even had he been disposed to offer such for the good of mankind. Not only is there no evidence of any tangible renunciation possible by Jesus, but there is no proof and no sign that Jesus possessed even the spirit of sacrifice. We challenge the Christian admirer of Jesus to point to a single act of this hero that can honestly be called a sacrifice. We know of no such act. We have studied the gospels to find such an act, and we have studied them in vain.
When a mother sees her boy pinned to the timbers of a wrecked car where the scalding steam must escape into his face and destroy his life, and to save her boy, voluntarily stands where this steam, with its hot breath, will take her life instead of her boy’s, this mother makes a sacrifice that is apparent, real. Such an act is sublime, grand, beyond heroism. Such an act wipes the Christian slander of total depravity from human nature. Such an act makes us almost worship the heart great enough to perform it.
Jesus did no such things as this. He braved no danger for another. He did not walk in the path of peril to save the life of friend or fellow. On the contrary, he seemed bent on a selfish mission, inspired by a purely personal ambition. He did not say: This world is suffering from oppression; I will lay down my life to make it free. He did not seek to destroy the throne and the sceptre that bear so heavily on the poor and weak; but he sought a throne and a sceptre for himself that he might rule the world.
Jesus sacrifice himself for the world! No! He demanded that the world sacrifice itself to exalt him! A poorer specimen of self-sacrifice could hardly be found in all the historical out-of-the-way places that we know anything about. Jesus had nothing to give up, nothing to renounce, nothing but his life to offer to the world, and this, even when it was taken, did the world no good.
The only incident in the whole career of Jesus which has been construed as a sacrifice was his crucifixion, but this was not voluntary on the part of the victim. Jesus, in dying, made no sacrifice. He surrendered his life at the command of a political power; he did not offer it for the world’s advancement. Jesus was the sport of circumstances, the victim of a cruel fate. He played for high stakes and lost. He was an adventurer, and suffered the penalty of failure. Taking the account of his career in the gospels as true, it is totally barren of any lofty, sublime action for the good of the human race. He did not throw his efforts into the public strife to elevate the condition of the majority, but he loaded himself on the shoulders of his followers to ride into divine greatness. Like hundreds of others, he threw the dice of political chance and was beaten.
In following the gospel steps of the deluded Nazarene we are not sure which are his and which are not, but take all the stories as true which his devoted disciples have told about him, they do not reveal a mind consecrated to any lofty purpose. He was working to establish the “kingdom of heaven,” but nobody knows what that is. He talked about his “father in heaven,” but nobody knows who he is. He had no practical ideas, he did no practical work. History would have written this man’s name among the unfortunate victims of political revolutions, if it had preserved it at all, which is doubtful, but Jesus was made by priestcraft to play a leading part in a theological drama, and religion has immortalized his name.
But it is a false part that Jesus has played. No such character has any reason for existing. The necessity for any human offering to God does not exist. The idea of an atoning sacrifice is a relic of at barbarous faith. It is time to take Christianity off the stage. It is an insult to the twentieth century.
The silly, sickly superstition of the sacrifice of Jesus should be left to die. It sprang from falsehood and has no basis in fact, in reason or in truth.
FASHIONABLE HYPOCRISY
There is nothing more inconsistent than for the rich to praise Jesus. There is dishonesty in every word that the wealthy speak in approbation of the poverty-preacher of Galilee. Jesus was poor, almost a beggar. He had no house, no home. But more than this, he did not see the good of such things. He did not tell his disciples to work and try to improve their earthly condition. There is no sound, sensible advice for a man to follow, who has to live and support his family, to be found in the so-called teachings of Jesus.
It is simply hypocrisy for a man who is rich or well-to-do, and who is living to add to his wealth or to increase his comforts, to pretend to honor Jesus. The truth is, Jesus did not do anything that deserves the honor of those who are trying to fill the earth with flowers of happiness, who are laboring to make brighter the homes they live in, and who are sowing the seeds of plenty and joy. Jesus did not do what this age regards as best for man, and he did not teach the philosophy which the wisest men to-day apply to human life.
Now, was Jesus right or wrong? That is the question. It is pure nonsense for the people of this country to claim to respect Jesus. We cannot respect a person who does what we think is foolish, or we cannot do so and have any self-respect. We are right or think we are, and Jesus was wrong; or else Jesus was right. Which is it?
The whole world, Christian and unbeliever alike, is living contrary to the precept and example of the New Testament preacher. Is every person on earth doing what he believes to be wrong; doing what he believes to be injurious to himself; doing what he considers will end in disaster and misery; doing what he feels will bring suffering and sorrow upon humanity? Not a bit of it. Every man is doing what he believes to be right when he is working to get out of poverty and degradation; when he is trying to better his condition in society; when he is improving his home and giving his family more blessings, more enjoyments.
We unhesitatingly declare that Jesus was wrong. It is impossible to make poverty popular. There is not an argument in its favor. Poverty has not a single blessing. It is a curse, pure and simple, everywhere and for everybody. It is not to be praised; it is to be condemned and got rid of. It is the father of vice and the mother of suffering. It sheds more tears than grief. It cuts more throats than crime. It breaks more hearts than cruelty. It is the one great giant evil of earth. It is the foe that every Knight of Labor is sworn to battle. Every heart that loves another is pledged to drive poverty off the earth. This monster devours more children than disease, and tortures the aged more than pain. Want is a flood, a drought, a famine, a pestilence. It is a prison, a work-house, a convict’s cell. It is the hell of the twentieth century.
Can we praise Jesus and be honest? No! Jesus and his gospel of poverty are not in harmony with the work, the love, the desire of this age, and for any one who is living above want, on the walls of whose home is the sunshine of peace and comfort, to pretend to honor Jesus or to follow his teaching is to be guilty of hypocrisy!
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
When religion comes in at the door common sense goes out at the window.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The churches erected in the name of God will ere long be tombstones to his memory.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Churches do not stand for moral influence. Not a Christian minister preaches salvation by good behavior. What a poor business Roman Catholicism would do among men if it advertised to save only those who were temperate, upright, intelligent and moral.
THE SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY
It is pretty certain that the laborer is hereafter to have more time for himself. That fact is already settled, and the demand will be conceded sooner or later. Eat, work and sleep is the ancient trinity of slavery. The modern life demands leisure; the opportunity for enjoyment and self-improvement. How it is best to be secured is a question about which there is a variety of opinions. One of the plans to give the workingman more time for himself is that of the Saturday half-holiday. We see no particular advantage in this over the eight-hour-for-a-day’s-work plan.
It seems to us that if laborers worked eight hours a day and had Sunday for a holiday instead of a holy day, all their requirements would be better answered than in any other way. We do not need a day nor an hour when either work or play would be a crime, and before any other portion of the week is set apart for a holiday, let Sunday be made free to enjoyment and recreation.
There is the eternal bugbear of religion to oppose this scheme, but that is all. The minister, who under free trade on Sunday would be obliged to close up his business, is in favor of a Sabbath law of protection for sermons and prayers, but why should a few clergymen who have six holidays in the week and only one work-day, be favored against millions of toilers, who work six days in the week and are liable to be arrested if they do not go to church on the seventh day? Not a Saturday half-holiday but a Sunday whole-holiday is the first rational step towards justice to the working-man. There is very little in the average Sunday service that is instructive and nothing that is entertaining, and it is based upon the erroneous notion that man owes something that he knows nothing about, a debt of worship one day in seven. Man’s brain should be emancipated from the superstition that there is a God in the universe that requires him to sacrifice his own good to divine vanity. Work is holier than worship, and to play is better for man than to pray.
Man wants leisure to enjoy himself, not to worship God. He can have it when he becomes sensible enough to demand it.
THE MOTIVE FOR PREACHING
Why does a man enter the Christian ministry? Why do men preach the Christian faith? There is some reason for doing so. What is it? We have been told that the men who adopt the profession of preaching for a living make a sacrifice of personal advantage by doing so; that these men, had they entered any other profession, could not only more readily achieve greatness, but could also make more money. We do not believe it. As a rule, we believe that the men who are getting a living to-day as ministers, earn more money and enjoy more fame, than they could get in any other business or calling. Ministers are not martyrs. That idea needs to be given up.
There is another idea that people have entertained too long, and that is, that all the young men who graduate from a divinity school are intellectual giants. Brains are not the capital of the pulpit. We gladly acknowledge the exception to what we have stated as a rule, and are not only willing, but anxious, to testify to the occasional brilliant preacher. We are speaking of the overwhelming majority and not of the conspicuous few.
Most men go into the ministry because they think they can get a living more easily by preaching than by doing anything else. The pulpit is founded not on spiritual sands, but on an earthly rock. It is the salary that makes it attractive.
Now, let us look at the facts in the case. The work of the minister is less than the work of the average laborer, and the pay of the preacher is more than the pay of the average mechanic or working-man. Here is the key to the pulpit for a lot of young men. A young man who has a taste for reading and loafing, and no genius for work, sees a chance to employ what talent he possesses by studying theology, and we venture to say that nine out of ten of the candidates for the ministry enter the profession from purely business, or, if you will, mercenary motives. The Lord does not pick out preachers. They pick themselves out.
There is just as much striving for the loaves and fishes among ministers as among other men; and the religious society that pays the largest salary is the vineyard that has the most applications for the job. We do not say that preachers are worse than other professional characters, but that they are human. They preach for money, and where the highest salary is there will the ministers be most anxious to go.
We do not wish to cut anybody’s wings, but when we read that certain new-fledged preachers are about to “work for the Lord,” and that they have “entered upon God’s chosen profession through their love of saving souls,” we want to correct the statements. They are going to work for themselves the best they know how, having entered upon their duties, not so much because they love their fellow-men, as because they love the good things of this world.
The truth is this, the motive for preaching to-day is the pay, and the religion of the pulpit is to say nothing that will cause a panic in the pews.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Man’s history is below his life, his destiny above it.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
All that secularists ask is that their thoughts be met fairly and honestly, and that the world accept what will lead it in the highest and surest way.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
If a person can join the salvation army corps and still be respected by his fellow-beings, he ought to be at liberty to enlist in the ranks of reason and common sense and not forfeit respect.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
God has done nothing for men and women except to scare them out of their wits.
THE CHRISTIAN’S GOD
Man is like the God he worships, and history shows that the Christian church has been as cruel as its God. A Christian minister damns just as his God does. He sends every free soul to hell just as his God does. He demands obedience just as his God does. The tyranny of heaven is repeated on earth and every tyrant quotes God for his authority.
Think of the Christian superstition demanding recognition and acceptance! It seems almost incredible that a man can be found in this age to preach such glaring inconsistencies and absurdities, such a ridiculous faith, such injustice and cruelty, as the Christian religion stands for. We can hardly believe our own ears when we go inside of a Christian church. We cannot understand how this terrible superstition has obtained possession of the mind, nor how human beings can be so blinded and apparently stultified! Were there on this earth a judge who should pronounce sentence upon a person on account of his religious belief, mankind would brand the name of that judge with the deepest obloquy. He would be stripped of his robe of office and disgraced forever in the eyes of every true man and woman on the globe. His deed would be a black spot on the page of history and his memory a burden to the world.
Put this judge on the throne of the universe and you have the Christian’s
God.
INDIFFERENCE TO RELIGION
The pulpit complains that people are indifferent to religion. Why shouldn’t they be? It is about time they were indifferent to it. Our wonder is, that the people tolerate a single priest or church on earth. Of what benefit is religion to mankind? Come now, ye that uphold religion, tell us what it does to make the world better, nobler, truer? Why should man worship God? Why should he build thousands of costly churches all over the earth, and pay priests and ministers large salaries to preach and pray in these churches?
If the churches were the humblest buildings in the land; if the ministers and priests were paid no more than carpenters or spinners, if there were any agreement between what religion professes to be and what it is as matter of fact, then less could be said in the way of condemnation of religion. But think you that men who live in hovels can respect men who preach in palaces as followers of the man of Nazareth? The thing is too ridiculous. The world is beginning to see how it has been humbugged, and it is becoming indifferent. It may in time become indignant. There will then be occasion for ministers to be alarmed.
But just now the people have reached a condition of utter indifference respecting religion. They don’t care for it. They don’t care to build it up or tear it down. They don’t care whether it is good or bad. They don’t care anything about it.
Some regret this state of things; we rejoice in it. It shows that the people are thinking, and when the people think long enough they will find what is true and right.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
If
If the government can carry a letter across the continent for two cents, why cannot it send a telegraphic message correspondingly cheap?
If the government can build and manage a navy, why cannot it build and operate a railroad?
If the government can run the treasury department, why cannot it run the banks?
If the government can maintain an army of soldiers in idleness, why cannot it support an army of laborers at some useful occupation?
If the government can serve at less cost than private corporations, why does it not do so?
SUNDAY SCHOOLS
Of all the stupid things we meet with, Sunday school lessons are the stupidest. There seems to be only one way to account for this, and that is that stupid persons are connected with Sunday schools and can comprehend only stupid things. It seems to us as though a bright boy or girl at the age of twelve years ought to be able to overthrow every argument employed in a Sunday school to bolster up the Christian superstition. The lessons taught in them are adapted to undeveloped brains, and the literature one gets from their libraries is of that variety that is calculated to discourage any robust independence of mind. We believe that any religious or theological instruction is a positive injury to the young; that it is utterly wrong to instill into the immature mind ideas of God, of a future life, of heaven and hell, of angels and devils. All that we know about God is what we don’t know. The same may be said of other branches of religion. How much better it would be to teach something useful, something of importance, something real, true! Parents owe it to their children to save them from being taught the false and foolish dogmas of Christianity. False education is the bane of humanity, and the falsehood that is learned in Sunday schools poisons and deforms the life of man as long as he lives. Fear of God—the most terrible spectre that ever haunted the human soul—is a product of the Sunday school. The victims of this fear can be counted to-day by millions. This one fact ought to be sufficient to condemn this nursery of superstition and evil. There is no earthly reason to fear God, and other reasons should have no weight. The black shadow of fear which darkens the whole earth is the result of faith in God. The catechisms used in the Sunday schools are mostly filled with pious trash. The questions and answers they contain are written out of ignorance, written, too, in most cases, for the purpose of making the intellect the slave of the priest and minister. There is no mystery so shallow as a theological mystery, because it is founded on deception. The only mysteries that the human mind can contemplate with real wonder are the sublime mysteries of Nature, the mysteries of life and death, of sand and star, of flower and feeling. Before these great, overwhelming mysteries, that everywhere surround us, the petty ideas of Gods and devils, of saviors and mediators, of heaven and hell, are trivial and cheap. We condemn Sunday schools, because they do not teach what is real, what is true, what is necessary to a noble human life on earth; because they inculcate superstitions, and elevate the belief of religious dogmas above scientific and useful knowledge; because they put God above man, heaven hereafter above the home here, and the performance of religious duties above the life of honesty, purity and love. Sunday schools are the poorest schools on the face of the earth, and there is only one excuse for their existence, and that is to perpetuate the church, to keep alive the superstitions upon which it was built and upon which the clergy depend for a living.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Our duty to the god of christianity is to bury him.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Nothing from nothing and nothing remains, Nothing from nothing and nothing is the same.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
If the factory pays taxes and the church does not, it follows that the church will some day own the factory.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
When christian ministers stand up in their pulpits and say “Let us pray,” if they would sometimes vary the invitation and say: Let us laugh, they would do their congregations more good.