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Everybody that comes is against God. Every soul, they think, is like
the wrecked Irishman. He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an
unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said to
him, "Have you a government here?" The man said, "We have." "Well,"
said he, "I am agin it!" The church teaches us that that is the
attitude of every soul in the universe of God. Ought a god to take any
credit to himself for making depraved people? A god that cannot make a
soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire
from the business. And if a god has made us, knowing that we would be
totally depraved, why should we go to the same being for repairs?

What is the next? "That all men are so alienated from God that there is
no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin except through God's
redeeming grace."

Reformation is not enough. If the man who steals becomes perfectly
honest, that is not enough; if the man who hates his fellow-man changes
and loves his fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through the
mysterious thing called the second birth; he must be born again. That
is not enough unless he has faith; he must believe something that he
does not understand. Reformation is not enough; there must be what they
call conversion. I deny it. According to the church, nothing so
excites the wrath of God--nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah
with revenge--as a man relying on his own good works. He must admit that
he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before God
will consent to save him. I saw a man the other day, and he said to me,
"I am a Unitarian Universalist; that is what I am." Said I, "What do
you mean by that?" "Well," said he, "here is what I mean: the
Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist
thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both."

What is the next thing in this great creed?

"We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the
records of God's revelation of Himself in the work of redemption; that
they are written by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit,
and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious
teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged."

This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that is, it is the
result of the high-joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for
churches; and there we have the statement that the bible was written
"by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit." What part of
the bible? All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testament
that was written by an infinitely good God? The being who wrote it did
not know the shape of the world He had made. The being who wrote it
knew nothing of human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if one
could love upon command. The same God upheld the institution of human
slavery; and the church says the bible that upholds that institution was
written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I disagree
with the Holy Ghost upon that institution.

The church tells us that men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost,
upheld the institution of polygamy--I deny it; that under the guidance
of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest--I
deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that
it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened
to differ with him on the subject of religion--I deny it. And yet that
is the book now upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church. If
the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he
have taken? Let every minister answer, honor bright. If you knew the
devil had written a little work on human slavery, in your judgment would
he uphold slavery or denounce it? Would you regard it as any evidence
that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery? And yet, here you have a
work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely
good, wise and beneficent God! If the devil upheld polygamy would you
be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill somebody for differing with
him would you be surprised? If the devil told a man to kill his wife,
would you be astonished? And yet, you say, that is exactly what the God
of us all did. If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy. That
creed is a libel upon Him who sits upon heaven's throne. I want--if
there he a God--I want Him to write in the book of his eternal
remembrance that I denied these lies for Him.

I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not worship a polygamous
Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a
husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought.

Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old testament, and told
the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on
religion, and that God afterward took upon Himself flesh and came to
Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed Him--did
it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had sown? Did it
ever occur to you that He fell a victim to His own tyranny, and was
destroyed by His own law! Of course I do not believe that any God ever
was the author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified, or that
any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you that
question.

Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of murder and
massacre; with all its foolish and cruel fables; with all its infamous
doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and
tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the
maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like
Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity
of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race.

And yet, I must say--I must admit--that the old testament is better than
the new. In the old testament, when God got a man dead, He let him
alone. When He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied. The
muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face. But in the new
testament the trouble commences just at death. In the new testament God
is to wreak His revenge forever and ever. It was reserved for one who
said, "Love your enemies," to tear asunder the veil between time and
eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men upon the gulfs of eternal
fire. The new testament is just as much worse than the old, as hell is
worse than sleep; just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than
annihilation; and yet, the new testament is pointed to as a gospel of
love and peace.

But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say.

"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of
God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I do not deny it.
But what was the result? The Christian world has caused more war than
all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death
have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which
the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and
subdued--all these machines have been born in Christian brains. And yet
He came to bring peace, they say. But the testament says otherwise: "I
came not to bring peace, but a sword." And the sword was brought. What
are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is there a solitary
Christian nation that will trust any other? How many millions of
Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their
enemies? There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent
for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his
enemies before he died. He says, "I have not any." "What! no enemies?"
"Not one," said the dying man, "I killed the last one three weeks ago."

How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy
their fellow-Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against
war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No;
it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of
peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows
and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then
Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to
God. Why? Because He has enabled a few of His children to kill some
others of His children. This is the religion of peace--the religion
that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000
pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the religion
of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in mail, all in the
name of universal forgiveness.

What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have
the nations been fighting about? What was the Thirty Years' War in
Europe for? What was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England
persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even
unto this day? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will
find a religious question. The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by
His church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness;
and why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation.
They do not say, if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there;
they do not say, if you pay your debts and love your wife, and love your
children, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, and your
country, you will get there; that will do you no good; you have got to
believe a certain thing. Oh, yes, no matter how bad you are, you can
instantly be forgiven then; and no matter how good you are, if you fail
to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judgment nothing is
left but to damn you forever, and all the angels will shout
"Hallelujah!"

What do they teach today? Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only
one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and
heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to
be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to
any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that
if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme
unction; let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through
the church; and let the Protestant understand that when he has
committed that crime, the community will not pray him into heaven. Let
him go with his victim. The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes
to hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. And if
heaven grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life to
the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. I am opposed
to that kind of forgiveness. And yet that is the religion of universal
peace to everybody.

Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to?

"We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of Christ over all
the earth."

What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting
along now? How many people are being born a year? About fifty
millions. How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully?
Five or six thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is
orthodox Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as
many unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago.
What are you doing in the missionary World? How long is it since you
converted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send missionaries,
with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman comes here,
mob him, simply to show him the difference between the practical and
theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long since you have
had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there never has been an
intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first missionary put his
foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has an intelligent
Chinaman been converted since the first missionary touched that shore.
Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in the reports. They
get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the edge of the grave, and
go and tell them stories how hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy
of the new testament, and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the
interior of Africa, without the work of Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy
of the Princeton Review. In my judgment, it is a book that would suit a
savage. Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from the old
and feeble. About how long is it before this kingdom is to be
established?

What is the next thing here? They all also believe in the resurrection
of the dead, and in their confession of faith hereto attached I find
they also believe in the resurrection of the body. Does anybody believe
that, that has ever thought? Here is a man, for instance, that weighs
200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; how much will he weigh
in the morning of the resurrection? Here is a cannibal, who eats
another man; and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your body
and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten the missionary,
and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies, who will the
atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an action of
replevin brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It has been
demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in nature, and no
destruction in nature. It has been demonstrated again and again that
the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other beings; grown
in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, been in the
metals; in other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have
been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms return to the
earth, and again spring in vegetation, taken up in the leaves of the
trees, turned into wood. And yet we have a church, in the nineteenth
century, getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by
presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us that they
believe in the resurrection of the body.

They know better. There is not one so ignorant but what knows better.

And what is the next thing? "And in a final judgment." It will be a
set day. All of us will be there, and the thousands, and millions, and
billions, and trillions, and quadrillions that have died will be there.
It will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened and our
case will be called. Does anybody believe in that now that has got the
slightest sense?--one who knows enough to chew gum without a string?"

"The issues of which are everlasting punishment for the wicked and
everlasting life for the redeemed. "That is the doctrine today of the
Congregational church, and that is the doctrine that I oppose. That is
the doctrine that I defy and deny.

But I must hasten on. Now this comes to us after all the discussion
that has been, and we are told that this religion is finally to conquer
this world. This is the same religion that failed to successfully meet
the hordes of Mohammed. Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the
cross the fairest part of Europe. It was known that he was an impostor.
They knew he was because the people of Mecca said so, and they knew that
Christ was not because the people of Jerusalem said he was. This
impostor wrested from the disciples of Christ the fairest part of
Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and infidelity in the
minds of the Christian world. And the next was an effort to rescue from
the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ. That commenced in the
eleventh century and ended in 1291. Europe was almost depopulated. For
every man owed a debt, the debt was discharged if he put a cross upon
his breast and joined the Crusades. No matter what crime he had
committed the doors of the prison were open for him to join the
Crusades. And what was the result? They believed that God would give
them victory over the infidel, and they carried in front of the first
Crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both those animals had been
blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say that those
same animals are in the lead today in the orthodox world. Until 1291
they endeavored to get that sepulchre, until finally the hosts of Christ
were driven back, baffled, beaten, and demoralized--a poor, miserable
religious rabble. They were driven back, and that fact sowed the seeds
of distrust in Christendom. You know at that time the world believed in
trial by battle--that God would take the side of right--and there had
been a trial by battle between the Cross and Mohammed, and Mohammed had
been victorious.

Well, what was the next? You know when Christianity came into power it
destroyed every statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon. It defaced
and obliterated every painting; it destroyed every beautiful building;
it destroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it destroyed all
the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy it could find, and
burned every library that it could reach with its torch. And the result
was the night of the middle ages fell upon the human race. But by
accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts escaped the
fury of religious zeal; a few statues had been buried; and the result
was, that these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of which is our
civilization of today. A few forms of beauty were dug from the earth
that had protected them, and now the civilized world is filled with art,
with painting, and with statuary, in spite of the rage of the early
church.

What is the next blow that that this church received? The discovery of
America. That is the next. The Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to write
the bible, did not know of the existence of this continent, never
dreamed of it; the result was that His bible never spoke of it. He did
not dream that the earth is round. He believed it was flat, although He
made it Himself, and at that time heaven was just up there beyond the
clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels were,
and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was that the angels
ascended and descended. It was to that heaven that Christ ascended
after His resurrection. It was up there where the New Jerusalem was,
with its streets of gold, and under this earth was perdition; there was
where the devils lived; there was where a pit was dug for all
unbelievers, and for men who had brains, and I say that for this reason:
That just in proportion that you have brains, just in that proportion
your chances for eternal joy are lessened, according to this religion.
And just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are increased.
They believe, under there that they discovered America. They found that
the earth is round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that
brave man set sail. The church told him: "The earth is flat, my friend;
don't go off. You will go off the edge." Magellan said: "I have seen
the shadow of the earth upon the moon, and I have more confidence in the
shadow even than I have in the church." The ship went round. The earth
was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand above it and beneath it,
and where was the heaven, and where was the hell? Vanished forever!
And they dwell now only in the religion of superstition. We found there
was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean against; no place there for the
gods and angels to live; no place there to empty the waters of the
deluge; no place there to which Christ could have ascended; and the
foundations of the New Jerusalem crumbled, and the towers and domes fell
and became simply space--space sown with an infinite number of stars;
not with New Jerusalems, but with constellations.

Then man began to grow great, and with that you know came astronomy.
Now just see what they did in that. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In
1543 his great work. In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by
the pope, by the infallible Catholic church, and the church is about as
near right upon that subject as upon any other. The system of
Copernicus was denounced. And how long do you suppose the church fought
that? Let me tell you. It was revoked by Pius VII. in the year of grace
1821. For 205 years after the death of Copernicus the church insisted
that that system was false, and that the old idea was true. Astronomy
is the first help that we ever received from heaven. Then came Kepler
in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of science from the night
that Kepler discovered his first law. That was the dawn of the day of
intelligence--his first law, that the planets do not move in circles;
his second law, that they described equal spaces in equal times; his
third law, that there was a direct relation between weight and velocity.
That man gave us a key to heaven. That man opened its infinite book,
and we now read it, and he did more good than all the theologians that
ever lived. I have not time to speak of the others--of Galileo, of
Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others that I could mention.

The next thing that gave this church a blow was statistics. Away went
special providence. We found by taking statistics that we could tell
the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend
upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances,
laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were
ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon
special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence even
in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity. We found by
statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average committed;
just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just so many
suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so many accidents on an
average; just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than
themselves; just so many murders of a particular kind; just the same
number of accidents; and I say tonight statistics utterly demolish the
idea of special providence. Only the other day a gentleman was telling
me of a case of special providence. He knew it. He had been the
subject of it. Yes, sir! A few years ago he was about to go on a ship
when he was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on
board. Yes! I said, "Do you think the fellows that were drowned
believed in special providence?" Think of the infinite egotism of such
a doctrine. Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with 500
passengers, and they go down to the bottom of the sea--fathers, mothers,
children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon the shores of
expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that didn't happen to go!
And he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in his poor
little withered behalf and let the rest all go. That is special
providence!

You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of
thanksgiving. We say to God, "Although You have afflicted all the other
countries, although You have sent war, and desolation, and famine on
everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been kind
to us, and we hope you will keep on." It don't make a bit of difference
whether we have good times or not--not a bit; the thanksgiving is
always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a governor of Iowa
got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to tell how thankful
the people were, how prosperous the State had been; and there was a
young fellow in the State who got out another proclamation, saying:
"Fearing that the Lord might be misled by official correspondence," he
went on to say that the governor's proclamation was entirely false;
that the State was not prosperous; that the crops had been an almost
entire failure; that nearly every farm in the state was mortgaged; that
if the Lord did not believe him, all he asked was He would send some
angel in whom he had confidence to look the matter over for himself.

Of course I have not time to recount the enemies of the church. Every
fact is an enemy of superstition. Every fact is a heretic. Every
demonstration is an infidel. Everything that ever happened testified
against the supernatural. I have only spoken of a few of the blows that
shattered the shield and shivered the lance of superstition. Here is
another one--the doctrine of Charles Darwin. This century will be
called Darwin's century, one of the greatest men who ever touched this
globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the
religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin there (on the one
hand) and the name of every theologian that ever lived there (on the
other hand), and from that name has come more light to the world than
from all those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival
of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in
every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has
not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew
nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology,
nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the bible is a book
written by ignorance--by the instigation of fear! Think of the man who
replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no parson too ignorant
to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the
more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule,
the scorn, and the contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died
England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her
grandest.

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