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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 26

To the Protestant Parson, whether you are an Episcopalian Archbishop with £30,000 a year, a poor Curate, preferring genteel poverty to honest hard work, a Scotch kirk minister, or a Methodist preacher it matters not

To the Protestant Parson, whether you are an Episcopalian Archbishop with £30,000 a year, a poor Curate, preferring genteel poverty to honest hard work, a Scotch kirk minister, or a Methodist preacher it matters not.

Sir,—

Many of the observations I have made to the Jewish Rabbi and Romish priest, are equally applicable to your case, so please appropriate them and thus save repetition. I must tell you at the outset, that the Jews and Papists are in many respects more consistent than you are, in some of the tenets of your churches, for instance the former in respect to the unity and indivisibility of the deity, and the Catholics, in regard to the interpretation of the Scriptures, their priests say to their dupes, you must not contemplate it by your own judgment you must take my interpretation of it only, whereas your churches profess the right of individual interpretation; but no sooner does one of your people attempt to exercise this boasted right beyond a slight limit, than you look upon and hold him up as an infidel and probably pray for him as one on the sure road to perdition—for what? For having had the barefaced effrontery to exercise this professed right and use his reason, God's grandest gift to man; and what is the result? page 14 You have in a degree, I admit, stifled open enquiry; but do you think you have stopped the yearnings of thirsting souls for more light? No! far from it, for ninetenths of those who for form's sake attend your meetings and outwardly conform to your ordinances, do not believe one half of what you preach to them; why? Because their reason revolts at it as derogatory to their conceptions of their merciful, heavenly Father, and as opposed to their experience of His boundless love and mercy, as well as repugnant to their reason. While they are hungering for the bread of life, you are offering them the stones of dogma, and while they are thirsting for the knowledge of the future life and of its reality, you are preaching about some foolish superstitious fable as the word of the living God, which neither you nor they really believe at heart; in consequence of this the universal cry is, that faith is dead, and no wonder, necessitating your having recourse to all sorts of dodges to keep the flickering spark alive by revival excitements, such as the disgraceful exhibitions of hysterical women and maudlin men, including dukes and duchesses if you like, who are reported as thronging in thousands round Sankey A Moody, whom I expect they will be making graven images of directly, and when they pass away no doubt, like Tiberius Cæsar, who is said to have proposed the deification of Jesus to the Roman Senate, some of their idolizing followers will propose to have them added to the incomprehensible trinity, in the same way as the 7 ver. of the v. chap, of I. John, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are One," the chief corner-stone of the trinitarian absurdity, was surreptitiously added to the Bible in the tenth or twelfth century to try and square the triangular fallacy. Well might Tertullian, orthodox as he was, exclaim—"I reverence the Christian religion because it is contemptible, I adore it because it is absurd, I believe it, because it is impossible," as literally rendered by a translator.

The humble Jesus never said anything about the Trinity, on the contrary he acknowledged only one God, and one Father of us all; but his biographers and followers assumed they knew a great deal better than he did, in the same way as whilst he inculcated secret prayer the clergy knew much better, and insist on public worship, because otherwise they could not pluck their geese, who, through constant habit, have become accustomed to the process, in fact to look upon it as a necessity—a sort of salve to their guilty consciences, and a necessary tax to be mulcted in, for appearing respectable Christians in the eyes of the world. When one has been emancipated from the bondage of this ceremonial mummery falsely termed religion, and can look back on all the solemn mockery he has gone through, and the valuable time that he has spent therein, he sees how foolish he has been in not having, long before, used the divine gift of reason, with which an all-merciful, heavenly Father had endowed him, and thereby discerned that religion consisted alone in a principle actuating man's every thought and action, instead of as he was taught, of a set creed, at variance with his reason and his experience, and a lot of useless forms, ceremonies, preachings and prayings in public, &c., resulting in hypocrisy and deceit in the place of true holiness, purity, and good actions.

page 15
Now, Sir, with all your assumption as a professional teacher of religion, what can you tell your credulous flock or others of the future life? Not a fraction more than any schoolboy can read for himself in that book which is composed of so much history and geography of the past, from the Jewish stand-point, but so very little about that which, had it been the inspired word of God as claimed for it, it would have principally consisted; and even the slight insight which it professes to give of man's future existence is so vague, so irrational, and so improbable, that few, very few indeed, and those only the most credulous and weak-minded amongst your followers, really believe the biblical accounts of the future existence of man's immortal soul, with its inert eternal anthem singing on the one hand, and its material lake of fire and brimstone for the eternal physical torture of a spiritual soul on the other. Did you ever consider the blasphemous character of the doctrine of eternal torment? I cannot imagine you have, unless you are prepared to admit that God is a thousand fold more unjust than man His creature, for even a thousand years torment would be out of all proportion for committing the greatest of crimes, during the longest life of a man on earth, far less that of eternal punishment. Contemplate for one instant never-ending torment! and say if you think it worthy of being ascribed to, or believed of our merciful Heavenly Father, and in accordance with our experience of His love and goodness to us here. Truly the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked to even suppose, that the change called death is to turn an all-just and merciful Father into a hideous demon of cruelty. No! the very book you call God's Word states otherwise—"I am the Lord, I change not."—Malachi iii. 6, and "with Whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."—James i. 17; or, as the hymn has it—

"O let us then at length be taught
What we are still so slow to learn—
That God is love, and changeth not,
Nor knows the shadow of a turn."

The very doctrine, that of original sin, on which your religion is based, is fallacious, and is derogatory to the character of God, who is perfection, and "Whose acts are consequently perfect, and do not require to be repented of, as falsely represented. The doctrine of original sin implies that man was created imperfect—that he was placed in the garden of Eden with a temptation before him that he had not the power to resist, and for his weakness in not resisting this temptation, a weakness he was not responsible for; that he and all his race are under the curse of the Creator our Heavenly Father, "Who, if the Bible is to be relied on, took over two thousand years or more to perfect a scheme for appeasing His wrath, the satisfaction of His sense of justice, and the redemption of His creatures, viz., the cruel murder on the cross of the most exemplary man the world has ever seen. Now, Sir, if you had a number of sons, and one of them committed an error, would you hold the others guilty also for that, or, if all of them except one committed errors, would you, if you dared to do so, have the guiltless cruelly murdered in order to appease your wrath for the errors of the others? I would not, and I am sure my God is not more unjust, more cruel, and more irrational than I am. page 16 You may say, "at! but it was decreed before the world was created that Jesus was to redeem the world from sin." This only makes the matter worse, and represents the character of your God in a more hideous light still. You may further say, "but Jesus was God as well as man, and gave himself to death for man's redemption." This is still more absurd. Just consider your God offering Himself as a sacrifice to appease His own wrath! But you still further remark, "Jesus was the second person of the Godhead." Then you must deny the unity of the Deity, for two persons cannot be one individuality, neither in this nor the future life. Man and wife are by the law of the land said to be one, but wherever you travel with your wife, you will find that you are charged for two notwithstanding. If you believe there is only one God, that Jesus is God, and at the same time that he is your elder brother, then it follows of necessity that you believe yourself to be brother to that Invisible Being Who is clothed with honor and majesty, Who covereth Himself with light as with a garment, Who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, Who maketh the clouds His chariot, Who walk-eth upon the wings of the wind; Brother to Him who chargeth His angels with folly, while the heavens themselves are not clear in His sight? Brother to Him whom no man hath seen, nor can see, neither hath any man heard His voice at any time, or seen His shape, and Whose ways are past finding out? A belief as presumptuous and impious in man, as it is profane and blasphemous towards God. Why, sir, if your will look into it with the eye of unbiased reason, you will find you profess to believe in that which is revolting to common sense, and in that which you would not believe if told you by your wife or daughter, or sworn to by your dearest friends as having occurred in the present day. I do not know which is the most revolting to common sense—the imputation of incompetency on the part of the Omnipotent One in creating mankind, or that of injustice and irrationality in the scheme of salvation by the All-wise Ruler.

The bible must necessarily give way whenever it clashes with man's reason, experience, and with science, which have won immortal victories for the human race; still, I am not unmindful of the many glorious truths set forth therein, nor of my indebtedness thereto for the grand lessons learnt through frequent perusal of many of its pages, and I would here remark that the bible, viewed in a rational light, considering the barbaric and semi-barbaric times in which its various parts were written, and allowing for the superstitious notions in those days prevalent, is one of, if not the most remarkable book of ancient literature extant, and to my mind bearing on the face of it the evidence of its inspirational character, though not from the exalted source generally claimed for it, but from a mediate source, more in accordance with reason and demonstrable facts.

We are told that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Could the devil be a revolutionary angel expelled from heaven before heaven was made? Because Joseph dreamed a dream, are we to believe what is contrary to nature? and do we place implicit confidence in our own dreams? The more the Bible is examined, the more apparent is it that it won't stand a rational analysis. Some of page 17 an imaginative turn of mind say that the Bible should be taken in an allegorical sense; and others, partly allegorically and partly literally; the more rational take it in its literal sense, they don't take bread to mean a stone, nor a fish to mean a serpent, nor yet truth to mean an ambiguity. The original Bible, as you ought to be aware, contained twenty-two books analagous to the number of letters constituting the Hebrew alphabet. Our Old Testament contains thirty-nine books, exclusive of the Apocrypha, which formerly was included. The original Bible was burnt by Antiochus Epiphanes during his war against the Jews. The version which we have the copies of now; was compiled by Ezra at a comparatively recent date.

Immaculate conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in olden times, that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in worldly matters was considered to be of supernatural lineage, Romulus, the founder of Rome, was declared to be the son of Mars, who seduced the virgin Rhea Sylvia one day as she went to the spring for water, pitcher in hand. Jupiter Ammon was said to be the father of Alexander, who styled himself "King Alexander the son of Jupiter Ammon," but allow me to say this did not make it the fact that it was so. It is recorded that his mother Olympias who ought certainly to have known the facts of the case, used jestingly to remark that "she wished Alexander would cease from incessantly embroiling her with Jupiter Amnion's wife."

In the second century Celsus wrote a work for the purpose of exposing the folly and madness of Christianity as then enunciated, and which he terms "a pernicious superstition." Tacitus describes Christians in his day as a set of people who were holden in abhorrence for their crimes, and states that their distinguishing characteristic was a hatred to all mankind not of their way of thinking. Porphyry, the Emperor Julian, and several others, wrote works condemning and exposing the absurdity of the doctrines of Christianity in their time; but we are informed the priests of that day succeeded in consigning every copy of those works which were adverse to their interests to the flames, as many of the more bigoted would like to do now if they could. Of the writings of Celsus we have only a few fragments preserved in the works of Origen, he having answered one of the works by Celsus about fifty years after it was written. (See Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol II.) For further information I must refer you to my address to earnest enquirers after truth :—

"Not in the church, by thousands trod,
Seek I, and find Thee, oh my God!
Not where the swelling anthems rise,
And lifted eyes salute the skies;
Not where hired priests alone may dare
The truth (?) to speak, to breathe the prayer,
And crowded congregations stand,
To talk with God at second hand;
For there come human pomp and pride,
Fashion and vice stand side by side—
The hypocrite with shining face,
And the backsliding saint embrace.
Park hearts and blood-stained hands are there,
Souls dead to truth, cars deaf to prayer;
Men who their brethren buy and sell,
Who seek not heaven, who fear not hell,
page 18 Men who on gold their hopes have built
Who covet gain, and wink at guilt;
Men who on sensual visions gloat,
While prayers and praises fill the throat;
And there the preachers (richly feed)
Their empty declarations read
Set prayers pronounce, set forms go through
And talk the good they ought to do"

"Not there, my God—I come not there,
Thy presence and its joys to share;
Not there my spirit feels Thee near;
Not there Thy still small voice I hear;
Not there my heart with love swells high,
Not there I learn to live and die;
Not there the inward strength is given
To conquer earth, and enter heaven."

"But 'neath the broad, o'erarching sky,
In the free winds that hurry by,
In the bright orbs that shine above,
In all things that have life, and move,
In the deep sea's resistless might,
In the still watches of the night,
In song of birds, and laughing rills,
In cultivated vales and wood crowned hills,
In all that greets my wondering eye,
I feel, I own that Thou art nigh."

"No mediator there I need—
His child, will not my Father heed?
Freely my spirit soars and glows,
Freely God's love, descending, flows;
Voiceless, before His shining throne,
I bend and pray in heart alone;
For words are vain, and speech is nought
To Him who knows each inmost thought;
Seraphs a fitting song might raise,
But silence is man's noblest praise!"