Part 11 (1/2)

It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely fict.i.tious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.

There is no rational doubt about the fict.i.tious character of the divine Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.

No religious doctrine or inst.i.tution of which we have an account in the New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of moral precepts.

The G.o.ds of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so many creations of the dominant or master cla.s.s, and their revelations were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the slave cla.s.s ignorant and contented.

Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the life which men, women and children live with reference to their terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments, is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.

According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious, personal G.o.d is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a h.e.l.l and gain a heaven for a future life in the sky.

O threats of h.e.l.l and Hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain--This Life flies; One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; Even one thing befalleth them; As the one dieth, so dieth the other; Yea, they have all one breath; So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; For all is vanity.

All go unto one place; All are of the dust, And all turn to dust again.

Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the embryonic cell to birth pa.s.ses through, by short cuts, the different forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.

In his illuminating book ent.i.tled, ”The Universal Kins.h.i.+p,” Professor Moore says:

The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125 inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny sac-shaped ma.s.s of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling, unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the ape.

Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of modern orthodox theologians.

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us pa.s.s'd the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel, too.

--Omar.

II.

In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a G.o.d (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law, that a law is what nature does, not what a G.o.d has willed, and that a system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.

The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and immutable in a social order as in a solar system.

”The very law that moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course.”

Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of tears, almost as much so as s.p.a.ce is full of spheres, but there would not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.

In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.

You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death, except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that it is right, not might.

What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so, of course, no interpretation of one, can really const.i.tute a right, unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening circle to do this for themselves.

Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes, even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities entering into the const.i.tution of the universe; which realities are but the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force; therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make them, no, not even G.o.ds in heavens.