It may be pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life,
but evidently we are not meant to remain Children always. The time
comes when we must put away childish things and obey the summons
of truth, stern and high. A people who fear the truth can never be
a free people.
I have a difficult task in hand. It is also a delicate one.
But I am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole
truth about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others.
Some people can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my
intellectual life with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago,
I might have collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I
feel sure I would have deserved the stake.
"Oh, Sam tears down, but does not build up," is another
criticism. It is not true. No preacher or priest is more constructive.
To build up their churches and maintain their creeds the priests pulled
down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and Rome,
plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted over a
thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because he
believed be had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the
sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to
destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail;
gagging the mouth of the student -- is that building up or tearing down?
When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world what
was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church had the
power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his head he was
clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us -- does it square with our
sense of justice to call the priest constructive, and the
scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their feet --
helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in
life, -- destructive? Count your rights -- political, religious,
social, intellectual -- and tell me which of them was conquered for
you by the priest.
The epithets you sling at me, "irreverent," "blasphemer," "atheist,"
and "infidel," are flung at me, not from pity, but from envy. Not having
the courage or the industry of anyone who works in the world of
men and books, searching with the sweat of his brow for the real
bread of life, wetting the open page before him with his tears, pushing
into the "wee" hours of the night his quest, animated by
the fairest of all loves, the love of truth, -- you ease your own
conscience by calling me names.
Let's place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence.
As far as possible, let us, be passive, showing no predisposition
one way or another. We can afford to be independent. If the
evidence proves the historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the
evidence is not sufficient to prove it, there is no reason why we
should fear to say so; besides, it is our duty to inform ourselves
on this question.
As intelligent beings we desire to know whether
this Jesus, whose worship is not only costing the world millions of
the people's money, but which is also drawing to his service the
time, the energies, the affection, the devotion, and the labor of
humanity, -- is a myth, or a reality. We believe that an religious
persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds and intolerance, which
still cramp and embitter our humanity, would be replaced by love
and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to see that the God-
Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow to which
credulity alone gives substance.
Like people who have been fighting in the dark, fearing some danger,
the sects, once relieved of the thraldom of a tradition which has been
handed down to them by a childish age and country, will turn around
and embrace one another.
In every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the
root of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or
death to the Christian religion.
Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian
cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection
myth, the ascension, the eucharist, baptism, worship by kneeling or
prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of
bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in
church, the candles, "holy" water, -- even the word Mass, were all
adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the
ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist,
as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as 'the
oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths.
The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of
Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the
Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the
older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu
and Pagan gods are incontrovertible evidence that all gods were at
one time -- the sun in heaven.
There was war before Christianity; has Jesus abolished war?
There was poverty and misery in the world before Christianity; has
Jesus removed these evils?
There was ignorance in the world before Christianity; has
Jesus destroyed ignorance?
There were disease, crime, persecution, oppression, slavery,
massacres, and bloodshed in the world before Christianity; alas,
are they not still with us?
When Jesus shall succeed in pacifying his own disciples; in
healing the sectarian world of its endless and bitter quarrels,
then it will be time to ask what else Jesus has done for
humanity If the world is improving at all, and we believe it is, the
progress is due to the fact that man pays now more attention to
this life than formerly. He is thinking less of the other world
and more of this.
Which of the religions has persecuted as long and as
relentlessly as Christianity?
Which of the many faiths of the world has opposed Science as
stubbornly and as bitterly as Christianity?
In the name of what other prophets have more people been
burned at the stake than in the names of Jesus and Moses?
What other revelation has given rise to so many sects,
hostile and irreconcilable, as the Christian?
Which religion has furnished as many effective texts for
political oppression, polygamy, slavery, and the subjection of
woman as the religion of Jesus ?
Is there, -- has there ever been another creed which makes
salvation dependent on belief, -- thereby encouraging hypocrisy,
and making honest inquiry a crime?
To send a thief to heaven from the gallows because he
believes, and an honest man to hell because he doubts, is that
the virtue which is going to save the world?
witches were put to death in the name of the devil. Yet all this
"evidence" has not saved the devil from passing out of existence.
What has happened to the devil will happen to the gods. Man is
the only real savior. If he is not a savior, there is no other saved!
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