Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1884-08-07


the cheeks of this world with tears. l deS-
pise it and l defy it. made up my mind,
/ say, to see what had to do in order to
save my soul according to the Testament,
and thereupon / read it. / read the Cos
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
and found that the clergy had been deceiv-
ing me. l found that the clergy did not
understand their own book. | found that
they had been building upon passages that
had been interpolated. / found that they
had been building upon passages that were
entirely untrue, and will tell why think
so.
"The speaker then read from and discus
sec the question as to what must be done
in order to be saved according to the gospel
of Matthew, and said, that all that gospel
required was charity and self-denial for
that purpose, and not a word was said in
it about believing anything and that Mark
and Luke substantially agreed with him
upon the subject, except Mark xvi, 10 ",
which he claimed was an Interpolation put
in by hypocrisy and priests, who longed to
grasp with bloody hands the sceptre OF
universal power That was the most
infamous passage in the Bible, every
letter of which had been sword and
faggot, dungeon and chain, and for one
thousand years had made the horizon lurid
with the faggot's flames. 1t was one
that contradicts the Sermon on the Mount,
travestied the Lords Prayer, ami turns the
splendid religion of deed and duty into the
superstition Of creed and cruelty, and he
denied that Christ ever said it. He then
said that Johns gospel was where all OF
trouble commenced, and taught an entirely
different doctrine from the other three gOs-
pels, which was the doctrine Ofbelief, which
the other three did not teach. He then
proceeded:
Now, upon these gospels that L have
read the churches rest; and out Of these
things, mistakes and interpretations they
have made their creeds, and the first
church to make creed, so far as / know,
was the Catholic, which was the church to
preserve all of these miracles and also
manuscripts for us, and is the one whose
word we have to take for their truthful
ness, and is the first witness Protestanism
brings TO the bar OF history to prove the
miracles that took place 1900 years ago;
and while the witness is there, Protestant
ism takes pains to say, You cannot believe
word this witness says now" Laughter.
1t is the only church that keeps up con-
slant com munication with heaven through
the instrumentality of a large number of
decayed saints Laughter. That church
has an agent ef God on earth, has person
who stands in the place of deity, and that
church is infallible That church has per
secuted to the exact extent of her power
and always will. In Spain Catholicism
stands erect and is arrogant. In the United
States she crawls, but the object in both
countries is the same-and that is the de-
struction of intellectual liberty. That
church teaches that we can make God
happy by being miserable ourselves; that
a nun is holier in the sight of God than
loving mother with her child in her thrilled
and thrilling arms; that priest Is better
than father; that celibacy is better than
that passion Of love that has made every
thing of beauty in this world. That church
tells the girl of sixteen or eighteen, with
eyes like dew and light; that girl with
the red of health In the white OF her
beautiful cheeks-tells that girl, Put on
the veil woven of death and night, kneel
upon stones, and you will please God.
tell you that by law no girl should be
allowed to take the veil and renounce the
to allowing these spider-like priests to
weave webs to catch the loving maidens of
the world. There ought to be law ap-
pointing commissioners to visit such places
twice year and release every person who
expresses desire to be released. | do not
believe in keeping these penitentiaries of
God No doubt they are honest about
it. That is not the question. These
ignorant supersititiOns fill millions of lives
with WEAKNESS and pain, with agony and
tears.
This church, after few centuries of
thought made creed, and that creed is
the foundation of the orthodox religion.
The speaker then criticized severely the
creeds of the Episcopal, Metho-
dist, Presbyterian, and other churches, and
concluded his lecture with the following
peroration
"As long as we live we will hope to live
and when the one dies that we love We
will say: Oh that we could meet again.
and whether we do, OF do not, it will not
be the work of theology. 1t will be a fact
in nature l would not for my life destroy
one star of human hope, but l want 1t SO
that when a poor woman rocks the cradle,
and sings lullaby to the dimpled darling,
she will not be compelled to believe that
chances in a hundred she is
raising kindling wood for hell. ZAP
plause) One world at time is
my doctrine. 1t is said in this les
lament, Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof and say: Sufficient unto each
world is the evil thereof Suppose, after
all, death does end all. Next to eternal
Joy, next to being forever with those we
love, and those who loved us, next to that,
is to be wrapped in the dreamless drapery
Of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is
eternal sleep. Upon the shadowy shore of
death the sea of trouble casts no wave.
had rather think of those / have loved
and lost as having returned to earth, as
having become part of the elemental
wealth of the world would rather think
of them as gurgling in the stream, floating
in the clouds, bursting in the form Of light
upon the shores of worlds, would rather
think of them as the lost visions of for
gotten night, than to have even the
faintest fear that their naked souls have
been clutched by an orthodoxy god. Ap-
plause. But for me, will leave the dead
where nature leaves them. l cannot be-
lieve there is any being in this universe
who has created human soul for eternal
pain. | would rather every god would
destroy himself; / would rather that we
all should 60 to eternal chaos, to black and
starless night, than that just one soul
should suffer eternal agony. have made
up my mind that if there is God, He will
be merciful to the merciful; that He will
not torture the forgiving; that every man
should be true to himself, and that there
is no world, no star, in which honesty is a
crime; and that the honest man, the good,
kind, sweet woman, and the happy child,
have nothing to fear, either in this world |