  ENGLAND is now for the first time offering to the toiling portion of its people a fair modicum of the education which was in old time the exclusive privilege of the rich. In doing so it has acted with a keen eye to self-preservation, for the history of every fallen nation shows that the unaided ignorance of the masses has been a principal and fatal element in its downfall. This truth would seem to be not yet fully realized by all of higher education in the country; for the teaching that many of them counsel for the poor is clogged with ignorance and clouded with error from which their own higher culture has long been free. It is distressing to see men who no longer regard the Bible as anything more than a curious and interesting record, a compound of reflections of ancient myths and poetry, commingled with a considerable amount of fabulous history and absurd theology—to see any such man still arguing that for the poor and for the young it is a necessary subject of study, and (for them) a useful article of belief! Do those who argue thus deem the light of reason too clear, too pure, too delightful, for mankind at large; or is it that they trust that the useful ignorance of the workers will continue to supply them with unmerited or unworthy luxuries? In neither case can the position endure. The refinement of Rome might loftily echo Odi profanum vulgus et arceo: but Rome has herself fallen; and not on the portals of future science or of humanity shall any such motto be written. Freedom of Knowledge is the corollary to Freedom of Thought: in the society of the future no hierarchy or oligarchy of intellect will close its doors upon the masses; none will find delight in either sensuous or intellectual pleasure obtained at the cost of the baser condition of others. The following Reprint will be found a clear exposition of the incongruities of creed and record and dogma taught to the poor as a system of ethics for the whole of their life; and held as a convenient thing up to a certain age for the young, and especially the female young, of the moneyed classes. It is time that such warfare as this should be aggressive; that such books as the present should be part of the food of our children. Our truest feelings and our tenderest years have been enslaved to blind faith, unreasoning credulity and degrading fear; our infant lips have been trained to link in loving accents the gentle and holy names of Mother and of Father with that of a God of jealousy, of vengeance, and brutality; our growing mind has been warned to look to a Hebrew ascetic as the noblest type of the divine, and to a Hebrew profligate and murderer as the highest type of the human. As the opening thought of youth has striven to turn to the light of reason, it has been constantly threatened back and thrust back into the dark of superstition. It has been told that eternal misery is the doom of those who leave the paths of dogma; and it has been falsely and persistently taught that Free-thinkers are evil and unclean, men without care for right, scoffers at every good thing. But it is not scoffers who wage this war of the rational against the supernatural: let none deceive themselves with that vain thought, or perpetuate the incorrect assertion. Of such books as the present, such writings as the present, some at least are the words of men and women who have been born to, and striven toward a godly life, with intense effort, with groanings not to be uttered: who, nursed in the bosom of the Church, and partakers in all her most sacred ordinances, crushed down as unholy the first and the repeated breathings of doubt and of reasoning their minds; who held to the falseness of their early teachings,—till there came that final struggle, when they wrestled with God,—to hold him,—not to lose him; gasping with fevered lips and shut teeth and scalding eyelids, "I will not let thee go ": and who won a blessing they knew not of in that they proved the Jehovah of Hebraism, the God of Christianity, to be an Apollyon of Superstition: who cast him off in disgust, in loathing, in half despair; who lay faint and bleeding through a night of darkness: but to whom, with the dawn, has come the free and bracing air of reason, and then the deep warm glow of true life, and humanity, and universal love,—love given this time not to a fetish, but to every fellow being, to man and beast, to tree and moss, to stone and star. With a great price obtained we this freedom, and we will that our Sons and that our Daughters be free born. To such a liberator as Robert G. Ingersoll the thanks of present parents are lovingly offered; his name will be cherished by our children, and his memory hallowed in the gratitude of generations yet unborn. B. E. Rudyard: 9th Month, 1881. BOUQUET GARNI. It is the curse of England that its intellect can see truths which its heart will not embody. —Laurence Oliphant The root of all tyranny and oppression, of all social and human ills, is found in witholding from the masses of each community mental culture, or knowledge that may be conferred on all. —Rd. Carlile. Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and every thing that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into tyranny over the understandings of men. —Bacon. A healthy poetic nature wants, as you yourself say, no Moral Law, no Rights of Man, no Political Metaphysics. You might have added as well, it wants no Deity, no Immortality, to stay and uphold itself withal. —Letter from Schiller to Goethe. Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. —Wordsworth. * A Bouquet Garni is a little bundle of herbs, some bitter some sweet, but all salutary.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION |
|
