Star.
London, England, 1830-10-21 00:00:00

of religion, and call them deists, atheists, sceptics, and e.el..‘ .
traduce their cuaracters by every unfair and unjust device that t... can
invent : they iestil hatred and anger, and every evil passion and t a ding
into these men, who naturally are thus taught to consider all pt: tension
to religion to be he pocricy, and that religion itself is a monster of ir.leity
and injustice. Thus, instead of kind feelings and genuine affection being
engendered between man and man, through which dispositions alone :he
world can ever be reformed and rendered happy, both parties are regu.'
larity trained to become not only the secret, but the open enemies of each
other; keeping the world in a state of perpetual discord, and affording
no hope of its termination. Were it not for the irrational feelings and
conduct of the classes Nos. 1 and 2 with respect to this class, the letter
would always become honest, well-disposed, and comparatively intelli.
feat members of society. As it is, the mass of the unthinking part of
every population is in direct hostility to them, end consevently
the me opposed to this mass, and the worst passions and feelings
'thulium nature are thus made to be the every day practice of mankind.
Upon the 4th class religion produces the deepest commiseration for
the ignorance, poverty, weakness, and crime, which it indicts upon the
human race. They cannot avoid seeing the regular steps by which it is
made to disorganize and disease the moral sense and intellectual facul-
ties of all who arc subject to its influence. They are compelled to dis-
cover the gradations by which it generates anger and discord throughout
society, and perverts all the superior qualities of our nature into curses
instead of blessings. They are penetrated with the keenest regret to
perceive the earth, which might be, with ease and pleasure to every one,
made a:terrestrial paradise, remaining a vast, a wild, and a disease, solely
for the want of cultivation; and its inhabitants generally, which might
be formed into beings of a far superior order to any hitherto known in
the history of the human race, poor, weak, irrational creatures, asking
for bread, while they are surrounded by the most ample means, if
properly used, to supply an inexhaustible store of every good
thing that the hear: of man could require, and while he himself,
with equal ease and gratification, may be farmed into a being
of high intelligence, possessing the finest moral sense, filled with the
purest affection and mast genuine charity for all of his kind, and with
perfect good feelings for all that has life in the universe.
It is therefore impossible for this class to know and witness this demo.
lotion of the earth, and this degradation of their fellows, and not to feel
an irresistible impulse to forego every private feeling and consideration,
that they may assist the nations of the world to emancipate themselves
from the depth of error in which they are now involved, and front the
crimes and misery with which, in consequence of this thick mental and
moral darkness, they are now overwhelmed.
It is solely for these purposes that we, now, in the face of all nations,
and in the centre of this great metropolis, hold these public meetings,
to which we invite all those who have moral courage sufficient openly to
meet error, under whatever specious name it may possess, or whatever
garb of disguise it may assume.
We are well aware of the hold which what is called religion, varied and
opposed as it is to itself over the whole earth, has upon the confiding
andiupon:the unthinking.part of the population of the world. We know
that fur numberless years men of the second class of mind, who have
hitherto governed mankind in all their affairs, have adopted every device
they could conceive to make men not to think, but implicitly to confide
in their ipso disit upon the most important questions connected with
their intellectual improvement and happiness, and especially upon the
subject of religion.
We cannot, therefore, be unconscious of the difficulties which we
have to encounter, even at the threshold of our proceedings, in p!acing
before the public the real advantages and disadvantages of religion, as it
has been hitherto taught, in forming the character of man, and in go.
venting the world.
I have endeavoured to explain the general effects produced by reli.
gion on the four most prominent divisions of our natural organization at
birth, namely—
Ist. The weak of intellect, with a strong moral sense, which religion
makes amiable and conscientiously honest in their belief and dealings,
as far as the inconsistencies of a weak intellect, rendered still more weak
by religious mysteries, will permit.
2d. Those with higher intellectual faculties, but having a weaker
moral sense,—these religion makes into moral hypocrites, into selfish
and deigning men, whose business through life is to take advan-
tage of the intellectual weakness and moral sense of class No. 1. and
to make them their tools or instruments by which they oppress the
mere era of all classes, but especially those of No. 3, who have been
always most unjustly treated by this class for their opinions, when
honestly and openly expressed.
3d. Those w have a moderate share of Intellect, and a large pro-
portion of moral sense.—Upon these religion produces the most un-
favourable results, b yereating in them the greatest enmity to the consci-
entious religious, and to the pretenders to religion, and, in course.
quenee, their lives are usually passal in endless and fruitless contests
with those in their families and neighbourhood, who belong to classes
Nos. I and 2. Finding that they are most uujusdy abused for expressing
the convictions which they are compelled to entertain, and that they are
grossly ill-treated fur being conscientiously honest ; the worst feelings
of our nature are engendered within them ; they imagine the whole
human race to be their enemies, and that every man's hand is against
them. They are almost always reduced to poverty, and, by a conti-
nuation of unjust and merciless oppressions, they are goaded on from
irritation to irritation, until their opposition to the professors of reli-
gion and the institutions of society knows no bounds. A state of so.
siety is thus created most unfavourable to an honest enquiry after
truth, and to a condition of charity anti kindness between man and
man, and nation and nation ; and endless cruelties are devised and
practised for the insane purpose of attempting to make men think
alike upon imaginary notions in opposition to facts, and to the evidence
of our senses. By this irrational conduct, engendered solely by reli-
gion as it has been hitherto taught, men have been educated, from
infancy, to become open or covert enemies to each other, and thus the
millions are made to fall and remain an easy prey to a few, otherwise
mat weak oppressors.
4th. Those who havealarge Owe of intellect, and whose moral sense is
strong. Upon this class of men, as soon as their faculties are sufficiently
ripe to observe, compare, reflect, and to judge with accuracy, religion pro.
duces many painful conflicts in their minds. They ardently and sincerely
wish to retain the belief forced upon them in childhood, in the div:ne
origin and untainted truth of the religion which they have been coiu-
pelled to receive before their minds could comprehend any part of it.—
'Fhey begin to investigate its principles or dogmas, and are forced, by
the facts around them and with the strength of their
intellectual faculties, to cotnpare these dogmas with the facts
around them, and with the laws of their own nature which they
feel within them ; and to their grief and dismay, they can dis.
cover no connection whatever between the dogmas of any
religion, and the facts around them, or with the feel.
lags of their own nature. They shrink from these first impressions of
doubt as though they were committing the most heinous of all crimes ;
yet they cannot, by any effort they can make, prevent their recurrence.
As their intellectualpowers and moral sense increase with their years and
experience, the discordance between thedoctrines of religion enciffacts, or
the laws of nature, become daily more and more evident. Their first liars
subside, their moral courage gradually increases, by degrees they investi.
gate the foundation on which all religions rest ; they compare these with
I the unchanging laws of human nature and to their utter surprise and aston-
ishment, they are obliged most reluctantly, to come to the conclusion
that, there is not only no agreement between them. but that they are in
direct opposition to each other. They are therefore compelled to enter-
tarn the conviction, that the facts of nature as they are presented to our
senses, are not facts but delusions, and that all the religions in the
world as hitherto taught, are the inventions of human creatures before
they had acquired sufficient knowledge from experience to govern man
except by the hopes and fems of future endless happiness or misery ;
devices which they funned before they had discovered that ma I could
be far better trained anti governed by real knowledge than by incense'.
tent notions invented by men weak, but cunning to keep the mass of
mankind in the very infancy of ignorance, and to retain them in mental
helplessness.
Ascertaining these important results, the men possessing by nature
strong intellectual faculties and a high moral sense, cannot avoid feeling
an irresistible desire to *et their fellows free from the mental bondage
which ensiavesall their superior facultiesand feelings;while their inferior
mental qualities and their worst passions are cultivated most success.
fully. These men therefore look around in every direction, to ascertain
in what manner they must commence their task.
With their knowledge of human nature and of the laws which govern
it, they cannot have any hostile or unkind feeling for any portion of
mankind ; they therefore desire to perform their task with the greatest
mildness and gentleness that will permit them to accomplish the great
and good objects which they have in view.
But after every attempt not to wound the feelings of their weak brc.
thren, they discover that while the imaginary notions relative to reli-
gion shall be forced into the infant Wind, they can make little or no
progress, and however unwilling they may be to hurt the artificial con
science which has been formed in their fellow-ereatures, lay the doginas
taught to children in all countries, they find that it is utterly imprae.
ticable to benefit the human race without destroying all the errors of all ,
the religions in the world.
This difficult but most important task must be effected toenable them
to lay a solid and permanent foundation for that knowledge which can alone
train man to have genuine charity and pure affection forall mankind. They
know it is not only an easyibut a delightful employment to teach the
human race truth, without any error from infancy. But they also know,
from all past experience, that it is the most difficult and dangerous of
all tasks in which man can engage, to attempt to unlearn or disabuse
the adult mind of those errors and prejudices on the subject of religion,
which have been with the greatest care and industry taught to them
from their birth,
We are now prepared to inquire what are the advantages of religion as
it has been hitherto taught, upon the four classes of original caganisa.
Lion. But first it is necessary to state what religion IN as it has been
hitherto taught under all the various sectarian names and forms, which
the priesthood us different countries have given to it.
Religion then, as it has been hitherto taught, Is an attempt to force
mankind to think spinet the evidence of their maws and of all facts,
that there is emelt el the highest eider, in believing what the rictus say
their votaries might to believe, and the deepest of all demerits in not
believing thmedelpirs,which they amend allorhatever may be the name
and form whisk they support, areoto call divine truths. And also in a
siginst atuesse Nepal mankind to believe, against the evidence of
their 11mtllt1 of ail facts, that there le 'seal merit in having real and