MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS,

AND

OTHER LECTURES.

By Helen H. Gardener.

With An Introduction By Robert G. Ingersoll.

Twelfth Edition.

New York:

The Truth Seeker Company,

28 Lafayette Place.

Copyright, By Helen H. Gardener,

1885.

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

is

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

WITH THE LOVE OF THE AUTHOR, TO

MRS. EVA INGERSOLL,

THE BRAVE, HAPPY WIFE OF AMERICA'S GREATEST ORATOR,

AND WOMAN'S TRUEST FRIEND.

IN HER BEAUTIFUL HOME-LIFE SUPERSTITION AND FEAR HAVE NEVER

ENTERED; HUMAN EQUALITY AND FREEDOM HAVE

THEIR HIGHEST ILLUSTRATION;

AND

TIME HAS DEEPENED YOUTHFUL LOVE INTO A DIVINER WORSHIP

THAN ANGELS OFFER OR THAN GODS INSPIRE.

CONTENTS.

     INTRODUCTION.
     MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
     ACCIDENT INSURANCE.
     CHIEFLY WOMEN.
     WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.
     WHAT IT TEACHES.
     THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
     KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
     AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.
     VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
     FEAR.
     BEGINNING TO THINK.
     CREEDS.
     SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.
     VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.
     TWIN MONSTERS INHERITED FROM INTELLECTUAL PIGMIES.
     GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.
     REVELATION.
     EVIDENCE OF FAITH.
     DID HE TALK?
     WHAT YOU MAY THINK.
     INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW.
     THE VICARIOUS THEORY THE CAUSE OF CRIME.
     REVISION.
     THE CHURCH'S MONEY-BOX.
     SHALL PROGRESS STOP?
     HISTORICAL FACTS AND THEOLOGICAL FICTIONS.
     CHURCH FICTIONS.
     HISTORICAL FACTS.
     CIVILIZATION.
     COMPARATIVE STATUS.
     WOMEN AS PERSONS.
     EDUCATION.
     AS WIVES.
     NOT WOMAN'S FRIEND.
     MORALS.

     APPENDIX
     Appendix A.
     Appendix B.
     Appendix C.
     Appendix D.
     Appendix E.
     Appendix F.
     Appendix G.
     Appendix H.
     Appendix I.
     Appendix J.
     Appendix K
     Appendix L.
     Appendix M.
     Appendix N.
     Appendix O.
     Appendix P.
     Appendix Q.
     Appendix R.
     Appendix S.
     Appendix T.
     Appendix U.
     Appendix V.

     ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY AND OTHERS.
     LETTER TO THE CLEVELAND CONGRESS OF FREETHINKERS, OCTOBER, 1885.

INTRODUCTION.

Nothing gives me more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise for the
future, than the fact that woman is achieving intellectual and physical
liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are
thousands of women who think and express their own thoughts--who are
thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious--who have neither been
narrowed nor corrupted by a heartless creed--who do not worship a being
in heaven whom they would shudderingly loathe on earth. Women who do
not stand before the altar of a cruel faith with downcast eyes of timid
acquiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless
yes. They are no longer satisfied with being told. They examine for
themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of society--the
satisfied serfs of husbands or the echoes of priests. They demand the
rights that naturally belong to intelligent human beings. If wives, they
wish to be the equals of husbands--if mothers, they wish to rear their
children in the atmosphere of love, liberty and philosophy. They believe
that woman can discharge all her duties without the aid of superstition,
and preserve all that is true, pure and tender without sacrificing in
the temple of absurdity the convictions of the soul.

Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked--not
mind--but opportunity. In the long night of barbarism physical strength,
and the cruelty to use it, were the badges of superiority. Muscle was
more than mind. In the ignorant age of Faith the loving nature of woman
was abused, her conscience was rendered morbid and diseased. It might
almost be said that she was betrayed by her own virtues. At best, she
secured, not opportunity, but flattery, the preface to degradation. She
was deprived of liberty and without that nothing is worth the having.
She was taught to obey without question, and to believe without thought.
There were universities for men before the alphabet had been taught
to woman. At the intellectual feast there were no places for wives and
mothers. Even now they sit at the second table and eat the crusts and
crumbs. The schools for women, at the present time, are just far
enough behind those for men to fall heirs to the discarded. On the same
principle, when a doctrine becomes too absurd for the pulpit, it is
given to the Sunday School. The ages of muscle and miracle--of fists and
faith--are passing away. Minerva occupies at last a higher niche than
Hercules. Now, a word is stronger than a blow.

At last we see women who depend upon themselves--who stand self poised
the shocks of this sad world without leaning for support against a
church--who do not go to the literature of barbarism for consolation,
nor use the falsehoods and mistakes of the past for the foundation of
their hope--women brave enough and tender enough to meet and bear the
facts and fortunes of this world.

The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do
not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their
declaration.

Yet, I must admit that there are thousands of wives who still have
faith in the saving power of superstition--who still insist on attending
church while husbands prefer the shores, the woods, or the fields. In
this way families are divided. Parents grow apart, and unconsciously
the pearl of greatest price is thrown away. The wife ceases to be
the intellectual companion of the husband. She reads the "Christian
Register," sermons in the Monday papers, and a little gossip about
folks and fashions, while he studies the works of Darwin, Haeckel and
Humboldt. Their sympathies become estranged. They are no longer mental
friends. The husband smiles at the follies of the wife and she weeps for
the supposed sins of the husband. Such wives should read this book.
They should not be satisfied to remain forever in the cradle of thought,
amused with the toys of superstition.

The parasite of woman is the priest.

It must also be admitted that there are thousands of men who believe
that superstition is good for women and children--who regard falsehood
as the fortress of virtue, and feel indebted to ignorance for the purity
of daughters and the fidelity of wives. These men think of priests
as detectives in disguise, and regard God as a policeman who prevents
elopements. Their opinions about religion are as correct as their
estimate of woman.

The church furnishes but little food for the mind. People of
intelligence are growing tired of the platitudes of the pulpit--the
iterations of the itinerants. The average sermon is "as tedious as a
twice-told tale vexing the ears of a drowsy man."

One Sunday a gentleman who is a great inventor called at my house. Only
a few words had passed between us, when he arose, saying that he must
go as it was time for church. Wondering that a man of his mental wealth
could enjoy the intellectual poverty of the pulpit, I asked for an
explanation, and he gave me the following: "You know that I am an
inventor. Well, the moment my mind becomes absorbed in some difficult
problem, I am afraid that something may happen to distract my attention.
Now, I know that I can sit in church for an hour without the slightest
danger of having the current of my thought disturbed."

Most women cling to the Bible because they have been taught that to give
up that book is to give up all hope of another life--of ever meeting
again the loved and lost. They have also been taught that the Bible is
their friend, their defender, and the real civilizer of man.

Now if they will only read this book--these three lectures, without
fear, and then read the Bible, they will see that the truth or falsity
of the dogma of inspiration has nothing to do with the question of
immortality. Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is
another life, and upon that question, even the New is obscure and vague.
The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs.
There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea
of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy
that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy
the brain or heart.

There are but few who do not long for a dawn beyond the night. And
this longing is born of, and nourished by, the heart. Love wrapped
in shadow--bending with tear-filled eyes above its dead, convulsively
clasps the outstretched hand of hope.

I had the pleasure of introducing Helen H. Gardener to her first
audience, and in that introduction said a few words that I will repeat,

"We do not know, we can not say whether death is a wall or a door, the
beginning or end of a day, the spreading of pinions to soar, or the
folding forever of wings. The rise or the set of a sun, of an endless
life that brings rapture and love to every one.

"Under the seven-hued arch of hope let the dead sleep."

They will also discover, as they read the "Sacred Volume," that it is
not the friend of woman. They will find that the writers of that book,
for the most part, speak of woman as a poor beast of burden--a serf, a
drudge, a kind of necessary evil--as mere property. Surely a book that
upholds polygamy is not the friend of wife and mother.

Even Christ did not place woman on an equality with man. He said not
one word about the sacredness of home, the duties of the husband to the
wife--nothing calculated to lighten the hearts of those who bear the
saddest burdens of this life.

They will also find that the Bible has not civilized mankind. A book
that establishes and defends slavery and wanton war is not calculated to
soften the hearts of those who believe implicitly that it is the work of
God. A book that not only permits, but commands religious persecution,
has not in my judgment developed the affectional nature of man. Its
influence has been bad and bad only. It has filled the world with
bitterness, revenge, and crime, and retarded in countless ways the
progress of our race.

The writer of this little volume has read the Bible with open eyes. The
mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision.

She has had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She
has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the humorous
side of the stupidly solemn. Her heart protests against the cruel, and
her brain rejects the childish, the unnatural, and absurd. There is no
misunderstanding between her head and heart. She says what she thinks,
and feels what she says.

No human being can answer her arguments. There is no answer. All the
priests in the world cannot explain away her objections. There is no
explanation. They should remain dumb, unless they can show that the
impossible is the probable--that slavery is better than freedom--that
polygamy is the friend of woman--that the innocent can justly suffer for
the guilty, and that to persecute for opinion's sake is an act of love
and worship.

Wives who cease to learn--who simply forget and believe, will fill the
evening of their lives with barren sighs and bitter tears. The mind
should outlast youth.

If, when beauty fades, Thought, the deft and unseen sculptor, hath not
left his subtle lines upon the face, then all is lost. No charm is left.
The light is out. There is no flame within to glorify the wrinkled clay.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.

Hoffman House,

New York, July 22, 1885.

MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.

IT is thought strange and particularly shocking by some persons for a
woman to question the absolute correctness of the Bible. She is supposed
to be able to go through this world with her eyes shut, and her mouth
open wide enough to swallow Jonah and the Garden of Eden without making
a wry face. It is usually recounted as one of her most beautiful traits
of character that she has faith sufficient to float the Ark without
inspecting the animals.

So it is thought strange that a woman should object to any of the
teachings of the Patriarchs. I claim, however, that if she honestly
thinks there is anything wrong about them, she has a right to say so. I
claim that I have a right to offer my objections to the Bible from the
standpoint of a woman. I think that it is fair, at least, to put the
case before you as it looks to me, using the Bible itself as my chief
witness. That Book I think degrades and belittles women, and I claim
the right to say why I think so. The opposite opinion has been stated by
hundreds of people, hundreds of times, for hundreds of years, so that it
is only fair that I be allowed to bring in a minority report.

Women have for a long time been asking for the right to an education,
for the right to live on an equal footing with their brothers, and
for the right to earn money honestly; while at the same time they have
supported a book and a religion which hold them as the inferiors of
their sons and as objects of contempt and degradation with Jehovah. They
have sustained a so-called "revelation" which holds them as inferior
and unclean things. Now it has always seemed to me that these women are
trying to stand on both sides of the fence at the same time--and that
neither foot touches.

I think they are making a mistake. I think they are making a mistake to
sustain any religion which is based upon faith. Even though a religion
claim a superhuman origin--and I believe they all claim that--it must
be tested by human reason, and if our highest moral sentiments revolt at
any of its dictates, its dictates must go. For the only good thing about
any religion is its morality, and morality has nothing to do with faith.
The one has to do with right actions in this world; the other with
unknown quantities in the next. The one is a necessity of Time; the
other a dream of Eternity. Morality depends upon universal evolution;
Faith upon special "revelation;" and no woman can afford to accept any
"revelation" that has yet been offered to this world.

That Moses or Confucius, Mohammed or Paul, Abraham or Brigham Young
asserts that his particular dogma came directly from God, and that
it was a personal communication to either or all of these favored
individuals, is a fact that can have no power over us unless their
teachings are in harmony with our highest thought, our noblest purpose,
and our purest conception of life. Which of them can bear the test?
Not one "revelation" known to man to-day can look in the face of
the nineteenth century and say, "I am parallel with your richest
development; I still lead your highest thought; none of my teachings
shock your sense of justice." Not one.

It is faith in "revelation" that makes a mother tear from her arms a
tender, helpless child and throw it in the Ganges--to appease the gods!
It is a religion of faith that teaches the despicable principle of
caste--and that religion was invented by those who profited by caste. It
was our religion of faith that sustained the institution of slavery--and
it had for its originators dealers in human flesh. It is the Mormon's
religion of faith, his belief in the Bible and in the wisdom of Solomon
and David, that enables the monster of polygamy to flaunt its power and
its filth in the face of the morality of the nineteenth century, which
has outgrown the Jehovah of the Jews.

Every religion must be tried at the bar of human justice, and stand or
fall by the verdict there. It has no right to crouch behind the theory
of "inspiration" and demand immunity from criticism; and yet that is
just what every one of them does. They all claim that we have no right
to use our reason on their inventions. But evil cannot be made good by
revelation, and good cannot be made evil by persecution.

A "revelation" that teaches us to trample on purity, or bids us despise
beauty--that gives power to vice or crushes the weak--is an evil. The
dogma that leads us to ignore our humanity, that asks us to throw away
our pleasures, that tells us to be miserable here in order that we may
be happy hereafter, is a doctrine built upon a false philosophy, cruel
in its premises and false in its promises. And the religion that teaches
us that believing Vice is holier than unbelieving Virtue is a grievous
wrong. Credulity is not a substitute for morality. Belief is not a
question of right or wrong, it is a question of mental organization. Man
cannot believe what he will, he must believe what he must. If his brain
tells him one thing and his catechism tells him another, his brain ought
to win. You don't leave your umbrella at home during a storm, simply
because the almanac calls for a clear day.

A religion that teaches a mother that she can be happy in heaven, with
her children in hell--in everlasting torment--strikes at the very roots
of family affection. It makes the human heart a stone. Love that means
no more than that, is not love at all. No heart that has ever loved can
see the object of its affection in pain and itself be happy. The thing
is impossible. Any religion that can make that possible is more to be
dreaded than war or famine or pestilence or death. It would eat out all
that is great and beautiful and good in this life. It would make life a
mockery and love a curse.

I once knew a case myself, where an eldest son who was an unbeliever
died. He had been a kind son and a good man. He had shielded his widowed
mother from every hardship. He had tried to lighten her pain and relieve
her loneliness. He had worked early and late to keep her comfortable and
happy. When he died she was heartbroken. It seemed to her more than
she could bear. As she sat and gazed at his dear face in a transport of
grief, the door opened and her preacher came in to bring her the comfort
of religion. He talked with her of her loss, and finally he said, "But
it would not be so hard for you to bear if he had been a Christian. If
he had accepted what was freely offered him you would one day see him
again. But he chose his path, he denied his Lord, and he is lost. And
now, dear madam, place your affections on your living son, who is,
thank God, saved." That was the comfort he brought her. That was the
consolation of his religion. I am telling you of an actual occurrence.
This is all a fact. Well, a few years later that dear old lady died in
her son's house, where she had gone on a visit. He broke her will--this
son who was saved--and brought in a bill against her estate for her
board and nursing while she was ill! Which one of those boys do you
think would be the best company for her in the next world?

It has always seemed to me that I would rather go to hell with a good
son than to heaven with a good Christian. I may be wrong, but with
my present light that is the way it looks to me; and for the sake of
humanity I am glad that it looks that way.

ACCIDENT INSURANCE.

A church member said to me some time ago that even though the Bible were
not "the word of God," even though it were not necessary to believe in
the creed in order to go to heaven, it could not do any harm to believe
it; and he thought it was "best to be on the safe side, for," said he,
"suppose after all it should happen to be true!"

So he carries a church-membership as a sort of accident insurance
policy.

I do not believe we have a right to work upon that basis. It is not
honest. I do not believe that any "suppose it should be" gives us the
right to teach "I know that it is." I do not believe in the honesty
and right of any cause that has to prop up its backbone with faith, and
splinter its legs with ignorance. I do not believe in the harmlessness
of any teaching that is not based upon reason, justice, and truth. I do
not believe that it is harmless to uphold any religion that is not noble
and elevating in itself. I do not believe that it is "just as well" to
spread any dogma that stultifies reason and ignores common-sense. I
do not believe that it is ever well to compromise with dishonesty and
pretence. And I cannot admit that it "can do no harm" to teach a belief
in the goodness of a God who sends an Emerson or a Darwin to hell
because Eve was fond of fruit, and who offers a reserved seat in heaven
to Christine Cox because a mob murdered Jesus Christ. It does not seem to
me good morals, and it is certainly poor logic.

And speaking of logic, I heard a funny story the other day about one of
those absurdly literal little girls who, when she heard people say they
"wanted to be an angel," did not know it was a joke.. She thought it was
all honor-bright. She was standing by the window killing flies, and
her mother called her and said, "My child, don't you know that is very
wicked? Don't you know that God made those dear little flies, and that
he loves them?" (Just imagine an infinite God in love with a blue-bottle
fly!) Well, the little girl thought that was queer taste, but she was
sorry, and said that she would not do it any more. By and by, however,
a great lazy fly was too tempting, and her plump little finger began to
follow him around slowly on the glass, and she said, "Oh you nice big
fly, did dod made you? And does dod love you? And does you love dod?"
(Down came the finger.) "_Well, you shall see him_."

Yet we all know Christians who love God better than anything else--"with
all their hearts and soul and strength"--who prefer to postpone seeing
him till the very last minute. They say it is because they have not
"fulfilled their allotted time." Why not be honest and say it is because
they like to live? They "long to put on immortality;" but their sleep is
sounder if they live next door to a good doctor.

People say that men are infidels because it is easier--to rid themselves
of responsibility. But it seems to me that anyone who advances the
doctrine of "morality and works" instead of that of "repentance and
faith," on the ground that it is easier, is laboring under a mistake. I
don't see how any one could ask for an easier way of getting rid of his
sins than the plan that simply unloads them on to another man. I fail to
see anything hard about that--except for the man who catches the load;
and I am unable to see anything commendable about it either. But it is
not always easy for a man to be brave enough to be responsible for his
own mistakes or faults. It is not always easy for a man to say "I did
it, and I will suffer the penalty." That is not always easy, but it is
always just. No one but a coward or a knave needs to shift his personal
responsibility on to the shoulders of the dead. Honest men and women
do not need to put "Providence" up between themselves and their own
motives.

A short time ago the wife of a very devout man apparently died, but her
body remained so lifelike and her color so natural that her relatives
decided that she could not be dead, and they summoned a physician. The
husband, however, refused to have him administer any restoratives. He
said that if the Lord had permitted her to go into a trance and was
anxious to bring her out alive he would do it. Meanwhile he did not
intend to meddle with Providence. His maxim was, "Whatever else you do,
don't interfere with Providence. Give Providence a good chance and if it
doesn't come round all right for Betsy, I think I can bear it--and she
will have to."

If we take care of our motives toward each other, "Providence" will take
care of itself.

Did you ever know a pious man do a real mean thing--that succeeded--who
did not claim that Providence had a finger in it? The smaller the trick,
the bigger the finger. He is perfectly honest in his belief too. He is
the sort of man that never has a doubt about hell--and that most people
go there. Thinks they all deserve it. Has entire confidence that God is
responsible for every word in the Bible, and that all other Bibles and
all other religions are the direct work of the devil. Probably prays for
people who don't believe that way. He is perfectly honest in it. That is
simply his size, and he usually pities anybody who wears a larger hat.

CHIEFLY WOMEN.

But they say this is not a matter of reason. This is outside of reason,
it is all a matter of faith. But whenever a superstition claims to be
so holy that you must not use your reason about it, there is something
wrong some place. Truth is not afraid of reason, nor reason of truth.

I am going to say something to-night about why I do not believe in a
religion of faith. I am going to tell you some of the reasons why I do
not believe that the Bible is "inspired;" why I, as a woman, don't
want to think it is the word of God; why I think that women, above all
others, should not believe that it is. And since women are the bulwarks
of the churches to-day, it seems to me they have the right, and that it
is a part of their duty, to ask themselves why. Since about seven-tenths
of all church-members are women, surely the churches should not deny
them the right to use their reason (or whatever serves them in that
capacity) in regard to their own work.

I saw some ladies begging the other day for money to pay off the debt of
a $200,000 church, on the corner-stone of which were cut the words,
"My kingdom is not of this world;" and I wondered at the time what the
property would have been like if the kingdom had been of this world. It
seemed to me that a few hundred such untaxed houses would be a pretty
fair property almost anywhere.

One of our prominent bishops, when speaking recently of
church-membership, said, "The Church must recruit her ranks hereafter
almost entirely with children;" and he added, "the time has passed
when she can recruit her ranks with grown men." Good! And the New York
_Evangelist_ (one of the strongest church papers) says, "Four-fifths of
the earnest young men of this country are sceptics, distrust the clergy,
and are disgusted with evangelical Christianity." Good again.

The Congregational Club of Boston has recently been discussing the
question how to win young men to Christianity. The Rev. R. R. Meredith
said: "The churches to-day do not get the best and sharpest young
men. They get the goody-goody ones easily enough; but those who do the
thinking are not brought into the church in great numbers. You cannot
reach them by the Bible. How many did Moody touch in this city during
his revival days? You can count them on your fingers. The man who wants
them cannot get them with the Bible under his arm. He must be like them,
sharp. They cannot be gathered by sentimentality. If you say to them,
'Come to Jesus,' very likely they will reply, ''Go to thunder.' [In
Boston!] The thing to be done with such a man is to first get into his
heart, and then lead him into salvation before he knows it."

I don't know how good this recipe is, but I should infer that it is a
double-back-action affair of some sort that could get into a man's heart
and lead him into salvation before he knew it, and that if the Church
can just get a patent on that she is all right; otherwise I suspect that
the goody-goody ones are likely to be about all she will get in large
numbers.

Do I need any stronger, plainer evidence than this to show that the
thought of the world is against it, and that it is time for women to ask
themselves whether a faith that can hold its own only by its grasp
upon the ignorance and credulity of children, a faith that has
made four-fifths of the earnest men sceptics, a faith that has this
deplorable effect upon Boston manners, is one that does honor to the
intellect and judgment of the women of to-day?

We hear women express indignation that the law classes them with idiots
and children; but from these orthodox statements it would seem that in
the Church they voluntarily accept about this classification themselves.
If only these church-people go to heaven, what a queer kindergarten
it will be, to be sure, with only a few male voices to join in the
choruses--and most of those tenor.

This religion and the Bible require of woman everything, and give her
nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her with contempt
and oppression. No wonder that four-fifths of the earnest men are
against it, for it is not manly and it is not just; and such men are
willing to free women from the ecclesiastical bondage that makes her
responsible for all the ills of life, for all the pains of deed and
creed, while it allows her no choice in their formation, no property in
their fruition. Such men are outgrowing the petty jealousies and musty
superstitions of narrow-minded dogmatists sufficiently to look upon the
question not as one of personal preference, but as one of human justice.
They do not ask, "Would _I_ like to see woman do thus or thus?"
but, "Have _I_ a right to dictate the limit of her efforts or her
energy?"--not, "Am I benefited by her ecclesiastical bondage and
credulity? Does it give me unlimited power over her?" but, "Have I
a right to keep in ignorance, have I a right to degrade, any human
intellect?" And they have answered with equal dignity and impersonal
judgment that it is the birthright of no human being to dominate or
enslave another; that it is the just lot of no human being to be born
subject to the arbitrary will or dictates of any living soul; and that
it is, after all, as great an injustice to a _man_ to make him a tyrant
as it is to make him a slave.

Whenever a man rises high enough to leave his own personality out of
the question, he has gone beyond the stage of silly platitudes. His own
dignity is too secure, his title to respect too far beyond question,
for him to need such little subterfuges to guard his position, either
as husband, as household-king, or as public benefactor. His home life is
not founded upon compulsory obedience; but is filled with the perfume of
perfect trust, the fragrance of loving admiration and respect. It is the
domestic tyrant, the egotistic mediocre, and the superstitious Church
that are afraid for women to think, that fear to lose her as worshipper
and serf.

You need go only a very little way back in history to learn that the
Church decided that a woman who learned the alphabet overstepped all
bounds of propriety, and that she would be wholly lost to shame who
should so far forget her modesty as to become acquainted with the
multiplication table.

And to-day, if she offers her opinion and her logic for what they are
worth, the clergy preach doleful sermons about her losing her beautiful
home character, about her innocence being gone, about their idea of her
glorious exaltation as wife and mother being destroyed. Then they grow
florid and exclaim that "man is after all subject to her, that he is
born for the rugged path and she for the couch of flowers!"*

     * "A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say
     that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to
     make fair concessions to their partners without being
     compelled to it, but that wives are not; that if allowed any
     rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all
     in any one else, and never will yield in anything, unless
     they can be compelled, by the man's mere authority, to yield
     in everything. This would have been said by many persons
     some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue,
     and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being
     what men made them.   But it will be said by no one now who
     is worth replying to. It is not the doctrine of the present
     day that women are less susceptible of good feeling and
     consideration for those with whom they are united by the
     strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are
     perpetually told that women are better than men by those who
     are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as
     good; so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome
     cant, intended to put a complimentary face upon an injury."
     --John Stuart Mill.

You recognize it all, I see. You seem to have heard it somewhere before.
I recall one occasion when I heard it from a country clergyman, who knew
so much about heaven and hell that he hardly had time to know enough
about this world to enable him to keep out of the fire unless he was
tied to a chair. It was in the summer of 1876, and I remember the
conversation began by his asking a lady in the room about the Centennial
display, from which she had just returned. He asked her if she would
advise him to take his daughter. She said she thought it would be a very
nice thing for the girl, and she added, "It will be good for you. You
will see so much that is new and wonderful. It will be of use to you in
your work, I am sure." He said, "Well, I don't know about that. There
won't be anything much that is new to me. I've seen it all. _I was
in Philadelphia in 1840_." Then he gave us quite a talk on "woman's
sphere." He could tell you in five minutes just what it was; and the
amount of information that man possessed about the next world was simply
astonishing. He knew pretty nearly everything. I think he could tell
you, within a fraction or two, just how much material it took to make
wings for John the Baptist, and whether Paul sings bass or tenor. His
presbytery says he is a most remarkable theologian--and I don't doubt
it. According to the law of compensation, however, what he does not know
about this world would make a very comprehensive encyclopedia.

But seriously, did it ever occur to you to ask any of these divine
oracles why, if all these recent compliments are true about the superior
beauty and virtue and truth and power resting with women--why it is that
they always desire as heirs sons rather than daughters? You would think
their whole desire would be for girls, and that, like Oliver Twist,
their chief regret would be that they hadn't "more." But the Bible (and
the clergy, until quite recently) pronounces it twice as great a crime
to be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy. A crime to be
the mother of a little child--a double crime if the child should be a
girl.*

     * See Appendix K.

It is often urged that women are better off under the Christian than
under any other religion; that our Bible is more just to her than
other Bibles are. For the time we will grant this, and respectfully
inquire--what does it prove? If it proves anything it is this--that
all "divine revelations" are an indignity to women, and that they had
better stick to nature. Nature may be exacting, but she is not partial.
If it proves anything, it is that all religions have been made by men
for men and through men. I do not contend for the superiority of other
Bibles, I simply protest against the wrong in ours. One wrong cannot
excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not make a hero of
the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more cruel than Jehovah,
that would be no palliation of the awful crimes of the Old Testament.
That slaves have better clothes than savages cannot make noble traffic
in human blood. A choice of evils is often necessary, but it does not
make either of them a good. But there is no book which tells of a more
infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and
cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God
with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity!

WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.

Another argument is that if orthodox Christianity were not good for
women they would not support and cling to it; if it did not comfort them
they would discard it. In reply to that I need only recall to you the
fact that it is the same in all religions. Women have ever been the
stanchest defenders of the faith, the most bitter haters of an infidel,
the most certain that their form of faith is the only truth.* Yet I do
not hear this fact advanced to prove the divinity of the Koran or the
book of Mormon. If it is a valid argument in the one case it is valid in
the others. The trouble with it is it proves too much. It takes in the
whole field. It does not leave a weed, from the first incantation of the
first aborigine to the last shout of the last convert to Mormonism, out
of its range; and it does, and always has done, just as good service
for any one of the other religions as it does for ours. It is a
free-for-all, go-as-you-please argument; but it is the sort of chaff
they feed theological students on--and they sift it over for women. It
is pretty light diet when it gets to them--but it is filling.

     * See Appendix G.

Recently I heard a clergyman give the following as his reason for
opposing medical, or scientific training of any sort, for women: "Now
her whole energy and force of action (outside of the family) must be
expended upon religion. If she were allowed other fields of action
or thought, her energy, like that of man, would be withdrawn from and
_fatally cripple the Church_."

To me, however, it seems that any organization that finds it necessary
to cripple its adherents in order to keep them has a screw loose
somewhere.

And it also seems to me that it is time for women to try to find out
where the trouble is. They will not want for aid from the men
who think--the men who hold self vastly inferior to principle and
justice--the rare noblemen of nature, honorable, fair, just, tender,
and thoughtful men--men who love to see the weakest share with them the
benefits of freedom--men who know that they are not the less men because
they are tender, that women are not the less women because they are
strong; and no land under the sky holds so many such as ours.

WHAT IT TEACHES.

It seemed to me that the time had come when women should know for
themselves what the Bible teaches for them and what the pulpit has
upheld; so I have looked it up a little, and although I cannot soil my
lips nor your ears with much of it, there is enough, I think, that I may
use to make any self-respecting, pure woman blush that she has sustained
it by word or act.

The Bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave,* that
he may sacrifice her purity to a mob,** and that he may murder her, and
still be a good father and a holy man. It teaches that a man may have
any number of wives; that he may sell them, give them away, or change
them around, and still be a perfect gentleman, a good husband, a
righteous man, and one of God's most intimate friends; and that is a
pretty good position for a beginning. It teaches almost every infamy
under the heavens for woman, and it does not recognize her as a
self-directing, free human being. It classes her as property, just as it
does a sheep: and it forbids her to think, talk, act, or exist, except
under conditions and limits defined by some priest.

     * Ex. xxi. 7.

     ** Judges xix. 24; Gen. xix. 8

If the Bible were strictly followed, women and negroes would still be
publicly bought and sold in America. If it were believed in as it once
was, if the Church had the power she once had, I should never see the
light of another day, and your lives would be made a hell for sitting
here to-night. The iron grasp of superstition would hold you and your
children forever over the bottomless pit of religious persecution, and
cover your fair fame with infamous slander, because you dared to sit
here and hear me strike a blow at infinite injustice.

Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian
country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted and perpetuated
by the pulpit. That seems strong language, no doubt; but I shall give
you an opportunity to decide as to its truth. I will now bring my
witnesses. They are from the "inspired word" itself, and therefore
must be all that could be desired. I will read you a short passage from
Exodus xx. 22; xxi. 7-8:

     22  And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto
     the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I talked with you
     from heaven. ********

     7  _And if a man sell his daughter_ to be a maid-servant,
     she shall not go out as the men-servants do.

     8  If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to
     himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her
     unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath
     dealt deceitfully with her.

The Lord doesn't object to a man selling his daughter, but if any one
thing makes him angrier than another it is to have her go about as the
men-servants do after she is sold. On a little point like that he is
absolutely fastidious. You may here notice that God took the trouble
to come down from heaven to tell the girl what not to do after she was
sold. He forgot to suggest to her father that it might be as well not
to sell her at all. He forgot that. But in an important conversation one
often overlooks little details. The next is Joshua xv. 16-17:

     16   And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and
     taketh it to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife.

     17   And Othniel the brother of Caleb [and consequently the
     girl's uncle] took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter
     to wife.

Please to remember that the said Caleb was one of God's intimates--a
favorite with the Almighty. The girl was not consulted; the father paid
off his warriors in female scrip. The next is Gen. xix. 5-8:

     5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where _are_
     the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out
     unto us that we may know them,

     6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door
     after him,

     7  And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

     8  Behold now, I have two daughters        * * * * * let me,
     I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is
     good in your eyes; only unto these men do nothing; for
     therefore came they under the shadow of my root

These men had come under the shadow of Lot's roof for protection, it
seems, and Lot felt that his honor demanded that he should shield them
even at the cost of the purity and safety of his own daughters! Do you
know I have always had a mild curiosity to know what his daughters were
under the shadow of his roof for. It could not have been for protection,
I judge, since Lot was one of God's best friends. He was on all sorts of
intimate terms with the Deity--knew things were going to happen before
they came--was the only man good enough to save from a doomed city--the
only one whose acts pleased God; and this act seems to have been
particularly satisfactory. These men were "angels of God" who required
this infamy for their protection! If it takes all the honor out of a man
when he gets to be an angel, they may use my wings for a feather-duster.

Now here is a little property law. Num. xxvii.:

     6 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

     8 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying,
     If a man die, _and have no son_, then ye shall cause his
     inheritance to pass unto his daughter.

And our law works a little that way yet; being the result of
ecclesiastical law it naturally would.*

     * See Appendix N. 5 and P. 5.

Next we have Num. xxxvi.:

     8  And every daughter that possesseth an inheritance in any
     tribe of the children of Israel,  _shall be wife_ unto one
     of the family of the tribe of her father, _that the children
     of Israel may enjoy every man the inheritance of his
     fathers_.

     9 Neither shall the inheritance remove from _one_ tribe to
     another tribe; but every one of the tribes of the children
     of Israel shall keep himself to his own inheritance.

     10 _Even as the Lord commanded Moses, so did the daughters
     of Zelophehad_.

That is all the women were for--articles of conveyance for property.
Save the land, no matter about the girls. Now these silly women actually
believed that God told Moses whom they had to marry just because Moses
said so! I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it is not safe to take
heavenly communications at second-hand. Second-hand articles are likely
to be varnished over, and have to be taken at a discount. And it seems
to me that, if the Lord is at all particular as to whom a girl should
marry, she is the one for him to discuss the matter with. Moses didn't
have to live with the _sons_ of Zelophehad, and consequently wasn't the
one to talk the matter over with. But, you see, it won't do to question
what Moses said God told him, because upon his veracity the whole
structure is built. He had more personal interviews with the Deity than
any other man--he and Solomon--and hence they are the best authority.

I have here the 31st chapter of Numbers, but it is unfit to read. It
tells a story of shame and crime unequalled in atrocity. It tells
that God commanded Moses and Eleazar, the priest, to produce vice and
perpetrate crime on an unparalleled scale. _It tells us that they obeyed
the order, and that 16,000 helpless girls were dragged in the mire of
infamy and divided amongst the victorious soldiers_. They were made
dissolute by force, and by direct command of God!

This one chapter stamps as false, forever, the claim of inspiration for
the Bible. That one chapter would settle it for me. Do you believe that
God told Moses that? Do you believe there is a God who is a thief, a
murderer, and a defiler of innocent girls? Do you believe it? Yet this
religion is built upon Moses' word, and woman's position was established
by him. It seems to me time for women to retire Moses from active
life. Coax him to resign on account of his health. Return him to his
constituency. He has been on the supreme bench long enough. Don't
let your children believe in such a God. Better let them believe in
annihilation. Better let them think that the sleep of death is the end
of all! Better, much better, let them believe that the tender kiss
at parting is the last of all consciousness for them, and after that
eternal rest! Don't let their hearts be seared, their lives clouded,
their intellects dwarfed by the cruel dread of the God of Moses! Better,
thrice better, let the cold earth close over the loved and loving dust
forever, than that it should enter the portals of infinite tyranny.

Next we will take Deut. xx. 10-16:

     10  When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it,
     then proclaim peace unto it.   [Good scheme!]

     11  And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and
     open unto thee, then it shall be, _that_ all the people
     _that_ is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and
     they shall serve thee.

     12  And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make
     war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

     13  _And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy
     hands_, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of
     the sword:

     14   But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and
     all that is in the city, _even_ all the spoil thereof,
     _shalt thou take unto thyself_; and thou shalt eat the spoil
     of thy enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

     15  Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very
     far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these
     nations.

     16  But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy
     God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive
     nothing that breatheth.

The injunction to proclaim peace unto a city about to be attacked and
plundered strikes me as a particularly brilliant idea. When you go
to rob and murder a man, just tell him to keep cool and behave like a
gentleman and you won't do a thing to him but steal all his property and
cut his throat and retire in good order, God always seemed to fight on
the side of the man who would murder most of his fellow-men and degrade
the greatest number of women. He seemed, in fact, to rather insist on
this point if he was particular about nothing else. And, by the way,
if you had happened to live in one of those cities, what opinion do you
think you would have had of Jehovah? Would he have impressed you as a
loving Father? Here we have 2 Samuel v. 10, 12-13:

     10 And David went on, and grew great, and the Lord God of
     hosts was with him.

     12  And David perceived that the Lord had established him
     king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for
     his people Israel's sake.

     13  And David took him more concubines and wives out of
     Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet
     sons and daughters born to David.

The nearer he got to God--the more God was "with him," the more wives he
wanted. Next we have 2 Samuel xx. 3:

     3 And David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king
     took the ten women, his concubines, whom he had left to keep
     the house, and put them in ward, and fed them * * * * * So
     they were shut up unto the day of their death, living in
     widowhood.

Now what did David do that for? I don't know. It was such a trifling
little matter that it was not thought necessary to give any reason.
Perhaps he had eaten too much pie and felt cross; and what else were
those women for but to be made stand around on such occasions? Weren't
they his property? Didn't those ten women belong to David? Hadn't he a
perfect right to shut them up and feed them if he wanted to? Don't you
think it was kind of him to feed them? I wonder if he sang any of his
psalms to them through the key-hole. His son Absalom had just been
killed, and he felt miserable about that. He had just delivered himself
of that touching apostrophe we often hear repeated from the pulpit
to-day, to awaken sympathy for God's afflicted prophet: "O my son
Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O
Absalom, my son, my son!" And I haven't a doubt that there were at least
ten women who echoed that wish most heartily. It must have been carried
in the family without a dissenting vote.

To this God of the Bible a woman may not go unless her father or husband
consents. She can't even promise to be good without asking permission.
This God holds no communication with women unless their male relations
approve. He wants to be on the safe side, I suppose. I'll read you
about that. It is in one of the chapters that are not commonly cited as
evidence that God is no respecter of persons, and that the Bible holds
woman as man's equal; nevertheless it is as worthy of belief as any
of the rest of it, and its "Thus saith the Lord" and "as the Lord
commanded Moses" are "frequent and painful and free," as Mr. Bret Harte
might say. The chapter is Numbers xxx.:

     And Moses spake unto the heads of the tribes concerning the
     children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the Lord
     hath commanded.

     2  If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to
     bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he
     shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.

     3  If a woman also vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself
     by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth;

     4  And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she
     hath; bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at
     her; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith
     she hath bound her soul shall stand.

     5  But if her father disallow her in the day that he
     heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she
     hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive
     her, because her father disallowed her.

     6  And if she had at all an husband, when she vowed, or
     uttered aught out of her lips, wherewith she bound her soul;

     7  And her husband heard _it_, and held his peace at her in
     the day that he heard _it_; then her vows shall stand, and
     her bonds wherewith she bound her soul shall stand.

     8  But if her husband disallowed her on the day that he
     heard _it_; then he shall make her vow which she vowed, and
     that which she uttered with her lips, wherewith she bound
     her soul, of none effect: and the Lord shall forgive her.

     9  But every vow of a widow, and of her that is divorced,
     wherewith they have bound their souls, shall stand against
     her.

     10  And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound her
     soul by a bond with an oath;

     11  And her husband heard _it_, and held his peace at her,
     _and_ disallowed her not; then all her vows shall stand, and
     every bond wherewith she hound her soul shall stand.

     12  But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the
     day he heard _them_; then whatsoever proceeded out of her
     lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of her
     soul, shall not stand: her husband hath made them void; and
     the Lord shall forgive her.

     13  Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul,
     her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it
     void.

     14  But if the husband altogether hold his peace at her from
     day to day; then he establisheth all her vows, or all her
     bonds, which are upon her: he confirmeth them, because he
     held his peace at her in the day that he heard them.

     15  But if he shall any ways make them void after that he
     hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity.

     16  These are the statutes, which the Lord commanded Moses,
     between a man and his wife, between the father and his
     daughter, _being yet_ in her youth in her father's house.

Between man and his God they tell us there is no one but a Redeemer; but
between woman and man's God there seems to be all her male relations,
which, I should think, would prevent any very close intimacy. And by the
time the divine commands to woman were filtered through the entire
male population, from Moses to the last gentleman who, in the confusion
natural to the occasion, misquotes "with all _thy_ worldly goods I _me_
endow," I should think it not impossible that some slight errors may
have crept in, and the Church should not feel offended if I were to aid
her in their detection.

Here we have two or three passages that are said to be the words of
Jesus. I hope that is not true. But I, believing him to have been a man,
can understand how they might have been the words of even a very good
man in that age and with his surroundings; but the words of a perfect
being--never! Of course I know that we have no positive knowledge of any
of the words of Jesus, since no one pretends that they were ever
written down until long after his death; but I am dealing now with the
theological creation upon the theologian's own grounds. My own idea of
Jesus places him far above the myth that bears his name.

     3  And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto
     him, They have no wine.

     4 Jesus saith unto her, _Woman, what have I to do with
     thee?_

     --John ii, 3-4.

I hope that Christ did not say that--for his manhood I hope so. I would
rather believe that this is the mistake of some "uninspired" writer than
think that one who in much had so gentle and tender a nature, was
unkind and brutal to his mother. No one would attempt, in this age, to
apologize for such a reply to so simple a remark made by a mother to her
son. But they say "he was divine." They also tell us he was a perfect
example; but with this evidence before me, I am glad our men are human.
Still I cannot pretend to say that this is not divine--never having made
any divine acquaintances. I can only say, humanity is better.

Then again he is reported to have said a most cruel thing to the
broken-hearted mother of a dying child, and I would rather believe the
Bible uninspired and keep my respect for Jesus, the man. It will be
better for this world to believe in Jesus, the brave, earnest man, than
in Jesus, the cruel God.

     21  Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of
     Tyre and Sidon.

     22  And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same
     coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O
     Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed
     with a devil.

     23  But he answered her not a word.

     25 Then came she and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me.

     26  But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the
     children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

     27  And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the
     crumbs which fall from their masters' table.

     --Matt. xv.

Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would
you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said,
"Doctor, come to my daughter; she is very ill. She has lost her reason,
and she is all I have!" What would you think of the doctor who would not
reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped
him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you
like him as a family physician? Do you think that, even if he were to
cure the child then, he would have done a noble thing? Is it evidence of
a perfect character to accompany a service with an insult? Do you think
a man who could offer such an indignity to a sorrowing mother has a
perfect character, is an ideal God? I do not. And I hope that Jesus
never said it. I prefer to believe that that story is a libel.

It won't do. We have either to give up the "inspiration" theory of the
Bible, and acknowledge that it is the work of men of a crude and brutal
age, and like any other book of legend and myth of any other people; or
else to give up the claim that God is any better than the rest of us.
You can take your choice.

Whenever a theologian undertakes to explain matters so as to keep the
Bible and the divine character both intact, I am always reminded of
the story of the Irishman who was given a bed in the second story of
a lodging-house the first night he spent in New York. In the night the
fire-engines ran past with their frightful noise. Aroused from a deep
sleep and utterly terrified, Mike's first thought was to get out of
the house. He hastily jerked on the most important part of his costume,
unfortunately wrong side before, and jumped out of the window. His friend
ran to the window and exclaimed, "Are ye kilt, Mike?" Picking himself up
and looking himself over by the light of the street lamp, he replied,
"No, not kilt, Pat, but I fear I am_ fatally twishted_."

Next we have God's opinion (on Bible authority) as to the use of wives.
They were to be forcibly changed around _as a punishment to their
husbands_ and for offences committed by the latter.

     11 Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against
     thee out of thy own house, and I will take thy wives before
     thy eyes and give them unto thy neighbor.

     --2 Sam. xii.

The latter part of the verse is omitted as being unfit to read. Don't
understand that I think any of it is exactly choice literature; but that
cover has been used to silence objection long enough. If it is fit to
teach as the word and will of God for women, it ought to be fit to read
in a theatre--but it is not.

What do you think of a religion that upholds such morals and such
justice as that just quoted? What do you think of women supporting the
Bible in the face of that as the will of God? Of all human beings a
woman should spurn the Bible first. She, above all others, should try
to destroy its influence; and I mean to do what little I can in that
direction. The morals of the nineteenth century have outgrown the Bible.
Jehovah stands condemned before the bar of every noble soul. What Moses
and David and Samuel taught as the word and will of God, we, who are
fortunate enough to live in the same age with Charles Darwin, know to
be the expression of a low social condition untempered by the light of
science. Their "thus saith the Lord," read in the light of to-day, is
"thus saith ignorance and fear"--no more, no less.

If you will read the 12th chapter of Leviticus, which is unfit to read
here, you will see that the Bible esteems it twice as great a crime to
be the mother of a girl as to be the mother of a boy; so highly esteemed
was woman by the priesthood; so great a favorite was she of Jehovah.*

     * See Appendix K.

And do you know there is a law in the Bible* which "the Lord spake unto
Moses" that says if a man is jealous of his wife, "whether he have cause
or not," he is to take her to a priest, and take a little barley meal
(if you ever want to try it, remember it must be barley meal; I don't
suppose the priest could tell whether she was guilty or not if you were
to take corn meal or hominy grits) and put it in the wife's hands. And
the priest is to take some "holy" water and scrape up the dirt off the
floor of the Tabernacle, and put the dirt in the water and make the
wife drink it. Now just imagine an infinite God getting up a scheme like
that! Then the priest curses her and says if she is guilty she shall
rot.... "and she shall say Amen." That is her defence! Then the priest
takes the stuff she has in her hands--this barley-meal "jealousy
offering"--and "waves it before the Lord." (I suppose you all know what
that part is done for. If you don't, ask some theological student with
a number six hat-band; he'll tell you.) And then he burns a pinch of it
(that is probably for luck), and at this point it is time to make the
woman drink some more of the filthy water (which he does with great
alacrity), and "if she be guilty the water will turn bitter within
her,"... "and she shall be accursed among her people." (You doubtless
perceive that her defence has been most elaborate throughout.) Do you
think that water would be bitter to the priest?

     *See Numbers v. 11-31.

But if she does not complain that the water is bitter, and if her "Amen"
is perfectly satisfactory all round, and she be pronounced innocent,
what then? Is the husband in any way reproved for his brutality? Did the
Lord "reveal" to Moses that he should drink the rest of that holy water
and dirt? No! That wasn't in Moses' line. Neither he nor the husband
drink the rest of that water--priest doesn't either; they don't even
take a pinch of the barley. But after she is subjected to this, and the
show is over, "if she be innocent, then shall she go free!" Oh, ye
gods! what magnificent generosity! I should have thought they would have
hanged her then for being innocent.

"And then shall the man be guiltless of iniquity, and the woman shall
bear her iniquity."

_If she is innocent she shall bear her iniquity_. You all see how that
is done I suppose. If you don't, ask your little number six theological
student, and he will tell you all about it, and he will also prove to
you, without being asked, that he and God are capable of regulating the
entire universe without the aid of General Butler.

But I am told that I ought to respect and love the Bible; that all women
ought to take an active part in teaching it to the heathen, to show
them how good Jehovah is to his daughters. But if he is, he has been
unusually unfortunate in his choice of executors.

Nor is it only in the Old Testament that such morals and such justice
are taught. The clergy put that part off by saying--"Oh, that was
a different dispensation, and God, the Unchangeable, has changed his
mind." That is the sole excuse they give for all the "holy" men, who
used to talk personally with God, practicing polygamy and all the
other immoralities. They maintain that it was God's best man who upheld
polygamy then, and that it is the Devil's best man who does it now.
Odd idea, isn't it? Simply a question of time and place; and as Col.
Ingersoll says, you have got to look on a map to see whether you are
damned or not. But it does seem to me that a God that did not always
know better than that, is not a safe chief magistrate. He might take to
those views again, They say history is likely to repeat itself. Anyhow,
I would rather be on the safe side and just fix the laws so that he
couldn't. It would be just as well.

But now we have come to "St." Paul and his ideas on the woman question.
He worked the whole problem by simple proportion and found that man
stands in the same relation to woman as God stands to man. That is, man
is to woman as God is to man--and only a slight remainder. I'm not going
to misrepresent this gifted saint. I shall let him speak for himself. He
does it pretty well for a saint, and much more plainly than they usually
do.

     33  Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, _as
     unto the Lord,_

     33 For the husband is the head of the wife, _even as Christ
     is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the
     body._

     --Ephesians v.

The husband is the saviour of the wife! Pretty slim hold on heaven for
most women, isn't it? And then suppose she hasn't any husband? Her case
is fatal.

     34  Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let
     the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

     --Ephesians v.

Paul was a modest person in his requirements.

9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel,
with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or
pearls, or costly array.

--1 Timothy ii.

It does seem as if anybody would know that braided hair was wicked; and
as to "gold and pearls and costly array," all you have to do to prove
the infallibility of Paul--and what absolute faith Christians have in
it!--is to go into any fashionable church and observe the absence of all
such sinfulness:

     10  But (which becometh women professing godliness) with
     good works.

     11  _Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection_.

     12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority
     over the man, but to be in silence.

     13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

     14 And _Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived_
     was in the transgression.

     --1 Timothy ii.

According to the reasoning of verse 13 man should be subject to all the
lower animals, because they were first formed, and then Adam. Verse 14
tells us that Adam sinned knowingly; Eve was deceived, so she deserves
punishment. Now I like that. If you commit a crime understandingly it is
all right. If you are deceived into doing it you ought to be damned. The
law says, "The criminality of an act resides in the intent;" but more
than likely St. Paul was not up in Blackstone and did not use Coke.

This next is St. Peter, and I believe this is one of the few topics
upon which the infallible Peter and the equally infallible Paul did not
disagree:

     Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands;
     that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the
     word be won by the conversation of the wives;

     2  While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with
     fear.

     --1 Peter iii.

I should think that would be a winning card. If the conversation of a
wife, coupled with a good deal of fear, would not convert a man, he is a
hopeless case.

But here is Paul again, in all his mathematical glory, and mortally
afraid that women won't do themselves honor.

     3  But I would have you know, that the head of every man is
     Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head
     of Christ is God.

     4  Every man praying or prophesying, having his head
     covered, dishonoreth his head.

     5  But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head
     uncovered, dishonoreth her head; for that is even all one as
     if she were shaven.

     6  For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn:
     but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let
     her be covered.

     7  For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch
     as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the
     glory of the man:

     8  For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the
     man.

     9  Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman
     for the man.
     --1 Cor. xi.

And that settles it, I suppose. But what on earth was man created for? I
should not think it could have been just for fun.

     34 Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is
     not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to
     be under obedience, as also saith the law.

     35  And if they will learn anything, let them ask their
     husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in
     the church.

     --1 Cor. xiv.

That is a principle that should entitle St. Paul to the profound
admiration of women. And yet, when I come to think of it, I don't know
which one gets the worst of that either. Whenever you want to know
anything, ask your husband, at home! No wonder most husbands don't have
time to stay at home much. No wonder they have to see a man so often.
It would unseat any man's reason if he lived in constant fear that he
might, any minute, be required to explain to a woman of sense, how death
could have been brought into this world by Eve, when every one knows
that long before man could have lived upon this earth animals lived and
died. It would make any man remember that he had to "catch a car" if he
were asked suddenly to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. I would not
blame the most sturdy theologian for remembering that it was club night,
if his wife were to ask him, unexpectedly, how Nebuchadnezzar, with his
inexperience, could digest grass with only one stomach, when it takes
four for the oxen that are used to it. That may account, however, for
his hair turning to feathers.

I don't believe St. Paul could have realized what a diabolical position
he was placing husbands in, when he told wives to ask them every time
they wanted to know anything--unless he wanted to make marriage
unpopular. There is one thing certain, he was careful not to try it
himself, which looks much as if he had some realizing sense of what he
had cut out for husbands to do, and felt that there were some men who
would rather be drafted--and then send a substitute.

But why are his commands not followed to-day? Why are not the words,
sister, mother, daughter, wife, only names for degradation And dishonor?

Because men have grown more honorable than their religion, and
the strong arm of the law, supported by the stronger arm of public
sentiment, demands greater justice than St. Paul ever dreamed of.
Because men are growing grand enough to recognize the fact that right
is not masculine only, and that justice knows no sex. And because the
Church no longer makes the laws. Saints have been retired from the legal
profession. I can't recall the name of a single one who is practicing
law now. Have any of you ever met a saint at the bar?

Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of
hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the
justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does
not crouch to-day where Saint Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the
men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior
to his God.

And remember that I have not read you the worst stories of the Bible.
The greater number of those which refer to women are wholly unfit to
read here. Are you willing to think they are the word of God? I am not.
Believe in a God if you will, but do not degrade him by accepting an
interpretation of him that would do injustice to Mephistopheles! Have
a religion if you desire, but demand that it be free from impurity and
lies, and that it be just. Exercise faith if you must, but temper it
wisely with reason. Do not allow ministers to tell you stories that are
sillier than fairy tales, more brutal than barbaric warfare, and too
unclean to be read, and then assure you that they are the word of God.
Use your reason; and when you are told that God came down and talked to
Moses behind a bush, and told him to murder several thousand innocent
people; when you are told that he created a vast universe and filled it
with people upon all of whom he placed a never-ending curse because of a
trivial disobedience of one; give him the benefit of a reasonable doubt
and save your reputation for slander.

Now just stop and think about it. Don't you think that if a God had come
down and talked to Moses he would have had something more important to
discuss than the arrangement of window curtains and the cooking of a
sheep? Since Moses was the leader of God's people, their lawgiver,
the guardian of their morals, don't you think that the few minutes of
conversation could have been better spent in calling attention to some
of the little moral delinquencies of Moses himself? Don't you think
it would have been more natural for an infinite and just ruler to have
mentioned the impropriety of murdering so many men, and degrading so
many young girls to a life worse than that of the vilest quarter of any
infamous dive, than to have occupied the time in trivial details about
a trumpery jewel-box? Since God elected such a man as Moses to guide
and govern his people, does it not seem natural that he would have given
more thought to the moral worth and practices of his representative on
earth, than to the particular age at which to kill a calf? If he were
going to take the trouble to say anything, would it not seem more
natural that he should say something important?

In his numerous chats with Solomon, don't you think he could have added
somewhat to that gentleman's phenomenal wisdom by just hinting to him
that he had a few more wives than were absolutely necessary? He had a
thousand we are told, which leaves Brigham Young away behind. Yet there
are Christians to-day who teach their children that Solomon was the
wisest man who ever lived, and that Brigham Young was very close to the
biggest fool. It is not strange that some of these children infer that
the trouble with Brigham was that he had not wives enough, and that
if he had only married the whole state of Massachusetts he and Solomon
would now occupy adjoining seats on the other shore, and use the same
jew's-harp?

Do you believe for one moment that a God ever talked with any man and
told him to murder a whole nation of men, to steal their property, to
butcher in cold blood the mothers, and to give the young girls to a camp
of brutal soldiers--_and that he helped to do it?_ Do you believe any
God ever told a man to give so many of those girls to one tribe, so
many to another, and to burn so many as an offering to himself? Do you
believe it? I don't. Would you worship him if he had? I would not.

And yet it is true that he did help in such work, or else the word
of Moses is not worth a nickel. God did this, or else our religion is
founded upon a fraud. He did it, or orthodoxy is a mistake. He did it,
or the Bible is an imposition. If it is true, no woman should submit to
such a fiend for an hour; if it is false, let her unclasp the clutches
of the superstition which is built upon her dishonor and nourished by
her hand.

They say it is a shame for a woman to attack the Bible. I say she is
the one who should do it. It is she who has everything to gain by its
overthrow. It is she who has everything to lose by its support. They
tell me it is the word and will of God. I do not, I cannot, believe
it! And it does seem to me that nothing but lack of moral perception
or mental capacity could enable any human being who was honest (and not
scared) to either respect or believe in such a God.

As a collection of ingenious stories, as a record of folly and
wickedness, as a curious and valuable old literary work, keep the Bible
in the library. But put it on the top shelf--or just behind it, and
don't let the children see it until they are old enough to read it
with discrimination. As a mythological work it is no worse than several
others. As a divine revelation it is simply monstrous.

Among your other tales you might tell the children some from it. You
might tell them that at one time a man got mad at another man, and
caught three hundred foxes, and set fire to their tails (they standing
still the while), and then turned them loose into the other man's corn,
and burned it all up. If they don't know much about foxes, and have
never experimented in burning live hair, they may think it is a pretty
good story. But I would not tell them that the man who got up that
torch-light procession was a good man. I would not tell them that he was
one of God's most intimate friends; because even if they think he had a
right to burn his enemy's crops, I don't believe that any right-minded
child would think it was fair to the foxes.

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

Some time ago I went to hear a noted minister, who preached a sermon
about the "fruit of the tree of knowledge" to a congregation composed,
as most congregations are, chiefly of women. Yet his sermon was a
monument of insult, bigotry, and dogmatic intolerance that would have
done honor to a witch-hunter several centuries ago. That women will
subject themselves to such insults week after week, and that there are
still men who will condescend to offer them, is a sad commentary upon
their self-respect as well as upon the degrading influence of their
religion.

Why will they listen to such nonsense? Perhaps woman was made of a rib
and so should be held as flesh and blood only, devoid of intellect. But
I don't know that she was; I was not there to see, and, in fact, none of
my family were; and since they tell us that the only gentleman present
upon that interesting occasion was asleep, I don't know who could have
told the story in the first place.

It is always a surprise to me that women will sit, year after year, and
be told that, because of a story as silly and childish as it is unjust,
she is responsible for all the ills of life; that because, forsooth,
some thousands of years ago a woman was so horribly wicked as to eat an
apple, she must and should occupy a humble and penitent position, and
remain forever subject to the dictates of ecclesiastical pretenders. It
is so silly, so childish, that for people of sense to accept it seems
almost incredible.

According to the story, she was deceived. According to the story, she
believed that she was doing a thing which would give greater knowledge
and a broader life, and she had the courage to try for it. According to
the story, she first evinced the desire to be more and wiser than a mere
brute, and incidentally gave her husband an opportunity to invent the
first human lie (a privilege still dear to the heart), a field which up
to that time had been exclusively worked by the reptiles. But they never
got a chance at it again. From the time that Adam entered the lists,
competition was too lively for any of the lower animals to stand a ghost
of a chance at it, and that may account for the fact that, from that
time to this, nobody has ever heard a snake tell a lie or volunteer
information to a woman. The Church has had a monopoly of these
profitable perquisites ever since. The serpent never tried it again. He
turned woman over to the clergy, and from that time to this they have
been the instructors who have told her which apple to bite, and how big
a bite to take. She has never had a chance since to change her diet.
From that day to this she has had apple pie, stewed apple, dried apple,
baked apple, apple-jack, and cider; and this clergyman that I heard,
started out fresh on apple-sauce. He seemed to think--"anything for a
change." You would have thought, to hear him, that the very worst
thing that ever happened to this world was the birth of the desire
for knowledge, and that such desire in woman had been the curse of all
mankind.

But it seems to me that if in this day of intelligence a minister
preaches or acts upon such dogmas, women should scorn him both as a
teacher and as a man. If a creed or Church upholds such doctrines they
should shun it as they would a pest-house. If any system or any book
of religion teaches such principles they should exert every effort to
utterly destroy its influence. I want to do what I can to show women
that the mercury of self-respect must fall several degrees at the church
door, and that the light of reason must go out.

In this sermon that I speak of, we were warned "not to be wise above
that which is written." As if a man should bind his thoughts and
knowledge down to what was known, believed, or written in ages past!
As though a man should fear and tremble, should hesitate to reach out
after, to labor to know, all that his intellect and energy can compass.
As though to be good he must accept situations, sentiments, ideas
ready-made, and dwarf his intellect and bind his mental ability by the
capacity of somebody else.

"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

"He that hath eyes to see, let him see."

And he that hath a brain to think, let him think. What is his intellect
for? Why is his mind one vast interrogation point? Why should not Eve
have grasped with eagerness the fruit of the tree of knowledge?

A taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge does drive man from the
paradise of ignorance, does send him forth a laborer in the vast fields
of speculation and thought, where there is no rest, and no possibility
of the cessation of labor so long as his energies and his love of truth
remain to impel him to the conquest of the infinite domain that lies
unexplored beyond.

But would any man sell what is gained in liberty, in strength, in
breadth, in conscious superiority, for the delights which every brute
has left him in his stagnant paradise of ignorance and rest? What man
in this nineteenth century can unblushingly say he would not choose the
labor with all its pain, the effort with all its failure, the struggle
with all its exhaustion? Why try to bind the human mind by the silly
theory that a God requires man to crush out or subject the intellect he
has given him? Whatever religion may have gained by such a course, think
what morality and progress have lost by it!

What has not woman lost by that silly fable which made her responsible
for transgression? Honor her for it! Honor her the more if it was she
who first dared the struggle rather than lose her freedom or crush her
reason. _If_ she learned first that the price of ignorance and slavery
was too great to pay for the luxury of idleness--honor her for it. The
acceptance of such contemptible stories, as told by the clergy _in
all ages and in all religions_ as the "word of God," has done more to
enslave and injure women's intellects, and to brutalize men, than has
been done by any other influence; and our boasted superior civilization
is not the result of the Christian religion, but has been won step
by step in despite of it.* For the Church has fought progress with a
vindictive bitterness and power found in no other antagonist--from the
time, long ago, when it crushed Galileo for daring to know more than its
"inspired" leaders could ever learn, down to yesterday, when it raised a
wild howl against Prof. Tyndall for making a simple statement, in itself
absolutely incontrovertible.

     * See Lecture 3, "Theological Fictions."

It had to yield to Galileo as the people grew beyond its power to blind
them to his truth. It is yielding every hour to-day to Tyndall from the
same dire necessity; while its nimble devotees vie with each other in
proclaiming that they thought that way all the time; had neglected
to say so (through an oversight); but that it was one of their very
strongest holds from the beginning. They have recently told us that
modern scientific doctrines (evolution included) are "plainly indicated
in the Bible," and that Science has at last worked up towards the
comprehension of scriptural truths.

It used to be the fashion to burn the man who got up a new theory or
discovered a new law of nature that interfered with the "revelation"
theory; but the style now is to go into the mental gymnastic business
and "reconcile" the old dogma with the new truth. The only kind of
reconciling the Church ever thought of in the days of her power, was to
become reconciled to the death of the scientist or thinker. To-day she
can take evolution and revelation, shake them up in a theological bag,
and then bring them forth so marvellously alike in appearance that their
own father would not know them apart. And the rest of us can't recognize
them at all.

To-morrow, when she has to yield her whole field to science, she will
hasten to assure us that it was only a few mistaken souls who ever
objected to Col. Ingersoll's style of theology; and that if we would
only interpret the Bible aright (and understood Hebrew) we should at
once discover that Col. Ingersoll was the "biggest card" they had had
yet.

You may not live until that to-morrow; I may not live until that
to-morrow; but it is as sure to come as it is certain that the old
tenets have yielded one by one before the irresistible march of an age
of intelligence and freedom, in which a priest or a Church can no longer
be judge, jury, and counsel.

Not long ago I heard two gentlemen--one a very devout Christian--talking
about what use the Church could make of Col. Ingersoll's teachings. One
said he was such a moral man, and always insisted so strongly upon right
action in this world, that it was a pity he did not have more faith. He
said, "What a power he would be in the Church! What a preacher he would
make! He would be a second St. Paul--I have been praying for years for
his conversion." "Well," said the other, "you needn't waste your time
any longer; softening of the brain doesn't run in Robert's family."

KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.

Let man rid himself of the pernicious idea that knowledge is a crime,
and then let only the man who is afraid to enter the world of thought go
back to his native paradise of ignorance and rest. Let him cling to his
old ideas. Humanity can do better without such a man, and humanity will
be better without him. The time is past when his type is needed, and let
us hope that it is nearly past when it can be found. He may have been
abreast of the time in 1840, but his grave was dug, his epitaph written,
in 1841. Science did not wait for him, and the world forgot his name!

Do you think the world has any farther use for the man who can gravely
tell those stories about Samson, for instance, as truth--as the word of
God? Do you think they do honor to the most attenuated intellect? Now
just stop and think of it. Just think of one thousand able-bodied men
(1,000 is a good many men) quietly standing around waiting for Sampson
to knock them on the head with a bone! And how does the durability of
that bone strike you?

If prowess with arms were estimated, I should say that was about the
most effective piece of generalship on record. If the gentleman who
conducted that neat little skirmish were living to-day there would not
be a question as to his eligibility for a third term, unit rule or no
unit rule. If we could provide our generals with a bone like that, we
might reduce the standing army sufficiently to reassure the most timid
congressman of the whole lot. It would not take more than four or five
generals and a captain to guard the whole frontier. Then we might keep
a private to keep the peace at the polls, and that would give us
sufficient force to readily murder several thousand people any morning
before breakfast, and I don't see how you could ask for anything better
than that. Two live men and one dead mule could raise a siege in a
quarter of an hour. Now, if there is anybody who wants to start "a
brilliant foreign policy," here is his chance. He could at the same time
make a record for economy, for it would be an enormous saving to this
country in arms and ammunition alone. For durability, cheapness, and
certainty not to miss fire there is simply no comparison at all.

It may be objected that our soldiers are not so strong as Samson; but
I am told by those who are intimately acquainted with mules, that they
have not deteriorated. They have simply transferred their superior
strength and durability from their jaw-bones to their heels--and they
engineer them themselves. So if our men can stand his voice and aim him
right, they won't have to wear long hair.

But seriously, if it is necessary to believe such stories as that in
order to go to heaven, don't you think the admission fee is a trifle
high? It is entirely beyond my means, and that is not one of the big
stories either.

The one that comes right after it is just as absurd. It is the second
scene of the same performance, and Samson only went out between acts for
a drink, and then he playfully walked off with a building about the size
of the capitol at Washington.

They say we must believe these tales or be damned; and that a woman has
not even a right to say, "I object." But it always did seem to me that
anybody who could believe them would not have brains enough to know
whether he was damned or not. They say we must not laugh at such very
solemn things as that. They also say that even if we don't believe them
ourselves we should show respect for those who do.

That is a very good theory, but I should like to know how any human
being with a sense of humor could sit and look solemn, and feel very
respectful, with that sort of chaff rattling down his back. It can't
be done unless he is scared. Fear will convince a man the quickest of
anything on earth. Even a shadow is provocative of solemnity if the
night is dark enough and the man is sufficiently scared.

Ignorance and Fear made the Garden of Eden, they created Jehovah, gave
Samson his wonderful strength, and Solomon his wisdom; they divided the
Red Sea, and raised Lazarus from the dead. It is not strange, therefore,
that they have compelled women to cling to the Church, and slaves to
cling to slavery. There were many black men in the South who voluntarily
went back and offered to remain in bondage. And that is one of the
strongest arguments against the institution of slavery--that it can so
far degrade its victims that they lose even the ambition to be free!*

     * "It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for
     slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray
     their masters. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated
     their slaves. But in truth these intense individual feelings
     nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height as under the most
     atrocious institutions. It is part of the irony of life,
     that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which
     human nature seems susceptible, are called forth in human
     beings toward those who, having the power entirely to crush
     their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that
     power. How great a place in most men this sentiment fills,
     even in religious devotion, it would be cruel to inquire. We
     daily see how much their gratitude to Heaven appears to be
     stimulated by the _contemplation of fellow-creatures to whom
     God has not been so merciful as he has to themselves_."
     --Mill.

The time is not far distant when a bondage of the intellect to the
Church will receive no more respectful consideration than a bondage
of the body to a master. This nineteenth century cannot much longer
be bound by the ignorance and intolerance of an age when might was the
highest law and force the only appeal. We need to recognize that the
broadest possible liberty is the greatest possible good; and that the
liberty to think is the highest good of all. So don't let people make
you afraid to think, or to laugh at nonsense wherever you see it.

Solomon saying it cannot make a silly thing wise, nor Moses doing it a
cruel thing kind. David cannot make brutality gentle, nor Paul injustice
just; and that the Bible sustains a wrong can never make it right.

Don't you know that if the leading men of the Old Testament were living
to-day, they would be known as liars, thieves, and murderers--some
indeed as monsters to whom even these terms would be base flattery.
Despoilers of those who had not injured them; infamous liars in the name
of God; murderers of men; butchers of children; debauchers of women;
if they were living in the nineteenth century they would be unanimously
elected to the gallows--that is if they escaped Judge Lynch long enough.
And yet they are held up to us, who have outgrown their morals, as
authorities on the subject of God's will to man, as Prophets, Saints,
Mediators!

Do you want your children taught to believe in the purity and honor
of such men? Do you want your children taught to worship a God who
sanctioned, commanded, and gloried (and usually participated) in their
worst crimes? Do you want them to believe that at any time, in any age,
a God was the director in the most heinous crimes, in the vilest
plots, in the most cruel, vulgar, cowardly acts of vice that were ever
recorded? Either he was or else Moses' word is not worth a copper, and
theology is the invention of ignorance. He did these hideous things
or the Bible is mistaken about it. There is to-day that kind of a God
somewhere in space waiting around to pounce on anybody who doesn't
admire him, or else the Church is founded upon the ignorance and fear of
its dupes, and teaches them what is not true.

They say it is wicked to inquire into the facts. I say it is wrong not
to. It seems to me that in a matter like this the most important thing
is to be honest all round, and that if the claims of the Church are true
no inquiry can injure them. They say, "Oh, well, drop all the bad part,
and only take the good. There is a great deal of good in it too." But if
I don't know what is good myself I won't go to Moses and that class of
men to find out. I'll go to somebody who has got a clean record. I won't
go to men who robbed and murdered in the name of God; I won't go to men
who bought and sold their fellow-men; I won't go to men who gave their
own daughters over to the hate and lust of others, even bargaining for
them with sons and brothers. Such men cannot tell me what is good.
Such men cannot make a religion for me to live by, or a God that I can
accept.

I am sometimes told that intelligent ministers nowadays do not believe
in the inspiration of the Bible, and do not teach it. Yet every minister
who, like the Rev. R. Heber Newton, dares to suggest mildly that even
the apple story is a fable, is silenced by his bishop or hounded down
for "heresy." And still they go right on telling little children that it
is the "word of God" and the only guide of life. For truth, better give
them AEsop's Fables or the Arabian Nights; for purity the Decameron or
Don Juan; for examples of justice the story of Blue-Beard or the life of
Henry the Eighth.

I wish you would read the Bible carefully _just as you would any other
book_, and see what you think of its morals. I am debarred from touching
the parts of it that are the greatest insult to purity and the most
infamous travesties of justice. I can only say to you, read it, and if
you are lovers of purity you will find that it teaches respect for a God
who taught the most degrading impurity and defended those who forced it
upon others. If you believe in the sacredness of human life, he gave the
largest license to murder. It does not matter that Moses said he
told him _to tell somebody else_ "Thou shalt not kill;"* for the same
gentleman remarked upon several other occasions that God told him not
only to kill, but to steal, to lie, to commit arson, to break pretty
much all the other commandments--and to be a professional tramp besides.
(I am told that he followed this latter occupation for forty years,
which I should think would give him the belt.) So you see we have the
same gentleman's word for all of it; and at times, I must confess, it
does not seem to me absolutely reliable authority. There is one thing
certain, if the returns are correct, and that is that Moses did not take
his own medicine in the little matter of keeping the commandments. They
were for his enemies and his slaves.

     * See Lecture 3, "Theological Fictions."

If you love liberty remember that the Bible teaches slavery in every
form, not only the buying of slaves, but the stealing them into bondage.
How any man or woman who censured slavery in our Southern States
can permit their children to be taught that the Bible is a book of
authority, and think they are consistent, I cannot understand. Every
slave-whip had for its lash the Bible. Every slave-holder had its
teachings for his guide. Every slave-driver found his authority there.
When the sword of the North severed the thongs of the black man, it
destroyed the absolute control of the Bible in America; and gave a fatal
blow to Jehovah the God of oppression. Only in the South is it that the
Bible still holds its own. Freedom has outgrown it; and the young South
is reading it, for the first time, with an eraser!

If you respect your mother, if you wish your children to respect theirs,
you will find that the Bible teaches not only disrespect for her, but
abject slavery and the most oppressive degradation. If you love your
young sister, your beautiful pure daughter, remember that Jehovah taught
that, whenever men could do so, they were to abuse, ruin, degrade
them; and remember, further, that his "prophets"--_the men who made our
religion--did these things and gloried in the work_.

It is for this reason that I say it is right and peculiarly fitting that
women should object to his teaching. After you have read the 31st ch.
of Numbers, with its "thus saith the Lord," think then if you want to
follow such teachings. Decide then whether or not the words, the acts,
the commands, or the religion of such men is good enough for you. Think
then whether or not you want your daughters, your sons, to believe that
the Bible has one grain of authority, or is in any sense a "revelation
of the divine will."

Don't allow ministers to palm off platitudes on you for "revelation;"
and don't let them make you believe that anything that Moses or David or
Solomon said was the command of God to women. Neither one of those men
was fit to speak of a respectable woman. With the superior morals of our
time neither one of them would be considered fit to live outside of a
brothel.

And don't let them tell you what "Saint" Paul said either. What did he
know about women anyway? He was a brilliant but erratic old bachelor
who fought on whichever side he happened to find himself on. He could
accommodate himself to circumstances and accept the situation almost
as gracefully as that other biblical gentleman who quietly went to
housekeeping inside of a whale, and held the fort for three days.

AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.

Did it ever occur to you that those absurd tales have as much claim to
be called the "word of God" as any of the rest of it? How can people
say they believe such nonsense? And how can they think it is evidence of
goodness to believe it? They say it takes a horribly wicked man to doubt
one of those yarns; and to come right out and say honestly, "I don't
believe it," will elect you, on the first ballot, to a permanent seat
in the lower house. Mr. Talmage says four out of five Christians "try to
explain away" these tales by giving them another meaning, and he urges
them not to do it. He says, stick to the original story in all its
literal bearings. The advice is certainly honest, but it would take
a brave man to follow it. And four out of five of even professed
Christians is a pretty heavy balance on the side of intellectual
integrity; and even Mr. Tal-mage's mammoth credulity fails to tip the
scale.

They simply can't believe these biblical stones, so they try to explain
the marvellous part entirely away. It has about come to this, in this
day of thought and intelligence, that when a thinking man claims to
believe these tales, and says it is an evidence of righteousness to
believe them, there are just two things to examine, his intellect and
his integrity. If one is all right the other is pretty sure to be out
of repair. Defective intellect or doubtful integrity is what he suffers
from. He has got one of them sure, and he may have both.

Now I should just like to ask you one honest question. Why should any
book bind us to sentiments that we would not tolerate if they came from
any other source? And why tolerate them coming from it? Do you know who
compiled the Bible? Do you know it was settled by vote which manuscripts
God did and which he did not write? The ballot is a very good thing to
have; but I decline to have it extend its power into eternity, and bind
my brain by the capacity of a ballot-box held by caste and saturated
with blood.

There can be but slow progress while we are weighted down by the
superstitions of ages past. The brain of the nineteenth century should
not be bound down to the capacity of the third, nor its moral sentiment
dwarfed to fit Jehovah.

But so long as the theories of revelation and vicarious atonement are
taught, we shall not need to be surprised that every murderer who is
hanged to-day says that he is going, with bloody hands, directly into
companionship with the deity of revelation. He has had ample time in
prison to re-read in the Bible (what he had previously been taught
in Sunday school), of many worse crimes than his which his spiritual
adviser assures him (to the edification and encouragement of all his
kind outside) were not only forgiven, but were actually ordered and
participated in, by the God he is going to.

That is what orthodoxy tells him! Just think of it! Do you think that is
a safe doctrine to teach to the criminal classes? Aside from its being
dishonest, is it safe? Does it not put a premium on crime? I maintain
that it is always a dangerous religion where faith in a given dogma, and
not continuous uprightness of life, is the standard of excellence. It is
a cruel religion where force is king and immorality God. It is an unjust
religion which seeks to make women serfs and men tyrants. It is an
unreasonable religion where credulity usurps the place of intellect and
judgment. It is an immoral religion where vice is deified and virtue
strangled. It is a cowardly religion where an innocent man, who was
murdered 1,800 years ago, is asked to bear the burden of your wrong acts
to-day. Aside from its impossibility that is cowardly.

Man should be taught that for every wrong he does, he must himself be
responsible--not that some one else stands between him and absolute
personal responsibility--not that Eve caused him to sin, nor that Christ
stands between him and full accountability for his every act.

And he should be taught that for every noble deed, for every act of
justice or mercy, he deserves the credit himself; that Christ does not
need it; that Christ cannot want it; and that Christ does not deserve
it.

And you will not want to "wash your hands in the blood of Christ," nor
to shed that of any other innocent man, if your motives are pure and
your lives clean.

*****

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.

IN an art collection in Boston there is a god--a redeemer--the best
illustration I have ever seen of the vicarious atonement theory. It is
a perfect representation of the agony endured by a helpless and innocent
being in order to relieve the guilty of their guilt. This god was
captured in Central Africa before his mission was complete, and there is
still suffering-space upon his body unused.

It is a wooden image of some frightful beast, and it is represented as
suffering the most intense physical agony. Nails are driven into its
head, body, legs, and feet. Each wrongdoer who wanted to relieve himself
of his own guilt drove a nail, a tack, a brad, or a spike into the flesh
of his god. The god suffered the pain; the man escaped the punishment.
He cast his burdens on his god, and went on his way rejoicing. Here is
vicarious atonement in all its pristine glory. The god is writhing
and distorted with pain; the criminal has relieved himself of further
responsibility, and his faith has made him whole. His sins are forgiven,
and his god will assume his load.

It is curious to examine the various illustrations of human nature as
represented by the size and shape of the nails. A sensitive man had
committed a trifling offence, and he drove a great spike into the head
of the god. A thick-skinned criminal inserted a small tack where it
would do the least harm--in the hoof. An honest, or an egotistic
penitent drove his nail in where it stands out prominently; while the
secretive devotee placed his among a mass of others of long standing and
inconspicuous location.

One day I stood with a friend looking at this god. My friend, who was a
devout believer in the vicarious theory of justification and punishment
as explained _away_ by the ethical divines of Boston, was unable to see
anything but the most horrible brutality and willingness to inflict
pain on the part of these African devotees, and was equally unable to
recognize the same principle when applied to orthodoxy. She said, "Is it
not horrible, the ignorance and superstition of these poor people? What
a vast field of labor our missionaries have."

To her the idea of justification by faith in a suffering god meant only
superstition and brutality when plainly illustrated in somebody else's
religion; but the same idea, the same morality, the same justice, she
thought beautiful when applied to Christianity.

I said, "There is the whole vicarious theory in wood and iron. That
is exactly the same as the Christian idea; and the same human
characteristics are plainly traceable in the size and location of these
nails.

"A Presbyterian or a Methodist drives his nail in the most conspicuous
spot, where the flesh is tender and the suffering plainly visible. The
Episcopalian or Catholic uses a small tack, and drives it as much out of
sight as possible, covering it over with stained glass, and distracting
the attention with music; but the bald, cruel, unjust, immoral,
degrading, and dishonest principle is there just the same.

"Faith in blind acts of devotion; the suffering of innocence for guilt;
transferring of crime; comfort and safety purchased for self by the
infliction of pain and unmerited torture upon another; premiums offered
for ignorance and credulity; punishments guaranteed for honest doubt and
earnest protest--all these beautiful provisions of the vicarious theory
are as essential to our missionary's belief as to that of his African
converts; and it seems to me simply a choice between thumbs up and
thumbs down."

While we were talking my friend's pastor joined us, and she told him
what I had said, and asked him what was the difference between the
Christian and the heathen idea of a suffering god. He said he could
explain it in five minutes some morning when he had time. He said
that the one was the true and living faith, and the other was blind
superstition. He also said that he could easily make us see which was
which. Then he gracefully withdrew with the air of one who says: "In six
days God made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day _he_
and _I_ rested." He has not called since to explain. While he stayed,
however, his manner was deeply, solemnly, awfully impressive; and of
course I resigned on the spot.

The theory of vicarious atonement is the child of cowardice and fear.
It arranges for a man to be a criminal and to escape the consequences
of his crime. It destroys personal responsibility, the most essential
element of moral character. It is contrary to every moral principle.

The Church never has been and never will be able to explain why a god
should be forced to resort to such injustice to rectify a mistake of his
own. To earnest questions and honest thoughts it has always replied with
threats. It has always silenced inquiry and persecuted thought. Past
authority is its god, present investigation its devil. With it brains
are below par, and ignorance is at a premium. It has never learned that
the most valuable capital in this world is the brain of a scholar.

FEAR.

Every earnest thought, like every earnest thinker, adds something to
the wealth of the world. Blind belief in the thought of another produces
only hopeless mediocrity. Individual effort, not mere acceptance, marks
the growth of the mind. The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of
the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think,
and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought
without fear.

Fear is the nearest approach to the ball and chain that this age will
permit, and it should be the glorious aim of the thinkers of to-day that
so refined and cruel a form of tyranny shall not be left for those who
come after us. We owe physical freedom to the intellectual giants of the
past; let us leave mental freedom to the intellectual children of the
future.

Fear scatters the blossoms of genius to the winds, and superstition
buries truth beneath the incrustation of inherited mediocrity. Fear
puts the fetters of religious stagnation on every child of the brain. It
covers the form of purity and truth with the contagion of contumely and
distrust. It warps and dwarfs every character that it touches. It is the
father, mother, and nurse of hypocrisy. It is the one great disgrace
of our day, the one incalculable curse of our time; and its nurse and
hot-bed is the Church.

Because I, a woman, have dared to speak publicly against the
dictatorship of the Church, the Church, with its usual force and honor,
answers argument with personal abuse. One reply it gives. It is this. If
a woman did not find comfort and happiness in the Church, she would not
cling to it. If it were not good for her, she in her purity and truth
would not uphold it in the face of the undeniable fact that the present
generation of thinking men have left it utterly.

You will find, however, that in every land, under every form of faith,
in each phase of credulity, it is the woman who clings closest and
longest to the religion she has been taught; yet no Christian will
maintain that this fact establishes the truth of any other belief.*

     * "Exactly the same thing may be said of the women in the
     harem of an Oriental They do not complain.... They think
     our women insufferably unfeminine."
     --Mill.

They will not argue from this that women know more of and have a
clearer insight into the divine will! If she knows more about it, if she
understands it all better than men, why does she not occupy the pulpit?
Why does she not hold the official positions in the Churches? Why has
she not received even recognition in our system of religion? Who ever
heard of a minister being surprised that God did not reveal any of the
forms of belief through a woman? If she knows and does the will of God
so much better than man, why did he not reveal himself to her and place
his earthly kingdom in her hands?

That argument won't do! As long as creed and Church held absolute
power there was no question but that woman was a curse, that she was an
inferior being, an after-thought. No Church but the Roman Catholic has
the decency to recognize even the so-called mother of God! The Church
has never offered women equality or justice. Its test of excellence
is force. The closer a Church or creed clings to its spirit, the more
surely does it assume to dictate to and control woman and to degrade
her. The more liberal the creed the nearer does it come to offering
individual justice and liberty.

The testimony of our own missionaries, as well as that of many others,
assures us that it is not the Turk but his wives who hold fastest
to their faith. The women of the harem, whom we pity because of the
injustice of their religious training, are the last to relinquish
their god, the most bitter opponents of the infidel or sceptic in their
Church, the most devout and constant believers of the faith, and the
most content with its requirements. They are the ones who cling to the
form even when the substance has departed--and it is so with us!

Among the "heathen" it is the women who are most shocked and offended
by the attacks made upon their superstitions by the missionaries whom we
pay to go to them and blaspheme their gods and destroy their idols.

Go where you will, read history as you may, and you will find that it
is the men who invented religion, and the women who believed in it.
They are the last to give it up. _The physically weak dread change_.
Inexperience fears the unknown. Ignorance shuns thought or development.
The dependent cannot be brave.

We are all prepared to admit, I think, that, with but few marked
exceptions here and there, the women of most countries are physically
and mentally undeveloped. They have had fear and dependence, the dread
enemies of progress and growth, constantly to retard them. Fear of
physical harm, fear of social ostracism, fear of eternal damnation. With
rare exceptions a child with a weak body, or any other dependent, will
do as he is told; and women have believed to order. They have done so
not only in Christianity but in Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Mormonism,
and Fetichism--in each and all of them. Each and all of these religions
being matter of faith, religion was the one subject in which every
Church alike claimed ignorance as a virtue; and the women understood
that the men understood it as little as they did. It was a field
where credulity and a solemn countenance placed all on an intellectual
level--and the altitude of the level was immaterial.

Women have never been expected to understand anything; hence jargon
about the "testimony of the spirit," the "three in one" absurdity, the
"horns of the altar," or the widow's oil miracle was not more empty or
unmeaning to her than a conversation about Bonds and Stocks, Political
Economy, or Medical Science. She swallowed her religion just as she did
her pills, because the doctor told her to, and said there was something
wrong with her head--and usually there was.

BEGINNING TO THINK.

The past education of woman gave her an outlook which simply embraced a
husband or nothing at all, which was often only a choice between two of
a kind.

There are a great many women to-day who think that orthodoxy is as great
nonsense as I do, but who are afraid to say so.

They whisper it to each other. They are afraid of the slander of the
Church.

I want to help make it so that they will dare to speak. I want to do
what I can to make it so that a mother won't have to evade the questions
of her children about the Bible.

CREEDS.

I am sometimes asked, "What do you propose to give in place of this
comforting faith? It makes people so happy. You take away all this
blessing and you give no other in its place. What is your creed?"

It has never seemed to me that a creed was the staff of life. Man cannot
live by creeds alone. I should not object, however, to one that should
read something like this:

I believe in honesty.

I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not know.

I believe that a clean life and a tender heart are worth more to this
world than all the faith and all the gods of Time.

I believe that this world needs all our best efforts and earnest
endeavors twenty-four hours every day.

I believe that if our labors were needed in another world we should be
in another world; so long as we are in this one I believe in making the
best and the most of the materials we have on hand.

I believe that fear of a god cripples men's intellects more than any
other influence. I believe that Humanity needs and should have all our
time, efforts, love, worship, and tenderness.

I believe that one world is all we can deal with at a time.

I believe that, if there is a future life, the best possible preparation
for it is to do the very best we can here and now.

I believe that love for our fellow-men is infinitely nobler, better, and
more necessary than love for God.

I believe that men, women, and children need our best thoughts, our
tenderest consideration, and our earnest sympathy.

I believe that God can get on just as well without any of these as with
them. If he wants anything he can get it without our assistance. It
is people with limitations, not gods without limitations, who need and
should have our aid.

I believe that it is better to build one happy home here than to invest
in a thousand churches which deal with a hereafter.

If a life that embraces this line of action does not fit a man for
heaven, and if faith in vicarious atonement will, then such a heaven is
not worth going to, and its god would be unworthy to make a good man's
acquaintance.

But suppose that faith in a myth is destroyed and another mysticism be
not set up in its place, what then? If a mother takes her child away
from the fire, which it finds beautiful, and believes to be a nice toy,
is it necessary for her to give it a kerosene lamp in its place?
She destroys a pleasant delusion--a faith and a delightful hope and
confidence--because she knows its danger and recognizes its false
foundation. It is surely not necessary that she should give to the child
another delusion equally dangerous and false. She gives it something
she knows to be safe; something she understands will not burn; something
which, though not so bright and attractive to the child at first, gives
pleasure without pain, occupation without disaster. Is she cruel or
only sensible? If I were to pretend to a knowledge of a divine creed, a
superhuman system, I should be guilty of the same dishonesty, the same
deception of which I complain in the Church.

I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most important human
ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world. I do not
know anything about "a land that is fairer than day." I do know that
women make shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one. I do know that
the needs of humanity and this world are infinite, unending, constant,
and immediate. They will take all our time, our strength, our love, and
our thoughts; and our work here will be only then begun.

Why not, if you believe in a God at all, give him credit for placing you
where he wanted you? Why not give him credit for giving you brains and
sympathies, as well as the courage to use them. Even if Eve did eat that
apple, why should _we_ insist upon having the colic?

SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.

I want to see the time come when mothers won't have to explain to their
children that God has changed his mind about goodness and right since he
used to incite murder; that eighteen hundred years ago he was a criminal
with bloody hands and vile, polluted breath; that less than three
hundred years ago his greatest pleasure was derived from witnessing the
agony of pure young girls burning alive, whose only crime was beauty of
face or honesty of thought.*

     * See Gage, "History of Woman Suffrage," p. 766.

I want it so that she won't allow her children to hear and believe such
a statement as Bishop Fallows made not long ago. He said, in effect,
that sins of omission are as heinous as those of commission: that Saul
committed two sins in his life, and that one of them was a refusal to
commit a coldblooded murder! He spared the life of a conquered enemy!
Out of a whole nation he saved one life--and that was a crime, a
sin! Bishop Fallows said that God expressly commanded Saul to utterly
exterminate that whole nation, and not only the nation but its flocks;
and that God took Saul's kingdom from him because he saved the life of
one fallen enemy.

That story, I think, is a libel; and I believe that if there is a God he
was never such a fiend! And I want it so that no mother will allow her
child to hear such an infamous travesty of the character of a Deity who
is called good, I want it so that all the lessons of the week, all
the careful training of a wise father or a good mother, will not be
antagonized on Sunday by such a statement as the Rev. Mr. Williamson
made at a large church convention recently. Speaking of prayer, he said:
"We should offer to God, by prayer, our virtue, our purity, and our
pious aspirations" (so far I do not object, for if it means anything I
fail to grasp it), "for by not doing so we claim self-control, which is
displeasing to God!"

I object! The lesson of self-control is precisely what we need. And when
we control ourselves and regulate our lives on principles of right and
truth, instead of allowing a Church to regulate them through a fear of
hell, we shall be a better people, and character will have a chance to
grow.

Then this same gentleman added: "We should also give him our vices, our
worry, our temper, and our passions, so that he may dispose of them."

Dispose of them yourselves! Don't try to shift your responsibilities
on to somebody else. Don't drive your tack into the brain of justice,
expecting to save your own soft skull. Don't enervate your strength
to do light by accepting the fatal doctrine of vicarious atonement. It
weakens every character that it touches.

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.

The doctrine of vicarious atonement is found in some form in most
religions, and it is the body and soul of ours. The idea is not a
Christian invention. It caused the Carthaginians to put to death their
handsomest prisoners if a battle were won, the most promising children
of their own nobility if it were lost. They were offerings to appease
the gods.

In old times there were peoples who believed that if a chief was guilty
of a misdemeanor it was just to punish or enslave any one of his tribe.
That was their idea of liberty and justice. If a father committed
a crime it could be expiated by the murder of his son. That was the
doctrine of vicarious atonement in all its pristine glory. So they
adopted that style of justice in our religion, and condemned the
whole lot of us to the eternal wrath of God on account of that little
indiscretion attributed to Eve. It seems a very little thing for anybody
to get so angry at us all about and stay angry so long! It doesn't seem
to me that if one of you were to eat every apple I had in my orchard, I
should want to murder and eternally damn all the folks that live in Asia
Minor. Do you think you would?

In the 11th verse of the 12th chapter of the second book of Samuel it is
claimed that God said he was going to be revenged for the crimes of some
men by a vile punishment of their wives.

Only a short time ago a man tried that same style of justice in one of
our Western towns. He claimed that Smith had alienated the affections of
his wife, so he went over to Smith's house and _whipped Mrs. Smith!_ And
do you know that the judge who tried that case (not being a good Bible
student) actually sent that good, pious man to the house of correction
--that man who not only believed in his Bible, but lived by it! And just
as likely as not that judge will be elected again. Truly we have fallen
on degenerate times!

Legal minds outgrew the idea of vicarious punishment long ago. Physical
liberty came to have a new meaning, and punishment was awarded more
nearly where it was due. But the religious mind never outgrows anything.
It is born as big as it ever gets. Development is its terror. It abhors
a change. It forces you to sin by proxy, to be redeemed by proxy; and
the only thing it does permit you to receive at first hand is Hell. That
is the only one thing you can't delegate to somebody else.

If you commit no sin, you are responsible for the sins of other people
--dead people, too, that you can't look after. If you are good and true
and noble--even if you are a Christian--you don't get any credit for it.
If there is any one thing above another that God detests it is to have
a man try to be grand and noble and true, and then get the credit of
it. "To Christ belongs all the honor, the praise, and the glory--world
without end, Amen."

But when it comes to the punishment, the vicarious notion doesn't seem
to work. There is the one point where you are welcome to your own, and
no discount allowed to heavy takers. Hell is always at par and no bail
permitted. Even ignorance of the requirements is no excuse. If you did
not know any better, somebody else did, and you've got to pay for it.

Now if the vicarious principle is not big enough to go clear round, I'll
leave my share off at the other end. If the Church wants to take my hell
(vicariously) it is welcome to it. I will let it go cheap.

Awhile ago a man stayed some time at a hotel in New York, and when
the time came for him to pay his bill he hadn't the money. Well, the
proprietor felt sorry for him and said, "I tell you what I'll do about
that bill, I'll throw off half." His guest was overwhelmed by this
liberality, and with tears of gratitude said, "I cannot permit you to
outdo me in generosity; I'll throw off the other half and we'll call it
square."

So if the Church desires all the credit, it is also welcome to all the
blame. I cannot permit it to outdo me in generosity. But I'd rather be
responsible for just my own sins, and then I can regulate them better,
and I can take care of my own reward when I get it. I shall not want
to deposit it with the clergy. A profit and loss system that is chiefly
loss will not pay me.

The doctrines of vicarious atonement and original or inherited sin are
the most infamously unjust dogmas that ever clouded the brain of man.

TWIN MONSTERS INHERITED FROM INTELLECTUAL PIGMIES.

They are twin monsters inherited from intellectual pigmies.

Let me read you a little prayer based upon this idea of right. I heard
it offered as a thanksgiving tribute. "Oh, God, we do thank thee that
thou didst give thy only son to die for us! _We thank thee that the
innocent has suffered for the guilty_, and that through the suffering
and death of thy most holy son our sins are blotted out!"

Monstrous! How would that work in a court of justice? What would you
think of a person who coolly thanked a judge who had knowingly allowed
the wrong man to be hung? What do you think of a code of morals that
offers as one of its beautiful provisions the murder of the innocent
instead of the punishment of the guilty?

People ask what good I expect to come of an attack on Christianity. They
ask me if I think Christianity does any direct harm. Yes! _It makes
a man unjust to believe in unjust doctrines_. Any man who honestly
believes in the righteousness of a system of vicarious rewards and
punishments is ripe for any form of tyranny. And the more honestly he
believes in it the less will he be a good man from principle.

I want men and women to be good and true because it is right towards
each other, and not because they are afraid of Hell. Honor towards
people in this world, not fear of a fiend in the next--that is my
doctrine. That is the way to make men and women strong and brave and
noble. Stop telling them they can't be good themselves; teach them that
they must do right themselves. Make them self-dependent. Teach them to
stand alone. Honor towards others, kindness, and love--these are what
make a man a good husband, a noble father--king in his household.

Fear never made any man a gentleman. Fear never made any woman a true
wife or a good mother. Fear never covered the pitfalls of vice with
anything stronger than the gloss of hypocrisy.

When Reason's torch burned low, Faith led her victims by chains of
ignorance into the land of hopeless superstition, and built her temple
there.

GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.

A religion of faith is simply a question in geography. Keep your
locality in mind and you are all right. On the banks of the Red Sea
murder and slavery were a religious duty. On the Ganges infanticide is a
virtue. In Rome you may steal or lie; you may deceive an innocent young
girl and blast her life forever; you may stab your friend in the dark,
and you are all right: but if you eat a piece of fried pork on Friday
you are a lost man! China arranges her prayers in a machine, and turns
her obligations to Deity off with a crank. There is usually more or less
intimate relationship between prayer and a crank. Our God loved human