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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Profits of Religion, by Sinclair
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+The Profits of Religion
+
+by Upton Sinclair
+
+December, 1998  [Etext #1558]
+[Date last updated: March 28, 2003]
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+
+THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
+
+An Essay in Economic Interpretation
+
+By UPTON SINCLAIR
+
+
+
+
+The Profits of Religion
+
+
+
+OFFERTORY
+
+This book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of
+view--as a Source of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have
+searched the libraries through, and no one has done it before. If
+you read it, you will see that it needed to be done. It has meant
+twenty-five years of thought and a year of investigation. It
+contains the facts.
+
+I publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the
+lowest possible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return
+for one thing which you may give me--the joy of speaking a true
+word and getting it heard.
+
+The present volume is the first of a series, which will do for
+Education, Journalism and Literature what has here been done for
+the Church: the four volumes making a work of revolutionary
+criticism, an Economic Interpretation of Culture under the
+general title of "The Dead Hand."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Introductory
+ Bootstrap-lifting
+ Religion
+
+Book One: The Church of the Conquerors
+ The Priestly Lie
+ The Great Fear
+ Salve Regina!
+ Fresh Meat
+ Priestly Empires
+ Prayer-wheels
+ The Butcher-Gods
+ The Holy Inquisition
+ Hell-fire
+
+Book Two: The Church of Good Society
+ The Rain Makers
+ The Babylonian Fire-God
+ The Medicine-men
+ The Canonization of Incompetence
+ Gibson's Preservative
+ The Elders
+ Church History
+ Land and Livings
+ Graft in Tail
+ Bishops and Beer
+ Anglicanism and Alcohol
+ Dead Cats
+ "Suffer Little Children"
+ The Court-circular
+ Horn-blowing
+ Trinity Corporation
+ Spiritual Interpretation
+
+Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls
+ Charity
+ God's Armor
+ Thanksgivings
+ The Holy Roman Empire
+ Temporal Power
+ Knights of Slavery
+ Priests and Police
+ The Church Militant
+ The Church Triumphant
+ God in the Schools
+ The Menace
+ King Coal
+ The Unholy Alliance
+ Secret Service
+ Tax Exemption
+  Holy History
+ Das Centrum
+
+Book Four: The Church of the Slavers
+ The Face of Caesar
+ Deutschland ueber Alles
+ Der Tag
+ King Cotton
+ Witches and Women
+ Moth and Rust
+ To Lyman Abbott
+ The Octopus
+ The Industrial Shelley
+ The Outlook for Graft
+ Clerical Camouflage
+ The Jungle
+
+Book Five: The Church of the Merchants
+ The Head Merchant
+ "Herr Beeble"
+ Holy Oil
+ Rhetorical Black-hanging
+ The Great American Fraud
+ Riches in Glory
+ Captivating Ideals
+ Spook Hunting
+ Running the Rapids
+ Birth Control
+ Sheep
+
+Book Six: The Church of the Quacks
+ Tabula Rasa
+ The Book of Mormon
+ Holy Rolling
+ Bible Prophecy
+ Koreshanity
+ Mazdaznan
+ Black Magic
+ Mental Malpractice
+ Science and Wealth
+ New Nonsense
+ "Dollars Want Me!"
+ Spiritual Financiering
+ The Graft of Grace
+
+Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution
+ Christ and Caesar
+ Locusts and Wild Honey
+ Mother Earth
+ The Soap Box
+ The Church Machine
+ The Church Redeemed
+ The Desire of Nations
+ The Knowable
+ "Nature's Insurgent Son
+ The New Morality
+ Envoi
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+Bootstrap-lifting
+
+Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader.
+
+It is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are
+gathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and
+distressing positions, their fingers hooked in the straps of
+their boots. They are engaged in lifting themselves; tugging and
+straining until they grow red in the face, exhausted. The
+perspiration streams from their foreheads, they show every
+symptom of distress; the eyes of all are fixed, not upon each
+other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the sky above. There
+is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and then, amid
+grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and triumph.
+
+I approach one and say to him, "Friend, what is this you are
+doing?"
+
+He answers, without pausing to glance at me, "I am performing
+spiritual exercises. See how I rise?"
+
+"But," I say, "you are not rising at all!"
+
+Whereat he becomes instantly angry. "You are one of the
+scoffers!"
+
+"But, friend," I protest, "don't you feel the earth under your
+feet?"
+
+"You are a materialist!"
+
+"But, friend, I can see--"
+
+"You are without spiritual vision!"
+
+And so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of
+a sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the
+prevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of
+the human race. How is it possible that none of them should
+suspect the futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that
+I am uncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting
+off the ground, or about to get off the ground?
+
+Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there
+among the bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and
+slipping his hands into their pockets. The position of the
+spiritual exercisers greatly facilitates his work; their eyes
+being cast up to heaven, they do not see him, their thoughts
+being occupied, they do not heed him; he goes through their
+pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents to a bag he
+carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him for a
+while, and finally approach and ask, "What are you doing, sir?"
+
+He answers, "I am picking pockets."
+
+"Oh," I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. "But--I beg
+pardon--are you a thief?"
+
+"Oh, no," hie answers, smilingly, "I am the agent of the
+Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity."
+
+"I see," I reply. "And these people let you--"
+
+"It is the law," he says. "It is also the gospel."
+
+I turn, following his glance, and observe another person
+approaching--a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes,
+moving with slow dignity. He gazes about at the sweating and
+grunting hordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a
+gesture of benediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, "Blessed
+are the Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."
+He moves on, and after a bit stops and announces again, "Man doth
+not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the
+mouth of the prophets and priests of Bootstrap-lifting."
+
+Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the
+agent of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets
+him as a friend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his
+capacious robes a generous share of the loot which he has
+collected. The majestic one does not cringe, nor does he make any
+effort to hide what is going on. On the contrary he cries aloud,
+"It is more blessed to give than to receive!" And again he cries,
+"The laborer is worthy of his hire!" And a third time he cries,
+yet more sternly, "Render unto Caesar the things which are
+Caesar's!" And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long enough to answer:
+"Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this
+law!" Then they renew their straining and tugging.
+
+I step up, and in timid tones begin, "Reverend sir, will you tell
+me by what right you take this wealth?"
+
+Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of
+thunder, "Blasphemer!" And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from
+their lifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a
+general call for a policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets'
+Association; and so I fall silent, and slink away in the throng,
+and thereafter keep my thoughts to myself.
+
+Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and
+incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting
+impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a
+long time ago--no man can recall how far back--the Wholesale
+Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's
+pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual
+exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in
+support of the practice. Now their propaganda is everywhere
+triumphant, and year by year we see an increase in the rewards
+and emoluments of the prophets and priests of the cult. The
+ground is covered with stately temples of various designs, all of
+which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting. I come to
+where a group of people are occupied in laying the corner-stone
+of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am informed it is
+the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I stand
+watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will
+do my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.
+
+I go on to another building, which I am told is a library
+containing volumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published
+under the auspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and
+find endless vistas of shelves, also several thousand current
+magazines and papers. I consult these--for my legs have given out
+in the effort to visit and inspect all phases of the
+Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that hardly a week passes
+that some one does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if
+I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and
+ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies,
+the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting. There
+are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed by
+Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters,
+whose priests live by "livings"; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters,
+whose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There
+are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;
+Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon
+Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and
+Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy
+Jumper, Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation
+Army bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand
+varieties of "New Thought" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and
+transcendentalist, Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme
+Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard high-art Bootstrap-lifters
+with half a million magazinelets at two bits apiece; the "uplift"
+and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and Orison Swett Marden
+Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes at one dollar
+per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and Kantian
+professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at
+several thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean
+Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the
+art-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift
+themselves down to the Ape.
+
+Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all
+these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of
+Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic
+that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and
+less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and
+give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when
+the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a
+year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school
+Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand
+of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the
+priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect,
+many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not
+reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is
+to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation,
+that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply
+their immemorial role with less chance of interference.
+
+Religion
+
+The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn
+the sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I
+admit the honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask
+of the preacher is that he shall make an effort to practice his
+doctrine. Let him be tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad
+like Nietzsche; let him stand upon a pillar and be devoured by
+worms like Simeon Stylites--on these terms I grant to any dreamer
+the right to hold himself above economic science.
+
+Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions
+about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries
+to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not
+limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this
+impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to
+say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of
+by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see
+asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers
+of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become
+hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind
+twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? What
+I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!
+
+It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses,
+one good and the other bad. Morality means the will to
+righteousness, or it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the
+rule of the people, or it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with
+the word "Religion". In its true sense Religion is the most
+fundamental of the soul's impulses, the impassioned love of life,
+the feeling of its preciousness, the desire to foster and further
+it. In that sense every thinking man must be religious; in that
+sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing force, the very
+nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought of assailing
+it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.
+
+But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest
+sense, because of another which has been given to it. To the
+ordinary man "Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth,
+the "hunger and thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in
+which this hunger has manifested itself in history, and prevails
+to-day throughout the world; that is to say, institutions having
+fixed dogmas and "revelations", creeds and rituals, with an
+administering caste claiming supernatural sanction. By such
+institutions the moral strivings of the race, the affections of
+childhood and the aspirations of youth are made the prerogatives
+and stock in trade of ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the
+thesis of this book that "Religion" in this sense is a source of
+income to parasites, and the natural ally of every form of
+oppression and exploitation.
+
+If by my jesting at "Bootstrap-lifting" I have wounded some dear
+prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more
+persuasive voice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the
+suffering of others; I have devoted my life to analyzing the
+causes of the suffering, to find out if it be necessary and
+fore-ordained, or if by any chance there be a way of escape for
+future generations. I have found that the latter is the case; the
+suffering is needless, it can with ease and certainty be banished
+from the earth. I know this with the knowledge of science--in the
+same way that the navigator of a ship knows his latitude and
+longitude, and the point of the compass to which he must steer in
+order to reach the port.
+
+Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the
+cults of the unknown. The power which made us has given us a
+mind, and the impulse to its use; let us see what can be done
+with it to rid the earth of its ancient evils. And do not be
+troubled if at the outset this book seems to be entirely
+"destructive". I assure you that I am no crude materialist, I am
+not so shallow as to imagine that our race will be satisfied with
+a barren rationalism. I know that the old symbols came out of the
+heart of man because they corresponded to certain needs of the
+heart of man. I know that new symbols will be found,
+corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I
+set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is
+not from blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to
+put a new and sounder structure in its place. Before we part
+company, I shall submit the blue print of that new home of the
+spirit.
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+The Church of the Conquerors
+
+ I saw the Conquerors riding by
+      With trampling feet of horse and men:
+  Empire on empire like the tide
+      Flooded the world and ebbed again;
+
+ A thousand banners caught the sun,
+      And cities smoked along the plain,
+  And laden down with silk and gold
+      And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.
+         Kemp.
+
+
+The Priestly Lie
+
+When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of
+lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He had no
+conception of natural forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this
+event as the act of an individual intelligence. To-day we read
+about fairies and demons, dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and
+Thor and Vulcan, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all
+these as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind; losing sight
+of the fact that they were originally meant with entire
+seriousness--that not merely did ancient man believe in them, but
+was forced to believe in them, because the mind must have an
+explanation of things that happen, and an individual intelligence
+was the only explanation available. The story of the hero who
+slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and
+night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the
+phenomena, it was the science of early times.
+
+Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend.
+If the lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be
+because the owner of the hut had given offense; so the owner must
+placate the god, using those means which would be effective in
+the quarrels of men--presents of roast meats and honey and fresh
+fruits, of wine and gold and jewels and women, accompanied by
+friendly words and gestures of submission. And when in spite of
+all things the natural evil did not cease, when the people
+continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity for
+hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of
+penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of
+dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the
+entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there
+would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and
+inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands.
+There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in
+these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally
+emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves
+aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and
+entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles
+in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would
+proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking
+with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels,
+acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing
+punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of
+laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to
+distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to
+impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects,
+architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and
+dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs
+
+  And storied winnows richly dight,
+  Casting a dim religious light.
+  There let the pealing organ blow,
+  To the full-voiced choir below,
+  In service high and anthem clear,
+  As may with sweetness through mine ear
+  Dissolve me into ecstacies,
+  And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
+
+So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms,
+the Priestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the
+world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its
+priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens
+and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of
+millions of "true believers"; each damns all the others, with
+more or less heartiness--and each is a mighty fortress of Graft.
+
+There will be few readers of this book who have not been brought
+up under the spell of some one of these systems of
+Supernaturalism; who have not been taught to speak with respect
+of some particular priestly order, to thrill with awe at some
+particular sacred rite, to seek respite from earthly woes in some
+particular ceremonial spell. These things are woven into our very
+fibre in childhood; they are sanctified by memories of joys and
+griefs, they are confused with spiritual struggles, they become
+part of all that is most vital in our lives. The reader who
+wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do well to
+begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects
+than his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine
+without fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's
+"Secret Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled"!--encyclopedias of the
+fantastic inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of
+the tortured soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities,
+charms and spells, illuminations and transmigrations, angels and
+demons, guides, controls and masters--all of which it is
+permissible to refuse to support with gifts. Let the reader then
+go to James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great Religions", and realize
+how many billions of humans have lived and died in the solemn
+certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven depended upon
+their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain rites, all
+mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the others and
+the followers of the others. So gradually the realization will
+come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its
+welfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to
+it.
+
+The Great Fear
+
+It was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor
+that his ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his
+mental suffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for
+Nature is a grim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have
+yet been learned. We have a right to scorn and anger only when we
+see this dread being diverted from its true function, a stimulus
+to a search for knowledge, and made into a means of clamping down
+ignorance upon the mind of the race. That this has been the
+deliberate policy of institutionalized Religion no candid student
+can deny.
+
+The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion,
+ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed
+by it--and that it cultivates the source from which its
+nourishment is derived. "The fear of divine anger", says Prof.
+Jastrow, "runs as an undercurrent through the entire religious
+literature of Babylonia and Assyria." In the words of
+Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:
+      Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?
+    The plan of a god is full of mystery--who can understand it?
+   He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.
+In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.
+
+And that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the
+Hebrew scriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews
+combined all their fears into one Great Fear. "The fear of the
+Lord is the beginning of wisdom," we are told by Solomon of the
+thousand wives; and the Psalmist repeats it. "Dominion and fear
+are with Him," cries Job. "How then can any man be just before
+God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even
+the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are not pure in His
+sight: How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man,
+which is a worm?" He goes on, in his lyrical rapture, "Sheol is
+naked before Him, and Destruction hath no covering. . . . The
+pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke. . . .
+The thunder of His power who can understand?" That all this is
+some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter the
+fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical
+perversion of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind
+for the seeds of Priestcraft.
+
+The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama": and what is the
+denouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last
+word about life? "Wherefore I abhor myself," says Job, "and
+repent in dust and ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing; we
+have been told at the beginning that he "was perfect and upright,
+and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." But the Sabeans and
+the Chaldeans rob him, and "the fire of God" falls from heaven
+and burns up his sheep and his servants, and "a great wind from
+the wilderness" kills his sons and daughters; and then his body
+becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon caused in part by worry,
+and the consequent nervous indigestion, but mainly by excess of
+starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the diet. Job, however,
+has never heard of the fasting cure for disease, and so he takes
+him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits among the
+ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his religious
+ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors himself,
+and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no
+purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter, unreasoning
+humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his friends
+make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for a
+whole templeful of priests--and then "the Lord gave Job twice as
+much as he had before. . . . And after this Job lived an hundred
+and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four
+generations."
+
+You do not have to look very deeply into this "Wisdom-drama" to
+find out whose wisdom it is. Confess your own ignorance and your
+own impotence, abandon yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred
+Caste, the Keepers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon
+and respite--in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from a
+psalm of the ancient Babylonians, which "heathen" chant is
+identical in spirit and purpose with the utterances of Job:
+
+ The Sin that I have wrought, I know not;
+  The unclean that I have eaten, I know not;
+  The offense into which I have walked, I know not....
+  The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded me;
+  The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me;
+  A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow....
+  I sought for help, but no one took my hand;
+  I wept, but no one harkened to me....
+  The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them;
+  To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer;
+  O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my
+       sacrifice;
+  O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me! accept
+       my sacrifice!
+
+
+Salve Regina!
+
+And now let the reader leap three thousand years of human
+history, of toil and triumph of the intellect of man; and instead
+of a Hebrew manuscript or a Babylonian brick there confronts him
+a little publication, printed on a modern rotary press in the
+capital of the United States of America, bearing the date of
+October, 1914, and the title "Salve Regina". In it we find "a
+beautiful prayer", composed by the late cardinal Rampolla; we are
+told that "Pius X attached to it an indulgence of 100 days, each
+time it is piously recited, applicable to the souls in
+purgatory."
+
+O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven, where
+thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your servant.
+Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses and exalts
+thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most beautiful and
+the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy holy name. He blesses
+thy sublime prerogatives as real Mother of God, ever Virgin,
+conceived without stain of sin, as co-Redemptress of the human
+race. He blesses the Eternal Father who chose you, etc. He
+blesses the Incarnate Word, etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit,
+etc. He blesses, exalts and thanks the most august Trinity, etc.
+O Virgin, holy and merciful . . . be pleased to accept this
+little homage of your servant, and obtain for him also from your
+divine Son pardon for his sins, Amen.
+
+And then, looking more closely, we discover the purpose of this
+"beautiful prayer", and of the neat little paper which prints it.
+"Salve Regina" is raising funds for the "National Shrine of the
+Immaculate Conception", a home for more priests, and Catholic
+ladies who desire to collect for it may receive little books
+which they are requested to return within three months. Pius X
+writes a letter of warm endorsement, and sets an example by
+giving four hundred dollars "out of his poverty"--or, to be more
+precise, out of the poverty of the pitiful peasantry of Italy.
+There is included in the paper a form of bequest for "devoted
+clients of Our Blessed Mother", and at the top of the editorial
+page the most alluring of all baits for the loving hearts of the
+flock--that the names of deceased relatives and friends may be
+written in the collection books, and will be transferred to the
+records of the Shrine, and these persons "will share in all its
+spiritual benefits". In the days of Job it was with threats of
+boils and poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained itself; but in
+the case of this blackest of all Terrors, transplanted to our
+free Republic from the heart of the Dark Ages, the wretched
+victims see before their eyes the glare of flames, and hear the
+shrieks of their loved ones writhing in torment through uncounted
+ages and eternities.
+
+
+Fresh Meat
+
+In the days when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, I sought
+earnestly for evidence of a non-meat-eating race; but candor
+compelled me to admit that man was like the monkey and the pig
+and the bear--he was vegetarian when he could not help it. The
+advocates of the reform insist that meat as a diet causes muddy
+brains and dulled nerves; but you would certainly never suspect
+this from a study of history. What you find in history is that
+all men crave meat, all struggle for it, and the strongest and
+cleverest get it. Everywhere you find the subject classes living
+in the midst of animals which they tend, but whose flesh they
+rarely taste. Even in modern America, sweet land of liberty, our
+millions of tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and turkeys,
+and hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save
+everything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the city. It
+would not be too much to say of the cultural records of early man
+that they all have to do, directly or indirectly, with the
+reserving of fresh meat to the masters. In J. T. Trowbridge's
+cheerful tale of the adventures of Captain Seaborn, we are told
+by the cannibal priest how idol-worship has ameliorated the
+morals of the tribe--
+
+ For though some warriors of renown
+      Continue anthropophagous,
+  'Tis rare that human flesh goes down
+      The low-caste man's aesophagus!
+
+I suspect that we should have to go back to the days of the
+cave-man to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a
+taboo upon meat, and promised supernatural favors to all who
+would exercise self-control, and instead of consuming their meat
+themselves, would bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or
+altar, where the god might come in the night-time and partake of
+it. Certainly, at any rate, there are few religions of record in
+which such devices do not appear. The early laws of the Hebrews
+are more concerned with delicatessen for the priests than with
+any other subject whatever. Here, for example, is the way to make
+a Nazarite:
+
+He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of the
+first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one ewe lamb
+of the first year without blemish for a sin offering, and one ram
+without blemish for peace offerings, and a basket of unleavened
+bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and wafers of
+unleavened bread anointed with oil, and their meat offerings.
+
+And the law goes on to instruct the priests to take certain
+choice, parts and "wave them for a wave offering before the Lord:
+this is holy for the priest." What was done with the other
+portions we are not told; but earlier in this same "Book of
+Numbers" we find the general law that
+
+Every offering of all the holy things of the children of Israel,
+which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And every man's
+hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man giveth to the
+priest, it shall be his.
+
+In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests
+of Ceylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them.
+Among the Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four
+new robes to the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the
+robes; if they fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before
+the judgment-throne. The devotees are instructed that "he who
+performs this rite succeeds in both worlds, and obtains a firm
+footing in both worlds." Among the Buddhists, the followers give
+alms to the monks, and are told specifically what advantages will
+thereby accrue to them. In the Aitareyo Brahmairiarn of the
+Rig-Veda we read
+
+He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is born
+from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates in the
+nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred knowledge),
+the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and is absorbed into
+the deity.
+
+Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma,
+or juice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god.
+Among the Episcopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the
+sacred juice is that of the grape, and the priest is not allowed
+to throw away what is left of it, but is ordered "reverently to
+consume it." In as much as the priest is the sole judge of how
+much good sherry wine he shall consecrate previous to the
+ceremony, it is to be expected that the priests of this cult
+should be lukewarm towards the prohibition movement, and should
+piously refuse to administer their sacrament with unfermented and
+uninteresting grape-juice.
+
+
+Priestly Empires
+
+In every human society of which we have record there has been one
+class which has done the hard and exhausting work, the "hewers of
+wood and drawers of water"; and there has been another, much
+smaller class which has done the directing. To belong to this
+latter class is to work also, but with the head instead of the
+hands; it is also to enjoy the good things of life, to live in
+the best houses, to eat the best food, to have choice of the most
+desirable women; it is to have leisure to cultivate the mind and
+appreciate the arts, to acquire graces and distinctions, to give
+laws and moral codes, to shape fashions and tastes, to be revered
+and regarded--in short, to have Power. How to get this Power and
+to hold it has been the first object of the thoughts of men from
+the beginning of time.
+
+The most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is
+uncertain, for any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed
+with it. It will be found that empires based upon military force
+alone, however cruel they may be, are not permanent, and
+therefore not so dangerous to progress; it is only when
+resistance is paralyzed by the agency of Superstition, that the
+race can be subjected to systems of exploitation for hundreds and
+even thousands of years. The ancient empires were all priestly
+empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed the will of the
+priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of the gods.
+
+Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:
+
+Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the Aztecs....
+Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by reserving to
+themselves the business of instruction, were enabled to mould the
+young and plastic mind according to their own wills, and to train
+it early to implicit reverence for religion and its ministers.
+
+The historian goes on to indicate the economic harvest of this
+teaching:
+
+To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for the
+maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented by the
+policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under the last
+Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent, and covered
+every district of the empire.
+
+And this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices,
+whereby the priestly caste maintained the prestige of its
+divinities:
+
+At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486, the
+prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the purpose,
+were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly two miles long.
+The ceremony consumed several days, and seventy thousand captives
+are said to have perished at the shrine of this terrible deity.
+
+The same system appears in Professor Jastrow's account of the
+priesthood of Babylonia and Assyria:
+
+The ultimate source of all law being the deity himself, the
+original legal tribunal was the place where the image or symbol
+of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or omen,
+indicative of the will of the god. The power thus lodged in the
+priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous. They virtually
+held in their hands the life and death of the people.
+
+And of the business side of this vast religious system:
+
+The temples were the natural depositories of the legal archives,
+which in the course of centuries grew to veritably enormous
+proportions. Records were made of all decisions; the facts were
+set forth, and duly attested by witnesses. Business and marriage
+contracts, loans and deeds of sale were in like manner drawn up
+in the presence of official scribes, who were also priests. In
+this way all commercial transactions received the written
+sanction of the religious organization. The temples
+themselves--at least in the large centres--entered into business
+relations with the populace. In order to maintain the large
+household represented by such an organization as that of the
+temple of Enlil of Nippur, that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that of
+Marduk at Babylon, or that of Shamash at Sippar, large holdings
+of land were required which, cultivated by agents for the
+priests, or farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of
+the produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple
+officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the
+furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at 20%--to
+barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides engaging labor
+for work of all kinds directly needed for the temples. A large
+quantity of the business documents found in the temple archives
+are concerned with the business affairs of the temple, and we are
+justified in including the temples in the large centres as among
+the most important business institutions of the country. In
+financial or monetary transactions the position of the temples
+was not unlike that of national banks. . . .
+
+And so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor
+said more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his
+lectures were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the
+University of Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which
+specifies that "all polemical subjects shall be positively
+excluded!"
+
+
+Prayer-wheels
+
+These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to
+find them we have only to ask ourselves: What countries are
+making no contribution to the progress of the race? What
+countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or
+industry?
+
+For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of
+Siam, that "they are exempted from all public charges, they
+salute nobody, while everybody prostrates himself before them.
+They are maintained at the public expense." In the same way we
+read of the negroes of the Caribbean islands that "their priests
+and priestesses exercise an almost unlimited power." Miss
+Kingsley, in her "West African Studies", tells us that if we
+desire to understand the institutions of this district, we must
+study the native's religion.
+
+For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it
+influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as the
+religion of the Europeans is at times. The African cannot say,
+"Oh, that is all right from a religious point of view, but one
+must be practical." To be practical, to get on in the world, to
+live the day and night through, he must be right in the religious
+point of view, namely, must be on working terms with the great
+world of spirits around him. The knowledge of this spirit world
+constitutes the religion of the African, and his customs and
+ceremonies arise from his idea of the best way to influence it.
+
+Or consider Henry Savage Landor's account of Thibet:
+
+In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims make
+circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and for days
+together, covering the entire distance lying flat upon their
+bodies.... From the ceiling of the temple hang hundreds of long
+strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the temple, and becoming so
+many flying prayers when hung up--for mechanical praying in every
+way is prominent in Thibet.... Thus instead of having to learn by
+heart long and varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the
+entire prayer-book into a prayer-wheel, and revolve it while
+repeating as fast as you can four words meaning, "O God, the gem
+emerging from the lotus-flower.". . . . The attention of the
+pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where
+they may deposit whatever offerings they can spare, and it must
+be said that their religious ideas are so strongly developed that
+they will dispose of a considerable portion of their money in
+this fashion.... The Lamas are very clever in many ways, and have
+a great hold over the entire country. They are ninety per cent of
+them unscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way and given to
+every sort of vice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge
+on the credulity and ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain
+this ignorance, upon which their luxurious life depends, that
+foreign influence of every kind is strictly kept out of the
+country.
+
+
+The Butcher-Gods
+
+In this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact
+about institutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have
+become the means of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of
+necessity be taken as an attack upon that class; it will be
+literally a crime--robbing the priests of their age-long
+privileges. And of course they will oppose the robber--using
+every weapon of terrorism, both of this world and the next. They
+will require the submission, not merely of their own people, but
+of their neighbors, and their jealousy of rival priestly castes
+will be a cause of wars. The story of the early days of mankind
+is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the name of ten
+thousand butcher-gods.
+
+Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how
+the priests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish
+called "the ark"; and how the people of one tribe violated this
+fetish and wakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god.
+
+And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked
+into the ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty
+thousand and three score and ten men; and the people lamented,
+because the Lord had smitten many of the people with a great
+slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand
+before this holy Lord God?
+
+This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a
+jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through
+his ministers precise instructions for the most revolting
+cruelties, the extermination of whole nations of men, women and
+children, whose sole offense was that they did not pay tribute to
+Jehovah's priests. Thus, for example, the chief of his prophets,
+Moses, called the people together, and with all solemnity, and
+with many warnings, handed down ten commandments graven upon
+stone tablets; he went on to set forth how the people were to set
+upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them these blood-thirsty
+instructions:
+
+When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
+goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee,
+the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the
+Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the
+Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when
+the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite
+them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with
+them, nor shew mercy unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with
+them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images,
+and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with
+fire. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord
+thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
+above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
+
+The records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent
+his chosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew
+all the males, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth,
+and commanded them to kill all the married women, and to take the
+single women "for themselves". We are told that sixteen thousand
+single women were spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty
+and two!" In the Book of Joshua we read that he had an interview
+with a supernatural personage called "the captain of the Lord's
+host", and how this captain had given to him a magic spell which
+would destroy the city of Jericho. The city should be accursed,
+"even it and all that are therein, to the Lord"; every living
+thing except one traitor-harlot was to be slaughtered, and all
+the wealth of the city reserved to the priestly caste. This was
+carried out to the letter, except that "Achan, the son of Carmi,
+the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took
+of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold and silver in
+his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and everybody
+knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes and
+fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and
+got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty
+man should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."
+
+And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah,
+and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his
+sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his
+sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them
+unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled
+us? the Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned
+him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned
+him with stones.
+
+We have no means of knowing what was the character of the
+unfortunate inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the
+Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of
+the victims of Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew
+priests that they sacrificed their children to their gods; but
+then, consider what we should believe about the Hebrew religion,
+if we took the word of rival priestly castes! Consider, for
+example, that in this twentieth century we saw an orthodox Jew
+tried in a Russian court of law for having made a sacrifice of
+Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews represent a
+considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of Russia. We
+know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture and
+all of the scientific knowledge of Spain; that the Huguenots had
+most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that
+they were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes
+of the Middle Ages.
+
+
+The Holy Inquisition
+
+Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval
+times, so that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the
+fifteenth century there was established in Europe the cult of a
+three-headed god, whose priests had won lordship over a
+continent. They were enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt;
+they sold to the rich the license to commit every possible crime,
+and they held the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the
+comparatively intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia
+there arose a great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest,
+protesting against the corruptions of his order. They trapped him
+into their power by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they
+repudiated because no promise to a heretic could have validity.
+They found him guilty of having taught the hateful doctrine that
+a priest who committed crimes could not give absolution for the
+crimes of others; and they held an auto de fe--which means a
+"sentence of faith." As we read in Lea's "History of the
+Inquisition":
+
+The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund (the
+Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire with
+their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes. While mass
+was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept waiting at the
+door; when brought in he was placed on an elevated bench by a
+table on which stood a coffer containing priestly vestments.
+After some preliminaries, including a sermon by the Bishop of
+Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund that the events of that day
+would confer on him immortal glory, the articles of which Huss
+was convicted were recited. In vain he protested that he believed
+in transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in
+polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on his
+persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in spite of
+this he continued to utter protests. The sentence was then read
+in the name of the council, condemning him both for his written
+errors and those which had been proven by witnesses. He was
+declared a pertinacious and incorrigible heretic who did not
+desire to return to the Church; his books were ordered to be
+burned, and himself to be degraded from the priesthood and
+abandoned to the secular court. Seven bishops arrayed him in
+priestly garb and warned him to recant while yet there was time.
+He turned to the crowd, and with broken voice declared that he
+could not confess the errors which he never entertained, lest he
+should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying that
+they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in his heresy.
+He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of his sacerdotal
+vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the tonsure was to be
+disposed of, an absurd quarrel arose among the bishops as to
+whether the head should be shaved with a razor or the tonsure be
+destroyed with scissors. Scissors won the day, and a cross was
+cut in his hair. Then on his head was placed a conical paper cap,
+a cubit in height, adorned with painted devils and the
+inscription, "This is the heresiarch."
+
+The place of execution was a meadow near the river, to which he
+was conducted by two thousand armed men, with Palsgrave Louis at
+their head, and a vast crowd, including many nobles, prelates,
+and cardinals. The route followed was circuitous, in order that
+he might be carried past the episcopal palace, in front of which
+his books were burning, whereat he smiled. Pity from man there
+was none to look for, but he sought comfort on high, repeating to
+himself, "Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon
+us!" and when he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees
+and prayed. He was asked if he wished to confess, and said that
+he would gladly do so if there were space. A wide circle was
+formed, and Ulrich Schorand, who, according to custom, had been
+providently empowered to take advantage of final weakening, came
+forward, saying, "Dear sir and master, if you will recant your
+unbelief and heresy, for which you must suffer, I will willingly
+hear your confession; but if you will not, you know right well
+that, according to canon law, no one can administer the sacrament
+to a heretic." To this Huss answered, "It is not necessary: I am
+not a mortal sinner." His paper crown fell off and he smiled as
+his guards replaced it. He desired to take leave of his keepers,
+and when they were brought to him he thanked them for their
+kindness, saying that they had been to him rather brothers than
+jailers. Then he commenced to address the crowd in German,
+telling them that he suffered for errors which he did not hold,
+and he was cut short. When bound to the stake, two cartloads of
+fagots and straw were piled up around him, and the palsgrave and
+vogt for the last time adjured him to abjure. Even yet he could
+save himself, but only repeated that he had been convicted by
+false witnesses on errors never entertained by him. They clapped
+their hands and then withdrew, and the executioners applied the
+fire. Twice Huss was heard to exclaim, "Christ Jesus, Son of the
+living God, have mercy upon me!" then a wind springing up and
+blowing the flames and smoke into his face checked further
+utterances, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to move
+while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster. The tragedy
+was over; the sorely-tried soul bad escaped from its tormentors,
+and the bitterest enemies of the reformer could not refuse to him
+the praise that no philosopher of old had faced death with more
+composure than he had shown in his dreadful extremity. No
+faltering of the voice had betrayed an internal struggle.
+Palsgrave Louis, seeing Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the
+executioners, ordered it thrown into the flames lest it should be
+reverenced as a relic, and promised the man to compensate him.
+With the same view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and
+thrown into the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was
+dug up and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the
+spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay, which
+they reverenced as relies of their martyr. The next day thanks
+were returned to God in a solemn procession in which figured
+Sigismund and his queen, the princes and nobles, nineteen
+cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven bishops, and all the
+clergy of the council. A few days later Sigismund, who had
+delayed his departure for Spain to see the matter concluded, left
+Constance, feeling that his work was done.
+
+
+Hell-Fire
+
+If such a scene could be witnessed in the world today, it would
+only be in some remote and wholly savage place, such as the
+mountains of Hayti, or the Solomon Islands. It could no longer
+happen in any civilized country; the reason being, not any
+abatement of the pretensions of the priesthood, but solely the
+power of science, embodied in the physical arm of a secular
+State. The advance of that arm the church has fought
+systematically, in every country, and at every point. To quote
+Buckle: "A careful study of the history of religious toleration
+will prove that in every Christian country where it has been
+adopted, it has been forced upon the clergy by the authority of
+the secular classes." The wolf of superstition has been driven
+into its lair; but it has backed away snarling, and it still
+crouches, watching for a chance to spring. The Church which
+burned John Huss, which burned Giordano Bruno for teaching that
+the earth moves round the sun--that same church, in the name of
+the same three-headed god, sent out Francesco Ferrer to the
+firing-squad; if it does not do the same thing to the author of
+this book, it will be solely because of the police. Not being
+allowed to burn me here, the clergy will vent their holy
+indignation by sentencing me to eternal burning in a future world
+which they have created, and which they run to suit themselves.
+
+It is a fact, the significance of which cannot be exaggerated,
+that the measure of the civilization which any nation has
+attained is the extent to which it has curtailed the power of
+institutionalized religion. Those peoples which are wholly under
+the sway of the priesthood, such as Thibetans and Koreans,
+Siamese and Caribbeans, are peoples among whom the intellectual
+life does not exist. Farther in advance are Hindoos, and Turks,
+who are religious, but not exclusively. Still farther on the way
+are Spaniards and Irish; here, for example, is a flashlight of
+the Irish peasantry, given by one of their number, Patrick
+MacGill:
+
+The merchant was a great friend of the parish priest, who always
+told the people if they did not pay their debts they would burn
+for ever and ever in hell. "The fires of eternity will make you
+sorry for the debts that you did not pay," said the priest. "What
+is eternity?" he would ask in a solemn voice from the altar
+steps. "If a man tried to count the sands on the sea-shore and
+took a million years to count every single grain, how long would
+it take him to count them all? A long time, you'll say. But that
+time is nothing to eternity. Just think of it! Burning in hell
+while a man, taking a million years to count a grain of sand,
+counts all the sand on the sea-shore. And this because you did
+not pay Farley McKeown his lawful debts, his lawful debts within
+the letter of the law." That concluding phrase, "within the
+letter of the law," struck terror into all who listened, and no
+one, maybe not even the priest himself, knew what it meant.
+
+There is light in Ireland to-day, and hope for an Irish culture;
+the thing to be noted is that it comes from two movements, one
+for agricultural co-operation and the other for political
+independence--both of them definitely and specifically
+non-religious. This same thing has been true of the movements
+which have helped on happier nations, such as the republics of
+France and America, which have put an end to the power of the
+priestly caste to take property by force, and to dominate the
+mind of the child without its parents' consent.
+
+This is as far as any nation has so far gone; it has apparently
+not yet occurred to any legislature that the State may owe a duty
+to the child to protect its mind from being poisoned, even though
+it has the misfortune to be born of poisoned parents. It is still
+permitted that parents should terrify their little ones with
+images of a personal devil and a hell of eternal brimstone and
+sulphur; it is permitted to found schools for the teaching of
+devil-doctrines; it is permitted to organize gigantic campaigns
+and systematically to infect whole cities full of men, women and
+children with hell-fire phobias. In the American city where I
+write one may see gatherings of people sunk upon their knees,
+even rolling on the ground in convulsions, moaning, sobbing,
+screaming to be delivered from such torments. I open my morning
+paper and read of the arrest of five men and seven women in Los
+Angeles, members of a sect known as the "Church of the Living
+God", upon a charge of having disturbed the peace of their
+neighbors. The police officers testified that the accused claimed
+to be possessed of the divine spirit, and that as signs of this
+possession they "crawled on the floor, grunted like pigs and
+barked like dogs." There were "other acts, even more startling",
+about which the newspapers did not go into details. And again, a
+week or two later, I read how a woman has been heard screaming,
+and found tied to a bedpost, being whipped by a man. She belonged
+to a religious sect which had found her guilty of witchcraft.
+Another woman was about to shoot her, but this woman's nerve
+failed, and the "high priest" was called in, who decreed a
+whipping. The victim explained to the police that she would have
+deserved to be whipped had she really been a witch, but a mistake
+had been made--it was another woman who was the witch. And again
+in the Los Angeles "Times" I read a perfectly serious news item,
+telling how a certain man awakened one morning, and found on his
+pillow where his head had lain a perfect reproduction of the head
+of Christ with its crown of thorns. He called in his neighbors to
+witness the miracle, and declared that while he was not
+superstitious, he knew that such a thing could not have happened
+by chance, and he knew what it was intended to signify--he would
+buy more Liberty Bonds and be more ardent in his support of the
+war!
+
+And this is the world in which our scientists and men of culture
+think that the battle of the intellect is won, and that it is no
+longer necessary to spend our energies in fighting "Religion!"
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+The Church of Good Society
+
+ Within the House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert
+  By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt,
+ Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure,
+  And they be found his chosen, untroubled, solemn, sure.
+
+ Within the House of Mammon the golden altar lifts
+  Where dragon-lamps are shrouded as costly incense drifts--
+ A dust of old ideals, now fragrant from the coals,
+  To tell of hopes long-ended, to tell the death of souls
+                                    Sterling.
+
+The Rain Makers
+
+I begin with the Church of Good Society, because it happens to be
+the Church in which I was brought up. Reading this statement,
+some of my readers suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my
+heart; yes, it brings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can
+remember I knew this atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every
+Sunday those melodious and hypnotizing incantations were chanted
+in my childish ears! I take up the book of ritual, done in
+aristocratic black leather with gold lettering, and the old worn
+volume brings me strange stirrings of recollected awe. But I
+endeavor to repress these vestigial emotions and to see the
+volume--not as a message from God to Good Society, but as a
+landmark of man's age-long struggle against myth and dogma used
+as a source of income and a shield to privilege.
+
+In the beginning, of course, the priest and the magician ruled
+the field. But today, as I examine this "Book of Common Prayer",
+I discover that there is at least one spot out of which he has
+been cleared entirely; there appears no prayer to planets to
+stand still, or to comets to go away. The "Church of Good
+Society" has discovered astronomy! But if any astronomer
+attributes this to his instruments with their marvelous accuracy,
+let him at least stop to consider my "economic interpretation" of
+the phenomenon--the fact that the heavenly bodies affect the
+destinies of mankind so little that there has not been sufficient
+emolument to justify the priest in holding on to his job as
+astrologer.
+
+But when you come to the field of meteorology, what a difference!
+Has any utmost precision of barometer been able to drive the
+priest out of his prerogatives as rainmaker? Not even in the most
+civilized of countries; not in that most decorous and dignified
+of institutions, the Protestant Episcopal Church of America! I
+study with care the passage wherein the clergyman appears as
+controller of the fate of crops. I note a chastened caution of
+phraseology; the church will not repeat the experience of the
+sorcerer's apprentice, who set the demons to bringing water, and
+then could not make them stop! The spell invokes "moderate rain
+and showers"; and as an additional precaution there is a
+counter-spell against "excessive rains and floods": the
+weather-faucet being thus under exact control.
+
+I turn the pages of this "Book of Common Prayer", and note the
+remnants of magic which it contains. There are not many of the
+emergencies of life with which the priest is not authorized to
+deal; not many natural phenomena for which he may not claim the
+credit. And in case anything should have been overlooked, there
+is a blanket order upon Providence: "Graciously hear us, that
+those evils which the craft or subtilty of the devil or man
+worketh against us, be brought to nought!" I am reminded of the
+idea which haunted my childhood, reading fairy-stories about the
+hero who was allowed three wishes that would come true. I could
+never understand why the hero did not settle the matter once for
+all--by wishing that everything he wished might come true!
+
+Most of these incantations are harmless, and some are amiable;
+but now and then you come upon one which is sinister in its
+implications. The volume before me happens to be of the Church of
+England, which is even more forthright in its confronting of the
+Great Magic. Many years ago I remember talking with an English
+army officer, asking how he could feel sure of his soldiers in
+case of labor strikes; did it never occur to him that the men had
+relatives among the workers, and might some time refuse to shoot
+them? His answer was that he was aware of it, the military had
+worked out its technique with care. He would never think of
+ordering his men to fire upon a mob in cold blood; he would first
+start the spell of discipline to work, he would march them round
+the block, and get them in the swing, get their blood moving to
+military music; then, when he gave the order, in they would go. I
+have never forgotten the gesture, the animation with which he
+illustrated their going--I could hear the grunting of bayonets in
+the flesh of men. The social system prevailing in England has
+made necessary the perfecting of such military technique; also,
+you discover, English piety has made necessary the providing of a
+religious sanction for it. After the job has been done, and the
+bayonets have been wiped clean, the company is marched to church,
+and the officer kneels in his family pew, and the privates kneel
+with the parlor-maids, and the clergyman raises his hands to
+heaven and intones: "We bless thy Holy Name, that it hath pleased
+Thee to appease the seditious tumults which have been lately
+raised up among us!"
+
+And sometimes the clergyman does more than bless the killers--he
+even takes part in their bloody work. In the Home Office Records
+of the British Government I read (vol 40, page 17) how certain
+miners were on strike against low wages and the "truck" system,
+and the Vicar of Abergavenny put himself at the head of the
+yeomanry and the Greys. He wrote the Home Office a lively account
+of his military operations. All that remained was to apprehend
+certain of the strikers, "and then I shall be able to return to
+my Clerical duties." Later he wrote of the "sinister influences"
+which kept the miners from returning to their work, and how he
+had put half a dozen of the most obstinate in prison.
+
+
+The Babylonian Fire-god
+
+So we come to the most important of the functions of the tribal
+god, as an ally in war, an inspirer to martial valour. When in
+ancient Babylonia you wished to overcome your enemies, you went
+to the shrine of the Firegod, and with awful rites the priest
+pronounced incantations, which have been preserved on bricks and
+handed down for the use of modern churches. "Pronounce in a
+whisper, and have a bronze image therewith," commands the ancient
+text, and runs on for many strophes in this fashion:
+
+      Let them die, but let me live!
+      Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
+      Let them perish, but let me increase!
+      Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!
+      O, fire-god, mighty, exalted among the gods,
+      Thou art the god, thou art my lord, etc.
+
+This was in heathen Babylon, some three thousand years ago. Since
+then, the world has moved on--
+
+ Three thousand years of war and peace and glory,
+      Of hope and work and deeds and golden schemes,
+  Of mighty voices raised in song and story,
+Of huge inventions and of splendid dreams--
+
+And in one of the world's leading nations the people stand up and
+bare their heads, and sing to their god to save their king and
+punish those who oppose him--
+
+ O Lord our God, arise,  Scatter his enemies,
+      And make them fall;
+  Confound their politics,
+  Frustrate their knavish tricks,
+  On him our hopes we fix,
+      God save us all.
+
+Recently, I understand, it has become the custom to omit this
+stanza from the English national anthem; but it is clear that
+this is because of its crudity of expression, not because of
+objection to the idea of praying to a god to assist one nation
+and injure others; for the same sentiment is expressed again and
+again in the most carefully edited of prayer-books:
+
+Abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their
+devices.
+Defend us, Thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies.
+Strengthen him (the King) that he may vanquish and overcome
+all his enemies.
+There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God.
+
+Prayers such as these are pronounced in every so-called civilized
+nation today. Behind every battle-line in Europe you may see the
+priests of the Babylonian Fire-god with their bronze images and
+their ancient incantations; you may see magic spells being
+wrought, magic standards sanctified, magic bread eaten and magic
+wine drunk, fetishes blessed and hoodoos lifted, eternity
+ransacked to find means of inciting soldiers to the mood where
+they will "go in". Throughout all civilization, the phobias and
+manias of war have thrown the people back into the toils of the
+priest, and that church which tortured Galileo in the dungeons of
+the Inquisition, and shot Ferrier beneath the walls of the
+fortress of Montjuich, is rejoicing in a "rebirth of religion".
+
+The Medicine-men
+
+
+Andrew D. White tells us that
+
+It was noted that in the 14th century, after the great plague,
+the Black Death, had passed, an immensely increased proportion of
+the landed and personal property of every European country was in
+the hands of the Church. Well did a great ecclesiastic remark that
+"pestilences are the harvests of the ministers of God."
+
+And so naturally the clergy hold on to their prerogative as
+banishers of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit
+to rebuke the upstart teachers of impious and atheistical
+inoculation, and scourge the people back into His fold as in the
+good old days of Moses and Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his
+immensely learned and half-suppressed work, "The Analysis of
+Religious Belief", quotes some missionaries to the Fiji
+islanders, concerning the ideas of these benighted heathen on the
+subject of a pestilence. It was the work of a "disease-maker",
+who was burning images of the people with incantations; so they
+blew horns to frighten this disease-maker from his spells. The
+missionaries undertook to explain the true cause of the
+affliction--and thereby revealed that they stood upon the same
+intellectual level as the heathen they were supposed to instruct!
+It appeared that the natives had been at war with their
+neighbors, and the missionaries had commanded them to desist;
+they had refused to obey, and God had sent the epidemic as
+punishment for savage presumption!
+
+And on precisely this same Fijian level stands the "Book of
+Common Prayer" of our most decorous and cultured of churches. I
+remember as a little child lying on a bed of sickness, occasioned
+by the prevalence in our home of the Southern custom of hot bread
+three times a day; and there came an amiable clerical gentleman
+and recited the service proper to such pastoral calls: "Take
+therefore in good part the visitation of the Lord!" And again,
+when my mother was ill, I remember how the clergyman read out in
+church a prayer for her, specifying all sickness, "in mind, body
+or estate". I was thinking only of my mother, and the meaning of
+these words passed over my childish head; I did not realize that
+the elderly plutocrat in black broadcloth who knelt in the pew in
+front of me was invoking the aid of the Almighty so that his
+tenements might bring in their rentals promptly; so that his
+little "flyer" in cotton might prove successful; so that the
+children in his mills might work with greater speed.
+
+Somebody asked Voltaire if you could kill a cow by incantations,
+and he answered, "Yes, if you use a little strychnine with it."
+And that would seem to be the attitude of the present-day
+Anglican church-member; he calls in the best physician he knows,
+he makes sure that his plumbing is sound, and after that he
+thinks it can do no harm to let the Lord have a chance. It makes
+the women happy, and after all, there are a lot of things we
+don't yet know about the world. So he repairs to the family pew,
+and recites over the venerable prayers, and contributes his mite
+to the maintenance of an institution which, fourteen Sundays
+every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the Athanasian
+Creed:
+
+Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he
+hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do keep whole
+and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
+
+For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be explained
+that the "Catholick faith" here referred to is not the Roman
+Catholic, but that of the Church of England and the Protestant
+Episcopal Church of America. This creed of the ancient
+Alexandrian lays down the truth with grim and menacing
+precision--forty-four paragraphs of metaphysical minutiae,
+closing with the final doom: "This is the Catholick faith: which
+except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved."
+
+You see, the founders of this august institution were not content
+with cultured complacency; what they believed they believed
+really, with their whole hearts, and they were ready to act upon
+it, even if it meant burning their own at the stake. Also, they
+knew the ceaseless impulse of the mind to grow; the terrible
+temptation which confronts each new generation to believe that
+which is reasonable. They met the situation by setting out the
+true faith in words which no one could mistake. They have
+provided, not merely the Creed of Athanasius, but also the
+"Thirty-nine Articles"--which are thirty-nine separate and
+binding guarantees that one who holds orders in the Episcopal
+Church shall be either a man of inferior mentality, or else a
+sophist and hypocrite. How desperate some of them have become in
+the face of this cruel dilemma is illustrated by the tale which
+is told of Dr. Jowett, of Balliol College, Oxford: that when he
+was required to recite the "Apostle's Creed" in public, he would
+save himself by inserting the words "used" between the words "I
+believe", saying the inserted words under his breath, thus, "I
+used to believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
+Perhaps the eminent divine never did this; but the fact that his
+students told it, and thought it funny, is sufficient indication
+of their attitude toward their "Religion." The son of William
+George Ward tells in his biography how this leader of the
+"Tractarian Movement" met the problem with cynicism which seems
+almost sublime: "Make yourself clear that you are justified in
+deception; and then lie like a trooper!"
+
+
+The Canonization of Incompetence
+
+The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in
+all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of
+mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it
+canonizes incompetence. Consider the power of the Church of
+England and its favorite daughter here in America; consider their
+prestige with the press and in politics, their hold upon
+literature and the arts, their control of education and the minds
+of children, of charity and the lives of the poor: consider all
+this, and then say what it means to society that such a power
+must be, in every new issue that arises, on the side of reaction
+and falsehood. "So it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
+shall be," runs the church's formula; and this per se and a
+priori, of necessity and in the nature of the case.
+
+Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the
+church's opposition to every advance in every field of science,
+even the most remote from theological concern. Here is the
+Reverend Edward Massey, preaching in 1772 on "The Dangerous and
+Sinful Practice of Inoculation"; declaring that Job's distemper
+was probably confluent small-pox; that he had been inoculated
+doubtless by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for
+the punishment of sin; and that the proposed attempt to prevent
+them is "a diabolical operation". Here are the Scotch clergy of
+the middle of the nineteenth century denouncing the use of
+chloroform in obstetrics, because it is seeking "to avoid one
+part of the primeval curse on woman". Here is Bishop Wilberforce
+of Oxford anathematizing Darwin: "The principle of natural
+selection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God"; it
+"contradicts the revealed relation of creation to its creator";
+it "is inconsistent with the fulness of His glory"; it is "a
+dishonoring view of nature". And the Bishop settled the matter by
+asking Huxley whether he was descended from an ape through his
+grandmother or grandfather.
+
+Think what it means, friends of progress, that these
+ecclesiastical figures should be set up for the reverence of the
+populace, and that every time mankind is to make an advance in
+power over Nature, the pioneers of thought have to come with
+crow-bars and derricks and heave these figures out of the way!
+And you think that conditions are changed to-day? But consider
+syphilis and gonorrhea, about which we know so much, and can do
+almost nothing; consider birth-control, which we are sent to jail
+for so much as mentioning! Consider the divorce reforms for which
+the world is crying--and for which it must wait, because of St.
+Paul! Realize that up to date it has proven impossible to
+persuade the English Church to permit a man to marry his deceased
+wife's sister! That when the war broke upon England the whole
+nation was occupied with a squabble over the disestablishment of
+the church of Wales! Only since 1888 has it been legally possible
+for an unbeliever to hold a seat in Parliament; while up to the
+present day men are tried for blasphemy and convicted under the
+decisions of Lord Hale, to the effect that "it is a crime either
+to deny the truth of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian
+religion or to hold them up to contempt or ridicule." Said Mr.
+justice Horridge, at the West Riding Assizes, 1911: "A man is not
+free in any public place to use common ridicule on subjects which
+are sacred."
+
+The purpose, as outlined by the public prosecutor in London, is
+"to preserve the standard of outward decency." And you will find
+that the one essential to prosecution is always that the victim
+shall be obscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke
+in a drawing-room. I will record an utterance of one of the
+obscure victims of the British "standard of outward decency", a
+teacher of mathematics named Holyoake, who presumed to discuss in
+a public hall the starvation of the working classes of the
+country. A preacher objected that he had discussed "our duty to
+our neighbor" and neglected "our duty to God"; whereupon the
+lecturer replied: "Our national Church and general religious
+institutions cost us, upon accredited computation, about twenty
+million pounds annually. Worship being thus expensive, I appeal
+to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to
+have a God. While our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to
+put deity upon half pay." And for that utterance the unfortunate
+teacher of mathematics served six months in the common Gaol at
+Gloucester!
+
+While men were being tried for publishing the "Free-thinker", the
+Premier of England was William Ewart Gladstone. And if you wish
+to know what an established church can do by way of setting up
+dullness in high places, get a volume of this "Grand Old Man's"
+writings on theological and religious questions. Read his
+"Juventus Mundi", in the course of which he establishes, a mystic
+connection between the trident of Neptune and the Christian
+Trinity! Read his efforts to prove that the writer of Genesis was
+an inspired geologist! This writer of Genesis points out in
+Nature "a grand, fourfold division, set forth in an orderly
+succession of times: First, the water population; secondly, the
+air population; thirdly, the land population of animals;
+fourthly, the land population consummated in man." And it seems
+that this division and sequence "is understood to have been so
+affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken as a
+demonstrated conclusion and established fact." Hence we must
+conclude of the writer of Genesis that "his knowledge was
+divine"! Consider that this was actually published in one of the
+leading British monthlies, and that it was necessary for
+Professor Huxley to answer it, pointing out that so far is it
+from being true that "a fourfold division and orderly sequence"
+of water, air and land animals "has been affirmed in our time by
+natural science", that on the contrary, the assertion is
+"directly contradictory to facts known to everyone who is
+acquainted with the elements of natural science". The
+distribution of fossils proves that land animals originated
+before sea-animals, and there has been such a mixing of land, sea
+and air animals as utterly to destroy the reputation of both
+Genesis and Gladstone as possessing a divine knowledge of
+Geology.
+
+
+Gibson's Preservative
+
+I have a friend, a well-known "scholar", who permits me the use
+of his extensive library. I stand in the middle and look about
+me, and see in the dim shadows walls lined from floor to ceiling
+with decorous and grave-looking books, bound for the most part in
+black, many of them fading to green with age. There are literally
+thousands of such, and their theme is the pseudo-science of
+"divinity". I close my eyes, to make the test fair, and walk to
+the shelves and put out my hand and take a book. It proves to be
+a modern work, "A History of the English Prayer-book in Relation
+to the Doctrine of the Eucharist". I turn the pages and discover
+that it is a study of the variations of one minute detail of
+church doctrine. This learned divine--he has written many such
+works, as the advertisements inform us--fills up the greater part
+of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities,
+arguments and counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties. I
+will give one sample of these footnotes--asking the reader to be
+patient:
+
+I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode: ("On
+Eucharist", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware in Gibson's
+"Preservative", vol X, Chap II) "One great point for which our
+divines have contended, in opposition to Romish errors, has been
+the reality of that presence of Christ's Body and Blood to the
+soul of the believer which is affected through the operation of
+the Holy Spirit notwithstanding the absence of that Body and
+Blood in Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both present
+and absent; present, really and truly present, in one sense--that
+is, by the soul being brought into immediate communion with--but
+absent in another sense--that is, as regards the contiguity of
+its substance to our bodies. The authors under review, like the
+Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real Presence, and
+assuming their own interpretation of the phrase to be the only
+true one, press into their service the testimony of divines who,
+though using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of
+theirs. The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by
+the Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to repudiate
+it, etc."
+
+Realize that of the work from which this "valuable observation"
+is quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume
+containing not less than 757 pages! Realize that in Gibson's
+"Preservative" there are not less than ten volumes of such
+writing! Realize that in this twentieth century a considerable
+portion of the mental energies of the world's greatest empire is
+devoted to that kind of learning!
+
+I turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 1910. I
+was in England within a year of that time, and so I can tell what
+was the condition of the English people while printers were
+making and papers were reviewing and book-stores were
+distributing this work of ecclesiastical research. I walked along
+the Embankment and saw the pitiful wretches, men, women and
+sometimes children, clad in filthy rags, starved white and frozen
+blue, soaked in winter rains and shivering in winter winds,
+homeless, hopeless, unheeded by the doctors of divinity,
+unpreserved by Gibson's "Preservative". I walked on Hampstead
+Heath on Easter day, when the population of the slums turns out
+for its one holiday; I walked, literally trembling with horror,
+for I had never seen such sights nor dreamed of them. These
+creatures were hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were
+some new grotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could
+only shamble; they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a
+hand-organ playing, and turned away--the things they did in their
+efforts to dance were not to be watched. And then I went out into
+the beautiful English country; cultured and charming ladies took
+me in swift, smooth motor-cars, and I saw the pitiful hovels and
+the drink-sodden, starch-poisoned inhabitants--slum-populations
+everywhere, even on the land! When the newspaper reporters came
+to me, I said that I had just come from Germany, and that if ever
+England found herself at war with that country, she would regret
+that she had let the bodies and the minds of her people rot; for
+which expression I was severely taken to task by more than one
+British divine.
+
+The bodies--and the minds; the rot of the latter being the cause
+of the former. All over England in that year of 1910, in
+thousands of schools, rich and poor, and in the greatest centres
+of learning, men like Dean Goode were teaching boys dead
+languages and dead sciences and dead arts; sending them out to
+life with no more conception of the modern world than a monk of
+the Middle Ages; sending them out with minds, made hard and
+inflexible, ignorant of science, indifferent to progress,
+contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight, this
+terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and
+disciplined by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The
+awful muddle that was in England during the first two years of
+the war has not yet been told in print; but thousands know it,
+and some day it will be written, and it will finish forever the
+prestige of the British ruling caste. They rushed off an
+expedition to Gallipoli, and somebody forgot the water-supply,
+and at one time they had ninety-five thousand cases of dysentery!
+
+They always "muddle through", they tell you; that is the motto of
+their ruling caste. But this time they did not "muddle
+through"--they had to come to America for help. As I write, our
+Congress is voting billions and tens of billions of dollars, and
+a million of the best of our young manhood are being taken from
+their homes--because in 1910 the mind of England was occupied
+with Dean Goode "On Eucharist", and the ten volumes of Gibson's
+"Preservative".
+
+
+The Elders
+
+What the Church means in human affairs is the rule of the aged.
+It means old men in the seats of authority, not merely in the
+church, but in the law-courts and in Parliament, even in the army
+and navy. For a test I look up the list of bishops of the Church
+of England in Whitaker's Almanac; it appears that there are 40 of
+these functionaries, including the archbishops, but not the
+suffragans; and that the total salary paid to them amounts to
+more than nine hundred thousand dollars a year. This, it should
+be understood, does not include the pay of their assistants, nor
+the cost of maintaining their religious establishments; it does
+not include any private incomes which they or their wives may
+possess, as members of the privileged classes of the Empire. I
+look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find that there is only
+one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is ninety-one, while
+the average age of the goodly company is seventy. There have been
+men in history who have retained their flexibility of mind, their
+ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the age of
+seventy, but it will always be found that these men were trained
+in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and
+theology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, recently stated to a newspaper reporter
+that he worked seventeen hours a day, and had no time to form an
+opinion on the labor question.
+
+And now--here is the crux of the argument--do these aged
+gentlemen rule of their own power? They do not! They do literally
+nothing of their own power; they could not make their own
+episcopal robes, they could not even cook their own episcopal
+dinners. They have to be maintained in all their comings and
+goings. Who supports them, and to what end?
+
+The roots of the English Church are in the English land system,
+which is one of the infamies of the modern world. It dates from
+the days of William the Norman, who took possession of Britain
+with his sword, and in order to keep possession for himself and
+his heirs, distributed the land among his nobles and prelates. In
+those days, you understand, a high ecclesiastic was a man of war,
+who did not stoop to veil his predatory nature under pretense of
+philanthropy; the abbots and archbishops, of William wore armor
+and had their troops of knights like the barons and the dukes.
+William gave them vast tracts, and at the same time he gave them
+orders which they obeyed. Says the English chronicler, "Stark he
+was. Bishops he stripped of their bishopricks, abbots of their
+abbacies". Green tells us that "the dependencie of the church on
+the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted from
+bishop as from baron." And what was this homage? The bishop knelt
+before William, bareheaded and without arms, and swore: "Hear my
+lord, I become liege man of yours for life and limb and earthly
+regard, and I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and
+death, God help me."
+
+The lands which the church got from William the Norman, she has
+held, and always on the same condition--that she shall be "liege
+man for life and limb and earthly regard". In this you have the
+whole story of the church of England, in the twentieth century as
+in the eleventh. The balance of power has shifted from time to
+time; old families have lost the land and new families have
+gotten it; but the loyalty and homage of the church have been
+held by the land, as the needle of the compass is held by a mass
+of metal. Some two hundred and fifty years ago a popular song
+gave the general impression--
+
+ For this is law that I'll maintain
+      Until my dying day, sir:
+  That whatsoever king shall reign
+      I'll still be vicar of Bray, sir!
+
+So, wherever you take the Anglican clergy, they are Tories and
+Royalists, conservatives and reactionaries, friends of every
+injustice that profits the owning class. And always among
+themselves you find them intriguing and squabbling over the
+dividing of the spoils; always you find them enjoying leisure and
+ease, while the people suffer and the rebels complain. One can
+pass down the corridor of English history and prove this
+statement by the words of Englishmen from every single
+generation. Take the fourteenth century; the "Good Parliament"
+declares that
+
+Unworthy and unlearned caitiffs are appointed to benefices of a
+thousand marks, while the poor and learned hardly obtain one of
+twenty. God gave the sheep to be pastured, not to be shaven and
+shorn.
+
+And a little later comes the poet of the people, Piers Plowman--
+
+ But now is Religion a rider, a roamer through the streets,  A
+leader at the love-day, a buyer of the land,  Pricking on a
+palfrey from manor to manor,  A heap of hounds at his back, as
+tho he were a lord;  And if his servant kneel not when he brings
+his cup,  He loureth on him asking who taught him courtesy.
+Badly have lords done to give their heirs' lands  Away to the
+Orders that have no pity;  Money rains upon their altars.  There
+where such parsons be living at ease  They have no pity on the
+poor; that is their "charity".  Ye hold you as lords; your lands
+are too broad,  But there shall come a king and he shall shrive
+you all  And beat you as the bible saith for breaking of your
+Rule.
+
+Another step through history, and in the early part of the
+sixteenth century here is Simon Fish, addressing King Henry the
+Eighth, in the "Supplicacyon for the Beggars", complaining of the
+"strong, puissant and counterfeit holy and ydell" which "are now
+increased under your sight, not only into a great nombre, but
+ynto a kingdome."
+
+They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto their
+hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. The goodliest
+lordshippes, maners, londes, and territories, are theyres.
+Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the come, medowe,
+pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves, lambes, pigges, gese and
+chikens. Ye, and they looke so narowly uppon theyre proufittes,
+that the poore wyves must be countable to thym of every tenth eg,
+or elles she gettith not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an
+heretike. . . . Is it any merveille that youre people so
+compleine of povertie? The Turke nowe, in your tyme, shulde never
+be abill to get so moche grounde of christendome . . . And whate
+do al these gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy theves? These be
+they that have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in your
+realme. These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and
+here them to an other.
+
+The petitioner goes on to tell how they steal wives and all their
+goods with them, and if any man protest they make him a heretic,
+"so that it maketh him wisshe that he had not done it". Also they
+take fortunes for masses and then don't say them. "If the Abbot
+of westminster shulde sing every day as many masses for his
+founders as he is bounde to do by his foundacion, 1000 monkes
+were too few." The petitioner suggests that the king shall "tie
+these holy idell theves to the cartes, to be whipped naked about
+every market towne till they will fall to laboure!"
+
+
+Church History
+
+King Henry did not follow this suggestion precisely, but he took
+away the property of the religious orders for the expenses of his
+many wives and mistresses, and forced the clergy in England to
+forswear obedience to the Pope and make his royal self their
+spiritual head. This was the beginning of the Anglican Church, as
+distinguished from the Catholic; a beginning of which the
+Anglican clergy are not so proud as they would like to be. When I
+was a boy, they taught me what they called "church history", and
+when they came to Henry the Eighth they used him as an
+illustration of the fact that the Lord is sometimes wont to
+choose evil men to carry out His righteous purposes. They did not
+explain why the Lord should do this confusing thing, nor just how
+you were to know, when you saw something being done by a
+murderous adulterer, whether it was the will of the Lord or of
+Satan; nor did they go into details as to the motives which the
+Lord had been at pains to provide, so as to induce his royal
+agent to found the Anglican Church. For such details you have to
+consult another set of authorities--the victims of the
+plundering.
+
+When I was in college my professor of Latin was a gentleman with
+bushy brown whiskers and a thundering voice of which I was often
+the object--for even in those early days I had the habit of
+persisting in embarrassing questions. This professor was a devout
+Catholic, and not even in dealing with ancient Romans could he
+restrain his propaganda impulses. Later on in life he became
+editor of the "Catholic Encyclopedia", and now when I turn its
+pages, I imagine that I see the bushy brown whiskers, and hear
+the thundering voice: "Mr. Sinclair, it is so because I tell you
+it is so!"
+
+I investigate, and find that my ex-professor knows all about King
+Henry the Eighth, and his motives in founding the Church of
+England; he is ready with an "economic interpretation", as
+complete as the most rabid muckraker could desire! It appears
+that the king wanted a new wife, and demanded that the Pope
+should grant the necessary permission; in his efforts to browbeat
+the Pope into such betrayal of duty, King Henry threatened the
+withdrawal of the "annates" and the "Peter's pence". Later on he
+forced the clergy to declare that the Pope was "only a foreign
+bishop", and in order to "stamp out overt expression of
+disaffection, he embarked upon a veritable reign of terror".
+
+In Anglican histories, you are assured that all this was a work
+of religious reform, and that after it the Church was the pure
+vehicle of God's grace. There were no more "holy idell theves",
+holding the land of England and plundering the poor. But get to
+know the clergy, and see things from the inside, and you will
+meet some one like the Archbishop of Cashell, who wrote to one of
+his intimates:
+
+I conclude that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to eat,
+drink and grow fat, rich and die; which laudable example I
+propose for the remainder of my days to follow.
+
+If you say that might be a casual jest, hear what Thackeray
+reports of that period, the eighteenth century, which he knew
+with peculiar intimacy:
+
+I read that Lady Yarmouth (my most religious and gracious King's
+favorite) sold a bishopric to a clergyman for 5000 pounds. (She
+betted him the 5000 pounds that he would not be made a bishop,
+and he lost, and paid her.) Was he the only prelate of his time
+led up by such hands for consecration? As I peep into George II's
+St. James, I see crowds of cassocks pushing up the back-stairs of
+the ladies of the court; stealthy clergy slipping purses into
+their laps; that godless old king yawning under his canopy in his
+Chapel Royal, as the chaplain before him is discoursing.
+Discoursing about what?--About righteousness and judgment? Whilst
+the chaplain is preaching, the king is chattering in German and
+almost as loud as the preacher; so loud that the clergyman
+actually burst out crying in his pulpit, because the defender of
+the faith and the dispenser of bishoprics would not listen to
+him!
+
+
+Land and Livings
+
+And how is it in the twentieth century? Have conditions been much
+improved? There are great Englishmen who do not think so. I quote
+Robert Buchanan, a poet who spoke for the people, and who
+therefore has still to be recognized by English critics. He
+writes of the "New Rome", by which he means present-day England:
+
+  The gods are dead, but in their name
+  Humanity is sold to shame,
+  While (then as now!) the tinsel'd priest
+  Sitteth with robbers at the feast,
+  Blesses the laden, blood-stained board,
+  Weaves garlands round the butcher's sword,
+  And poureth freely (now as then)
+  The sacramental blood of Men!
+
+You see, the land system of England remains--the changes having
+been for the worse. William the Conqueror wanted to keep the
+Saxon peasantry contented, so he left them their "commons"; but
+in the eighteenth century these were nearly all filched away. We
+saw the same thing done within the last generation in Mexico, and
+from the same motive--because developing capitalism needs cheap
+labor, whereas people who have access to the land will not slave
+in mills and mines. In England, from the time of Queen Anne to
+that of William and Mary, the parliaments of the landlords passed
+some four thousand separate acts, whereby more than seven million
+acres of the common land were stolen from the people. It has been
+calculated that these acres might have supported a million
+families; and ever since then England has had to feed a million
+paupers all the time.
+
+As an old song puts the matter:
+
+  Why prosecute the man or woman
+  Who steals a goose from off the common,
+  And let the greater felon loose
+  Who steals the common from the goose?
+
+In our day the land aristocracy is rooted like the native oak in
+British soil: some of them direct descendants of the Normans,
+others children of the court favorites and panders who grew rich
+in the days of the Tudors and the unspeakable Stuarts. Seven men
+own practically all the land of the city and county of London,
+and collect tribute from seven millions of people. The estates
+are entailed--that is, handed down from father to oldest son
+automatically; you cannot buy any land, but if you want to build,
+the landlord gives you a lease, and when the lease is up, he
+takes possession of your buildings. The tribute which London pays
+is more than a hundred million dollars a year. So absolute is the
+right of the land-owner that he can sue for trespass the driver
+on an aeroplane which flies over him; he imposes on fishermen a
+tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the shore.
+
+And in this graft, of course, the church has its share. Each
+church owns land--not merely that upon which it stands, but farms
+and city lots from which it derives income. Each cathedral owns
+large tracts; so do the schools and universities in which the
+clergy are educated. The income from the holdings of a church
+constitutes what is called a "living"; these livings, which vary
+in size, are the prerogatives of the younger sons of the ruling
+families, and are intrigued and scrambled for in exactly the
+fashion which Thackeray describes in the eighteenth century.
+
+About six thousand of these "livings" are in the gift of great
+land owners; one noble lord alone disposes of fifty-six such
+plums; and needless to say, he does not present them to clergymen
+who favor radical land-taxes. He gives them to men like
+himself--autocratic to the poor, easy-going to members of his own
+class, and cynical concerning the grafts of grace.
+
+In one English village which I visited the living was worth seven
+hundred pounds, with the use of a fine mansion; as the incumbent
+had a large family, he lived there. In another place the living
+was worth a thousand pounds, and the incumbent hired a curate,
+himself appearing twice a year, on Christmas day and on the
+King's birthday, to preach a sermon; the rest of the time he
+spent in Paris. It is worth noting that in 1808 a law was
+proposed compelling absentee pluralists--that is, clergymen
+holding more than one "living"--to furnish curates to do their
+work; it might be interesting to note that this law met with
+strenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bishops voting
+against it without a division. Thus we may understand the sharp
+saying of Karl Marx, that the English clergy would rather part
+with thirty-eight of their thirty-nine articles than with one
+thirty-ninth of their income.
+
+There is always a plentiful supply of curates in England. They
+are the sons of the less influential ruling families, and of the
+clergy; they have been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and
+possess the one essential qualification, that they are gentlemen.
+Their average price is two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their
+function was made clear to me when I attended my first English
+tea-party. There was a wicker table, perhaps a foot and a half
+square, having three shelves, one below the other the top layer
+the plates and napkins, on the next the muffins, and on the
+lowest the cake. Said the hostess, "Will you pass the curate,
+please?" I looked puzzled, and she pointed. "We call that the
+curate, because it does the work of a curate."
+
+
+Graft in Tail
+
+As one of America's head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular
+with the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in
+their campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and
+disconcerted when they found I did not agree with their
+interpretation of my writings. I had told of corruption in
+American politics; surely I must know that in England they had no
+such evils! I explained that they did not have to; their graft,
+to use their own legal phrase, was "in tail"; the grafters had,
+as a matter of divine right, the things which in America they had
+to buy. In America, for instance, we had a Senate, a
+"Millionaire's Club", for admission to which the members paid in
+cash; but in England the same men came to the same position as
+their birth-right. Political corruption is not an end in itself,
+it is merely a means to exploitation; and of exploitation England
+has even more than America. When I explained this, my popularity
+with the British ruling classes vanished quickly.
+
+As a matter of fact, England is more like America than she
+realizes; her British reticence has kept her ignorant about
+herself. I could not carry on my business in England, because of
+the libel laws, which have as their first principle "the greater
+the truth, the greater the libel". Englishmen read with
+satisfaction what I write about America; but if I should turn my
+attention to their own country, they would send me to jail as
+they sent Frank Harris. The fact is that the new men in England,
+the lords of coal and iron and shipping and beer, have bought
+their way into the landed aristocracy for cash, just as our
+American senators have done; they have bought the political
+parties with campaign gifts, precisely as in America; they have
+taken over the press, whether by outright purchase like
+Northcliffe, or by advertising subsidy--both of which methods we
+Americans know. Within the last decade or two another group has
+been coming into control; and not merely is this the same class
+of men as in America, it frequently consists of the same
+individuals. These are the big money-lenders, the international
+financiers who are the fine and final flower of the capitalist
+system. These gentlemen make the world their home--or, as
+Shakespeare puts it, their oyster. They know how to fit
+themselves to all environments; they are Catholics in Rome and
+Vienna, country gentlemen in London, bons vivants in Paris,
+democrats in Chicago, Socialists in Petrograd, and Hebrews
+wherever they are.
+
+And of course, in buying the English government, these new
+classes have bought the English Church. Skeptics and men of the
+world as they are, they know that they must have a Religion. They
+have read the story of the French revolution, and the shadow of
+the guillotine is always over their thoughts; they see the giant
+of labor, restless in his torment, groping as in a nightmare for
+the throat of his enemy. Who can blind the eyes of this giant,
+who can chain him to his couch of slumber? There is but one
+agent, without rival--the Keeper of the Holy Secrets, the Deputy
+of the Almighty Awfulness, the Giver and Withholder of Eternal
+Life. Tremble, slave! Fall down and bow your forehead in the
+dust! I can see in my memory the sight that thrilled my
+childhood--my grim old Bishop, clad in his gorgeous ceremonial
+robes, stretching out his hands over the head of the new priest,
+and pronouncing that most deadly of all the Christian curses:
+
+"Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins
+thou dost retain, they are retained!"
+
+
+Bishops and Beer
+
+For example, the International Shylocks wanted the diamond mines
+of South Africa--wanted them more firmly governed and less firmly
+taxed than could be arranged with the Old Man of the Boers. So
+the armies of England were sent to subjugate the country. You
+might think they would have had the good taste to leave the lowly
+Jesus out of this affair--but if so, you have missed the
+essential point about established religion. The bishops, priests,
+and deacons are set up for the populace to revere, and when the
+robber-classes need a blessing upon some enterprise, then is the
+opportunity for the bishops, priests and deacons to earn their
+"living." During the Boer war the blood-lust of the English
+clergy was so extreme that writers in the dignified monthly
+reviews felt moved to protest against it. When the pastors of
+Switzerland issued a collective protest against cruelties to
+women and children in the South African concentration-camps, it
+was the Right Reverend Bishop of Winchester who was brought
+forward to make reply. Nowadays all England is reading Bernhardi,
+and shuddering at Prussian glorification of war; but no one
+mentions Bishop Welldon of Calcutta, who advocated the Boer war
+as a means of keeping the nation "virile"; nor Archbishop
+Alexander, who said that it was God's way of making "noble
+natures".
+
+The British God had other ways of improving nations--for example,
+the opium traffic. The British traders had been raising the poppy
+in India and selling its juice to the Chinese. They had made
+perhaps a hundred million "noble natures" by this method; and
+also they were making a hundred million dollars a year. The
+Chinese, moved by their new "virility," undertook to destroy some
+opium, and to stop the traffic; whereupon it was necessary to use
+British battle-ships to punish and subdue them. Was there any
+difficulty in persuading the established church of Jesus to bless
+this holy war? There was not! Lord Shaftesbury, himself the most
+devout of Anglicans, commented with horror upon the attitude of
+the clergy, and wrote in his diary:
+
+I rejoice that this cruel and debasing opium war is terminated.
+We have triumphed in one of the most lawless, unnecessary, and
+unfair struggles in the records of history; and Christians have
+shed more heathen blood in two years, than the heathens have shed
+of Christian blood in two centuries.
+
+That was in 1843; for seventy years thereafter pious England
+continued to force the opium traffic upon protesting China, and
+only in the last two or three years has the infamy been brought
+to an end. Throughout the long controversy the attitude of the
+church was such that Li Hung Chang was moved to assert in a
+letter to the Anti-Opium Society:
+
+Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and China
+can never meet on a common ground. China views the whole question
+from a moral standpoint, England from a fiscal.
+
+And just as the Chinese people were poisoned with opium, so the
+English people are being poisoned with alcohol. Both in town and
+country, labor is sodden with it. Scientists and reformers are
+clamoring for restriction--and what prevents? Head and front of
+the opposition for a century, standing like a rock, has been the
+Established Church. The Rev. Dawson Burns, historian of the early
+temperance movement, declares that "among its supporters I cannot
+recall one Church of England minister of influence." When Asquith
+brought in his bill for the restriction of the traffic in beer,
+he was confronted with petitions signed by members of the clergy,
+protesting against the act. And what was the basis of their
+protest? That beer is a food and not a poison? Yes, of course;
+but also that there was property invested in brewing it, Three
+hundred and thirty-two clergy of the diocese of Peterborough
+declared:
+
+We do strongly protest against the main provisions of the present
+bill as creating amongst our people a sense of grave injustice as
+amounting to a confiscation of private property, spelling ruin
+for thousands of quite innocent people, and provoking deep and
+widespread resentment, which must do harm to our cause and hinder
+our aims.
+
+I have come upon references to another and even more plainspoken
+petition, signed by 1,280 clergymen; but war-time facilities for
+research have not enabled me to find the text. In Prof. Henry C.
+Vedder's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," we read:
+
+It was authoritatively stated a short time ago that Mr. Asquith's
+temperance bill was defeated in Parliament through the opposition
+of clergymen who had invested their savings in brewery stock, the
+profits of which might have been lessened by the bill.
+
+Also the power of the clergy, combined with the brewer, was
+sufficient to put through Parliament a provision that no
+prohibition legislation should ever be passed without providing
+for compensation to the owners of the industry. Today, all over
+America, appeals are being made to the people to eat less grain;
+the grain is being shipped to England, some of it to be made into
+beer; and a high Anglican prelate, his Grace the Archbishop of
+York, comes to America to urge us to increased sacrifices, and in
+his first newspaper interview takes occasion to declare that his
+church is not in favor of prohibition as a measure of war-time
+economy!
+
+
+Anglicanism and Alcohol
+
+This partnership of Bishops and Beer is painfully familiar to
+British radicals; they see it at work in every election--the
+publican confusing the voters with spirits, while the parson
+confuses them with spirituality. There are two powerful societies
+in England employing this deadly combination--the "Anti-Socialist
+Union" and the "Liberty and Property Defense League." If you scan
+the lists of the organizers, directors and subsidizers of these
+satanic institutions, you find Tory politicians and landlords,
+prominent members of the higher clergy, and large-scale dealers
+in drunkenness. I attended in London a meeting called by the
+"Liberty and Property Defense League," to listen to a
+denunciation of Socialism by W. H. Mallock, a master sophist of
+Roman Catholicism; upon the platform were a bishop and half a
+dozen members of the Anglican clergy, together with the secretary
+of the Federated Brewers' Association, the Secretary of the Wine,
+Spirit, and Beer Trade Association, and three or four other
+alcoholic magnates.
+
+In every public library in England and many in America you will
+find an assortment of pamphlets published by these organizations,
+and scholarly volumes endorsed by them, in which the stock
+misrepresentations of Socialism are perpetuated. Some of these
+writings are brutal--setting forth the ethics of exploitation in
+the manner of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, the English clergyman who
+supplied for capitalist depredation a basis in pretended natural
+science. Said this shepherd of Jesus:
+
+A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot
+get subsistence from his parents, and if society does not want
+his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food,
+and in fact has no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty
+feast there is no cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and
+will quickly execute her own orders.
+
+Such was the tone of the ruling classes in the nineteenth
+century; but it was found that for some reason this failed to
+stop the growth of Socialism, and so in our time the clerical
+defenders of Privilege have grown subtle and insinuating. They
+inform us now that they have a deep sympathy with our fundamental
+purposes; they burn with pity for the poor, and they would really
+and truly wish happiness to everyone, not merely in Heaven, but
+right here and now. However, there are so many complications--and
+so they proceed to set out all the anti-Socialist bug-a-boos.
+Here for example, is the Rev. James Stalker, D. D., expounding
+"The Ethics of Jesus," and admonishing us extremists:
+
+Efforts to transfer money and property from one set of hands to
+another may be inspired by the same passions as have blinded the
+present holders to their own highest good, and may be accompanied
+with injustice as extreme as has ever been manifested by the rich
+and powerful.
+
+And again, the Rev. W. Sanday, D. D., an especially popular
+clerical author, gives us this sublime utterance of religion on
+wage-slavery:
+
+The world is full of mysteries, but some clear lines run through
+them, of which this is one. Where God has been so patient, it is
+not for us to be impatient.
+
+And again, Professor Robert Flint, of Edinburgh University, a
+clergyman, author of a big book attacking Socialism, and bringing
+us back to the faith of our fathers:
+
+The great bulk of human misery is due, not to social
+arrangements, but to personal vices.
+
+I study Professor Flint's volume in the effort to find just what,
+if anything, he would have the church do about the evils of our
+time. I find him praising the sermons of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of
+Durham, as being the proper sort for clergymen to preach. Bishop
+Westcott, whether he is talking to a high society congregation,
+or to one of workingmen, shows "an exquisite sense of knowing
+always where to stop." So I consulted the Bishop's volume, "The
+Social Aspects of Christianity" and I see at once why he is
+popular with the anti-Socialist propagandists--neither I or any
+other man can possibly discover what he really means, or what he
+really wants done.
+
+I was fascinated by this Westcott problem; I thought maybe if I
+kept on the good Bishop's trail, I might in the end find
+something a plain man could understand; so I got the beautiful
+two-volume "Life of Brooke Westcott, by his Son"--and there I
+found an exposition of the social purposes of bishops! In the
+year 1892 there was a strike in Durham, which is in the coal
+country; the employers tried to make a cut in wages, and some ten
+thousand men walked out, and there was a long and bitter
+struggle, which wrung the episcopal heart. There was much
+consultation and correspondence on episcopal stationery, and at
+last the masters and men were got together, with the Bishop as
+arbitrator, and the dispute was triumphantly settled--how do you
+suppose? On the basis of a ten per cent reduction in wages!
+
+I know nothing quainter in the history of English graft than the
+naivete with which the Bishop's biographer and son tells the
+story of this episcopal venture into reality. The prelate came
+out from the conference "all smiles, and well satisfied with the
+result of his day's work." As for his followers, they were in
+ecstacies; they "seized and waltzed one another around on the
+carriage drive as madly as ever we danced at a flower show ball.
+Hats and caps are thrown into the air, and we cheer ourselves
+hoarse." The Bishop proceeds to his palace, and sends one more
+communication on episcopal stationery--an order to all his clergy
+to "offer their humble and hearty thanks to God for our happy
+deliverance from the strife by which the diocese has been long
+afflicted." Strange to say, there were a few varlets in Durham
+who did not appreciate the services of the bold Bishop, and one
+of them wrote and circulated some abusive verses, in which he
+made reference to the Bishop's comfortable way of life. The
+biographer then explains that the Bishop was so tender-hearted
+that he suffered for the horses who drew his episcopal coach, and
+so ascetic that he would have lived on tea and toast if he had
+been permitted to. A curious condition in English society, where
+the Bishop would have lived on tea and toast, but was not
+permitted to; while the working people, who didn't want to live
+on tea and toast, were compelled to!
+
+
+Dead Cats
+
+For more than a hundred years the Anglican clergy have been
+fighting with every resource at their command the liberal and
+enlightened men of England who wished to educate the masses of
+the people. In 1807 the first measure for a national
+school-system was denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury as
+"derogatory to the authority of the Church." As a counter-
+measure, his supporters established the "National Society for
+Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Doctrines of the
+Established Church"; and the founder of the organization, a
+clergyman, advocated a barn as a good structure for a school, and
+insisted that the children of the workers "should not be taught
+beyond their station." In 1840 a Committee of the Privy Council
+of Education was appointed, but bowed to the will of the
+Archbishops, setting forth the decree of "their lordships" that
+"the first purpose of all instruction must be the regulation of
+the thoughts and habits of the children by the doctrine and
+precepts of revealed religion." In 1850 a bill for secular
+education was denounced as presenting to the country "a choice
+between Heaven or Hell, God or the Devil." In 1870, Forster,
+author of the still unpassed bill, wrote that while the parsons
+were disputing, the children of the poor were "growing into
+savages."
+
+As with Education, so with Social Reform. During the struggle to
+abolish slavery in the British colonies, some enthusiasts
+endeavored to establish the doctrine that Christian baptism
+conferred emancipation upon negroes who accepted it; whereupon
+the Bishop of London laid down the formula of exploitation:
+"Christianity and the embracing of the gospel do not make the
+least alteration of civil property."
+
+Gladstone, who was a democrat when he was not religious, spoke of
+the cultured classes of England:
+
+In almost every one, if not every one, of the greatest political
+controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the
+franchise, whether they affected commerce, whether they affected
+religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable
+institution of slavery, or what subject they touched, these
+leisured classes, these educated classes, these titled classes
+have been in the wrong.
+
+The "Great Commoner" did not add "these religious classes," for
+he belonged to the religious classes himself; but a study of the
+record will supply the gap. The Church opposed all the reform
+measures which Gladstone himself put through. It opposed the
+Reform Bill of 1832. It opposed all the social reforms of Lord
+Shaftesbury. This noble-hearted Englishman complained that at
+first only a single minister of religion supported him, and to
+the end only a few. He expressed himself as distressed and
+puzzled "to find support from infidels and non-professors;
+opposition or coldness from religionists or declaimers."
+
+And to our own day it has been the same. In 1894 the House of
+Bishops voted solidly against the Employers' Liability Law. The
+House of Bishops opposed Home Rule, and beat it; the House of
+Bishops opposed Womans' Suffrage, and voted against it to the
+end. Concerning this establishment Lord Shaftesbury, himself the
+most devout of Englishmen, used the vivid phrase: "this vast
+aquarium full of cold-blooded life." He told the Bishops that he
+would give up preaching to them about ecclesiastical reform,
+because he knew that they would never begin. Another member of
+the British aristocracy, the Hon. Geo. Russell, has written of
+their record and adventures:
+
+They were defenders of absolutism, slavery, and the bloody penal
+code; they were the resolute opponents of every political or
+social reform; and they had their reward from the nation outside
+Parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his palace sacked and
+burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep an engagement to
+preach lest the congregation should stone him. The Bishop of
+Litchfield barely escaped with his life after preaching at St.
+Bride's, Fleet Street. Archbishop Howley, entering Canterbury for
+his primary visitation, was insulted, spat upon, and only brought
+by a circuitous route to the Deanery, amid the execrations of the
+mob. On the 5th of November the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester
+were burnt in effigy close to their own palace gates. Archbishop
+Howley's chaplain complained that a dead cat had been thrown at
+him, when the Archbishop--a man of apostolic meekness--replied:
+"You should be thankful that it was not a live one."
+
+The people had reason for this conduct--as you will always find
+they have, if you take the trouble to inquire. Let me quote
+another member of the English ruling classes, Mr. Conrad Noel,
+who gives "an instance of the procedure of Church and State about
+this period":
+
+In 1832 six agricultural labourers in South Dorsetshire, led by
+one of their class, George Loveless, in receipt of 9s. a week
+each, demanded the 10s. rate of wages usual in the neighbourhood.
+The result was a reduction to 8s. An appeal was made to the
+chairman of the local bench, who decided that they must work for
+whatever their masters chose to pay them. The parson, who had at
+first promised his help, now turned against them, and the masters
+promptly reduced the wage to 7s., with a threat of further
+reduction. Loveless then formed an agricultural union, for which
+all seven were arrested, treated as convicts, and committed to
+the assizes. The prison chaplain tried to bully them into
+submission. The judge determined to convict them, and directed
+that they should be tried for mutiny under an act of George III,
+specially passed to deal with the naval mutiny at the Nore. The
+grand jury were landowners, and the petty jury were farmers; both
+judge and jury were churchmen of the prevailing type. The judge
+summed up as follows: "Not for anything that you have done, or
+that I can prove that you intend to do, but for an example to
+others I consider it my duty to pass the sentence of seven years'
+penal transportation across His Majesty's high seas upon each and
+every one of you."
+
+
+Suffer Little Children
+
+The founder of Christianity was a man who specialized in
+children. He was not afraid of having His discourses disturbed by
+them, He did not consider them superfluous. "Of such is the
+Kingdom of Heaven", He said; and His Church is the inheritor of
+this tradition--"feed my lambs". There were children in Great
+Britain in the early part of the nineteenth century, and we may
+see what was done with them by turning to Gibbin's "Industrial
+History of England":
+
+Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the
+manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory
+district, and there keep them, generally in some dark cellar,
+till they could hand them over to a mill owner in want of hands,
+who would come and examine their height, strength, and bodily
+capacities, exactly as did the slave owners in the American
+markets. After that the children were simply at the mercy of
+their owners, nominally as apprentices, but in reality as mere
+slaves, who got no wages, and whom it was not worth while even to
+feed and clothe properly, because they were so cheap and their
+places could be so easily supplied. It was often arranged by the
+parish authorities, in order to get rid of imbeciles, that one
+idiot should be taken by the mill owner with every twenty sane
+children. The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse than
+that of the others. The secret of their final end has never been
+disclosed, but we can form some idea of their awful sufferings
+from the hardships of the other victims to capitalist greed and
+cruelty. The hours of their labor were only limited by
+exhaustion, after many modes of torture had been unavailingly
+applied to force continued work. Children were often worked
+sixteen hours a day, by day and by night.
+
+In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the
+labor of children nine years of age to four-teen hours a day.
+This would seem to have been a reasonable provision, likely to
+have won the approval of Christ; yet the bill was violently
+opposed by Christian employers, backed by Christian clergymen. It
+was interfering with freedom of contract, and therefore with the
+will of Providence; it was anathema to an established Church,
+whose function was in 1819, as it is in 1918, and was in 1918 B.
+C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of the prevailing
+economic order. "Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the exalted
+prince, worshipper of the gods".... so begins the oldest legal
+code which has come down to us, from 2250 B. C.; and the
+coronation service of the English church is made whole out of the
+same thesis. The duty of submission, not merely to divinely
+chosen King, but to divinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen
+Manufacturer, is implicit in the church's every ceremony, and
+explicit in many of its creeds. In the Litany the people petition
+for increase of grace to hear meekly "Thy Word"; and here is this
+"Word," as little children are made to learn it by heart. If
+there exists in the world a more perfect summary of slave ethics,
+I do not know where to find it.
+
+My duty towards my neighbour is.....
+ To honour and obey the King, and all that are put in authority
+under him;
+ To submit myself to all my governours, teachers, spiritual
+pastors, and masters:
+ To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters ....
+ Not to covet nor desire other men's goods;
+ But to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do
+my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to
+call me.
+
+A hundred years ago one of the most popular of British writers
+was Hannah More. She and her sister Martha went to live in the
+coal-country, to teach this "catechism" to the children of the
+starving miners. The "Mendip Annals" is the title of a book in
+which they tell of their ten years' labors in a village popularly
+known as "Little Hell." In this place two hundred people were
+crowded into nineteen houses. "There is not one creature in it
+that can give a cup of broth if it would save a life." In one
+winter eighteen perished of "a putrid fever", and the clergyman
+"could not raise a sixpence to save a life."
+
+And what did the pious sisters make of all this? From cover to
+cover you find in the "Mendip Annals" no single word of social
+protest, not even of social suspicion. That wages of a shilling a
+day might have anything to do with moral degeneration was a
+proposition beyond the mental powers of England's most popular
+woman writer. She was perfectly content that a woman should be
+sentenced to death for stealing butter from a dealer who had
+asked what the woman thought too high a price. When there came a
+famine, and the children of these mine-slaves were dying like
+flies, Hannah More bade them be happy because God had sent them
+her pious self. "In suffering by the scarcity, you have but
+shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of knowing the
+advantage you have had over many villages in your having suffered
+no scarcity of religious instruction." And in another place she
+explained that the famine was caused by God to teach the poor to
+be grateful to the rich!
+
+Let me remind you that probably that very scarcity has been
+permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite all
+ranks of people together, to show the poor how immediately they
+are dependent upon the rich, and to show both rich and poor that
+they are all dependent upon Himself. It has also enabled you to
+see more clearly the advantages you derive from the government
+and constitution of this country--to observe the benefits flowing
+from the distinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the
+high to so liberally assist the low.
+
+It appears that the villagers were entirely convinced by this
+pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night and burned
+an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a tragic
+consequence, for one of the "common people," known as Robert,
+"was overtaken by liquor," and was unable to appear at Sunday
+School next day. This fall from grace occasioned intense remorse
+in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his mind for many months,"
+records Martha More, "and despair seemed at length to take
+possession of him." Hannah had some conversation with him, and
+read him some suitable passages from "The Rise and Progress". "At
+length the Almighty was pleased to shine into his heart and give
+him comfort."
+
+Nor should you imagine that this saintly stupidity was in any way
+unique in the Anglican establishment. We read in the letters of
+Shelley how his father tormented him with Archdeacon Paley's
+"Evidences" as a cure for atheism. This eminent churchman wrote a
+book, which he himself ranked first among his writings, called
+"Reasons for Contentment, addressed to the Labouring Classes of
+the British Public." In this book he not merely proved that
+religion "smooths all inequalities, because it unfolds a prospect
+which makes all earthly distinctions nothing"; he went so far as
+to prove that, quite apart from religion, the British exploiters
+were less fortunate than those to whom they paid a shilling a
+day.
+
+Some of the conditions which poverty (if the condition of the
+labouring part of mankind must be so called) imposes, are not
+hardships, but pleasures. Frugality itself is a pleasure. It is
+an exercise of attention and contrivance, which, whenever it is
+successful, produces satisfaction..... This is lost among
+abundance.
+
+And there was William Wilberforce, as sincere a philanthropist as
+Anglicanism ever produced, an ardent supporter of Bible societies
+and foreign missions, a champion of the anti-slavery movement,
+and also of the ruthless "Combination Laws," which denied to
+British wage-slaves all chance of bettering their lot.
+Wilberforce published a "Practical View of the System of
+Christianity", in which he told unblushingly what the Anglican
+establishment is for. In a chapter which he described as "the
+basis of all politics," he explained that the purpose of religion
+is to remind the poor:
+
+That their more lowly path has been allotted to them by the hand
+of God; that it is their part faithfully to discharge its duties,
+and contentedly to bear its inconveniences; that the objects
+about which worldly men conflict so eagerly are not worth the
+contest; that the peace of mind, which Religion offers
+indiscriminately to all ranks, affords more true satisfaction
+than all the expensive pleasures which are beyond the poor man's
+reach; that in this view the poor have the advantage; that if
+their superiors enjoy more abundant comforts, they are also
+exposed to many temptations from which the inferior classes are
+happily extempted; that, "having food and raiment, they should be
+therewith content," since their situation in life, with all its
+evils, is better than they have deserved at the hand of God; and
+finally, that all human distinctions will soon be done away, and
+the true followers of Christ will all, as children of the same
+Father, be alike admitted to the possession of the same heavenly
+inheritance. Such are the blessed effects of Christianity on the
+temporal well-being of political communities.
+
+The Court Circular
+
+The Anglican system of submission has been transplanted intact to
+the soil of America. When King George the Third lost the
+sovereignty of the colonies, the bishops of his divinely inspired
+church lost the control of the clergy across the seas; but this
+revolution was purely one of Church politics--in doctrine and
+ritual the "Protestant Episcopal Church of America" remained in
+every way Anglican. The little children of our free republic are
+taught the same slave-catechism, "to order myself lowly and
+reverently to all my betters." The only difference is that
+instead of being told "to honour and obey the King," they are
+told "to honour and obey the civil authority."
+
+It is the Church of Good Society in England, and it is the same
+in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
+Charleston. Just as our ruling classes have provided themselves
+with imitation English schools and imitation English manners and
+imitation English clothes--so in their Heaven they have provided
+an imitation English monarch. I wonder how many Americans realize
+the treason to democracy they are committing when they allow
+their children to be taught a symbolism and liturgy based upon
+absolutist ideas. I take up the hymn-book--not the English, but
+the sturdy, independent, democratic American hymn-book. I have
+not opened it for twenty years, yet the greater part of its
+contents is as familiar to me as the syllables of my own name. I
+read:
+
+ Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,  Casting down their
+golden crowns around the glassy sea;  Cherubim and seraphim
+bowing down before Thee,  Which wert, and art, and ever more
+shall be!
+
+One might quote a hundred other hymns made thus out of royal
+imagery. I turn at random to the part headed "General," and find
+that there is hardly one hymn in which there is not "king ... ..
+throne," or some image of homage and flattery. The first hymn
+begins--
+
+     Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory;
+      To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray.
+
+And the second--
+
+     Christ, whose glory fills the skies---
+
+And the third--
+
+     Lord of all being, throned afar,
+      Thy glory flames from sun and star.
+
+There is a court in Heaven above, to which all good Britons look
+up, and about which they read with exactly the same thrills as
+they read the Court Circular. The two courts have the same
+ethical code and the same manners; their Sovereigns are jealous,
+greedy of attention, self-conscious and profoundly serious,
+punctilious and precise; their existence consisting of an endless
+round of ceremonies, and they being incapable of boredom. No
+member of the Royal Family can escape this regime even if he
+wishes; and no more can any member of the Holy Family--not even
+the meek and lowly Jesus, who chose a carpenter's wife for his
+mother, and showed all his earthly days a preference for low
+society.
+
+This unconventional Son lived obscurely; he never carried
+weapons, he could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off
+in his presence. But see how he figures in the Court Circular:
+
+ The Son of God goes forth to war,
+      A kingly crown to gain:
+  His blood-red banner streams afar:
+      Who follows in His train?
+
+This carpenter's son was one of the most unpretentious men on
+earth; utterly simple and honest--he would not even let anyone
+praise him. When some one called him "good Master," he answered,
+quickly, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good save one,
+that is, God." But this simplicity has been taken with
+deprecation by his church, which persists in heaping compliments
+upon him in conventional, courtly style:
+
+ The company of angels
+      Are praising Thee on high;
+  And mortal men, and all things
+      Created, make reply:  All Glory, laud and honour,
+      To Thee, Redeemer, King. . . . .
+
+The impression a modern man gets from all this is the unutterable
+boredom that Heaven must be. Can one imagine a more painful
+occupation than that of the saints--casting down their golden
+crowns around the glassy sea--unless it be that of the
+Triumvirate itself, compelled to sit through eternity watching
+these saints, and listening to their mawkish and superfluous
+compliments!
+
+But one can understand that such things are necessary in a
+monarchy; they are necessary if you are going to have Good
+Society, and a Good Society church. For Good Society is precisely
+the same thing as Heaven; that is, a place to which only a few
+can get admission, and those few are bored. They spend their time
+going through costly formalities--not because they enjoy it, but
+because of its effect upon the populace, which reads about them
+and sees their pictures in the papers, and now and then is
+allowed to catch a glimpse of their physical Presences, as at the
+horse-show, or the opera, or the coaching-parade.
+
+
+Horn-blowing
+
+I know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it
+from the inside. I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one
+of my earliest recollections--I cannot have been more than four
+years of age--is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the
+choir-boy carried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I
+remember asking if I might say the "Lord's prayer" in this
+fascinating play; and my mother's reply: "If you say it
+reverently." When I was thirteen, I attended service, of my own
+volition and out of my own enthusiasm, every single day during
+the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen I was teaching
+Sunday-school. It was the Church of the Holy Communion, at Sixth
+Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the
+city will understand that this is a peculiar location--precisely
+half way between the homes of some of the oldest and most august
+of the city's aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy
+of the city's slums. The aristocracy were paying for the church,
+and occupied the best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei
+gegossen, as the Germans say, with the manner they so carefully
+cultivate, gracious, yet infinitely aloof. The service was made
+for them--as all the rest of the world is made for them; the
+populace was permitted to occupy a fringe of vacant seats.
+
+The assistant clergyman was an Englishman, and a gentleman;
+orthodox, yet the warmest man's heart I have ever known. He could
+not bear to have the church remain entirely the church of the
+rich; he would go persistently into the homes of the poor,
+visiting the old slum women in their pitifully neat little
+kitchens, and luring their children with entertainments and
+Christmas candy. They were corralled into the Sunday-school,
+where it was my duty to give them what they needed for the health
+of their souls.
+
+I taught them out of a book of lessons; and one Sunday it would
+be Moses in the Bulrushes, and next Sunday it would be Jonah and
+the Whale, and next Sunday it would be Joshua blowing down the
+walls of Jericho. These stories were reasonably entertaining, but
+they seemed to me futile, not to the point. There were little
+morals tagged to them, but these lacked relationship to the lives
+of little slum-boys. Be good and you will be happy, love the Lord
+and all will be well with you; which was about as true and as
+practical as the procedure of the Fijians, blowing horns to drive
+away a pestilence.
+
+I had a mind, you see, and I was using it. I was reading the
+papers, and watching politics and business. I, followed the fates
+of my little slum-boys--and what I saw was that Tammany Hall was
+getting them. The liquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the
+panders and the pimps, the crap-shooters and the petty
+thieves--all these were paying the policeman and the politician
+for a chance to prey upon my boys; and when the boys got into
+trouble, as they were continually doing, it was the clergyman who
+consoled them in prison--but it was the Tammany leader who saw
+the judge and got them out. So these boys got their lesson even
+earlier in life than I got mine--that the church was a kind of
+amiable fake, a pious horn-blowing; while the real thing was
+Tammany.
+
+I talked about this with the vestrymen and the ladies of Good
+Society; they were deeply pained, but I noticed that they did
+nothing practical about it; and gradually, as I went on to
+investigate, I discovered the reason--that their incomes came
+from real estate, traction, gas and other interests, which were
+contributing the main part of the campaign expenses of the
+corrupt Tammany machine, and of its equally corrupt rival. So it
+appeared that these immaculate ladies and gentlemen, aus dem Ei
+gegossen, were themselves engaged, unconsciously, perhaps, but
+none the less effectively, in spreading the pestilence against
+which they were blowing their religious horns!
+
+So little by little I saw my beautiful church for what it was and
+is: a great capitalist interest, an integral and essential part
+of a gigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and
+cultural and artistic features, however sincerely they might be
+meant by individual clergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device
+to lure the poor into the trap of submission to their exploiters.
+And as I went on probing into the secret life of the great
+Metropolis of Mammon, and laying bare its infamies to the world,
+I saw the attitude of the church to such work; I met, not
+sympathy and understanding, but sneers and denunciation--until
+the venerable institution which had once seemed dignified and
+noble became to me as a sepulchre of corruption.
+
+
+Trinity Corporation
+
+There stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street a towering
+brown-stone edifice, one of the most beautiful and most famous
+churches in America. As a child I have walked through its church
+yard and read the quaint and touching inscriptions on its
+gravestones; when I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, it
+seemed to me a sublime thing that here in the very heart of the
+world's infamy there should be raised, like a finger of warning,
+this symbol of Eternity and Judgment. Its great bell rang at
+noon-time, and all the traders and their wage-slaves had to
+listen, whether they would or no! Such was Old Trinity to my
+young soul; and what is it in reality?
+
+The story was told some ten years ago by Charles Edward Russell.
+Trinity Corporation is the name of the concern, and it is one of
+the great landlords of New York. In the early days it bought a
+number of farms, and these it has held, as the city has grown up
+around them, until in 1908 their value was estimated at anywhere
+from forty to a hundred million dollars. The true amount has
+never been made public; to quote Russell's words:
+
+The real owners of the property are the communicants of the
+church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent of
+the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom, nor what
+is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even the simplest
+fact about these matters has been baffled. The management is a
+self perpetuating body, without responsibility and without
+supervision.
+
+And the writer goes on to describe the business policy of this
+great corporation, which is simply the English land system
+complete. It refuses to sell the land, but rents it for long
+periods, and the tenant builds the house, and then when the lease
+expires, the Corporation takes over the house for a nominal sum.
+Thus it has purchased houses for as low as $200, and made them
+into tenements, and rented them to the swarming poor for a total
+of fifty dollars a month. The houses were not built for
+tenements, they have no conveniences, they are not fit for the
+habitation of animals. The article, in Everybody's Magazine for
+July, 1908, gives pictures of them, which are horrible beyond
+belief. To quote the writer again:
+
+Decay, neglect and squalor seem to brood wherever Trinity is an
+owner. Gladly would I give to such a charitable and benevolent
+institution all possible credit for a spirit of improvement
+manifested anywhere, but I can find no such manifestation. I have
+tramped the Eighth Ward day after day with a list of Trinity
+properties in my hand, and of all the tenement houses that stand
+there on Trinity land, I have not found one that is not a
+disgrace to civilization and to the City of New York.
+
+It happens that I once knew the stately prelate who presided over
+this Corporation of Corruption. I imagine how he would have
+shivered and turned pale had some angel whispered to him what
+devilish utterances were some day to proceed from the lips of the
+little cherub with shining face and shining robes who acted as
+the bishop's attendant in the stately ceremonials of the Church!
+Truly, even into the goodly company of the elect, even to the
+most holy places of the temple, Satan makes his treacherous way!
+Even under the consecrated hands of the bishop! For while the
+bishop was blessing me and taking me into the company of the
+sanctified, I was thinking about what the papers had reported,
+that the bishop's wife had been robbed of fifty thousand dollars
+worth of jewels! It did not seem quite in accordance with the
+doctrine of Jesus that a bishop's wife should possess fifty
+thousand dollars worth of jewels, or that she should be setting
+the blood-hounds of the police on the train of a human being. I
+asked my clergyman friend about it, and remember his patient
+explanation--that the bishop had to know all classes and
+conditions of men: his wife had to go among the rich as well as
+the poor, and must be able to dress so that she would not be
+embarrassed. The Bishop at this time was making it his life-work
+to raise a million dollars for the beginning of a great Episcopal
+cathedral; and this of course compelled him to spend much time
+among the rich!
+
+The explanation satisfied me; for of course I thought there had
+to be cathedrals--despite the fact that both St. Stephen and St.
+Paul had declared that "the Lord dwelleth not in temples made
+with hands." In the twenty-five years which have passed since
+that time the good Bishop has passed to his eternal reward, but
+the mighty structure which is a monument to his visitations among
+the rich towers over the city from its vantage-point on
+Morningside Heights. It is called the Cathedral of St. John the
+Divine; and knowing what I know about the men who contributed its
+funds, and about the general functions of the churches of the
+Metropolis of Mammon, it would not seem to me less holy if it
+were built, like the monuments of ancient ravagers, out of the
+skulls of human beings.
+
+
+Spiritual Interpretation
+
+There remains to say a few words as to the intellectual functions
+of the Fifth Avenue clergy. Let us realize at the outset that
+they do their preaching in the name of a proletarian rebel, who
+was crucified as a common criminal because, as they said, "He
+stirreth up the people." An embarrassing "Savior" for the church
+of Good Society, you might imagine; but they manage to fix him up
+and make him respectable.
+
+I remember something analogous in my own boyhood. All day
+Saturday I ran about with the little street rowdies, I stole
+potatoes and roasted them in vacant lots, I threw mud from the
+roofs of apartment-houses; but on Saturday night I went into a
+tub and was lathered and scrubbed, and on Sunday I came forth in
+a newly brushed suit, a clean white collar and a shining tie and
+a slick derby hat and a pair of tight gloves which made me
+impotent for mischief. Thus I was taken and paraded up Fifth
+Avenue, doing my part of the duties of Good Society. And all
+church-members go through this same performance; the oldest and
+most venerable of them steal potatoes and throw mud all week
+--and then take a hot bath of repentance and put on the clean
+clothing of piety. In this same way their ministers of religion
+are occupied to scrub and clean and dress up their disreputable
+Founder--to turn him from a proletarian rebel into a
+stained-glass-window divinity.
+
+The man who really lived, the carpenter's son, they take out and
+crucify all over again. As a young poet has phrased it, they nail
+him to a jeweled cross with cruel nails of gold. Come with me to
+the New Golgotha and witness this crucifixion; take the nails of
+gold in your hands, try the weight of the jeweled sledges! Here
+is a sledge, in the form of a dignified and scholarly volume,
+published by the exclusive house of Scribner, and written by the
+Bishop of my boyhood, the Bishop whose train I carried in the
+stately ceremonials: "The Citizen in His Relation to the
+Industrial Situation," by the Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter,
+D. D., L. L. D., D. C. L.--a course of lectures delivered before
+the sons of our predatory classes at Yale University, under the
+endowment of a millionaire mining king, founder of the
+Phelps-Dodge corporation, which the other day carried out the
+deportation from their homes of a thousand striking miners at
+Bisbee, Arizona. Says my Bishop:
+
+Christ did not denounce wealth any more than he denounced
+pauperism. He did not abhor money; he used it. He did not abhor
+the company of rich men; he sought it. He did not invariably
+scorn or even resent a certain profuseness of expenditure.
+
+And do you think that the late Bishop of J. P. Morgan and Company
+stands alone as an utterer of scholarly blasphemy, a driver of
+golden nails? In the course of this book there will march before
+us a long line of the clerical retainers of Privilege, on their
+way to the New Golgotha to crucify the carpenter's son: the
+Rector of the Money Trust, the Preacher of the Coal Trust, the
+Priest of the Traction Trust, the Archbishop of Tammany, the
+Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club, the Pastor of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad, the Religious Editor of the New Haven, the
+Sunday-school Superintendent of Standard Oil. We shall try the
+weight of their jewelled sledges--books, sermons,
+newspaper-interviews, after-dinner speeches--wherewith they pound
+their golden nails of sophistry into the bleeding hands and feet
+of the proletarian Christ.
+
+Here, for example, is Rev. F. G. Peabody, Professor of Christian
+Morals at Harvard University. Prof. Peabody has written several
+books on the social teachings of Jesus; he quotes the most rabid
+of the carpenter's denunciations of the rich, and says:
+
+Is it possible that so obvious and so limited a message as this,
+a teaching so slightly distinguished from the curbstone rhetoric
+of a modern agitator, can be an adequate reproduction of the
+scope and power of the teaching of Jesus?
+
+The question answers itself: Of course not! For Jesus was a
+gentleman; he is the head of a church attended by gentlemen, of
+universities where gentlemen are educated. So the Professor of
+Christian Morals proceeds to make a subtle analysis of Jesus'
+actions; demonstrating therefrom that there are three proper uses
+to be made of great wealth: first, for almsgiving--"The poor ye
+have always with you!"; second, for beauty and culture--buying
+wine for wedding-feasts, and ointment-boxes and other objets de
+vertu; and third, "stewardship," "trusteeship"--which in plain
+English is "Big Business."
+
+I have used the illustration of soap and hot water; one can
+imagine he is actually watching the scrubbing process, seeing the
+proletarian Founder emerging all new and respectable under the
+brush of this capitalist professor. The professor has a rule all
+his own for reading the scriptures; he tells us that when there
+are two conflicting sayings, the rule of interpretation is that
+"the more spiritual is to be preferred." Thus, one gospel makes
+Jesus say: "Blessed are ye poor." Another puts it: "Blessed are
+the poor in spirit." The first one is crude and literal;
+obviously the second must be what Jesus meant! In other words,
+the professor and his church have made for their economic masters
+a treacherous imitation virtue to be taught to wage-slaves, a
+quality of submissiveness, impotence and futility, which they
+call by the name of "spirituality". This virtue they exalt above
+all others, and in its name they cut from the record of Jesus
+everything which has relation to the realities of life!
+
+So here is our Professor Peabody, sitting in the Plummer chair at
+Harvard, writing on "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," and
+explaining:
+
+The fallacy of the Socialist program is not in its radicalism,
+but in its externalism. It proposes to accomplish by economic
+change what can be attained by nothing less than spiritual
+regeneration.
+
+And here is "The Churchman," organ of the Episcopalians of New
+York, warning us:
+
+It is necessary to remember that something more than material and
+temporal considerations are involved. There are things of more
+importance to the purposes of God and to the welfare of humanity
+than economic readjustments and social amelioration.
+
+And again:
+
+Without doubt there is a strong temptation today, bearing upon
+clergy and laity alike, to address their religious energies too
+exclusively to those tasks whereby human life may be made more
+abundant and wholesome materially..... We need constantly to be
+reminded that spiritual things come first.
+
+There come before my mental eye the elegant ladies and gentlemen
+for whom these comfortable sayings are prepared: the vestrymen
+and pillars of the Church, with black frock coats and black kid
+gloves and shiny top-hats; the ladies of Good Society with their
+Easter costumes in pastel shades, their gracious smiles and their
+sweet intoxicating odors. I picture them as I have seen them at
+St. George's, where that aged wild boar, Pierpont Morgan, the
+elder, used to pass the collection plate; at Holy Trinity, where
+they drove downtown in old-fashioned carriages with grooms and
+footmen sitting like twin statues of insolence; at St. Thomas',
+where you might see all the "Four Hundred" on exhibition at once;
+at St. Mary the Virgin's, where the choir paraded through the
+aisles, swinging costly incense into my childish nostrils, the
+stout clergyman walking alone with nose upturned, carrying on his
+back a jewelled robe for which some adoring female had paid sixty
+thousand dollars. "Spiritual things come first?" Ah, yes! "Seek
+first the kingdom of God, and the jewelled robes shall be added
+unto you!" And it is so dreadful about the French and German
+Socialists, who, as the "Churchman" reports, "make a creed out of
+materialism." But then, what is this I find in one issue of the
+organ of the "Church of Good Society"?
+
+Business men contribute to the Y. M. C. A. because they realize
+that if their employes are well cared for and religiously
+influenced, they can be of greater service in business!
+
+Who let that material cat out of the spiritual bag?
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+The Church of the Servant-girls
+
+ Was it for this--that prayers like these
+      Should spend themselves about thy feet,
+  And with hard, overlabored knees
+      Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat
+  Bosoms too lean to suckle sons
+  And fruitless as their orisons?
+
+ Was it for this--that men should make
+     Thy name a fetter on men's necks,
+  Poor men made poorer for thy sake,
+      And women withered out of sex?
+  Was it for this--that slaves should be--
+Thy word was passed to set men free?
+                          Swinburne.
+
+
+Charity
+
+As everyone knows, the "society lady" is not an independent and
+self-sustaining phenomenon. For every one of these exquisite,
+sweet-smelling creatures that you meet on Fifth Avenue, there
+must be at home a large number of other women who live sterile
+and empty lives, and devote themselves to cleaning up after their
+luckier sisters. But these "domestics" also are human beings;
+they have emotions--or, in religious parlance, "souls;" it is
+necessary to provide a discipline to keep them from appropriating
+the property of their mistresses, also to keep them from becoming
+enceinte. So it comes about that there are two cathedrals in New
+York: one, St. John the Divine, for the society ladies, and the
+other, St. Patrick's, for the servant-girls. The latter is
+located on Fifth Avenue, where its towering white spires divide
+with the homes of the Vanderbilts the interest of the crowds of
+sight-seers. Now, early every Sunday morning, before "Good
+Society" has opened its eyes, you may see the devotees of the
+Irish snake-charmer hurrying to their orisons, each with a little
+black prayer-book in her hand. What is it they do inside? What
+are they taught about life? This is the question to which we have
+next to give attention.
+
+Some years ago Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, traction and insurance magnate
+of New York, favored me with his justification of his own career
+and activities. He mentioned his charities, and, speaking as one
+man of the world to another, he said: "The reason I put them into
+the hands of Catholics is not religious, but because I find they
+are efficient in such matters. They don't ask questions, they do
+what you want them to do, and do it economically."
+
+I made no comment; I was absorbed in the implications of the
+remark--like Agassiz when some one gave him a fossil bone, and
+his mind set to work to reconstruct the creature.
+
+When a man is drunk, the Catholics do not ask if it was long
+hours and improper working-conditions which drove him to
+desperation; they do not ask if police and politicians are
+getting a rake-off from the saloon, or if traction magnates are
+using it as an agency for the controlling of votes; they do not
+plunge into prohibition movements or good government
+campaigns--they simply take the man in, at a standard price, and
+the patient slave-sisters and attendants get him sober, and then
+turn him out for society to make him drunk again. That is
+"charity," and it is the special industry of Roman Catholicism.
+They have been at it for a thousand years, cleaning up loathsome
+and unsightly messes--"plague, pestilence and famine, battle and
+murder and sudden death." Yet--puzzling as it would seem to
+anyone not religious--there were never so many messes, never so
+many different kinds of messes, as now at the end of the thousand
+years of charitable activity!
+
+But the Catholics go on and on; like the patient spider, building
+and rebuilding his web across a doorway; like soldiers under the
+command of a ruling class with a "muddling through" tradition--
+
+ Theirs not to reason why,
+  Theirs but to do and die.
+
+And so of course all magnates and managers of industry who have
+messes to be cleaned up, human garbage-heaps to be carted away
+quickly and without fuss, turn to the Catholic Church for this
+service, no matter what their personal religious beliefs or lack
+of beliefs may be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of every
+steel-mill, every coal-mine or other place of industrial danger,
+you will find a Catholic hospital, with its slave-sisters and
+attendants. Once when I was "muck-raking" near Pittsburgh, I went
+to one of these places to ask information as to the frequency of
+industrial accidents and the fate of the victims. The "Mother
+Superior" received me with a look of polite dismay. "These
+concerns pay us!" she said. "You must see that as a matter of
+business it would not do for us to talk about them."
+
+Obey and keep silence: that is the Catholic law. And precisely as
+it is with the work of nursing and almsgiving, so it is with the
+work of vote-getting, the elaborate system of policemen and
+saloon-keepers and ward-heelers which the Catholic machine
+controls. This industry of vote-getting is a comparatively new
+one; but the Church has been handling the masses for so many
+centuries that she quickly learned this new way of "democracy,"
+and has established her supremacy over all rivals. She has the
+schools for training the children, the confessional for
+controlling the women; she has the intellectual machinery, the
+purgatory and the code of slave-ethics. She has the supreme
+advantage that the rank and file of her mighty host really
+believe what she teaches; they do not have to listen to
+table-rappings and flounder through swamps of automatic writings
+in order to bolster their hope of the survival of personality
+after death!
+
+So it comes about that our captains of industry and finance have
+been driven to a more or less reluctant alliance with the Papacy.
+The Church is here, and her followers are here, before the war
+several hundred thousand of them pouring into the country every
+year. It is no longer possible to do without Catholics in
+America; not merely do ditches have to be dug, roads graded, coal
+mined, and dishes washed, but franchises have to be granted,
+tariff-schedules adjusted, juries and courts manipulated, police
+trained and strikes crushed. Under our native political system,
+for these purposes millions of votes are needed; and these votes
+belong to people of a score of nationalities--Irish and German
+and Italian and French-Canadian and Bohemian and Mexican and
+Portuguese and Polish and Hungarian. Who but the Catholic Church
+can handle these polyglot hordes? Who can furnish teachers and
+editors and politicians familiar with all these languages?
+
+Considering how complex is the service, the price is extremely
+moderate--the mere actual expenses of the campaign, the cost of
+red fire and torch-lights, of liquor and newspaper
+advertisements. The rest may come out of the public till, in the
+form of exemption from taxation of church buildings and lands, a
+share of the public funds for charities and schools, the control
+of the police for saloon-keepers and district leaders, the
+control of police-courts and magistrates, of municipal
+administrations and boards of education, of legislatures and
+governors; with a few higher offices now and then, to flatter our
+sacred self-esteem, a senator or a justice on the Supreme Court
+Bench; and on state occasions, to keep up our necessary prestige,
+some cabinet-members and legislators and justices to attend High
+Mass, and be blessed in public by Catholic prelates and
+dignitaries.
+
+You think this is empty rhetoric--you comfortable, easy-going,
+ultra-cultured Americans? You professors in your classic shades,
+absorbed in "the passionless pursuit of passionless
+intelligence"--while the world about you slides down into the
+pit! You ladies of Good Society, practicing your "sweet little
+charities," pursuing your "dear little ideals," raising your
+families of one or two lovely children--while Irish and
+French-Canadians and Italians and Portuguese and Hungarians are
+breeding their dozens and scores, and preparing to turn you out
+of your country!
+
+
+God's Armor
+
+You remember "Bishop Blougram's Apology," Browning's study of the
+psychology of a modern Catholic ecclesiastic. He is not unaware
+of modern thought, this bishop; he is a man of culture, who wants
+to have beauty about him, to be a "cabin passenger":
+
+  There's power in me and will to dominate
+  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else;
+  In many ways I need mankind's respect,
+  Obedience, and the love that's born of fear.
+
+He wishes that he had faith--faith in anything; he understands
+that faith is all-important--
+
+ Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat.
+
+But you cannot get faith just by wishing for it--
+
+     But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn!
+
+He tries to imagine himself going on a crusade for truth, but he
+asks what there would be in it for him--
+
+     State the facts,
+  Read the text right, emancipate the world--
+The emancipated world enjoys itself
+  With scarce a thank-you.
+ Blougram told it first
+  It could not owe a farthing,--not to him
+  More than St. Paul!
+
+So the bishop goes on with his role, but uneasily conscious of
+the contempt of intellectual people.
+
+  I pine among my million imbeciles
+  (You think) aware some dozen men of sense
+  Eye me and know me, whether I believe
+  In the last winking virgin as I vow,
+  And am a fool, or disbelieve in her,
+  And am a knave.
+
+But, as he says, you have to keep a tight hold upon the chain of
+faith, that is what
+
+  Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,
+  With the rough, purblind mass we seek to rule.
+  We are their lords, or they are free of us,
+  Just as we tighten or relax that hold.
+
+So he continues, but not with entire satisfaction, in his role of
+shepherd to those whom he calls "King Bomba's lazzaroni," and
+"ragamuffin saints."
+
+I wander into a Catholic bookstore and look to see what Bishop
+Blougram is doing with his lazzaroni and his ragamuffin saints
+here in this new country of the far West. It is easy to acquire
+the information, for the saleswoman is polite and the prices fit
+my purse. America is going to war, and Catholic boys are being
+drafted to be trained for battle; so for ten cents I obtain a
+firmly bound little pamphlet called "God's Armor, a Prayer Book
+for Soldiers." It is marked "Copyright by the G. R. C.
+Central-Verein," and bears the "Nihil Obstat" of the "Censor
+Theolog." and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes Josephus,
+Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici"--which last you may at first fail
+to recognize as a well-known city on the Mississippi River. Do
+you not feel the spell of ancient things, the magic of the past
+creeping over you, as you read those Latin trade-marks? Such is
+the Dead Hand, and its cunning, which can make even St. Louis
+sound mysterious!
+
+In this booklet I get no information as to the commercial causes
+of war, nor about the part which the clerical vote may have
+played throughout Europe in supporting military systems. I do not
+even find anything about the sacred cause of democracy, the
+resolve of a self-governing people to put an end to feudal rule.
+Instead I discover a soldier-boy who obeys and keeps silent, and
+who, in his inmost heart, is in the grip of terrors both of body
+and soul. Poor, pitiful soldier-boy, marking yourself with
+crosses, performing genuflexions, mumbling magic formulas in the
+trenches--how many billions of you have been led out to slaughter
+by the greeds and ambitions of your religious masters, since
+first this accursed Antichrist got its grip upon the hearts of
+men!
+
+I quote from this little book:
+
+Start this day well by lifting up your heart to God. Offer
+yourself to Him, and beg grace to spend the day without sin. Make
+the sign of the cross. Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost, behold me in Thy Divine Presence. I adore Thee and give
+Thee thanks. Grant that all I do this day be for Thy Glory, and
+for the salvation of my immortal soul.
+
+During the day lift your heart frequently to God. Your prayers
+need not be long nor read from a book. Learn a few of these short
+ejaculations by heart and frequently repeat them. They will serve
+to recall God to your heart and will strengthen you and comfort
+you.
+
+You remember a while back about the prayer-wheels of the
+Thibetans. The Catholic religion was founded before the Thibetan,
+and is less progressive; it does not welcome mechanical devices
+for saving labor. You have to use your own vocal apparatus to
+keep yourself from hell; but the process has been made as
+economical as possible by kindly dispensations of the Pope. Thus,
+each time that you say "My God and my all," you get fifty days
+indulgence; the same for "My Jesus, mercy," and the same for
+"Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things." For "Jesus, Mary,
+Joseph," you get three hundred days--which would seem by all odds
+the best investment of your spare breath.
+
+And then come prayers for all occasions: "Prayer before Battle";
+"Prayer for a Happy Death"; "Prayer in Temptation"; "Prayer
+before and after Meals"; "Prayer when on Guard"; "Prayer before a
+long March"; "Prayer of Resignation to Death"; "Prayer for Those
+in their Agony"--I cannot bear to read them, hardly to list them.
+I remember standing in a cathedral "somewhere in France" during
+the celebration of some special Big Magic. There was brilliant
+white light, and a suffocating strange odor, and the thunder of a
+huge organ, and a clamor of voices, high, clear voices of young
+boys mounting to heaven, like the hands of men in a pit reaching
+up, trying to climb over the top of one another. It sent a
+shudder into the depths of my soul. There is nothing left in the
+modern world which can carry the mind so far back into the
+ancient nightmare of anguish and terror which was once the mental
+life of mankind, as these Roman Catholic incantations with their
+frantic and ceaseless importunity. They have even brought in the
+sex-spell; and the poor, frightened soldier-boy, who has perhaps
+spent the night with a prostitute, now prostrates himself before
+a holy Woman-being who is lifted high above the shames of the
+flesh, and who stirs the thrills of awe and affection which his
+mother brought to him in early childhood. Read over the phrases
+of this "Litany of the Blessed Virgin":
+
+Holy Mary, Pray for us. Holy Mother of God. Holy Virgin of
+Virgins. Mother of Christ. Mother of divine grace. Mother most
+pure. Mother most chaste. Mother inviolate. Mother undefiled.
+Mother most amiable. Mother most admirable. Mother of good
+counsel. Mother of our Creator. Mother of our Savior. Virgin most
+prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most renowned. Virgin most
+powerful. Virgin most merciful. Virgin most faithful. Mirror of
+justice. Seat of wisdom. Cause of our Joy. Spiritual vessel.
+Vessel of honor. Singular vessel of devotion. Mystical rose.
+Tower of David. Tower of ivory. House of gold. Ark of the
+covenant. Gate of heaven. Morning Star. Health of the sick.
+Refuge of sinners. Comforter of the afflicted. Help of
+Christians. Queen of Angels. Queen of Patriarchs. Queen of
+Prophets. Queen of Apostles. Queen of Martyrs. Queen of
+Confessors. Queen of Virgins. Queen of all Saints. Queen
+conceived without original sin. Queen of the most holy Rosary.
+Queen of Peace, Pray for us.
+
+
+Thanksgivings
+
+For another five cents--how cheaply a man of insight can obtain
+thrills in this fantastic world!--I purchase a copy of the
+"Messenger of the Sacred Heart", a magazine published in New
+York, the issue for October, 1917. There are pages of
+advertisements of schools and colleges with strange titles:
+"Immaculata Seminary", "Holy Cross Academy", "Holy Ghost
+Institute", "Ladycliff", "Academy of Holy Child Jesus". The
+leading article is by a Jesuit, on "The Spread of the Apostleship
+of Prayer among the Young"; and then "Sister Clarissa" writes a
+poem telling us "What are Sorrows"; and then we are given a story
+called "Prayer for Daddy"; and then another Jesuit father tells
+us about "The Hills that Jesus Loved". A third father tells us
+about the "Eucharistic Propaganda"; and we learn that in July,
+1917, it distributed 11,699 beads, and caused the expenditure of
+57,714 hours of adoration; and then the faithful are given a form
+of letter which they are to write to the Honorable Baker,
+Secretary of War, imploring him to intimate to the French
+government that France should withdraw from one of her advances
+in civilization, and join with mediaeval America in exempting
+priests from being drafted to fight for their country. And then
+there is a "Question Box"--just like the Hearst newspapers, only
+instead of asking whether she should allow him to kiss her before
+he has told her that he loves her, the reader asks what is the
+Pauline Privilege, and what is the heroic Act, and is Robert a
+saint's name, and if food remains in the teeth from the night
+before, would it break the fast to swallow it before Holy
+Communion. (No, I am not inventing this.)
+
+I quoted the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, and pointed out how
+deftly the Church has managed to slip in a prayer for worldly
+prosperity. But the Catholic Church does not show any
+squeamishness in dealing with its "million imbeciles", its
+"rough, purblind mass". There is a department of the little
+magazine entitled "Thanksgiving", and a statement at the top that
+"the total number of Thanksgivings for the month is 2,143,911." I
+am suspicious of that, as of German reports of prisoners taken;
+but I give the statement as it stands, not going through the list
+and picking out the crudest, but taking them as they come,
+classified by states:
+
+GENERAL FAVORS: For many of these favors Mass and publication
+were promised, for others the Badge of Promoter's Cross was used,
+for others the prayers of the Associates had been asked.
+
+Alabama--Jewelry found, relief from pain, protection during
+storm.
+
+Alaska--Safe return, goods found.
+
+Arizona--Two recoveries, suitable boarding place, illness
+averted, safe delivery.
+
+British Honduras--Successful operation.
+
+California--Seventeen recoveries, six situations, two successful
+examinations, house rented, stocks sold, raise in salary, return
+to religious duties, sight regained, medal won, Baptism,
+preservation from disease, contract obtained, success in
+business, hearing restored, Easter duty made, happy death,
+automobile sold, mind restored, house found, house rented,
+successful journey, business sold, quarrel averted, return of
+friends, two successful operations.
+
+And for all these miraculous performances the Catholic machine is
+harvesting the price day by day--harvesting with that ancient
+fervor which the Latin poet described as "auri sacra fames". As
+Christopher Columbus wrote from Jamaica in 1503: "Gold is a
+wonderful thing. By means of gold we can even get souls into
+Paradise."
+
+
+The Holy Roman Empire
+
+The system thus self-revealed you admit is appalling in its
+squalor; but you say that at least it is milder and less perilous
+than the Church which burned Giordano Bruno and John Huss. But
+the very essence of the Catholic Church is that it does not
+change; semper eadem is its motto: the same yesterday, today and
+forever--the same in Washington as in Rome or Madrid--the same in
+a modern democracy as in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church is
+not primarily a religious organization; it is a political
+organization, and proclaims the fact, and defies those who would
+shut it up in the religious field, The Rev. S. B. Smith, a
+Catholic doctor of divinity, explains in his "Elements of
+Ecclesiastical Law":
+
+Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church consists
+in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to
+command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a
+perfect society or sovereign state. This theory is false; for the
+Church, as was seen, is vested Jure divino with power, (1) to
+make laws; (2) to define and apply them (potestas judicialis);
+(3) to punish those who violate her laws (potestas coercitiva).
+
+And this is not one scholar's theory, but the formal and repeated
+proclamation of infallible popes. Here is the "Syllabus of
+Errors", issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in
+precise language that
+
+The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess
+and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.
+
+It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power shall
+require the permission of the civil power in order to the
+exercise of its authority.
+
+Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are
+affirmed thus:
+
+She has the right to require the state not to leave every man
+free to profess his own religion.
+
+She has the right to exercise her power without the permission or
+consent of the state.
+
+She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and state.
+
+She has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be
+the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others.
+
+She has the right to prevent the state from granting the public
+exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating from it.
+
+She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
+expression of opinion.
+
+You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened. You, who
+think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization,
+ought at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about
+the matter. Here is Mgr. Segur, in his "Plain Talk About
+Protestantism of Today", a book published in Boston and
+extensively circulated by American Catholics:
+
+Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is likewise
+the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy. It is one of those
+impossibilities which only the levity of a superficial reason can
+regard as admissable. But a sound mind, that does not feed on
+empty words, looks upon this freedom of thought only as simply
+absurd, and, what is more, as sinful.
+
+You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe
+because the Law will protect you. But do you imagine that this
+"Law" applies to your Catholic neighbors? Do you imagine that
+they are bound by the restraints that bind you? Here is Pope Leo
+XIII, in his Encyclical of 1890--and please remember that Leo
+XIII was the beau ideal of our capitalist statesmen and editors,
+as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever roasted a
+heretic. He says:
+
+If the laws of the state are openly at variance with the laws of
+God--if they inflict injury upon the Church--or set at naught the
+authority of Jesus Christ which is vested in the Supreme Pontiff,
+then indeed it becomes a duty to resist them, a sin to render
+obedience.
+
+And consider how many fields there are in which the laws of a
+democratic state do and forever must contravene the "laws of God"
+as interpreted by the Catholic Church. Consider for example, that
+the Pope, in his decree Ne Temere, has declared that all persons
+who have been married by civil authorities or by Protestant
+clergymen are living in "filthy concubinage"! Consider, in the
+same way, the problems of education, burial, prison discipline,
+blasphemy, poor relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious
+endowments, vows of celibacy. To the above list, as given by
+Gladstone, one might add many issues, such as birth control,
+which have arisen since his time.
+
+What the Church means is to rule. Her literature is full of
+expressions of that intention, set forth in the boldest and
+haughtiest and most uncompromising manner. For example, Cardinal
+Manning, in the Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, speaking in the name
+of the Pope:
+
+I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; I
+claim more than this--I claim to be the supreme judge and
+director of the consciences of men---of the peasant that tills
+the field, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the
+household of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for
+kingdoms; I am the sole, last supreme judge of what is right and
+wrong.
+
+
+Temporal Power
+
+What this means is, that here in our American democracy the
+Catholic Church is a rebel; a prisoner of war who bides his time,
+watching for the moment to rise in revolt, and meantime making no
+secret of his intentions. The pious Leo XIII, addressing all true
+believers in America, instructed them as to their attitude in
+captivity:
+
+The Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and
+government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation,
+protected against violence by the common laws and the
+impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without
+hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very
+erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought
+the type of the most desirable status of the church, or that it
+would be universally lawful or expedient for state and church to
+be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that
+Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying
+a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the
+fecundity with which God has endowed His Church .... But she
+would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to
+liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and patronage of the
+public authority.
+
+Accordingly, here is Father Phelan of St. Louis, addressing his
+flock in the "Western Watchman", June 27, 1913:
+
+Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen
+afterwards; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between
+the church and the civil government we take the side of the
+church; of course we do. Why, if the government of the United
+States were at war with the church, we would say tomorrow, To
+hell with the government of the United States; and if the church
+and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say,
+To hell with all the governments of the world .... Why is it that
+in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the
+population, the Catholic church is so much feared? She is loved
+by all her children and feared by everybody. Why is it that the
+Pope has such tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the
+world. All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the
+presidents of the world, are as these altar boys of mine. The
+Pope is the ruler of the world.
+
+You recall what I said at the outset about Power; the ability to
+control the lives of other men, to give laws and moral codes, to
+shape fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded. Here is a
+man swollen to bursting with this Power. Dressed in his holy
+robes, with his holy incense in his nostrils, and the faces of
+the faithful gazing up at him awe-stricken, hear him proclaim:
+
+The Church gives no bonds for her good behavior. She is the judge
+of her own rights and duties, and of the rights and duties of the
+state.
+
+And lest you think that an extreme example of ultramontanist
+arrogance, listen to the Boston "Pilot", April 6, 1912, speaking
+for Cardinal O'Connell, whose official organ it is:
+
+It must be borne in mind that even though Cardinals Farley,
+O'Connell and Gibbons are at heart patriotic Americans and
+members of an American hierachy, yet they are as cardinals
+foreign princes of the blood, to whom the United States, as one
+of the great powers of the world, is under an obligation to
+concede the same honors that they receive abroad.
+
+Thus, were Cardinal Farley to visit an American man-of-war, he
+would be entitled to the salutes and to naval honors reserved for
+a foreign royal personage, and at any official entertainment at
+Washington the Cardinal will outrank not merely every cabinet
+officer, the speaker of the house and the vice-president, but
+also the foreign ambassadors, coming immediately next to the
+chief magistrate himself.
+
+Incidentally, it may be mentioned that when a royal personage not
+of sovereign rank visits New York it is his duty to make the
+first call on Cardinal Farley.
+
+Knights of Slavery
+
+Such is the worldly station of these apostles of the lowly Jesus.
+And what is their attitude towards their brothers in God, the
+rank and file of the membership, whose pennies grease the wheels
+of the ecclesiastical machine? His Holiness, the Pope, sent over
+a delegate to represent him in America, and at a convention of
+the Federation of Catholic Societies held in New Orleans in
+November, 1910, this gentleman, Diomede Falconio, delivered
+himself on the subject of Capital and Labor. We have heard the
+slave-code of the Anglican disciples of Jesus, the revolutionary
+carpenter; now let us hear the slave-code of his Roman disciples:
+
+Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of two
+classes of people, the rich and the poor, which respectively
+represent Capital and Labor.
+
+Hence it follows that according to the ordinance of God, human
+society is composed of superiors and subjects, masters and
+servants, learned and unlettered, rich and poor, nobles and
+plebeians.
+
+And lest this should not be clear enough, the Pope sent a second
+representative, Mgr. John Bonzano, who, speaking at a general
+meeting of the German Catholic Central-Verein, St. Louis, 1917,
+declared:
+
+One of the worst evils that may grow out of the European war is
+the spreading of the doctrine of Socialism, and the Catholic
+Church must be ready to counteract such doctrines. We must be
+ready to prevent the spread of Socialism and to work against it.
+As I understand, you have a society of wealthy people in St.
+Louis ready for such a campaign. You have experienced leaders who
+are masters in their kind of work. They are always insistent to
+show that this wealth was and is in close touch with the Church,
+and therefore it will not fail.
+
+This, you perceive, is the complete thesis of the present book,
+which therefore no doubt will be entitled to the "Nihil Obstat"
+of the "Censor Theolog.", and the "Imprimatur" of "Johannes
+Josephus, Archiepiscopus Sti. Ludovici." No wonder that the
+"experienced leaders" of America, our captains of industry and
+exploiters of labor, are forced, whatever their own faith may be,
+to make use of this system of subjection. A few years ago we read
+in our papers how a Jewish millionaire of Baltimore was
+presenting a fortune to the Catholic Church, to be used in its
+war upon Socialism. The late Mark Hanna, the shrewdest and most
+far-seeing man that Big Business ever brought into power, said
+that in twenty years there would be two parties in America, a
+capitalist and a socialist; and that it would be the Catholic
+church that would save the country from Socialism. That prophecy
+was widely quoted, and sank into the souls of our steel and
+railway and money magnates; from which time you might see, if you
+watched political events, a new tone of deference to the Roman
+Hierarchy on the part of our ruling classes. Today you cannot get
+an expression of opinion hostile to Catholicism into any
+newspaper of importance. The Associated Press does not handle
+news unfavorable to the Church, and from top to bottom, the
+politician takes off his hat when the Sacred Host goes by. Said
+Archbishop Quigley, speaking before the children of the Mary
+Sodality:
+
+I'd like to see the politician who would try to rule against the
+church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.
+
+
+Priests and Police
+
+And how is it in our national capital, the palladium of our
+liberties? As a means of demonstrating the power of the church
+and the subservience of our politicians, the Catholics have
+invented what they call the "Cardinal's Day Mass": An elaborate
+procession of high ecclesiastics, dressed in gorgeous robes and
+jewels, through the streets of Washington, accompanied by a small
+army of policemen, paid by non-Catholic taxpayers. The Cardinal
+seats himself upon a throne, and our political rulers make
+obeisance before him. On Sunday, January 14, 1917, there were
+present at this political mass the following personages: Four
+cabinet members and their wives; the speaker of the House; a
+large group of senators and representatives; a general of the
+army and his wife; an admiral of the navy and his wife; the Chief
+Justice of the Supreme Court and his wife, and another Justice of
+the Supreme Court and his wife.
+
+And understand that the church makes no secret of its purpose in
+conducting such public exhibitions. Here is the pious Pope Leo
+XIII again, in his Encyclical of Nov. 1, 1885:
+
+All Catholics must make themselves felt as active elements in
+daily political life in the countries where they live. They must
+penetrate, wherever possible, in the administration of civil
+affairs; must constantly exert the utmost vigilance and energy to
+prevent the usages of liberty from going beyond the limits fixed
+by God's law. All Catholics should do all in their power to cause
+the constitutions of states and legislation to be modeled on the
+principles of the true Church.
+
+And following these instructions, the Catholics are organized for
+political work. There are the various Catholic Societies, such as
+the Knights of Columbus, secret, oath-bound organizations, the
+military arm of the Papal Power. These societies boast some three
+million members, and control not less than that many votes. The
+one thing that you can be certain about these votes is that on
+every public question, of whatever nature, they will be cast on
+the side of ignorance and reaction. Thus, it was the influence of
+the Catholic Societies which put upon our national statute books
+the infamous law providing five years imprisonment and five
+thousand dollars fine for the sending through the mail of
+information about the prevention of conception. It is their
+influence which keeps upon the statute-books of New York state
+the infamous law which permits divorce only for infidelity, and
+makes it "collusion" if both parties desire the divorce. It is
+these societies which, in every city and town in America, are
+pushing and plotting to get Catholics upon library boards, so
+that the public may not have a chance to read scientific books;
+to get Catholics into the public schools and on school-boards, so
+that children may not hear about Galileo, Bruno, and Ferrer; to
+have Catholics in control of police and on magistrates benches,
+so that priests who are caught in brothels may not be exposed or
+punished.
+
+You are shocked at this, you think it a vulgar jest, perhaps; but
+during a period of "vice raids" in New York I was told by a
+captain of police, himself a Catholic, that it was a common thing
+for them to get priests in their net. "Of course," the official
+added, good-naturedly, "we let them slip out." I understood that
+he had to do that; for the Pope, in his "Motu Proprio" decree,
+has forbidden Catholics to bring a priest into court for any
+civil crime whatsoever; he has forbidden Catholic policemen to
+arrest, Catholic judges to try, and Catholic law-makers to make
+laws affecting any priest of the Church of Rome. And of course we
+know, upon the authority of a cardinal, that the Pope is "the
+sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong." He has
+held that position for a thousand years and more; and wherever
+you consult the police records throughout the thousand years, you
+find the same entries concerning Catholic ecclesiastics. I turn
+to Riley's "Illustrations of London Life from Original
+Documents," and I find in the year 1385 a certain chaplain, whose
+name is considerately suppressed, had a breviary stolen from him
+by a loose woman, because he has not given her any money, either
+on that night or the one previous. In 1320 John de Sloghtre, a
+priest, is put in the tower "for being found wandering about the
+city against the peace", and Richard Heyring, a priest, is
+indicted in the ward of Farringdon and in the ward of Crepelgate
+"as being a bruiser and nightwalker." That this has been going on
+for six hundred years is due, not to any special corruption of
+the Catholic heart, but to the practice of clerical celibacy,
+which is contrary to nature, a transgression of fundamental
+instinct. It should be noted that the purpose of this
+transgression, which pretends to be spiritual, is really
+economic; it was the means whereby the church machine built up
+its power through the Middle Ages. The priests had children then,
+as they have them today; but these children not being recognized,
+the church machine remained the sole heir of the property of its
+clergy.
+
+The Church Militant
+
+Knowing what we know today, we marvel that it was possible for
+Germany to prepare through so many years for her assault on
+civilization, and for England to have slept through it all. In
+exactly the same way, the historian of a generation from now will
+marvel that America should have slept, while the New Inquisition
+was planning to strangle her. For we are told with the utmost
+explicitness precisely what is to be done. We are to see wiped
+out these gains of civilization for which our race has bled and
+agonized for many centuries; the very gains are to serve as the
+means of their own destruction! Have we not heard Pope Leo tell
+his faithful how to take advantage of what they find in
+America--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty,
+our open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met
+democracy?
+
+We see the army being organized and drilled under our eyes; and
+we can read upon its banners its purpose proclaimed. Just as the
+Prussian military caste had its slogan "Deutschland ueber Alles!"
+so the Knights of Slavery have their slogan: "Make America
+Catholic!"
+
+Their attitude to democratic institutions is attested by the fact
+that none of their conventions ever fails in its resolutions to
+"deeply deplore the loss of the temporal power of Our Father, the
+Pope." Their subjection to priestly domination is indicated by
+such resolutions as this, bearing date of May 13th, 1914:
+
+The Knights of Columbus of Texas in annual convention assembled,
+prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness, present filial regards
+with assurances of loyalty and obedience to the Holy See and
+request the Papal blessing.
+
+On June 10th, 1912, one T. J. Carey of Palestine, Texas, wrote to
+Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate: "Must I, as a
+Catholic, surrender my political freedom to the Church? And by
+this I mean the right to vote for the Democratic, Socialist, or
+Republican parties when and where I please?" The answer was: "You
+should submit to the decisions of the Church, even at the cost of
+sacrificing political principles." And to the same effect Mgr.
+Preston, In New York City, Jan. 1, 1888: "The man who says, 'I
+will take my faith from Peter, but I will not take my politics
+from Peter,' is not a true Catholic."
+
+Such is the Papal machine; and not a day passes that it does not
+discover some new scheme to advance the Papal glory; a "Catholic
+battle-ship" in the United States navy; Catholic chaplains on all
+ships of the navy; Catholic holidays---such as Columbus Day--to
+be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million
+dollars worth of church property exempted from taxation in New
+York City; mission bells to be set up at the expense of the state
+of California; state support for parish schools--or, if this
+cannot be had, exemption of Catholics from taxation for school
+purposes. So on through the list which might continue for pages.
+
+More than anything else, of course, the Papal machine is
+concerned with education, or rather, with the preventing of
+education. It was in its childish days that the race fell under
+the spell of the Priestly Lie; it is in his childish days that
+the individual can be most safely snared. Suffer little children
+to come unto the Catholic priest, and he will make upon their
+sensitive minds an impression which nothing in after life can
+eradicate. So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is the
+parish-school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school
+system. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the Society of Jesus,
+in his book, "The Rights of Our Little Ones":
+
+Catholic parents cannot, in conscience send their children to
+American public schools, except for very grave reasons approved
+by the ecclesiastical authorities.
+
+While state education removes illiteracy and puts a limited
+amount of knowledge within the reach of all, it cannot be said to
+have a beneficial influence on civilization in general.
+
+The state cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in
+case of utter illiteracy, so long as the essential physical and
+moral education are sufficiently provided for.
+
+And so, at all times and in all places, the Catholic Church is
+fighting the public school. Eternal vigilance is necessary; as
+"America", the organ of the Jesuits, explains:
+
+Sometimes it is a new building code, or an attempt at taxing the
+school buildings, which creates hardships to the parochial and
+other private schools. Now it is the free text book law that puts
+a double burden on the Catholics. Then again it is the unwise
+extension of the compulsory school age that forces children to be
+in school until they are 16 to 18 years old.
+
+And if you wish to know the purpose of the Catholic schools, hear
+Archbishop Quigley of Chicago, speaking before the children of
+the Mary Sodality in the Holy Name Parish-School:
+
+Within twenty years this country is going to rule the world.
+Kings and emperors will pass away, and the democracy of the
+United States will take their place. The West will dominate the
+country, and what I have seen of the Western parochial schools
+has proved that the generation which follows us will be
+exclusively Catholic. When the United States rules the world the
+Catholic Church will rule the world.
+
+
+The Church Triumphant
+
+The question may be asked, What of it? What if the Church were to
+rule? There are not a few Americans who believe that there have
+to be rich and poor, and that rule by Roman Catholics might be
+preferable to rule by Socialists. Before you decide, at least do
+not fail to consider what history has to tell about priestly
+government. We do not have to use our imaginations in the matter,
+for there was once a Golden Age such as Archbishop Quigley dreams
+of, when the power of the church was complete, when emperors and
+princes paid homage to her, and the civil authority made haste to
+carry out her commands. What was the condition of the people in
+those times? We are told by Lea, in his "History of the
+Inquisition" that:
+
+The moral condition of the laity was unutterably depraved.
+Uniformity of faith had been enforced by the Inquisition and its
+methods, and so long as faith was preserved, crime and sin was
+comparatively unimportant except as a source of revenue to those
+who sold absolution. As Theodoric Vrie tersely puts it, hell and
+purgatory would be emptied if enough money could be found. The
+artificial standard thus created is seen in a revelation of the
+Virgin to St. Birgitta, that a Pope who was free from heresy, no
+matter how polluted by sin and vice, is not so wicked but that he
+has the absolute power to bind and loose souls. There are many
+wicked popes plunged in hell, but all their lawful acts on earth
+are accepted and confirmed by God, and all priests who are not
+heretics administer true sacraments, no matter how depraved they
+may be. Correctness of belief was thus the sole essential; virtue
+was a wholly subordinate consideration. How completely under such
+a system religion and morals came to be dissociated is seen in
+the remarks of Pius II, that the Franciscans were excellent
+theologians, but cared nothing about virtue.
+
+This, in fact, was the direct result of the system of persecution
+embodied in the Inquisition. Heretics who were admitted to be
+patterns of virtue were ruthlessly exterminated in the name of
+Christ, while in the same holy name the orthodox could purchase
+absolution for the vilest of crimes for a few coins. When the
+only unpardonable offence was persistence in some trifling error
+of belief, such as the poverty of Christ; when men had before
+them the example of their spiritual guides as leaders in vice and
+debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions of
+morality were destroyed and the confusion between right and wrong
+became hopeless. The world has probably never seen a society more
+vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart fascinate us with
+their pictures of the artificial courtesies of chivalry; the
+mystic reveries of Rysbroek and of Tauler show us that spiritual
+life survived in some rare souls, but the mass of the population
+was plunged into the depths of sensuality and the most brutal
+oblivion of the moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that
+the priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with
+them, the laity were holy. What was that state of comparative
+holiness he proceeds to describe, blushing as he writes, for the
+benefit of confessors, giving a terrible sketch of universal
+immorality which nothing could purify but fire and brimstone from
+heaven. The chroniclers do not often pause in their narrations to
+dwell on the moral aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals
+of Flanders, under date of 1379, tells us that it would be
+impossible to describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries,
+blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,
+rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom, debauchery,
+avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness: and similar
+vices, and he illustrates his statement with the fact that in the
+territory of Ghent, within the space of ten months, there
+occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders committed in the
+bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and other similar
+places. When, in 1396, Jean sans Peur led his Crusaders to
+destruction at Micopolis, their crimes and cynical debauchery
+scandalized even the Turks, and led to the stern rebuke of
+Bajazet himself, who as the monk of St. Denis admits was much
+better than his Christian foes. The same writer, moralizing over
+the disaster at Agincourt, attributes it to the general
+corruption of the nation. Sexual relations, he says, were an
+alternation of disorderly lust and of incest; commerce was nought
+but fraud and treachery; avarice withheld from the Church her
+tithes, and ordinary conversation was a succession of
+blasphemies. The Church, set up by God as a model and protector
+of the people, was false to all its obligations. The bishops,
+through the basest and most criminal of motives, were habitual
+accepters of persons; they annointed themselves with the last
+essence extracted from their flocks, and there was in them
+nothing of holy, of pure, of wise, or even of decent.
+
+
+God in the Schools
+
+But that, you may say, was a long time ago. If so, let us take a
+modern country in which the Catholic Church has worked its will.
+Until recently, Spain was such a country. Now the people are
+turning against the clerical machine; and if you ask why, turn to
+Rafael Shaw's "Spain From Within":
+
+On every side the people see the baleful hand of the Church,
+interfering or trying to interfere in their domestic life,
+ordering the conditions of employment, draining them of their
+hard-won livelihood by trusts and monopolies established and
+maintained in the interest of the Religious Orders, placing
+obstacles in the way of their children's education, hindering
+them in the exercise of their constitutional rights, and
+deliberately ruining those of them who are bold enough to run
+counter to priestly dictation. Riots suddenly break out in
+Barcelona; they are instigated by the Jesuits. The country goes
+to war in Morocco; it is dragged into it solely in defense of the
+mines owned, actually, if not ostensibly, by the Jesuits. The
+consumos cannot be abolished because the Jesuits are financially
+interested in their continuance.
+
+We have read the statement of a Jesuit father, that "the state
+cannot justly enforce compulsory education, even in case of utter
+illiteracy." How has that doctrine worked out in Spain? There was
+an official investigation of school conditions, the report
+appearing in the "Heraldo de Madrid" for November, 1909. In 1857
+there had been passed a law requiring a certain number of schools
+in each of the 79 provinces: this requirement being below the
+very low standards prevailing at that time in other European
+countries. Yet in 1909 it was found that only four provinces had
+the required number of elementary schools, and at the rate of
+increase then prevailing it would have taken 150 years to catch
+up. Seventy-five per cent of the population were wholly
+illiterate, and 30,000 towns and villages had no government
+schools at all. The government owed nearly a million and a half
+dollars in unpaid salaries to the teachers. The private schools
+were nearly all "nuns' schools", which taught only needle-work
+and catechism; the punishments prevailing in them were "cruel and
+disgusting."
+
+As to the location of the schools, a report of the Minister of
+Education to the Cortes, the Parliament of Spain, sets forth as
+follows:
+
+More than 10,000 schools are on hired premises, and many of these
+are absolutely destitute of hygienic conditions. There are
+schools mixed up with hospitals, with cemeteries, with slaughter
+houses, with stables. One school forms the entrance to a
+cemetery, and the corpses are placed on the master's table while
+the last responses are being said. There is a school into which
+the children cannot enter until the animals have been sent out to
+pasture. Some are so small that as soon as the warm weather
+begins the boys faint for want of air and ventilation. One school
+is a manure-heap in process of fermentation, and one of the local
+authorities has said that in this way the children are warmer in
+winter. One school in Cataluna adjoins the prison. Another, in
+Andalusia, is turned into an enclosure for the bulls when there
+is a bull-fight in the town.
+
+These conditions excited the indignation of a Spanish educator by
+the name of Francesco Ferrer. He founded what he called a "modern
+school", in which the pupils should be taught science and common
+sense. He drew, of course, the bitter hatred of the Catholic
+hierarchy, which saw in the spread of his principles the end of
+their mastery of the people. When the Barcelona insurrection took
+place, they had Ferrer seized upon a charge of having been its
+instigator; they had him tried in secret before a military
+tribunal, convicted upon forged documents, and shot beneath the
+walls of the fortress of Montjuich. The case was thoroughly
+investigated by William Archer, one of England's leading critics,
+a man of scrupulous rectitude of mind. His conclusion is that
+Ferrer was absolutely innocent of the charges against him, and
+that his execution was the result of a clerical plot. Of Ferrer's
+character Archer writes:
+
+Fragmentary though they be, the utterances which I have quoted
+form a pretty complete revelation. From first to last we see in
+him an ardent, uncompromising, incorruptible idealist. His ideals
+are narrow, and his devotion to them fanatical; but it is devoid,
+if not of egoism, at any rate of self-interest and self-seeking.
+As he shrank from applying the money entrusted him to ends of
+personal luxury, so also he shrank from making his ideas and
+convictions subserve any personal ambition or vanity.
+
+
+The Menace
+
+There are, of course, many people in America who will not rest
+idle while their country falls into the condition of Spain. There
+are anti-Catholic propaganda societies, which send out lecturers
+to discuss the Church and its records; and this is exasperating
+to devout believers, who regard the Church as holy, and any
+criticism of it as blasphemy. So we have opportunity to observe
+the working out of the doctrine that the Church is superior to
+the civil law.
+
+On June 12th, 1913, there came to the little town of Oelwein,
+Iowa, a former priest of the Catholic Church, named Jeremiah J.
+Crowley, to deliver a lecture exposing the Papal propaganda. The
+Catholics of the town made efforts to intimidate the owner of the
+place in which the lecture was to be given; the priest of the
+town, Father O'Connor, preached a sermon furiously denouncing the
+lecturer; and after the lecture the unfortunate Crowley was
+surrounded by a mob of men, women and boys, and although he was
+six feet three in size, he was beaten almost to death. At the
+trial which followed it developed that Father O'Connor and also
+his brother, a judge on the Superior Bench, were accessories
+before the fact.
+
+Nor is this a solitary instance. The Catholic military societies,
+with their uniforms and their armories, are not maintained for
+nothing. As Archbishop Quigley declared before the German
+Catholic Central Verein:
+
+We have well ordered and efficient organizations, all at the beck
+and nod of the hierarchy and ready to do what the church
+authorities tell them to do. With these bodies of loyal Catholics
+ready to step into the breach at any time and present an unbroken
+front to the enemy we may feel secure.
+
+And so, on the evening of April 15th, 1914, a group of Catholics
+entered the Pierce Hotel in Denver, Colorado, overpowered a
+police guard and seized the Rev. Otis L. Spurgeon, an
+anti-Catholic lecturer. They bound and gagged him, took him to a
+lonely woods, and beat him to insensibility. The same thing
+happened to the Rev. Augustus Barnett, at Buffalo; the Rev.
+William Black was killed at Marshall, Texas. In each case the
+assailants avowed themselves Knights of Columbus, and efforts to
+punish them failed, because no jury can be got to convict a
+Catholic, fighting for his Pope against a godless state. The most
+pious Leo XIII has laid down:
+
+It is an impious deed to break the laws of Jesus Christ for the
+purpose of obeying the magistrates, or to transgress the law of
+the Church under the pretext of observing the civil law.
+
+There are papers published to warn Americans against the plotting
+of this political Church. One of them, "The Menace," has a
+circulation of more than a million; and naturally the Knights of
+Slavery do not enjoy reading it. Year after year they have
+marshalled their power to have this paper barred from the
+mails--so far, in vain. They caused an obscenity prosecution,
+which failed; so finally the press rooms of the paper were blown
+up with dynamite. At the present time there is a "Catholic Truth
+Society" with a publication called "Truth", to oppose the
+anti-Catholic campaign; and that is all right, of course--except
+when the agents who collect the two-dollar subscriptions to this
+publication make use of Untruth in their labors--promising
+absolution and salvation to the families, dead and living, of
+those who "come across" with subscriptions. In the "Bulletin of
+the American Federation of Catholic Societies" for September,
+1915, I find a record of the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism
+of the Catholic Church from the mails. Fitzgerald, a Tammany
+Catholic congressman, proposes a bill in Washington; and Judge
+St. Paul, of New Orleans, a member of the Federation's "law
+committee", points out the difficulties in the way of such
+legislation. You cannot pass a law against ridiculing religion,
+because the Catholics want to ridicule Christian Science,
+Mormonism, and the "Holy Ghost and Us" Society! The Judge thinks
+the purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if they
+can slip into the present law the words "scurrilous and
+slanderous"; he hopes that this much can be done without the
+American people catching on!
+
+You read these things for the first time, perhaps, and you want
+to start an American "Kultur-kampf." I make haste, therefore, to
+restate the main thesis of this book. It is not the New
+Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege.
+It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of
+Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.
+
+You remember how, when Americans first awakened to the universal
+corruption of our politics, we used to attribute it to the
+"ignorant foreign vote." Turn to Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty"
+and you will see how reformers twenty years ago explained our
+political depravity. But we probed deeper, and discovered that
+the purely American communities, such as Rhode Island, were the
+most corrupt of all. It dawned upon us that wherever there was a
+political boss paying bribes on election day, there was a captain
+of industry furnishing the money for the bribes, and taking some
+public privilege in return. So we came to realize that political
+corruption is merely a by-product of Big Business.
+
+And when we come to probe this problem of the spread of
+Supersition in America, this amazing renascence of Romanism in a
+democracy, we find precisely the same phenomenon. It is not the
+poor foreigner who troubles us. Our human magic would win
+him--our easy-going trust, our quiet certainty of liberty, our
+open-handed and open-homed and hail-fellow-well-met democracy. We
+should break down the Catholic machine, and not all the priests
+in the hierarchy could stop us--were it not for the Steel Trust
+and the Coal Trust and the Beef Trust, the Liquor Trust and the
+Traction Trust and the Money Trust--those masters of America who
+do not want citizens, free and intelligent and self-governing,
+but who want the slave-hordes as they come, ignorant, inert,
+physically, mentally and morally helpless!
+
+No, do not let yourself be lured into a Kultur-kampf. It is not
+the pennies of the servant-girls which build the towering
+cathedrals; it is not the two-dollar contributions for the
+salvation of souls which support the Catholic Truth Society and
+the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society and the Mary
+Sodality and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and
+all the rest of the machinery of the Papal propaganda. These
+help, of course; but the main sources of growth are, first, the
+subsidies of industrial exploiters, the majority of whom are
+non-Catholic, and second, the privilege of public plunder granted
+as payment for votes by politicians who are creatures and puppets
+of Big Business.
+
+
+King Coal
+
+The proof of these statements is written all over the industrial
+life of America. I will stop long enough to present an account of
+one industry, asking the reader to accept my statement that if
+space permitted I could present the same sort of proof for a
+dozen other industries which I have studied--the steel-mills of
+Western Pennsylvania, the meat-factories of Chicago, the
+glass-works of Southern Jersey, the silk-mills of Paterson, the
+cotton-mills of North Carolina, the woolen-mills of
+Massachusetts, the lumber-camps of Louisiana, the copper-mines of
+Michigan, the sweat-shops of New York.
+
+In a lonely part of the Rocky Mountains lies a group of
+enormously valuable coal-mines owned by the Rockefellers and
+other Protestant exploiters. The men who work these mines, some
+twelve or fifteen thousand in number, come from all the nations
+of Europe and Asia, and their fate is that of the average
+wage-slave. I do not ask anyone to take my word, but present
+sworn testimony, taken by the United States Commission on
+Industrial Relations in 1914. Here is the way the Italian miners
+live, as described in a doctor's report:
+
+Houses up the canyon, so-called, of which eight are habitable,
+and forty-six simply awful; they are disreputably disgraceful. I
+have had to remove a mother in labor from one part of the shack
+to another to keep dry.
+
+And here is the testimony of the Rev. Eugene S. Gaddis, former
+superintendent of the Sociological Department of the Colorado
+Fuel and Iron Company:
+
+The C. F. & I. Company now own and rent hovels, shacks and
+dug-outs that are unfit for the habitation of human beings and
+are little removed from the pig-sty make of dwellings. And the
+people in them live on the very level of a pig-sty. Frequently
+the population is so congested that whole families are crowded
+into one room; eight persons in one small room was reported
+during the year.
+
+And here is what this same clergyman has to say about the bosses
+whom the Rockefellers employ:
+
+The camp superintendents as a whole impressed me as most uncouth,
+ignorant, immoral, and in many instances, the most brutal set of
+men that I have ever met. Blasphemous bullies.
+
+Sometimes the miner grows tired of being robbed of his weights,
+and applies for the protection which the law of the state allows
+him. What happens then?
+
+"When a man asked for a checkweighman, in the language of the
+super he was getting too smart."
+
+"And he got what?"
+
+"He got it in the neck, generally."
+
+And when these wage-slaves, goaded beyond endurance, went on
+strike, in the words of the Commission's report:
+
+Five strikers, one boy, and thirteen women and children in the
+strikers' tent colony were shot to death by militiamen and guards
+employed by the coal companies, or suffocated and burned to death
+when these militiamen and guards set fire to the tents in which
+they made their homes.
+
+And now, what is the position of education in such camps? The
+Rev. James McDonald, a Methodist preacher, testified that the
+school building was dilapidated and unfit. One year there were
+four teachers, the next three, and the next only two. The teacher
+of the primary grade had a hundred and twenty children enrolled,
+ninety per cent of whom could not speak a word of English.
+
+Every little bench was seated with two or three. It was
+over-crowded entirely, and she could hardly get walking room
+around there.
+
+And as to the political use made of this deliberately cultivated
+ignorance, former United States Senator Patterson testified that
+the companies controlled all elections and all nominations:
+
+Election returns from the two or three counties in which the
+large companies operate show that in the precincts in which the
+mining camps are located the returns are nearly unanimous in
+favor of the men or measures approved by the companies,
+regardless of party.
+
+And now comes the all-important question. What of the Catholic
+Church and these evils? The majority of these mine-slaves are
+Catholics, it is this Church which is charged with their
+protection. There are priests in every town, and in nearly every
+camp. And do we find them lifting their voices in behalf of the
+miners, protesting against the starving and torturing of thirty
+or forty thousand human beings? Do we find Catholic papers
+printing accounts of the Ludlow massacre? Do we find Catholic
+journalists on the scene reporting it, Catholic lawyers defending
+the strikers, Catholic novelists writing books about their
+troubles? We do not!
+
+Through the long agony of the fourteen months strike, I know of
+just one Catholic priest, Father Le Fevre, who had a word to say
+for the strikers. One of the first stories I heard when I reached
+the strike-field was of a priest who had preached on the text
+that "Idleness is the root of all evil," and had been reported as
+a "scab" and made to shut up. "Who made him?" I asked, naively,
+thinking of his church superiors. My informant, a union miner,
+laughed. "We made him!" he said.
+
+I talked with another priest who was prudently saving souls and
+could not be interested in questions of worldly greed. Max
+Eastman, reporting the strike in the "Masses", tells of an
+interview with a Catholic sister.
+
+"Has the Church done anything to try to help these people, or to
+bring about peace?" we asked. "I consider it the most useless
+thing in the world to attempt it," she replied.
+
+The investigating committee of Congress came to the scene, and
+several clergymen of the Protestant Church appeared and bore
+testimony to the outrages which were being committed against the
+strikers; but of all the Catholic priests in the district not one
+appeared--not one! Several Protestant clergymen testified that
+they had been driven from the coal-camps--not because they
+favored the unions, but because the companies objected to having
+their workers educated at all; but no one ever heard of the
+Catholic Church having trouble with the operators. To make sure
+on this point I wrote to a former clergyman of Trinidad who
+watched the whole strike, and is now a first lieutenant in the
+First New Mexico Infantry. He answered:
+
+The Catholic Church seemed to get along with the companies very
+cordially. The Church was permitted in all the camps. The
+impression was abroad that this was due to favoritism. I honor
+what good the Church does, but I know of no instance, during the
+Colorado coal-strike or at any other time or place, when the
+Catholic Church has taken any special interest in the cause of
+the laboring men. Many Catholics, especially the men, quit the
+church during the coal-strike.
+
+
+The Unholy Alliance
+
+Everywhere throughout America today the ultimate source of all
+power, political, social, and religious, is economic
+exploitation. To all other powers and all other organizations it
+speaks in these words: "Help us, and you will thrive; oppose us,
+and you will be destroyed." It has spoken to the Catholic Church,
+for sixteen hundred years the friend and servant of every ruling
+class; and the Church has hastened to fit itself into the
+situation, continuing its pastoral role as shepherd to the
+wage-slave vote.
+
+In New York and Boston and Chicago the Church is "Democratic"; so
+in the Blaine campaign it was possible for a Republican clergyman
+to describe the issue as "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." But the
+Holy Office was shrewd and socially ambitious, and the Grand Old
+Party was desperately in need of votes, so under the regime of
+Mark Hanna, the President-Maker, there began a rapprochement
+between Big Business and the New Inquisition. Under Hanna the
+Catholic Church got representation in the Cabinet; under him the
+Cardinal's Mass became a government institution, a Catholic
+College came to the fore in Washington, and Catholic prelates
+were introduced in the role of eminent publicists, their
+reactionary opinions on important questions being quoted with
+grave solemnity by a prostitute press. It was Mark Hanna himself
+who founded the National Civic Federation, upon whose executive
+committee Catholic cardinals and archbishops might work hand in
+glove with Catholic labor-leaders for the chloroforming of the
+American working-class. Hanna's biographer naively calls
+attention to the President-maker's popularity among Catholics,
+high and low, and the support they gave him. "Archbishop Ireland
+was in frequent correspondence with him, and used his influence
+in Mr. Hanna's behalf."
+
+And this tradition, begun under Hanna, was continued under
+Roosevelt, and reached its finest flower in the days of Taft, the
+most pliant tool of the forces of evil who has occupied the White
+House since the days of the Slave Power. President Taft was
+himself a Unitarian; yet it was under his administration that the
+Catholic Church achieved one of its dearest ambitions, and broke
+into the Supreme Court. Why not? We can imagine the powers of the
+time in conference. It is desired to pack the Court against the
+possibility of progress; it is desired to find men who will stand
+like a rock against change--and who better than those who have
+been trained from childhood in the idea of a divine sanction for
+doctrine and morals? After all, what is it that Hereditary
+Privilege wants in America? A Roman Catholic code of property
+rights, with a supreme tribunal to play the part of an infallible
+Pope!
+
+Under this Taft administration the country was governed by the
+strangest legislative alliance our history ever saw; a
+combination of the Old Guard of the Republican Party with the
+leaders of the Tammany Democracy of New York. "Bloody shirt"
+Foraker, senator from Ohio, voting with the sons of those Irish
+Catholic mob-leaders whom the Federal troops shot down in the
+draft-riots! By this unholy combination a pledge to reduce the
+tariff was carried out by a bill which greatly increased its
+burdens; by this combination the public lands and resources of
+the country were fed to a gang of vultures by a thievish
+Secretary of the Interior. And of course under such an
+administration the cause of "Religion" made tremendous strides.
+Catholic officials were appointed to public office, Catholic
+ecclesiastics were accorded public honors, and Catholic favor
+became a means to political advancement. You might see a
+hard-swearing old political pirate like "Uncle Joe" Cannon,
+taking his cigar out of the corner of his blasphemous mouth and
+betaking himself to the "Cardinal's Day Mass", to bend his stiff
+knees and bow his hoary unrepentant head before a jeweled prelate
+on a throne. You might see an emissary of the United States
+government proceeding to Rome, prostrating himself before the
+Pope, and paying over seven million dollars of our taxes for
+lands which the filthy and sensual friars of the Philippine
+Islands had filched from the wretched serfs of that country and
+which the wretched serfs had won back by their blood in a
+revolution.
+
+
+Secret Service
+
+This Taft administration, urged on by the Catholic intrigue, made
+the most determined efforts to prevent the spread of radical
+thought. Because the popular magazines were opposing the
+plundering of the country, a bill was introduced into Congress to
+put them out of business by a prohibitive postal tax; the
+President himself devoted all his power to forcing the passage of
+this bill. At the same time the Socialist press was handicapped
+by every sort of persecution. I was at that time in intimate
+touch with the "Appeal to Reason", and I know that scarcely a
+month passed that the Post Office Department did not invent some
+new "regulation" especially designed to limit its circulation. I
+recall one occasion when I met the editor on his way to
+Washington with a trunkful of letters from subscribers who
+complained that their postmasters refused to deliver the paper to
+them; and later on this same editor was prosecuted by a Catholic
+Attorney General and sentenced to prison for seeking to awaken
+the people concerning the Moyer-Haywood case.
+
+From my personal knowledge I can say that under the
+administration of President Taft the Roman Catholic Church and
+the Secret Service of the Federal Government worked hand in hand
+for the undermining of the radical movement in America. Catholic
+lecturers toured the country, pouring into the ears of the public
+vile slanders about the private morality of Socialists; while at
+the same time government detectives, paid out of public funds,
+spent their time seeking evidence for these Catholic lecturers to
+use. I know one man, a radical labor-leader, whose morals
+happened to approach those of the average capitalist politician,
+and who was prevented by threats of exposure and scandal from
+accepting the Socialist nomination for President. I know a dozen
+others who were shadowed and spied upon; I know one
+case--myself--a man who was asking a divorce from his wife, and
+whose mail was opened for months.
+
+This subject is one on which I naturally speak with extreme
+reluctance. I will only say that my opponent in the suit made no
+charge of misconduct against me; but those in control of our
+political police evidently thought it likely that a man who was
+not living with his wife might have something to hide; so for
+months my every move was watched and all my mail intercepted. In
+such a case one might at first suspect one's private opponent;
+but it soon became evident that this net was cast too wide for
+any private agency. Not merely was my own mail opened, but the
+mail of all my relatives and friends--people residing in places
+as far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland smile
+of a government official to whom I complained about this matter:
+"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear." My answer
+was that a study of many labor cases had taught me the methods of
+the agent provocateur. He is quite willing to take real evidence
+if he can find it; but if not, he has familiarized himself with
+the affairs of his victim, and can make evidence which will be
+convincing when exploited by the yellow press. In my own case,
+the matter was not brought to a test, for I went abroad to live;
+when I made my next attack on Big Business, the Taft
+administration had been repudiated at the polls, and the Secret
+Service of the government was no longer at the disposal of the
+Catholic machine.
+
+
+Tax Exemption
+
+Today the Catholic Church is firmly established and everywhere
+recognized as one of the main pillars of American capitalism. It
+has some fifteen thousand churches, fourteen million
+communicants, and property valued at half a billion dollars. Upon
+this property it pays no taxes, municipal, state or national;
+which means, quite obviously, that you and I, who do not go to
+church, but who do pay taxes, furnish the public costs of
+Catholicism. We pay to have streets paved and lighted and cleaned
+in front of Catholic churches; we pay to have thieves kept away
+from them, fires put out in them, records preserved for them--all
+the services of civilization given to them gratis, and this in a
+land whose constitution provides that Congress (which includes
+all state and municipal legislative bodies) "shall make no law
+respecting a religious establishment." When war is declared, and
+our sons are drafted to defend the country, all Catholic monks
+and friars, priests and dignitaries are exempted. They are
+"ministers of religion"; whereas we Socialists may not even have
+the status of "conscientious objectors." We do not teach
+"religion"; we only teach justice and humanity, decency and
+truth.
+
+In defense of this tax-exemption graft, the stock answer is that
+the property is being used for purposes of "education" or
+"charity". It is a school, in which children are being taught
+that "liberty of conscience is a most pestiferous error, from
+which arises revolution, corruption, contempt of sacred things,
+holy institutions, and laws." (Pius IX). It is a "House of
+Refuge", to which wayward girls are committed by Catholic
+magistrates, and in which they are worked twelve hours a day in a
+laundry or a clothing sweat-shop. Or it is a "parish-house", in
+which a celibate priest lives under the care of an attractive
+young "house-keeper". Or it is a nunnery, in which young girls
+are held against their will and fed upon the scraps from their
+sisters' plates to teach them humility, and taught to lie before
+the altar, prostrate in the form of a cross, while their
+"Superiors" walk upon their bodies to impress the religious
+virtues. "I was a teacher in the Catholic schools up to a very
+recent period," writes the woman friend who tells me of these
+customs, "and I know about the whole awful system which endeavors
+to throttle every genuine impulse of the human will."
+
+Concerning a large part of this church property, the claim of
+"religious" use has not even the shadow of justification. In
+every large city of America you will find acres of land owned by
+the Catholic machine, and supposed to be the future site of some
+institution; but as time goes on and property values increase,
+the church decides to build on a cheaper site, and proceeds to
+cash in the profits of its investment, precisely as does any
+other real estate speculator. Everywhere you turn in the history
+of Romanism you find it at this same game, doing business under
+the cloak of philanthropy and in the holy name of Christ. Read
+the letter which the Catholic Bishop of Mexico sent to the Pope
+in 1647, complaining of the Jesuit fathers and their boundless
+graft. In McCabe's "Candid History of the Jesuits" appears a
+summary:
+
+A remarkable account is given of the worldly property of the
+fathers. They hold, it seems, the greater part of the wealth of
+Mexico. Two of their colleges own 300,000 sheep, besides cattle
+and other property. They own six large sugar refineries, worth
+from half a million to a million crowns each, and making an
+annual profit of 100,000 crowns each, while all the other monks
+and clergy of Mexico together own only three small refineries.
+They have immense farms, rich silver mines, large shops and
+butcheries, and do a vast trade. Yet they continually intrigue
+for legacies--a woman has recently left them 70,000 crowns--and
+they refuse to pay the appointed tithe on them. It is piquant to
+add to this authoritative description that the Jesuit
+congregation at Rome were still periodically forbidding the
+fathers to engage in commerce, and Jesuit writers still gravely
+maintain that the society never engaged in commerce. It should be
+added that the missionaries were still heavily subsidized by the
+King of Spain, that there were (the Bishop says) only five or six
+Jesuits to each of their establishments, and that they conducted
+only ten colleges.
+
+
+"Holy History"
+
+And if you think this tax-exemption privilege should be taken
+away from the church grafters, let me suggest a course of
+procedure. Write a letter about it to your daily newspaper; and
+if the letter is not published, go and see the editor and ask
+why; so you will learn something about the partnership between
+Superstition and Big Business!
+
+It is not too much to say that today no daily newspaper in any
+large American city dares to attack the emoluments of the
+Catholic Church, or to advocate restrictions upon the
+ecclesiastical machine. As I write, they are making a new
+Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, and all the newspapers of that
+graft-ridden city herald it as an important social event. Each
+paper has the picture of the new prelate, with his shepherd's
+crook upraised, his empty face crowned with a rhomboidal fool's
+cap, and enough upholstery on him to outfit a grand opera
+company. The Los Angeles "Examiner", the only paper in the city
+with a pretense to radicalism, turns loose its star-writer--one
+of those journalist virtuosos who will describe you a Wild West
+"rodeo" one day, and a society elopement the next, and a G. O. P.
+convention the next; and always with his picture, one inch
+square, at the head of his effusion. He takes in the Catholic
+festivity; and does it phaze him? It does not! He is a newspaper
+man, and if his city editor sent him to hell, he would take the
+assignment and write like the devil. To read him now you might
+think he had been reared in a convent; his soul is uplifted, and
+he bursts forth in pure spontaneous ecstacy:
+
+Solemnly magnificent, every brilliant detail symbolically
+picturing the holy history of the Roman Catholic Church in the
+inexorable progress of its immense structure, which rises from
+the rock of Peter, with its beacons of faith and devotion
+piercing the fog of doubt and fear which surround the world and
+the worldly, was the ceremony yesterday at the Cathedral of St.
+Vibiana, whereby Bishop John J. Cantwell was installed in his
+diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles.
+
+And then, a month later, comes another occasion of state--the
+Twenty-third Annual-Banquet of the Merchants' and Manufacturers'
+Association of Los Angeles. I should have to write a little essay
+to make clear the sociological significance of that function;
+explaining first, a nation-wide organization which has been
+proven by congressional investigation and by the publication of
+its secret documents to be a machine for the corruption of our
+political life; and then exhibiting our "City of the Angels",
+from which all Angels have long since fled; a city in the first
+crude stage of land speculation, without order, dignity or charm;
+a city of real estate agents, who exist by selling climate to new
+arrivals from the East; a city whose intellectual life is
+"boosting", whose standards of truth are those of the
+horse-trade. Its newspapers publish a table of temperatures,
+showing the daily contrast between Southern California and the
+East. This device is effective in the winter-time; but last June,
+when for five days and nights the temperature was over 110, and
+several times 114--the Los Angeles space was left empty!
+
+In the same way, there is a rule that our earthquake shocks are
+never mentioned, unless they destroy whole towns. On the
+afternoon of Jan. 26th, 1918, a cyclone hit Pasadena, of violence
+sufficient to lift a barn over a church-steeple and deposit it in
+the pastor's front yard. That evening a friend of mine in Los
+Angeles called up the office of the "Times" to make inquiry; and
+although they are only thirteen miles away, and have a branch
+office and a special correspondent in Pasadena, the answer was
+that they had heard nothing about the cyclone! And next morning I
+made a careful search of their columns. On the front page I read:
+"Fourth Blizzard of Season Raging in East"; also: "Another
+Earthquake in Guatemala". But not a line about the Pasadena
+cyclone That there was plenty of space in that issue, you may
+judge from the fact that there were twenty headlines like the
+following--many of them representing full page and half page
+illustrated "write-ups":
+
+Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The Bright
+Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California: Southland's Arms
+Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the East; Flower Stands
+Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate Big Manufacturing
+Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los Angeles' Beautiful Homes;
+Nymphs Knit and Bathe at Ocean's Sunny Beach; etc.
+
+Now we are in the War and our business is booming, we are making
+money hand over fist. It is all the more delightful, because we
+are putting our souls into it, we are lending our money to the
+government and saving the world for Democracy! Our labor
+unionists have been driven to other cities, and our Mexican
+agitators and I. W. W.'s are in jail; so, in the gilt ball-room
+of our palatial six-dollar-a-day hotel the four hundred masters
+of our prosperity meet to pat themselves on the back, and they
+invite the new Catholic bishop to come and confer the grace of
+God upon their eating.
+
+The Bishop comes; and I take up the "Times"--the labor-hating,
+labor-baiting, fire-and-slaughter-breathing "Times"--and here is
+the episcopal picture on the front page, the arms stretched four
+columns wide in oratorical beneficence. How the shepherd of Jesus
+does love the Merchants and Manufacturers! How his eloquence is
+poured out upon them! "You represent, gentlemen, the largest and
+the most civilizing secular body in the country. You are the
+pioneers of American civilization..... I am glad to be among you;
+glad that my lines have fallen in this glorious land by the
+sunset sea, and honored to meet in intimate acquaintance the big
+men who have raised here in a few years a city of metropolitan
+proportions."
+
+And then, bearing in mind his responsibilities as guardian of
+Exploitation, the Bishop goes on to tell them about the coming
+class-war. "On the one side a statesman preaching patience and
+respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith; on
+the other a demagog speaking about the tyranny of capitalists and
+usurers." And then, of course, the inevitable religious tag: "How
+will men obey you, if they believe not in God, who is the author
+of all authority?" At which, according to the "Times", "prolonged
+applause and cheers" from the Merchants and Manufacturers! The
+editor of the "Times" goes back to his office, and inspired by
+this episcopal eloquence writes a "leader" with the statement
+that: "We have no proletariat in America!"
+
+
+Das Centrum
+
+In order to see clearly the ultimate purpose of this Unholy
+Alliance, this union of Superstition and the Merchants' and
+Manufacturers' Association, we have to go to Europe, where the
+arrangement has been working for a thousand years. In Europe
+to-day we see the whole world in conflict with a band of
+criminals who have been able to master the minds and lives of a
+hundred million highly civilized people. As I write, the Junker
+aristocracy is at bay, and soon to have its throat cut; but there
+comes a Holy Father to its rescue, with the cross of Jesus
+uplifted, and a series of pleas for mercy, written in Vienna,
+edited in Berlin, and sent out from Rome. The Holy Father loves
+all mankind with a tender and touching love; his heart bleeds at
+the sight of bloodshed and suffering, and he pleads the sacred
+cause of peace on earth and good-will toward men.
+
+But what was the Holy Father doing through the forty-three years
+that the Potsdam gang were preparing for their assault on the
+world? How was the Holy Father manifesting his love of peace and
+good will? He is, you understand, the "sole, last, supreme judge
+of what is right and wrong," and his followers obey him with the
+utmost promptness and devotion--they express themselves as
+"prostrate at his feet." And when the masters of Prussia came to
+him and said: "Give us the power to turn this nation into the
+world's greatest military empire"--what did the Roman Church
+answer? Did it speak boldly for the gentle Jesus, and the cause
+of peace on earth and good-will towards men? No, it did not. To
+Bismarck in Germany it said, precisely as it said to Mark Hanna
+in America: "Give us honors and prestige; give us power over the
+minds of the young, so that we may plunder the poor and build our
+cathedrals and feed fat our greed; and in return we will furnish
+you with votes, so that you may rule the state and do what you
+will."
+
+You think there is exaggeration in that statement? Why, we know
+the very names of the prelates with whom the master-cynic of the
+Junkerthum made his "deal." He had tried the method of the
+Kultur-kampf, and had failed; but before he repealed the
+anti-Catholic laws, he made sure that the Church had learned its
+lesson, and would nevermore oppose the Prussian ruling caste. We
+know how this bargain was carried out; we have the record of the
+Centrum, the Catholic party of Germany, whose hundred deputies
+were the solid rock upon which the military regime of Prussia was
+erected. Not a battle-ship nor a Zeppelin was built for which the
+Black Terror did not vote the funds; not a school-child was
+beaten in Posen or Alsace that the New Inquisition did not shout
+its "Hoch!" The writer sat in the visitors' gallery of the
+Reichstag when the Socialists were protesting against the
+torturing of miserable Herreros in Africa, and he heard the
+deputies of the Holy Father's political party screaming their
+rage like jaguars in a jungle night. All over Europe the Catholic
+Church organized fake labor unions, the "yellows," as they were
+called, to scab upon the workers and undermine the revolutionary
+movement. The Holy Father himself issued precise instructions for
+the management of these agencies of betrayal. Hear the most pious
+and benevolent Leo XIII:
+
+"They must pay special and principal attention to piety and
+morality, and their internal discipline must be directed
+precisely by these considerations; otherwise they entirely lose
+their special character, and come to be very little better than
+those societies which take no account of Religion at all."
+
+It is so hard, you see, to keep a man thinking about piety and
+morality while he is starving! I am quoting from the Encyclical
+Letter on "The Condition of Labor," issued in 1891, and addressed
+"to our Venerable Brethren, all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops
+and Bishops of the Catholic World in Grace and Communion with the
+Apostolic See." The purpose of the letter is "to refute false
+teaching," and the substance of its message is:
+
+This great labor question cannot be solved except by assuming as
+a principle that private property must be held sacred and
+inviolable.
+
+And again, the purpose of churches proclaimed in language as
+frank as any used in the present book:
+
+The chief thing to be secured is the safe-guarding, by legal
+enactment and policy, of private property. Most of all it is
+essential in these times of covetous greed, to keep the multitude
+within the line of duty; for if all may justly strive to benefit
+their condition, yet neither justice nor the common good allows
+any one to seize that which belongs to another, or, under the
+pretext of futile and ridiculous equality, to lay hands on other
+peoples' fortunes.
+
+And this, you understand, in lands where rapine and conquest,
+class-tyranny and priestly domination have been the custom since
+the dawn of history; in which no property-right can possibly
+trace back to any other basis than force. In Austria, for
+example--Austria, the leader and guardian of the Holy
+Alliance--Austria, which had no Reformation, no Revolution, no
+Kultur-kampf--Austria, in which the income of the Catholic
+Primate is $625,000 a year! In other words, Austria is still to a
+large extent a "Priestly Empire;" and it was Austria which began
+the war--began it in a religious quarrel, with a Slav people
+which does not acknowledge the Holy Father as the ruler of the
+world, but persists in adhering to the Eastern Church. So of
+course to-day, when Austria is learning the bitter lesson that
+they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, the heart of
+the Holy Father is wrung with grief, and he sends out these
+eloquent peace-notes, written in Vienna and edited in Berlin. And
+at the same time his private chaplain is convicted and sentenced
+to prison for life as Austria's Master-Spy in Rome!
+
+It is a curious thing to observe--the natural instinct which, all
+over the world, draws Superstition and Exploitation together.
+This war, which is hailed as a war against autocracy, might
+almost as accurately be described as a war against the clerical
+system. Wherever in the world you find the Papal power strong,
+there you find sympathy with the Prussian infamy and there you
+find German intrigue. In Spain, for example; in Ireland and
+Quebec, and in the Argentine. The treatment of Belgium was a
+little too raw--too many priests were shot at the outset, and so
+Cardinal Mercier denounces the Germans; but you notice that he
+pleads in vain with the Vatican, which stands firm by its beloved
+Austria, and against the godless kingdom of Italy. The Kaiser
+allows the hope of restoration of the temporal power at the peace
+settlement; and meantime the law forbidding the presence of the
+Jesuits in Germany has been repealed, and all over the world the
+propagandists of this order are working for the Kaiser. Sir Roger
+Casement was raised a Catholic, and so also "Jim" Larkin, the
+Irish labor-leader who is touring America denouncing the Allies.
+The Catholic Bishop of Melbourne opposed and beat conscription in
+Australia, and it was Catholic propaganda of treachery among the
+ignorant peasant-soldiers from Sicily which caused the breaking
+of the Italian line at Tolmino. So deeply has this instinct
+worked that, in the fall of 1917 while the Socialist party in New
+York was campaigning for immediate peace, the Catholic Irish
+suddenly forgot their ancient horrors. The Catholic "Freeman's
+Journal" published nine articles favoring Socialism in a single
+issue; while even "The Tablet," the diocesan paper, began to
+discover that the Socialists were not such bad fellows after all.
+The same "Tablet" which a few years ago allowed Father Belford to
+declare that Socialists were mad dogs who should be "stopped with
+a bullet"!
+
+Note to second edition: Since the above was written, the war
+fervor has swept America, including even the rank and file of the
+Catholics, and what has here been said might seem unfair to
+persons who have forgotten the attitude of the Church during the
+early part of the conflict, and the struggle it cost to bring the
+hierarchy into line. It is one of the ironies of history that the
+most reactionary organization in the world should be lending its
+aid to the destruction of the second most reactionary. When the
+Catholic Church marches forth to war for Democracy, it is not
+drawing America down into the pit, but is letting America pull it
+out of the pit--at least for a time, and the spectacle is one in
+which all lovers of progress will rejoice.
+
+
+
+BOOK FOUR
+
+The Church of the Slavers
+
+ See, underneath the Crown of Thorn,
+      The eye-balls fierce, the features grim!
+  And merrily from night to morn
+      We chaunt his praise and worship him--
+Great Christus-Jingo, at whose feet
+  Christian and Jew and Atheist meet!
+
+ A wondrous god! most fit for those
+      Who cheat on 'Change, then creep to prayer;
+  Blood on his heavenly altar flows,
+      Hell's burning incense fills the air,
+  And Death attests in street and lane
+  The hideous glory of his reign.
+
+
+Face of Caesar
+
+The thesis of this book is the effect of fixed dogma in producing
+mental paralysis, and the use of this mental paralysis by
+Economic Exploitation. From that standpoint the various
+Protestant sects are better than the Catholic, but not much
+better. The Catholics stand upon Tradition, the Protestants upon
+an Inspired Word; but since this Word is the entire literary
+product, history and biography, science and legislation, poetry,
+drama and fiction of a whole people for something like a thousand
+years, it is possible by judicious selection of texts to prove
+anything you wish to prove and to justify anything you wish to
+do. The "Holy Book" being full of polygamy, slavery, rape and
+wholesale murder, committed by priests and rulers under the
+direct orders of God, it was a very simple matter for the
+Protestant Slavers to construct a Bible defense of their system.
+
+They get poor Jesus because he was given to irony, that most
+dangerous form of utterance. If he could come back to life, and
+see what men have done with his little joke about the face of
+Caesar on the Roman coin, I think he would drop dead. As for
+Paul, he was a Roman bureaucrat, with no nonsense in his make-up;
+when he ordered, "Servants obey your masters," he meant exactly
+what he said. The Roman official stamp which he put upon the
+gospel of Jesus has been the salvation of the Slavers from the
+Reformation on.
+
+In the time of Martin Luther, the peasants of Germany were
+suffering the most atrocious and awful misery; Luther himself
+knew about it, he had denounced the princely robbers and the
+priestly land-exploiters with that picturesque violence of which
+he was a master. But nothing had been done about it, nothing ever
+is done about it--until at last the miserable peasants attempted
+to organize and win their own rights. Their demands do not seem
+to us so very criminal as we read them today; the privilege of
+electing their own pastors, the abolition of villeinage, the
+right to hunt and fish and cut wood in the forest, the reduction
+of exorbitant rents, extra payment for extra labor, and--that
+universal cry of peasant communes whether in Russia, England,
+Mexico or sixteenth century Germany--the restoration to the
+village of lands taken by fraud. But Luther would hear nothing of
+slaves asserting their own rights, and took refuge in the Pauline
+sociology: If they really wished to follow Christ, they would
+drop the sword and resort to prayer; the gospel has to do with
+spiritual, not temporal, affairs; earthly society cannot exist
+without inequalities, etc.
+
+And when the peasants went on in spite of this, he turned upon
+them and denounced them to the princes; he issued proclamations
+which might have been the instructions of Mr. John Wanamaker to
+the police-force of his "City of Brotherly Love": "One cannot
+answer a rebel with reason, but the best answer is to hit him
+with the fist until blood flows from the nose." He issued a
+letter: "Against the Murderous and Thieving Mob of Peasants,"
+which might have come from the Reverend Woelfkin, Fifth Avenue
+Pastor of Standard Oil: "The ass needs to be beaten, and the
+populace needs to be controlled with a strong hand. God knew this
+well, and therefore he gave the rulers, not a fox's tail, but a
+sword." He implored these rulers, after the fashion of Methodist
+Chancellor Day of the University of Syracuse: "Do not be troubled
+about the severity of their repression, for it will save many
+souls." With such pious exhortations in their ears the princes
+set to work, and slaughtered a hundred thousand of the miserable
+wretches; they completely aborted the social hopes of the
+Reformation, and cast humanity into the pit of wage-slavery and
+militarism for four centuries. As a church scholar, Prof.
+Rauschenbusch, puts it:
+
+The glorious years of the Lutheran Reformation were from 1517 to
+1525, when the whole nation was in commotion, and a great
+revolutionary tidal wave seemed to be sweeping every class and
+every higher interest one step nearer to its ideal of life. . . .
+The Lutheran Reformation had been most truly religious and
+creative when it embraced the whole of human life and enlisted
+the enthusiasm of all ideal men and movements. When it became
+"religious" in the narrow sense, it grew scholastic and spiny,
+quarrelsome, and impotent to awaken high enthusiasm and noble
+life.
+
+
+Deutschland ueber Alles
+
+As a result of Luther's treason to humanity, his church became
+the state church of Prussia, and Bible-worship and Devil-terror
+played their part, along with the Mass and the Confessional, in
+building up the Junker dream. A court official--the
+Oberhofprediger--was set up, and from that time on the
+Hohenzollerns were the most pious criminals in Europe. Frederick
+the Great, the ancestral genius, was an atheist and a scoffer,
+but he believed devoutly in religion for his subjects. He said:
+"If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in
+the ranks." And Carlyle, instinctive friend of autocrats, tells
+with jocular approval how he kept them from thinking:
+
+He recognizes the uses of Religion; takes a good deal of pains
+with his Preaching Clergy; will suggest texts to them; and for
+the rest expects to be obeyed by them, as by his Sergeants and
+Corporals. Indeed, the reverend men feel themselves to be a body
+of Spiritual Sergeants, Corporals, and Captains, to whom
+obedience is the rule, and discontent a thing not to be indulged
+in by any means.
+
+So the soldiers stayed in the ranks, and Frederick raided Silesia
+and Poland. His successors ordered all the Protestant sects into
+one, so that they might be more easily controlled; from which
+time the Lutheran Church has been a department of the Prussian
+state, in some cases a branch of the municipal authority.
+
+In 1848, when the people of various German states demanded their
+liberty, it was an ultra-pious king of Prussia who sent his
+troops and shot them down--precisely as Luther had advised to
+shoot down the peasants. At this time the future maker of the
+German Empire rose in the Landtag and made his bow before the
+world; a young Prussian land-magnate, Otto von Bismarck by name,
+he shook his fist in the face of the new German liberalism, and
+incidentally of the new German infidelity:
+
+Christianity is the solid basis of Prussia; and no state erected
+upon any other foundation can permanently exist.
+
+The present Hohenzollern has diligently maintained this tradition
+of his line. It was his custom to tour the Empire in a train of
+blue and white cars, carrying as many costumes as any stage
+favorite, most of them military; with him on the train went the
+Prussian god, and there was scarcely a performance at which this
+god did not appear, also in military costume. After the failure
+of the "Kultur-kampf," the official Lutheran religion was ordered
+to make friends with its ancient enemy, the Catholic Church. Said
+the Kaiser:
+
+I make no difference between the adherents of the Catholic and
+Protestant creeds. Let them both stand upon the foundation of
+Christianity, and they are both bound to be true citizens and
+obedient subjects. Then the German people will be the rock of
+granite upon which our Lord God can build and complete his work
+of Kultur in the world.
+
+And here is the oath required of the Catholic clergy, upon their
+admission to equality of trustworthiness with their Protestant
+confreres:
+
+I will be submissive, faithful and obedient to his Royal
+Majesty,--and his lawful successors in the government,--as my
+most gracious King and Sovereign; promote his welfare according
+to my ability; prevent injury and detriment to him; and
+particularly endeavor carefully to cultivate in the minds of the
+people under my care a sense of reverence and fidelity towards
+the King, love for the Fatherland, obedience to the laws, and all
+those virtues which in a Christian denote a good citizen; and I
+will not suffer any man to teach or act in a contrary spirit. In
+particular I vow that I will not support any society or
+association, either at home or abroad, which might endanger the
+public security, and will inform His Majesty of any proposal
+made, either in my diocese or elsewhere, which might prove
+injurious to the State.
+
+And later on this heaven-guided ruler conceived the scheme of a
+Berlin-Bagdad railway, for which he needed one religion more; he
+paid a visit to Constantinople, and made another debut and
+produced another god--with the result that millions of Turks are
+fighting under the belief that the Kaiser is a convert to the
+faith of Mohammed!
+
+
+Der Tag.
+
+All this was, of course, in preparation for the great event to
+which all good Germans looked forward--to which all German
+officers drank their toasts at banquets--the Day.
+
+This glorious day came, and the field-gray armies marched forth,
+and the Pauline-Lutheran God marched with them. The Kaiser, as
+usual, acted as spokesman:
+
+Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, the
+German emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am His sword,
+His weapon and His viceregent. Woe to the disobedient and death
+to cowards and unbelievers.
+
+As to the Prussian state religion, its attitude to the war is set
+forth in a little book written by a high clerical personage, the
+Herr Consistorialrat Dietrich Vorwerk, containing prayers and
+hymns for the soldiers, and for the congregations at home. Here
+is an appeal to the Lord God of Battles:
+
+Though the warrior's bread be scanty, do Thou work daily death
+and tenfold woe unto the enemy. Forgive in merciful
+long-suffering each bullet and each blow which misses its mark.
+Lead us not into the temptation of letting our wrath be too tame
+in carrying out Thy divine judgment. Deliver us and our ally from
+the Infernal Enemy and his servants on earth. Thine is the
+kingdom, the German land; may we, by the aid of Thy steel-clad
+hand, achieve the fame and the glory.
+
+It is this Herr Consistorialrat who has perpetrated the great
+masterpiece of humor of the war--the hymn in which he appeals to
+that God who keeps guard over Cherubim, Seraphim, and Zeppelins.
+You have to say over the German form of these words in order to
+get the effect of their delicious melody--"Cherubinen,
+Seraphinen, Zeppelinen!" And lest you think that this too-musical
+clergyman is a rara avis, turn to the little book which has been
+published in English under the same title as Herr Vorwerk's
+"Hurrah and Hallelujah." Here is the Reverend S. Lehmann:
+
+Germany is the center of God's plans for the world. Germany's
+fight against the whole world is in reality the battle of the
+spirit against the whole world's infamy, falsehood and devilish
+cunning.
+
+And here is Pastor K. Koenig:
+
+It was God's will that we should win the war.
+
+And Pastor J. Rump:
+
+Our defeat would mean the defeat of His Son in humanity. We fight
+for the cause of Jesus within mankind.
+
+And here is an eminent theological professor:
+
+The deepest and most thought-inspiring result of the war is the
+German God. Not the national God such as the lower nations
+worship, but "our God," who is not ashamed of belonging to us,
+the peculiar acquirement of our heart.
+
+
+King Cotton
+
+It is a cheap way to gain applause in these days, to denounce the
+Prussian system; my only purpose is to show that Bible-worship,
+precisely as saint-worship or totem-worship, delivers the
+worshipper up to the Slavers. This truth has held in America,
+precisely as in Prussia. During the middle of the last century
+there was fought out a mighty issue in our free republic; and
+what was the part played in this struggle by the Bible-cults?
+Hear the testimony of William Lloyd Garrison: "American
+Christianity is the main pillar of American slavery." Hear Parker
+Pillsbury: "We had almost to abolish the Church before we could
+reach the dreadful institution at all."
+
+In the year 1818 the Presbyterian General Assembly, which
+represented the churches of the South as well as of the North,
+passed by a unanimous vote a resolution to the effect that
+"Slavery is utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which
+requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves." But in a
+generation the views of the entire South, including the
+Presbyterian Church, had changed entirely. What was the reason?
+Had the "law of God" been altered? Had some new "revelation" been
+handed down? Nothing of the kind; it was merely that a Yankee by
+the name of Eli Whitney had perfected a machine to take the seeds
+out of short staple cotton. The cotton crop of the South
+increased from four thousand bales in 1791 to four hundred and
+fifty thousand in 1820 and five million, four hundred thousand in
+1860.
+
+There was a new monarch, King Cotton, and his empire depended
+upon slaves. According to the custom of monarchs since the dawn
+of history, he hired the ministers of God to teach that what he
+wanted was right and holy. From one end of the South to the other
+the pulpits rang with the text: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant to
+servants shall he be to his brethren." The learned Bishop
+Hopkins, in his "Bible View of Slavery", gave the standard
+interpretation of this text:
+
+The Almighty, forseeing the total degredation of the Negro race,
+ordained them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of
+Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged it to be their
+fittest condition.
+
+I might fill the balance of this volume with citations from
+defenses of the "peculiar institution" in the name of Jesus
+Christ--and not only from the South, but from the North. For it
+must be understood that leading families of Massachusetts and New
+York owed their power to Slavery; their fathers had brought
+molasses from New Orleans and made it into rum, and taken it to
+the coast of Africa to be exchanged for slaves for the Southern
+planters. And after this trade was outlawed, the slave-grown
+cotton had still to be shipped to the North and spun; so the
+traders of the North must have divine sanction for the Fugitive
+Slave law. Here is the Bishop of Vermont declaring: "The slavery
+of the negro race appears to me to be fully authorized both in
+the Old and New Testaments." Here in the "True Presbyterian", of
+New York, giving the decision of a clerical man of the world:
+"There is no debasement in it. It might have existed in Paradise,
+and it may continue through the Millenium."
+
+And when the slave-holding oligarchy of the South rose in arms
+against those who presumed to interfere with this divine
+institution, the men of God of the South called down blessings
+upon their armies in words which, with the proper change of
+names, might have been spoken in Berlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr.
+Thornwell, one of the leading Presbyterian divines of the South:
+"The triumph of Lincoln's principles is the death-knell of
+slavery...... Let us crush the serpent in the egg." And the
+Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston: "The war is a war against
+slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word,
+Providence and Government of God." I read in the papers, as I am
+writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering against
+President Wilson's declaration that that country must become
+democratic. Here is a manifesto of the German Evangelical League,
+made public on the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation:
+
+We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from America,
+that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions, and that they
+are an essential condition of the kingdom of God on earth.
+
+In exactly the same way the religious bodies of the entire South
+united in an address to Christians throughout the world, early in
+the year 1863:
+
+The recent proclamation of the President of the United States,
+seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South, is in our
+judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of the people of
+God.
+
+
+Witches and Women
+
+To whatever part of the world you travel, to whatever page of
+history you turn, you find the endowed and established clergy
+using the word of God in defense of whatever form of
+slave-driving may then be popular and profitable. Two or three
+hundred years ago it was the custom of Protestant divines in
+England and America to burn poor old women as witches; only a
+hundred and fifty years ago we find John Wesley, founder of
+Methodism, declaring that "the giving up of witchcraft is in
+effect the giving up of the Bible." And if you investigate this
+witch-burning, you will find that it is only one aspect of a blot
+upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see, there were
+two Hebrew legends--one that woman was made out of a man's rib,
+and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England
+a wife must be content with a legal status lower than a domestic
+servant.
+
+Perhaps the most comical of the clerical claims is this--that
+Christianity has promoted chivalry and respect for womanhood. In
+ancient Greece and Rome the woman was the equal and helpmate of
+man; we read in Tacitus about the splendid women of the Germans,
+who took part in public councils, and even fought in battles. Two
+thousand years before the Christian era we are told by Maspero
+that the Egyptian woman was the mistress of her house; she could
+inherit equally with her brothers, and had full control of her
+property. We are told by Paturet that she was "juridically the
+equal of man, having the same rights and being treated in the
+same fashion." But in present-day England, under the common law,
+woman can hold no office of trust or power, and her husband has
+the sole custody of her person, and of her children while minors.
+He can steal her children, rob her of her clothing, and beat her
+with a stick provided it is no thicker than his thumb. While I
+was in London the highest court handed down a decision on the law
+which does not permit a woman to divorce her husband for
+infidelity, unless it has been accompanied by cruelty; a man had
+brought his mistress into his home and--compelled his wife to
+work for and wait upon her, and the decision was that this was
+not cruelty in the meaning of the law!
+
+And if you say that this enslavement of Woman has nothing to do
+with religion--that ancient Hebrew fables do not control modern
+English customs--then listen to the Vicar of Crantock, preaching
+at St. Crantock's, London, Aug. 27th, 1905, and explaining why
+women must cover their heads in church:
+
+(1) Man's priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then Eve.
+
+(2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but the
+woman of the man.
+
+(3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the
+woman, but the woman for the man.
+
+(4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the glory of
+God, but woman is the glory of man.
+
+(5) Woman's priority in the fall. Adam was not deceived; but the
+woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.
+
+(6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to Christ, so
+let the wives be to their husbands.
+
+(7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is
+Christ, but the head of the woman is man.
+
+I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these
+ancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which
+cannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes.
+In the city where I write, three clergymen are being sent to jail
+for six months for protesting against the use of the name of
+Jesus in the wholesale slaughter of men. Now, I am backing this
+war. I know that it has to be fought, and I want to see it fought
+as hard as possible; but I want to leave Jesus out of it, for I
+know that Jesus did not believe in war, and never could have been
+brought to support a war. I object to clerical cant on the
+subject; and I note that an eminent theological authority,
+"Billy" Sunday, appears to agree with me; for I find him on the
+front page of my morning paper, assailing the three pacifist
+clergymen, and making his appeal not to Jesus, but to the
+blood-thirsty tribal diety of the ancient Hebrews:
+
+I suppose they think they know more than God Almighty, who
+commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the battle for
+the Lord; more than the God who made Samson strong so he could
+slay thousands of his nation's enemies in a righteous cause.
+
+Right you are, Billy! And if the capitalist system continues to
+develop unchecked, we shall some day see it dawn upon the masters
+of the world how wasteful it is to permit the superannuated
+workers to perish by slow starvation. So much more sensible to
+make use of them! So we shall have a Bible defense of
+cannibalism; we shall hear our evangelists quoting Leviticus:
+"They shall eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters." Or
+perhaps some of our leisure-class ladies might make the discovery
+that the flesh of working-class babies is relished by pomeranians
+and poodles. If so, the Billy Sundays of the twenty-first century
+may discover the text: "Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth
+thy little ones against the stones."
+
+
+Moth and Rust
+
+It is especially interesting to notice what happens when the
+Bible texts work against the interests of the Slavers and their
+clerical retainers. Then they are null and void--and no matter
+how precise and explicit and unmistakable they may be! Take for
+example the Sabbath injunction: "Six days shalt thou labor and do
+all that thou hast to do." Karl Marx records of the pious England
+of his time that
+
+Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned to
+imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in his front
+garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of contract if
+he remains away from his metal, paper or glass works on the
+Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox
+Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in
+the process of expanding capital.
+
+Or consider the attitude of the Church in the matter of usury.
+Throughout ancient Hebrew history the money-lender was an
+outcast; both the law and the prophets denounced him without
+mercy, and it was made perfectly clear that what was meant was,
+not the taking of high interest, but the taking of any interest
+whatsoever. The early church fathers were explicit, and the
+Catholic Church for a thousand years consigned money-lenders
+unhesitatingly to hell. But then came the modern commercial
+system, and the money-lenders became the masters of the world!
+There is no more amusing illustration of the perversion of human
+thought than the efforts of the Jesuit casuists to escape from
+the dilemma into which their Heavenly Guides had trapped them.
+
+Here, for example is Alphonso Ligouri, a Spanish Jesuit of the
+eighteenth century, a doctor of the Church, now worshipped as St.
+Alphonsus, presenting a long and elaborate theory of "mental
+usury"; concluding that, if the borrower pay interest of his own
+free will, the lender may keep it. In answer to the question
+whether the lender may keep what the borrower pays, not out of
+gratitude, but out of fear that otherwise loans will be refused
+to him in future, Ligouri says that "to be usury, it must be paid
+by reason of a contract, or as justly due; payment by reason of
+such a fear does not cause interest to be paid as an actual
+price," Again the great saint and doctor tells us that "it is not
+usury to exact something in return for the danger and expense of
+regaining the principal!" Could the house of J. P. Morgan and
+Company ask more of their ecclesiastical department?
+
+The reader may think that such sophistications are now out of
+date; but he will find precisely the same knavery in the efforts
+of present-day Slavers to fit Jesus Christ into the system of
+competitive commercialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a
+carpenter's son, a thoroughly class-conscious proletarian. He
+denounced the exploiters of his own time with ferocious
+bitterness, he drove the money-changers out of the temple with
+whips, and he finally died the death of a common criminal. If he
+had forseen the whole modern cycle of capitalism and
+wage-slavery, he could hardly have been more precise in his
+exortations to his followers to stand apart from it. But did all
+this avail him? Not in the least!
+
+I place upon the witness-stand an exponent of Bible-Christianity
+whom all readers of our newspapers know well: a scholar of
+learning, a publicist of renown; once pastor of the most famous
+church in Brooklyn; now editor of our most influential religious
+weekly; a liberal both in theology and politics; a modernist, an
+advocate of what he calls industrial democracy. His name is Lyman
+Abbott, and he is writing under his own signature in his own
+magazine, his subject being "The Ethical Teachings of Jesus".
+Several times I have tried to persuade people that the words I am
+about to quote were actually written and published by this
+eminent doctor of divinity, and people have almost refused to
+believe me. Therefore I specify that the article may be found in
+the "Outlook", the bound volumes of which are in all large
+libraries: volume 94, page 576. The words are as follows, the
+bold face being Dr. Abbott's, not mine:
+
+My radical friend declares that the teachings of Jesus are not
+practicable, that we cannot carry them out in life, and that we
+do not pretend to do so. Jesus, he reminds us, said, 'Lay not up
+for yourself treasures upon earth;' and Christians do universally
+lay up for themselves treasures upon earth; every man that owns a
+house and lot, or a share of stock in a corporation, or a life
+insurance policy, or money in a savings bank, has laid up for
+himself treasure upon earth. But Jesus did not say, "Lay not up
+for yourselves treasures upon earth." He said, "Lay not up for
+yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt
+and where thieves break through and steal." And no sensible
+American does. Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil
+wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and thieves do not often
+break through and steal a railway or an insurance company or a
+savings bank. What Jesus condemned was hoarding wealth.
+
+Strange as it may sound to some of the readers of this book, I
+count myself among the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His
+example has meant more to me than that of any other man, and all
+the experiences of my revolutionary life have brought me nearer
+to him. Living in the great Metropolis of Mammon, I have felt the
+power of Privilege, its scourge upon my back, its crown of thorns
+upon my head. When I read that article in the "Outlook", I felt
+just as Jesus himself would have felt; and I sat down and wrote a
+letter--
+
+To Lyman Abbott
+
+This discovery of a new method of interpreting the Bible is one
+of such very great interest and importance that I cannot forbear
+to ask space to comment upon it. May I suggest that Dr. Abbott
+elaborate this exceedingly fruitful idea, and write us another
+article upon the extent to which the teachings of the Inspired
+Word are modified by modern conditions, by the progress of
+invention and the scientific arts? The point of view which Dr.
+Abbott takes is one which had never occurred to me before, and I
+had therefore been completely mistaken as to the attitude of
+Jesus on the question. Also I have, like Dr. Abbott, many radical
+friends who are still laboring under error.
+
+Jesus goes on to bid his hearers: "Consider the lilies of the
+field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." What
+an apt simile is this for the "great mass of American wealth," in
+Dr. Abbott's portrayal of it! "It is serving the community," he
+tells us; "it is building a railway to open a new country to
+settlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway to carry
+grain from the harvests of the West to the unfed millions of the
+East," etc. Incidentally, it is piling up dividends for its pious
+owners; and so everybody is happy--and Jesus, if he should come
+back to earth, could never know that he had left the abodes of
+bliss above.
+
+Truly, there should be a new school of Bible interpretation
+founded upon this brilliant idea. Jesus says, "Therefore when
+thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the
+hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may
+have glory of men." Verily not; for of what avail are trumpets,
+compared with the millions of copies of newspapers which daily go
+forth to tell of Mr. Rockefeller's benefactions? How transitory
+are they, compared with the graven marble or granite which Mr.
+Carnegie sets upon the front of each of his libraries!
+
+There is the paragraph, "Neither shalt thou swear by thy head,
+because thou canst not make one hair white or black." I have
+several among my friends who are Quakers; presumably Dr. Abbott
+has also; and he should not fail to point out to them the changes
+which scientific discovery has wrought in the significance of
+this command against swearing. We can now make our hair either
+white or black, or a combination of both. We can make it a
+brilliant peroxide golden; we could, if pushed to an extreme,
+make it purple or green. So we are clearly entitled to swear all
+we please by our head.
+
+Nor should we forget to examine other portions of the Bible
+according to this method. "Look not upon the wine when it is
+red," we are told. Thanks to the activities of that Capitalism
+which Dr. Abbott praises so eloquently, we now make our beverages
+in the chemical laboratory, and their color is a matter of
+choice. Also, it should be pointed out that we have a number of
+pleasant drinks which are not wine at all--"high-balls" and "gin
+rickeys" and "peppered punches"; also vermouthe and creme de
+menthe and absinthe, which I believe, are green in hue, and
+therefore entirely safe.
+
+Then there are the Ten Commandments. "Thou shalt not make unto
+thee any graven image." See how completely our understanding of
+this command is changed, so soon as we realize that we are free
+to make images of molten metal! And that we may with impunity bow
+down to them and worship them and serve them--even, for instance,
+a Golden Calf!
+
+"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou
+shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
+manservant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the
+stranger that is within thy gates." This, again, it will be
+noted, is open to new interpretations. It specifies maidservants,
+but does not prevent one's employing as many married women as he
+pleases. It also says nothing about the various kinds of
+labor-saving machinery which we have now taught to work for
+us--sail-boats, naptha launches, yachts, automobiles, and private
+cars--all of which may be busily occupied during the seventh day
+of the week. The men who run these machines--the guides, boatmen,
+stokers, pilots, chauffeurs, and engineers--would all indignantly
+resent being regarded as "servants", and so they do not come
+under the prohibition any more than the machines.
+
+"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet
+thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor
+his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." I read
+this paragraph over for the first time in quite a while, and I
+came with a jolt to its last words. I had been intending to point
+out that it said nothing about a neighbor's automobile, nor a
+neighbor's oil wells, sugar trusts, insurance companies and
+savings banks. The last words, however, stop one off abruptly.
+One is almost tempted to imagine that the Divine Intelligence
+must have foreseen Dr. Abbott's ingenious method of
+interpretation, and taken this precaution against him. And this
+was a great surprise to me--for, truly, I had not supposed it
+possible that such an interpretation could have been foreseen,
+even by Omniscience itself. I will conclude this communication by
+venturing the assertion that it could not have been foreseen by
+any other person or thing, in the heavens above, on the earth
+beneath, or the waters under the earth. Dr. Abbott may accept my
+congratulations upon having achieved the most ingenious and
+masterful exhibition of casuistical legerdemain that it has ever
+been my fortune to encounter in my readings in the literatures of
+some thirty centuries and seven different languages.
+
+And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to
+publish this letter. And I announce to him in advance that if he
+refuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the
+first page of the "Appeal to Reason", where it will be read by
+some five hundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before
+several million followers of Jesus Christ, the world's first and
+greatest revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and
+betrayed by the most amazing piece of theological knavery that it
+has ever been my fortune to encounter.
+
+
+The Octopus
+
+Dr. Lyman Abbott published this letter! In his editorial comment
+thereon he said that he did not know which of two biblical
+injunctions to follow: "Answer not a fool according to his folly,
+lest thou be thought like unto him"; or "Answer a fool according
+to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit". I replied by
+pointing out a third text which the Reverend Doctor had possibly
+overlooked: "He that calleth his neighbor a fool shall be in
+danger of hell-fire." But the Reverend Doctor took refuge in his
+dignity, and I bided my time and waited for that revenge which
+comes sooner or later to us muck-rakers. In this case it came
+speedily. The story is such a perfect illustration of the
+functions of religion as oil to the machinery of graft that I ask
+the reader's permission to recite it at length.
+
+For a couple of decades the political and financial life of New
+England has been dominated by a gigantic aggregation of capital,
+the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It is a "Morgan"
+concern; its popular name, "The New Haven", stands for all the
+railroads of six states, nearly all the trolley-lines and
+steamship-lines, and a group of the most powerful banks of Boston
+and New York. It is controlled by a little group of insiders, who
+followed the custom of rail-road-wrecking familiar to students of
+American industrial life: buying up new lines, capitalizing them
+at fabulous sums, and unloading them on the investing public;
+paying dividends out of capital, "passing" dividends as a means
+of stock manipulation, accumulating surpluses and cutting
+"melons" for the insiders, while at the same time crushing labor
+unions, squeezing wages, and permitting rolling-stock and
+equipment to go to wreck.
+
+All these facts were perfectly well known in Wall Street, and
+could not have escaped the knowledge of any magazine editor
+dealing with current events. In eight years the "New Haven" had
+increased its capitalization 1501 per cent; and what that meant,
+any office boy in "the Street" could have told. What attitude
+should a magazine editor take to the matter?
+
+At that time there were still two or three free magazines in
+America. One of them was Hampton's, and the story of its wrecking
+by the New Haven criminals will some day serve in school
+text-books as the classic illustration of that financial piracy
+which brought on the American social revolution. Ben Hampton had
+bought the old derelict "Broadway Magazine", with twelve thousand
+subscribers, and in four years, by the simple process of straight
+truth-telling, had built up for it a circulation of 440,000. In
+two years more he would have had a million; but in May, 1911, he
+announced a series of articles dealing with the New Haven
+management.
+
+The articles, written by Charles Edward Russell, were so exact
+that they read today like the reports of the Interstate Commerce
+Commission, dated three years later. A representative of the New
+Haven called upon the editor of Hampton's with a proof of the
+first article--obtained from the printer by bribery--and was
+invited to specify the statements to which he took exception; in
+the presence of witnesses he went over the article line by line,
+and specified two minor errors, which were at once corrected. At
+the end of the conference he announced that if the articles were
+published, Hampton's Magazine would be "on the rocks in ninety
+days."
+
+Which threat was carried out to the letter. First came a campaign
+among the advertisers of the magazine, which lost an income of
+thousands of dollars a month, almost over night. And then came a
+campaign among the banks--the magazine could not get credit.
+Anyone familiar with the publishing business will understand that
+a magazine which is growing rapidly has to have advances to meet
+each month's business. Hampton undertook to raise the money by
+selling stock; whereupon a spy was introduced into his office as
+bookkeeper, his list of subscribers was stolen, and a campaign
+was begun to destroy their confidence.
+
+It happened that I was in Hampton's office in the summer of 1911,
+when the crisis came. Money had to be had to pay for a huge new
+edition; and upon a property worth two millions of dollars, with
+endorsements worth as much again, it was impossible to borrow
+thirty thousand dollars in the city of New York. Bankers,
+personal friends of the publisher, stated quite openly that word
+had gone out that any one who loaned money to him would be
+"broken". I myself sent telegrams to everyone I knew who might by
+any chance be able to help; but there was no help, and Hampton
+retired without a dollar to his name, and the magazine was sold
+under the hammer to a concern which immediately wrecked it and
+discontinued publication.
+
+
+The Industrial Shelley
+
+Such was the fate of an editor who opposed the "New Haven". And
+now, what of those editors who supported it? Turn to "The
+Outlook, a Weekly Journal of Current Events," edited by Lyman
+Abbott--the issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and nine years
+after Christ came down to bring peace on earth and good-will
+toward Wall Street. You will there find an article by Sylvester
+Baxter entitled "The Upbuilding of a Great Railroad." It is the
+familiar "slush" article which we professional writers learn to
+know at a glance. "Prodigious", Mr. Baxter tells us, has been the
+progress of the New Haven; this was "a masterstroke", that was
+"characteristically sagacious". The road had made "prodigious
+expenditures", and to a noble end: "Transportation efficiency
+epitomizes the broad aim that animated these expenditures and
+other constructive activities." There are photographs of bridges
+and stations--"vast terminal improvements", "a masterpiece of
+modern engineering", "the highest, greatest and most
+architectural of bridges". Of the official under whom these
+miracles were being wrought--President Mellen--we read:
+"Nervously organized, of delicate sensibility, impulsive in
+utterance, yet with an extraordinarily convincing power for
+vividly logical presentation." An industrial Shelley, or a
+Milton, you perceive; and all this prodigious genius poured out
+for the general welfare! "To study out the sort of transportation
+service best adapted to these ends, and then to provide it in the
+most efficient form possible, that is the life-task that
+President Mellen has set himself."
+
+There was no less than sixteen pages of these raptures--quite a
+section of a small magazine like the "Outlook". "The New Haven
+ramifies to every spot where industry flourishes, where business
+thrives." "As a purveyor of transportation it supplies the public
+with just the sort desired." "Here we have the new efficiency in
+a nutshell." In short, here we have what Dr. Lyman Abbott means
+when he glorifies "the great mass of American wealth". "It is
+serving the community; it is building a railway to open a new
+country to settlement by the homeless; it is operating a railway
+to carry grain from the harvests of the West to the unfed
+millions of the East," etc. The unfed millions--my typewriter
+started to write "underfed millions"--are humbly grateful for
+these services, and hasten to buy copies of the pious weekly
+which tells about them.
+
+The "Outlook" runs a column of "current events" in which it tells
+what is happening in the world; and sometimes it is compelled to
+tell of happenings against the interests of "the great mass of
+American wealth". The cynical reader will find amusement in
+following its narrative of the affairs of the New Haven during
+the five years subsequent to the publication of the Baxter
+article.
+
+First came the collapse of the road's service; a series of
+accidents so frightful that they roused even clergymen and
+chambers of commerce to protest. A number of the "Outlook's"
+subscribers are New Haven "commuters", and the magazine could not
+fail to refer to their troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913,
+three years and ten days after the Baxter rhapsody, we read:
+
+The most numerous accidents on a single road since the last
+fiscal year have been, we believe, those on the New Haven. In the
+opinion of the Connecticut Commission, the Westport wreck would
+not have occurred if the railway company had followed the
+recommendation of the Chief Inspector of Safety Appliances of the
+Interstate Commerce Commission in its report on a similar
+accident at Bridgeport a year ago.
+
+And by June 28th, matters had gone farther yet; we find the
+"Outlook" reporting:
+
+Within a few hours of the collision at Stamford, the wrecked
+Pullman car was taken away and burned. Is this criminal
+destruction of evidence?
+
+This collapse of the railroad service started a clamor for
+investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which of
+course brought terror to the bosoms of the plunderers. On Dec.
+20, 1913, we find the "Outlook" "putting the soft pedal" on the
+public indignation. "It must not be forgotten that such a road as
+the New Haven is, in fact if not in terms, a National possession,
+and as it goes down or up, public interests go down or up with
+it," But in spite of all pious admonitions, the Interstate
+Commerce Commission yielded to the public clamor, and an
+investigation was made--revealing such conditions of rottenness
+as to shock even the clerical retainers of Privilege. "Securities
+were inflated, debt was heaped upon debt", reports the horrified
+"Outlook"; and when its hero, Mr. Mellen--its industrial Shelley,
+"nervously organized, of delicate sensibility"--admitted that he
+had no authority as to the finances of the road and no
+understanding of them, but had taken all his orders from Morgan,
+the "Outlook" remarks, deeply wounded: "A pitiable position for
+the president of a great railway to assume." A little later, when
+things got hotter yet, we read:
+
+In the search for truth the Commissioners had to overcome many
+obstacles, such as the burning of books, letters and documents,
+and the obstinacy of witnesses, who declined to testify until
+criminal proceedings were begun. The New Haven system has more
+than three hundred subsidiary corporations in a web of entangling
+alliances, many of which were seemingly planned, created and
+manipulated by lawyers expressly retained for the purpose of
+concealment or deception.
+
+But do you imagine even that would sicken the pious jackals of
+their offal? If so, you do not know the sturdiness of the pious
+stomach. A compromise was patched up between the government and
+the thieves who were too big to be prosecuted; this bargain was
+not kept by the thieves, and President Wilson declared in a
+public statement that the New Haven administration had "broken an
+agreement deliberately and solemnly entered into," in a manner to
+the President "inexplicable and entirely without justification."
+Which, of course, seemed to the "Outlook" dreadfully impolite
+language to be used concerning a "National possession"; it
+hastened to rebuke President Wilson, whose statement was "too
+severe and drastic."
+
+A new compromise was made between the government and the thieves
+who were too big to be prosecuted, and the stealing went on. Now,
+as I work over this book, the President takes the railroads for
+war use, and reads to Congress a message proposing that the
+securities based upon the New Haven swindles, together with all
+the mass of other railroad swindles, shall be sanctified and
+secured by dividends paid out of the Public purse. New Haven
+securities take a big jump; and the "Outlook", needless to say,
+is enthusiastic for the President's policy. Here is a chance for
+the big thieves to baptize themselves--or shall we say to have
+the water in their stocks made "holy"? Says our pious editor, for
+the government to take property without full compensation "would
+be contrary to the whole spirit of America."
+
+
+The Outlook for Graft
+
+Anyone familiar with the magazine world will understand that such
+crooked work as this, continued over a long period, is not done
+for nothing. Any magazine writer would know, the instant he saw
+the Baxter article, that Baxter was paid by the New Haven, and
+that the "Outlook" also was paid by the New Haven. Generally he
+has no way of proving such facts, and has to sit in silence; but
+when his board bill falls due and his landlady is persistent, he
+experiences a direct and earnest hatred of the crooks of
+journalism who thrive at his expense. If he is a Socialist, he
+looks forward to the day when he may sit on a Publications' Graft
+Commission, with access to all magazine books which have not yet
+been burned!
+
+In the case of the New Haven, we know a part of the price--thanks
+to the labors of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Needless to
+say, you will not find the facts recorded in the columns of the
+Outlook; you might have read it line by line from the palmy days
+of Mellen to our own, and you would have got no hint of what the
+Commission revealed about magazine and newspaper graft. Nor would
+you have got much more from the great metropolitan dailies, which
+systematically "played down" the expose, omitting all the really
+damaging details. You would have to go to the reports of the
+Commission--or to the files of "Pearson's Magazine", which is out
+of print and not found in libraries!
+
+According to the New Haven's books, and by the admission of its
+own officials, the road was spending more than four hundred
+thousand dollars a year to influence newspapers and magazines in
+favor of its policies. (President Mellen stated that this was
+relatively less than any other railroad in the country was
+spending). There was a professor of the Harvard Law School, going
+about lecturing to boards of trade, urging in the name of
+economic science the repeal of laws against railroad
+monopolies--and being paid for his speeches out of railroad
+funds! There was a swarm of newspaper reporters, writing on
+railroad affairs for the leading papers of New England, and
+getting twenty-fivedollars weekly, or two or three hundred on
+special occasions. Sums had been paid directly to more than a
+thousand newspapers--$3,000 to the Boston "Republic", and when
+the question was asked "Why?" the answer was, "That is Mayor
+Fitzgerald's paper." Even the ultra-respectable "Evening
+Transcript", organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for $144
+for typing, mimeographing and sending out "dope" to the country
+press. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 "Prayers"; and when
+asked about that President Mellen explained that it referred to a
+pamphlet called "Prayers from the Hills", embodying the yearnings
+of the back-country people for trolley-franchises to be issued to
+the New Haven. Asked why the pamphlet was called "Prayers", Mr.
+Mellen explained that "there was lots of biblical language in
+it."
+
+And now we come to the "Outlook"; after five years of waiting, we
+catch our pious editors with the goods on them! There appears on
+the pay-roll of the New Haven, as one of its regular
+press-agents, getting sums like $500 now and then--would you
+think it possible?--Sylvester Baxter! And worse yet, there
+appears an item of $938.64 to the "Outlook", for a total of 9,716
+copies of its issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and nine years
+after Christ came to bring peace on earth and good will towards
+Wall Street!
+
+The writer makes a specialty of fair play, even when dealing with
+those who have never practiced it towards him. He wrote a letter
+to the editor of the "Outlook", asking what the magazine might
+have to say upon this matter. The reply, signed by Lawrence F.
+Abbott, President of the "Outlook" Company, was that the
+"Outlook" did not know that Mr. Baxter had any salaried
+connection with the New Haven, and that they had paid him for the
+article at the usual rates. Against this statement must be set
+one made under oath by the official of the New Haven who had the
+disbursing of the corruption fund--that the various papers which
+used the railroad material paid nothing for it, and "they all
+knew where it came from." Mr. Lawrence Abbott states that "the
+New Haven Railroad bought copies of the 'Outlook' without any
+previous understanding or arrangement as anybody is entitled to
+buy copies of the 'Outlook'." I might point out that this does
+not really say as much as it seems to; for the President of every
+magazine company in America knows without any previous
+understanding or arrangement that any time he cares to print an
+article such as Mr. Baxter's, dealing with the affairs of a great
+corporation, he can sell ten thousand copies to that corporation.
+The late unlamented Elbert Hubbard wrote a defense of the
+Rockefeller slaughter of coal-miners, published it in "The Fra,"
+and came down to New York and unloaded several tons at 26
+Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the copper strike
+in Michigan, and again in the case of "The Jungle"--and all this
+without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or authority!
+
+Mr. Abbott answers another question: "We certainly did not return
+the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience
+must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the
+"Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen
+goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and
+we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the
+thief is the most notorious in the city--when his picture has
+been in the paper a thousand times? And when the thief swears
+that the broker knew him? And when the broker's shop is full of
+other suspicious goods? Why did the "Outlook" practically take
+back Mr. Spahr's revelations concerning the Powder barony of
+Delaware? Why did it support so vigorously the Standard Oil
+ticket for the control of the Mutual Life Insurance Company--and
+with James Stillman, one of the heads of Standard Oil, president
+of Standard Oil's big bank in New York, secretly one of its
+biggest stockholders!
+
+Also, why does the magazine refuse to give its readers a chance
+to judge its conduct? Why is it that a search of its columns
+reveals no mention of the revelations concerning Mr. Baxter--not
+even any mention of the $400,000 slush fund of its paragon, of
+transportation virtues? I asked that question in my letter, and
+the president of the "Outlook" Company for some reason failed to
+notice it. I wrote a second time, courteously reminding him of
+the omission; and also of another, equally significant--he had
+not informed me whether any of the editors of the "Outlook", or
+the officers or directors of the Company, were stockholders in
+the New Haven. His final reply was that the questions seem to him
+"wholly unimportant"; he does not know whether the "Outlook"
+published anything about the Baxter revelations, nor does he know
+whether any of the editors or officers or directors of the
+"Outlook" Company are or ever have been stockholders of the New
+York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. The fact "would
+not in the slightest degree affect either favorably or
+unfavorably our editorial treatment of that corporation."
+Caesar's wife, it appears is above suspicion--even when she is
+caught in a brothel!
+
+
+Clerical Camouflage
+
+I have seen a photograph from "Somewhere in France", showing a
+wayside shrine with a statue of the Virgin Mary, innocent and
+loving, with her babe in her arms. If you were a hostile aviator,
+you might sail over and take pictures to your heart's content,
+and you would see nothing but a saintly image; you would have to
+be on the enemy's side, and behind the lines, to make the
+discovery that under the image had been dug a hole for a
+machine-gun. When I saw that picture, I thought to myself--there
+is capitalist Religion!
+
+You see, if cannon and machine-guns are out in the open, they are
+almost instantly spotted and put out of action; and so with
+magazines like "Leslie's Weekly", or "Munsey's", or the "North
+American Review", which are frankly and wholly in the interest of
+Big Business. If an editor wishes really to be effective in
+holding back progress, he must protect himself with a camouflage
+of piety and philanthropy, he must have at his tongue's end the
+phrases of brotherhood and justice, he must be liberal and
+progressive, going a certain cautious distance with the
+reformers, indulging in carefully measured fair play--giving a
+dime with one hand, while taking back a dollar with the other!
+
+Let us have an illustration of this clerical camouflage. Here are
+the wives and children of the Colorado coal-miners being shot and
+burned in their beds by Rockefeller gun-men, and the press of the
+entire country in a conspiracy of silence concerning the matter.
+In the effort to break down this conspiracy, Bouck White,
+Congregational clergyman, author of "The Call of the Carpenter",
+goes to the Fifth Avenue Church of Standard Oil and makes a
+protest in the name of Jesus. I do not wish to make extreme
+statements, but I have read history pretty thoroughly, and I
+really do not know where in nineteen hundred years you can find
+an action more completely in the spirit and manner of Jesus than
+that of Bouck White. The only difference was that whereas Jesus
+took a real whip and lashed the money-changers, White politely
+asked the pastor to discuss with him the question whether or not
+Jesus condemned the holding of wealth. He even took the
+precaution to write a letter to the clergyman announcing in
+advance what he intended to do! And how did the clergyman prepare
+for him? With the sword of truth and the armor of the spirit?
+No--but with two or three dozen strong-arm men, who flung
+themselves upon the Socialist author and hurled him out of the
+church. So violent were they that several of White's friends,
+also one or two casual spectators, were moved to protest; what
+happened then, let us read in the New York "Sun", the most
+bitterly hostile to radicalism of all the metropolitan
+newspapers. Says the "Sun's" report:
+
+A police billy came crunching against the bones of Lopez's legs.
+It struck him as hard as a man could swing it eight times. A fist
+planted on Lopez's jaw knocked out two teeth. His lip was torn
+open. A blow in the eye made it swell and blacken instantly. A
+minute later Lopez was leaning against the church with blood
+running to the doorsill.
+
+And now, what has the clerical camouflage to say on this
+proceeding? Does it approve it? Oh no! It was "a mistake", the
+"Outlook" protests; it intensifies the hatred which these
+extremists feel for the church. The proper course would have been
+to turn the disturber aside with a soft answer; to give him some
+place, say in a park, where he could talk his head off to people
+of his own sort, while good and decent Christians continued to
+worship by themselves in peace, and to have the children of their
+mine-slaves shot and burned in their beds. Says our pious editor:
+
+The true way to repress cranks is not to suppress them; it is to
+give them an opportunity to air their theories before any who
+wish to learn, while forbidding them to compel those to listen
+who do not wish to do so.
+
+Or take another case. Twelve years ago the writer made an effort
+to interest the American people in the conditions of labor in
+their packing-plants. It happened that incidentally I gave some
+facts about the bedevilment of the public's meat-supply, and the
+public really did care about that. As I phrased it at the time, I
+aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the
+stomach. There was a terrible clamor, and Congress was forced to
+pass a bill to remedy the evils. As a matter of fact this bill
+was a farce, but the public was satisfied, and soon forgot the
+matter entirely. The point to be noted here is that so far as
+concerned the atrocious miseries of the working-people, it was
+not necessary even to pretend to do anything. The slaves of
+Packingtown went on living and working as they were described as
+doing in "The Jungle", and nobody gave a further thought to them.
+Only the other day I read in my paper--while we are all making
+sacrifices in a "War for Democracy"--that Armour and Company had
+paid a dividend of twenty-one per cent, and Swift and Company a
+dividend of thirty-five per cent.
+
+This prosperity they owe in good part to their clerical
+camouflage. Listen to our pious "Outlook", engaged in
+countermining "The Jungle". The "Outlook" has no doubt that there
+are genuine evils in the packing-plants; the conditions of the
+workers ought of course to be improved; BUT--
+
+To disgust the reader by dragging him through every conceivable
+horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and
+with offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel--all this
+is to overreach the object .... Even things actually terrible may
+become distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational
+way and in a high pitched key...... More convincing if it were
+less hysterical.
+
+Don't you see what these clerical crooks are for?
+
+
+The Jungle
+
+A four years' war was fought in America, a million men were
+killed and half a continent was devastated, in order to abolish
+chattel slavery and put wage slavery in its place. I have made a
+thorough study of both these industrial systems, and I freely
+admit that there is one respect in which the lot of the wage
+slave is better than that of the chattel slave. The wage slave is
+free to think; and by squeezing a few drops of blood from his
+starving body, he may possess himself of machinery for the
+distribution of his ideas. Taking his chances of the policeman's
+club and the jail, he may found revolutionary organizations, and
+so he has the candle of hope to light him to his death-bed. But
+excepting this consideration, and taking the circumstances of the
+wage slave from the material point of view alone, I hold it
+beyond question that the average lot of the chattel slave of 1860
+was preferable to that of the modern slave of the Beef Trust, the
+Steel Trust, or the Coal Trust. It was the Southern master's real
+concern, his business interest, that the chattel slave should be
+kept physically sound; but it is nobody's business to care
+anything about the wage slave. The children of the chattel slave
+were valuable property, and so they got plenty to eat, and a
+happy outdoor life, and medical attention if they fell ill. But
+the children of the sweat-shop or the cotton-mill or the
+canning-factory are raised in a city slum, and never know what it
+is to have enough to eat, never know a feeling of security or
+rest--
+
+ We are weary in our cradles
+      From our mother's toil untold;
+  We are born to hoarded weariness
+      As some to hoarded gold.
+
+The system of competitive commercialism, of large-scale
+capitalist industry in its final flowering! I quote from "The
+Jungle":
+
+Here in this city tonight, ten thousand women are shut up in foul
+pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live. Tonight
+in Chicago there are ten thousand men, homeless and wretched,
+willing to work and begging for a chance, yet starving, and
+fronting with terror the awful winter cold! Tonight in Chicago
+there are a hundred thousand children wearing out their strength
+and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their bread! There
+are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery and
+squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones!
+There are a hundred thousand old people, cast off and helpless,
+waiting for death to take them from their torments! There are a
+million people, men and women and children, who share the curse
+of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand and see,
+for just enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till the
+end of their days to monotony and weariness, to hunger and
+misery, to heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to ignorance and
+drunkenness and vice! And then turn over the page with me, and
+gaze upon the other side of the picture. There are a
+thousand--ten thousand, maybe--who are the masters of these
+slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they
+receive, they do not even have to ask for it---it comes to them
+of itself, their only care is to dispose of it. They live in
+palaces, they riot in luxury and extravagance--such as no words
+can describe, as makes the imagination reel and stagger, makes
+the soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds of dollars for
+a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions
+for horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets,
+for little shiny stones with which to deck their bodies. Their
+life is a contest among themselves for supremacy in ostentation
+and recklessness, in the destroying of useful and necessary
+things, in the wasting of the labor and the lives of their
+fellow-creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations, the sweat
+and tears and blood of the human race! It is all theirs--it comes
+to them; just as all the springs pour into streamlets, and the
+streamlets into rivers, and the rivers into the ocean--so,
+automatically and inevitably, all the wealth of society comes to
+them. The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the
+weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the stone, the clever man
+invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the
+inspired man sings--and all the results, the products of the
+labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous
+stream and poured into their laps!
+
+This is the system. It is the crown and culmination of all the
+wrongs of the ages; and in proportion to the magnitude of its
+exploitation, is the hypocrisy and knavery of the clerical
+camouflage which has been organized in its behalf. Beyond all
+question, the supreme irony of history is the use which has been
+made of Jesus of Nazareth as the Head God of this blood-thirsty
+system; it is a cruelty beyond all language, a blasphemy beyond
+the power of art to express. Read the man's words, furious as
+those of any modern agitator that I have heard in twenty years of
+revolutionary experience: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on
+earth!--Sell that ye have and give alms!--Blessed are ye poor,
+for yours is the kingdom of Heaven!--Woe unto you that are rich,
+for ye have received your consolation!--Verily, I say unto you,
+that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of
+Heaven!--Woe unto you also, you lawyers!--Ye serpents, ye
+generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"
+
+"And this man"--I quote from "The Jungle" again--"they have made
+into the high-priest of property and smug respectability, a
+divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern
+commercial civilization! Jewelled images are made of him, sensual
+priests burn insense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring
+their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women and
+children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats
+and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors of dusty
+divinity!"
+
+
+
+BOOK FIVE
+
+The Church of the Merchants
+
+               Mammon led them on--
+ Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
+  From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and
+      thoughts
+  Were always downward bent, admiring more
+  The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
+  Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
+  In vision beatific.....
+ Let none admire
+  That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
+  Deserve the precious bane.
+                 Milton.
+
+The Head Merchant
+
+Ours is the era of commerce, as its propagandists never weary of
+telling us. Business is the basis of our material lives, and
+consequently of our culture. Business men control our politics
+and dictate our laws; business men own our newspapers and direct
+their policy; business men sit on our school boards, and endow
+and manage our universities. The Reformation was a revolt of the
+newly-developing merchant classes against the tyrannies and
+abuses of feudal clericalism: so in all Protestant Christianity
+one finds the spirit, ideals, and language of Trade. We have
+shown how the symbolism of the Anglican Church is of the palace
+and the throne; in the same way that of the non-conformist sects
+may be shown to be of the counting-house. In the view of the
+middle-class Britisher, the nexus between man and man is cent per
+cent; and so in their Sunday services the worshippers sing such
+hymns as this:
+
+ Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,
+  Repaid a thousand fold shall be;
+  Then gladly will we give to Thee,
+           Who givest all.
+
+The first duty of every man under the competitive system is to
+secure the survival of his own business; so on the Sabbath, when
+he comes to deal with eternity, he is practical and explicit:
+
+ Nothing is worth a thought beneath
+  But how I may escape the death
+     That never, never dies;
+  How make mine own election sure,
+  And when I fail on earth secure
+      A mansion in the skies.
+
+Just as the priest of the aristocratic caste figures God as a
+mighty Conqueror--
+
+          Marching as to war
+  With the cross of Jesus
+           Going on before
+
+so the preacher to the trader figures the divinity as a glorified
+Merchant keeping books. This Head Merchant has a monopoly in His
+line; He knows all His rivals' secrets, so there is no getting
+ahead of Him, and nothing to do but obey His Word, as revealed
+through His clerical staff. The system is oily with protestations
+of divine love; but when you read the comments of Luther upon
+Calvin and of Calvin upon Luther, you understand that this love
+is confined to the inside of each denomination. And even so
+restricted, there is not always enough to go around. Recently I
+met a Presbyterian clergyman, to whom I remarked, "I see by the
+papers that you have just finished a church building." "Yes," he
+answered; "and I have had three offers of a new church." I did
+not see the connection, and asked, "Because you were so
+successful with this one?" The reply was, "They always take it
+for granted that you want to change when you've finished a new
+building, because you make so many enemies!"
+
+The business man puts up the money to build the church, he puts
+up the money to keep it going; and the first rule of a business
+man is that when he puts up the money for a thing he "runs" that
+thing. Of course he sees that it spreads his own views of life,
+it helps to maintain his tradition. In the days of Anu and Baal
+we heard the proclamation of the divine right of Kings; in these
+days of Mammon we hear the proclamation of the divine right of
+Merchants. Some fifteen years ago the head of our Coal Trust
+announced during a great strike that the question would be
+settled "by the Christian men to whom God in His Infinite Wisdom
+has given control of the property interests of this country". And
+on that declaration all pious merchants stand; whatever their
+denominations, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist,
+Presbyterian or Hebrew, their Sabbath doctrines are alike, as
+their week-day practices are alike; whether it is Rockefeller
+shooting his Bayonne oil-workers and burning alive the little
+children of his miners; or smooth John Wanamaker, paying
+starvation wages to department-store girls and driving them to
+the streets; or that clergyman who, at a gathering of society
+ladies, members of the "Law and Order League" of Denver, declared
+in my hearing that if he could have his way he would blow up the
+home of every coal-striker with dynamite; or the Rev. R. A.
+Torrey, Dean of the Bible institute of Los Angeles, who refused
+to employ union labor on the million dollar building of the
+Institute, declaring that "the Church cannot afford to have any
+dealings with a band of fire-bugs and murderers!"
+
+
+"Herr Beeble"
+
+The business of the Clerical Department of the Merchants' and
+Manufacturers' Association is to justify the processes of trade,
+and to preach to clerks and employees the slave-virtues of
+frugality, humility, and loyalty to the profit system. The depths
+of sociological depravity to which some of the agents of this
+Association have sunk is difficult of belief. Twelve years ago I
+was invited to address the book-sellers of New York, in company
+with a well-known clergyman of the city, the Reverend Madison C.
+Peters. This gentleman's address made such an impression upon me
+that I recall it even at this distance: a string of jokes spoken
+with an effect of rapid-fire smartness, and simply reeking with
+commercialism. I could not describe it better than to say that it
+was on the ethical level of the "Letters of a Self-Made Merchant
+to His Son". Again, I attended a debate on Socialism, in which
+the capitalist end was taken by another famous clergyman, pastor
+of the Metropolitan Temple, the Rev. J. Wesley Hill. He was so
+ignorant that when he wished to prove that Socialism means free
+love, he quoted a writer by the name of "Herr Beeble"; he was so
+dishonest that he garbled the writings of this "Herr Beeble",
+making him say something quite different from what he had meant
+to say. I could name several clergymen of various denominations
+who have stooped to that device against the Socialists; including
+the Catholic Father Belford, who says that we are mad dogs and
+should be stopped with bullets.
+
+Or consider the Reverend Thomas Dixon. This gentleman's
+pulpit-slang used to be the talk of New York when I was a boy;
+and when I grew up, and came into the Socialist movement--behold,
+here he was, chief inquisitor of the capitalist Holy Office. I
+had a friend, a man who saved my life at a time when I was
+practically starving, and to whom therefore I owe my survival as
+a writer; this friend had been a clergyman in a Middle Western
+state, and had preached Jesus as he really was, and so was hated
+and feared like Jesus. It happened that he was unhappily married,
+and permitted his wife to divorce him so that he might marry the
+woman he loved; for which unheard of crime the organized
+hypocrisy of America fell upon him like a thousand devils with
+poisoned whips. The Reverend Dixon's holy rage was fired; he
+applied his imagination to my friend's story, producing a novel
+under the title of "The One Woman"; and it is as if you were
+reading the story of Jesus and the Magdalen transmitted through
+the personality of a he-goat. Of late years this clerical author
+has turned his energies to negrophobia, and militarism, making
+millions out of motion-picture incitements to hatred and terror.
+The pictures were made here in Southern California, and friends
+in the business have described to me the pious propagandist in
+the position of St. Anthony surrounded by swarms of cute and
+playful little movie-girls.
+
+Or take the Rev. James Roscoe Day, D. D., S. T. D., L. L. D., D.
+C. L., L. H. D., a leading light of the Methodist Episcopal
+Church, who offers himself as comic relief in our Clerical
+Vaudeville. Dr. Day is Chancellor of Syracuse University, a
+branch of the Mental Munitions Department of the Standard Oil
+Company; his function being to manufacture intellectual weapons
+and explosives to be used in defense of the Rockefeller fortune.
+It is generally not expected that the makers of ruling-class
+munitions should face the dirty and perilous work of the
+trenches; but ten years ago, during a raid by an active squad of
+muckrake-men, Chancellor Day astonished the world by rushing to
+the front with both arms full of star-shells and bombs. He
+afterwards put the history of this gallant action into a volume,
+"The Raid on Prosperity"; and if you want the real thrill of the
+class-war, here is where to get it!
+
+The Chancellor is a quaint and touching figure; an enthusiast and
+dreamer, idealist and martyr, in whom the ordinary human virtues
+have been fused, absorbed, transformed and sublimated into a new
+supreme virtue of loyalty to Exploitation, patriotism for
+Profiteering. He began life as a working-man, he tells us, in the
+good old American fashion of hustle for yourself; but he differed
+from other Americans in that he had an instant, intuitive
+recognition of the intellectual and moral excellence of
+Plutocracy. The first time he met a rich man, he quivered with
+rapture, he burst into a hymn of appreciation. So very quickly he
+was recognized as a proper person to have charge of a Mental
+Munition Works; and the ruling classes proceeded to pin medals
+upon the bosom of his academic robes--D. D., S. T. D., L. L. D.,
+D. C. L., L. H. D.
+
+The Chancellor knows the masters of our Profit System, those
+"consummate geniuses of manufacture and trade by which the earth
+has yielded up her infinite treasures." And having been at the
+same time in intimate daily communion with the Almighty, he can
+tell us the Almighty's attitude towards these prodigies. "God has
+made the rich of this world to serve Him.... He has shown them a
+way to have this world's goods and to be rich towards God ....
+God wants the rich men ....Christ's doctrines have made the world
+rich, and provide adequate uses for its riches." Also the
+Chancellor knows our great corporations, and gives us the
+Almighty's views about them; they mean that "the forces with
+which God built the universe have been put into the hands of
+man." Likewise by divine authority we learn that "the sympathy
+given to Socialism is appalling. It is insanity." We learn that
+the income tax is "a doctrine suited to the dark ages, only no
+age ever has been dark enough." Somebody raises the issue of
+"tainted money", and the Chancellor disposes of this matter also.
+As a Deputy of Divinity, he settles it by Holy Writ: "Paul
+permitted meat offered to idols to be eaten in the fear of God."
+And then, to make assurance doubly sure, he settles it with plain
+human logic; and you are astonished to see how simple, under his
+handling, the complex problem becomes--how clear and clean-cut is
+the distinction he draws for you:
+
+Every boy knows that one cannot take stolen goods without being a
+partaker with the thief. But the proceeds of recognized business
+are quite a different thing.
+
+
+
+Holy Oil
+
+And here is Billy Sunday, most conspicuous phenomenon of
+Protestant Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth
+century. For the benefit of posterity I explain that "Billy" is a
+baseball player turned Evangelist, who has brought to the cause
+of God the crowds and uproar of the diamond; also the commercial
+spirit of America's most popular institution. He travels like a
+circus, with all the press-agent work and newspaper hurrah; he
+conducts what are called "revivals", in an enormous "tabernacle"
+built especially for him in each city. I cannot better describe
+the Billy Sunday circus than in the words of a certain Sidney C.
+Tapp, who brought suit against the evangelist for $100,000
+damages for the theft of the ideas of a book. Says Mr. Tapp in
+his complaint:
+
+The so-called religious awakening or "trail-hitting" is produced
+by an appeal to the emotions and in stirring up the senses by a
+combination of carrying the United States flag in one hand and
+the Bible in the other, singing, trumpeting, organ playing,
+garrulous and acrobatic feats of defendant, by defendant in his
+talk leaping from the rostrum to the top of the pulpit, lying
+prone on the floor of the rostrum on his stomach in the presence
+of the vast audience and from thence into a pit to shake hands
+with the so-called "trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of
+plaintiff's thoughts contained in said books. Said harangues and
+vulgarisms of said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing
+by said choir and vast audience which are assembled by means of
+said newspaper advertisements for the purpose of inducing a habit
+of free and copious flow of money through religious and patriotic
+excitement produced by and through the vulgarisms, scurrility,
+buffoonery, obscenity and profanity of defendant pretending to be
+in the interest of the cause of religion through what he
+denominates "hitting the trail", the real object being to induce
+a religious frenzy and enthusiasm which he announces in advance
+is to result in large audiences composed of thousands of people
+generously contributing vast sums of money on the last day and
+night of the so-called revival which is invariably appropriated
+by the defendant and through which scheme and device defendant
+has become enormously wealthy.
+
+As I write, the evangelist is in Los Angeles, and twice each day
+he holds forth to a crowd of ten or fifteen thousand; in addition
+the newspapers print literally pages of his utterances. The
+entire Protestant clergy for a score of miles around has been
+hitched to his triumphal chariot, and driven captive through the
+streets. Here in this dignified city of Pasadena, home of
+millionaire brewers and chewing-gum kings, all the churches have
+been plastered for weeks with cloth signs: "This Church is
+Cooperating in the Sunday Campaign." To give a sample of the
+intellectual level of the performance, here is what Billy has to
+say about modern thought:
+
+All this blasphemy against God and Jesus Christ, all this
+sneering, highbrow, rotten, loathesome, higher criticism,
+wriggling its dirty, filthy, stinking carcass out of a beer-mug
+in Leipzig or Heidelberg!
+
+Whether willingly or reluctantly, the preachers sit upon the
+platform and smile while Billy thus slangs the devil; and being
+themselves, poor fellows, at their wits end to draw the crowd,
+they watch and see how he does it, and then return to their own
+churches and try the same stunt; so the manners of the baseball
+diamond spread like a contagion. I open my morning paper, and
+find a picture of an intense-looking clerical gentleman, the Rev.
+J. Whitcomb Brougher, pastor of the Baptist Temple. He is
+discussing certain slanderous rumors which he has heard about
+Billy Sunday, and he offers ten thousand dollars reward to anyone
+who can prove these things; though, as he says,
+
+The dirty, low-down, contemptible, weazen-brained,
+impure-hearted, shrivelled-souled, gossipping devils do not
+deserve to be noticed..... Scandal-mongers, gossip-lovers,
+reputation-destroyers, hypocritical, black-hearted, green-eyed
+slanderers..... Corrupt, devil-possessed, vile debauches.....
+Immoral, sin-loving, vice-practicing, underhanded sneaks.....
+Carrion-loving buzzards and foul-smelling skunks.
+
+You will be prepared after this to hear that when the Socialists
+were near to carrying Los Angeles, this clergyman preached a
+sermon in support of the candidate of "Booze, Gas and Railroads".
+
+In so far as Billy Sunday is trying to keep the neglected youth
+of our streets from drinking, gambling and whoring, no one could
+wish him anything but success; but his besotted ignorance, his
+childish crudity of mind, make it impossible that he could have
+any success except of a delusive nature. He is utterly devoid of
+a social sense; utterly unaware of the existence of the forces of
+capitalism which are causing depravity ten times as fast as all
+the evangelists in creation can remedy it. So he is precisely
+like the Catholics with their "charity", cleaning up loathsome
+and unsightly messes for a thousand years, and never stopping to
+ask why such messes continue to come into existence.
+
+More than that, I question whether the spirit of commercialism
+which he fosters does not help the development of evil more than
+his preaching hinders it. The newspapers always report the cost
+of the tabernacle, of the "free-will offering", which amounts to
+hundreds of thousands of dollars in each "campaign", In each city
+the expenses are guaranteed by men who are generally the most
+sinister exploiting forces of the community; they welcome and
+fete him, and he visits their homes, and is in every way one of
+the crowd. After the big strike in Paterson, N. J., the
+employers, Jews and Catholics included, all subscribed a fund to
+bring Billy Sunday to that city; and it was freely proclaimed
+that the purpose was to undermine the radical union movement.
+This was never denied by Sunday himself, and his whole campaign
+was conducted on that basis.
+
+Later Billy came to New York, where he met a certain rich young
+man, perhaps a thousand times as rich as any that lived in
+Palestine. This young man came to Billy and said: "What shall I
+do to inherit eternal life?" And Billy told him to keep the
+commandments--"Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal,
+Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother." The
+young man answered; "All these have I kept from my youth up." And
+Billy said: "Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast
+and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
+heaven; and come follow me." And when he heard this he was very
+sorrowful, for he was very rich.
+
+--No, I have got the story mixed up. That is what happened in
+Palestine. What happened in New York is that Billy said, "I am
+delighted to meet you, Mr. Rockefeller." And Mr. Rockefeller
+said, "Come be my guest at my palace in the Pocantico Hills; and
+then we will go together and you may preach submission to my
+wage-slaves in the oil-factories at Bayonne and elsewhere." And
+Billy went to the palace, and went and preached to the
+wage-slaves, telling them to beware the "stinking Socialists",
+and to concentrate their attention on the saving of their souls;
+so the rich young man was delighted, and he sent for all the
+newspaper reporters to come to his office at 26 Broadway, and
+told them what a great and useful man Billy Sunday is. As the New
+York "Times" tells about it:
+
+Mr. Rockefeller seldom gives interviews and certainly he has
+never been charged with having an excess of verbally expressed
+enthusiasm on any subject. But he talked for an hour and a half
+about the evangelist. He was full of the subject of Billy Sunday.
+"Billy did New York a lot of good," he said. He went on to tell
+of 187 meetings held in 100 different factories, attended by
+50,000 men. "That's good work." And he expressed his satisfaction
+with Sunday's theology: "He believes the Bible from cover to
+cover and that is good enough for me." The Sunday campaign had
+cost $200,000, and "If it had stopped here, if it was not kept
+up, it would be poor business; a poor dividend on the $200,000
+and the work invested. But we expect to get dividends in the next
+year."
+
+Again you note the symbolism of the counting-house!
+
+
+Rhetorical Black-hanging
+
+It is the duty of the clergy, not merely to defend large-scale
+merchants while they live, but to bury them when they die, and to
+place the seal of sanctity upon their careers. Concerning this
+aspect of Bootstrap-lifting I quote the opinion of an earnest
+hater of shams, William Makepeace Thackeray:
+
+I think the part which pulpits play in the death of kings is the
+most ghastly of all the ceremonial: the lying eulogies, the
+blinking of disagreeable truths, the sickening flatteries, the
+simulated grief, the falsehood and sycophancies--all uttered in
+the name of Heaven in our State churches: these monstrous
+Threnodies which have been sung from time immemorial over kings
+and queens, good, bad, wicked, licentious. The State parson must
+bring out his commonplaces; his apparatus of rhetorical
+black-hanging......
+
+And this, of course, applies not merely to kings of England, but
+to kings of Steel, kings of Coal, kings of Oil, kings of Wall
+Street. When a certain king of Western railroads died, a
+Methodist clergyman, afterwards Bishop, likened his heir to the
+boy Christ; a statement which requires for its appreciation a
+mention of the fact that this heir died of syphilis. In the year
+1904 there passed from his earthly reward in Pennsylvania a
+United States senator who had been throughout his lifetime a
+notorious and unblushing corruptionist. Matthew Stanley Quay was
+his name, and the New York "Nation", having no clerical
+connections, was free to state the facts about him:
+
+He bought the organization, bribed or intimidated the press, got
+his grip on the public service, including even the courts;
+imposed his will on Congress and Cabinet, and upon the last three
+Presidents--making the latter provide for the offal of his
+political machine, which even Pennsylvania could no longer
+stomach--and all without identifying his name with a single
+measure of public good, without making a speech or uttering a
+party watchword, without even pretending to be honest, but solely
+because, like Judas, he carried the bag and could buy whom he
+would.
+
+Such was the lay opinion; and now for the clerical. It was
+expressed by a Presbyterian divine, the Reverend Dr. J. S.
+Ramsey, who stood over the coffin of "Matt", and without cracking
+a smile declared that he had been "a statesman who was always on
+the right side of every moral question!"
+
+In that same year of 1904 died the high priest of our political
+corruption, Mark Hanna. He had belonged to no church, but had
+backed them all, understanding the main thesis of this book as
+clearly as the writer of it. In his home city of Cleveland the
+eulogy upon him was pronounced by Bishop Leonard, in St. Paul's
+Episcopal Church; while in the United States Senate the service
+was performed by the Chaplain, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. This
+is a name well-known in American letters, as in American
+religious life; it was borne by a benevolent old gentleman, a
+Unitarian and a liberal, who organized "Lend-a-Hand Clubs" and
+such like amiabilities. "Do You Love This Old Man?" the signs in
+the street-cars used to ask when I was a boy; and I promptly
+answered "Yes"--for my mother took the "Ladies' Home Journal",
+and I swallowed the sentimental dish-water set out for me. But
+when I read the Rev. Edward's funeral oration over the Irrev.
+Mark, I loved neither of them any longer. "This whole-souled
+child of God," cried the Rev. Edward, "who believed in success,
+and knew how to succeed by using the infinite powers!" You
+perceive that the Chaplain of the Millionaires' Club agrees with
+this book, that the "infinite powers" in America are the powers
+that prey!
+
+
+The Great American Fraud
+
+Among the most loathesome products of our native commercial greed
+is the patent medicine industry, "The Great American Fraud," as
+its historian has called it. In 1907 this historian wrote:
+
+Gullible America will spend this year some seventy-five millions
+of dollars in the purchase of patent medicines. In consideration
+of this sum it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, an
+appalling amount of opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of
+varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart
+depressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, far in excess of
+all other ingredients, undiluted fraud. For fraud, exploited by
+the skillfullest of advertising bunco men, is the basis of the
+trade.
+
+One by one Mr. Adams tells about these medical fakes:
+habit-forming laxatives, head-ache powders full of acetanilid,
+soothing-syrups and catarrh-cures full of opium and cocaine,
+cock-tails subtly disguised as "bitters", "sarsaparillas", and
+"tonics". He shows how the fake testimonials are made up and
+exploited; how the confidential letters, telling the secret
+troubles of men and women, are collected by tens and hundreds of
+thousands and advertised and sold--so that the victim, as he
+begins to lose faith in one fake, finds another at hand, fully
+informed as to his weakness. He quotes the amazing "Red Clause"
+in the contracts which the patent-medicine makers have with
+thousands of daily and weekly papers, whereby the makers are able
+to control the press of the country and prevent legislation
+against the "Great American Fraud."
+
+There are a thousand religious papers in America, weekly and
+monthly; and what is their attitude on this question? Mr. Adams
+tells us:
+
+Whether because church-going people are more trusting, and
+therefore more easily befooled than others, or from some more
+obscure reason, many of the religious papers fairly reek with
+patent medicine fakes.
+
+He gives us many pages of specific instances:
+
+Dr. Smith belongs to the brood of cancer vampires. He is a patron
+and prop of religious journalism. It is his theory that the
+easiest prey is to be found among readers of church papers.
+Moreover he has learned from his father-in-law (who built a small
+church out of blood-money) to capitalize his own sectarian
+associations, and when confronted recently with a formal
+accusation he replied, with an air of injured innocence, that he
+was a regular attendant at church, and could produce an
+endorsement from his minister.
+
+And here is the "Church Advocate", of Harrisburg, Pa., which
+publishes quack advertisements disguised as editorials. One of
+them Mr. Adams paraphrases:
+
+As Dr. Smith is, on the face of his own statements, a
+self-branded swindler and rascal, you run no risk in assuming
+that the Rev. C. H. Forney, D. D., L. L. D., in acting as his
+journalistic supporter for pay, is just such another as himself!
+
+And again:
+
+Will the editor of the "Baptist Watchman" of Boston explain by
+what phenomenon of logic or elasticity of ethics he accepts the
+lucubrations of Dr. Bye, of Oren Oneal, of Liquozone, of Actina,
+that marvelous two-ended mechanical appliance which "cures"
+deafness at one terminus and blindness at the other, and all with
+a little oil of mustard?
+
+And again:
+
+The "Christian Observer" of Louisville replied to a protesting
+subscriber, suggesting that the "Collier" articles were written
+in a spirit of revenge, because "Collier's" could not get patent
+medicine advertising. When I asked the Rev. F. Bartlett Converse
+for his foundation for the charge, he said that one of the
+typewriters must have written the letter! Doubtless also the same
+highly responsible typewriter imitated the signature with
+startling fidelity to Dr. Converse's handwriting!
+
+And here is--would you think it possible?--our "Church of Good
+Society"! It has an organ in Chicago called the "Living Church",
+most dignified and decorous. You have to study quite a while to
+ascertain what denomination it belongs to; it will not tell you
+directly, for the Anglician pose is that it is the church
+
+ Elect from every nation,
+      Yet one oer all the earth,
+  Her charter of salvation,
+      One Lord, one Faith, one Birth;
+  One holy name she blesses,
+      Partakes one holy food,
+  And toward one Hope she presses,
+      With every grace endued.
+
+And this one holy institution was found setting at its peak the
+black flag of the trader, the "Jolly Roger" of the modern
+commercial pirate--"Caveat emptor!" To quote the precise words:
+
+The editors and publishers of the "Living Church" assume no
+responsibility for the assertions of advertisers.
+
+And so it threw open its columns to the claims of America's
+champion labor-baiter, the late C. W. Post, that his "Grapenuts"
+would prevent appendicitis, and obviate the need of operations in
+such cases!
+
+And here is the "Christian Endeavor World", organ of one of the
+most powerful non-sectarian religious bodies in the country. Some
+one wrote complaining of its medical advertising, and the answer
+was:
+
+To the best of our knowledge and belief, we are not publishing
+any fraudulent or unworthy medical advertising ...... Trusting
+that you will be able to understand that we are acting according
+to our best and sincerest judgment, I remain, yours very truly,
+The Golden Rule Company, George W. Coleman, Business Manager.
+
+Whereupon the historian of "The Great American Fraud" remarks:
+
+Assuming that the business management of the "Christian Endeavor
+World" represents normal intelligence, I would like to ask
+whether it accepts the statement that a pair of "magic foot
+drafts" applied to the soles of the feet will cure any and every
+kind of rheumatism in any part of the body? Further, if the
+advertising department is genuinely interested in declining
+"fraudulent and unworthy" copy, I would call their attention to
+the ridiculous claims of Dr. Shoop's medicines, which "cure"
+almost every disease; to two hair removers, one an "Indian
+Secret", the other an "accidental discovery", both either fakes
+or dangerous; to the lying claims of Hall's Catarrh Cure, that it
+is "a positive cure for catarrh", in all its stages; to "Syrup of
+Figs", which is not a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna; to
+Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical
+constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure for
+cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates suffering
+from an incurable malady. All of these, with other matter, which
+for the sake of decency I do not care to detail in these columns,
+appear in recent issues of the "Christian Endeavor World".
+
+
+Riches in Glory
+
+There came recently to Los Angeles a "world-famous evangelist",
+known as "Gipsy" Smith. There was a shirt-waist strike at the
+time, and the girls were starving, and they sent a delegation to
+this evangelist to ask for help. They told him how they were
+mistreated, exposed to insults, driven to sell their virtue
+because their wage would not support life; and to their plea he
+made answer: "Get Jesus in your hearts, and these questions will
+take care of themselves!"
+
+So we see the most important of the many services which the
+churches perform for the merchants--taking the revolutionary hope
+of Jesus, for a kingdom of heaven upon earth, and perverting it
+into a dream of a golden harp in an uncertain future. To
+appreciate the fullness of this betrayal, take the prayer which
+Jesus dictated--so simple, direct and practical: "Give us this
+day our daily bread", and put it beside the hymns which the
+slave-congregations are trained to sing. In my neighborhood is a
+one-roomed building with a plate glass front, upon which I
+observe a painter inscribing in red, white and blue letters the
+sign "Glory Mission". I approach him, and he drops his work and
+welcomes me with eager cordiality. Am I "living in grace"? I
+answer that I am. I have to shout the good tidings into his ear,
+as he is very deaf. He presents me with his card, which shows
+that he bears the title of "Reverend", also the sobriquet of
+"Mountain Missionary". I ask him to permit me to examine the
+hymn-book which he uses in his work, and with touching eagerness
+he presses upon me a well-worn volume bearing the title "Waves of
+Glory". I seat myself and note down a few of the baits it sets
+out for hungry wage-slaves:
+
+ O, there's a plenty, O, there's a plenty,
+  There's a plenty in my Father's bank above!
+
+ Riches in glory, riches in glory,
+  Royal supply our wants exceed!
+
+ Feasting, I'm feasting,
+  I'm feasting with my Lord!
+
+ Beautiful robes, beautiful robes,
+  Beautiful robes we then shall wear!
+
+ Jerusalem the golden,
+  With milk and honey blest!
+
+ Yes, I'll meet you in the city of the New Jerusalem,
+  I'll be there, I'll be there!
+
+ Blest Canaan land, bright Canaan land,
+  I love to be in Canaan land!
+
+ Oh, Beulah land, sweet Beulah land,
+  As on the highest mount I stand,
+  I look away across the sea,
+  Where mansions are prepared for me!
+
+ In the sweet bye and bye
+  We shall meet on that beautiful shore--
+
+I stopped there, being reminded of Joe Hill, poet of the I. W. W.
+who was hanged three or four years ago in Utah, and who used this
+tune in his little red book of revolutionary chants:
+
+ You will eat, bye and bye,
+  In the glorious land above the sky;
+  Work and pray, live on hay,
+  You'll get pie in the sky when you die!
+
+
+Captivating Ideals
+
+In one of the writer's earlier novels, "Prince Hagen", the hero
+is a Nibelung out of Wagner's "Rheingold", who leaves his
+diggings in the bowels of the earth, and comes up to look into
+our superior civilization. The thing that impresses him most is
+what he calls "the immortality idea". The person who got that up
+was a world-genius, he exclaims. "If you can once get a man to
+believing in immortality, there is no more left for you to
+desire; you can take everything he owns--you can skin him alive
+if it pleases you--and he will bear it all with perfect good
+humor."
+
+And is that merely the spiritual deficiency of a Nibelung--or the
+effort of a young author to be smart? Would you like to hear that
+view of the most vital of Christian doctrines set forth in the
+language of scholarship and culture? Would you like to know how
+an ecclesiastical authority, equipped with every tool of modern
+learning, would set about voicing the idea that the function of
+the teaching of Heaven is to chloroform the poor, so that the
+rich may continue to rob them in security?
+
+Here under my hand is a volume in the newest dress of
+scholarship, dated 1912, and written by Professor Georges
+Chatterton-Hill, of the University of Geneva. Its title is "The
+Sociological Value of Christianity", and from cover to cover it
+is a warning to the rich of the danger they run in giving up
+their religion and ceasing to support its priests. It explains
+how "the genius of Christianity has succeeded in making the
+individual suffering, the individual sacrifices, which are
+indispensible for the welfare of the collectivity, appear as
+indispensible for the individual welfare." The learned professor
+makes plain just what he means by "individual suffering,
+individual sacrifices"; he means all the horrors of capitalism;
+and the advantage of Christianity is that it makes you think that
+by submitting to these horrors, you are profiting your own soul.
+"By making individual salvation depend on the acceptance of
+suffering, on the voluntary sacrifice of egotistical interests,
+Christianity adapts the individual to society". And this, as the
+professor explains, is not an easy thing to do, in a world in
+which so many people are thinking for themselves. "The only means
+of causing the rationalized individual to consent to the
+sacrifice...... is to captivate him with a sufficiently powerful
+idea!" And the professor shows how beautifully Jesus can be used
+for this purpose. "Jesus, the so-called humanitarian, never
+ceased to insist on the necessity of suffering, the desirableness
+of suffering--of that suffering which a weak and sickly
+humanitarianism would fain suppress if it could."
+
+You get this, you "blanket-stiff", you "husky", or "wop", or
+whatever you are--you disinherited of the earth, you proletarians
+who have only your labor-power to sell, you weak and sickly ones
+who are condemned to elimination? There has come, let us say, a
+period of "overproduction"; you have raised too much food, and
+therefore you are starving, you have woven too much cloth, and
+therefore you are naked, you have finished the world for your
+masters, and it is time for you to move out of the way. As the
+sociologist from Geneva phrases it, "Your suppression imposes
+itself as an imperious necessity." And the function of the
+Christian religion is to make you enjoy the process, by
+"captivating you with a sufficiently powerful ideal"! The priest
+will fill your nostrils with incense, your eyes with
+candle-lights and images, your ears with sweet music and soothing
+words; and so you will perish without raising a finger! "Here,"
+reflects the professor, "we see how magnificently the teaching of
+Jesus applies to all classes of society!"
+
+Somebody has evidently put up to our Christian sociologist the
+embarrassing fact that so many of those who survive under the
+capitalist system are godless scoundrels. But do you think that
+troubles him? Not for long. Like all religious thinkers, he
+carries with his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical
+wings, wherewith at any moment he may soar into the empyrean, out
+of reach of vulgar materialists, like you and me. "Inequality
+signifies inequality of capacity," he explains; but the standard
+whereby we judge this capacity "cannot be the standard of the
+moral law."
+
+The laws which govern the biological evolution of man are known,
+but those which govern his moral nature cannot be known; the
+moral nature appertains to the Absolute, and hence is not subject
+to the law of inequality!
+
+As an exhibition of metaphysical wing-power, that is almost as
+wonderful as the flight of Cardinal Newman when confronted with
+the fact that his divinely guided church had burned men for
+teaching the Copernican view of the universe; that infallible
+popes had again and again condemned this heresy ex cathedra. Said
+the eloquent cardinal:
+
+Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary,
+and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at
+rest. How can we determine which of these opposite statements is
+the very truth till we know what motion is?
+
+
+Spook Hunting
+
+Do not imagine that it is only in Geneva that Christian
+professors realize this peril from the loss of faith. It is never
+far from the thoughts of any of them--for, of course, no man can
+look at the present system and not wonder how the poor stand it,
+and more especially why they stand it. There have been many
+thinking men who have given up the miracle-business quite
+cheerfully, but have stood appalled at the idea of letting the
+lower classes find out the truth. You note that idea continually
+in the writings of Professor Goldwin Smith, who was a
+free-thinker, but also a bourgeois publicist, with a deep sense
+of responsibility to the money-masters of the world. He was about
+as honest a man as the capitalist system can produce; he was the
+beau ideal of the New York "Evening Post", which indicates his
+point of view. He wrote:
+
+It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensation in a future
+state, for a short measure of happiness here, has materially
+helped to reconcile the less favored members of the community to
+the inequalities of the existing order of things.
+
+When I was a student in Columbia University, I took a course
+called "Practical Ethics", under a professor by the name of
+Hyslop. The course differed from most of the forty that I tried,
+in that it gave evidence that the professor was accustomed to
+read the morning paper. He had learned that American politics
+were rotten; his idea of "Practical Ethics" was to outline in
+elaborate detail a complete scheme of constitutional changes
+which would make it impossible for the "boss" to control the
+government. I think I must have been born with a charm against
+bourgeois thought, for the good professor never fooled me an
+instant; I remember I used to smile at the idea of how quickly
+the "boss" would brush through his constitutional cobwebs. The
+reforms required an elaborate campaign of publicity--and of
+course long before they could be put into practice, the
+politicians would be ready with devices to make them of no
+effect.
+
+Soon after this, my ethical professor resigned and went to
+hunting spooks. I don't want to be unfair to him; I know that he
+is a determined and courageous man, and it seems possible that he
+may really have bagged some spooks. All I wish to point out here
+is the method he uses in seeking to persuade the heedless rich to
+support the spook-hunting industry. The very same argument as we
+got from the University of Geneva and the University of Toronto!
+Says our head spook-hunter:
+
+There has been no belief that exercised so much power upon the
+poor as that in a future life. The politicians, men of the world,
+have known this so well as to postpone the day of political
+judgment by it for many years.
+
+And again:
+
+The Church, having lost all its battles with science, and having
+abandoned a strenuous intellectual defense of its fundamental
+beliefs, has lost its power over the poor and the laboring
+classes..... The spiritual ideal of life has gone out of the
+masses as well as the classes, and nothing is left but a venture
+on a struggle with wealth.
+
+And again, more menacingly yet:
+
+The rich will learn in the dangers of a social revolution that
+the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and immortality.
+
+What is to be done about this? The question answers itself: Step
+up, ladies and gentlemen, and empty your purses into the
+Psychical Research hat! So that we may accumulate statistics as
+to the cost of milk and honey in Jerusalem the Golden!
+
+You read what I had to say about Bootstrap-lifters, and the
+Wholesale Pickpockets' Association making use of their
+incantations. You admired my ability to sling language, but not
+my taste; and you certainly did not think that I would back my
+rhetoric with facts. But what do these quotations mean, unless
+they mean what I have said? Are not these three professors men of
+culture? Are they not as "spiritual" as any men of learning you
+can find in our present-day society?
+
+And now stop for a moment and put yourself in the position of the
+young student of the working-class, who goes to these books and
+discovers that truth is not truth, but only a bait for a snare.
+Who discovers that professors of ethics, practical or
+impractical, are not interested in justice among men, but only in
+collecting funds for their specialty; that in order to get funds,
+they are willing to teach the rich how to paralyze the minds of
+the poor! Do you wonder that such young students conclude that
+bourgeois thinkers do not know what honesty is, but are
+prostitutes, retainers and lackeys, to be kicked out of the
+temple of truth?
+
+
+Running the Rapids
+
+And now, can you form to yourselves a clear concept of what it
+means to society that practically all its moral teaching should
+be in the hands of men who are incapable of clean, straight
+thinking? That all the intellectual prestige of the Church should
+be lent to the support of vagueness, futility, and deliberate
+evasion? Here we are, all of us, caught in the most terrific
+social crisis of history; I search for a metaphor to picture our
+position, and I recall a canoe-trip in the wilds of Ontario,
+hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit in the bow of
+the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead; and there
+comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go over it, and into
+a torrent of foaming white, which seizes you and rushes you along
+with the speed of a race-horse. With every sense alert, You watch
+for the rocks, and when you see one, you dip your paddle on one
+side or the other and with a quick motion draw the canoe clear of
+the danger. If by any chance you fail to do it, over you go, and
+your partner with you, and all your belongings go down-stream,
+and maybe you are sucked into a whirlpool, and not seen for
+several hours afterwards. Precisely like this is the voyage of
+life, for the whole of society and for every individual. The
+paddle which would save us from the rocks is experimental
+science; but in most of our canoes we put a man who has no
+paddle, but a Holy Book; and he casts up his eyes and murmurs
+words in ancient Greek and Hebrew, and now and then, when he sees
+an especially formidable obstruction--a war, or the gonococcus,
+or the I. W. W.--he casts a holy wafer upon the foaming torrent.
+
+And mind you, it isn't as if I could save myself and you could
+save yourself; we are all in the same canoe, and we all go
+overboard together. You, perhaps, have a son who is drafted into
+the trenches in winter-time, and drowned in blood and mud,
+because in Europe the Catholic party supported militarism, and
+kept aristocratic criminals in control of states. Or you find
+yourself involved in a marital tragedy, and in order to free
+yourself from unendurable misery, you are obliged to go to
+law-courts dominated by the tradition of Paul, the Roman
+bureaucrat, who despised women, and regarded marriage as a means
+of gratifying an unclean animal desire. "It is better to marry
+than to burn," he said, with unmatchable brutality; and so of
+course those who think him a voice of God can form no conception
+of the dignity and grace of love, and if you want sound and
+wholesome sex-conventions, you will be as apt to find them among
+the Ashantees or the Kamchadals as among the followers of the
+Apostle to the Gentiles.
+
+You go to a so-called "divorce-court," which is dominated by this
+Christian taboo, and exists for the purpose of barring you from a
+second chance at the gratification of your unclean animal desire.
+You are not permitted to tell your own story, for that would be
+"collusion;" you listen while your intimate friends recite the
+pitiful and shameful details of your domestic misfortune, under
+the cross-questioning of lawyers who have suppressed for the time
+whatever decent instincts they may possess, and follow blindly
+the details of a prescribed procedure, at the cost of all
+sincerity, humanity and truth. The next morning you find that the
+privacy guaranteed you by law has been taken from you by corrupt
+court officials, who have sold copies of the testimony to the
+newspapers, so that all the intimate details of where you slept
+and where your wife slept and what you saw your wife doing have
+been thrown out to journalistic jackals, who scream with glee as
+they rend the carcass of your dead love. And in the end, perhaps,
+you find that you have gone through this horror for nothing--the
+august court with its Roman Catholic judge throws out your
+petition, its suspicions having been excited by the fact that
+when you discovered your domestic tragedy, you sought to behave
+like a civilized person, with pity and self-restraint, instead of
+like a sultan in Turkey, or a basso in an Italian grand opera.
+
+
+Birth Control
+
+I assert that the control of our thinking on ethical questions by
+minds enslaved to tradition and priestcraft is an unmitigated
+curse to the race. The armory of science is full of weapons which
+might be used to slay the monsters of disease and vice--but these
+weapons are not allowed to be employed, sometimes not even to be
+mentioned. Consider the misery which is piling itself up in the
+slams of our great cities---the degenerate, the defective, the
+insane, who are multiplying as never before in history. There
+exists a perfectly harmless and painless method of sterilizing
+the hopelessly unfit, so that they can not reproduce their
+hopeless unfitness; but religion objects to this operation, and
+so the law does not make use of this knowledge. There exists a
+simple, entirely harmless, and practically costless method of
+preventing conception, which would enable us to check the blind
+and futile fecundity of Nature, and to multiply as gods instead
+of as animals. Consider the festering mass of misery in the slums
+of our great cities; consider the millions of terrified,
+poverty-hounded women, bearing one half-nurtured infant after
+another, struggling desperately to feed and care for them, and
+seeing them drop into the grave as fast as they are born-until
+finally the mother, worn out with the Sisyphean labor, gives up
+and follows her misbegotten offspring. Consider how many women,
+in their agony and despair, make use of the methods of the
+primitive savage, to escape from Nature's curse of fecundity. Dr.
+Wm. J. Robinson has estimated that in the United States alone
+there are a million abortions every year; and consider that all
+this hideous mass of suffering--a bloody European war going on
+continually, unheeded by any newspaper correspondent--might be
+avoided by the use of a simple sterilizing formula, which we are
+not permitted to give! The Federation of Catholic Societies have
+placed a law upon the statute-books of the nation, and of all the
+states as well; the whole power of police and courts and jails is
+at the service of religious bigots, and a young girl is sent to
+prison and forcibly fed with a tube through the nose for telling
+poverty-ridden, slum-women how to keep from becoming pregnant!
+
+And go among the sleek, cynical men of the world, the judges and
+district attorneys, the commissioners of correction and doctors
+who perpetrated this infamy under a so-called "reform"
+administration in New York City--and what do you find? The first
+thing you find is that they themselves, one and all, practice
+birth-control with their wives or their mistresses. The second
+thing you find is that the statute-books are crowded with other
+laws which they make no pretense of enforcing; for example, the
+law which forbids the saloons to be open on Sunday--which law
+they take the liberty of understanding to mean that the saloons
+shall not have their front doors open on Sunday. You will find
+that they are not at all afraid of the religious taboos; they are
+afraid of the religious vote--and even more they are afraid of
+the campaign contributions of sweat-shop manufacturers and
+landlords, who cannot see what would become of prosperity if the
+women of the slums were to cease to breed. So once more we
+discover the wolf in sheep's clothing, the trader, making use of
+Tradition-worship; hiding behind the skirts of devout old maiden
+aunts and grandmothers, who repeat the instructions which God
+gave to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the
+earth." As if God were as blind as a Fifth Avenue preacher, and
+could see no difference between the Garden of Eden, full of all
+fruits that grow and all creatures that run and fly and swim, and
+a modern East Side tenement-room, with an oil stove and no
+windows and no water-closet, and the price of cabbage seven cents
+a pound!
+
+
+Sheep
+
+There are more than a hundred thousand Protestant churches in
+America. They own more than a billion dollars' worth of property,
+and in the West and South they dominate the intellectual life of
+the country. I do not wish to be unfair in what I say of them.
+They are far more democratic than the Catholic Church; they fight
+valiantly against the liquor traffic and those forms of graft
+which are obvious, or directly derived from vice. There are among
+their clergy many men who are honestly seeking light, and trying
+to make their institutions a factor for progress. But they are
+caught in the spirit of Lutheran scholasticism, narrow and
+ignorant, dogmatic and jealous; and they cannot help it, because
+they are pledged by their creeds and foundations to
+Tradition-worship; they have to believe certain things because
+their ancestors believed them, they have to act in certain ways,
+because of certain facts which existed in the world three
+thousand years ago, but which now are known only to historians.
+
+You are familiar with the habit of a herd of sheep to follow the
+example of their leader; if this leader leaps over a stick, all
+the rest will leap when they come to that spot, even though the
+stick may have been taken away in the meantime. The scientist
+explains this seeming-foolishness by the fact that sheep once
+lived in high mountains, and fled from their enemies in swiftly
+rushing herds; when the leader leaped across an abyss, the others
+had to leap, without waiting to see in the dust and confusion.
+Now there are no mountains and no enemies, but the sheep still
+jump. And in exactly the same way the tailor still sews buttons
+at the back of your dress-coat, because a couple of hundred years
+ago all gentlemen wore swords; in the same way our railroad
+builders make cars narrow and uncomfortable and liable to
+overturn, because a hundred years ago all cars were hauled by
+mules. In the same way the Orthodox Hebrew will eat no pork, in
+spite of the fact that the microscope affords him complete
+protection against disease; the orthodox Catholic will not eat
+meat on Friday, because he thinks Jesus was crucified on that
+day; the orthodox Anglican will not marry his deceased wife's
+sister, because of something he reads in Leviticus; the orthodox
+Baptist requires total immersion in a climate quite different
+from that of Palestine; the orthodox Methodist refuses to enjoy
+fresh air and exercise on the Sabbath.
+
+In ancient Judea, you see, the people lived an open-air life,
+tending sheep and working the fields; so it was an excellent
+thing for them to rest from labor one day of the week, and to
+gather in temples to hear the reading of the best literature of
+their time. But nowadays the city slave spends his week-days shut
+up in an office, poring over a ledger, or in a sweat-shop,
+chained to a sewing-machine. Obviously, therefore, the thing to
+do on the seventh day is to lure him into the open air, and
+persuade him to run and play. But do we do that, we human sheep?
+We write ancient Hebrew laws upon our modern statute-books, and
+if the city slave goes into a vacant lot and tries to play
+base-ball, we send a policeman and take him to jail, and next
+morning he is fined five dollars, and probably loses his job.
+
+In the city where I live, a city supposed to be free and
+enlightened, but in reality heavily burdened with churches, there
+are tennis courts built and paid for out of public funds, my own
+included; yet I cannot use these tennis courts on Sunday, because
+of the ancient Hebrew taboo. My mail is not delivered to me, the
+swimming pool in the park is closed to me, the library is closed
+nearly all day. If I enquire about it, I am told that it is
+desirable that city employees should have one day's rest a week;
+but when I ask why it might not be possible to relay the
+employees, so that they might all have one, or even two days'
+rest a week, and still give the public their rights on Sunday,
+there is no answer. But I know the answer, having probed our
+politics of hypocrisy. There is a "church vote" at which all
+politicians tremble; there are clergymen, humanly jealous when
+their peculiar graft is threatened, and hoping that if the law
+enforces a general boredom, the public may be more disposed to
+endure the boredom of sermons.
+
+In New York City the theaters are closed on Sunday; but moving
+pictures having come into being since the days of Puritan rule,
+the picture-shows are free to keep open. The law permits "sacred
+concerts"--which, under the benevolent sway of Tammany, has come
+to mean any sort of vaudeville; so what we have is a free rein to
+the imbecilities of "Mutt & Jeff" and the obscenities of Anna
+Held and Gaby Deslys--while we bar the greatest moralists of our
+times, such as Ibsen and Brieux.
+
+I speak with some crossness of this Sabbath taboo, because of an
+experience which once befell me. In the second decade of this
+century of enlightenment and progress, in our free American
+democracy, whose constitution proclaims religious toleration, and
+forbids the establishment by the state of any form of worship, I
+was made to serve a sentence of eighteen hours in the state
+prison of Delaware for playing a game of tennis on the Sabbath. I
+was duly arrested upon a warrant, duly sentenced by a magistrate,
+duly clad in a prison costume, duly set to work upon a
+stone-pile, duly locked up over night in a steel-barred cell full
+of vermin--in a building housing some five hundred wretches,
+black and white, thirty of them serving life-terms under
+circumstances which never permitted them a breath of fresh air
+nor a glimpse of the sunshine or the sky. They had no exercise
+court to their prison, and the inmates were not permitted to
+speak to one another, but ate their meals in dead silence, and
+walked back to their cells with folded arms, and had their only
+occupation working for a sweat-shop contractor; this on the
+outskirts of the capital city of Wilmington, with no less than
+ninety-one churches! The writer was informed that he would return
+to this institution regularly every week unless he abandoned his
+godless habit of playing tennis on a private club court on
+Sunday; he only escaped the painful punishment by making the
+discovery that at the Wilmington Country Club it was the custom
+of the leading officials of the city and state to play golf every
+Sunday, and by threatening to employ detectives and have these
+mighty ones arrested and sent to their own prison. Which shows
+again the importance of understanding the relationship of
+Superstition and Big Business!
+
+
+
+BOOK SIX
+
+The Church of the Quacks
+
+ They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
+  And how one ought never to think of one's self,
+  And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking--
+My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
+      How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
+      How pleasant it is to have money.
+                                 Clough.
+
+
+Tabula Rasa
+
+Nature has given us a virgin continent, a clean slate upon which
+to write what we will. And what are we writing? What is our
+intellectual life? I came to the far West, which I had been
+taught by novelists and poets to think of as a place of freedom.
+I came, because I like freedom; I am staying because I like the
+climate. I find that what freedom means in the West is the
+ability of ignorant and fanatical persons to start some new,
+fantastical quirk of scriptural interpretation, to build a new
+cult around it, and earn a living out of it.
+
+My first contact with that sort of thing was when I went to the
+Battle Creek Sanitarium to investigate hydrotherapy, and found
+myself in a nest of Seventh-day Adventists. Three generations or
+so ago some odd character hit upon the discovery that the
+Christian churches had let the devil snare them into resting on
+the first day of the week, whereas the Bible states distinctly
+that the Lord "rested on the seventh day". So here is a million
+dollar establishment, with a thousand or two patients and
+employees, and on Friday at sundown the silence of death settles
+upon the place, and stays settled until sundown of Saturday, when
+everything comes suddenly to life again, and there is a little
+celebration, like Easter or New Year's, with what I used to call
+"sterilized dancing"--the men pairing with men and the women with
+women.
+
+They are decent and kindly people, and you learn to put up with
+their eccentricities; it is really convenient in some ways,
+because, as not all the city shares their delusions, there are
+some stores open every day of the week. But then you discover
+that the Sanitarium is training "medical missionaries" to send to
+Africa, and is teaching these supposed-to-be-scientists that
+evolution is a doctrine of the devil, and not proven anyhow!
+
+You get the shrewd little doctor who is running this
+establishment alone in his office, and he will smile and admit
+that of course it is not necessary to take all Bible phrases
+literally; but you know how it is--there are different levels of
+intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know how it is. You have an
+institution founded upon a certain dogma, and run by means of
+that dogma, and it is hard to change without smashing things. It
+is especially convenient when servants and nurses have a
+religious upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the
+patients. People will come from all over the country, and pay
+high prices to stay in such a sanitarium; you can make
+vegetarians of them, which you think more important than teaching
+abstract notions about their being descended from monkeys. Also
+you can manufacture vegetarian foods for them, and build up an
+enormous business--so obtaining that Power which is the thing
+desired of men.
+
+This is but one illustration of a sort of thing of which I could
+cite a hundred. The city in which I live is headquarters of
+another sect, the "Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene"; primitive
+Methodists, Bible-worshippers not content with the King James
+version, but going back to the Sinaitic MS. They have a
+"University", located in one of the most beautiful spots that
+Nature ever made; an institution with seventy-five students. A
+couple of years ago I happened to meet the "president," who was a
+preacher with grease on the ample expanse of his black broadcloth
+waistcoat, and a speech full of the commonest grammatical errors,
+such as "you was" and "I seen". The past year witnessed a split,
+and the founding of a brand new church and "University"--because
+one of the preachers insisted upon preaching so much that the
+students got no chance to study; also because he sent home a rich
+man's daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her
+fleshly nature.
+
+And there is an even stranger phenomenon in the locality, taking
+you back to the Libyan desert and the time of Thais. A lady
+friend of mine, generously blessed with this world's goods, asks
+me have I seen the hermit. "Hermit?" I say, and she replies,
+"Didn't you know there was a hermit? He lives on a mountain, in a
+cave, and never has anything to do with the world. He has no
+books; he contemplates spiritually." I picture my friend with her
+large limousine, a rolling palace full of ladies, drawing up at
+the door of this hermit's cave. "He received you?" I ask. "Yes,
+he was quite polite." "And what was your impression of him?" "Oh,
+how he stank!" I answer that this is the odor of sanctity, and my
+friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I have to explain to
+her that I am not jesting, but that there are definite
+physiological phenomena incidental to the ecstatic life.
+
+
+The Book of Mormon
+
+Or let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the headquarters of a
+still stranger cult.
+
+On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the
+Lord delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth
+in a "backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had
+"the appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is
+the habit of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places
+and to make miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of
+life; so, as devout believers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In
+this case the plates were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the
+Angel thoughtfully provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and
+Thummim, two magic stones with which to read the records. They
+proved to deal with a mystery which has haunted the minds of
+Bible students for centuries--the fate of the "lost ten tribes
+of Israel", who were now revealed to have been the ancestors of
+the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a new
+religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general;
+so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N. Y.,
+there was formally launched the "Church of the Latter Day
+Saints." Smith turned over to his followers his translation of
+the miraculous plates, called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously
+genuine, for it read precisely like the books which we already
+know are the revealed word of God. But, on chance that this might
+not be sufficient, we were offered in the preface two documents,
+the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", and the "Further Testimony of
+Eight Witnesses". The latter being the shorter, may be quoted:
+
+Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, unto
+whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the translator
+of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been
+spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the
+leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did handle with our
+hands; and we also saw the engravings there-on, all of which has
+the appearance of ancient work and of curious workmanship. And
+this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith
+has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a
+surety that the said Smith hath got the plates of which we have
+spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness that
+which we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
+
+  Christian Whitmer
+  Jacob Whitmer
+  Peter Whitmer, Jr.
+  John Whitmer
+  Hiram Page
+  Joseph Smith, Sr.
+  Hyrum Smith
+  Saml. H. Smith
+
+The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore
+out the Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine
+origin; it was persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted,
+and its followers proceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving
+populations, just as the divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven
+from place to place, they built at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful
+temple, according to plans revealed in a vision, exactly like
+Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where they have a
+magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers. The
+United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected
+to their practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have
+as many wives as they could support; the government confiscated
+the church's property, and forced it to conceal the practice of
+polygamy, as is done by elderly church members in other parts of
+the country. Recently the head of the church, who bears the title
+of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator", was persuaded to permit an
+examination of one of its secret plates, the "Book of Abraham",
+by egyptologists, who found that it was ordinary Egyptian
+hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but containing prayers to the
+sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to the devout
+followers of Joseph--any more than it has made to devout
+Catholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that
+the Bible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and
+that the four gospels date from the second and third centuries
+after Christ.
+
+
+Holy Rolling
+
+All over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of
+them pathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely
+grotesque. Thus, for example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who
+founded the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed
+himself up in scarlet and purple robes with stars on. Through his
+Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Company he became enormously
+wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I
+remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.
+T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a
+sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old
+prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle
+and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of
+all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting
+up, and suing one another in the law-courts.
+
+Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jumpers", ghastly
+sects which cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread
+like a plague among the women of our lonely prairie farms and
+desert ranches. The "Holy Rollers", who call themselves the
+"Apostolic Church", have a meeting place here in Pasadena, and
+any Sunday evening at nine o'clock you may see the Spirit of the
+Lord taking possession of the worshippers, causing moans and
+shrieks and convulsions; you may see a woman holding her hands
+aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch, making chattering
+sounds like an ape. This is called "talking in tongues" and is a
+sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come back at
+eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation, men
+and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches;
+and maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.
+
+You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself
+into these convulsions. Here is a paper called "Trust", which is
+"published Monthly (D. V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work
+and Bible Training School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The
+Pentecostal Baptism", and tells the story of her experiences. She
+"camped on the Word of God," she declares.
+
+I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the mission
+told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay there all day.
+There is plenty of wood, and you can stay there all night." I
+went down, and there was plenty of "let go" in me. I cried, and
+prayed all I knew, and got wonderfully loosed.....
+
+Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God told me it
+was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He spoiled my
+praying and I took up praising. I praised God that He who worked
+in the Upper Room was working the same in me. I praised, and I
+praised, and I praised. The devil said to me, "That's
+mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord, and if You want real
+praise, You'll have to put the wind in the sails."
+
+That's the way I came through. One morning I was just getting out
+of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call
+it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The
+babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I
+still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does
+not tire you.
+
+And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: published
+monthly, or as often as the Lord leads." The editor quotes the
+Bible, "Call upon the name of the Lord," and explains that "Call
+means call." The word appears to have a special meaning to these
+pentecostal persons--it means working yourself into a frenzy of
+agitation; as the editor puts it, "you must lay hold of the horns
+of the altar." He goes on to exhort--the bold face being his:
+
+Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few minutes
+seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every word, the
+next few, relief in a measure will come, more liberty in calling.
+In a very little while you will be dead to the room, dead to the
+chair, dead to everyone around you, dead to all and tremendously
+alive to your desperate need and emptyness; this conviction will
+grow as you increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it
+maybe you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged,
+it, maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a moment let your
+mind rest on the condition of your person. Open your mouth and
+God has promised to fill it. Ask persistently until the very
+floor seems to sink beneath you and the fountains of the deep, of
+your heart let loose. Like David, "pour out your soul" like one
+would pour water out of a bucket. I have seen hundreds get
+through right at this point. When self-thought, reticence,
+decorum, reserve, propriety and dignity had all been thrown to
+the four winds of heaven. Self was then obliterated and
+consciousness of person gone. Draw near to God and He will draw
+near to you saith the scripture, but you must draw near to Him
+first.
+
+These enthusiasts derive their practices from the Shakers, a sect
+which originated in England, but was driven by persecution to the
+New World. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of
+True Believers in Christ's Second Coming," and were founded by
+Ann Lee, who, variously termed herself the "Female Christ", the
+"Holy Comforter", and the "God-anointed Woman". They might be
+termed the suffragettes of religion, for they pray always to "Our
+Father and Mother, which are in heaven." They were taught the
+convenient doctrine that their Founder had "spiritual
+illumination", so that any evidence of the senses used against
+her might deceive. She governed through terror, holding that by
+her mental powers she could inflict torment upon any of her
+followers. Fortunately she taught absolute celibacy, and so there
+are now only about a thousand of her disciples.
+
+
+Bible Prophecy
+
+This far western country swarms with those fanatics who await the
+return of Christ, and find in Bible chronology positive evidence
+that he is coming on a specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture
+on Socialism that some eager old lady does not come up to me and
+point out how futile are my hopes, because the Millenium will
+come before the Revolution. Several times I have come on an item
+in the newspapers, telling of a group of people, sometimes whole
+villages, selling their goods and going out into the fields to
+shout and sing and pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His
+Angels in the skies. I have in my hand a pamphlet entitled
+"Shekineh: The Glory of God in Israel, Facts Mathematically
+Foretold, of the Soon Coming of Our Blessed Lord." It is
+earnestly, yearningly written, in that spirit of feeble-minded
+affectionateness which the Bible-sects seem to encourage:
+
+Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a wonderful
+story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus is soon
+coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next week perhaps
+our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may not end till the
+close of the A. M. year, which will be March 20th, 1897. But let
+us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh, my Christian friends, live
+near the Blessed Christ, and gain eternal life through Jesus Our
+Lord!
+
+In the public library I find another pamphlet, entitled "The Our
+Race," which proves that the "lost ten tribes of Israel" are not
+the American Indians, but the Irish! And here is a publication of
+the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," declaring:
+
+The great pyramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of the
+ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage under "a
+Draconis" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first ascending
+passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand Gallery symbolizes
+the Gospel Age. Its upper step symbolizes the approaching period
+of tribulation and anarchy, "Judgment" upon Christendom.
+
+It is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California sunshine
+revising this manuscript, when a decorous-looking young man
+approaches, having a sack over his shoulder. "From the
+Bible-students," he says politely, and hands me a little paper,
+"The Bible Students' Monthly: an Independent, Unsectarian
+Religious Newspaper, Specially devoted to the Forwarding of the
+Laymen's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of God and Good
+of Humanity." The leading article is headed "The Fall of Babylon:
+Ancient Babylon a Type--Mystic Babylon the Antitype: Why
+Christendom must Suffer--the Final Outcome." A note explains:
+
+The following article is extracted from Pastor Russell's
+posthumous volume entitled "The Finished Mystery," the 7th in the
+series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published subsequent
+to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction of being the
+most fearless and powerful writer of modern times on
+ecclesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume, which is
+called "his last legacy to the Christians on earth," is found a
+thorough exposition of every verse in the entire book of
+Revelation and also an elucidation of the obscure prophecy of
+Ezekiel. The book contains 608 pages, handsomely bound in
+embossed cloth.
+
+Pastor Russell used to publish a two-column sermon in some
+hundreds of Sunday newspapers, together with a presentment of his
+features--solemn, stiff, white-whiskered, set off with a "choker"
+and a black broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in
+America, but if you have an impulse to despair for your country,
+remember that it produced Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, as well as
+Pastor Russell and the Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one
+passage from "The Finished Mystery", in order that the reader may
+know what it means to "hold the distinction of being the most
+fearless and powerful writer of modern times on ecclesiastical
+subjects." Pastor Russell does not approve of the Methodists, and
+he quotes twelve verses of Revelation, line by line and phrase by
+phrase, showing how the evil course and downfall of the Wesleyan
+system were divinely foretold. Thus:
+
+"But that they should be tormented five months."--In symbolic
+time, 150 years--5 X 30 = 150. (Ezek. 4:6.) Wesley became the
+first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9:1.) When the Methodist
+denomination, with all the others, was cast off from favor in
+1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by preaching what
+Presbyterians describe as "Conscious misery, eternal in duration"
+came to an end legally, and to a large extent actually--Rev.
+9:10.
+
+P. S. A few months pass, and while this book is going to press,
+"The Finished Mystery" is suppressed by the government and
+several score "Bible Students" are landed in jail for sedition.
+
+
+Koreshanity
+
+Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other
+ancient writings with strange nomenclature and ritual and
+symbolism, calculated to impress the unlettered; also our
+prophets have imaginations of their own, and can invent
+nomenclature and ritual and symbolism never seen in heaven nor on
+earth before. Thus there is Dr. Newo Newi New, who called himself
+"Archbishop of the Newthot Church," and gathered about him a
+harem of devoted females in San Francisco, and was landed in jail
+for using the mails to defraud. Or there is "Oahspe, the Cosmic
+Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a brand-new view of
+the universe and all things therein:
+
+The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not only
+his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and significance
+of names and titles commonly applied to the Transcendental
+Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are presided over by
+chiefs, chosen for their superior development in wisdom and love.
+For our solar system to cross one of these provinces requires
+about 3,000 years, and between them are belts of high Etherian
+light which take several years to pass over. The passage of each
+province is a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are
+called Dawns of Dan.
+
+And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to
+Dr. C. R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took
+the name of Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from
+Joseph, the Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center
+of the Son of man", and went out on the streets of the city to
+preach that the earth is a hollow sphere with the stars inside.
+The street urchins of the pork-packing metropolis threw stones at
+him, and the irreverent newspapers took up his adventures, with
+the result that followers gathered, and now there is a
+flourishing colony in Florida, with a dignified magazine called
+"The Flaming Sword", and a collection of propaganda volumes: "The
+Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan Universology and
+the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and Processes
+of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by Lord
+Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing
+of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this
+Chicago revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements
+of the earth which prove that its surface is concave; and second
+upon some philological discoveries very much resembling puns.
+Thus the "cross of Christ" is explained in a sense of the word
+more common among horse-breeders than among theologians:
+
+The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the cross of
+Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the Lord God, in
+order to perpetuate his own being, descends into the race of
+sensuality.
+
+And again, when someone asks about meteors:
+
+"The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up from
+their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors which fall to
+the earth are composed of metallic, mineral, and geological
+substances, being materialized or actually created in the
+atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process from zones or belts
+periodically open, which precipitate their contents in the form
+or shape of meteors."
+
+And perhaps I ought also to quote the "Indicia of Human
+Progress", by "Berthaldine, Matrona". I don't know what a
+"Matrona" is--unless it is a female matron. This female matron
+tells me that now is the "Time of Restitution", and explains that
+"the prolification of the human race has reached a fruition of
+the adultery of the truth and good of the Lord with the fallacies
+and evils of the mortal hells"..... We have come, it seems, to
+the "age of Pisces", which is "one of the greatest radical
+prolification"; and what we now need is the "power of
+polarization", so that we may join the "White Horse Army of the
+Most High", which is the organization of the "Aquarian age",
+proclaimed by Koresh on January 15th, 1891.
+
+
+Mazdaznan
+
+And here is another and even more startling revelation from
+Chicago, given to a seer by the name of Dr. Otoman Prince of
+Adusht Ha'nish, prophet of the Sun God, Prince of Peace, Manthra
+Magi of Temple El Katman, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and
+Envoy of Mazdaznan living, Viceroy-Elect and International Head
+of Master-Thot. If you had happened to live near the town of
+Mendota, Illinois, and had known the German grocer-boy named Otto
+Hanisch, you might at first have trouble in recognizing him
+through this transmogrification. I have traced his career in the
+files of the Chicago newspapers, and find him herding sheep,
+setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism, and fake
+spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then the "Christian
+Catholic Church in Zion", and then the cult of Brighouse, who
+claimed to be Christ returned. Finally he sets himself up in
+Chicago as a Persian Magi, teaching Yogi breathing exercises and
+occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing
+metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in
+India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park
+Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples
+are fed on lilac-blossoms--"the white and pinkish for males, the
+blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale
+grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes,
+and he sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies",
+price five dollars per volume, with information on such subjects
+as:
+
+The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets of
+Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic Attraction
+and Electric Mating.
+
+A Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to jail for six
+months; but that does not harm his cult, which now has a temple
+in Chicago, presided over by a lady called Kalantress and
+Evangelist; also a "Northern Stronghold" in Montreal, an
+"Embassy" in London, an "International Aryana" in Switzerland,
+and "Centers" all over America. At the moment of going to press,
+the prophet himself is in flight, pursued by a warrant charging
+him with improper conduct with a number of young boys in a Los
+Angeles hotel.
+
+I have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are a farrago of
+every kind of ancient mysticism--paper and binding from the
+Bible, illustrations from the Egyptian, names from the
+Zoroastrian, health rules from the Hindoos, laws from the
+Confucians--price ten dollars per volume. Would you like to
+discover your seventeen senses, to develop them according to the
+GaLlama principle, and to share the "expansion of the magnetic
+circles"? Here is the way to do it:
+
+Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one
+exhalation, speak slowly:
+
+Open, O thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth hidden
+by the vase of dazzling light.
+
+Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following
+sentence upon one exhalation as before:
+
+Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I may
+behold Thy True Being.
+
+I have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper telling of the
+prophet's arriving there. He takes the front page with the
+captivating headline: "Women Didn't Think Till They Put On
+Corsets". The interview tells about his mysteriousness, his
+aloofness, his bird-like-diet, and his personal beauty. "Despite
+his seventy-three years, Ha'nish evidences no sign of age. His
+keen blue eyes showed no sign of wavering. There were no wrinkles
+on his face, and his walk was that of a man of forty." The humor
+of this becomes apparent when we mention that at Ha'nish's trial,
+three or four years ago, he was proven to be thirty-five years
+old!
+
+Being thus warned as to the accuracy of American journalism, we
+shall not be taken in by the repeated statements that the
+Mazdaznan prophet is a millionaire. But there is no doubt that he
+is wealthy; and as all Americans wish to be wealthy, I will quote
+his formula of prosperity, his method of accomplishing what might
+be called the Individual Revolution:
+
+When hungry and you do not know where to get your next piece of
+bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has provided you
+with everything that will meet all cases of emergency. Place your
+teeth tightly together, with tongue pressing against the lower
+teeth and lips parted. Breathe in, close lips immediately,
+exhaling through the nostrils. Breathe again; if saliva forms in
+your mouth, hold your breath so you can swallow it first before
+you exhale. You thus take out of the air the metal-substance
+contained therein; you can even taste the iron which you convert
+into substance required for making the blood. Should you feel
+that, although you have sufficient iron in the blood, there is a
+lack of copper and zinc and silver, place upper teeth over lower,
+keep lower lip tightly to lower teeth, now breathe and you can
+even taste the metals named. Then should you feel you need more
+gold element for your brain functions, place your back teeth
+together just as if you were to grind the back teeth, taking
+short breaths only. You will then learn to know that there is
+gold and silver all around us. That our bodies are filled with
+quite a quantity of gold.
+
+
+Black Magic
+
+What all this means is that we have a continent, with a hundred
+million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but
+spiritually starving; so any man who possesses personality, who
+looks in any way strange and impressive, or has hunted up old
+books in a library, and can pronounce mysterious words in a
+thrilling voice--such a man can find followers. Anybody can do it
+with any doctrine, from anywhere, Persia or Patagonia, Pekin or
+Pompei. I would be willing to wager that if I cared to come out
+and announce that I had had a visit from God last night, and to
+devote such literary and emotional power as I possess to
+communicating a new revelation, I could have a temple, a
+university, and a million dollars within five years at the
+outside. And if at the end of five years I were to announce that
+I had played a joke on the world, some one of my followers would
+convince the faithful that I had been an agent of God without
+knowing it, and that the leadership had now been turned over to
+him.
+
+I would not be understood as believing that all our cults are
+undiluted fakery, for that would be doing injustice to some
+earnest people. There are, in this country, many followers of the
+Persian reformer, Abbas Effendi, who call themselves Babists, and
+who have what I am inclined to think is the purest and most
+dignified religion in existence. There was a man named Jacob
+Beilhardt, who founded a cult in Illinois with the painful name
+of "Spirit Fruit Colony", who nevertheless was a man of spiritual
+insight, a true mystic; he was honest, and so he failed, and died
+of a broken heart. Also there are the Christian Scientists and
+the Theosophists, so exasperating that one would like to throw
+them onto the rubbish-heap, who yet compel us to sift over their
+mountains of chaff for the grains of truth which will bear fruit
+in future.
+
+While we western races have been exploring the natural world and
+perfecting the mechanical arts, the Hindoo students have been
+exploring the subconscious and its strange powers. What Myers and
+Lodge and Janet and Charcot and Freud and Jung are telling us
+today they had hints of a long time ago; and doubtless they have
+hints of other things, upon which our scientists have not yet
+come. I have friends, perfectly sane and competent people, who
+tell me that they can see auras, and use this ability as a means
+of judging character. Shall I say that there are no auras, simply
+because I do not happen to have this gift of seeing them? In the
+same way, having read Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living," I am
+not ready to ridicule the claim of the Yogi adepts, that they are
+able to project some kind of astral body, and to communicate with
+one another from distant places. But granting such occult powers
+in a world of economic strife, what follows? Simply new floods of
+charlatanism, elaborate and complicated systems of ritual and
+metaphysic for the deluding and plundering of the credulous.
+
+I have seen the thing working itself out in one case known to me.
+A young man had a gift of mental healing; I know, because I saw
+it work; but it did not always work, and that was annoying. He
+was penniless and had a taste for power, and to eke out his
+erratic endowment he got himself books of Eastern lore, and day
+by day as I watched him I could see him becoming more and more
+impressive, mysterious and forbidding. Today he is a full-fledged
+wonder-worker, with the language of a dozen mystic cults at his
+tongue's end, and the reverent regard of many wealthy ladies. I
+have never tried to break through his guard, but I feel certain
+that he is a deliberate charlatan.
+
+This is an economic process, automatic and irresistible. Just as
+the manufacturer of honest foods is driven out by the
+adulterator, so the worker of miracles drives out the sincere
+investigator. As a result we have here in America a plague of
+Eastern cults, with "swamis" using soft yellow robes and soft
+brown eyes to win the souls of idle society ladies. These
+teachers of ancient Hindoo lore despise us as a race of
+barbarians; but they stay--whether because of love of man or
+woman, I do not pretend to say.
+
+There are the Theosophists of many brands, with schools and
+institutes and temples and colonies, and a doctrine as complex
+and detailed and fantastic as that of the Roman Catholics. I have
+already referred to the writings of Madame Blavatsky, a runaway
+Russian army officer's daughter, whose career reads like a tale
+out of the Arabian Nights. And there is Annie Besant, who was
+once an ardent worker in the Social-democratic Federation; H. M.
+Hyndman tells of his dismay when she went to India and walked in
+a procession between two white bulls! Here in California is
+Madame Tingley, with a colony and a host of followers in a
+miniature paradise. Men work at money-lending or manufacturing
+sporting-goods, and when they get old and tired they make the
+thrilling discovery that they have souls; the theosophists
+cultivate these souls and they leave their money to the
+soul-cause, and there are lawsuits and exposes in the newspapers.
+For, you see, there is ferocious rivalry in the game of
+cultivating millionaire souls; there are slanders and feuds, just
+as in soulless affairs. "Don't have anything to do with Madame
+Tingley," whispers a Theosophist lady to my wife; and when my
+wife in all innocence inquires, "Why not?" the awe-stricken
+answer comes, "She practices black magic!"
+
+Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do
+not believe that she could practice it, even if she wanted to--I
+do not believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how
+theosophists quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and
+the bronze image of the Babylonian fire-god:
+
+ Let them die, but let me live!  Let them be put under a ban, but
+let me prosper!  Let them perish, but let me increase!  Let them
+become weak, but let me wax strong!
+
+
+Mental Malpractice
+
+This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith.
+Why, if there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid
+us, may there not also be a power which hates, and can be
+persuaded to destroy? No religion has ever been able to answer
+this, and therefore none has ever been able to escape from
+devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by Satan, and the Holy
+Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the exorcising of demons,
+and a most frightful formula for cursing. And here are our
+friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the unreality of
+all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing
+themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a
+squalid phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal
+Magnetism".
+
+Christian Science is the most characteristic of American
+religious contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay
+for failing to educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker
+Glover Patterson Eddy is the price we pay for failing to educate
+our farmer's daughters.
+
+That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I
+have a little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her
+"Science" made its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the
+idle rich. If a person has nothing to do but think that he is
+sick, you can work easy miracles by persuading him to think that
+he is well; and if he has nothing to do but think that he is
+well, he will help you to build marble churches and maintain
+propaganda societies. But recently I have experimented with
+mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the subconscious
+mind which controls our physical functions can be powerfully
+influenced by the will.
+
+I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's
+Magazine for April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will
+lay your hands upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture
+of the bodily changes you desire, and concentrating the power of
+your will upon them, you may be surprised by the results,
+especially if you possess anything in the way of psychic gifts.
+You do not have to adopt any theories, you do not have to do it
+in the name of any divinity, ancient or modern; the only bearing
+of such ideas is that they serve to persuade people to make the
+experiment, and to make it with persistence and intensity. So it
+has come about that "miracles" of healing are associated with
+"faith"; and so it comes about that scientists are apt to flout
+the subject. But read of the work of Janet and Charcot and their
+followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven that all kinds of
+seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical in nature,
+and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
+Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact
+that cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the
+grotto of Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus
+performed all the miracles of healing attributed to him
+--including the raising up of people pronounced to be dead by the
+ignorance of that time. I am convinced that in the new science of
+psycho-analysis we have a universe as vast as the universe of the
+atom or of the stars.
+
+The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have
+mixed it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or
+five hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows
+how many million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my
+hard-earned dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself
+be stunned and blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It
+is unadulterated moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and
+Hegelian and other orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can
+prove to you in one minute. What interests me about the
+phenomenon is not the slinging of tremendous words, but the
+strictly Yankee use which is made of them. There is no nonsense
+about saving your soul in Christian Science; what it is for is to
+remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney, and to enable
+you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the growth
+of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
+and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
+development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.
+
+It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do
+not issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the
+Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the
+work is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory
+editions, and the price is from three to seven-fifty, according
+to binding. Treatments cost from three dollars to ten, whether
+you come and get them or take them over the telephone. And we
+have no nonsense about charity, we don't worry about the poor who
+fester in our city slums; because poverty is a product of Mortal
+Mind, and we offer to all men a way to get rich right off the
+bat. You may come to our marble churches and hear people testify
+how through the power of Divine Mind they were enabled to
+anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail
+yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also
+the punishment.
+
+As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy
+is a Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled
+by an absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five
+men, who alone dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter
+from a Christian Science healer who was listed as an "authorized
+practitioner", and who withdrew from the Church because of its
+attitude on public questions. He sends me a copy of his
+correspondence with the editors of the "Christian Science
+Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the position of that
+paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He writes:
+
+I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church is
+consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have heard of
+the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is that he is one
+of the richest men in the movement.
+
+After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a
+carefully drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide
+life-boats and trained crews. The "Christian Science Monitor"
+opposed this bill; and when my correspondent cited the fact, he
+brought out a quaint bit of metaphysical logic, as follows:
+
+One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single boat,
+rather than on some other vessels which were loaded down with
+life-boats, where the government of Mind was not understood!
+
+
+Science and Wealth
+
+The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion
+from the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible
+"Mother" Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business
+have said this science was of great advantage from a secular
+point of view." And in her advertisements she threw aside all
+pretense, declaring that her work "Affords an opportunity to
+acquire a profession by which one can accumulate a fortune." When
+her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of their success; nor did
+she neglect her own accumulating.
+
+It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order
+to be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I
+proceed to a street corner in my home city, where is a stand with
+a sign: "Christian Science Literature." I take four sample
+copies of a magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published
+by the Mother Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of
+Healing". In the issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of
+St. Margarets-on-Thames, England, testifies: "Through a number of
+circumstances unnecessary to relate, but proving conclusively
+that the result came not from man but from God, employment was
+found." In the issue of December 2, 1916, Frances Tuttle of
+Jersey City, N. J., testifies how her sister was successfully
+treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner. "Every
+condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D. Miller
+of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful truth
+came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a
+responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire
+satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than
+a year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of
+Agricola, Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of
+snake-bite and removed two painful corns from her own foot. In
+the issue of August 4, 1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash.,
+testifies how it suddenly occurred to her that because God is
+All, she would drop her planning and outlining in regard to real
+estate properties, "upon which for nine months all available
+material methods were tried to no effect." The result was a
+triumph of "Principle".
+
+While working in the yard one morning and gratefully communing
+with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I should stop
+working and prepare for visitors on their way to look at the
+property. I obeyed this very distinct command, and in about an
+hour I greeted two people who had searched almost the entire city
+for just what we had to offer. They had been directed to our
+place by what to material sense would seem an accident, but we
+know it was the divine law of harmony in its universal operation.
+
+After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian
+Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:
+
+My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian
+Science is the only system which has intelligently related
+religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all
+ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business belongs to
+Him.
+
+As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing,
+They blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with
+tragic consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the
+pill-doctors know nothing about this power, and regard it with
+contempt mingled with fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers
+whom the pill-doctors cannot help flock to the healers of the
+"Church of Christ, Scientist". According to the custom of those
+who are healed by "faith", they swallow line, hook, and sinker,
+creed, ritual, metaphysic and divinity. So we see in
+twentieth-century America precisely what we saw in B. C.
+twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers, giving their
+worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of
+fanatics and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise
+of graft, and harvesting that thing desired of all men, power
+over the lives and destinies of others.
+
+And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one
+another's Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl
+over the spoils like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the
+Mother, denouncing one of her students--a perfectly amiable and
+harmless youth whose only offense was that he had gone his own
+way and was healing the sick for the benefit of his own
+pocket-book:
+
+Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out the
+sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy virtue, put
+out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent, befouling thy track
+with the trophies of thy guilt--I say, Behold the "cloud" no
+bigger than a man's hand already rising on the horizon of Truth,
+to pour down upon thy guilty head the hailstones of doom.
+
+And again:
+
+The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method with
+the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and will fall
+upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him through. Let him
+remember this when, in the dark recesses of thought, he is
+robbing, committing adultery and killing. When he is attempting
+to turn friend away from friend, ruthlessly stabbing the
+quivering heart; when he is clipping the thread of life and
+giving to the grave youth and its rainbow hues; when he is
+turning back the reviving sufferer to his bed of pain, clouding
+his first morning after years of night; and the Nemesis of that
+hour shall point to the tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon
+the sword of justice.
+
+
+New Nonsense
+
+In a certain city of America is a large building given up
+entirely to the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors
+but "Promenades", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you
+stroll, you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London,
+furs from Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South
+Africa and beads from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and
+cherries from Japan, fortune-tellers from Arabia and
+dancing-masters from Petrograd and "naturopaths" from Vienna.
+There are seventy-three shops, by actual count, containing
+everything that could be imagined or desired by a pretty lady,
+whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion she
+calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a
+"Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel
+tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker
+chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we
+probe the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout
+America, called "New Thought."
+
+We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth;
+Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter;
+Adept; Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift;
+Now. And then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the
+eye and the purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes
+containing the lore and magic of a score of races and two score
+of centuries--together with the very newest manifestations of
+Yankee hustle and graft.
+
+As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a
+fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate.
+It is a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite,
+and that we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it.
+It is a fact that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles
+of mental and moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of
+nervous energy and of the blood, thus furthering the processes of
+bodily healing. But the fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent
+does not bar the fact that He has certain ways of working, which
+He does not vary; and that it is our business to explore and
+understand these ways, instead of setting our fancies to work
+imagining other ways more agreeable to our sentimentality.
+
+Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we
+shall plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and
+distribute it. Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it
+appears to be His decree that we shall store the wheat in
+elevators, and ship it in freight cars, and buy it through a
+grain exchange, with capital borrowed from a national bank; in
+other words, that our daily bread shall be the plaything of
+exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have the
+intelligence to form an effective political party and establish
+Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God
+in the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about
+the Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate
+these agencies of starvation? You do not!
+
+What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady
+practitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and
+pronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital
+Letters and LARGE TYPE: "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, GOD
+WILL PROVIDE. Bread is coming to you! Bread is coming to you!!
+BREAD IS COMING TO YOU!!!"
+
+You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have
+never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the
+gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the
+highest high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady
+named Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess
+Elizabeth tells you:
+
+I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the
+right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.
+
+I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of
+testimonials and advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity.
+"Are you in the success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next
+tells you "How to enter the silence. How to manifest what you
+desire. The secret of advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure
+at Sixty Won Sudden Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a
+Lesson for Old and Young Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to
+pay $3.00 for a book called "Power of Will." And here is another
+book:
+
+Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success, can
+throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the Treasure
+House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake who are Wise
+enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh the Evidence, firm
+enough to Follow their Own Judgment and Strong enough to Make the
+Sacrifice Exacted.
+
+
+"Dollars Want Me"
+
+I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called
+"All Sufficiency in All Things," published by the "Unity School
+of Christianity", in Kansas City; it explains that God is God,
+not merely of the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.
+
+This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands ready
+to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or wish, just
+as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same yesterday, today and
+forever. Abundant Supply by the manifestation of the Father
+within us, from within outward, is as much a legitimate outcome
+of the Christ life or spiritual understanding as is bodily
+healing..... "Know that I am God--all of God, Good, all of Good.
+I am Life. I am Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance."
+
+And here is W. W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called
+"Mind Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr.
+Atkinson will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the
+secret of the Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense,
+Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will tell you what to say, he will
+write out for you Incantations which you may pronounce to
+yourself, to convince yourself that you have Power, that the
+INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its MIGHT is yours. Mr. Atkinson
+rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow
+Bootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you
+notice that his magazine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline
+the advertisements of such too-practical practitioners.
+
+Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles,
+who tells in one pamphlet "How to Be a Genius", and in another
+pamphlet "How to Get What you Want". The thing for you to do is--
+
+Saturate your mentality through and through with the knowledge
+that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO..... Look upon the
+peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department store, and
+make it grow; you can.
+
+And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:
+
+Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling: I CAN
+succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible to me. I AM
+success. I do succeed, for I am full of the Power of Success.
+
+Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of
+the capitalist system--a "soda-jerker", a "counter-jumper", a
+book-keeper for the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life
+are one in ten thousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical
+Library, and pays the price of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry
+Harrison Brown, who was first a Unitarian clergyman, and then an
+extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San Francisco, an Honorary
+Vice-President of the International New Nonsense Alliance. Mr.
+Brown will tell our soda-jerker or counter-jumper exactly how to
+elevate himself by mental machinery. All calculations of
+probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have faith, you
+can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's, Macy's, or
+the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself " is the title of one
+of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--
+
+Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your faith. A
+doubt cuts the connection.
+
+A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth
+edition, bears the thrilling title of "Dollars Want Me!" In it
+Mr. Brown lays claim to being a pioneer:
+
+I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance of
+the thought that each individual has the ability so to radiate
+his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to feel him, love
+him, seek him, and thus draw at will all things needed for his
+unfoldment from the universal supply.
+
+"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers:
+
+Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as you
+are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They have no
+power till you give them power. Make them feel this through your
+thought-vibrations as you feel the importance of your work. They
+will then come to you to be used.
+
+"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:
+
+Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the
+Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and, in the
+One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait for the
+manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.
+
+And our author goes on to hand out packages of these
+thought-seeds--"Affirmations" as they are called, in the jargon
+of the New Conjuring:
+
+ I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.  I desire
+that the flow of prosperity become equalized.  I desire a greater
+consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.  The Indwelling
+Power cares for my purse.  I own whatever I desire.  I can afford
+to use dollars for my happiness.  I always have a good bank
+account. I actually see it.  My one idea of the law is to use,
+use, USE.
+
+
+Spiritual Financiering
+
+If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and
+that of the non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of
+the International New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the
+"ticker". "What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks
+William Morris Nichols in the publication of the " 'Now' Folk",
+San Francisco:
+
+Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the Universe
+good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you sure of its
+being honored?
+
+If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are on
+the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.
+
+Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of Spirit? If
+not, then you should at once open one therewith. For no one can
+afford to keep less than a large deposit of spiritual funds with
+that Bank.
+
+And how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:
+
+Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire. Seek
+for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the way for
+your Spiritual Substance, which governs material supply, to reach
+you and make you as rich as you ought to be, in freedom and
+happiness. All this you can, and when in earnest, will do.
+
+I turn over the advertisements of this publication of the " 'Now'
+Folk". One offers "The Business Side of New Thought." Another
+offers "The Books Without an If", with your money back IF you are
+not satisfied! Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an
+acre. Another quotes Shakespeare: " 'Tis the mind that makes the
+body rich." Another offers two copies of the "Phrenological Era"
+for ten cents.
+
+There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot
+find dupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice
+commands:
+
+Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled "Strands of
+Gold" or "From Darkness into Light!"
+
+Another announces:
+
+The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of
+Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's Remembrance,
+the Akashic Records.
+
+And here is an advertisement published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:
+
+Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you appear
+to be to others? What you really are? What you want to be? What
+would overcome your present and future difficulties? Write to X,
+Philosopher. You will receive full particulars of his personal
+work which is dedicated to your service. No problem is too big or
+too small for Numerology. Understanding awaits you.
+
+And looking in the body of the magazine, you find this
+Philosopher imparting some of this Understanding. Would you like,
+for example, to understand why America entered the War? Nothing
+easier. The vowels of the Words United States of America are
+uieaeoaeia, which are numbered 2951561591, which added make 45,
+or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not at first see what that has to
+do with the War--until the Philosopher points out that "9 in the
+number of completion, indicating the end of a cosmic cycle."
+That, of course, explains everything.
+
+And here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead
+science, Astrology. It is called "Lucky Hours for Everybody: A
+True System of Planetary Hours by Prof. John B. Early. Price One
+Dollar." It teaches you things like this:
+
+Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters
+relating to gold-mining..... The Sun negative rules the emerald,
+the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours
+are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to hire
+servants of both sexes.....
+
+A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several vain
+attempts to transact important business in the hours ruled by
+Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she was nearly
+always fortunate in what she began in the hours ruled by Saturn.
+Upon investigation I found her name was ruled by the Sun
+negative, and that she had Capricorn with Saturn therein as her
+ascendant at birth, which explains.
+
+And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported in the
+"Weekly Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over
+two-horse power oil engines which fail to act. "Going a little
+apart, he came back in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all
+right now and will work satisfactorily.' and without any further
+difficulty it did." We are told how Dr. Rawson gave a
+demonstration of his method to a newspaper reporter the other
+day. Fixing his gaze as though looking into space, he apparently
+became absorbed in deep contemplation and said aloud: "There is
+no danger; man is surrounded by divine love; there is no matter;
+all is spirit and manifestation of spirit."
+
+You might at first find difficulty in believing what can be
+accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this; not merely are
+two-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic
+machine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may
+recall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons
+was taken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here
+is a New-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds
+of our Nonsense magazines:
+
+London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have been
+discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with "charmed
+lives" are being made every day, according to Frederick L.
+Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has found the
+miraculous way by which they are developed. He calls it "audible
+treatment". "Practical utilization of the powers of God by right
+thinking," is the agency through which Dr. Rawson declares he can
+so treat a man that he will not be harmed when hundreds of men
+are being shot dead beside him. This amazing treatment includes a
+new type of prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men
+audibly, and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war
+began has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of
+the statements of Dr. Rawson.......
+
+At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
+Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across. Then
+Capt. --------, who practices this method of prayer, treated them
+for an hour before they started, and not a man was knocked out.
+He was the only officer left out of eighty in his brigade. He
+simply held onto the fact that man is spiritual and perfect and
+could not be touched. A bullet fired from a revolver only five
+yards away hit him over the chest, tore his shirt and went out at
+the shoulder. But it never penetrated his chest. He was
+frequently in a hail of shells and bullets which did not touch
+him.
+
+
+The Graft of Grace
+
+All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a
+world of commercial competition. It happens not merely to
+Christian Science and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and
+Zionist, Holy Roller and Mormon religions, but to Catholic and
+Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist and Baptist religions.
+For you see, when you are with the wolves you must howl with
+them; when you are competing with fakirs you must fake. The
+ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New Thought fakers
+with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
+publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the
+Church of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant
+Episcopal communion, pretending to call rain and to banish
+pestilence, to protect crops and win wars and heal those who are
+"sick in estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?
+
+The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but
+that is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces
+which operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and
+priests and healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame
+still more the competitive wage-system, which presents them with
+the alternative to swindle or to starve.
+
+For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got
+along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in
+Palestine and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith
+has been possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who
+expects to influence the minds of men has to have books and
+newspapers; he will find a telephone and a typewriter and
+postage-stamps hardly to be dispensed with, also in Europe and
+America some sort of a roof over his meeting place. So the
+prophet is caught, like all the rest of us, in the net of the
+speculator and the landlord. He has to get money, and in order to
+get it he has to impress those who already have it--people whose
+minds and souls have been deformed by the system of parasitism
+and exploitation.
+
+So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes
+a martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of
+charlatans. I care not how sincere, how passionately proletarian
+a religious prophet may be, that is the fate which sooner or
+later befalls him in a competitive society--to be the founder of
+an organization of fools, conducted by knaves, for the benefit of
+wolves. That fate befell Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius
+Loyola and Francis of Assisi, John Fox and John Calvin and John
+Wesley.
+
+A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes
+to me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people,
+mostly women, with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the
+survival of personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does
+not alter the fact that they have a rare and special
+sensitiveness, a new faculty which science must investigate. They
+come, poor people mostly--for the well-to-do will seldom give
+their time to exacting and wearisome experiments. They come,
+wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering with cold, obviously
+undernourished; and their survival depends upon their producing
+"phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will not come at
+call. So, what more natural than that mediums should resort to
+faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud, and
+science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary
+power of the subconscious mind?
+
+Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling
+us about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at
+the city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of
+curiosity, my wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her
+mouth my wife recognized her as the person who has been trying
+for several months to get me on the telephone to tell me how the
+spirit of Jack London is seeking to communicate with me! The
+seance was a public one, a gathering composed, half of wealthy
+and cultured society-women, and half of confederates, people with
+the dialect and manners of a vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was
+set in the middle of the floor, the room was made dark, a couple
+of hymns were sung, and then the spirit of Dr. Oliver Wendell
+Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery accent, and gave
+communications from relatives and friends of the various
+confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit of
+Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of
+a child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr.
+Holmes; and one of the society ladies started, and answered, and
+presently burst into tears. A marvelous piece of
+evidence--especially when you recall that the story of this
+mother's bereavement had been published in all the papers a
+couple of months before!
+
+And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city
+of America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily
+Dale, in New York State, where the spiritualists hold their
+combination of Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is
+going on in the field of mental healing, and of all other
+"occult" forces and powers, whether real or imaginary. It is
+going on with new spiritual fervors, new moral idealisms, new
+poetry, new music, new painting, new sculpture. The faker, the
+charlatan is everywhere--using the mental and moral and artistic
+forces of life as a means of delivering himself from economic
+servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being exploited,
+and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing
+through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many
+men I know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift
+from one new quackery to another, wasting their income seeking
+health and happiness in futile emotionalism! How many kind and
+sensitive spirits I know--both men and women--who pour their
+treasures of faith and admiration into the laps of hierophants
+who began by fooling all mankind and ended by fooling themselves!
+
+In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the
+Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely
+sincere, self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if
+anyone can persuade them to read it--with pain and anger;
+thinking that I am mocking at their faith, and have no
+appreciation of their devotion. All that I can say is that I am
+trying to show them how they are being trapped, how their fine
+and generous qualities are being used by exploiters of one sort
+or another; and how this must continue, world without end, until
+there is order in the material affairs of the race, until justice
+has been established as the law of man's dealing with his
+fellows.
+
+
+
+BOOK SEVEN
+
+The Church of the Social Revolution
+
+ They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--
+   Infidel hordes that believe not in man;
+  Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,
+      But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.
+  They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,
+      They have buried him deep under steel and stone--
+But we come leading the great Crusade
+      To give our Comrade back to his own.
+                            Waddell.
+
+
+Christ and Caesar
+
+In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus,
+we are told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and
+showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and
+the devil said unto him: "All this power will I give unto thee,
+and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me, and to
+whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship
+me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we know, answered and said
+"Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really meant it; he would
+have nothing to do with worldly glory, with "temporal power;" he
+chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and died the death
+of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three centuries his
+church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his proletarian
+gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common, except
+women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted
+catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.
+
+But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one
+defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces
+which battle for him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again,
+to get Jesus' church. He came when, through the power of the new
+revolutionary idea, the Church had won a position of tremendous
+power in the decaying Roman Empire; and the subtle worm assumed
+the guise of no less a person than the Emperor himself,
+suggesting that he should become a convert to the new faith, so
+that the Church and he might work together for the greater glory
+of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious for
+their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off
+laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from
+Jesus three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest
+religion. How complete and swift was his success you may judge
+from the fact that fifty years later we find the Emperor
+Valentinian compelled to pass an edict limiting the donations of
+emotional females to the church in Rome!
+
+From that time on Christianity has been what I have shown in this
+book, the chief of the enemies of social progress. From the days
+of Constantine to the days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and
+Caesar have been one, and the Church has been the shield and
+armor of predatory economic might. With only one qualification to
+be noted: that the Church has never been able to suppress
+entirely the memory of her proletarian Founder. She has done her
+best, of course; we have seen how her scholars twist his words
+out of their sense, and the Catholic Church even goes so far as
+to keep to the use of a dead language, so that her victims may
+not hear the words of Jesus in a form they can understand.
+
+ 'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung
+  Only by priests, and in the Latin tongue!
+
+But in spite of this, the history of the Church has been one
+incessant struggle with upstarts and rebels who have filled
+themselves with the spirit of the Magnificat and the Sermon on
+the Mount, and of that bitterly class-conscious proletarian,
+James, the brother of Jesus.
+
+And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has
+given life to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on
+the hearts of men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and
+fervor which has been poured into it by generation after
+generation of poor men who live like Jesus as outcasts, and die
+like Jesus as criminals, and are revered like Jesus as founders
+and saints. The greatest of the early Church fathers were
+bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their own time. St.
+Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of office,
+exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by the
+Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor
+Theodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was
+exiled and finally martyred. In the same way, most of the
+heretics whom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were
+proletarian rebels; the saints whom the Church reveres, the
+founders of the orders which gave it life for century after
+century, were men who sought to return to the example of the
+carpenter's son. Let us hear a Christian scholar on this point,
+Prof. Rauschenbusch:
+
+The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the
+Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic and
+communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest doctrinal
+reformer before the reformation; but his eyes, too, were first
+opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman Church by joining in
+a great national and patriotic movement against the alien
+domination and extortion of the Church. The Bohemian revolt made
+famous by the name of John Huss, was quite as much political and
+social as religious. Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a
+religious prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo
+de Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting
+absolution. Of the man he demanded a living faith in God's mercy.
+Of the millionaire he demanded restitution of his ill-gotten
+wealth. Of the political usurper he demanded the restoration of
+the liberties of the people of Florence. It is significant that
+the dying sinner found it easy to assent to the first, hard to
+assent to the second, and impossible to concede the last.
+
+
+Locusts and Wild Honey
+
+This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long
+before Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious
+character of the Jews--that stubborn independence, that
+stiff-necked insistence on the right of a man to interview God
+for himself and to find out what God wants him to do; also the
+inclination to find that God wants him to oppose earthly rulers
+and their plundering of the poor. What is it that gives to the
+Bible the vitality it has today? Its literary style? To say that
+is to display the ignorance of the cultured; for elevation of
+style is a by-product of passionate conviction; it is what the
+Jewish writers had to say, and not the way they said it, that has
+given them their hold upon mankind. Was it their insistence upon
+conscience, their fear of God as the beginning of wisdom? But
+that same element appears in the Babylonian psalms, which are as
+eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, yet are read
+only by scholars. Was it their sense of the awful presence of
+divinity, of the soul immortal in its keeping? The Egyptians had
+that far more than the Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their
+religious books. Or was it the love of man for all things living,
+the lesson of charity upon which the Catholics lay such stress?
+The gentle Buddha had that, and had it long before Christ; also
+his priests had metaphysical subtlety, greater than that of John
+the Apostle or Thomas Aquinas.
+
+No, there is one thing and one only which distinguishes the
+Hebrew sacred writings from all others, and that is their
+insistent note of proletarian revolt, their furious denunciations
+of exploiters, and of luxury and wantonness, the vices of the
+rich. Of that note the Assyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian
+writing contain not a trace, and the Egyptian hardly enough to
+mention. The Hindoos had a trace of it; but the true,
+natural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They were
+rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they are today in
+Petrograd and New York; the spirit of equality and brotherhood
+which spoke through Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah, through John the
+Baptist and Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through
+Marx and Lassalle and Jaures, and speaks today through Liebknecht
+and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and
+Morris Hillquit and Abraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph
+Fels endowment.
+
+The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was
+20%; the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the
+Egyptians only stepped in to prevent more than 100%. But listen
+to this Hebrew law:
+
+If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee, then
+thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or a
+sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no interest of
+him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy brother may live with
+thee. Thou shalt not give him any money upon usury, nor lend him
+thy victuals for increase.
+
+And so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond servants, and
+commanding that at the end of fifty years All debtors shall have
+their debts forgiven and their lands returned to them. And note
+that this is not the raving of agitators, the demand of a
+minority party; it is the law of the Hebrew land.
+
+There has been of late a great deal of new discovery concerning
+the early Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes the results as follows:
+
+The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon
+peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional
+sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of widows,
+orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no economic
+independence should eat and be satisfied; that loans should be
+given cheerfully, not only without any interest, but even at the
+risk of losing the principal. To withhold a loan because the year
+of release is at hand in which the principal is no longer
+recoverable, is described as a grave sin. When you are compelled
+to free your slaves, you must give them sufficient capital to
+embark upon some industry which shall prevent their falling back
+into slavery. A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must
+be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God cares
+for these people who have been driven to poverty, and they shall
+never cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall be no poor with
+you, for the Lord will bless you, if you will obey these laws.
+
+But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with
+the capitalist ideas of the heathen empires. The Jews fell from
+the stern justice of their fathers; and so came the prophets,
+wild-eyed men of the people, clad in camel's hair and living upon
+locusts and wild honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and
+capitalists with their furious denunciations. And always they
+incited to class war and social disturbance. I quote Conrad Noel
+again:
+
+Nathan and Gad bad been David's political advisers, Abijah had
+stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab, Elisha had
+fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders against the misrule
+of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces the landlords and the
+usurers, Micah charges them with blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and
+the latter prophets, though they strike a more intimate note of
+personal repentance, strike it as the prelude to that national
+restoration for which they hunger as exiles.
+
+The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old Testament
+point of view. Just as the prophets of the nineteenth century
+thundered against the "Christian" employers of Lancashire, and
+told them their houses were cemented with the blood of little
+children, so Isaiah cries against his generation: "Your governing
+classes companion with thieves; behold you build up Sion with
+blood." Their ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an
+abomination to God. "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide
+mine eyes from you. Your hands are full of blood." The poor man
+is robbed. The rich exact usury. "Woe unto you that lay house to
+house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the midst of
+the land." "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your
+doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well,
+seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
+for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.
+Though your sins be blood-colored, they shall be as white as
+snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If
+ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.
+But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword."
+
+
+Mother Earth
+
+And nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist agitators,
+following the same tradition, possessed by the same dream as the
+ancient Hebrew prophets. I have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be
+that the reader is not familiar with her writings, and does not
+realize how very Biblical she is, both in point of view and
+style. Let me quote a few sentences from a recent issue of her
+paper, "Mother Earth", on the subject of our ruling classes and
+their social responsibility:
+
+Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to do to you!
+Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are falling from
+your backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted that the ink on
+them should turn to acid and eat holes in your pockets and your
+skins. You have piled up your dirty millions, but what wages have
+you paid to the poor devils of farm hands you have robbed? And do
+you imagine they won't remember it when the revolution comes? You
+loll on soft couches and amuse yourselves with your mistresses;
+you think you are "it" and the world is yours. You send
+militiamen and shoot down our organizers, and we are helpless.
+But wait, comrades, our time is coming.
+
+Doubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author of this
+tirade is now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of
+good taste. They always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is
+the way to know a prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another
+prophet who is now behind bars--Alexander Berkman, in his "Prison
+Memoirs of an Anarchist", discussing the same subject of
+plutocratic pretension:
+
+Tell me, you four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave it to
+you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go all the
+way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in your title? I tell
+you that the beginning and the root of your wealth is necessarily
+in injustice. And why? Because Nature did not make this man rich
+and that man poor from the start. Nature does not intend for one
+man to have capital and another to be a wage-slave. Nature made
+the earth to be cultivated by all. The idea we Anarchists have of
+the rich is of highwaymen, standing in the street and robbing
+every one that passes.
+
+Or take "Big Bill" Haywood, chief of the I. W. W. Hear what he
+has to say in a pamphlet addressed to the harvest-hands he is
+seeking to organize:
+
+How much farther do you plutes expect to go with your grabbing?
+Do you want to be the only people left on earth? Why else do you
+drive out the workers from all share in Nature, and claim
+everything for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and
+poor alike; where do you get your title deeds to it? Nature gave
+everything for all men to use alike; it is only your robbery
+which makes your so-called "ownership". Capital has no rights.
+The land belongs to Nature, and we are all Nature's sons.
+
+Or take Eugene V. Debs, three times candidate of the Socialist
+Party for President. I quote from one of his pamphlets:
+
+The propertied classes are like people who go into a public
+theatre and refuse to let anyone else come in, treating as
+private property what is meant for social use. If each man would
+take only what he needs, and leave the balance to those who have
+nothing, there would be no rich and no poor. The rich man is a
+thief.
+
+I might go on citing such quotations for many pages; but I know
+that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and Bill Haywood and Gene
+Debs may read this book, and I don't want them to close it in the
+middle and throw it at me. Therefore let me hasten to explain my
+poor joke; the sentiments I have been quoting are not those of
+our modern agitators, but of another group of ancient ones. The
+first is not from Emma Goldman, nor did I find it in "Mother
+Earth". I found it in the Epistle of James, believed by orthodox
+authorities to have been James, the brother of Jesus. It is
+exactly what he wrote--save that I have put it into modern
+phrases, and changed the swing of the sentences, in order that
+those familiar with the Bible might read it without suspicion.
+The second passage is not in the writings of Alexander Berkman,
+but in those of St. John Chrysostom, most famous of the early
+fathers, who lived 374-407. The third is not from the pen of "Big
+Bill" but from that of St. Ambrose, a father of the Latin Church,
+340-397, and the fourth is not by Comrade Debs, but by St. Basil
+of the Greek Church, 329-379. And if the reader objects to my
+having fooled him for a minute or two, what will he say to the
+Christian Church, which has been fooling him for sixteen hundred
+years?
+
+
+The Soap Box
+
+This book will be denounced from one end of Christendom to the
+other as the work of a blasphemous infidel. Yet it stands in the
+direct line of the Christian tradition: written by a man who was
+brought up in the Church, and loved it with all his heart and
+soul, and was driven out by the formalists and hypocrites in high
+places; a man who thinks of Jesus more frequently and with more
+devotion than he thinks of any other man that lives or has ever
+lived on earth; and who has but one purpose in all that he says
+and does, to bring into reality the dream that Jesus dreamed of
+peace on earth and good will toward men.
+
+I will go farther yet and say that not merely is this book
+written for the cause of Jesus, but it is written in the manner
+of Jesus. We read his bitter railings at the Pharisees, and miss
+the point entirely, because the word Pharisee has become to us a
+word of reproach. But this is due solely to Jesus; in his time
+the word was a holy word, it meant the most orthodox and
+respectable, the ultra high-church devotees of Jerusalem. The way
+to get the spirit of the tirades of Jesus is to do with him what
+we did with the early church fathers--translate him into
+American. This time, since the reader shares the secret, it will
+not be necessary to disguise the Bible style, and we may follow
+the text exactly. Let me try the twenty-third chapter of Matthew,
+omitting seven verses which refer to subtleties of Hebrew
+casuistry, for which we should have to go to Lyman Abbott or St.
+Alphonsus to find a parallel:
+
+Then Jesus mounted upon a soap-box, and began a speech, saying,
+The doctors of divinity and Episcopalians fill the Fifth Avenue
+churches; and it would be all right if you were to listen to what
+they preach, and do that; but don't follow their actions, for
+they never practice what they preach. They load the backs of the
+working-classes with crushing burdens, but they themselves never
+move a finger to carry a burden, and everything they do is for
+show. They wear frock-coats and silk hats on Sundays, and they
+sit at the speakers' table at the banquets of the Civic
+Federation, and they occupy the best pews in the churches, and
+their doings are reported in all the papers; they are called
+leading citizens and pillars of the church. But don't you be
+called leading citizens, for the only useful man is the man who
+produces. (Applause). And whoever exalts himself shall be abased,
+and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.
+
+Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and Catholics, hypocrites! for
+you shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men; you don't go in
+yourself and you don't let others go in. Woe unto you, doctors of
+divinity and Presbyterians, hypocrites! for you foreclose
+mortgages on widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long
+prayers. For this you will receive the greater damnation! Woe
+unto you, doctors of divinity and Methodists, hypocrites! for you
+send missionaries to Africa to make one convert, and when you
+have made him, he is twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
+(Applause). Woe unto you, blind guides, with your subtleties of
+doctrine, your transubstantiation and consubstantiation and all
+the rest of it; you fools and blind! Woe unto you, doctors of
+divinity and Episcopalians, hypocrites! for you drop your checks
+into the collection-plate and you pay no heed to the really
+important things in the Bible, which are justice and mercy and
+faith in goodness. You blind guides, who strain at a gnat and
+swallow a camel! (Laughter). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity
+and Anglicans, hypocrites! for you bathe yourselves and dress in
+immaculate clothing but within you are full of extortion and
+excess. You blind high churchmen, clean first your hearts, so
+that the clothes you wear may represent you. Woe unto you,
+doctors of divinity and Baptists, hypocrites! for you are like
+marble tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside
+are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you
+appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and
+iniquity. (Applause). Woe unto you, doctors of divinity and
+Unitarians, hypocrites! because you erect statues to dead
+reformers, and put wreathes upon the tombs of old-time martyrs.
+You say, if we had been alive in those days, we would not have
+helped to kill those good men. That ought to show you how to
+treat us at present. (Laughter). But you are the children of
+those who killed the good men; so go ahead and kill us too! You
+serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the
+damnation of hell?
+
+At this point, according to the report published in the Jerusalem
+"Times", a police sergeant stepped up to the orator and notified
+him that he was under arrest; he submitted quietly, but one of
+his followers attempted to use a knife, and was severely clubbed.
+Jesus was taken to the station-house followed by a riotous
+throng, and held upon a charge of disorderly conduct. Next
+morning the Rev. Dr. Caiaphas of Old Trinity appeared against
+him, and Magistrate Pilate sentenced him to six months on
+Blackwell's Island, remarking that from this time on he proposed
+to make an example of those soap-box orators who persist in using
+threatening and abusive language. Just as the prisoner was being
+led away, a detective appeared with a requisition from the
+Governor, ordering that Jesus be taken to San Francisco, where he
+is under indictment for murder in the first degree, it being
+charged that his teachings helped to incite the Preparedness Day
+explosion.
+
+
+The Church Machine
+
+The Catholics of His time came to Jesus and said, "Master, we
+would have a sign of Thee"--meaning that they wanted him to do
+some magic, to prove to their vulgar minds that his power came
+from God. He answered by calling them an evil and adulterous
+generation--which is exactly what I have said about the Papal
+machine. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and other
+book-worshippers of his time accused him of violating the sacred
+commands so definitely set down in their ancient texts, and to
+them he answered that the Sabbath was made for man and not man
+for the Sabbath; he called them hypocrites, and quoted Karl Marx
+at them--"This people honoreth me with their lips, but their
+heart is far from me." Because he despised the company of the
+respectables, and went among the humble and human folk of his own
+class in the places where they gathered--the public houses--the
+churchly scandal-mongers called him "a man gluttonous and a
+wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"--precisely as in
+the old days they used to sneer at the Socialists for having
+their meetings in the back-rooms of saloons, and precisely as
+they still denounce us as free-lovers and atheists.
+
+But the longing for justice between man and man, which is the
+Kingdom of Heaven on earth, is the deepest instinct of the human
+heart, and the voice of the carpenter cannot be confined within
+the thickest church-walls, nor drowned by all the pealing organs
+in Christendom. Even in these days, when the power of Mammon is
+more widespread, more concentrated and more systematized than
+ever before in history--even in these days of Morgan and
+Rockefeller, there are Christian clergymen who dare to preach as
+Jesus preached. One by one they are cast out of the
+Church--Father McGlynn, George D. Herron, Alexander Irvine, J.
+Stitt Wilson, Austin Adams, Algernon Crapsey, Bouck White; but
+their voices are not silenced they are like the leaven, to which
+Jesus compared the kingdom of God--a woman took it and hid it in
+three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. The young
+theological students read, and some of them understand; I know
+three brothers in one family who have just gone into the Church,
+and are preaching straight social revolution--and the scribes and
+the pharisees have not yet dared to cast them out.
+
+In this book I have portrayed the Christian Church as the servant
+and henchman of Big Business, a part of the system of Mammon.
+Every church is necessarily a money machine, holding and
+administering property. And it is not alone the Catholic Church
+which is in politics, seeking favors from the state--the
+exemption of church property from taxation, exemption of
+ministers from military service, free transportation for them and
+their families on the railroads, the control of charity and
+education, laws to deprive people of amusements on Sunday--so on
+through a long list. As the churches have to be built with money,
+you find that in them the rich possess the control and demand the
+deference, while the poor are humble, and in their secret hearts
+jealous and bitter; in other words, the class struggle is in the
+churches, as everywhere else in the world, and the social
+revolution is coming in the churches, just as it is coming in
+industry.
+
+It is a fact of deep significance that the majority of ministers
+are proletarians, eking out their existence upon a miserable
+salary, and beholden in all their comings and goings to the
+wealthy holders of privilege. Even in the Roman Catholic Church
+that is true. The ordinary priest is a man of the working class,
+and knows what working people suffer and feel. So in the Catholic
+Church there are proletarian rebellions; there is many a priest
+who does not carry out the political orders of his superiors, but
+goes to the polls and votes for his class instead of for his
+pope. In Ireland, as I write, the young priests are defying their
+bishops and joining the Sinn Fein, a non-religious movement for
+an Irish Republic.
+
+What is it that keeps the average workingman in subjection to the
+exploiter? Simply terror, the terror of losing his job. And if
+you could get into the inmost soul of Christian ministers, you
+would find that precisely the same force is keeping many of them
+slaves to Tradition. They are educated men, and thousands of them
+must resent the dilemma which compels them to be either fools or
+hypocrites. They have caught enough of the spirit of their time
+not to enjoy having to pose as miracle-mongers, rain-makers and
+witch-doctors; they would like to say frankly that they do not
+believe that Jonah ever swallowed the whale, and even that they
+are dubious about Hercules and Achilles and other demigods. But
+they are part of a machine, and the old men and the rich men who
+run the machine have laid down the law. Those who find themselves
+tempted to think, remember suddenly that they have wives and
+children; they have only one profession, they have been unfitted
+for any other by a life-time of study of dead things, as well as
+by the practice of altruism.
+
+But now the Social Revolution is coming; coming upon swift
+wings--it may be here before this book sees the light. And who
+knows but then we may see in America that wonderful sight which
+we saw in Russia, when Christian monks assembled and burned their
+holy books, and petitioned the state to take them in as citizens
+and human beings? It is my belief that when the power of
+exploitation is broken, we shall see the Dead Hand crumble into
+dust, as a mummy crumbles when it is exposed to the air. All
+those men who stay in the Church and pretend to believe nonsense,
+because it affords an easy way to earn a living, will suddenly
+realize that it is possible to earn a living outside; that any
+man can go into a factory, clean and well-ventilated and humanly
+run, and by four hours work can earn the purchasing power of ten
+or fifteen dollars. Do you not think that there may be some who
+will choose freedom and self-respect on those terms?
+
+And what of those thousands and tens of thousands who join the
+church because it is a part of the regime of respectability, a
+way to make the acquaintance of the rich, to curry favor and
+obtain promotion, to get customers if you are a tradesman, to
+extend your practice if you are a professional man? And what
+about the millions who go to church because they are poor, and
+because life is a desperate struggle, and this is one way to keep
+the favor of the boss, to get a little better chance for the
+children, to get charity if you fall into need; in short, to
+acquire influence with the well-to-do and powerful, who stand
+together, and like to see the poor humble and reverent, contented
+in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call them?
+
+
+The Church Redeemed
+
+Do I mean that I expect to see the Church--all churches--perish
+and pass away? I do not, for I believe that the Church answers
+one of the fundamental needs of man. The Social Revolution will
+abolish poverty and parasitism, it will make temptations fewer,
+and the soul's path through life much easier; but it will not
+remove the necessity of struggle for individual virtue, it will
+only clear the way for the discovery of newer and higher types of
+virtue. Men will gather more than ever in beautiful places to
+voice their love of life and of one another; but the places in
+which they gather will be places swept clean of superstition and
+tyranny. As the Reformation compelled the Catholic Church to
+cleanse itself and abolish the grossest of its abuses, so the
+Social Revolution will compel it to repudiate its defense of
+parasitism and exploitation. I will record the prophecy that by
+the year 1950 all Catholic authorities will be denying that the
+Church ever opposed Socialism--true Socialism; just as today they
+deny that the Church ever tortured Galileo, ever burned men for
+teaching that the earth moves around the sun, ever sold the right
+to commit crime, ever gave away the New World to Spain and
+Portugal, ever buried newly-born infants in the cellars of
+nunneries.
+
+The Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian,
+Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their
+formalists and traditionalists. If there is any church that
+refuses so to adapt itself, the swift progress of enlightenment
+and freedom will leave it without followers. But in the great
+religions, which have a soul of goodness and sincerity, we may be
+sure that reformers will arise, prophets and saints who, as of
+old, will preach the living word of God. In many churches today
+we can see the beginning of that new Counter-Reformation. Even in
+the Catholic Church there is a "modernist" rebellion; read the
+books of the "Sillon", and Fogazzaro's trilogy of novels, "The
+Saint", and you will see a genuine and vital protest against the
+economic corruption of the Church. In America, the "Knights of
+Slavery" have been forced by public pressure to support a "War
+for Democracy", and even to compete with the Y. M. C. A. in the
+training camps. They are doing good work, I am told.
+
+This gradual conquest of the old religiosity by the spirit of
+modern common sense is shown most interestingly in the Salvation
+Army. William Booth was a man with a great heart, who took his
+life into his hands and went out with a bass-drum to save the
+lost souls of the slums. He was stoned and jailed, but he
+persisted, and brought his captives to Jesus--
+
+  Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath,
+  Unwashed legions with the ways of death.
+
+Incidentally the "General" learned to know his slum population.
+He had not wanted to engage in charity and material activities;
+he feared hypocrisy and corruption. But in his writings he lets
+us see how utterly impossible it is for a man of real heart to do
+anything for the souls of the slum-dwellers without at the same
+time helping their diseased and hunger-racked bodies. So the
+Salvation army was forced into useful work--old clothes depots,
+nights lodgings, Christmas dinners, farm colonies--until today
+the bare list of the various kinds of enterprises it carries on
+fills three printed pages. It is all done with the money of the
+rich, and is tainted by subservience to authority, but no one can
+deny that it is better than "Gibson's Preservative", and the
+fox-hunting parsons filling themselves with port.
+
+And in Protestant Churches the advance has been even greater.
+Here and there you will find a real rebel, hanging onto his job
+and preaching the proletarian Jesus; while even the great Fifth
+Avenue churches are making attempts at "missions" and
+"settlements" in the slums. The more vital churches are gradually
+turning themselves into societies for the practical betterment of
+their members. Their clergy are running boys clubs and
+sewing-schools for girls, food conservation lectures for mothers,
+social study clubs for men. You get prayer-meetings and
+psalm-singing along with this; but here is the fact that hangs
+always before the clergyman's face--that with prayer-meetings and
+psalm-singing alone he has a hard time, while with clubs and
+educational societies and social reforms he thrives.
+
+And now the War has broken upon the world, and caught the
+churches, like everything else, in its mighty current; the clergy
+and the congregations are confronted by pressing national needs,
+they are forced to take notice of a thousand new problems, to
+engage in a thousand practical activities. No one can see the end
+of this--any more than he can see the end of the vast upheaval in
+politics and industry. But we who are trained in revolutionary
+thought can see the main outlines of the future. We see that in
+these new church activities the clergy are inspired by things
+read, not in ancient Hebrew texts, but in the daily newspapers.
+They are responding to the actual, instant needs of their boys in
+the trenches and the camps; and this is bound to have an effect
+upon their psychology. Just as we can say that an English girl
+who leaves the narrow circle of her old life, and goes into a
+munition factory and joins a union and takes part in its debates,
+will never after be a docile home-slave; so we can say that the
+clergyman who helps in Y. M. C. A. work in France, or in Red
+Cross organization in America, will be less the bigot and
+formalist forever after. He will have learned, in spite of
+himself, to adjust means to ends; he will have learned
+co-operation and social solidarity by the method which modern
+educators most favor--by doing. Also he will have absorbed a mass
+of ideas in news despatches from over the world. He is forced to
+read these despatches carefully, because the fate of his own boys
+is involved; and we Socialists will see to it that the despatches
+are well filled with propaganda!
+
+
+The Desire of Nations
+
+So the churches, like all the rest of the world, are caught in
+the great revolutionary current, and swept on towards a goal
+which they do not forsee, and from which they would shrink in
+dismay: the Church of the future, the Church redeemed by the
+spirit of Brotherhood, the Church which we Socialists will join.
+They call us materialists, and say that we think about nothing
+but the belly--and that is true, in a way; because we are the
+representatives of a starving class, which thinks about its belly
+precisely as does any individual who is ravening with hunger. But
+give us what that arrant materialist, James, the brother of
+Jesus, calls "those things which are needful to the body," and
+then we will use our minds, and even discover that we have souls;
+whereas at present we are led to despise the very word
+"spiritual", which has become the stock-in-trade of parasites and
+poseurs.
+
+We have children, whom we love, and whose future is precious to
+us. We would be glad to have them trained in ways of decency and
+self-control, of dignity and grace. It would make us happy if
+there were in the world institutions conducted by men and women
+of consecrated life who would specialize in teaching a true
+morality to the young. But it must be a morality of freedom, not
+of slavery; a morality founded upon reason, not upon
+superstition. The men who teach it must be men who know what
+truth is, and the passionate loyalty which the search for truth
+inspiries. They cannot be the pitiful shufflers and compromisers
+we see in the churches today, the Jowetts who say they used to
+believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Rather than
+trust our children to such shameless cynics, we will make shift
+to train them ourselves--we amateurs, not knowing much about
+children, and absorbed in the desperate struggle against
+organized wrong.
+
+It is a statement which many revolutionists would resent, yet it
+is a fact nevertheless, that we need a new religion, need it just
+as badly as any of the rest of our pitifully groping race. That
+we need it is proven by the rivalries and quarrels in our
+midst--the schisms which waste the greater part of our
+activities, and which are often the result of personal jealousies
+and petty vanities. To lift men above such weakness, to make them
+really brothers in a great muse--that is the work of "personal
+religion" in the true and vital sense of the words.
+
+We pioneers and propagandists may not live to see the birth of
+the new Church of Humanity; but our children will see it, and the
+dream of it is in our hearts; our poets have sung of it with
+fervor and conviction. Read these lines from "The Desire of
+Nations," by Edwin Markham, in which he tells of the new Redeemer
+who is at hand:
+
+ And when he comes into the world gone wrong,
+  He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
+  To every heart he will its own dream be:
+  One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
+  Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
+  "Baldur the Beautiful has come again!"
+  The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead:
+  "Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!"
+  The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice:
+  "Osiris comes: Oh tribes of Time, rejoice!"
+  And social architects who build the State,
+  Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,
+  Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.
+  And glad quick cries will go from man to man:
+  "Lo, He has come, our Christ the artisan,
+  The King who loved the lilies, He has come!"
+
+
+The Knowable
+
+The new religion will base itself upon the facts of life, as
+demonstrated by experience and reason; for to the modern thinker
+the basis of all interest is truth, and the wonders of the
+microscope and the telescope, of the new psychology and the new
+sociology are more wonderful than all the magic recorded in
+ancient Mythologies. And even if this were not so, the business
+of the thinker is to follow the facts. The history of all
+philosophy might be summed up in this simile: The infant opens
+his eyes and sees the moon, and stretches out his hands and cries
+for it, but those in charge do not give it to him, and so after a
+while the infant tires of crying, and turns to his mother's
+breast and takes a drink of milk.
+
+Man demands to know the origin of life; it is intolerable for him
+to be here, and not know how, or whence, or why. He demands the
+knowledge immediately and finally, and invents innumerable
+systems and creeds. He makes himself believe them, with fire and
+torture makes other men believe them; until finally, in the
+confusion of a million theories, it occurs to him to investigate
+his instruments, and he makes the discovery that his tools are
+inadequate, and all their products worthless. His mind is finite,
+while the thing he seeks is infinite; his knowledge is relative,
+while the First Cause is absolute.
+
+This realization we owe to Immanuel Kant, the father of modern
+philosophy. In his famous "antinomies", he proved four
+propositions: first, that the universe is limitless in time and
+space; second, that matter is composed of simple, indivisible
+elements; third, that free will is impossible; and fourth, that
+there must be an absolute or first cause. And having proven these
+things, he turned round and proved their opposites, with
+arguments exactly as unanswerable. Any one who follows these
+demonstrations and understands them, takes all his metaphysical
+learning and lays it on the shelf with his astrology and magic.
+
+It is a fact, which every one who wishes to think must get clear,
+that when you are dealing with absolutes and ultimates, you can
+prove whatever you want to prove. Metaphysics is like the fourth
+dimension; you fly into it and come back upside down, hindside
+foremost, inside out; and when you get tired of this condition,
+you take another flight, and come back the way you were before.
+So metaphysical thinking serves the purpose of Catholic cheats
+like Cardinal Newman and Professor Chatterton-Hill; it serves
+hysterical women like "Mother" Eddy; it serves the
+New-thoughters, who wish to fill their bellies with wind; it
+serves the charlatans and mystagogs who wish to befuddle the wits
+of the populace. Real thinkers avoid it as they would a
+bottomless swamp; they avoid, not merely the idealism of
+Platonists and Hegelians, but the monism of Haeckel, and the
+materialism of Buechner and Jacques Loeb. The simple fact is that
+it is as impossible to prove the priority of origin and the
+ultimate nature of matter as it is of mind; so that the scientist
+who lays down a materialist dogma is exactly as credulous as a
+Christian.
+
+How then are we to proceed? Shall we erect the mystery into an
+Unknowable, like Spencer, and call ourselves Agnostics with a
+capital letter, like Huxley? Shall we follow Frederic Harrison,
+making an inadequate divinity out of our impotence? I have read
+the books of the "Positivists", and attended their imitation
+church in London, but I did not get any satisfaction from them.
+In the midst of their dogmatic pronouncements I found myself
+remembering how the egg falls apart and reveals a chicken, how
+the worm suddenly discovers itself a butterfly. The spirit of man
+is a breaker of barriers, and it seems a futile occupation to set
+limits upon the future. Our business is not to say what men will
+know ten thousand years from now, but to content ourselves with
+the simple statement of what men know now. What we know is a
+procession of phenomena called an environment; our life being an
+act of adjustment to its changes, and our faith being the
+conviction that this adjustment is possible and worth while.
+
+In the beginning the guide is instinct, and the act of trust is
+automatic. But with the dawn of reason the thinker has to justify
+his faith; to convince himself that life is sincere, that there
+is worth-whileness in being, or in seeking to be; that there is
+order in creation, laws which can be discovered, processes which
+can be applied. Just as the babe trusts life when it gropes for
+its mother's breast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts
+it when he declares that water is made of two parts hydrogen and
+one part oxygen, and sets it down for a certainty that this will
+always be so--that he is not being played with by some sportive
+demon, who will today cause H2O to behave like water, and
+tomorrow like benzine.
+
+
+Nature's Insurgent Son
+
+Life has laws, which it is possible to ascertain; and with each
+bit of knowledge acquired, the environment is changed, the life
+becomes a new thing. Consider, for example, what a different
+place the world became to the man who discovered that the force
+which laid the forest in ashes could be tamed and made to warm a
+cave and make wild grains nutritious! In other words, man can
+create life, he can make the world and himself into that which
+his reason decides it ought to be. The means by which he does
+this is the most magical of all the tools he has invented since
+his arboreal ancestor made the first club; the tool of
+experimental science--and when one considers that this weapon has
+been understood and deliberately employed for but two or three
+centuries, he realizes that we are indeed only at the beginning
+of human evolution.
+
+To take command of life, to replace instincts by reasoned and
+deliberate acts, to make the world a conscious and ordered
+product--that is the task of man. Sir Ray Lankester has set this
+forth with beautiful precision in his book, "The Kingdom of Man".
+We are, at this time, in an uncomfortable and dangerous
+transition stage, as a child playing with explosives. This child
+has found out how to alter his environment in many startling
+ways, but he does not yet know why he wishes to alter it, nor to
+what purpose. He finds that certain things are uncomfortable, and
+these he proceeds immediately to change. Discovering that grain
+fermented dispels boredom, he creates a race of drunkards;
+discovering that foods can be produced in profusion, and prepared
+in alluring combinations, he makes himself so many diseases that
+it takes an encyclopedia to tell about them. Discovering that
+captives taken in war can be made to work, he makes a procession
+of empires, which are eaten through with luxury and corruption,
+and fall into ruins again.
+
+This is Nature's way; she produces without limit, groping
+blindly, experimenting ceaselessly, eliminating ruthlessly. It
+takes a million eggs to produce one salmon; it has taken a
+million million men to produce one idea--algebra, or the bow and
+arrow, or democracy. Nature's present impulse appears as a
+rebellion against her own methods; man, her creature, will
+emancipate himself from her law, will save himself from her
+blindness and her ruthlessness. He is "Nature's insurgent son";
+but, being the child of his mother, goes at the task in her old
+blundering way. Some men are scheduled to elimination because of
+defective eyesight; they are furnished with glasses, and the
+breeding of defective eyes begins. The sickly or imbecile child
+would perish at once in the course of Nature; it is saved in the
+name of charity, and a new line of degenerates is started.
+
+What shall we do? Return to the method of the Spartans, exposing
+our sickly infants? We do not have to do anything so wasteful,
+because we can replace the killing of the unfit by a scientific
+breeding which will prevent the unfit from getting a chance at
+life. We can replace instinct by self-discipline. We can
+substitute for the regime of "Nature red in tooth and claw with
+ravin" the regime of man the creator, knowing what he wishes to
+be and how to set about to be it. Whether this can happen,
+whether the thing which we call civilization is to be the great
+triumph of the ages, or whether the human race is to go back into
+the melting pot, is a question being determined by an infinitude
+of contests between enlightenment and ignorance: precisely such a
+contest as occurs now, when you, the reader, encounter a man who
+has thought his way out to the light, and comes to urge you to
+perform the act of self-emancipation, to take up the marvellous
+new tools of science, and to make yourself, by means of exact
+knowledge, the creator of your own life and in part of the life
+of the race.
+
+
+The New Morality
+
+Life is a process of expansion, of the unfoldment of new powers;
+driven by that inner impulse which the philosophers of Pragmatism
+call the elan vital. Whenever this impulse has its way, there is
+an emotion of joy; whenever it is balked, there is one of
+distress. So pleasure and pain are the guides of life, and the
+final goal is a condition of free and constantly accelerating
+growth, in which joy is enduring.
+
+That man will ever reach such a state is more than we can say. It
+is a perfectly conceivable thing that tomorrow a comet may fall
+upon the earth and wipe out all man's labor's. But on the other
+hand, it is a conceivable thing that man may some day learn to
+control the movements of comets, and even of starry systems. It
+seems certain that if he is given time, he will make himself
+master of the forces of his immediate environment--
+
+  The untamed giants of nature shall bow down--
+  The tides, the tempest and the lightning cease
+  From mockery and destruction, and be turned
+  Unto the making of the soul of man.
+
+It is a conceivable thing that man may learn to create his food
+from the elements without the slow processes of agriculture; it
+is conceivable that he may master the bacteria which at present
+prey upon his body, and so put an end to death. It is certain
+that he will ascertain the laws of heredity, and create human
+qualities as he has created the spurs of the fighting-cock and
+the legs of the greyhound. He will find out what genius is, and
+the laws of its being, and the tests whereby it may be
+recognized. In the new science of psycho-analysis he has already
+begun the work of bringing an infinity of subconsciousness into
+the light of day; it may be that in the evidence of telepathy
+which the psychic researchers are accumulating, he is beginning
+to grope his way into a universal consciousness, which may come
+to include the joys and griefs of the inhabitants of Mars, and of
+the dark stars which the spectroscope and the telescope are
+disclosing.
+
+All these are fascinating possibilities. What stands in the way
+of their realization? Ignorance and superstition, fear and
+submission, the old habits of rapine and hatred which man has
+brought with him from his animal past. These make him a slave, a
+victim of himself and of others; to root them out of the garden
+of the soul is the task of the modern thinker.
+
+The new morality is thus a morality of freedom. It teaches that
+man is the master, or shall become so; that there is no law, save
+the law of his own being, no check upon his will save that which
+he himself imposes.
+
+The new morality is a morality of joy. It teaches that true
+pleasure is the end of being, and the test of all righteousness.
+
+The new morality is a morality of reason. It teaches that there
+is no authority above reason; no possibility of such authority,
+because if such were to appear, reason would have to judge it,
+and accept or reject it.
+
+The new morality is a morality of development. It teaches that
+there can no more be an immutable law of conduct, than there can
+be an immutable position for the steering-wheel of an aeroplane.
+The business of the pilot of an aeroplane is to keep his machine
+aloft amid shifting currents of wind. The business of a moralist
+is to adjust life to a constantly changing environment. An action
+which was suicide yesterday becomes heroism today, and futility
+or hypocrisy tomorrow.
+
+This new morality, like all things in a world of strife, is
+fighting for existence, using its own weapons, which are reason
+and love. Obviously it can use no others, without
+self-destruction; yet it has to meet enemies who fight with the
+old weapons of force and fraud. Whether it will prevail is more
+than any prophet can say. Perhaps it is too much to ask that it
+should succeed--this insolent effort of the pigmy man to leap
+upon the back of his master and fit a bridle into his mouth.
+Perhaps it is nothing but a dream in the minds of a few, the
+scientists and poets and inventors, the dreamers of the race.
+Perhaps the nerve of the pigmy will fail him at the critical
+moment, and he will fall from the back of his master, and under
+his master's hoofs.
+
+The hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and
+as scientists we can proclaim it--the human race is in a swift
+current of degeneration, which a new morality alone can check.
+The struggle is at its height in our time; if it fails, if the
+fibre of the race continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race
+to be eaten out by poverty and luxury, by insanity and disease,
+by prostitution, crime and war--then mankind will slip back into
+the abyss, the untamed giants of Nature will resume their ancient
+sway, and the tides, the tempest and the lightning will sweep the
+earth clean again. I do not believe that this calamity will
+befall us. I know that in the diseased social body the forces of
+resistance are gathering--the Socialist movement, in the broad
+sense--the activities of all who believe in the possibility of
+reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice and love.
+To such people this book goes out: to the truly religious people,
+those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now, who
+believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain
+and ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate
+achievement.
+
+     From the edge of harsh derision,
+           From discord and defeat,
+      From doubt and lame division,
+           We pluck the fruit and eat;
+  And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet....
+      O sorrowing hearts of slaves,
+           We heard you beat from far!
+      We bring the light that saves,
+           We bring the morning star;
+Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are...
+
+
+Envoi
+
+I have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me.
+I think of the "young men and maidens meek" who will read this
+book, and I wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark
+together; we have gone romping down the vista of the ages,
+swatting*, every venerable head that showed itself, beating the
+dust out of ancient delusions. You would like all your life to be
+that kind of lark; but you may not find it so, and perhaps you
+will suffer disillusionment and vexation.
+
+I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have
+nearly all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been
+wise, and therefore not so happy as they might have been. In the
+course of time I have formulated to myself the peril to which
+young radicals are exposed. We see so much that is wrong in
+ancient things, it gets to be a habit with us to reject them. We
+have only to know that a thing is old to feel an impulse of
+impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are tempted to welcome
+anything which can prove itself to be unprecedented. There is a
+common type of radical whose aim in life is to be several jumps
+ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is that it shocks
+the bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may find
+him--and her--in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the
+newest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and
+discussing the newest form of psycopathia sexualis. After you
+have watched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new
+people have fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy,
+the non sequitur, and likewise to the oldest form of slavery,
+which is self-indulgence.
+
+If it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon
+ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in
+the old moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so
+long as man is what he is--a creature of impulses, good and bad,
+wise and foolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make
+choice between these impulses; so long as he is a material body
+and a personal consciousness, obliged to live in society and
+adjust himself to the rights of others. What I would like to say
+to young radicals--if there is any way to say it without seeming
+a prig--is that in choosing their own path through life, they
+will need not merely enthusiasm and radical fervor, but wisdom
+and judgment and hard study.
+
+It is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat
+over and over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny
+and slavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient
+societies; and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in
+our own persons the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To
+light the fires of lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder
+there, and imagine we are trying new experiments in psychology!
+Who does not know the radical woman who demonstrates her
+emancipation from convention by destroying her nerves with
+nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who demonstrates
+his repudiation of private property by permitting his lady loves
+to support him? Who does not know the man who finds in the
+phrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing
+of young girls?
+
+You will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the
+conclusion that there is anything in it to spare you the duty of
+getting yourself moral standards and holding yourself to them. On
+the contrary, because your task is the highest and hardest that
+man has yet undertaken--for this reason you will need standards
+the most exacting ever formulated. Let me quote some words from a
+teacher you will not accuse of holding to the slave-moralities:
+
+Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I hear, and
+not that thou hast escaped a yoke.
+
+Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke?
+
+Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye
+tell me: free to what?
+
+Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy
+will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and
+avenger of thy law?
+
+Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy
+law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into the icy
+breath of isolation.
+
+Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the
+sunlight of knowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it
+over, not according to the will of any gods, but according to the
+law in our own hearts. For that task we have need of all the
+resources of our being; of courage and high devotion, of faith in
+ourselves and our comrades, of clean, straight thinking, of
+discipline both of body and mind. We go to this task with a
+knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of mankind--the
+knowledge that our actions determine the future of life, not
+merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the
+laws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not
+repealed, but on the contrary has reinforced with a thousand
+confirmations--that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the
+children unto the third and fourth generations.
+
+I get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they
+are young people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I
+gather them now about my knee, and pronounce upon them a
+benediction in the ancient patriarchal style. Children and
+grandchildren of my hopes, for ages men suffered and fought, so
+that the world might be turned over to you. Now the day is
+coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with the shining of its
+wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of it. I thought
+we should have more time to get ready for the taking over of the
+world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took to
+tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us.
+So, whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world;
+we have to decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it.
+Let us not fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll
+of history that mankind had to go through yet new generations of
+wars and tumults and enslavements, because the youth of the
+international revolution could not lift themselves above those
+ancient personal vices which wrecked the fair hopes of their
+fathers--bigotry and intolerance, vindictiveness and vanity,
+envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness!
+
+
+
+Reader:
+
+For twenty years I have been haunted by the dream that I might
+some day be my own publisher. I was waiting till I could afford
+the luxury; but many a man has put off a bold action till he
+died, so I am publishing this book without being able to afford
+it.
+
+The reason is that I do not want to be a writer for the rich. I
+want to be read by working-boys and girls, and by poor students.
+
+I offer the book at a low price. In the hope of tempting you to
+go out and get your friends to read it, I have made a price in
+quantities which will allow no profit at all. A margin has been
+figured to cover postage, stationery, circulars, and the cost of
+a clerical assistant; but nothing for interest on capital, which
+is a gift, nor for the rent of an office, which is my home, nor
+for the services of manager and press agent, which is myself.
+
+You have read the book, and its fate is yours to decide. If it
+seems worth while, pass it on to someone else. If you can afford
+it, order a number of copies and give them away. If you can't
+afford it, give your time and be a book-agent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Profits of Religion, by Sinclair
+