Part 1 (2/2)
THE a.s.sumption is general that if the faith of the common people should be unsettled as to some things which they have heretofore been taught regarding religion, they would immediately reject all truth, and fall into a most deplorable state of skepticism and infidelity, and that the existing inst.i.tutions of religion would be destroyed, and public virtue so undermined as to endanger the very foundations of morality and civil government. This is not only the fear of conservative and timid clergymen, but many of our prominent statesmen seem anxious lest the enlightenment of the people in matters in which they have been cruelly deceived should so weaken the restraints of police and governmental authority as to result in universal anarchy and a general disregard of the rights of property, and even of the sacredness of human life.
These foolish fears show a great want of confidence in human nature, and falsely a.s.sume that moral character depends mainly upon an unquestioning faith in certain dogmas which, in point of fact, have no necessary connection with it.
The statistics of crime show that a very large majority of those who have been seized by the strong arm of the law as dangerous members of society are those who most heartily believe in those very dogmas of theology which we are warned not to criticise, though we may know them to be accretions of ignorance and superst.i.tion, and that some of them have a natural tendency to fetter the essential principles of true religion and that higher code of morality which alone can stand strong under all circ.u.mstances. It is safe to affirm that ninety-nine hundredths of the criminal cla.s.s believe, or profess to believe, in the dogmas of the dominant theology, Romish and Protestant; which are essentially the same.
It is too often forgotten that the very first condition of good government is faith in human nature, confidence in the people. You always excite dishonor and dishonesty by treating men as if you think them all rogues, and as if you expect nothing good from them, but every conceivable evil, only as they may be restrained by the fear of pains and penalties in this life and after death.
One great fundamental mistake of theologians and dogmatic pietists is the baseless a.s.sumption that religion is something supernatural, not to say anti-natural; something external to human nature and of foreign origin; something to be received by transfusion as the result or consequence of faith in certain dogmas or the observance of external rites; something bottled up by the Church, like rare and precious medicines in an apothecary-shop, to be dealt out to those who are willing to follow priestly prescriptions and pay the required price.
The fact is, churches and scriptures and dogmas are the outcome of that religious element which is inherent in human nature. It cannot be too often or too strongly urged that the religious principle is _innate_ and _ineradicable_ in mankind, and that you might as well try to destroy man's love of the beautiful, his desire for knowledge, his love of home and kindred, or even his appet.i.te for food, as to try to destroy it. It is as natural to feel the want of religion as it is to be hungry. You _cannot^ destroy the foundations of religion. They rest in *nature_ and antedate all creeds and churches, and will survive them.
Even Professor Tyndall says: ”The facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the facts of physics.”
... ”The world will have religion of some kind.”... ”You who have escaped from these religions into the high and dry light of intellect may deride them, but in doing so you deride accidents of form merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems at this hour.”
Renan also writes thus: ”All the symbols which serve to give shape to the religious sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be one after another rejected. But nothing is more remote from the truth than the dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected humanity without religion.”... ”Devotion is as natural as egoism to a true-born man. The organization of devotion _is_ religion. Let no one hope, therefore, to dispense with religion or religious a.s.sociations. Each progression of modern society will render this want more imperious.”
We use the word religion as it was used by Cicero, in the sense of _scruple_, implying the consciousness of a natural obligation wholly irrespective of what one may believe concerning the G.o.ds. Religion in its true meaning is the great fact of _duty, of oughtness_, consisting in an honest and persistent effort to realize ideal excellence and to transform it into actual character and practical life. Religion as a _spirit_ and a life is objected to by none, but is admired and commended by all. It is superst.i.tion, bigotry, credulity, and dogma that are detestable. The religious instinct has been perverted, turned into wrong channels, made subservient to priestcraft and kingcraft, but its basic principle remains for ever firm. If it _could_ have been destroyed, the machinations of priests would have annihilated it long ago. Give yourselves no anxiety about the corner-stone of religion, but look well to the rotten superstructures that have been reared upon it. Its professed friends are often its real enemies. It is the false prophet who is afraid to have his oracles subjected to tests of reason and history. It is the evil-doer who is afraid of the light, the conscious thief who objects to being searched. An honest man would say, ”Let the truth be published, though the heavens fell.”
The whole truth should be published, as a matter of common honesty, if nothing more. We have no moral right to conceal the truth, any more than we have to proclaim falsehood. He who deliberately does the one will not hesitate long about doing the other. And this is one of the most serious aspects of this subject. He who can bring himself to practise deceit regarding religion will soon be a villain at heart, even if worldly prudence is strong enough to keep him out of the penitentiary.
As a rule, the unfaithful teacher inflicts a greater evil upon his own soul than upon his unsuspecting dupe. The deceiver is sure to be overtaken by his own deceit. Mean men become more mean, and liars come to believe their own oft-repeated falsehoods. This principle may in part account for the fact that in all ages dishonest, mercenary, designing priests have been most corrupt citizens and ready tools in the hands of tyrants to oppress and enslave the people.
Every deceptive act blunts the moral sense, defiles and sears the conscience, until at last the hypocrite degenerates into a slimy, subtle human serpent that always crawls upon its belly and eats dust.
Secretiveness and deceitfulness become a second nature, and show themselves continually even in the ordinary affairs of life. The reflex influence of deception upon the deceiver himself is its most bitter condemnation.
But modern preachers have a way of justifying their evasions and prevarications by saying that even Jesus himself withheld from his own disciples some things, for the reason that they were ”not able to bear them,” quite overlooking the fact that he is also reported to have said, ”When the Spirit of truth has come, he will teach you all things,” and that other pa.s.sage (Luke 12: 2), where Jesus is represented as saying, ”For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear, in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
If after eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching the time has not yet come to proclaim the whole truth, it is not likely to come for many ages in the future. If religion is a mystery too great to be comprehended, too sacred for reverent but untrammelled investigation, something that can only exist with a blind, unreasoning credulity and the utter stultification of the natural faculties of a true manhood, then religion is not worth what it costs and should be exposed as a delusion and a snare.
The time for the religious _Kabala_ has pa.s.sed, and ambiguities, concealments, and evasions are no longer to be tolerated. Martin Luther builded better than he knew when he proclaimed the right of private judgment in matters of religion. It has taken two hundred years for this fundamental principle to become thoroughly accepted by the people; but so firmly is it now established that bigoted ecclesiastics might as well attempt to resist the trend of an earthquake, stop the rising of the sun, and turn the light of noonday into the darkness of midnight as to attempt to arrest the progress of a true religious rationalism. The mad ravings of fanatics will have no more influence than the pope's bull had on the comet. Learning is no longer monopolized by a few monks and ministers. For every five clergymen who are abreast with the times, the progress of modern thought, and the conclusions of science, there are fifty laymen who are familiar with the writings of Humboldt, Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, and scores of other scientists, to whom the world is more indebted for true progress than to all the lazy monks and muttering priests who have lived since the world began. The fact is, the old delusion that men must look to the sacerdotal cla.s.s exclusively, or even mainly, for religious truth, has been for ever banished from the minds of intelligent men. The literature of the day is full of free thought and downright rationalism, and even the secular newspaper is a missionary of religious progress and reform, and brings stirring messages of intellectual progress every day to our breakfast-tables. The world moves, and those who attempt to stop it are sure to be crushed.
The pretence that anything is too sacred for investigation and publication will not stand the light of this wide-awake nineteenth century.
It is often said that the common people are not ready for the whole truth. In 1873, Dr. J. G. Holland, then editor of _Scribner's Monthly_, wrote to Dr. Augustus Blauvelt declining to publish an article on ”The Divine and Infallible Inspiration of the Bible,” and added, ”I believe you are right. I should like to speak your words to the world; but if I do speak them it will pretty certainly cost me my connection with the magazine. This sacrifice I am willing to make if duty requires it. I am afraid of nothing but doing injury to the cause I love.... In short, you see that I sincerely doubt whether the Christian world is ready for this article.... Instead of the theologians the _people_ would howl.... I cannot yet carry my audience in such a revolution. Perhaps I shall be able to do so by and by, but as I look at it to-day it seems impossible.... My dear friend, I believe in you. You are in advance of your time. You have great benefits in your hands for your time. You are free and true. And I mourn sadly and in genuine distress that I cannot speak your words with a tongue which all my fellow-Christians can hear.
They will not hear them yet. They will some time....”
Dr. Holland has pa.s.sed away and cannot reply to criticism. Let us be kind and charitable. He intended to be right, but he was mistaken. The people do not howl when the truth is published, even though their prejudices may be aroused; and no tedious preparation is now necessary to be able to hear the whole truth. The ma.s.ses of the people are hungry for knowledge, and it is high time that they be honestly fed. They now more than half suspect that they have been deceived by those some of whom they have educated by their charities and liberally paid to teach them the truth. When, in 1875, _Scribner's Monthly_ did publish Dr.
Blauvelt's articles on ”Modern Skepticism,” it was not the people that ”howled.” It was the clergy. Some of them demanded a new editor; others warned the people from the pulpit not to patronize _Scribner_; and one distinguished man declared that the magazine must be ”stamped out,” and at once organized a most powerful ecclesiastical combination against the freedom of the press; and yet the _North American Review_ and other similar magazines are today doing more to settle long-mooted religious questions than all the pulpits in Christendom; and the people do not howl. No respectable enterprising publisher now hesitates to publish a book of real merit, however much its doctrines may differ from the dominant faiths. The ma.s.ses of the people are determined to know all that can be known of the history, philosophy, and principles of religion; and the greater the effort to conceal and suppress the truth the stronger will be the demand for its full and undisguised proclamation.
That there is a general drifting away from the old formulas of religious doctrine everybody knows, and yet there is more practical religion in the world to-day than in any previous age. It does not consist in fastings and attendance upon ecclesiastical rites and ordinances; but it takes the form of universal education, of providing homes for friendless infancy and old age, of the prevention of cruelty to children and even to brute animals, of the more rational and humane treatment of lunatics, paupers, and criminals, ameliorating the miseries of prisons and hospitals,-in short, of elevating and improving the condition of universal humanity. These truly religious works do not depend upon any particular statement of religious belief, for all sects and persons of no sect are equally engaged in them.
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