WHAT DOES IT PROVE
Christians say that the resurrection of Jesus proves his claim to be the Messiah. But what proves the resurrection? Certainly not the contradictory stories of the gospels. The story of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb merely proves that somebody lied, that is all. A pretty Messiah Jesus was! The Messiah of the Jews was to be a king who should restore the lost splendor of the house of David; who should overthrow the power of the Romans and build up the Israelitish kingdom. This king never came. Jesus was just about as much a Jewish Messiah as Crispus Attucks was a President of the United States.
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No creed can be stretched to the size of truth; no church can be made as large as man.
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To correct in ourselves what we condemn in others would remove most of the evils of life.
HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY
There is nothing that tends to perpetuate the weakness of humanity more than religion. Men have been taught for ages that they were dependent upon God for all they have. This kind of teaching must be corrected; it is false. Man is dependent upon man. No God will help or hurt him. Be he ever so good no God will praise him; be he ever so bad no God will blame him. What he wants to escape is his own condemnation.
In order to develop an independent spirit in man it is necessary to increase his responsibility. Man must be taught to rely upon his own strength, upon his own body and mind. He must learn his relations to Nature and abide by the laws of his being. He must know this: if he would have anything he must deserve it. Human destiny follows human conduct.
The old notion that man is responsible to God cannot be proved. There are no facts that corroborate that notion. Man is responsible to himself. It is this truth that is calculated to elevate and ennoble human life. Let human beings understand that there is that within themselves that is to be respected, and that they are responsible to themselves for all they do, and they will be more worthy of respect and live more worthy lives.
ABOLISH DIRT
We should like to see one generation brought up to hate dirt. Every child ought to be taught that clean hands and face and clean clothes help to a clean life. There are too many homes on this earth that human beings live in that are dirty, in which those three household gods—the broom, the mop, and the dust-rag—have no place.
Children should be taught to drive dirt out of the house as they would a mad dog. Dirt is the food of disease. It is the enemy of health and happiness. Abolish dirt.
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If God exists, what objection can he have to saying so?
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When we have nothing to give a beggar, we can at least tell him so kindly.
RELIGION AND MORALITY
A religious man is not trusted to-day because he is religious. Faith in vicarious atonement is not accepted as a moral substitute for meeting one’s obligations. Worship of God is not equivalent to helping your neighbor. The fact that a man is religious may not be proof that he is a bad man, but it is no evidence that he is a good man. The most contemptible wretch that ever robbed the widow or orphan could shine in a prayer-meeting, where words are passed for virtues. The veriest scoundrel can pay a pew tax and march up the aisle of the church with sanctimonious countenance. Religion is such a superficial affair that it carries no moral recommendation. Without morality religion could not borrow a dollar on its name, while morality without religion can get all the accommodation it asks for. The real virtues of a man do not depend upon religion. Men have lived good lives while believing in dozens of gods and without faith in a single god. Morality is not the offspring of theology. You cannot pick out a moral man by hearing him pray. A great deal of religion is worn to conceal moral defects.
We should watch the man who stands up in public and says: I am moral. We should say to him: It is not necessary for you to proclaim your morality; your daily life will show how moral you are. The world is becoming suspicious of him who stands up in public and says: I am religious.
A great many people seem to think if they profess to love God it is not necessary for them to love man.
We are not denying that a great many good men and women are religious; that a great many good men and women go to church and prayer-meeting. We do not deny that a great many moral men and women profess faith in total depravity, in vicarious atonement, but we do not see how their faith has anything to do with their morality. There is no particular necessity for Christians to be good. Their faith saves them, not their conduct. Religion is not doing, it is believing, or pretending to.
There is a big opportunity to lie in religion. You cannot tell when a person says he believes in God whether he is telling the truth or not. It is mighty easy to be religious. But the moral man has no such chance. He is not judged by his professions, but by his actions.
Religion makes hypocrisy easy, but morality offers the hypocrite no show whatever.
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Never forget the good deeds that others do to you, nor remember those that you do to others.
JESUS AS A MODEL
It is common to speak of Jesus as though he touched the borders of every human experience, and sounded the depths of every joy and every woe, but there is no warrant for such statements.
He lived a very narrow life, and his brief career cannot be stretched to cover the limits of our earthly existence. He is held up for us to imitate, as though he had left a pattern for every hour of our lives, and a model for every day from the cradle to the grave. This is simply nonsense. This “model” business has been overworked. Jesus had a great many crude, foolish ideas, and did a great many deeds that are not worth repeating. As a model of what is best in this age he is a wretched failure. It is a mistake to look upon Jesus as a fit person to lead our century to a higher life.
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There is nothing to live for in the past.
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We must condemn christianity, not christians; strike the church, but spare the heart.
SINGING LIES
Go into any Christian church and you will hear the choir and the congregation singing lies. Is it not time to stop it? Is music married irrevocably to falsehood? Take up an ordinary hymn-book and you will hardly find a sensible line in it. The entire contents of the book is about God, heaven, salvation, and other equally unknown quantities, states and conditions. Why not sing sense? Why not sing facts? Why not sing truth? Why not sing the glories of Nature, of life, of man?
Music is a wonderful power, a wonderful educator of the feelings and emotions. It is essential, therefore, that music be inspired by what is true, by what is good, by what is right. Truth should be set to music and the lips taught to sing what science has discovered, what art has done, what the universe reveals, what the world is living for.
The common Christian music is a wail of despair, a cry of sorrow, a shriek of fear. It is composed of false conceptions of Nature, of humanity, of life. It is a “doleful sound.” The triumph of faith which it celebrates is not a full, round, complete joy.
The Church does not know the music of laughter, the music of the heart. Its song seems always to hover on the brink of fear. It is not the glad note of natural freedom, but the uncertain joy of the escaped convict.
The free song must come from the free heart, must denote the free thought. Let life that is healthy, happy and human be set to music. Let us sing as we live, as we think, as we feel. The music of the hand, the mind, the heart, should be on the lips. If we could only sing what sings through us, the world would listen with rapture. We do not want “harmonious madness” nor harmonious idiocy. Pious music is stupid, false. It is inspired by the sickness of the world. We need a stronger note, a sturdier song.
Lies enough have been sung. Let truth now fill the air. Out of the great hope of the race let new songs come. We are beginning to live for life on earth, for happiness here, for love here, for victory here. Let the hands and feet, the brains and hearts of men and women move to the music of truth.
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There is not a village where poverty does not pinch the stomach or starve the mind, where misery does not need charity and where wealth could not bless.
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Piety could do nothing better than imitate morality.
A WALK THROUGH A CEMETERY
In walking through a country graveyard one sees a prominent granite or marble monument here and there, but more of the stones that mark the resting-places of the dead are modest in appearance, plain and humble. But there are some graves that are unmarked by any outward token of remembrance. Such graves may hold the dust of as great and good men and women as those spots above which has been raised the lofty shaft and costly design.
Graveyards are just as deceptive as are the homes of the living. A fine house is not proof of the moral, the manly or womanly worth of its occupant. Saints do not sleep beneath the gilded roof any more than under a leaky thatch. So also the wise, the good, the true, are not the ones over whose ashes rises the chiseled stone. The dead may deserve monuments that the living are not able to buy.
A graveyard might be called a library of lies. Epitaphs are to be read, and believed, if you can believe them. We have found as big falsehoods in cemeteries as in newspapers. “Say nothing bad of the dead” is kindly counsel, but, say nothing of the dead on a tombstone, is wiser.
We have seen a towering stone covered with words of praise over the ashes of a man, who, while living, was simply a lover of money. We have seen the sunken grave of a woman, with no marble to adorn it, who lived a heroic life of love and duty beyond words to tell. If virtues bore monuments one would rise over the neglected grave of that saintly woman that would reach the clouds, and that other grave would be stripped of its marble and left to oblivion.
Though a cemetery is more or less a museum of vanity and pride, there is at the bottom of the costly display of granite and marble a tender feeling, a commendable virtue. There may be as much love and respect for those in unmarked graves as for those who sleep in costly masonry or beneath sculptured stone. In walking through a graveyard, if our steps should go to the places where no monument invited the eye, they would be more likely to walk over the dust of those who did life’s duty well, than if they paused only before the imposing shaft or read the marble tale of virtue that never was told in deeds.
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God never helps those who need the help of men and women.
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No man ever knew Providence to interpose when his neighbor’s hens are scratching up his garden.
PEACE WITH GOD
A good, pious lady said to us not long ago: “Don’t you think that you ought to make your peace with God?” We have never had a bit of trouble with God. We have got along with him tip top. He has never shown that it was at all necessary for us to make peace with him. We have never quarrelled. If we are not at peace with God, we did not know it. We have no wish to have a row with anyone, and if God has the idea that we are mad with him or want to injure him in any way, we wish to disabuse his mind of such a notion.
We wish to say that we have never had any dealings with God, to our knowledge. If we have seen him, we did not know it. If he has spoken to us, we were not aware of the fact. If he has been in our presence at any time, we were not conscious of it.
We do not know that we have ever wronged God or that God has ever wronged us. We do not say that some word or act of ours may not have injured God.
All we can say is that we have no way of finding out whether such is the fact or not. Of course, we could not take the word of a priest or minister on this point. We want God’s own assurance in the matter.
Up to this time God has made no complaint to us that we have wronged him, or that we need to make our peace with him, and until we hear from his own lips that we owe him an apology, we do not intend to make one.
God is just as good to us as though he was dead. He does not cross our path, stand in our light, dog our steps, or interfere with what we are doing. He does not get in our way any more than if he lived in the planet Jupiter. So we do not see that we need to make our peace with him. We do not comprehend how there can be any collision between us.
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Priests will pardon thieves but not philosophers.
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Priest and God have formed some of the worst combinations in history.
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Too long has this world been at the feet of the priest. Man is never in that position for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the priest.
SAVING THE SOUL
The man who can deliberately, and in cold blood, as it were, try to save his soul, must be grossly selfish. To do that which shall redound to one’s own advantage or profit, without care or consideration of another, shows little humanity. The finer feeling is that which looks after others rather than one’s self. It can only increase selfishness to seek salvation.
When a man gets the idea that his soul must be saved, and goes to work to save it, the things that he will do in order to insure its salvation tend to lessen its value; and by the time he thinks his soul is saved it is generally not worth saving. The more willing we are to be lost, the more chance there is that we will not be.
The cheapest method of saving one’s soul is by believing something. This requires but little effort and no brains. Christianity is organized gullibility. It tells people to believe what it teaches and it will save their souls. It remains to be seen whether Christianity fulfils its part of the contract.
It occurs to us that before we try to save our soul we ought to know that we have a soul and that it needs saving. We fail to see any necessity for anxiety on account of our soul. We do not care to go into the salvation business and let the priest get all the dividends. Any person who can seriously talk about “saving his soul” ought to have a guardian.
THE SEARCH FOR SOMETHING TO WORSHIP
What is there in the universe that deserves worship? Is there anything? What is there that men and women should kneel to, pray to and adore? If there is anything that deserves such worship from human beings, where is it? Let us see if we can find any such thing.
We look at the earth and its inhabitants, and while we see much which calls for admiration, we find nothing to worship. The mountain impresses us with its towering grandeur, the ocean with its vast extent and terrible power, but we cannot get on our knees to rocks, no matter how high they are piled; nor pray to water, no matter how much there is of it. The flower elicits our wondering delight, but we cannot adore a rose, a sunflower or a daisy. We own the marvelous beauty of the animal form, but we cannot worship a horse, a tiger or a dog. We hear the gladness and madness of melody which comes from the throat of the bird, but sweet and entrancing as it is, we cannot adore a skylark, a nightingale or a thrush. We see man, the fairest form that walks the earth, the most marvelous piece of work that Nature reveals to our senses, but we cannot worship our own image.
Beyond earth the eye looks, and cloud, black or bright, is seen and the endless blue beyond the cloud, but man cannot get on his knees to vapor or pray to the sky. In the daytime the sun is seen, and at night the moon and countless stars, but man cannot worship a ball of fire nor a dying planet, or adore a point of light.
We can find nothing on the earth or in the heavens that we can worship. Is there something not on the earth or in the heavens? If so, what is it and where is it? What do men and women kneel to? Nothing. What do men and women pray to? Nothing. What do men and women worship? Nothing.
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Coals out of the ashes of love will never light the fires of friendship.
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The names of most men live on account of the falsehoods told about them.
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We should scorn the person who would be mean enough to allow his fellow-being to be punished for his deeds. Yet we have a religion in our midst that is founded on this kind of meanness.
WHERE ARE THEY
Where are the sons of gods that loved the daughters of men?
Where are the nymphs, the goddesses of the winds and waters?
Where are the gnomes that lived inside the earth?
Where are the goblins that used to play tricks on mortals?
Where are the fairies that could blight or bless the human heart?
Where are the ghosts that haunted this globe?
Where are the witches that flew in and out of the homes of men?
Where is the devil that once roamed over the earth?
Where are they? Gone with the ignorance that believed in them.
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No man was ever yet canonized for minding his own business.
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No man was ever yet sorry to find that he had married a good cook.
SOME QUESTIONS FOR CHRISTIANS TO ANSWER
How do ministers know what pleases God?
What is “inspiration of God?”
When God “inspired men of old,” what did he do to them?
What has God revealed to man that has ever helped him get a living?
If we do not need to worship God six days in the week why do we need to worship him on the seventh?
If there were no ministers and no priests, how long would there be any churches?
If God will answer prayer, what is the necessity of working?
If God weeps when the poor suffer, what does he make it so cold for?
If rich men cannot enter the kingdom of God, what business have rich men to be in Christian churches?
If God is our “father,” does he take very good care of his children?
If God sends what blesses us, who sends what curses us?
If Christianity makes the world better, why is there so much vice and crime?
If “salvation is free,” why is anybody lost?
THE IMAGE OF GOD
We wonder if anyone knows what is meant by the expression, “the image of
God.” It is said in the Bible that God “created man in his own image.”
If man makes anything in his image we know how this thing looks, but when God creates something in his image we are at a loss to comprehend what is meant unless God has the likeness of man. In ancient times there is no doubt but what the assertion that God “created man in his own image” was accepted literally, that the people looked upon God as a big man. Later they came to look upon man as a little god.
But we are dealing with the brain of the twentieth century, with the common sense of a scientific age, when it is no longer believed that God “created” man at all. To-day the “image of God” is a puzzle. If God “created man in his own image,” in whose image did he create the elephant, the lion, the bear, the ox, the goat, the snake, the beetle, the bee, the fly, the gnat? These could not all have been created in the divine image, unless the divine image is a multitudinous likeness.
Is it not about time that a few literary murders were committed, that some one went through our literature and killed off a lot of nonsensical expressions that, if they ever meant anything, are meaningless today? If there was more honesty in the pulpit a great many Bible expressions would go out of fashion. One of the first that needs to die or be killed is this foolish expression, “the image of God.” It may be religious, but it lacks sense. It means nothing in this age. God is a term that eludes definition. It is a survival of an age of ignorance.
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A man may be a fool and not know it, but he cannot be a fool without others knowing it.
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There is a pious regard for certain men and women who have in past ages been, as it were, the world’s salvation. We would honor these men wherever piety offers her praise, but we would not, like piety, forbid man the right to excel them. We all know how much easier it is to be saved by another than to save ourselves, but it cannot be denied that there is a certain respect, a feeling of admiration, a thrill of reverence for the man who says: I am a free moral being and scorn to allow another to suffer for my sins.