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THIS LITTLE VOLUME
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS. ACCIDENT INSURANCE. CHIEFLY WOMEN. WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT. WHAT IT TEACHES. THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME. AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT. FEAR. BEGINNING TO THINK. CREEDS. SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION. TWIN MONSTERS INHERITED FROM INTELLECTUAL PIGMIES. GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION. REVELATION. EVIDENCE OF FAITH. DID HE TALK? WHAT YOU MAY THINK. INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW. TH
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INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
Nothing gives me more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise for the future, than the fact that woman is achieving intellectual and physical liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our country, there are thousands of women who think and express their own thoughts—who are thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious—who have neither been narrowed nor corrupted by a heartless creed—who do not worship a being in heaven whom they would shudderingly loathe on earth. Women who do not stand be
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MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS.
IT is thought strange and particularly shocking by some persons for a woman to question the absolute correctness of the Bible. She is supposed to be able to go through this world with her eyes shut, and her mouth open wide enough to swallow Jonah and the Garden of Eden without making a wry face. It is usually recounted as one of her most beautiful traits of character that she has faith sufficient to float the Ark without inspecting the animals. So it is thought strange that a woman should object
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ACCIDENT INSURANCE.
ACCIDENT INSURANCE.
A church member said to me some time ago that even though the Bible were not "the word of God," even though it were not necessary to believe in the creed in order to go to heaven, it could not do any harm to believe it; and he thought it was "best to be on the safe side, for," said he, "suppose after all it should happen to be true!" So he carries a church-membership as a sort of accident insurance policy. I do not believe we have a right to work upon that basis. It is not honest. I do not belie
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CHIEFLY WOMEN.
CHIEFLY WOMEN.
But they say this is not a matter of reason. This is outside of reason, it is all a matter of faith. But whenever a superstition claims to be so holy that you must not use your reason about it, there is something wrong some place. Truth is not afraid of reason, nor reason of truth. I am going to say something to-night about why I do not believe in a religion of faith. I am going to tell you some of the reasons why I do not believe that the Bible is "inspired;" why I, as a woman, don't want to th
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WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.
WHY WOMEN SUPPORT IT.
Another argument is that if orthodox Christianity were not good for women they would not support and cling to it; if it did not comfort them they would discard it. In reply to that I need only recall to you the fact that it is the same in all religions. Women have ever been the stanchest defenders of the faith, the most bitter haters of an infidel, the most certain that their form of faith is the only truth.* Yet I do not hear this fact advanced to prove the divinity of the Koran or the book of
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WHAT IT TEACHES.
WHAT IT TEACHES.
It seemed to me that the time had come when women should know for themselves what the Bible teaches for them and what the pulpit has upheld; so I have looked it up a little, and although I cannot soil my lips nor your ears with much of it, there is enough, I think, that I may use to make any self-respecting, pure woman blush that she has sustained it by word or act. The Bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave,* that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob,** and that he may mu
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THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.
Some time ago I went to hear a noted minister, who preached a sermon about the "fruit of the tree of knowledge" to a congregation composed, as most congregations are, chiefly of women. Yet his sermon was a monument of insult, bigotry, and dogmatic intolerance that would have done honor to a witch-hunter several centuries ago. That women will subject themselves to such insults week after week, and that there are still men who will condescend to offer them, is a sad commentary upon their self-resp
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KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
Let man rid himself of the pernicious idea that knowledge is a crime, and then let only the man who is afraid to enter the world of thought go back to his native paradise of ignorance and rest. Let him cling to his old ideas. Humanity can do better without such a man, and humanity will be better without him. The time is past when his type is needed, and let us hope that it is nearly past when it can be found. He may have been abreast of the time in 1840, but his grave was dug, his epitaph writte
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AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.
AS MUCH INSPIRED AS ANY OF IT.
Did it ever occur to you that those absurd tales have as much claim to be called the "word of God" as any of the rest of it? How can people say they believe such nonsense? And how can they think it is evidence of goodness to believe it? They say it takes a horribly wicked man to doubt one of those yarns; and to come right out and say honestly, "I don't believe it," will elect you, on the first ballot, to a permanent seat in the lower house. Mr. Talmage says four out of five Christians "try to ex
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VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
IN an art collection in Boston there is a god—a redeemer—the best illustration I have ever seen of the vicarious atonement theory. It is a perfect representation of the agony endured by a helpless and innocent being in order to relieve the guilty of their guilt. This god was captured in Central Africa before his mission was complete, and there is still suffering-space upon his body unused. It is a wooden image of some frightful beast, and it is represented as suffering the most intense physical
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FEAR.
FEAR.
Every earnest thought, like every earnest thinker, adds something to the wealth of the world. Blind belief in the thought of another produces only hopeless mediocrity. Individual effort, not mere acceptance, marks the growth of the mind. The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear. Fear is the nearest approach to the ball and chain that this a
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BEGINNING TO THINK.
BEGINNING TO THINK.
The past education of woman gave her an outlook which simply embraced a husband or nothing at all, which was often only a choice between two of a kind. There are a great many women to-day who think that orthodoxy is as great nonsense as I do, but who are afraid to say so. They whisper it to each other. They are afraid of the slander of the Church. I want to help make it so that they will dare to speak. I want to do what I can to make it so that a mother won't have to evade the questions of her c
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CREEDS.
CREEDS.
I am sometimes asked, "What do you propose to give in place of this comforting faith? It makes people so happy. You take away all this blessing and you give no other in its place. What is your creed?" It has never seemed to me that a creed was the staff of life. Man cannot live by creeds alone. I should not object, however, to one that should read something like this: I believe in honesty. I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not know. I believe that a clean life and a tend
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SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.
SELF-CONTROL WHAT WE NEED.
I want to see the time come when mothers won't have to explain to their children that God has changed his mind about goodness and right since he used to incite murder; that eighteen hundred years ago he was a criminal with bloody hands and vile, polluted breath; that less than three hundred years ago his greatest pleasure was derived from witnessing the agony of pure young girls burning alive, whose only crime was beauty of face or honesty of thought.* I want it so that she won't allow her child
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VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.
VICARIOUS ATONEMENT NOT A CHRISTIAN INVENTION.
The doctrine of vicarious atonement is found in some form in most religions, and it is the body and soul of ours. The idea is not a Christian invention. It caused the Carthaginians to put to death their handsomest prisoners if a battle were won, the most promising children of their own nobility if it were lost. They were offerings to appease the gods. In old times there were peoples who believed that if a chief was guilty of a misdemeanor it was just to punish or enslave any one of his tribe. Th
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They are twin monsters inherited from intellectual pigmies.
They are twin monsters inherited from intellectual pigmies.
Let me read you a little prayer based upon this idea of right. I heard it offered as a thanksgiving tribute. "Oh, God, we do thank thee that thou didst give thy only son to die for us! We thank thee that the innocent has suffered for the guilty , and that through the suffering and death of thy most holy son our sins are blotted out!" Monstrous! How would that work in a court of justice? What would you think of a person who coolly thanked a judge who had knowingly allowed the wrong man to be hung
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GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.
GEOGRAPHICAL RELIGION.
A religion of faith is simply a question in geography. Keep your locality in mind and you are all right. On the banks of the Red Sea murder and slavery were a religious duty. On the Ganges infanticide is a virtue. In Rome you may steal or lie; you may deceive an innocent young girl and blast her life forever; you may stab your friend in the dark, and you are all right: but if you eat a piece of fried pork on Friday you are a lost man! China arranges her prayers in a machine, and turns her obliga
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REVELATION.
REVELATION.
Now this God either did or he did not believe in and command murder and rapine in the days when he used to sit around evenings and chat with Abraham and Moses and the rest of them. His especial plans and desires were "revealed" or they were not. The ideas of justice and right were higher in those days than they are now, or else we are wiser and better than God, or else the Bible is not his revealed will. You can take your choice. My choice is to keep my respect for divine justice and honor, and
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EVIDENCE OF FAITH.
EVIDENCE OF FAITH.
We are asked to be as fair toward the evidence of Bible witnesses as we are toward other evidence. We are told that we believe a great deal that we have never seen, and that we accept it on the word of others; that we have never seen a man hung, but that we believe that men have been hung; we never saw Napoleon's great feats of generalship, but we believe in them because history records them. Why not believe in the Bible as well as in other history? Why not, on the testimony of witnesses, believ
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DID HE TALK?
DID HE TALK?
In olden times—in the times of the Bible—men believed that animals sometimes used human language, and that beasts were wiser than their masters. I'm not now going to question that belief, but still I don't think that nowadays one-half of us would take the word of a horse on any important subject. You must remember, however, that it took an ass to know an angel at first sight in Balaam's time. Balaam never suspected that there was an angel in his path until that ass told him! In those days, on a
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WHAT YOU MAY THINK.
WHAT YOU MAY THINK.
Show me a grade of society that buckles its little belt of belief and faith around its members, and you will show me a collection of hopeless mediocres. The thinkers move out or die out. They object to being fossilized. They decline to go down to history as physical members of the nineteenth century, and mental members of the third. I would rather have the right to put on my monument, "She was abreast of her time," than have all the sounding texts and all the feathered tribes chiseled upon it. I
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INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW.
INTELLECTUAL GAG-LAW.
When the day comes when offences against the intellect are deemed as great crimes as offences against the person, intellectual gag-law will meet with no more respect than lynch-law does to-day, and will be recognized as the expression of an undeveloped moral and social condition. Choking an opinion into or out of a man's mind is no more respectable than the same argument applied to his body. Any form of faith, any religion, that has the vicarious element in it, is an insult to the intellect. It
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THE VICARIOUS THEORY THE CAUSE OF CRIME.
THE VICARIOUS THEORY THE CAUSE OF CRIME.
This idea of vicarious atonement has encouraged injustice and crime of every kind. Out of eighty-four men who have been hanged recently, seventy-one have gone directly to heaven. They asked the assembled spectators to be as good as they conveniently could, and meet them on the other shore. Their spiritual advisers administered the holy sacrament, and assured them that they were "lambs of the fold," and that a robe and a harp awaited them at the right hand of God. Just imagine a lamb in a robe, p
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REVISION.
REVISION.
As a system Christianity has had its day. Long ago it may have served a good purpose, but after eighteen hundred years it is worn threadbare and useless. If some of its milder tenets still cling to and fit our vast mediocrity, it is equally certain that the intellectual giants have moulted it as the birds moult their plumage in a dying year, and have taken on the bright new garments of higher thought, the spring plumage of intellectual liberty. When I heard that the Bible was going to be revised
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THE CHURCH'S MONEY-BOX.
THE CHURCH'S MONEY-BOX.
The Church used to keep a box about four feet long and two feet wide which it called the sacred ark of God. It was certain death for any man not a priest to touch that box. It is supposed that they kept in it gold and jewels which they extorted from their dupes, and that for fear of robbery they made superstition their banker. Well, they had to move that jewelry-box once for some reason, and it is not said that anything happened to the men who put it on the cart; but as the man who drove the oxe
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SHALL PROGRESS STOP?
SHALL PROGRESS STOP?
In its day the Bible was all very well, no doubt. It was the expression of the best that the Jewish people then knew in morals. In his time Christ was a great reformer and a brave man. His philosophy was then an onward spring, and he detested the shams of the Church. But with the knowledge we have to-day we should call that man a lunatic who tried to bind medical science by the teachings of that age, and maintained that when a man was sick he had a devil, and that if he got worse he had a whole
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CHURCH FICTIONS.
CHURCH FICTIONS.
IT is one of the glittering fictions of the Church that to her civilization is due,* and that it is to her benign influence and direction alone that woman has been advanced to her present position in the social scale; that without the Bible and the Church the status of woman in Christian countries would be lower and her lot harder. 1st. To prove this claim she directs attention to the status of woman in several non-Christian countries, and compares the degradation and hardship she there endures
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CIVILIZATION.
CIVILIZATION.
We are told that our superior civilization and high moral tone are due to Christianity. I think that this is not true. The whole, or at least much the larger and foundation part of the question of civilization—where it shall grow and where only live, where it shall drag and where scarcely exist—seems to me to be decided primarily by environment, the basis of which is climate and soil. Where the climate and soil are most favorable to the highest development; where the environment is neither too h
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COMPARATIVE STATUS.
COMPARATIVE STATUS.
It is a fact that in some Christian countries the actual status of woman is higher than it is to-day in any other country; but it is also true that her comparative status is often lower.* If we compare the actual status of woman in Russia or Spain (the two most intensely Christian countries to-day) with that of the Chinese or Hindoo woman, the showing may be somewhat in favor of the former; but on the other hand, her comparative position (when taken with that of the men of her country) does not
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WOMEN AS PERSONS.
WOMEN AS PERSONS.
Blackstone enumerates three "absolute rights of persons." First, "The right of personal security , in the legal enjoyment of life, limb, body, health, and reputation." Second, "The right of personal liberty—free power of locomotion without legal restraint." Third, "The right of private property—the free use and disposal of his own lawful acquisitions." None of these three primary and essential rights of persons were conceded to women, and Church law did not rank her as a person deprived of these
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EDUCATION.
EDUCATION.
In dealing with this point the humor of the situation is too plain to require comment, and I need only cite a few facts in order to place the beautiful little fiction where it belongs.* As to general education it is well known that the Church has fought investigation and persecuted science. From the third century to Bruno, and from Bruno to Darwin and Tyndall there is an unbroken chain of evidence as to her position in these matters and her opposition to the diffusion of knowledge. When, however
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AS WIVES.
AS WIVES.
We are told that women owe honorable marriage to Christianity;* that the more beautiful and tender relations of husband and wife find their root there; that Christianity protects and elevates the mother as no other law or religion ever has. Let us see. On this subject I find in Maine's "Ancient Law" these facts: Thus it will be seen that from the first, and extending down to the present, the Church did all she could to cast woman back into the night of the race from which in a great measure she
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NOT WOMAN'S FRIEND.
NOT WOMAN'S FRIEND.
After all that has preceded this page I need hardly do more with this count of the last claim of "Theological Fiction" than simply say, if the Bible is woman's best friend, then the clergy, without authority and in violation of the precepts of their own guide, have been her worst enemy, either through malice or ignorance; in either of which cases they are and have always been unfit to dictate, to lead opinion, or to receive a following as reliable guides for this world or the next. If they have
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MORALS.*
MORALS.*
After my lecture on Men, Women, and Gods, in Chicago, I was asked how it would be possible to train children to be good without a belief in the divinity of the Bible; how they could be made to know it is wrong to be and steal and kill. The belief that the Bible is the originator of these and like moral ideas, or that Christ was their first teacher, is far from the truth; and it is only another evidence of the duplicity or ignorance of the Church that such a belief obtains or that such a falsehoo
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Appendix A.
Appendix A.
1. "For a species increases or decreases in numbers, widens or contracts its habitat, migrates or remains stationary, continues an old mode of life or falls into a new one , under the combined influence of its intrinsic nature and the environing actions, inorganic and organic. "Beginning with the extrinsic factors, we see that from the outset several kinds of them are variously operative. They need but barely ennumerating. We have climate, hot, cold, or temperate, moist or dry, constant or varia
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Appendix B.
Appendix B.
1. "Napoleon himself was indifferent to Christianity, but he saw that the clergy were friends of despotism."—Buckle. 2. "Thus it is that a careful survey of history will prove that the Reformation made the most progress not in those countries where the people were most enlightened, but in those countries where, from political causes, the clergy were least able to withstand the people."—Buckle. 3. "Christian civilization in the twentieth century of its existence, degrades its women to labor fit o
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Appendix C.
Appendix C.
1. "Sappho flourished b. c. 600, and a little later; and so highly did Plato value her intellectual, as well as her imaginative endowments, that he assigned her the honors of sage as well as poet; and familiarly entitled her the 'tenth muse'"—Buckle, 2. "Wilkinson says among no ancient people had women such influence and liberty as among the ancient Egyptians."—Buckle. 3. "The Americans have in the treatment of women fallen below, not only their own democratic principles, but the practice of som
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Appendix D.
Appendix D.
Within the reign of the present sovereign Mrs. Gage tells us of a young girl being ordered by the Petty Sessions Bench back to the "service" of a landlord, from whom she had run away because such service meant the sacrifice of her honor. She refused to go and was put in jail ....
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Appendix E.
Appendix E.
1. "Women were taught by the Church and State alike, that the Feudal Lord or Seigneur had a right to them, not only against themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The law known as Marchetta , or Marquette, compelled newly-married women to a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the Feudal Lord from one to three days after their marriage, and from this custom, the oldest son of the serf was held as the son of the lord, 'as perchance it was he
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Appendix F.
Appendix F.
1. "The French government, about the middle of the eighteenth century, seems to have reached the maturity of its wickedness, allowing if not instigating religious persecutions of so infamous a nature that they would not be believed if they were not attested by documents of the courts in which the sentences were passed."—Buckle. 2. Of Louis XV., the eminently Christian king of France, Buckle says: "His harem cost more than 100,000,000 francs, and was composed of little girls . He was constantly d
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Appendix G.
Appendix G.
1. "The narrow range of their sympathies [the clergy's], and the intellectual servitude they have accepted, render them peculiarly unfitted for the office of educating the young, which they so persistently claim, and which, to the great misfortune of the world , they were long permitted to monopolize.... The almost complete omission from female education of those studies which most discipline and strengthen the intellect, increases the difference, while at the same time it has been usually made
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Appendix H.
Appendix H.
1. Fenelon, a celebrated French clergyman and writer of the seventeenth century, discouraged the acquisition of knowledge by women.—See Hallam's "Lit. of Europe." 2. "Perhaps it is to the spirit of Puritanism that we owe the little influence of women, and the consequent inferiority of their education."—Buckle. 3. "In England (1840) a distrust and contempt for reason prevails amongst religious circles to a wide extent; many Christians think it almost a matter of duty to decry the human faculties
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Appendix I.
Appendix I.
1. "The Roman [Pagan] religion was essentially domestic, and it was a main object of the legislator to surround marriage with every circumstance of dignity and solemnity. Monogamy was, from the earliest times, strictly enjoined , and it was one of the great benefits that have resulted from the expansion of Roman power, that it made this type dominant in Europe . In the legends of early Rome we have ample evidence both of the high moral estimate of women, and of their prominence in Roman life. Th
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Appendix J.
Appendix J.
1. "We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband; no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law. Casuists may say that the obligation of obedience stops short of participation in crime, but it certainly extends to everything else. She can do no act what
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Appendix K
Appendix K
"In this tendency [to depreciate extremely the character and position of women] we may detect in part the influence of the earlier Jewish writings, in which it is probable that most impartial observers will detect evident traces of the common oriental depreciation of women. The custom of money-purchase to the father of the bride was admitted. Polygamy was authorized, and practised by the wisest men on an enormous scale. A woman was regarded as the origin of human ills. A period of purification w
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Appendix L.
Appendix L.
1. "Mr. F. Newman, who looks on toleration as the result of intellectual progress, says: 'Nevertheless, not only does the Old Testament justify bloody persecution, but the New teaches that God will visit men with fiery vengeance for holding an erroneous creed ."—Buckle. 2. "The first great consequence of the decline of priestly influence was the rise of toleration.... I suspect that the impolicy of persecution was perceived before its wickedness. "—Ibid. 3. "While a multitude of scientific disco
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Appendix M.
Appendix M.
1. "The writers of the Middle Ages are full of accounts of nunneries that were like brothels.... The inveterate prevalence of incest among the clergy rendered it necessary again and again to issue the most stringent enactments that priests should not be permitted to live with their mothers or sisters .... An Italian bishop of the tenth century enigmatically described the morals of his time, when he declared, that if he were to enforce the canons against unchaste people administering ecclesiastic
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Appendix N.
Appendix N.
1. "The great and main duty which a wife, as a wife, ought to learn, and so learn as to practise it, is to be subject to her own husband.... There is not any husband to whom this honor of submission is not due; no personal infirmity, frowardness of nature; no, not even on the point of religion, doth deprive him of it."—Fergusson on "the Epistles." 2. "The sum of a wife's duty unto her husband is subjection. "—Abernethy. 3. "We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of obedience [
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Appendix O.
Appendix O.
"St. Gregory the Great describes the virtue of a priest, who through motives of piety had discarded his wife ... Their wives, in immense numbers , were driven forth with hatred and with scorn... Pope Urban II. gave license to the nobles to reduce to slavery the wives of priests who refused to abandon them."—Lecky....
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Appendix P.
Appendix P.
1. "Hallam denies that respect for women is due to Christianity. "—Buckle. 2. "In England, wives are still occasionally led to the market by a halter around the neck to be sold by the husband to the highest bidder."—Ibid. "The sale of a wife with a halter around her neck is still a legal transaction in England. The sale must be made in the cattle market, as if she were a mare, all women being considered as mares by old English law, and indeed called 'mares' in certain counties where genuine old
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Appendix Q.
Appendix Q.
1. "The five writers to whose genius we owe the first attempt at comprehensive views of history were Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon. Of these the second was but a cold believer in Christianity, if, indeed, he believed in it at all; and the other four were avowed and notorious infidels."—Buckle. 2 "Here, then, we have the starting-point of progress— scepticism .... All, therefore, that men want is no hindrance from their political and religious rulers.... Until common minds
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Appendix R.
Appendix R.
"He [Mohammed] promulgated a mass of fables, which he pretended to have received from heaven.... After enjoying for twenty years a power without bounds, and of which there exists no other example , he announced publicly, that, if he had committed any act of injustice, he was ready to make reparation. All were silent.... He died; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to his people will be seen to change the face of three-quarters of the globe.... I shall add that the religion of Mohammed is th
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Appendix S.
Appendix S.
The claim is so often and so boldly made that Infidelity produces crime, and that Christianity, or belief, or faith, makes people good, that the following statistics usually produce a rather chilly sensation in the believer when presented in the midst of an argument based upon the above mentioned claim. I have used it with effect. The person upon whom it is used will never offer that argument to you again. The following statistics were taken from the British Parliamentary reports, made on the in
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Appendix T.
Appendix T.
"Moreover, as Goethe has already shown, the celebrated Mosaic moral precepts, the so-called Ten Commandments, were not upon the tables upon which Moses wrote the laws of the covenant which God made with his people. "Even the extraordinary diversity of the many religions diffused over the surface of the earth suffices to show that they can stand in no necessary connection with morals, as it is well known that wherever tolerably well-ordered political and social conditions exist, the moral precept
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Appendix U.
Appendix U.
"And here it may be remarked, once for all, that no man who has subscribed to creeds and formulas, whether in theology or philosophy, can be an unbiased investigator of the truth or an unprejudiced judge of the opinions of others. His sworn preconceptions warping his discernment, adherence to his sect or party engenders intolerance to the honest convictions of other inquirer? Beliefs we may and must have, but a belief to be changed with new and advancing knowledge impedes no progress, while a cr
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Appendix V.
Appendix V.
Since I have recorded this incident of my lecture in Chicago, it is peculiarly fitting and pleasant to be able to give the following extract from the review of the first edition of this book printed in the Chicago Times . No great daily paper would have dared to print such a comment a few years ago. To-day it is stated as a matter quite beyond controversy: "She takes considerable pains to show what one would think need scarcely be insisted upon in our day , that the morals of civilization—morals
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ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY AND OTHERS.
ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY AND OTHERS.
Up to the present time I have tried to reply personally to each one who has favored me with a letter of thanks, criticism, or praise of the little book, "Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures," just published, but I find that if I continue to do this I shall have but little time for anything else. The very unexpected welcome which the book has received prompts me to take this plan and means of replying to many who have honored me by writing me personal letters. First, permit me to thank those
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LETTER TO THE CLEVELAND CONGRESS OF FREETHINKERS, OCTOBER, 1885.
LETTER TO THE CLEVELAND CONGRESS OF FREETHINKERS, OCTOBER, 1885.
I send my greetings to the Congress of Freethinkers assembled at Cleveland, and regret, more than I can express, that I am unable to be there and hear all the good things you will hear, and see all the earnest workers you will see. The Freethinkers of America ought to be a very proud and enthusiastic body, when they have in their presidential chair the ablest orator of modern times, and the broadest, bravest, and most comprehensive intellect that has ever been called "Mr. President" in this land
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