Is The Bible Worth Reading, and Other Essays. Lemuel Kelley Washburn
the earth for a dwelling-place for man. But as it is, we have to think as well of Nature as possible and dodge her lightning, run from her water-spouts, keep out of the way of cyclones and shift for ourselves while here. What follows nobody knows. It may be better for us beyond this life; we hope it is no worse. And it may be only sleep, sleep with no dreams and no awakening. We should dislike to die on this side of the grave with the fear that we should come out on the other only to meet a hurricane in the teeth, or find an earthquake had been put under us to give us a shaking up the first thing on that “shining shore,” or to be caught in a furious torrent that poured down the sides of some heavenly mountain. Earth is a pretty good place when the conditions are all favorable, but if we are to have another life it ought to be a better one or else we should be saved the trouble of dying.
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The feet of progress have always been shod by doubt.
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A true man will not join anything that in any way abridges his freedom or robs him of his rights.
THE INFINITE PURPOSE
A Christian writer recently said:—“The supreme duty of humanity is to get into touch with the infinite purpose.” This may be so, but we want first to understand just what the infinite purpose is before we subscribe to it. When the infinite purpose is bent on getting up an earthquake we do not care to “get into touch” with it, not much. When this purpose is forging an electric bolt to shoot out of the clouds, we have no desire to “get into touch” with any such thing. It makes a vast difference what this purpose is bent upon, whether or not we want to go into partnership with it. Now, when the infinite purpose is at work on the earth, turning dirt into flowers, or vegetables, or trees, we should feel a joy in sharing its labor, but when it is determined to burn and scorch everything on the face of the ground with a heat that knows no abatement, we should want to sell out our interest in the concern at once.
There is just as much nonsense connected with the use of this phrase “the infinite purpose” as there is with “special Providence” or “Divine love,” or any other religious expression which expresses nothing unless you are religious. Where this “purpose” “makes for righteousness,” as Matthew Arnold delighted to believe, we are willing to catch on to it, but where it is going in the other direction we prefer to go our own way.
This notion of uniting the finite with the infinite purpose is all right, providing the latter does not conflict with the former, but we have serious objection to doing anything that will interfere with the highest development of our humanity. The purpose which is at work in the world does not make for health any more than for disease. It seems to carry a tubercle with as much satisfaction as a ray of sunshine, and lends all its forces to assist the highwayman with no more charge than it makes to the law-abiding citizen.
It seems to us that it is necessary to divorce the “infinite purpose” from a lot of intentions that do not work for human interests, before it will be desirable to assume intimate relations with this purpose. We do not want to “get into touch” with what is not going our way; that is, the way of health, of prosperity, of happiness. We do not deny that we need to give a higher direction to human thought. We affirm this fact as positively as our most Christian contemporary. But before we advise mankind to harness its wagon to the infinite purpose we want to be sure where it is going. Man has to go to mill and market as well as to meeting, and there is just as good a purpose manifested in getting the most wholesome food for our stomachs as there is in getting the safest creed for our souls. We are loth to trust any religious purpose as opposed to a human one. We believe in man first, last, and all the time.
Now, let us admit that humanity needs a wiser purpose to guide it, but let us also admit that it can be found in a wiser human head and human heart. If what is called the infinite purpose is working for the highest end of human life, there is no evidence of the fact. If there is anything better than human energy back of a good human thought that will help this world, we do not know what it is.
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The man who accepts the faith of Calvin is miserable in proportion to the extent he carries it out.
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Whatever tends to prolong the existence of ignorance or to prevent the recognition of knowledge is dangerous to the well-being of the human race.
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A higher respect for man has been one of the chief promoters of civilization. Advancement has always been toward right and truth when the ranks were imbued with a proper regard for human hearts and human happiness.
FREETHOUGHT COMMANDS
Say nothing about others that you would not have others say about you.
Be severe toward yourself; be kind to your fellow-man.
Do not give advice that you cannot follow.
Do not thank God for what man does.
Serve neither God nor Mammon, but humanity alone.
Do not try to be perfect as a "Father in heaven," but try to be better than you yourself are.
Seek first to improve the earth, and heaven will be of less consequence.
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Let us not forget that men speak according to the measure of their knowledge and light, and that a superior enlightenment is a higher authority.
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History shows that there is nothing so easy to enslave and nothing so hard to emancipate as ignorance, hence it becomes the double enemy of civilization. By its servility it is the prey of tyranny, and by its credulity it is the foe of enlightenment.
A RAINBOW RELIGION
There is little doubt that the faith of the early Christians was what might be classed under the head of rainbow religion. We learn from the New Testament that it was taught that those who accepted the faith held by John and Jesus and Paul were in some peculiar manner to be protected from the common ills of life, and were to be especial favorites of their “Father in heaven.” How sincerely this faith was held we cannot now determine, nor to what extent it was put into practice, but that it possessed the mind in a considerable degree there is no room whatever to doubt. But this is not the question that we want settled, but rather the value of this faith.
It is pleasant and comforting to believe that one is watched over by a superior power which at any moment of peril or temptation is ready to stretch forth its hand and rescue from danger and death, and it is on account of the wonderful seductiveness of this faith that it has lasted so long and has been so hard to overcome. But what we are interested in is, whether or not such a belief has any foundation in fact or in human experience. When Jesus bid his followers to cease giving thought to what they should eat and drink and wear, telling them that their “heavenly Father” fed the fowls of the air, and that they were better than such fowls, thus implying that their heavenly Father would take proportionately better care of them, was there any ground for any such teaching, and is there any ground for this faith today? We claim that the “heavenly Father” referred to by Jesus never fed anything, neither fowl nor man; and that