If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superst.i.tion is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

363. The Sacred Sabbath

Of all the superst.i.tious of mankind, this insanity about the "sacred Sabbath" is the most absurd. The idea of feeling it a duty to be solemn and sad one-seventh of the time! To think that we can please an infinite being by staying in some dark and sombre room, instead of walking in the perfumed fields! Why should G.o.d hate to see a man happy? Why should it excite his wrath to see a family in the woods, by some babbling stream, talking, laughing and loving? Nature works on that "sacred" day. The earth turns, the rivers run, the trees grow, buds burst into flower, and birds fill the air with song. Why should we look sad, and think about death, and hear about-h.e.l.l? Why should that day be filled with gloom instead of joy?

364. Make the Sabbath Merry

Freethinkers should make the Sabbath a day of mirth and music; a day to spend with wife and child--a day of games, and books, and dreams--a day to put fresh flowers above our sleeping dead--a day of memory and hope, of love and rest.

365. Away to the Hills and the Sea

A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of rest and joy, a day to visit stream and wood--a day to live with wife and child; a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and strength for toils to come. And his weary wife needs a breath of sunny air, away from street and wall, amid the hills or by the margin of the sea, where she can sit and prattle with her babe, and fill with happy dreams the long, glad day.

366. Melancholy Sundays

When I was a little fellow most everybody thought that some days were too sacred for the young ones to enjoy themselves in. That was the general idea. Sunday used to commence Sat.u.r.day night at sundown, under the old text, "The evening and the morning were the first day." They commenced then, I think, to get a good ready. When the sun went down Sat.u.r.day night, darkness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night fell upon that house. The boy that looked the sickest was regarded as the most pious. You could not crack hickory nuts that night, and if you were caught chewing gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart. It was a very solemn evening. We would sometimes sing, "Another day has pa.s.sed." Everybody looked as though they had the dyspesia--you know lots of people think they are pious, just because they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn night, and the next morning the solemnity had increased. Then we went to church, and the minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high. If it was in the winter there was no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable while you were thanking the Lord. The minister commenced at firstly and ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then he divided it up again; and then he made some concluding remarks, and then he said lastly, and when he said lastly he was about half through.

367. Moses took Egyptian Law for his Model

It has been contended for many years that the ten commandments are the foundation of all ideas of justice and of law. Eminent jurists have bowed to popular prejudice, and deformed their works by statements to the effect that the Mosaic laws are the fountains from which sprang all ideas of right and wrong. Nothing can be more stupidly false than such a.s.sertions. Thousands of years before Moses was born, the Egyptians had a code of laws. They had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery, larceny, perjury, laws for the collection of debts, and the enforcement of contracts.

368. A False Standard of Success

It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great, to be a success; and neither is it necessary to have your name between the putrid lips of rumor to be great. We have had a false standard of success. In the years when I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and he generally was a man that slept about three hours a night. They never put down in the books the gentlemen who succeeded in life and yet slept all they wanted to. We have had a wrong standard.

369. Toilers and Idlers

You can divide mankind into two cla.s.ses: the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers should be brothers. The laborers should have equal-rights before the world and before the law. And I want every farmer to consider every man who labors either with hand or brain as his brother. Until genius and labor formed a partnership there was no such thing as prosperity among men. Every reaper and mower, every agricultural implement, has elevated the work of the farmer, and his vocation grows grander with every invention. In the olden time the agriculturist was ignorant; he knew nothing of machinery, he was the slave of superst.i.tion.

370. The Sad Wilderness History

While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword and plague. Ignorant and superst.i.tious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. G.o.d was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend.

371. Law Much Older than Sinai

Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation. Industry objected to supporting idleness, and laws were made against theft. Laws were made against murder, because a very large majority of the people have always objected to being murdered. All fundamental laws were born simply of the instinct of self-defence. Long before the Jewish savages a.s.sembled at the foot of Sinai, laws had been made and enforced, not only in Egypt and India, but by every tribe that ever existed.

372. Who is the Blasphemer?

There was no pity in inspired war. G.o.d raised the black flag, and commanded his soldiers to kill even the smiling infant in its mother's arms. Who is the blasphemer; the man who denies the existence of G.o.d, or he who covers the robes of the infinite with innocent blood?

373. Standing Tip for G.o.d

We are told in the Pentateuch that G.o.d, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal l.u.s.ts of savage men. If there be a G.o.d, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

374. Matter and Force

The statement in the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth, I cannot accept. It is contrary to my reason, and I cannot believe it. It appears reasonable for me that force has existed from eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist apart from matter. Force, in its nature, is forever active, and without matter it could not act; and so I think matter must have existed forever. To conceive of matter without force, or of force without matter, or of a time when neither existed, or of a being who existed for an eternity without either, and who out of nothing created both, is to me utterly impossible.

375. Haeckel before Moses!

It may be that I am led to these conclusions by "total depravity," or that I lack the necessary humility of spirit to satisfactorily harmonize Haeckel and Moses; or that I am carried away by pride, blinded by reason, given over to hardness of heart that I might be d.a.m.ned, but I never can believe that the earth was covered with leaves, and buds, and flowers, and fruits, before the sun with glittering spear had driven back the hosts of night.

376. How was it Done?

We are told that G.o.d made man; and the question naturally arises, how was this done? Was it by a process of "evolution," "development;" the "transmission of acquired habits;" the "survival of the fittest," or was the necessary amount of clay kneaded to the proper consistency, and then by the hands of G.o.d moulded into form? Modern science tells that man has been evolved, through countless epochs, from the lower forms; that he is the result of almost an infinite number of actions, reactions, experiences, states, forms, wants and adaptations.