Part 21 (1/2)

Church of England............................................... 1,400

Dissenters............................................................

150

Infidels................................................................

5

These statistics are taken from the report of the British Parliament, which, for learning and intelligence, as a deliberative body, has not its superior, if it has its equal, in the world, and it is surely a sufficiently Christian body to be accepted as authority in this matter, since a large number of its members are clergymen. These statistics hardly sustain the allegation that ”Infidelity is coupled with impurity.”

We are willing to stand upon our record. But, lest it be claimed that this is a British peculiarity, allow me to defer to the patriotic sentiment of my readers by one other little set of tables which, while not complete, is equally as suggestive.

”In sixty-six different prisons, jails, reformatories, refuges, penitentiaries, and lock-ups there were, for the years given in reports, 41,335 men and boys, women and girls, of the following religious sects:

Catholics..................................................................

16,431

Church of England....................................................

9,975

Eighteen other Protestant denominations.................... 14,811

Universalists.............................................................

5

Jews, Chinese, and Mormons..................................... 110

Infidels (two so-called, one avowed)............................ 3

”These included the prisons of Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, and Canada.”

Present these two tables to those who a.s.sure you that crime follows in the wake of Infidelity, and you will have time to take a comfortable nap before your Christian friend returns to the attack or braces up after the shock sustained by his sentiments and inflicted by these two small but truly suggestive tables.

One cold fact like this will inoculate one of the faithful with more modesty than an hour of usual argument based upon the a.s.sumptions of the clergy and the ignorance of his hearers.

Infidels are not perfect. Many of them need reconstruction sadly, but the above data seem to indicate that they compare rather favorably with their fellow-men in the matter of good citizens.h.i.+p.

”Moreover, as Goethe has already shown, the celebrated Mosaic moral precepts, the so-called Ten Commandments, were _not_ upon the tables upon which Moses wrote the laws of the covenant which G.o.d made with his people.

”Even the extraordinary diversity of the many religions diffused over the surface of the earth suffices to show that they can stand in no necessary connection with morals, as it is well known that wherever tolerably well-ordered political and social conditions exist, the moral precepts in their essential principles are the same, whilst when such conditions are wanting, a wild and irregular confusion, or even an entire deficiency of moral notions is met with.* History also shows incontrovertibly that religion and morality have by no means gone hand in hand in strength and development, but that even contrariwise the most religious times and countries have produced the greatest number of crimes and sins against the laws of morality, and indeed, as daily experience teaches, still produce them. The history of nearly all religions is filled with such horrible abominations, ma.s.sacres, and boundless wickednesses of every kind that at the mere recollection of them the heart of a philanthropist seems to stand still, and we turn with disgust and horror from a mental aberration which could produce such deeds. If it is urged in vindication of religion that it has advanced and elevated human civilization, even this merit appears very doubtful in presence of the facts of history, and at least as very rarely or isolatedly the case. In general, however, it cannot be denied that most systems of religion have proved rather inimical than friendly to civilization. For religion, as already stated, tolerates no doubt, no discussion, no contradiction, no investigations, those eternal pioneers of the future of science and intellect! Even the simple circ.u.mstance that our present state of culture has already long since left far behind it all and even the highest intellectual ideals established and elaborated by former religions may show how little intellectual progress is influenced by religion. Mankind is perpetually being thrown to and fro between science, and religion, but it advances moro intellectually, morally and physically in proportion as it turns away from religion and to science.