bodes forth the knowledge and the belief of the people at the time it
was made, and in no book is there any knowledge found, except that of
the people who wrote it. In no book is there found any knowledge, except
that of the time in which it was written. Barbarians have produced, and
always will produce barbarian religions; barbarians have produced and
always will produce ideas in harmony with their surroundings, and all
the religions of the past were produced by barbarians. We are making
religions to-day. That is to say, we are changing them, and the religion
of to-day is not the religion of one year ago. What changed it? Science
has done it; education and the growing heart of man has done it. And
just to the extent that we become civilized ourselves, will we improve
the religion of our fathers. If the religion of one hundred years ago,
compared with the religion of to-day is so low, what will it be in one
thousand years?
If we continue making the inroads upon orthodoxy which we have been
making during the last twenty-five years, what will it be fifty years
from to-night? It will have to be remonetized by that time, or else it
will not be legal tender. In my judgment, every religion that stands
by appealing to miracles is dishonoured. Every religion in the world has
denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they
all tell the truth--about others. Why? suppose Mr. Smith should tell
Mr. Brown that he--Smith--saw a corpse get out of the grave, and that
when he first saw it, it was covered with the worms of death, and that
in his presence it was re-clothed in healthy, beautiful flesh. And then
suppose Mr. Brown should tell Mr. Smith, "I saw the same thing myself.
I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man rise." Suppose then that
Smith should say to Brown, "You're a liar," and Brown should reply to
Smith, "And you're a liar," what would you think? It would simply be
because Smith, never having seen it himself, didn't believe Brown; and
Brown, never having seen it, didn't believe Smith had. Now, if Smith had
really seen it, and Brown told him he had seen it too, then Smith would
regard it as a corroboration of his story, and he would regard Brown
as one of his principal witnesses. But, on the contrary, he says, "You
never saw it." So when a man says, "I was upon Mount Sinai, and there I
met God, and he told me, 'Stand aside and let me drown these people;'"
and another man says to him, "I was up upon a mountain, and there I met
the Supreme Brahma," and Moses says, "That's not true," and contends
that the other man never did see Brahma, and he contends that Moses
never did see God, that is in my judgment proof that they both speak
truly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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