in theological seminaries, but it is to be proclaimed from housetops and in language understood in every-day life.
It was once said that “the lips of the priest give knowledge,” but it may now be truly said that modern scientists and philosophers among the laity are the principal teachers of mankind, and that publications like the North American Review and The Forum, and last, but not least, the secular daily newspapers, are doing more to instruct the people in living truths than the whole brood of ecclesiastical parrots.
2d. We charge that many professional clergymen suppress things which they do believe to be true, and not unfrequently suggest things, at least by implication, which they do know to be false.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale recently published an article in the North American Review entitled “Insincerity in the Pulpit;” and the Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks of Boston, who recently received episcopal honors in Massachussetts, has confirmed in the Princeton Review what Dr. Hale charged in the North American Review regarding clerical disingenuousness. Dr. Brooks wrote thus:
“A large acquaintance with clerical life has led me to think that almost any company of clergymen, talking freely to each other, will express opinions which would greatly surprise, and at the same time greatly relieve, the congregations who ordinarily listen to these ministers.... How many men in the ministry to-day believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration which our fathers held? and how many of us have frankly told the people that we do not believe it?… How many of us hold that the everlasting punishment of the wicked is a clear and certain truth of revelation? But how many of us who do not have ever said a word?”
The same principle of prevarication and deceit was practised by the early Fathers of the Christian Church, who not only concealed the truth from the masses of the people, but did not hesitate to deceive and mislead them.
Mosheim, an ecclesiastical historian of high authority, testifies that “in the fourth century it was an almost universally adopted maxim that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when by such means the interests of the Church might be promoted.” He further says of the fifth century, “Fraud and impudent imposture were artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar.”
Milman, in his History of Christianity, says: “It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.” He further says in the same historical work, “That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forgeries can scarcely be questioned.” There is not a Bible manuscript or version that has not been manipulated by ecclesiastics for century after century. Many of these priests were both ignorant and vicious. From the fifth to the fifteenth century crimes not fit to be mentioned prevailed among the clergy.
Dr. Lardner says that Christians of all sorts were guilty of fraud, and quotes Cassaubon as saying, “In the earliest times of the Church it was considered a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions.” Dr. Thomas Burnet, in a Latin treatise intended for the clergy only, said, “Too much light is hurtful to weak eyes;” and he recommended the practice of deceiving the common people for their own good. I know that this same policy is in vogue in our day. This same nefarious doctrine of the exoteric and esoteric, one thing for the priest and another for the people, is far from being dead in this nineteenth century. It has always been, and now is, the real priestly policy to keep the common people in ignorance of many things; and if all do not accept the maxim of Gregory, that “Ignorance is the mother of Devotion,” many ministers privately hold in our day that “where ignorance is bliss ’Tis folly to be wise.”
3d. The third article of impeachment, under the general charge of infidelity is, that sacerdotalists teach dogmas which they do not believe themselves. They do not all believe, ex animo, the distinctive dogmas of the orthodox creeds—that God is angry with the great body of mankind, that his wrath is a burning flame, and that there is, as to a majority of men, but a moment’s time and a point of space between them and eternal torture more terrible than imagination can conceive or language describe. It is well said that “Actions speak louder than words;” and we need only ask the question, “Do ministers who profess to believe these horrible dogmas preach as if they really believed them?” Notice the general deportment of the clergy at the summer resort, at the seaside, or on the mountain-top, and say whether they can possibly believe what for eight or nine months they have been preaching in their now closed churches. Listen to the private conversation of our evangelists at the camp-meeting or at the meetings of ecclesiastical bodies, and then conclude, if you can, that they believe what they teach.
Take, if you please, the case of one of our best-known evangelical ministers, a member of the strictest of our orthodox sects, who spends a large proportion of his time in studying the ways of insects, and who would chase a pismire across the continent to find out its habits. Can a pastor believe in his heart the dogmas of the Westminster Confession, and yet devote so much time to ants? It is impossible. He may deceive himself; he cannot deceive others.
4th. Our fourth article of impeachment under the general charge is, that the pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism called infidelity, in that it insists upon the belief of dogmas which are absurd upon their face, such as the miraculous conception of Jesus, the dogma of the Trinity, the origin and fall of man, vicarious atonement, predestination, election and reprobation, eternal torture for the majority, and many other absurdities which no rational mind can now consistently accept.
True, these dogmas may be found in the Bible; and when men ate told with weekly reiterations that the Bible is purely divine, supernatural, and infallible, and they find that it is purely human, natural, and very fallible, they cannot believe the Bible, though they find many inspiring and helpful things in it. When ministers tell thinking men that they must believe all or reject all, they accept the foolish alternative and reject all. And so it might be further shown how, in very many ways, the pulpit is the great promoter of skepticism and infidelity, and that the professed teachers of religion are its greatest enemies, its most effective clogs and successful antagonists. No wonder that the most thoughtful and intelligent men and women in every community have drifted away from the popular faith, and are anxiously inquiring, What next?
President Thomas Jefferson, in writing to Timothy Pickering, well said:
“The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor.” Writing to Dr. Cooper, he said: “My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel if there had never been a priest.”
We would not abolish the office, or, if you please, the profession, of public moral teacher, but we would banish from the world the caste idea, the holy-order pretence. When simple-minded young men and grave and surpliced bishops talk about taking “holy orders,” sensible and thoughtful men know that they are talking holy nonsense. No man has a right to assume that he is more holy than other men, or that he has authority to exercise religious functions that other men have not.
Nor have we any objection that moral teachers should be paid for their services as other teachers are paid; but when educated men can afford to teach without pecuniary compensation, we think it would be well for them to do so; and when the teacher of morals adopts the example of St. Paul, “working with his own hands” and “living in his own hired house,” we think the world will be the better for it. Let us hope that the day will soon dawn when clergymen will consider themselves moral teachers only, and for ever repudiate the false pretence of special authority and priestly sanctimoniousness, and clearly understand that mediocrity and stupidity will not much longer be tolerated because of the so-called sacredness of a profession.
That the estimate here made of sacerdotalists may not seem extreme and unjustifiable, I add the testimony of one of the
