The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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The following facts result from our investigations:
Supernatural Christianity is false. God-worship is idolatry.
Prayer is useless. The soul is not immortal. There are no
rewards and there are no punishments in a future state.
It now remains to be considered whether it is right to say so.
It will doubtless be supposed that I shall make use of the plea
that a writer is always justified in publishing the truth, or
what he conscientiously believes to be the truth, and that if
it does harm he is not to blame. But I shall at once
acknowledge that truth is only a means towards an end β the
welfare of the human race. If it can be shown that by speaking
the truth an injury is inflicted on mankind, then a stubborn
adherence to truth becomes merely a Pharisee virtue, a
spiritual pride. But in moral life Truth, though not
infallible, is our safest guide, and those who maintain that it
should be repressed must be prepared to bring forward
irrefutable arguments in favour of their cause. If so much as
the shadow of a doubt remains, their client, Falsehood, is non-suited, and Truth remains in possession of the conscience. Let
us now hear what the special pleaders have to say. The
advocates for Christianity versus Truth will speak first, and I
shall reply; and then the advocates for Deism will state their
case. What they will endeavour to prove is this, that even
admitting the truth of my propositions, it is an immoral action
to give them to the world. On the other hand, I undertake to
show that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the
interests of civilisation; and also that man will never attain
his full powers as a moral being until he has ceased to believe
in a personal God and in the immortality of the soul.
βChristianity, we allow, is human in its origin, erroneous in
its theories, delusive in its threats and its rewards,β say
the advocates for Christianity. βJesus Christ was a man
with all the faults and imperfections of the prophetic character.
The Bible is simply a collection of Jewish writings. The
miracles in the Old Testament deserve no more
attention from historians than the miracles in Homer. The
miracles in the gospels are like the miracles in Plutarchβs
Lives; they do not lessen the value of the biography, and the
value of the biography does not lessen the absurdity of the
miracles. So far we go with you. But we assert that this
religion with all its errors has rendered inestimable services
to civilisation, and that it is so inseparably associated in
the minds of men with purity of life, and the precepts of
morality, that it is impossible to attack Christianity without
also attacking all that is good, all that is pure, all that is
lovely in human nature. When you travelled in Africa did you
not join in the sacrifices of the pagans? Did you not always
speak with respect of their wood spirits and their water
spirits, and their gods of the water and the sky? And did you
not take off your shoes when you entered the mosque, and did
you not, when they gave you the religious blessing, return the
religious reply? And since you could be so tolerant to savages,
surely you are bound to be more tolerant still to those who
belong to your own race, to those who possess a nobler
religion, and whose minds can be made by a careless word to
suffer the most exquisite pain. Yet you attack Christianity,
and you attack it in the wrong way. You ought, in the interests
of your own cause, to write in such a manner that minds might
be gradually trained to reflection and decoyed to doubt. It is
not only heartless and inhuman, it is also unwise, it is also
unscientific, to say things which will shock and disgust those
who are beginning to inquire, and it is bad taste to jest on
subjects which if not sacred in themselves are held sacred in
the, eyes of many thoughtful and cultivated men. You ought to
adopt a tone of reluctance and to demonstrate, as it were
against your will, the errors of the popular religion.
Believers at least have a right to demand that if you discuss
these questions upon which their hopes of eternal happiness are
based, you will do so with gravity and decorum.β
To this I reply that the religion of the Africans, whether
pagan or Moslem, is suited to their intellects, and is
therefore a true religion; and the same may be said of
Christianity among uneducated people. But Christianity is not
in accordance with the cultivated mind; it can only be accepted
or rather retained by suppressing doubts, and by denouncing
inquiry as sinful. It is therefore a superstition, and ought to
be destroyed. With respect to the services which it once
rendered to civilisation, I cheerfully acknowledge them, but
the same argument might once have been advanced in favour of
the oracle at Delphi, without which there would have been no
Greek culture, and therefore no Christianity. The question is
not whether Christianity assisted the civilisation of our
ancestors, but whether it is now assisting our own. I am firmly
persuaded that whatever is injurious to the intellect is also
injurious to moral life; and on this conviction I base my
conduct with respect to Christianity. That religion is
pernicious to the intellect; it demands that the reason shall
be sacrificed upon the altar; it orders civilised men to
believe in the legends of a savage race. It places a hideous
image, covered with dirt and blood, in the Holy of Holies; it
rends the sacred Veil of Truth in twain, It teaches that the
Creator of the Universe, that sublime, that inscrutable power,
exhibited his back to Moses, and ordered Hosea to commit
adultery, and Ezekiel to eat dung. There is no need to say
anything more. Such a religion is blasphemous and foul. Let
those admire it who are able. I, for my part, feel it my duty
to set free from its chains as many as I can. Upon this point
my conscience speaks clearly, and it shall be obeyed. With
respect to manner and means, I shall use the arguments and the
style best suited for my purpose. There has been enough of
writing by implication and by innuendo; I do not believe in its
utility, and I do not approve of its disguise. There should be
no deceit in matters of religion. In my future assaults on
Christianity I shall use the clearest language that I am able
to command.
Ridicule is a destructive instrument, and it is my
intention to destroy. If a man is cutting down a tree, it is
useless asking him not to strike so hard. But because I make
use of ridicule, it does not follow that I am writing merely
for amusement; and because I tear up a belief by the roots, it
does not follow that I am indifferent to the pain which I
inflict. Great revolutions cannot be accomplished without much
anguish and some evil being caused. Did not the Roman women
suffer when the Christians came and robbed them of their gods,
and raised their minds, through pain and sorrow, to a higher
faith? The religion which I teach is as high above Christianity
as that religion was superior to the idolatry of Rome. And
when, the relative civilisations of the two ages are compared,
this fetish of ink and paper, this Syrian book is, in truth,
not less an idol than those statues which obtained the
adoration of the Italians and the Greeks. The statues were
beautiful as statues; the book is admirable as a book; but the
statues did not come down from heaven; the book was not a
magical composition; it bears the marks not only of human
genius, but also of human depravity and superstition.
As for the advocates of Deism they acknowledge that
Christianity is unsuited to the mental condition of the age;
they acknowledge that the Bible ought to be attacked as
Xenophanes attacked Homer; they acknowledge that the fables of
a god impregnating a woman, of a god living on the earth, are
relics of pagan superstition; they acknowledge that the
doctrine of eternal punishment is incompatible with justice,
and is therefore incompatible with God. But they declare that
Christianity should not be destroyed but reformed; that its
barbarous elements should be expelled, and that then, as a pure
God-worship, it should be offered to the world. βIt is trueβ, they say,
βthat God is an idol, an image made of human ideas which, to
superior beings, would appear as coarse and vile for such a
purpose as the wood and the stone of the savage appear to us.
But this idolatry is conducive to the morality of man. That
exquisite form which he raises in his mind, and before which he
prostrates him self in prayer, that God of purity and love,
becomes his ideal and example. As the Greek women placed
statues of Apollo and Narcissus in their chambers that the
beauty of the marble form might enter their wombs through the
windows of their eyes, so by ever contemplating perfection the
mind is ennobled, and the actions born of it are divine. And
surely it is a sweet and consoling faith that there is above us
a great and benignant Being who, when the sorrows of this life
are past, will take us to himself. How can it injure men to
believe that the righteous will he rewarded and that the wicked
will be punished in a future state? What good can be done by
destroying a belief so full of solace for the sorrowful, so
full of promise for the virtuous, so full of terror for the
workers of iniquity? You do not deny that βmuch anguish and some
evil will be causedβ by the destruction of this belief; and what
have you to show on the other side? What will you place in the
balance? Consider what a dreadful thing it is to take even from
a single human being the hopes of a future life.
βAll men cannot be philosophers; all cannot resign themselves with
fortitude and calm to the death-warrant of the soul. Annihilation has
perhaps more terrors for the mind than eternal punishment
itself. O, make not the heart an orphan, cast it not naked and
weeping on the world! Take it not away from its father, kill
not its hopes of an eternal home! There are mothers whose
children have gone before them to the grave, poor miserable
women whose beauty is faded, who have none to care for them on
earth, whose only happiness is in the hope that when their life
is ended they will be joined again to those whom they have
lost. And will you take that hope away? There are men who have
passed their whole lives in discipline and self-restraint that
they may be rewarded in a future state; will you tell them that
they have lived under an illusion, that they would have done
better to laugh, and to feast, and to say βLet us make merry,
for to-morrow we shall dieβ? There are men whom the fear of
punishment in a future life deters from vice and perhaps from
crime. Will you dare to spread a doctrine which unlooses all
restraints, and leaves men to the fury of their passions? It is
true that we are not demoralised by this belief in the
impersonality of God and the extinction of the soul; but it
would be a dangerous belief for those who are exposed to strong
temptations, and whose minds have not been raised by culture to
the religion of dignity and self-control.β
In the first
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