The Profits of Religion Part 12

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 G.o.d--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 G.o.d marched with them. The Kaiser, as usual, acted as spokesman:

Remember that the German people are the chosen of G.o.d. On me, the German emperor, the spirit of G.o.d 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tle as Herr Vorwerk's "Hurrah and Hallelujah." Here is the Reverend S. Lehmann:

Germany is the center of G.o.d'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 G.o.d's will that we should will 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 G.o.d. Not the national G.o.d such as the lower nations wors.h.i.+p, but "our G.o.d," 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-wors.h.i.+p, precisely as saint-wors.h.i.+p or totem-wors.h.i.+p, delivers the wors.h.i.+pper 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 inst.i.tution at all."

In the year 1818 the Presbyterian General a.s.sembly, which represented the churches of the South as well as of the North, pa.s.sed by a unanimous vote a resolution to the effect that "Slavery is utterly inconsistent with the law of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d" 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 G.o.d 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 j.a.pheth, 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 inst.i.tution" 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 Ma.s.sachusetts and New York owed their power to Slavery; their fathers had brought mola.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 debas.e.m.e.nt 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 inst.i.tution, the men of G.o.d 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 G.o.d." 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 inst.i.tutions, and that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of G.o.d 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 emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves of the South, is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of the people of G.o.d.

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 G.o.d 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 hang 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 fas.h.i.+on." 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 G.o.d, 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 heads.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.ses. 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, a.s.sailing 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 G.o.d Almighty, who commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the battle for the Lord; more than the G.o.d 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-cla.s.s ladies might make the discovery that the flesh of working-cla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l. But then came the modern commercial system, and the money-lenders became the masters of the world! There is no more amusing ill.u.s.tration 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 grat.i.tude, 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 princ.i.p.al!" 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 compet.i.tive commercialism. Jesus, as we have pointed out, was a carpenter's son, a thoroughly cla.s.s-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.