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                The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

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                       THE GREAT INFIDELS

                              1881

     I have sometimes thought that it will not make great and
splendid character to rock children in the cradle of hypocrisy. I
do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and
glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon
certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go
through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will
think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that
above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he
believes. For my part, I believe men will be nearer honest in
business, in politics, grander in art -- in everything that is good
and grand and beautiful, if they are taught from the cradle to the
coffin to tell their honest opinion.

     Neither do I believe thought to be dangerous. It is incredible
that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible
that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be
no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond
what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real
opinions.

     We have passed midnight in the great struggle between Fact and
Faith, between Science and Superstition. The brand of intellectual
inferiority is now upon the orthodox brain. There is nothing
grander than to rescue from the leprosy of slander the reputation
of a good and generous man. Nothing can be nearer just than to
benefit our benefactors.

     The Infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the
next. The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. The
old passes away, and the new becomes old. There is in the
intellectual world, as in the material, decay and growth, and ever
by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy. The history of
intellectual progress is written in the lives of Infidels.
Political rights have been preserved by traitors -- the liberty of
the mind by heretics. To attack the king was treason -- to dispute
the priest was blasphemy. The sword and cross were allies. They
defended each other. The throne and altar were twins -- vultures
from the same egg.

     It was James I. who said: "No bishop, no king." He might have
said: "No cross, no crown."


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     The king owned the bodies, and the priest the souls, of men.
One lived on taxes, the other on alms. One was a robber, the other
a beggar, and each was both.

     These robbers and beggars controlled two worlds. The king made
laws, the priest made creeds. With bowed backs the people received
the burdens of the one, and with wonder's open mouth the dogmas of
the other. If any aspired to be free they were crushed by the king,
and every priest was a Herod who slaughtered the children of the
brain. The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by
both.

     The king said to the people: "God made you peasants, and he
made me king. He made rags and hovels for you, robes and palaces
for me. Such is the justice of God." And the priest said: "God made
you ignorant and vile. He made me holy and wise. If you do not obey
me, God will punish you here and torment you hereafter. Such is the
mercy of God."

     Infidels are intellectual discoverers. They sail the unknown
seas and find new isles and continents in the infinite realms of
thought.

     An Infidel is one who has found a new fact, who has an idea of
his own, and who in the mental sky has seen another star.

     He is an intellectual capitalist, and for that reason excites
the envy and hatred of the theological pauper.

                  THE ORIGIN OF GOD AND HEAVEN,
                     OF THE DEVIL AND HELL.

     In the estimation of good orthodox Christians I am a criminal,
because I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, husbands, wives, and lovers the consolations naturally
arising from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I want to
tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that priests erected
in the fields of innocent pleasure -- a God made of sticks called
creeds, and of old clothes called myths. I shall endeavor to take
from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out
the fires of revenge kindled by an infinite fiend.

     Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the
glare of Hell?

     Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice,
immortal meanness. To worship an eternal goaler hardens, debases,
and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and
breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly
happy.

     Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every
grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The God of Hell
should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens
eternal pain should be hated, not loved -- cursed, not worshiped.
A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell.
I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and 


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redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell
-- in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the
lost only increase laughter and double bliss.

     The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear,
cowardice, and revenge. This idea testifies that our remote
ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves,
only from mouths filled with cruel fangs, only from hearts of fear
and hatred, only from the conscience of hunger and lust, only from
the lowest and most debased could come this most cruel, heartless
and bestial of all dogmas.

     Our barbarian ancestors knew but little of nature. They were
too astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of
the idea that everything happened with reference to them; that they
caused storms and earthquakes; that they brought the tempest and
the whirlwind; that on account of something they had done, or
omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped from the darkened
sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and powerful
beings presided over this world; that one was good and the other
bad; that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls
of men; that they were relentless enemies, eternal foes; that both
welcomed recruits and hated deserters; that both demanded praise
and worship; that one offered rewards in this world, and the other
in the next. The Devil has paid cash -- God buys on credit.

     Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature, because he imagined that
phenomena were produced to punish or to reward him. When his poor
hut was torn and broken by the wind, he thought it a punishment.
When some town or city was swept away by flood or sea, he imagined
that the crimes of the inhabitants had been avenged. When the land
was filled with plenty, when the seasons were kind, he thought that
he had pleased the tyrant of the skies.

     It must he remembered that both gods and devils were supposed
to be presided over by the greatest God and the greatest Devil. The
God could give infinite rewards and could inflict infinite
torments. The Devil could assist man here; could give him wealth
and place in this world, in consideration of owning his soul
hereafter. Each human soul was a prize contended for by these
deities. Of course this God and this Devil had innumerable spirits
at their command, to execute their decrees. The God lived in heaven
and the Devil in hell. Both were monarchs and were infinitely
jealous of each other. The priests pretended to be the agents and
recruiting sergeants of this God, and they were duly authorized to
promise and threaten in his name; they had power to forgive and
curse. These priests sought to govern the world by force and fear.
Believing that men could be frightened into obedience, they
magnified the tortures and terrors of perdition. Believing also
that man could in part be influenced by the hope of reward, they
magnified the joys of heaven. In other words, they promised eternal
joy and threatened everlasting pain. Most of these priests, born of
the ignorance of the time, believed what they taught. They proved
that God was good, by sunlight and harvest, by health and
happiness; that he was angry, by disease and death. Man, according
to this doctrine, was led astray by the Devil, who delighted only
in evil. It was supposed that God demanded worship; that he loved 


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to be flattered; that he delighted in sacrifice; that nothing made
him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees; that above
all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and that he
regarded all investigation as rebellion.

     Now and then believers in these ideas, those who had gained
great reputation for learning and sanctity, or had enjoyed great
power, wrote books, and these books after a time were considered
sacred. Most of them were written to frighten mankind, and were
filled with threatenings and curses for unbelievers and promises
for the faithful. The more frightful the curses, the more
extravagant the promises, the more sacred the books were
considered. All of the gods were cruel and vindictive, unforgiving
and relentless, and the devils were substantially the same. It was
also believed that certain things must be accepted as true, no
matter whether they were reasonable or not; that it was pleasing to
God to believe a certain creed, especially if it happened to be the
creed of the majority. Each community felt it a duty to see that
the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to
live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil --
every misfortune -- was accounted for by something the community
had permitted or done. When epidemics appeared, brought by
ignorance and welcomed by filth, the heretic was brought out and
sacrificed to appease the vengeance of God. From the knowledge they
had -- from their premises -- they reasoned well. They said, if God
will inflict such frightful torments upon us here, simply for
allowing a few heretics to live, what will he do with the heretics?
Of course the heretics would be punished forever. They knew how
cruel was the barbarian king when he had the traitor in his power.
They had seen every horror that man could inflict on man. Of course
a God could do more than a king. He could punish forever. The fires
he would kindle never could be quenched. The torments he would
inflict would be eternal. They thought the amount of punishment
would be measured only by the power of God.

     These ideas were not only prevalent in what are called
barbarous times, but they are received by the religious world of
to-day.

     No death could be conceived more horrible than that produced
by flames. To these flames they added eternity, and hell was
produced. They exhausted the idea of personal torture.

     By putting intention behind what man called good, God was
produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the
Devil was created. Leave this "intention" out, and gods and devils
fade away.

     If not a human being existed the sun would continue to shine,
and tempests now and then would devastate the world; the rain would
fall in pleasant showers, and the bow of promise would adorn the
cloud; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun, and the
earthquake would devour; birds would sing, and daisies bloom, and
roses blush, and the volcanoes would fill the heavens with their
lurid glare; the procession of the seasons would not be broken, and
the stars would shine just as serenely as though the world was
filled with loving hearts and happy homes. But in the olden time 


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man though otherwise. He imagined that he was of great importance.
Barbarians are always egotistic. They think that the stars are
watching them; that the sun shines on their account; that the rain
falls for them and that gods and devils are really troubling
themselves about their poor and ignorant souls.

     In those days men fought for their God as they did for their
king. They killed the enemies of both. For this their king would
reward them here, and their God hereafter. With them it was loyalty
to destroy the disloyal. They did not regard God as a vague
"spirit," nor as an "essence" without body or parts, but as a
being, a person, an infinite man, a king, the monarch of the
universe, who had garments of glory for believers and robes of
flame for the heretic and infidel.

     Do not imagine that this doctrine of hell belongs to
Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a
corner-stone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built.
Over the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This
world was regarded as one of trial. Here a God of infinite wisdom
experimented with man. Between the outstretched paws of the
Infinite the mouse, man, was allowed to play. Here man had the
opportunity of hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here he
could read and hear read the sacred books. Here he could have the
example of the pious and the counsels of the holy. Here he could
build churches and cathedrals. Here he could burn incense, fast,
wear haircloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to
priests, count beads, be miserable one day in seven, make creeds,
construct instruments of torture, bow before pictures and images,
eat little square pieces of bread, sprinkle water on the heads of
babes, shut his eyes and say words to the clouds, and slander and
defame all who have the courage to despise superstition, and the
goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death, nothing could
be done to make him better. When he should come into the presence
of God, nothing was left except to damn him. Priests might convert
him here, but God could do nothing there, -- all of which shows how
much more a priest can do for a soul than its creator; how much
more potent is the example of your average Christian than that of
all the angels, and how much superior earth is to heaven for the
moral development of the soul. In heaven the Devil is not allowed
to enter. There all are pure and perfect, yet they cannot influence
a soul for good.

     Only here, on the earth, where the Devil is constantly active,
only where his agents attack every soul, is there the slightest
hope of moral improvement.

     Strange! that a world cursed by God, filled with temptations
and thick with fiends, should be the only place where hope exists,
the only place where man can repent, the only place where reform is
possible. Strange that heaven, filled with angels and presided over
by God, is the only place where reformation is utterly impossible!
Yet these are the teachings of all the believers in the eternity of
punishment.

     Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves
got a kind of shadowy revenge by whispering back the threat. The 
poor have damned the rich and the rich the poor. The imprisoned

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imagined a hell for their gaolers; the weak built this place for
the strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the vanquished for their
victors; the priest for the thinker, religion for reason,
superstition for science.

     All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all
the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of
man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word --
Hell.

     For the nourishment of this dogma cruelty was soil, ignorance
was rain, and fear was light.

     Christians have placed upon the throne of the universe a God
of eternal hate. I cannot worship a being whose vengeance is
boundless, whose cruelty is shoreless, and whose malice is
increased by the agonies he inflicts.

                     APPEAL TO THE CEMETERY.

     Whoever attacks a custom or a creed, will be confronted with
a list of the names of the dead who upheld the custom, or believed
the creed. He is asked in a very triumphant and sneering way, if he
knows more than all the great and honored of the past. Every
defender of a creed has graven upon his memory the names of all
"great" men whose actions or words can be tortured into evidence
for his doctrine. The church is always anxious to have some king or
president certify to the moral character of Christ, the authority
of the Scriptures, and the justice of the Jewish God. Of late
years, confessions of gentlemen about to be hanged have been
considered of great value, and the scaffold is regarded as a means
of grace.

     All the churches of our day seek the rich. They are no longer
the friends and defenders of the poor. Poverty no longer feels at
home in the house of God. In the Temple of the Most High, garments
out of fashion are considered out of place. People now, before
confessing to God what worthless souls they have, enrich their
bodies. Now words of penitence mingle with the rustle of silk, and
light thrown from diamonds adorns the repentant tear. We are told
that the rich, the fortunate, the holders of place and office, the
fashionable, the respectable, are all within the churches. And yet
all these People grow eloquent over the poverty of Christ -- boast
that he was born in a manger -- that the Holy Ghost passed by all
the ladies of titled wealth and fashion and selected the wife of a
poor and unknown mechanic for the Mother of God.

     They admit that all the men of Jerusalem who held high
positions -- all the people of wealth, influence and power -- were
the enemies of the Savior and held his pretensions in contempt.
They admit that he had influence only with the poor, and that he
was so utterly unknown -- so indigent in acquaintance, that it was
necessary to bribe one of his disciples to point him out to the
police. They assert that he had done a great number of miracles --
had cured the sick, and raised the dead -- that he had preached to
vast multitudes -- had made a kind of triumphal entry into
Jerusalem -- had scourged from the temple the changers of money -- 


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had disputed with the doctors -- and yet, notwithstanding all these
things, he remained in the very depths of obscurity. Surely he and
his disciples could have been met with the argument: that the
"great" dead were opposed to the new religion.

     The apostles, it is claimed, preached the doctrines of Christ
in Rome and Athens, and the people of those cities could have used
the arguments against Christianity that Christians now use in its
support. They could have asked the apostles if they were wiser than
all the philosophers, poets orators, and statesmen dead -- if they
knew more coming as they did from a weak and barbarous nation, than
the greatest men produced by the highest civilization of the known
world. With what scorn would the Greeks listen to a barbarian's
criticisms upon Socrates and Plato. How a Roman would laugh to hear
a vagrant Hebrew attack a mythology that had been believed by Cato
and Virgil.

     Every new religion has to overcome this argument of the
cemetery -- this logic of the grave. Old ideas take shelter behind
a barricade of corpse and tombstones. They have epitaphs for battle
cries, and malign the living in the name of the dead. The moment,
however, that a new religion succeeds, it becomes the old religion
and uses the same argument against a new idea that it once so
gallantly refuted. The arguments used to-day against what they are
pleased to call infidelity would have shut the mouth of every
religious reformer, from Christ to the founder of the last sect.
The general objection to the new is, that it differs somewhat from
the old, and the fact that it does differ is urged as an argument
against its truth.

     Every man is forced to admit that he does not agree with all
the great men, living or dead. The average Catholic, if not a
priest, as a rule will admit that Sir Isaac Newton was in some
things his superior, that Demosthenes had the advantage of him in
expressing his ideas in public, and that as a sculptor he is far
below the unknown man of whose hand and brain was born the Venus de
Milo, but he will not, on account of these admissions, change his
views upon the important question of transubstantiation.

     Most Protestants will cheerfully admit that they are inferior
in brain and genius to some men who have lived and died in the
Catholic Church; that in the matter of preaching funeral sermons
they do not pretend to equal Bossuet; that their letters are not so
interesting and polished as those of Pascal; that Torquemada
excelled them in the genius of organization, and that for planning
a massacre they would not for a moment dispute the palm with
Catherine de Medici.

     And yet, after all these admissions, they would insist that
the Pope is an unblushing impostor, and that the Catholic Church is
a vampire fattened by the best blood of a thousand years.

     The truth is, that in favor of almost every sect, the names of
some great men can he pronounced. In almost every church there have
been men whose only weakness was their religion, and who in other
directions achieved distinction. If you call men great because they
were emperors, kings, noblemen, statesmen, millionaires -- because 


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they commanded vast armies and wielded great influence in their day
then more names can be found to support and prop the Church of Rome
than any other Christian sect.

     Is Protestantism willing to rest its claims upon the "great
man" argument? Give me the idea, the religions, not that have been
advanced and believed by the so-called great of the past, but that
will be defended and believed by the great souls of the future.

     It gives me pleasure to say that Lord Bacon was a great man;
but I do not for that reason abandon the Copernican system of
astronomy, and insist that the earth is stationary. Samuel Johnson
was an excellent writer of latinized English, but I am confident
that he never saw a real ghost. Matthew Hale was a reasonably good
judge of law, but he was mistaken about witches causing children to
vomit crooked pins. John Wesley was quite a man, in a kind of
religious way, but in this country few people sympathize with his
hatred of republican government, or with his contempt for the
Revolutionary Fathers. Sir Isaac Newton, in the domain of science,
was the colossus of his time, but his commentary on the book of
Revelation would hardly excite envy, even in the breast of a
Spurgeon or a Talmage. Upon many questions, the opinions of
Napoleon were of great value, and yet about his bed, when dying, he
wanted to see burning the holy candles of Rome. John Calvin has
been called a logician, and reasoned well from his premises, but
the burning of Servetus did not make murder a virtue. Luther
weakened somewhat the Power of the Catholic Church, and to that
extent was a reformer, and yet Lord Brougham affirmed that his
"Table Talk" was so obscene that no respectable English publisher
would soil paper with a translation. He was a kind of religious
Rabelais; and yet a man can defend Luther in his attack upon the
church without justifying his obscenity. If every man in the
Catholic Church was a good man that would not convince me that
Ignatius Loyola ever met and conversed with the Virgin Mary. The
fact is, very few men are right in everything.

     Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot
sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common
stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem. No one
should attempt to refute an argument by pronouncing the name of
some man, unless he is willing to adopt all the ideas and beliefs
of that man. It is better to give reasons and facts than names. An
argument should not depend for its force upon the name of its
author. Facts need no pedigree logic has no heraldry, and the
living should not awed by the mistakes of the dead.

     The greatest men the world has produced have known but little.
They had a few facts, mingled with mistakes without number. In some
departments they towered above their fellows, while in others they
fell below the common level of mankind.

     Daniel Webster had great respect for the Scriptures, but very
little for the claims of his creditors. Most men are strangely
inconsistent. Two propositions were introduced into the Confederate
Congress by the same man. One was to hoist the black flag, and the
other was to prevent carrying the mails on Sunday. George
Whitefield defended the slave trade, because it brought the negroes


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within the sound of the gospel, and gave them the advantage of
associating with the gentlemen who stole them. And yet this same
Whitefield believed and taught the dogma of predestination. Volumes
might be written upon the follies and imbecilities of great men. A
full rounded man -- a man of sterling sense and natural logic -- is
just as rare as a great painter, poet, or sculptor. If you tell
your friend that he is not a painter, that he has no genius for
poetry, he will probably admit the truth of what you say, without
feeling that he has been insulted in the least. But if you tell him
that he is not a logician, that he has but little idea of the value
of a fact, that he has no real conception of what evidence is, and
that he never had an original thought in his life, he will cut your
acquaintance. Thousands of men are most wonderful in mechanics, in
trade, in certain professions, keen in business, knowing well the
men among whom they live, and yet satisfied with religions
infinitely stupid, with politics perfectly senseless and they will
believe that wonderful things were common long ago, such things as
no amount of evidence could convince them had happened in their
day. A man may be a successful merchant, lawyer, doctor, mechanic,
statesman, or theologian without one particle of originality, and
almost without the ability to think logically upon any subject
whatever. Other men display in some directions the most marvelous
intellectual power, astonish mankind with their grasp and vigor,
and at the same time, upon religious subjects drool and drivel like
David at the gates of Gath.

     We have found, at last, that other nations have sacred books
much older than our own, and that these books and records were and
are substantiated by traditions and monuments, by miracles and
martyrs, christs and apostles, as well as by prophecies fulfilled.
In all of these nations differences of opinion as to the
authenticity and meaning of these books arose from time to time,
precisely as they have done and still do with us, and upon these
differences were founded sects that manufactured creeds. These
sects denounced each other, and preached with the sword and
endeavored to convince with the fagot. Our theologians were greatly
astonished to find in other bibles the same stories, precepts,
laws, customs and commands that adorn and stain our own. At first
they accounted for this, by saying that these books were in part
copies of the Jewish Scriptures, mingled with barbaric myths. To
such an extent did they impose upon and insult probability, that
they declared that all the morality of the world, all laws
commanding right and prohibiting wrong, all ideas respecting the
unity of a Supreme Being, were borrowed from the Jews, who obtained
them directly from God. The Christian world asserts with warmth,
not always born of candor, that the Bible is the source, origin,
and fountain of law, liberty, love, charity, and justice; that it
is the intellectual and moral sun of the world; that it alone gives
happiness here, and alone points out the way to joy hereafter; that
it contains the only revelation from the Infinite; that all others
are the work of dishonest and mistaken men. They say these things
in spite of the fact that the Jewish nation was one of the weakest
and most barbaric of the past; in spite of the fact that the
civilization of Egypt and India had commenced to wane before that
of Palestine existed. To account for all the morality contained in
the sacred books of the Hindus by saying that it was borrowed from 



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the wanderers in the Desert of Sinai, from the escaped slaves of
the Egyptians, taxes to the utmost the credulity of ignorance,
bigotry, and zeal.

     The men who make these assertions are not superior to other
men. They have only the facts common to all, and they must admit
that these facts do not force the same conclusions upon all. They
must admit that men equally honest, equally well-informed as
themselves, deny their premises and conclusions. They must admit
that had they been born and educated in some other country, they
would have had a different religion, and would have regarded with
reverence and awe the books they now hold as false and foolish.
Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of
others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave
countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume.
So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and
solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of
neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or
creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to
hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each
religion, the same arguments would be urged. There is the same
evidence in favor of the inspiration of the Koran and Bible. Both
are substantiated in exactly the same way. It is just as wicked and
unreasonable to be a heretic in Constantinople as in New york. To
deny the claims of Christ and Mohammed is alike blasphemous. It all
depends upon where you are when you make the denial. No religion
has ever fallen that carried with it down to dumb death a solitary
fact. Mistakes moulder with the temples in which they were taught,
and countless superstitions sleep with their dead priests.

     Yet Christians insist that the religions of all nations that
have fallen from wealth and power were false, with of course the
solitary exception of the Jewish, simply because the nations
teaching them dropped from their dying hands the swords of power.
This argument drawn from the fate of nations proves no more than
would one based upon the history of persons. With nations as with
individuals, the struggle for life is perpetual, and the law of the
survival of the fittest applies equally to both.

     It may be that the fabric of our civilization will crumbling
fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods
and even memory forgets. Perhaps the blind Samson of some
imprisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, may so wreck and
strand the world that man, in stress and strain of want and fear,
will shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. The time
may come in which this thrilled and throbbing earth, shorn of all
life, will in its soundless orbit wheel a barren star, on which the
light will fall as fruitlessly as falls the gaze of love upon the
cold, pathetic face of death.

                              FEAR.

     There is a view quite prevalent, that in some way you can
prove whether the theories defended or advanced by a man are right
or not, by showing what kind of man he was, what kind of life he
lived, and what manner of death he died.



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     A man entertains certain opinions; he is persecuted. He
refuses to change his mind; he is burned, and in the midst of
flames cries out that he dies without change. Hundreds then say
that he has sealed his testimony with his blood, and his doctrines
must be true.

     All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient
to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule,
establishes the sincerity of the martyr, -- never the correctness
of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth
cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established,
or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely
enough to make it a truth.

     No Christian will admit that any amount of heroism displayed
by a Mormon is sufficient to prove that Joseph Smith was divinely
inspired. All the courage and culture, all the poetry and art of
ancient Greece, do not even tend to establish the truth of any
myth.

     The testimony of the dying concerning some other world, or in
regard to the supernatural, cannot be any better, to say the least,
than that of the living. In the early days of Christianity a serene
and intrepid death was regarded as a testimony in favor of the
church. At that time Pagans were being converted to Christianity --
were throwing Jupiter away and taking the Hebrew God instead. In
the moment of death many of these converts, without doubt, retraced
their steps and died in the faith of their ancestors. But whenever
one died clinging to the cross of the new religion, this was seized
upon as an evidence of the truth of the gospel. After a time the
Christians taught that an unbeliever, one who spoke or wrote
against their doctrines, could not meet death with composure --
that the infidel in his last moments would necessarily be a prey to
the serpent of remorse. For more than a thousand years they have
made the "facts" to fit this theory. Crimes against men have been
considered as nothing when compared with a denial of the truth of
the Bible, the divinity of Christ, or the existence of God.

     According to the theologians, God has always acted in this
way. As long as men did nothing except to render their fellows
wretched; as long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and
helpless, God maintained the strictest and most heartless
neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul
expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to
the wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real
God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his
quivering flesh tore his wretched soul.

     There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of
murder has been paralyzed -- no truthful account in all the
literature of the world of the innocent being shielded by God.
Thousands of crimes are committed every day -- men are this moment
lying in wait for their human prey -- wives are whipped and
crushed, driven to insanity and death -- little children begging
for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces
of fathers and mothers -- sweet girls are deceived, lured, and  



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outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things -- no time to
defend the good and to protect the pure. He is too busy numbering
hairs and watching sparrows.

     He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at
priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in
colleges who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy
of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing if you won't
swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking
God's name in vain, but millions of men, women, and children have
been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no
one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful
hand of God.

     All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with
reasonable serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a
pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon
the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the
multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in
making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he
has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the
eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged
cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and
fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has
succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and
bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint.

     The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power,
murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year
that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ
was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was
consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are
thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of
the divinity of the Savior. Theodosius called a council at
Constantinople in 381, and this council decided that the Holy Ghost
proceeded from the Father. Theodosius, the younger, assembled
another council at Ephesus to ascertain who the Virgin Mary really
was, and it was solemnly decided in the year 431 that she was the
Mother of God. In 451 it was decided by a council held at
Chalcedon, called together by the Emperor Marcian, that Christ had
two natures -- the human and divine. In 680, in another general
council, held at Constantinople, convened by order of Pognatius, it
was also decided that Christ had two wills, and in the year 1274 it
was decided at the Council of Lyons, that the Holy Ghost proceeded
not only from the Father, but from the Son as well. Had it not been
for these councils, we might have been without a Trinity even unto
this day. When we take into consideration the fact that a belief in
the Trinity is absolutely essential to salvation, how unfortunate
it was for the world that this doctrine was not established until
the year 1274. Think of the millions that dropped into hell while
these questions were being discussed.

     This, however, is a digression. Let us go back to Constantine.
This Emperor, stained with every crime, is supposed to have died
like a Christian. We hear nothing of fiends leering at him in the
shadows of death. He does not see the forms of his murdered wife
and son covered with the blood he shed. From his white and 


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shrivelled lips issued no shrieks of terror. He does not cover his
glazed eyes with thin and trembling hands to shut out the visions
of hell. His chamber is filled with the rustle of wings -- of wings
waiting to bear his soul to the thrilling realms of joy.

     Against the Emperor Constantine the church has hurled no
anathema. She has accepted the story of his vision in the clouds,
and his holy memory has been guarded by priest and pope. All the
persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who burned their
brothers in the name of Christ rest in consecrated ground. Whole
libraries could not contain even the names of the wretches who have
filled the world with violence and death in defence of book and
creed, and yet they all died the death of the righteous, and no
priest or minister describes the agony and fear, the remorse and
horror, with which their guilty souls were filled in the last
moments of their lives. These men had never doubted -- they
accepted the creed -- they were not infidels -- they had not denied
the divinity of Christ -- they had been baptized -- they had
partaken of the Last Supper -- they had respected priests -- they
admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded," and these things put
pillows beneath their dying heads, and covered them with the
drapery of peace.

     Now and then, in the history of this world, a man of genius,
of sense, of intellectual honesty has appeared. These men have
denounced the superstitions of their day. They pitied the
multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people filled
them with indignation. These men were honest enough to tell their
thoughts. Then they were denounced, tried, condemned, executed.
Some of them escaped the fury of the people who loved their
enemies, and died naturally in their beds.

     It would not do for the church to admit that they died
peacefully. That would show that religion was not actually
necessary in the last moment. Religion got much of its power from
the terror of death.

                         THE DEATH TEST.

     You had better live well and die wicked, you had better live
well and die cursing than live badly and die praying.

     It would not do to have the common people understand that a
man could deny the Bible, refuse to look at the cross, contend that
Christ was only a man, and yet die as calmly as Calvin did after he
had murdered Servetus, or as did King David after advising one son
to kill another.

     The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments
of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were
infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could
not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every
good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these
accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the
world. Protestant ministers have repeated the inventions of
Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity, 



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have sworn to the falsehoods told by Protestants. Upon this point
they have always stood together, and will as long as the same
calumny can be used by both.

     Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grow eloquent. When
describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever,
their eyes glitter with delight.

     It is a festival.

     They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open
graves. They devour the reputations of the dead.

     It is a banquet.

     Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze
at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that
never dies. They see them in flames -- in oceans of fire -- in
gulfs of pain -- in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They
applaud.

     It is an auto da fe, presided over by God and his angels.

     The men they thus describe were not atheists; they were all
believers in God, in special providence, and in the immortality of
the soul. They believed in the accountability of man -- in the
practice of virtue, in justice. and liberty, but they did not
believe in that collection of follies and fables called the Bible.
In order to show that an infidel must die overwhelmed with remorse
and fear, they have generally selected from all the "unbelievers"
since the day of Christ five men -- the Emperor Julian, Spinoza,
Voltaire, Diderot, David Hume, and Thomas Paine.

     Hardly a minister in the United States has attempted to
"answer" me without referring to the death of one or more of these
men. In vain have these calumniators of the dead been called upon
to prove their statements. In vain have rewards been offered to any
priestly malinger to bring forward the evidence.

     Let us once for all dispose of these slanders -- of these
pious calumnies.

                             JULIAN.

     They say that the Emperor Julian was an "apostate;" that he
was once a Christian; that he fell from grace, and that in his last
moments, throwing some of his own blood into the air, he cried out
to Jesus Christ, "Galilean, thou hast conquered!"

     It must be remembered that the Christians had persecuted and
imprisoned this very Julian; that they had exiled him; that they
had threatened him with death. Many of his relatives were murdered
by the Christians. He became emperor, and Christians conspired to
take his life. The conspirators were discovered and they were
pardoned. He did what he could to prevent the Christians from
destroying each other. He held pomp and pride and luxury in
contempt, and led his army on foot, sharing the privations of the
meanest soldier.

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     Upon ascending the throne he published an edict proclaiming
universal religious toleration. He was then a Pagan. It is claimed
by some that he never did entirely forget his Christian education.
In this I am inclined to think there is some truth, because he
revoked his edict of toleration, and for a time was nearly as
unjust as though he had been a saint. He was emperor one year and
seven months. In a battle with the Persians he was mortally
wounded. "Brought back to his tent, and feeling that he had but a
short time to live, he spent his last hours in discoursing with his
friends on the immortality of the soul. He reviewed his reign and
declared that he was satisfied with his conduct, and had neither
penitence nor remorse to express for anything that he had done."
His last words were: "I submit willingly to the eternal decrees of
heaven, convinced that he who is captivated with life, when his
last hour has arrived is more weak and pusillanimous than he who
would rush to voluntary death when it is his duty still to live.

     When we remember that a Christian emperor murdered Julian's
father and most of his kindred, and that he narrowly escaped the
same fate, we can hardly blame him for having a little prejudice
against a church whose members were fierce, ignorant, and bloody --
whose priests were hypocrites, and whose bishops were assassins. If
Julian had said he was a Christian -- no matter what he actually
was, he would have satisfied the church.

     The story that the dying emperor acknowledged that he was
conquered by the Galilean was originated by some of the so-called
Fathers of the Church, probably by Gregory or Theodoret. They are
the same wretches who said that Julian sacrificed a woman to the
moon, tearing out her entrails with his own hands. We are also
informed by these hypocrites that he endeavored to rebuild the
temple of Jerusalem, and that fire came out of the earth and
consumed the laborers employed in the sacrilegious undertaking.

     I did not suppose that an intelligent man could be found in
the world who believed this childish fable, and yet in the January
number for 1880, of the Princeton Review, the Rev. Stuart Robinson
(whoever he may be) distinctly certifies to the truth of this
story. He says: "Throughout the entire era of the planting of the
Christian Church, the gospel preached was assailed not only by the
malignant fanaticism of the Jew and the violence of Roman
statecraft, but also by the intellectual weapons of philosophers,
wits, and poets. Now Celsus denounced the new religion as base
imposture. Now Tacitus described it as but another phase of the
odium generius humani. Now Julian proposed to bring into contempt
the prophetic claims of its founder by the practical test of
rebuilding the Temple." Here then in the year of grace 1880 is a
Presbyterian preacher, who really believes that Julian tried to
rebuild the Temple, and that God caused fire to issue from the
earth and consume the innocent workmen.

     All these stories rest upon the same foundation, the mendacity
of priests.

     Julian changed the religion of the Empire, and diverted the
revenues of the church. Whoever steps between a priest and his
salary, will find that he has committed every crime. No matter how 


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often the slanders may be refuted, they will be repeated until the
last priest has lost his body and found his wings. These falsehoods
about Julian were invented some fifteen hundred years ago, and they
are repeated to-day by just as honest and just as respectable
people as these who told them at first. Whenever the church cannot
answer the arguments of an opponent, she attacks his character. She
resorts to falsehood, and in the domain of calumny she has stood
for fifteen hundred years without a rival.

     The great Empire was crumbling to its fall. The literature of
the world was being destroyed by priests. The gods and goddesses
were driven from the earth and sky. The paintings were torn and
defaced. The statues were broken. The walls were left desolate, and
the niches empty. Art, like Rachel, wept for her children, and
would not be comforted. The streams and forests were deserted by
the children of the imagination, and the whole earth was barren,
poor and mean.

     Christian ignorance, bigotry and hatred, in blind unreasoning
zeal, had destroyed the treasures of our race. Art was abhorred,
Knowledge was despised, Reason was an outcast. The sun was blotted
from the intellectual heaven, every star extinguished, and there
fell upon the world that shadow -- that midnight, -- known as "The
Dark Ages."

     This night lasted for a thousand years.

     The First Great Star -- Herald of the Dawn -- was Bruno.

                             BRUNO.

     The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The
first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was
Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.

     He was born in 1550, was educated for a priest, became a
Dominican friar. At last his reason revolted against the doctrine
of transubstantiation. He could not believe that the entire Trinity
was in a wafer, or in a swallow of wine. He could not believe that
a man could devour the Creator of the universe by eating a piece of
bread. This led him to investigate other dogmas of the Catholic
Church, and in every direction he found the same contradictions and
impossibilities supported, not by reason, but by faith.

     Those who loved their enemies threatened his life. He was
obliged to flee From his native land, and he became a vagabond in
nearly every nation of Europe. He declared that he fought, not what
priests believed, but what they pretended to believe. He was driven
from his native country because of his astronomical opinions. He
had lost confidence in the Bible as a scientific work. He was in
danger because he had discovered a truth.

     He fled to England. He gave some lectures at Oxford. He found
that institution controlled by priests. He found that they were
teaching nothing of importance -- only the impossible and the
hurtful. He called Oxford "the widow of true learning." There were
in England, at that time, two men who knew more than the rest of 
the world. Shakespeare was then alive.

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     Bruno was driven from England. He was regarded as a dangerous
man, -- he had opinions, he inquired after reasons, he expressed
confidence in facts. He fled to France. He was not allowed to
remain in that country. He discussed things -- that was enough. The
church said, "move on." He went to Germany. He was not a believer
-- he was an investigator. The Germans wanted believers: they
regarded the whole Christian system as settled; they wanted
witnesses; they wanted men who would assert. So he was driven from
Germany.

     He returned at last to his native land. He found himself
without friends, because he had been true, not only to himself, but
to the human race. But the world was false to him because he
refused to crucify the Christ of his own soul between the two
thieves of hypocrisy and bigotry. He was arrested for teaching that
there are other worlds than this; that many of the stars are suns,
around which other worlds revolve; that Nature did not exhaust all
her energies on this grain of sand called the earth. He believed in
a plurality of worlds, in the rotation of this, in the heliocentric
theory. For these crimes, and for these alone, he was imprisoned
for six years. He was kept in solitary confinement. He was allowed
no books, no friends, no visitors. He was denied pen and paper. In
the darkness, in the loneliness, he had time to examine the great
questions of origin, of existence, of destiny. He put to the test
what is called the goodness of God. He found that he could neither
depend upon man nor upon any deity. At last. the Inquisition
demanded him. He was tried, condemned, excommunicated and sentenced
to be burned. According to Professor Draper, he believed that this
world is animated by an intelligent soul -- the cause of forms, but
not of matter; that it lives in all things, even in such as seem
not to live; that everything is ready to become organized; that
matter is the mother of forms, and then their grave; that matter
and the soul of things, together, constitute God. He was a
pantheist -- that is to say, an atheist. He was a lover of Nature,
-- a reaction from the asceticism of the church. He was tired of
the gloom of the monastery. He loved the fields, the woods, the
streams. He said to his brother-priests: Come out of your cells,
out of your dungeons: come into the air and light. Throw away your
beads and your crosses. Gather flowers; mingle with your fellow-
men; have wives and children; scatter the seeds of joy; throw away
the thorns and nettles of your creeds; enjoy the, perpetual miracle
of life.

     On the sixteenth day of February, in the year of grace 1600,
by "the triumphant beast," the Church of Rome, this philosopher,
this great and splendid man, was burned. He was offered his liberty
if he would recant. There was no God to be offended by his
recantation, and yet, as an apostle of what he believed to be the
truth, he refused this offer. To those who passed the sentence upon
him he said: "It is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence
upon me than I receive it." This man, greater than any naturalist
of his day; grander than the martyr of any religion, died willingly
in defence of what he believed to be the sacred truth. He was great
enough to know that real religion will not destroy the joy of life
on earth; great enough to know that investigation is not a crime --
that the really useful is not hidden in the mysteries of faith. He
knew that the Jewish records were below the level of the Greek and 


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Roman myths; that there is no such thing as special providence;
that prayer is useless; that liberty and necessity are the same,
and that good and evil are but relative. He was the first real
martyr, -- neither frightened by perdition, nor bribed by heaven.
He was the first of all the world who died for truth without
expectation of reward. He did not anticipate a crown of glory. His
imagination had not peopled the heavens with angels waiting for his
soul. He had not been promised an eternity of joy if he stood firm,
nor had he been threatened with the fires of hell if he wavered and
recanted. He expected as his reward an eternal nothing! Death was
to him an everlasting end -- nothing beyond but a sleep without a
dream, a night without a star, without a dawn -- nothing but
extinction, blank, utter, and eternal. No crown, no palm, no "well
done, good and faithful servant," no shout of welcome, no song of
praise, no smile of God, no kiss of Christ, no mansion in the fair
skies -- not even a grave within the earth -- nothing but ashes,
wind-blown and priest-scattered, mixed with earth and trampled
beneath the feet of men and beasts.

     The murder of this man will never be completely and perfectly
avenged until from Rome shall be swept every vestige of priest and
pope, until over the shapeless ruin of St. Peter's, the crumbled
Vatican and the fallen cross, shall rise a monument to Bruno, --
the thinker, philosopher, philanthropist, atheist, martyr.

               THE CHURCH IN THE TIME OF VOLTAIRE.

     When Voltaire was born, the natural was about the only thing
in which the church did not believe. The monks sold little amulets
of consecrated paper. They would cure diseases. If laid in a cradle
they would prevent a child being bewitched. So, they could be put
into houses and barns to keep devils away, or buried in a field to
prevent bad weather, to delay frost, and to insure good crops.
There was a regular formulary by which they were made, ending with
a prayer, after which the amulets were sprinkled with holy water.
The church contended that its servants were the only legitimate
physicians. The priests cured in the name of the church, and in the
name of God, by exorcism, relics, water, salt, and oil. St.
Valentine cured epilepsy, St. Gervasius was good for rheumatism,
St. Michael de Sanatis for cancer, St. Judas for coughs, St.
Ovidius for deafness, St. Sebastian for poisonous bites, St. 
Apollonia for toothache, St. Clara for rheum in the eye, St. Hubert
for hydrophobia. Devils were driven out with wax tapers, with
incense, with holy water, by pronouncing prayers. The church, as
late as the middle of the twelfth century, prohibited good
Catholics from having anything to do with physicians.

     It was believed that the devils produced storms of wind, of
rain and of fire from heaven; that the atmosphere was a battlefield
between angels and devils; that Lucifer had power to destroy fields
and vineyards and dwellings, and the principal business of the
church was to protect the people from the Devil. This was the
origin of church bells. These bells were sprinkled with holy water,
and their clangor cleared the air of imps and fiends. The bells
also prevented storms and lightning. The church used to
anathematize insects. In the sixteenth century, regular suits were 



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commenced against rats, and judgment was rendered. Every monastery
had its master magician, who sold magic incense, salt, and tapers,
consecrated palms and relics.

     Every science was regarded as an outcast, an enemy. Every fact
held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were enemies
in disguise. Thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its
vast power for centuries to prevent the intellectual progress of
man. There was no liberty, no education, no philosophy, no science;
nothing but credulity, ignorance, and superstition. The world was
really under the control of Satan and his agents. The church, for
the purpose of increasing her power, exhausted every means to
convince the people of the existence of witches, devils, and
fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power.
She simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding
communication with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear
him to pieces.

     To such an extent was this frightful course pursued, and such
was the prevalence of the belief in the supernatural, that the
worship of the devil was absolutely established. The poor people,
brutalized by the church, filled with fear of Satanic influence,
finding that the church did not protect, as a last resort began to
worship the Devil. The power of the Devil was proven by the Bible.
The history of Job, the temptation of Christ in the desert, the
carrying of Christ to the top of the temple, and hundreds of other
instances, were relied upon as establishing his power; and when
people laughed about witches riding upon anointed sticks in the
air, invisible, they were reminded of a like voyage when the Devil
carried Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple.

     This frightful doctrine filled every friend with suspicion of
his friend. It made the husband denounce the wife, the children the
parents, and the parents the children. It destroyed all the sweet
relations of humanity. It did away with justice in the courts. It
destroyed the charity of religion. It broke the bond of friendship.
It filled with poison the golden cup of life. It turned earth into
a very hell, peopled with ignorant, tyrannical, and malicious
demons.

     Such was the result of a few centuries of Christianity. Such
was the result of a belief in the supernatural. Such was the result
of giving up the evidence of our own senses, and relying upon
dreams, visions, and fears. Such was the result of destroying human
reason, of depending upon the supernatural, of living here for
another world instead of for this, of depending upon priests
instead of upon ourselves. The Protestants vied with the Catholics.
Luther stood side by side with the priests he had deserted, in
promoting this belief in devils and fiends. To the Catholic, every
Protestant was possessed by a devil. To the Protestant, every
Catholic was the homestead of a fiend. All order, all regular
succession of causes and effects, were known no more. The natural
ceased to exist. The learned and the ignorant were on a level. The
priest had been caught in the net spread for the peasant, and
Christendom was a vast madhouse, with insane priests for keepers.




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     When Voltaire was born, the church ruled and owned France. It
was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were 
mostly libertines. The judges were nearly as cruel as venal. The
royal palace was simply a house of assignation. The nobles were
heartless, proud, arrogant, and cruel to the last degree. The
common people were treated as beasts. It took the church a thousand
years to bring about this happy condition of things.

     The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered
by every noble and by every priest. They germinated in the hearts
of the helpless. They were watered by the tears of agony. Blows
began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood.
Workmen, blackened by the sun, bent by labor, looked at the white
throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them.

     In those days witnesses were cross-examined with instruments
of torture. The church was the arsenal of superstition. Miracles,
relics, angels and devils were as common as rags. Voltaire laughed
at the evidences, attacked the pretended facts, held the Bible up
to ridicule, and filled Europe with indignant protests against the
cruelty, bigotry, and injustice of the time.

     He was a believer in God, and in some ingenious way excused
this God for allowing the Catholic Church to exist. He had an idea
that, originally, mankind were believers in one God, and practiced
all the virtues. Of course this was a mistake. He imagined that the
church had corrupted the human race. In this he was right.

     It may be that, at one time, the church relatively stood for
progress, but when it gained power, it became an obstruction. The
system of Voltaire was contradictory. He described a being of
infinite goodness, who not only destroyed his children with
pestilence and famine, but allowed them to destroy each other.
While rejecting the God of the Bible, he accepted another God, who,
to say the least, allowed the innocent to be burned for loving him.

     Voltaire hated tyranny, and loved liberty. His arguments to
prove the existence of a God were just as groundless as those of
the reverend fathers of his day to prove the divinity of Christ, or
that Mary was the mother of God. The theologians of his time
maligned and feared him. He regarded them as a spider does flies.
He spread nets for them. They were caught, and he devoured them for
the amusement and benefit of the public. He was educated by the
Jesuits, and sometimes acted like one.

     It is fashionable to say that he was not profound, This is
because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed,
and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a
priest forever: this was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to
prevent Christians from murdering each other and did what he could
to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect,
obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow
fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the
Christian world. Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of
antiquity, had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed
himself, devoured the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet
of philosophy in the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven
this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.

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     Instead of doing these things, he willfully closed his eyes to
the light of the gospel, examined the Bible for himself advocated
intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an
arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of
man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal
toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed.

     These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die
in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might
follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy
fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so
successful an enemy of the church, to die without leaving some
shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of
chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam.

     He was an old man of eighty-four. He had been surrounded with
the comforts of life; he was a man of wealth, of genius. Among the
literary men of the world he stood first. God had allowed him to
have the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the
intoxication of flattery. He stood at the summit of his age.

     The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would
forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example
of Voltaire.

     Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that
Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the
unclean birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey.

     "Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure
of Saint Sulpice and the Abbe Gautier and brought them into his
uncle's sick chamber, who was informed that they were there. 'Ah,
well!' said Voltaire, 'give them my compliments and my thanks.' The
Abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The cure
of Saint Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and
asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed one of his
hands against the cure's coif shoving him back, and cried, turning
abruptly to the other side, 'Let me die in peace.' The cure
seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by
the touch of the philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little
brushing, and went out with the Abbe Gautier."

     He expired, says Wagniere, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about
a quarter past eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquillity.
Ten minutes before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his
valet de chamber, who was watching by him, pressed it and said:
"Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last words.

     From this death, so simple and serene, so natural and
peaceful; from, these words so utterly destitute of cant or
dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing
utterances, have been drawn and made. From these materials, and
from these alone, have been constructed all the shameless lies
about the death of this great and wonderful man, compared with whom
all of his calumniators, dead and living. were and are but dust and
vermin.


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     Voltaire was the intellectual autocrat of his time. From his
throne at the foot of the Alps he pointed the finger of scorn at
every hypocrite in Europe. He was the pioneer of his century. He
was the assassin of superstition. He left the quiver of ridicule
without an arrow. Through the shadows of faith and fable, through
the darkness of myth and miracle, through the midnight of
Christianity, through the blackness of bigotry, past cathedral and
dungeon, past rack and stake, past altar and throne, he carried,
with chivalric hands, the sacred torch of reason.

                            DIDEROT.

              DOUBT IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD TRUTH.

     Diderot was born in 1713. His parents were in what may be
called the humbler walks of life. Like Voltaire he was educated by
the Jesuits. He had in him something of the vagabond, and was for
several years almost a beggar in Paris. He was endeavoring to live
by his pen. In that day and generation, a man without a patron,
endeavoring to live by literature, was necessarily almost a beggar.
He nearly starved -- frequently going for days without food.
Afterward, when he had something himself, he was as generous as the
air. No man ever was more willing to give, and no man less willing
to receive, than Diderot.

     He wrote upon all conceivable subjects, that he might have
bread. He even wrote sermons, and regretted it all his life. He and
D'Alembert were the life and soul of the Encyclopedia. With
infinite enthusiasm he helped to gather the knowledge of the world
for the use of each and all. He harvested the fields of thought,
separated the grain from the straw and chaff, and endeavored to
throw away the seeds and fruit of superstition. His motto was,
"Incredulity is the first step towards philosophy."

     He had the vices of most Christians -- was nearly as immoral
as the majority of priests. His vices he shared in common, his
virtues were his own. All who knew him united in saying that he had
the pity of a woman, the generosity of a prince, the self-denial of
an anchorite, the courage of Caesar, and the enthusiasm of a poet.
He attacked with every power of his mind the superstition of his
day. He said what he thought. The priests hated him. He was in
favor of universal education -- the church despised it. He wished
to put the knowledge of the whole world within reach of the
poorest.

     He wished to drive from the gate of the Garden of Eden the
cherubim of superstition, so that the child of Adam might return to
eat once more the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Every Catholic
was his enemy. His poor little desk was ransacked by the police
searching for manuscripts in which something might be found that
would justify the imprisonment of such a dangerous man. Whoever, in
1750, wished to increase the knowledge of mankind was regarded as
the enemy of social order.

     The intellectual superstructure of France rests upon the
Encyclopedia. The knowledge given to the people was the impulse,
the commencement, of the revolution that left the church without an


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altar and the king without a throne. Diderot thought for himself,
and bravely gave his thoughts to others. For this reason he was
regarded as a criminal. He did not expect his reward in another
world. He did not do what he did to please some imaginary God. He
labored for mankind. He wished to lighten the burdens of those who
should live after him. Hear these noble words:

     "The more man ascends through the past, and the more he
launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these
philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen
victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the
fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This:
That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the
vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred
stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who
art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the
hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy
consoling faith never, never abandon me!" Posterity is for the
philosopher what the other world is for the devotee.

     Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true
Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he
should have used it.

     Of course it would not do for the church to allow a man to die
in peace who had added to the intellectual wealth of the world. The
moment Diderot was dead, Catholic priests began painting and
recounting the horrors of his expiring moments. They described him
as overcome with remorse, as insane with fear; and these falsehoods
have been repeated by the Protestant world, and will probably be
repeated by thousands of ministers after we are dead. The truth is,
he had passed his three-score years and ten. He had lived for
seventy-one years. He had eaten his supper. He had been conversing
with his wife. He was reclining in his easy chair. His mind was at
perfect rest. He had entered, without knowing it, the twilight of
his last day. Above the horizon was the evening star, telling of
sleep. The room grew still and the stillness was lulled by the
murmur of the street. There were a few moments of perfect peace.
The wife said, "He is asleep." She enjoyed his repose, and breathed
softly that he might not be disturbed. The moments wore on, and
still he slept. Lovingly, softly, at last she touched him. Yes, he
was asleep. He had become a part of the eternal silence.

                           DAVID HUME.

     The worst religion of the world was the Presbyterianism of
Scotland as it existed in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The Kirk had all the faults of the Church of Rome without a
redeeming feature. The Kirk hated music, painting, statuary, and
architecture. Anything touched with humanity -- with the dimples of
joy -- was detested and accursed. God was to be feared -- not
loved.

     Life was a long battle with the Devil. Every desire was of
Satan. Happiness was a snare, and human love was wicked, weak and
vain. The Presbyterian priest of Scotland was as cruel, bigoted and
heartless as the familiar of the Inquisition.


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     One case will tell it all;

     In the beginning of this, the nineteenth century, a boy
seventeen years of age, Thomas Aikenhead, was indicted and tried at
Edinburgh for blasphemy. He had denied the inspiration of the
Bible. He had on several occasions, when cold, jocularly wished
himself in hell that he might get warm. The poor, frightened boy
recanted -- begged for mercy; but he was found guilty, hanged,
thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold, and his weeping
mother vainly begged that his bruised and bleeding body might be
given to her.

     This one case, multiplied again and again, gives you the
condition of Scotland when, on the 26th of April, 1711, David Hume
was born.

     David Hume was one of the few Scotchmen of his day who were
not owned by the church. He had the manliness to examine historical
and religious questions for himself, and the courage to give his
conclusions to the world. He was singularly capable of governing
himself, He was a philosopher, and lived a calm and cheerful life,
unstained by an unjust act, free from all excess, and devoted in a
reasonable degree to benefiting his fellow-men. After examining the
Bible he became convinced that it was not true. For failing to
suppress his real opinion, for failing to tell a deliberate
falsehood, he brought upon himself the hatred of the church.

     Intellectual honesty is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and
whether God will forgive this sin or not his church has not, and
never will.

     Hume took the ground that a miracle could not be used as
evidence until the fact that it had happened was established. But
how can a miracle be established? Take any miracle recorded in the
Bible, and how could it be established now? You may say: Upon the
testimony of those who wrote the account. Who were they? No one
knows. How, could you prove the resurrection of Lazarus? Or of the
widow's son? How could you substantiate, today, the ascension of
Jesus Christ? In what way could you prove that the river Jordan was
divided upon being struck by the coat of a prophet? How is it
possible now to establish the fact that the fires of a furnace
refused to burn three men? Where are the witnesses? Who, upon the
whole earth, has the slightest knowledge upon this subject?

     He insisted that at the bottom of all good was the useful;
that human happiness was an end worth working and living for; that
origin and destiny were alike unknown; that the best religion was
to live temperately and to deal justly with our fellowmen; that the
dogma of inspiration was absurd, and that an honest man had nothing
to fear. Of course the Kirk hated him. He laughed at the creed.

     To the lot of Hume fell ease, respect, success, and honor.
While many disciples of God were the sport and prey of misfortune,
he kept steadily advancing. Envious Christians bided their time.
They waited as patiently as possible for the horrors of death to
fall upon the heart and brain of David Hume. They knew that all the
furies would be there, and that God would get his revenge.


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     Adam Smith, author of the "Wealth of Nations," speaking of
Hume in his last sickness, says that in the presence of death "his
cheerfulness was so great, and his conversation and amusements ran
so much in the usual strain, that, notwithstanding all his bad
symptoms, many people could not believe he was dying. A few days
before his death Hume said: 'I am dying as fast as my enemies -- if
I have any -- could wish, and as easily and tranquilly as my best
friends could desire.'"

     Col. Edmondstoune shortly afterward wrote Hume a letter, of
which the following is an extract:

     "My heart is full, could not see you this morning. I thought
it was better for us both. You cannot die -- you must live in the
memory of your friends and acquaintances; and your works will
render you immortal. I cannot conceive that it was possible for any
one to dislike you, or hate you. He must be more than savage who
could be an enemy to a man with the best head and heart and the
most amiable manners. Adam Smith happened to go into his room while
he was reading the above letter, which he immediately showed him.
Smith said to Hume that he was sensible of how much he was
weakening, and that appearances were in many respects bad; yet,
that his cheerfulness was so great and the spirit of life still
seemed to be so strong in him, that he could not keep from,
entertaining some hopes.

     Hume answered, "When I lie down in the evening I feel myself
weaker than when I arose in the morning; and when I rise in the
morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible,
besides, that some of my vital parts are affected so that I must
soon die."

     "Well." said Mr. Smith, "if it must be so, you have at least
the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, and the members of
your brother's family in particular, in great prosperity."

     He replied that he was so sensible of his situation that when
he was reading Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, among all the
excuses which are alleged to Charon for not entering readily into
his boat, he could not find one that fitted him. He had no house to
finish; he had no daughter to provide for; he had no enemies upon
whom he wished to revenge himself; "and I could not well," said he,
"imagine what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a
little delay. I have done everything of consequence which I ever
meant to do, and I could, at no time expect to leave my relations
and friends in a better situation than that in which I am now
likely to leave them; and I have, therefore, every reason to die
contented."

     "Upon further consideration," said he, "I thought I might say
to him, 'Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new
edition. Allow me a little time that I may see how the public
receives the alterations.' 'But,' Charon would answer, 'when you
have seen the effect of this, you will be for making other
alterations. There will be no end to such excuses; so, my honest
friend, please step into the boat.' 'But,' I might still urge,
'have a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavoring to 


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open the eyes of the public; if I live a few years longer, I may
have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the
prevailing systems of superstition.' And Charon would then lose all
temper and decency, and would cry out, 'You loitering rogue, that
will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant
you a lease for so long a time? Get into the boat this instant.'"

     To the Comtesse de Boufflers, the dying man, with the perfect
serenity that springs from an honest and loving life, writes:

     "I see death approach gradually without any anxiety or regret.
* * * I salute you with great affection and regard, for the last
time."

     On the 25th of August, 1776, the philosopher, the historian,
the infidel, the honest man, and a benefactor of his race, in the
composure born of a noble life, passed quietly and panglessly away.

     Dr Black wrote the following account of his death;

     "Monday, 26 August, 1776.

     "Dear Sir: Yesterday, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Mr.
Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident on the
evening between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became
exhaustive, and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer
rise from his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and
free from much pain or feeling of distress. He never dropped the
smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to
speak to the people about him, always did it with all affection and
tenderness. * * * When he became very weak, it cost him an effort
to speak, and he died in such happy composure of mind that nothing
could exceed it."

     Dr. Cullen writes Dr. Hunter on the 17th of September, 1776,
from which the following extracts are made:

     "You desire an account of Mr. Hume's last days, and I give it
to you with great pleasure. * * * It was truly an example des
grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant; and to me, who have
been so often shocked with the horrors of superstition, the
reflection on such a death is truly agreeable. For many weeks
before his death he was very sensible of his gradual decay; and his
answer to inquiries after his health was, several times, that he
was going as fast as his enemies could wish, and as easily as his
friends could desire. He passed most of the time in his drawing-
room, admitting the visits of his friends, and with his usual
spirit conversed with them upon literature and politics and
whatever else was started. In conversation he seemed to be
perfectly at ease; and to the last abounded with that pleasantry
and those curious and entertaining anecdotes which ever
distinguished him. * * * His senses and judgment did not fail him
to the last hour of his life. He constantly discovered a strong
sensibility of the attention and care of his friends; and midst
great uneasiness and languor never betrayed any peevishness or
impatience." (Here follows the conversation with Charon.) "These
are a few particulars which may, perhaps, appear trivial; but to
me, no particulars seem trivial which relate to so great a man. It 

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is perhaps from trifles that we can best distinguish the
tranquilness and cheerfulness of the philosopher at a time when the
most part of mankind are under disquiet, and sometimes even horror.
I consider the sacrifice of the cock as a more certain evidence of
the tranquillity of Socrates than his discourse on immortality."

     The Christians took it for granted that this serene and placid
man died filled with remorse for having given his real opinions,
and proceeded to describe, with every incident and detail of
horror, the terrors of his last moments. Brainless clergymen,
incapable of understanding what Hume had written, knowing only in
a general way that he had held their creeds in contempt, answered
his arguments by maligning his character.

     Christians took it for granted that he died in horror and
recounted the terrible scenes.

     When the facts of his death became generally known to
intelligent men, the ministers redoubled their efforts to maintain
the old calumnies, and most of them are in this employment even
unto this day. Finding it impossible to tell enough falsehoods to
hide the truth, a few of the more intelligent among the priests
admitted that Hume not only died without showing any particular
fear, but was guilty of unbecoming levity. The first charge was
that he died like a coward; the next that he did not care enough,
and went through the shadowy doors of the dread unknown with a
smile upon his lips. The dying smile of David Hume scandalized the
believers in a God of love. They felt shocked to see a man dying
without fear who denied the miracles of the Bible; who had spent a
life investigating the opinions of men; in endeavoring to prove to
the world that the right way is the best way; that happiness is a
real and substantial good, and that virtue is not a termagant with
sunken cheeks and hollow eyes.

     Christians hated to admit that a philosopher had died serenely
without the aid of superstition -- one who had taught that man
could not make God happy by making himself miserable, and that a
useful life, after all, was the best possible religion. They
imagined that death would fill such a man with remorse and terror.
He had never persecuted his fellowmen for the honor of God, and
must needs die in despair. They were mistaken.

     He died as he had lived. Like a peaceful river with green and
shaded banks he passed, without a murmur, into that waveless sea
where life at last is rest.

                        BENEDICT SPINOZA.

     One of the greatest thinkers was Benedict Spinoza, a Jew, born
at Amsterdam, in 1632. He studied medicine and afterward theology.
He endeavored to understand what he studied. In theology he
necessarily failed. Theology is not intended to be understood, --
it is only to be believed. It is an act, not of reason, but of
faith. Spinoza put to the rabbis so many questions, and so
persistently asked for reasons, that he became the most troublesome
of students. When the rabbis found it impossible to answer the
questions, they concluded to silence the questioner. He was tried, 
found guilty, and excommunicated from the synagogue.

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     By the terrible curse of the Jewish religion, he was made an
outcast from every Jewish home. His father could not give him
shelter. His mother could not give him bread -- could not speak to
him, without becoming an outcast herself. All the cruelty of
Jehovah, all the infamy of the Old Testament, was in this curse. In
the darkness of the synagogue the rabbis lighted their torches, and
while pronouncing the curse, extinguished them in blood, imploring
God that in like manner the soul of Benedict Spinoza might be
extinguished.

     Spinoza was but twenty-four years old when he found himself
without kindred, without friends, surrounded only by enemies. He
uttered no complaint. He earned his bread with willing hands, and
cheerfully divided his crust with those still poorer than himself.

     He tried to solve the problem of existence. To him, the
universe was One. The Infinite embraced the All. The All was God.
According to his belief, the universe did not commence to be. It
is; from eternity it was; to eternity it will be.

     He was right. The universe is all there is, or was, or will
be. It is both subject and object, contemplator and contemplated,
creator and created, destroyer and destroyed, preserver and
preserved, and hath within itself all causes, modes, motions and
effects.

     In this there is hope. This is a foundation and a star. The
Infinite is the All. Without the All, the Infinite cannot be. I am
something. Without me, the Infinite cannot exist.

     Spinoza was a naturalist -- that is to say, a pantheist. He
took the ground that the supernatural is, and forever will be, an
infinite impossibility. His propositions are luminous as stars, and
each of his demonstrations is a Gibraltar, behind which logic sits
and smiles at all the sophistries of superstition.

     Spinoza has been hated because he has not been answered. He
was a real republican. He regarded the people as the true and only
source of political power. He put the state above the church, the
people above the priest. He believed in the absolute liberty of
worship, thought and speech. In every relation of life he was just,
true, gentle, patient, modest and loving. He respected the rights
of others, and endeavored to enjoy his own, and yet he brought upon
himself the hatred of the Jewish and the Christian world. In his
day, logic was blasphemy, and to think was the unpardonable sin.
The priest hated the philosopher, revelation reviled reason, and
faith was the sworn foe of every fact.

     Spinoza was a philosopher, a philanthropist. He lived in a
world of his own. He avoided men. His life was an intellectual
solitude. He was a mental hermit. Only in his own brain he found
the liberty he loved. And yet the rabbis and the priests, the
ignorant zealot and the cruel bigot, feeling that this quiet,
thoughtful, modest man was in some way forging weapons to be used
against the church, hated him with all their hearts.

     He did not retaliate. He found excuses for their acts. Their
ignorance, their malice, their misguided and revengeful zeal 

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excited only pity in his breast. He injured no man. He did not live
on alms. He was poor -- and yet, with the wealth of his brain, he
enriched the world. On Sunday, February 21, 1677, Spinoza, one of
the greatest and subtlest of metaphysicians -- one of the noblest
and purest of human beings, -- at the age of forty-four, passed
tranquilly away; and notwithstanding the curse of the synagogue
under which he had lived and most lovingly labored, death left upon
his lips the smile of perfect peace.

                          OUR INFIDELS.

     In our country there were three infidels -- Paine, Franklin
and Jefferson. The colonies were filled with superstition, the
Puritans with the spirit of persecution. Laws savage, ignorant and
malignant had been passed in every colony, for the purpose of
destroying intellectual liberty. Mental freedom was absolutely
unknown. The Toleration Acts of Maryland tolerated only Christians
-- not infidels, not thinkers, not investigators. The charity of
Roger Williams was not extended to those who denied the Bible, or
suspected the divinity of Christ. It was not based upon the rights
of man, but upon the rights of believers, who differed in non-
essential points.

     The moment the colonies began to deny the rights of the king
they suspected the power of the priest. In digging down to find an
excuse for fighting George the Third, they unwittingly undermined
the church. They went through the Revolution together. They found
that all denominations fought equally well. They also found that
persons without religion had patriotism and courage, and were
willing to die that a new nation might be born. As a matter of fact
the pulpit was not in hearty sympathy with our fathers. Many
priests were imprisoned because they would not pray for the
Continental Congress. After victory had enriched our standard, and
it became necessary to make a constitution -- to establish a
government -- the infidels -- the men like Paine, like Jefferson,
and like Franklin, saw that the church must be left out; that a
government deriving its just powers from the consent of the
governed could make no contract with a church pretending to derive
its powers from an infinite God.

     By the efforts of these infidels, the name of God was left out
of the Constitution of the United States. They knew that if an
infinite being was put in, no room would be left for the people.
They knew that if any church was made the mistress of the state,
that mistress, like all others, would corrupt, weaken, and destroy.
Washington wished a church established by law in Virginia. He was
prevented by Thomas Jefferson. It was only a little while ago that
people were compelled to attend church by law in the Eastern
States, and taxes were raised for the support of churches the same
as for the construction of highways and bridges. The great
principle enunciated in the Constitution has silently repealed most
of these laws. In the presence of this great instrument, the
constitutions of the States grew small and mean, and in a few years
every law that puts a chain upon the mind, except in Delaware, will
be repealed, and for these our children may thank the Infidels of
1776.



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     The church never has pretended that Jefferson or Franklin died
in fear. Franklin wrote no books against the fables of the ancient
Jews. He thought it useless to cast the pearls of thought before
the swine of ignorance and fear. Jefferson was a statesman. He was
the father of a great party. He gave his views in letters and to
trusted friends. He was a Virginian, author of the Declaration of
Independence, founder of a university, father of a political party,
President of the United States, a statesman and philosopher. He was
too powerful for the divided churches of his day. Paine was a
foreigner, a citizen of the world. He had attacked Washington and
the Bible. He had done these things openly, and what he had said
could not he answered. His arguments were so good that his
character was bad.

                          THOMAS PAINE.

     THOMAS PAINE was born in Thetford, England. He came from the
common people. At the age of thirty-seven he left England for
America. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the New World.
He wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense," and in a few months the
Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent
States -- a new nation was born. Paine having aroused the spirit of
independence, gave every energy of his soul to keep the spirit
alive. He was with the army. He shared its defeats and its glory.
When the situation became desperate, he gave them "The Crisis." It
was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, leading the way
to freedom, honor, and to victory.

     The writings of Paine are gemmed with compact statements that
carry conviction to the dullest. Day and night he labored for
America, until there was a government of the people and for the
people. At the close of the Revolution, no one stood higher than
Thomas Paine. Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would
have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by
other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an
imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites,
and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a
hypocritical monument covered with lies.

     Having done so much for man in America, he went to France. The
seeds sown by the great infidels were bearing fruit in Europe. The
eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the wreath of
progress. Upon his arrival in France he was elected a member of the
French Convention -- in fact, he was selected about the same time
by the people of no less than four Departments. He was one of the
committee to draft a constitution for France. In the Assembly,
where nearly all were demanding the execution of the king, he had
the courage to vote against death. To vote against the death of the
king was to vote against his own life. This was the sublimity of
devotion to principle. For this he was arrested, imprisoned, and
doomed to death. While under sentence of death, while in the gloomy
cell of his prison, Thomas Paine wrote to Washington, asking him to
say one word to Robespierre in favor of the author of "Common
Sense." Washington did not reply. He wrote again. Washington, the
President, paid no attention to Thomas Paine, the prisoner. The,
letter was thrown into the wastebasket of forgetfulness, and Thomas

 

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                       THE GREAT INFIDELS

Paine remained condemned to death. Afterward he gave his opinion of
Washington at length, and I must say, that I have never found it in
my heart to greatly blame him.

     Thomas Paine, having done so much for political liberty,
turned his attention to the superstitions of his age. He published
"The Age of Reason;" and from that day to this, his character has
been maligned by almost every priest in Christendom. He has been
held up as the terrible example. Every man who has expressed an
honest thought, has been warningly referred to Thomas Paine. All
his services were forgotten. No kind word fell from any pulpit. His
devotion to principle, his zeal for human rights, were no longer
remembered. Paine simply took the ground that it is a contradiction
to call a thing a revelation that comes to us second-hand. There
can be no revelation beyond the first communication. All after that
is hearsay. He also showed that the prophecies of the Old Testament
had no relation whatever to Jesus Christ, and contended that Jesus
Christ was simply a man. In other words, Paine was an enlightened
Unitarian. Paine thought the Old Testament too barbarous to have
been the work of an infinitely benevolent God. He attacked the
doctrine that salvation depends upon belief. He insisted that every
man has the right to think.

     After the publication of these views every falsehood that
malignity could coin and malice pass was given to the world. On his
return to America, after the election to the presidency of another
infidel, Thomas Jefferson, it was not safe for him to appear in the
public streets. He was in danger of being mobbed. Under the very
flag he had helped to put in heaven his rights were not respected.
Under the Constitution that he had suggested, his life was
insecure. He had helped to give liberty to more than three millions
of his fellow-citizens, and they were willing to deny it unto him.
He was deserted, ostracized, shunned, maligned, and cursed. He
enjoyed the seclusion of a leper; but he maintained through it all
his integrity. He stood by the convictions of his mind. Never for
one moment did he hesitate or waver.

     He died almost alone. The moment he died Christians commenced
manufacturing horrors for his death-bed. They had his chamber
filled with devils rattling chains, and these ancient lies are
annually certified to by the respectable Christians of the present
day. The truth is, he died as he had lived. Some ministers were
impolite enough to visit him against his will. Several of them he
ordered from his room. A couple of Catholic priests, in all the
meekness of hypocrisy, called that they might enjoy the agonies of
a dying friend of man. Thomas Paine, rising in his bed, the few
embers of expiring life blown into flame by the breath of
indignation, had the goodness to curse them both. His physician,
who seems to have been a meddling fool, just as the cold hand of
death was touching the patriot's heart, whispered in the dull ear
of the dying man: "Do you believe, or do you wish to believe, that
Jesus Christ is the son of God?" And the reply was: "I have no wish
to believe on that subject."

     These were the last remembered words of Thomas Paine. He died
as serenely as ever Christian passed away. He died in the full
possession of his mind, and on the very brink and edge of death 
proclaimed the doctrines of his life.

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                       THE GREAT INFIDELS

     Every Christian, every philanthropist, every believer in human
liberty, should feel under obligation to Thomas Paine for the
splendid service rendered by him in the darkest days of the
American Revolution. In the midnight of Valley Forge, "The Crisis"
was the first star that glittered in the wide horizon of despair.
Every good man should remember with gratitude the brave words
spoken by Thomas Paine in the French Convention against the death
of Louis. He said: "We will kill the king, but not the man. We will
destroy monarchy, not the monarch."

     Thomas Paine was a champion, in both hemispheres, of human
liberty; one of the founders and fathers of this Republic; one of
the foremost men of his age. He never wrote a word in favor of
injustice. He was a despiser of slavery. He abhorred tyranny in
every form. He was, in the widest and best sense, a friend of all
his race. His head was as clear as his heart was good, and he had
the courage to speak his honest thought.

     He was the first man to write these words: "The United States
of America" He proposed the present Federal Constitution. He
furnished every thought that now glitters in the Declaration of
Independence.

     He believed in one God and no more. He was a believer even in
special providence, and he hoped for immortality.

     How can the world abhor the man who said:

     "I believe in the equality of man, and that religious duties
consist in doing justice, in loving mercy, and endeavoring to make
our fellow-creatures happy." --

     "It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
faithful to himself" --

     "The word of God is the creation which we behold." --

     "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." --

     "My opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in
doing good and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will
be happy hereafter." --

     "One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."

     "I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness
beyond this life." --

     "Man has no property in man" -- and

     "The key of heaven is not in the keeping of any sect!"

     Had it not been for Thomas Paine I could not deliver this
lecture here to-night.





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                       THE GREAT INFIDELS

     It is still fashionable to calumniate this man -- and yet
Channing, Theodore Parker, Longfellow, Emerson, and in fact all the
liberal Unitarians and Universalists of the world have adopted the
opinions of Thomas Paine.

     Let us compare these Infidels with the Christians of their
time,:

     Compare Julian with Constantine, -- the murderer of his wife,
-- the murderer of his son -- and who established Christianity with
the same sword he had wet with their blood. Compare him with all
the Christian emperors -- with all, the robbers and murders and
thieves -- the parricides and fratricides. and matricides that ever
wore the imperial purple on the banks of the Tiber or the shores of
the Bosphorus.

     Let us compare Bruno with the Christians who burned him; and
we will compare Spinoza, Voltaire. Diderot, Hume, Jefferson, Paine
-- with the men who it is claimed have been the visible
representatives of God.

     Let it be remembered that the popes have committed every crime
of which human nature is capable, and that not one of them was the
friend of intellectual liberty -- that not one of them ever shed
one ray of light.

     Let us compare these Infidels with the founders of sectarian
churches; you will see how narrow, how bigoted, how cruel were
their founders, and how broad, how generous, how noble, were these
infidels.

     Let us be honest. The great effort of the human mind is to
ascertain the order of facts by which we are surrounded -- the
history of things.

     Who has accomplished the most in this direction -- the church,
or the unbelievers? Upon one side write all that the church has
discovered -- every phenomenon that has been explained by a creed,
every new fact in Nature that has been discovered by a church, and
on the other side write the discoveries of Humboldt, and the
observations and demonstrations of Darwin!

     Who has made Germany famous -- her priests, or her scientists?

     Goethe.

     Kant: That immortal man who said: "Whoever thinks that he can
please God in any way except by discharging his obligations to his
fellows, is superstitious.

     And that greatest and bravest of thinkers, Ernst Haeckel.

     Humboldt.

     Italy: -- Mazzini. Garibaldi.




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                       THE GREAT INFIDELS

     In France who are and were the friends of freedom -- the
Catholic priests, or Renan? the bishops, or Gambetta? -- Dupanloup,
or Victor Hugo?

     Michelet -- Taine -- Auguste Comte.

     England -- Let us compare her priests with John Stewart Mill,
-- Harriet Martineau, that "free rover on the breezy common of the
universe." -- George Eliot -- with Huxley and Tydall, with Holyoake
and Harrison -- and above and over all with Charles Darwin.

                           CONCLUSION.

     Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the
mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of
France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as
Diderot and Voltaire? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much
to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the
clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals
and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as
much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? -- as much for science as
Charles Darwin?

     What would the world be if infidels had never been?

     The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the
flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed
day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past;
the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls,
proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all
the years to be.

     Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted
their lives to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been
hissed at in the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while
men who defended slavery, practiced polygamy, justified the
stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked
hack of unpaid labor are supposed to have passed smilingly from
earth to the embraces of the angels? Why should we think that the
brave thinkers, the investigators, the honest men, must have left
the crumbling shore of time in dread and fear, while the
instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and
users of thumbscrews, of iron boots and racks; the burners and
tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the
enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers, and
babes; the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the
builders of dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the
slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all
died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded
upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of prejudice, the
apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty, the breakers of
fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded by the fierce hands
of God?

                          ****     ****

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