What is sin? If we are able to ascertain what sin is, we shall probably understand why salvation should be extended to the one that sins, or to a community of sinners.

Everything has a beginning. We draw our deductions by comparison. Men judge in part by their own experience, and in part by the experience of others. We see what is going on in our daily active life, how every work or enterprise, society or society reform, is started and set in active operation.

Every beginning is crude and awkward. Rules adopted to govern a family circle, jar and chafe when introduced to govern larger bodies of individuals. What may seem good for a household government would hardly be suitable for a community, and the rules regulating the general community would hardly be available for a people or a nation.

Modifications in the rule of conduct are inevitable as families or communities increase numerically. They may be slow, imperceptible, and cause little disturbance. But sudden and radical changes produce quite another effect. They may cause simple irritation or friction among the elements composing the family or community, may cause temporary embarrassment, or may cause an eruption with considerable commotion, and accompanied with more or less serious effects.

Change in the methods of conducting and regulating the affairs of mankind, individually or collectively, in small family groups or in large communities, has ever been a matter, not only of great interest and deep concern to mankind, but also of bitter dispute, conflict, and hostility.

It has ever been thus, from the time intelligence superseded instinct, with attempts to introduce innovations, new or improved methods regulating the conduct of either individuals or communities, or the general affairs of man. Individual must yield to family, family to community, community to people, and people to nation.

Rules once established, no matter how rude, vulgar, or barbarous, or how enlightened and beneficial, were adopted to secure a general uniformity of conduct or line of action for each individual or family belonging to the community or people, for what was considered the best interest of the whole, and their mutual benefit and safety.

The most primitive rules were instinctively adopted in the lower order of animal life, the laws of self-preservation and mutual protection.

The individual conduct, in either family or community life, is governed accordingly. That is very evident, and requires but little observation to find the secret spring that explains the necessity for its existence.

If a community, whether animals or men, are favorably located, have ample provision and comfort, they will live in peace and contentment, thrive, develop, without friction or trouble. Let a lack of food arise, or let the numbers increase and produce a scarcity, strife is inevitable. New, other than peaceful, methods are adopted. Either they quarrel and battle among themselves, or they go in search of food elsewhere—emigrate, in part or as a whole. If they meet with opposition, they will fight—the strongest takes possession, might asserts its right, and the conquerer becomes the ruling power.

In the early stages of human civilization, thousands of years ago, the simplest primitive rules were established for the conduct and guidance of the individual living in the community—for, of course, mutual protection and self-preservation. Humanity in a barbarous state adopted these rules, and handed them down from generation to generation until at length they were codified into laws. What are they?

Honor thy parents.

Do not commit murder.

Do not take another man’s wife.

Do not bear false witness.

Do not take anything belonging to another.

These are laws for self-preservation and mutual protection! If such simple rules were not recognized and established, neither life nor property would be safe. Destruction of life and forcible possession of property would naturally lead to extermination.

The family union is instinctive. The father, like the leader of a flock, is in authority. He is feared, therefore honored.

A community soon learns from experience that “in union is strength.” Herds of cattle seem to know this, and are ever ready to protect and defend themselves collectively.

The lowest savages, barbarians, observe among themselves the first, yes, primitive rules to govern them in community, in family.

These rules arose from necessity. It was for each individual’s interest, for family interest, and for the interest of the community at large, to adopt these rules, obey them and have them obeyed. These rules were for individual welfare, and for the common welfare of the community at large, the preservation of their lives and the protection of their life and property.

So long as any community of human beings, whatever be their condition, have ample provision to satisfy their wants, and are secure from depredations from without, there will be no trouble. Happiness and contentment, as well as peace and prosperity, will characterize their state.

As to the relation between males and females, that regulates itself. All communities, barbarians and savages, have always some general recognized rule to guide them. Female chastity is secure among all nations, high and low, civilized and uncivilized, whether they are decorated in a complete suit of nudity, a gauze covering, or a ball-room dress. There is no necessity of going back four or five thousand years. CÆsar relates (Lib. vi, 21) that the Germans were in complete undress costume when bathing promiscuously; yet they had their customs of marriage and marriage ceremonies. In this country we have had the same customs and may have again. When Columbus arrived at one of the islands of the Caribs, 1494, a cacique and his family paid him a visit. This family consisted of two daughters, five sons, and five brothers. “One of the daughters was eighteen years of age, beautiful in form and countenance; her sister somewhat younger; both were naked, according to the custom of these islands, but were of modest demeanor” (Irving).

As a further illustration I quote from Irving’s description of the people that Peter Martyr met with. He relates: “It is certain that the land among the people is as common as the sun and water; and that ‘mine and thine,’ the seed of all mischief, have no place with them. They are content with so little, that in so large a country they have rather superfluity than scarceness; so they seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens; not intrenched with dykes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, without judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who taketh pleasure in doing hurt to another; and albeit they delight not in superfluities, yet they make provision for the increase of such roots whereof they make their bread, content with such simple diet, whereby health is preserved and disease avoided.”

Possibly somewhere on the African continent there may still exist a people that live a life as simple and as happy as those in the time of Columbus. But everything must yield before northern energy and Christian greed; besides, the new-comers need the land for their surplus population.

May we not ask, Is not our present high state of civilization the natural outcome of our necessities in the struggle to exist? Is not our high state of nervous development largely due to that struggle?

Indolence and inactivity produce nothing. Activity and diligence produce and invent all things.

All wrongful acts committed are either injuries done to ourselves, or injuries inflicted upon others.

Injuries done to ourselves are not necessarily sins. Onanism, for example, is unquestionably injurious, yet is not recognized as a sin. It leads to the insane asylum, and in many instances underlies religious insanity.

There are other disgusting practices that are neither injurious nor recognized as sins.

The stomach commits no sin, but leads nevertheless to many wrongs, to one’s self.

All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. And all injuries done to others are accounted both sins and crimes.

What seems very strange yet is wonderfully true is that all sins and crimes against others find their origin in the indulgence of either stomach or sexual organs.

Starvation may lead to crime. Hunger often drives to theft. Extravagance, lust, and luxury lead to any variety of crime, from forgery to appropriating another man’s wife.

In the gratification of those two organs, passions, we find the cradle of all crime.

And what we call morality means the proper regulation of these passions, of these organs.

The church occasionally takes cognizance of sins, when discovered, that do not come within the category of crime, as was seen recently in the case of a Major Theobald who seduced his niece while nursing his invalid wife; he was suspended for one year, but saved his soul!

All our civil justices in the city of New York are kept busy to regulate and to punish overindulgences of the stomach and some other petty wrongs. Our criminal courts are kept busy in punishing those who have wrongfully appropriated other people’s property, or injured or killed another.

The superior civil courts attend to the disputes about property.

Why do those who adopt for their mode of livelihood the profession of theology want to exercise salvation? What have they to save?

Let us examine for what sins the Deluge was brought, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and Christ was crucified.

The principal scriptural sins:

Cain commits murder, from jealousy, because God preferred meat to vegetables (Gen. iv, 8).

Gen. vi, 5: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The contents of this sentence is absurd. The heart cannot imagine, or think. The function of the heart is the circulation of the blood.

What this wickedness consisted of, we do not know.

History has no record exactly where this Flood or Deluge took place. That it was localized is certain. It was in all probability nothing more than an overflow of the river Euphrates—that is joined by the river Tigris, and terminates in the Gulf of Persia—in consequence of a series of consecutive rainstorms, etc., and God had as much to do with this supposed deluge as he has to do with any deluge in the Mississippi valley when that river overflows.

Gen. vi, 6: “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.” Now we are getting at God’s anatomy!

Man may labor under delusions—hear voices, etc. All those extravagant statements are perfectly excusable from our modern standpoint.

All this wickedness is supposed to have taken place 2348 before the Christian era, and we have still the same sort of wickedness on earth as there was then. Barbarians inhabited that region—rude, crude, half-civilized herdsmen, not much superior to our Indians. Minding their flocks and increasing their families was their main occupation. Abraham made no scruples in cohabiting with Miss Hagar, Sarah’s maid; nor had Jacob any objections to Miss Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, nor did he scruple to accommodate Miss Zilpha, Leah’s maid, and later we read how Reuben lay with Bilhah, Jacob’s mistress. Shechem seduced Dina, Jacob’s daughter. Her brothers Simon and Levi killed all the males, etc. At this time, we learn, harlots were in fashion.

We have it recited, crime after crime—according to our modern notions—yet these barbarians were God’s own people! After killing Shechem, and Hamor his father, and all the rest of the males, they took possession of their property. Lot and his daughters is another instance of biblical ethics.

This barbarian family, these shepherds, had their first experience in civilization when they reached Egypt, and whatever they practiced later was adopted from that nation. They had received some training under Egyptian rule for nearly four hundred and thirty years. During this period we hear nothing of sin or transgression. No sooner were they organized as a community than the sins, transgressions, and wickedness broke out anew, and continued right along in a greater or lesser degree through the patriarchal period, theocratic period, and monarchial period. During the entire national existence of nearly one thousand years to their captivity, we have recited sins, transgressions, and crime, crime, transgressions, and sin; and all are perfectly human, perfectly natural among barbarians, savages, half-civilized, and even civilized people. Whether David lusts after a nude woman, or Amnon forces his own sister, it reveals the weakness of animal human nature, and is a breach of the recognized laws, and a lack of discipline.

All through the Old Testament the same story is repeated—sensuality, cruelty, and crime; and rebellion against the established laws. It is the burden of song and of prophecy—greed and scramble for power, the cause of continual dissension. The only time the Jews were reasonably quiet was when they were exterminating other nations, plundering and taking forcible possession of their women and female children as well as their property. The great burden of sin throughout the Old Testament consists in the infringement of the law established by Moses, to worship no other god except the one he manufactured—that is, a God endowed with all brutality and sensuality, without a representative form, a God that had all the senses and could utilize them. The wooden idol had these organs but could not use them, while the Mosaic God had them not but could exercise all the functions of animal life. In the light of history, all ages display the same process in the human mind—the same passions and the same tendencies, held more or less under restraint, according to the laws, customs, and habits of the people. The Jews during their whole career were more or less idolators, and were continually relapsing into the idolatry, of some one kind or another, of dead men, which was practiced under different celestial or animal emblems in the neighboring countries. And it was not ended until after the Babylonish captivity, 588 B.C., and when Ezra returned to Jerusalem, 557 B.C., who collected the various manuscripts and put them into some sort of shape and started to rebuild the Temple. This event took place during the reign of Xerxes son of Darius. Ezra and his companions had been educated meanwhile. They had enjoyed the privilege of a Babylonian education. They had the advantage of their learning, their philosophy. Now they returned better equipped mentally than ever they were before their captivity. And for the first time they began to call themselves “holy seed” (chapter ix). They had intermarried with the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Amorites, etc., (verse 2) “so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands.” Verse 6, this priest goes into hysterics: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee,” etc. Chapter x: He prays, confesses, and weeps and casts himself down before the house of God, etc. Verse 11: “And separate yourself from the people of the land, and from the strange wives.” Of course their wives were sent adrift. That was the first time in their history that marriages were restricted to their own nation. This also is the first wholesale divorce on record. Intermarriages they had been guilty of for many centuries, and they were never accounted a sin until the time of Ezra. After this reformation the same sins continue, intermarriages perhaps excepted. The animal predominated, as it naturally would. Selfishness was more prominent than ever. They knew the value of gold, and onyx stone, and bdellium. God had told them all about it in Gen. ii, 11, 12. The commercial enterprise started with creation, and has continued. Jehova had not half the romance and the poesy of Zeus or Jupiter. The latter had all the Grecian refinement, while the former had all the barbarity of Chaldea.

Thus, the identical sins continued through the remaining centuries until Christ made his entry on this world’s stage. He came opportunely. It was at a time of great agitation. Judea was a Roman province. Pontius Pilate was governor. Corruption, fraud, and crimes of all descriptions were practiced and flourished. The Temple served as a place for barter and business. Sedition, parricide, greed, and seduction were the ruling crimes and passions. Fanatics, heretics, and blasphemers were abundant. There were any number of religious factions, quarreling and fighting among themselves, hating one another heartily, and doing one another as much mischief as in their power lay. The frequent contact with foreign invading nations brought new notions, new customs and usages. New ideas consequently developed—sins and salvation of souls. And humility and meekness were put forth against arrogance of wealth, domineering, and priestly oppression. Communistic and socialistic ideas are always a prolific field for the hungry, poor, and starving. “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts,” etc. (Matt. vi, 11, 12). Christ’s camel and needle story confirms it. The result was he had a following, preached reformation, and accusation and persecution put an end to his life. It had taken root, and a new sect was formed.

Was his life sacrificed for the sins of humanity? Nonsense! This young man’s death has not relieved any one, much more all future generations, of their sins. What? Sacrifice a man to God in place of sheep and cattle? So long as men have senses and passions, so long as we have extremes of poverty and wealth, sin remains.

The prevention of sin has never been the function of the church. The trespasses of the natural laws were not properly understood, and the masses are not educated up to that standard even now. Each man and woman pays the penalty if he or she trespass against her or himself; and if they trespass or sin against another, our civil laws take care of that part.

Has humanity improved since the coming of Christ? Where do you find it? In the history of the Catholic church?

They have two kinds of sin, mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin entails spiritual death. Venial sin does not. Mountains of literature have been written upon that one subject. Hundreds of thousands of men have assumed the task of salvation for nearly two thousand years. What have they accomplished? What have the popes, bishops, and priests done? And what are they doing now? Of what use are they? They have been more of a curse to the world than a benefit. We are too busy to look back at popish history, the power, the ignorance, the superstition, the darkness, and the persecution that overshadowed the world during the popes’ tyrannical and bloodthirsty rule. Greed, the chief characteristic of the churchmen, readily finds means to raise money for their use and benefit. In 1517 they sold indulgences for past and future sins. Every crime was pardoned. Luther and reformation came. Did this change or eradicate the evil? No! God, Christ, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary, etc., assumed only a milder role, only a slight transformation. The Catholic church has been the greatest curse of any church that ever existed. They started their anathemas (curses) at Nice 325 A.D., and have continued cursing, through the twentieth council at Trent, 1546 A.D., and still continue. Their power has to some extent been modified, but the spirit of intolerance only slumbers. They readily accommodate themselves to circumstances. If they cannot rule the nation, they will seize the schools and train the young, inculcating obedience to the church—that the youth shall be subservient to the priest and yield up their earnings to the pope’s treasure. These are supported by the masses, assisted by the state, to teach stuff like the following sample: