CHAPTER XV. DISCUSSIONS.

 

"Can ye burn the truth in the martyr's fire, Or chain a thought in the dungeon dire? Or stay the soul when it wars away,

In glorious life from the mouldering clay?"

 

"BEING now in the rudimental sphere, we might profitably tarry for a time, and improve the opportunity in learning various ideas entertained by the spirit before it has left earth to try the unknown realms of eternity" said the Sage.

 

"Then you still hold that man knows nothing of the future state while he remains man?" asked Hero.

 

"He cannot know with certainty—all is obscure and doubtful. He may possess an interior desire for immortality, but he cannot reason upon this important subject from the testimony of his senses; and he has no other data from which to draw his conclusions."

 

"Has he not the Bible."

 

"What data can that afford, when there is no external evidence of its truth? And those who profess to believe it do not live exemplary lives as a proof of its inspiration. The fact is, that man believes not fully in immortality. If he did, think you he would not depart the earthly life with joy, when he was sure of being ushered into the presence of his God? Verily, if he recognizes fully in his conscience such a beautiful place as his ideal heaven, be would rejoice at grim Death's approach. Men profess to believe the Bible fully, and are terribly shocked if you question its veracity in the least. It is the idea they believe, not the substance, educational prejudice compelling them to take for granted that which the eternal light of their natures condemns."

 

"Reason, they say, is carnal, and not of God," said Leon, "and should not be exercised."

 

"Yes, and those who preach this doctrine exercise their reason to shut the light from their own and others' understanding."

 

"Thai is the light in which it always appeared to me. I have heard preachers declaim by the hour on the fallibility of poor human reason, and the infallibility of the Holy Scripture, exerting their own benighted reasoning powers to prove reason false."

 

"But why should they declaim so much against reason?" asked Hero; "they of course admit that reason and nature, as well as the Bible, came from God; why recognize one as superior to the other?"

 

To support priestly rule, the mass must not think, nor reason, but be kept in ignorance. On these grounds, reason must be debarred from all access to the Bible for you well know that, admitting the right to reason on a subject, gives also the right to pronounce true or false. Without this privilege, reason is useless. When we reason on a subject, we are in doubt as to its truth. Our reason may condemn, and no one should question our right to obey its dictates, or condemn us for not accepting that which appears contrary to our understanding. If the right to reason on the Scriptures and the various church schemes of salvation be admitted, then we can, after mature investigation, condemn the whole or a part. To maintain the present system of theology, the Bible must be taken as an infallible standard. Everything must be measured by it. Reason, if allowed, would condemn a portion, and prove very hostile to the monstrous speculations drawn from mythic tradition.

 

Hence it is hurled rudely aside, and from one end of Christendom to the other the cry is sent up: 'Trust not carnal reason and poor foolish nature; they have plunged more souls into hell than the arch-fiend himself, who bids you follow their guidance.' The whole fabric of the church system is founded on educational prejudice. This system, accumulated under priestly rule, has assumed the character of a dead weight on a man's advancement, dragging him down to ignorance and blind subservience. Why is it indisputably the case that the lawyer, physician, and clergyman are generally striving with their united energies, and ever striven to keep the masses in mental darkness? Simply because their success—their wages, depend on the ignorance of the masses concerning the organic and physical laws. Under these, and no other conditions, will they swallow stale doctrines and nostrums without murmuring. But set them to thinking, and they make sad havoc with the professions. If the clergyman would preach practical lessons of morality, instead of such endless verbose theorisms, they would become more useful members of society. If the doctor would lay aside his antiquated theories and mystical technicalities, and discourse in a language which common sense could understand, explaining the laws of health and life in a simple style, his patients would soon know enough not to be sick. If the lawyer would strive with his brother, the clergyman, to elevate the moral condition of his clients, instead of arousing all the base principles of their nature, his quibbling falsehoods and deceptions would not be needed. Mankind, properly elevated by their moral teachers, would forgive the trespasses of their brother, as they already have the idea of doing, and not nourish those feelings of hate and revenge too often found among the highest order of Christians. If all would strive to elevate their fellows, instead of keeping them in ignorance, how soon, think you, the ram would be redeemed, and all these professional men who now live like sharks in the ocean, on the smaller fishes, be compelled to forego delicacies for which others have labored, and with the motto, 'dig or die,' ringing in their ears, of necessity be forced to honest toil? The clergy have ever acted as a millstone around the neck of reformation, checking progress until it could be restrained no longer—when the masses, bursting through their efforts to hold them back, take a mighty leap upward and onward, carrying everything with their accumulated energy. All the clergy's influence has been directed backward, while humanity has moved forward, despite their efforts. Their cries of infallibility are now but little heeded. Few have patience to hear the jargon of diplomated physicians; and none but the ignorant have confidence in their remedies. A less number of persons think of consulting a priest while on the death-couch. The once prevalent idea of infallibility is fast decreasing. The question now asked is: 'How much do you practically know?' not, 'At what college did you graduate?' Oh, that the bright day, fast dawning, may shine forth, when every one will be his own master, his own sovereign, his own ruler, and govern himself with the strength of his manhood! Then shall we hail a millennium, where all will be developed up to the plane of the highest now on earth. Then we will hail an age of practical intellectual power and morality, shadowed forth in the vague prophecies of the past.

 

Near the place where they were reposing, a clergyman and an infidel were engaged in argument.

 

"Then you doubt all claims of the Bible to inspiration?" said the clergyman.

 

"Not only do I doubt, but wholly, totally disbelieve," replied the infidel. "What claim has it to my belief?"

 

"Why it commands all to believe, or be cast into hell, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth forever."

 

"Because it commands, is that a reason why I should believe?" was the retort, with a sneer.

"In truth it is, and a strong reason, too."

"Must I believe that which contradicts my senses?" "If God says so, you must."

"Does not God speak through nature, as well as the Bible?" "Yes."

"Do they agree?"

"Not apparently."

"Do they, in reality?"

"I must acknowledge that God has seen fit to throw great mysteries in the way of reconciliation, and to my feeble knowledge they cannot be harmonized."

 

"Of the two, acknowledging both came from God, which one must be taken as a standard? Why, the written page, you say, descending through centuries, unknown as to its origin except its own assertion, and even if true, but the rude chronicles of a tribe of low barbarians. Yes, the written page, mutilated, interpolated, falsely translated, must be taken as infallible; and Nature, the living mouthpiece of Deity, the instrument through which He now speaks to mankind, must be rejected! God made nature, and pronounced it all right according to your Bible. We are left to judge of its laws and actions. Our lamp is reason, which you attempt to ridicule and despise; and we call all Christendom to witness that our lives are as correct as yours."

 

"You may be moral, and do right; yet morality is not religion. You are not baptized in the blood of the Lamb, and therefore can never enter life eternal. In the last great day you will be found wanting. Christ died to save sinners; but they must take up his cross."

 

"If Christ died to save sinners, of course without him none can be saved. By what miracle were those saved who died before him? They must necessarily all be lost."

 

"You deny the great doctrine of the atonement!" said the priest, in holy horror.

"I never could believe that my sins were to be laid on an innocent man. I expect to suffer for my own errors, and for no one's else. The world must be saved by its own merits—sink or rise by its own wickedness or goodness. Salvation must be by growth, and not by blood even of a slaughtered God."

"Few, then, will be saved. If our own goodness is to save us, I fear few, few will ever enter heaven."

"Then few will; for to my understanding there can be no other scheme for their salvation—if saved."

"If saved! Why an if?"

"Because I feel the case doubtful."

"Why should the human mind desire immortality—why such an excessive hope in the future?"

"I answer this question by asking another: If man is not annihilated at death, why does he so sadly fear that end?"

"Ah, my dear friend, I fear the old master of evil has hardened your heart, and turned you to error!"

"Satan, you mean? I do not fear him; in truth, air, I never could see the use of the old rascal."

"Worse and worse! Where will you land next? Better disbelieve all else than that. The Bible teaches of a devil as much as of a god."

"And nature says that there is not, as plainly, and a thousand times more conclusively."

[Clergyman musingly.] "Disbelieve in a devil! Why that saps the very foundations of our theology, and destroys all our systems of salvation, all our creeds, our churches everything. [Aloud.] Nature teaches! Ah, vain and miserable mortal! you but exercise your carnal reason."

"If there is a devil, why does God suffer him to exist!"

"It is a part of his inscrutable providence to suffer him to tempt souls to hell."

 

"You say God knows who are going there; if they are doomed, why does he take all this trouble to obtain an excuse for Bending them there? You say God made all things good; the devil is not good, nor ever can have been good. Hence God could not have made him, and he must be co­eternal and co-equal with God, or else so good a being as God must be would not allow such a scoundrel to forever defeat his best plans. Hence your God is limited, and of but little use in nature's government."

 

"O perverse sinner! Satan himself is in your heart. I cannot argue with your stubbornness. Oh, when will you see the true way, and join our holy order?" He turned and walked away, leaving the infidel exulting in his supposed triumph, musing to himself:—

 

"I hate these professors. They appear to think they have a right to abuse anybody who believes not as themselves. Our 'holy order!' Poor self­deluding fools!"

 

"How mistaken are both! One is as much as the other."

 

"It does seem," said Leon, passionately, "that there might be some means to converse with these our erring brothers, and convince one and all that they are in error."