Religion, supernaturalism, ecclesiastical control of human affairs, have done more harm than the good they have ever effected. For several thousand years they have been doing the worst of mischief—in spite of their conceited belief to the contrary—to actual enlightenment, to the advancement and prosperity of the masses, to the progress of nations generally. They have been a persistent barrier to every step forward, and have persecuted every idea that threatened in any way to interfere with their organized system. The sacred or Hebraic nationality, steeped in barbarism, washed in cruelty, and bathed in the blood of humanity, was succeeded by another organized system, the Roman Catholic church, which was by no means an improvement upon the Bible methods. They added savagery and cruelty of a more refined character. They associated with it a tyranny and a persecution that fairly blackens the pages of history. All was done, however, for the sacred cause, with the cant, sanctimoniousness, greed, and selfishness that only the church and its saintly priests could be capable of. These self-styled divine organizations ever have been, and are even now, inimical to the best social interests of humanity. Their own aggrandizement was of greater importance to them than the welfare of the oppressed. They are the real promoters of class distinction. They are the promulgators of sectarian hate. They lessen the dignity of woman. They are the fomentors of prejudice and superstition. They are the supporters and sustainers of the opulent, the powerful, the wealthy and influential, to the detriment and debasement of the poor and more unfortunate classes. They are the actual enemies of virtue and simplicity of life—by their expensive church trappings, their gorgeous adornments, their costly decorations, their glaring exhibition, their glittering finery, their pompous display of church dress, their gilded magnificence, their showy grandeur, their ostentation and boastful ceremonies, overawing the senses, and subduing the humble, the ignorant, making them mentally more stupid, the slaves to a pernicious system of doctrine.

In ancient times, in the days of antiquity, the males were the chief worshipers. They were the privileged portion of the community, who assumed the duties to come in direct contact with all that was considered sacred, holy, or divine. Woman was considered as a defiled or polluted creature, unworthy or unfit to come within the sacred precincts of their temples or participate in any church affairs, or to minister in any of their ecclesiastical rites or ceremonies. Women had nothing to say. They have nothing to say to this day, in the Roman Catholic church especially, and in the orthodox Protestant denominations very little, because Paul lays down the law in Cor. xiv, 34: “Let your women keep silence in your churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.”

The sacred Christian view of woman is that she is an inferior creature. She is the slave, the plaything, the toy of pleasurable gratification. God himself so ordained it, when he created Adam out of the dust and Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. That was the Chaldean mode of explaining her inferiority and of subjecting woman to man. These barbarians, first the Hebrews, and Christians later, did not think fit to place woman on a level with man. Therefore they placed her in the lower scale of creation as a servant and handmaid to man. The heathens, the Greeks especially, were more considerate, politer, and more refined towards women. Women were honored by them, which is evident from the composition of the council of Jupiter, the supreme divinity. This was composed of six gods, namely, Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, and Vulcan; and six goddesses, namely, Juno, Ceres, Vesta, Minerva, Diana, and Venus. To this assembly no other deities were admitted. There is some sense, reason, and humanity in this arrangement. It is very unlike the great masculine bully of a God, what Christians call sacred and scriptural Jehova, an intermeddling, sensual, beef-eating affair, who has sons and never tells any one where they came from, who the mother was (Gen. vi, 2): “And the sons of God,” etc. Vestal virgins were admitted by the Romans to their temples, thus showing that woman was honored. She was equally privileged with man to minister to the sacred offices of the gods. Civilization has advanced, progress has been made in the arts and sciences, the intellectual faculties are more developed, and to woman has been conceded her proper place among the learned and the more liberal portion of humanity. Intellectually no line of demarcation is drawn. Cultured brain is cultured brain, whether found in man or in woman. Both sexes stand on the same platform, on an equal footing, and they receive equal honor and recognition if the mental capacity is equal. What is the relation of woman to-day to the respective churches to which she may belong? Has the Roman Catholic church receded one step from her antiquated ecclesiastical position? Or have the orthodox Protestants? Not one step! Woman still holds the same degraded position in the Christian church as she did a thousand years ago. Circumstances have somewhat ameliorated the relative position of church and worshipers. Formerly the males were the principal church attenders and worshipers. In modern times it is the women who make the congregations. The male, if he attends, does so to please the female more than himself. Besides, the sexual attractions contribute very largely towards these Sunday entertainments. “Women” (says Maudsley, in his “Pathology of Mind,” ch. iv, page 143) “are naturally more prone to religious worship than man, and more apt to fall into a morbidly subjective habit, first, because of the preponderance of the affective life in them, and secondly, because they have not the distracting and correcting and intellectually hardening influences of outside interests and pursuits which men have. If unmarried women chance to come, as by reason of those conditions they are apt to do, under the ignorant and misapplied zeal of unwise priests who mistake for deep religious feeling what is really morbid self-feeling springing at bottom from unsatisfied instinct or other uterine action upon the mind, the mischief is greatly aggravated. It were well if those who make it their business to guide the consciousness of mankind through the manifold changes and chances of life were to be at the pains to inquire how much supposed religious feeling may be due to physiological causes, before they sanction or enjoin a repeated introspection of the feelings. He whose every organ is in perfect health knows not he has a body, and only becomes conscious that he has organs when something wrong is going on; in like manner a healthy mind in the sound exercise of the functions is little conscious that he has feeling, and only gets very self-conscious when there is something morbid in the processes of its activity. The ecstatic trances of such saintly women as Catherine de Sienne and St. Theresa, in which they believed themselves to be visited by their Savior and to be received as veritable spouses into his bosom, were, though they knew it not, little else than vicarious sexual orgasm; a condition of things which the intense contemplation of the naked male figure, carved or sculptured in all its proportions on the cross, is more fitted to produce in women of susceptible nervous temperament than people are apt to consider. Every experienced physician must have met with instances of single and childless women who have devoted themselves with extraordinary zeal to habitual religious exercises, and who having gone insane as a culmination of their emotional fervor, have straightway exhibited the saddest mixture of religious and erotic symptoms—a boiling over with lust, in voice, face, gesture, under the pitiful degradation of disease. On such persons the confessional has had sometimes the most injurious effect, more especially in those churches which spring Romanism in their ritual, have not placed confession under the stringent regulations and safeguards with which the Roman Catholic church surrounds it. The fanatical religious sects, such as the Shakers and the like, which spring up from time to time in communities and disgust them by the offensive way in which they mingle love and religion, are inspired in great measure by sexual feelings. On the one hand, there is probably the cunning of a hypocritical knave or the self-deceiving duplicity of a half-insane one, using the weaknesses of weak woman to minister to his vanity or to his lust, under a religious guise; on the other hand, there is an exaggerated self-feeling, rooted often in sexual passions, which is unwittingly fostered under the cloak of religious emotion, and which is apt to conduct to madness or to sin. In such case the holy kiss of love owes its warmth to the sexual impulse which inspires it, consciously or unconsciously, and the mystical religious union of the sexes is fitted to issue in a less spiritual union. Without doubt, an excessive development of the emotional life in any other direction would be equally pernicious. All that the unwise religious teacher can be blamed for is his disposition to foster the egotistic development of emotion, without considering its real origin, by the overwhelming importance which he teaches the individual to attach to himself and his destiny. Instead of urging him to lessen the gap between himself and nature until he loses self in a sympathetic oneness with nature, he stimulates him to widen it more and more until he rises to the insane conceit of himself as something entirely distinct from nature—an unrelated, spiritual essence, for whose benefit the universe and all that there is has been specially created. Assuredly were not man now, as he always has been, instinctively wiser than his creeds, were he not moved by a deeper impulse than consciousness can give account of, he would make no progress in civilization.”

The church has lost its grip on the male portion of society. They have considerably outgrown the ecclesiastical swaddling of scriptural doctrine of the ancient and modern theology. The woman is the stronghold as worshiper, and sustainer of the sacred masculine prerogative whom they can easily influence. By reason, as the holy book claims, of their intellectual feebleness, women are the submissive tools of cunning priests, sentimental and emotional appeals, and yield readily to their extravagant dictum. The priests exhort them, with their conventional religious phraseology, to be partakers of some mysterious glory to be found somewhere in infinite space. Keeping ever in sight the same stupefying refrain of the orthodox prayer and blessing: “Blessed and glorious trinity, trinity in unity, three—one, three persons in one God, tri-personal, triune, coeternal, coequal, God-man, O Lord God! who art one God, one Lord! not one only person, but three persons in one substance! O Lord God! Lamb of God! Son of the father! O God the son, Redeemer of the world! O God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the father and the son! The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be among you. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you. Glory be to the father, and to the son, and to the Holy Ghost. Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be all honor and glory. Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end,” etc.

These are the terms and doxologies, forms of prayer and blessings. Can anyone conceive a more meaningless set of phrases? These are automatically repeated year in and year out, with the same intonation, gesture, whirling and buzzing in a circle. Do not the brains become blunted, the senses dulled? Or is it a mere mechanical effort, accompanied by an extraordinary amount of insincerity and actual duplicity of character? The conceit of these theological gentlemen, claiming divine superiority, is in consequence of the frequent repetition of the above vapid nonsense, that they are the truly chosen and elect, separate and apart from other people. Though they accept and place trust in the above creed, God, Son, and Holy Ghost, and delude themselves with prayers, blessings, psalm-singing, and the rest of supernatural subterfuge, do they believe that it will save them—save their bodies from dissolution, when the vital organs have ceased to perform their functions? These fixed delusions are not wholesome. Encouraging them is misleading and deceiving those who are ignorant of the actual state of nature. It is playing upon the weak and simple-minded. It means corrupting their morals and their understanding. It is paralyzing to every human effort. It is degrading manhood and womanhood. Analyze the meaning of the belief, the language employed, the associations of ideas, and seriously consider the amount of sense you can discover. Does not this rigid system of changeless belief prevent intellectual development? Does it not bar proper inquiry into the phenomena of nature? Does it not encourage a cowardly dependence on priestcraft and hypocritical cunning? Does it not extinguish every impulse towards the evolution of thought? Does it not stamp out the energies and aspirations of man and woman? Is not the kneeling and praying before some daub of a picture or the figure of some supposed God or saint debasing and degrading to the individual? Is not the act of prayer a humiliating acknowledgement either of an enfeebled mind or of a contemptible slave? Is not the will power subdued and deteriorated and the natural energy destroyed? Are not the functions of the brain seriously interfered with, the mental faculties checked in the normal process of development, and the powers of reason stifled by the asphyxiating influences of prayer? Does it not blunt the sense of responsibility, breed insincerity, foster falsehood, promote lying, and offer a premium for wrong-doing and a shelter for crime? Imagine the stupefying effect of counting beads. The “Rosary” is a series of prayers, and consists of fifteen decades. Each decade contains ten Ave Marias, marked by small beads, preceded by a pater noster, marked by a larger bead, and concluded by a gloria patri. Five decades make a chaplet, which is a third of a rosary. What a sluggardizing effect on the intellect, what a suppression of intelligence, and how near it brings them to the borderland of monomaniacs, by the constant mumbling of those insipid compositions. The sooner we get rid of the belief in this supernatural intervention in human affairs the better for our physical, moral, and mental welfare. Every time the priest induces his pupil to repeat a prayer, he stupefies and degrades his pupil. He knocks the pins of self-restraint and self-reliance right from under him. The blessing the pupil receives, and the forgiveness at the confessional, shift the responsibility for his acts off his shoulders, thus leading him to believe himself irresponsible for any wrong he may commit. The absurd doctrine inculcated, that God made him necessarily makes him irresponsible. If God was a fool big enough to make him bad, or silly, why should he be responsible? The priest who helps to maintain and sustain this belief, helps to weaken the pupil’s mind and rather gives him license to indulge than restrains him.

You are taught to deceive yourselves and deceive others by prayer, but you cannot bribe nature; you cannot deceive nature. The penalty must be paid for every transgression. And prayers are absolutely useless, nay, every prayer is an admission of an act of cowardice, just as every blessing pronounced is a humiliation to those receiving it. What necessity is there for a man who is supposed to teach morality to be dressed like a clown in scarlet, purple, or other-colored coat and decorated with an antiquated headgear like a mountebank going through a series of peculiar gesticulations and ceremonials of buffoonery, in order to sustain this ecclesiastical humbug? Would it not be better to train the intellect by teaching the young how to observe accurately, to reason soundly from facts, to think honestly and act sincerely, have the truth revealed and nature and nature’s laws soundly and practically interpreted? An insight into the secret workings of nature would lead to a more precise adjustment on the part of man to his complex surroundings, guard cautiously against the infringement of nature’s laws, and correspondingly produce gain in intellectual power. How can a man be otherwise than reckless, or willfully disobedient, to laws he is entirely ignorant of, though he brings certain punishment upon himself? Can there be any better discipline than to learn the cause and know the root of all evils, in order to avoid them, thus improving the morals and inducing one to take earnest pains to do well in the future? There is more satisfaction in doing right than many may think, if people were instructed how. Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical mills of forgiveness are too busy teaching supernatural follies, which actually mislead the ignorant and the foolish. As a foolish woman spoils her own child by her own silly conduct, so the supernatural creeds have spoilt humanity by perverting the moral responsibility in teaching their pernicious beliefs. Wonder why the world has not become better? Teach men the moral and physical laws of nature, by lessons of experience, that may guide them in their conduct through life. Teach them to learn prudence, and observe them faithfully and sincerely. Good, natural, healthy thoughts produce good actions; by their frequent repetition, generate good habits of doing well, of doing right. The nervous structures that are brought into play, the mental activities, function these excellences, developing these faculties, generating higher moral feelings. We finally come to regard as doing wrong acting contrary to our acquired habit. Good impulses to act right and do well come out of good feelings. To act otherwise becomes repugnant to our acquired habits, our second nature, and is judged unwise by our reason and understanding. Let nature teach you to be wise, and when you understand the natural you will cease to believe in aught supernatural.

Do not believe in a God—there is no such thing. Do not believe in the divinity of any man, whether he be called Moses, Jesus Christ, or Martin Luther. Do not believe that the book called the Bible, sacred scripture, and Testaments, new or old, is sacred, holy, or inspired by any supernatural being. Do not believe the story of the creation as recited in the five books of Moses—they are not true. It is a fiction, a sort of fairy tale. It is the work of the imagination of man. Do not believe in any miracle. No man can perform a miracle, except to the ignorant and stupid. No man in the Bible ever performed a miracle. Those said to have been performed were deceptions, tricks, and delusions. Do not believe in the Holy Ghost. There are no ghosts, either holy or unholy. And above all, do not give credence to that very silly piece of nonsense, that the Holy Ghost committed adultery with Mrs. Mary Joseph, the reputed mother of Jesus Christ. Nor believe that the young man Jesus was the son of God, nor that he came upon earth to save the world from sinning. Do not believe that there are three Gods in one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; nor God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Ghost. This fallacy, compounded of Hebraic theology and Grecian mythology, is an absurd fabrication—this trinity in unity, and unity in trinity. Do not believe in a heaven, nor in a hell. You make your own heaven, and your own hell. Nor place any reliance on future rewards, or future punishments. Your good conduct will bring your rewards and your bad conduct your punishments. Do not believe in angels, spirits, or any supernatural existences. Have no faith in anything you do not understand. Place no reliance on divine interference. Do not follow blindly any ecclesiastical teachings. Rely upon yourself. Let reason and common sense be your guide. Do not pray—praying makes a coward of you. Nor place confidence in the blessing of any man, be he the pope or some fanatical preacher. Never kneel before any image, whether it be the nude figure of Christ, or a daub painting of the Virgin Mary. Do not be the dupe of priestly cunning. Do not be afraid of anything except your own bad deeds, your vicious habits, and your own transgressions.

Some Rules and Duties in Life.

Health is essential for physical and mental labor. The maintenance of health consists in having proper food, proper clothing, and proper shelter. Work is a duty, nature demands it. Exercise that duty. Earn so much as will provide the necessary comforts in life. Indolence is a vice, and laziness a crime. They are of no good to their practicers, and a curse to others. Economy is a law of nature. Save your surplus produce of industry. It comes useful in time of need. Avoid excesses of all kinds. Do not overtax or over-stimulate the organs of the body. Luxuries are injurious to health. Remember the stomach is only a receptacle for food and not a cesspool for all kinds of refuse. Cleanliness of stomach and body is necessary for the healthy action both of mind and body. A rigid adherence to the natural rules is the surest safeguard against disease. Make judicious use of everything. Abuse neither yourself nor others. Each individual is his own guardian over his own acts. He himself is responsible for his own misdeeds, whether through ignorance, want of proper education or understanding, or weakness.

Our guide through life should be: Speak the truth always. Let yes and no be the form of speech. Every promise fulfill. Never deceive yourself, or deceive others. Promise nothing you cannot perform. Honesty is ennobling, dishonesty debasing. Let every word and act be strictly reliable, never waver or fail in your integrity. Be punctilious in your duties towards others. Do not cheat yourself or your neighbors. Misrepresentation is wrong. Have confidence in yourself, others will have confidence in you. Do not slander others, lest you do an injury, doing evil without benefit to yourself. A slanderer is despised. Let your motives be pure, your purpose upright. Be mild in speech, even in temper. Kind words are inexpensive. Anger and passion are brutal qualities, be human. Do not get excited over trifles, it does not prolong life. If your habits are bad, mend them. Good impulses come from good feelings, as bad impulses from bad feelings. Our character is molded by our habits, as our habits are by our instruction. By your conduct gain the esteem of your fellow-men. It is better to be loved than hated. Injure no one. Despise no one. Be neither prejudiced nor bigoted. Gain the respect of every man, and respect those that deserve to be respected. Obey the existing laws. Learn to depend on yourself. Trust in your own judgment, none will be so true to you as yourself. Hope is delusive, action is certain. Reveal not your own thoughts to others lest they betray you. Confidence, self-possession, and presence of mind guard against surprises. Do not mind other people’s business, you may not find time to mind your own. Negligence is a fault, diligence is a virtue. Frivolity is the froth of life. It has neither strength nor substance. There is more satisfaction in an ounce of peace than in a ton of wrangling. Control your appetites, subdue your passions, if you would be human. Remember there is no heaven beyond this life, therefore make your home and your life as beautiful as you can. Few wants well supplied, is better than many wants unsatisfied. Desire nothing you cannot obtain, it will save you annoyance. Do not assume to be what you are not. Nature has marked you. Do not be tempted by trifles, life is too short and time too precious. Pleasures are enjoyable where the senses are not overstrained. Be not too proud, nor too vain, no matter how great you are; man, like the animal, is composed only of eighteen elements. Ambition is laudable, when others are not made to suffer. Do not try to be greater than you are; a gill will never fill a pint. Gain understanding, and let reason and common sense guide you in all your acts. Look out. Save your honor, your integrity, and your character. Our duty on earth is to be good, to do right, and contribute to the betterment of our fellow-men. The higher we rise in intelligence, the farther we are removed from the brute. Free yourself from all supernatural notions, all antiquated beliefs, and all superstitions. The humanization of mankind marks the progress of civilization. The excitement of pleasure is not lasting; exhaustion stops all enjoyment; too much sunshine is fatiguing; too much laughter is trying. Empty stomachs make a bad audience, hunger breeds discontent. Poverty is degrading; it ruins health, breeds disease, and lowers the morals. Neglect yourself and everybody will neglect you. Lost opportunities are seldom recovered. The higher you climb the farther you are removed from the lower levels. One wrong act loses the balance of integrity, our esteem suffers. One grain of intelligence is worth a pound of brute force. Be prudent, discreet, and deliberate in all transactions in life, but quick in decision. Distrust persuasive, bland, smooth, suave talkers. A pious hypocrite is the worst of frauds. Your own faults are the greatest misfortune. A brave man is never discouraged, and simpletons are the prey for sharpers. Don’t be a coward in danger, or pray when disaster overtakes you. Self-abuse is the worst abuse. Your expenditure should never exceed your income. Aspire to be better, not worse. You cannot get wealthy on nothing. Millionaire and beggar belong to this earth, whether living or dead. Our success in life depends on the quality of Brain. Polished steel is of greater value than common iron ore, so are intellectual faculties of greater worth than uncultured brains. The weaker must yield to the stronger. The friction of life is great; the less the resisting force, the sooner it yields. In the struggle the strongest survive. Tenacity to life and tenacity to our possessions lead to success. Let those who accumulate great wealth unjustly, yield it readily to those who are most in need. A man can accumulate vast riches only by the industry of many, never by his own. Remember dead men enjoy nothing, therefore be wise, be reasonable, make your heaven on earth, your paradise of your home. Be your own God, your own Savior, your own priest.