Part 2 (2/2)
For pure, unadulterated malevolence, the Vedas, the Shaster, the Zend-Avesta, afford no parallel for this truly Christian doctrine
If, however, Mr Wendling challenges us to name an era or school in which the _brotherhood of ht before the tie
It was taught by Buddha, Confucius, and nu before the time of Jesus, for proof of which I refer the reader to Prof Max Muller, Sir Ws the desires us to ”Tell me (him) why it is that all the creeds of Christendo the Ideal Man of Christianity despite the laws of climate and of race?”
I will answer this question in the Irish one or two others Tell me why it is, if Christianity is a divine systehteen centuries of active propagandis sea and land toto recent statistics, but theof 399,200,000; while Buddhism has 405,600,000, and Brahmanism, Mohammedanism, etc, 500,000,000? Not nearly one-third of the world's population Christians, and the nu! Tell me why it is, if Christianity is true that its foundations are ht of Modern Science?' Tell me why it is, if the Bible is an inspired book, a divine revelation, that scarcely a single really eminent scientist or scholar of the present day accepts it as such? Tell nosticis the educated and intelligent, in every civilized country, both in the church and out of it? That the dogmas upon which Christianity rests are doomed; and as Froude, the historian, says, ”Doctrines once fixed as a rock are now fluid as water?” If the Bible can bear the light of science and historical research, how is it that these have already irrevocably sapped its very foundations; and that, as a consequence, the world is completely ”honey-combed with infidelity,” as a Toronto paper recently asserted of that city? The only answer Mr Wendling can give to these questions is this: Because Christianity is unable to show its titles; because the Bible, being hu in errors, both in science and ht of y, Ancient and Modern”--The International Religio-Science Series--Rose-Belford Publishi+ng Company, Toronto
REPLY TO LYNCH
A CRUshi+NG (?) EDICT FROM ST MICHAEL'S PALACE
(_Brutened), John Joseph Lynch”
Since Ingersoll's visit to Canada, Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto,-has also felt called upon to issue a bull against the Freethinkers; and, I propose to take this ”bull” by the horns and _lynch_ hio eh, they still keep __!) Under the circu the bull) will not be one wholly of _supererogation_,--though it may be more than a _venial_ offence--indeed possibly a _et no _absolution_--to presume to criticise an Archbishop, and break a lance with his holy bull! I have, however, desperately resolved to take o in for the bull
Some of the Archbishop's flock, it would seehts of ersoll lecture, and also attending sos of the Toronto _Liberal association_ Hence the fulmination of the aforesaid ”bull,” wherein his Grace, with that meekness, charity and toleration born of piety and infallibility, orders his people to ”avoid all contact with these Freethinkers, their lectures and their writings,”
and threatens all Catholics who ”go to the s and lectures of the Freethinkers or Atheists” with refusal of ”absolution,” which priestly function, he patronizingly tells thee the hope, in this age of reason, and land of at least professed liberty, and esoteric freedom of conscience, that every man, be he Catholic or Protestant, will look upon this atteotry and intolerance with practical disregard, and deserved contempt As for the Freethinkers, they can afford to sine himself in the ninth instead of the nineteenth century, and in Rome or Spain instead of the Dominion of Canada They can but look at him and his foolish ”bull” asthis precious docuerent of God” requires to make him a first-class modern Torquemada is the power--the outward authority to carry out his subjective hatred of ”brutalized” Freethinkers But this, thanks to science, and consequent civilization, he has not got
The Rationalist can, therefore, at this day, afford to deride the s of this zealous bishop of an emasculated Church He and his Church (the whole Christian Church) are, fortunately for huth, which, in the past, they have used with such fiendish ferocity and brutality on huht an _auto-da-fe_ around the body of a Bruno The time has passed when she may thrust a Galileo into prison and force hier cast a Roger Bacon into a noisoations True, she can still, if she choose, excommunicate a Copernicus for what she denounced as his ”false Pythagorean doctrine,” but that is all Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Proctor and the rest are safe This relentless enemy of Science and liberty, and consequently ofscience by the throat and strangle struggling truth, which, crushed to earth has risen again in its ht; and history will scarcely repeat itself in the case of Bruno the Atheist, or Galileo the Astronoer Bacon the Philosopher, or a thousand other victiht”--the Church She may still continue to fulminate her absurd and innocuous _anathemas_, but this is about all The Holy Inquisition, with its two hundred and fifty thousand human victims; the Crusades with its five millions; the massacre of St
Bartholoious horrors of the Netherlands, of England, Scotland, and Ireland since the reformation--all these holy horrors, let us hope, are ”hideous blots on the history of the past never to be repeated” Or will it be said of the future history of Christianity, as has been frankly admitted of its past by one of its ardent disciples, Baxter, that ”Blood, blood, blood stains every page?”
The tables are now turning The Church, to-day, instead of burning unbelievers, and strangling science by iled by science (with no loss of hu in their death throes, at the feet of the Hercules of ression will not be out of order here Our comic caricaturist at Toronto (of which, on the whole, Canadathe theological Ga the _serpent_ ”Freethought”
Now, though usually on the side of truth and impartiality, _Grip_ has undoubtedly, in this case, taken an oblique squint at truth and justice, and has for once, at least, got the cart before the horse Facts and truth deladiators in his cartoon ical nomenclature corrected And if _Grip_ had read Huxley and Tyndall, and correctly observed the signs of the times, he would scarcely have fallen into this unpardonable error Let us quote Prof Huxley on this subject of strangling serpents:--
”It is true that, if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been aians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules_; and history records that, whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire fro and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought It learns not, neither can it forget; and, though at present bewildered and afraid toas ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralyzed hands can hurl those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism”--_Lay Sermons_, p
277-8
From this, _Grip_ will see that instead of the fair forht (which he represents as a snake) being strangled by a prelate of the church, it is the serpent, orthodoxy, which is being strangled by the Hercules of science It is to be regretted that _Grip_, notwithstanding his professions of independence and impartiality, is himself obnoxious to the very moral cowardice he has so often fearlessly and justly exposed in others Else why does he represent Freethought as a snake? Is it because Freethought is yet comparatively weak in nu will please the Church, which _is_ popular and powerful? What characteristic of the snake attaches to Freethought or Freethinkers? None; and we fearlessly challenge _Grip_ and the Church on this point Freethought has none of the reptilian qualities of hypocrisy, cunning or deceit, but is frank and fearless Amid all the obloquy, denunciation, persecution, social ostracism, calumny, and ”holy bulls” hurled at thee of their opinions; and bear all these, as well as business detriard as _truth_
What does Prof Tyndall say of Freethinkers and Atheists? To Archbishop Lynch, who, in his pronunciamiento, says, ”A person who, disbelieves in the Ten Commandments, in hell or in Heaven, can hardly be trusted in the concerns of life;” and to _Grip_ who cowardly crystalizes this base assertion into a baser cartoon, I quote with pride the language of this noble htly Review_ for November, 1877, Prof Tyndall says:
”It st us ladiators of the pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favorably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand When I say 'offensive' I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because Atheism or Materialism, when compared with ious newspapers, has any particular offensiveness to me If I wished to find ements, whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shi+ftiness of any kind is subjectively unknown; if I wanted a loving father, a faithful husband, an honorable neighbor, and a just citizen, I would seek hi the band of Atheists to which I refer I have known sost the with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a 'hangman's whip,' with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as e of them, as if their eternal future depended on their latest deeds”
Let the Archbishop, and _Grip_, and every reader ponder these brave words of so high an authority in defence of the reprobated class-stigmatised as ”infidels,” to which they refer; and then, for corroboration, co facts around them
The Archbishop says, these ”foolish e the world into the depths of Barbarisanism,” etc, etc To those who know that the present attitude of all the great scientists and emas of the Christian Church, is one of undoubted unbelief and hostility; and who are conversant with the history of the Archbishop's own church in particular, during the past fifteen centuries,--to them the Archbishop's vituperation is as foolish as it is ridiculous From the days of Constantine to this year, 1880, the Church, of which this learned (?) prelate is a representative, has strenuously opposed learning, and retarded civilization; has tolerated no freedo instead of extending the liberty enjoyed in Pagan and Imperial Rome, over whose ruins she reared her tyrannical head Talk of ”Paganisanisan Roned precursor Renan tells us, ”We may search in vain, the Roainst freedoovern an abstract doctrine” And, Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, tells us that the Romans exercised this toleration in the amplest ans, it is now universally conceded by Christian historians, have been greatly exaggerated; Christians have killed, in one day, for their faith nearly half as ans during the whole period of the Pagan Empire” (The Influence of Christianity on Civilization, pp 24-5, Underwood)
The Archbishop's Church is, therefore, no ianisress the world has made in liberty and civilization, has been made, not with the assistance of the Christian Church, but in spite of its determined opposition and deadly hostility Dr Draper, author of the ”History of the Conflict between Religion and Science,” and other works, tells us that: