The Bible of nature : $b or, The principles of secularism. A contribution to the religion of the futureOswald, Felix L. (Felix Leopold)
Religion
The Bible of nature : $b or, The principles of secularism. A contribution to the religion of the future
Oswald, Felix L. (Felix Leopold)
Secularism
The doctrine of salvation by grace had substituted favor and caprice
for the rights of natural justice, and for a series of centuries the
consequences of its teachings were seen in the treatment of nearly
every benefactor of mankind. The prince who devoted the fruits of his
conquests to the feeding of countless convent drones, let scholars
starve and loaded the discoverer of a New World with chains. His
successors who lavished the treasures of their vast empire on pimps and
clerical mountebanks, let Cervantes perish in penury. The sovereign
protector of a thousand stall-fed prelates refused to relieve the last
distress of John Kepler. The moralists who thought it a grievance that
the church should be denied the right of tithing the lands of southern
Spain, had no pity for the sufferings of the men whose labor had made
those lands blossom like the gardens of paradise, and who were exiled
by thousands for the crime of preferring the unitary God of the Koran
to the trinitary gods of the New Testament.
E.—REFORM.
The perversion of our moral standards by the dogmas of an antinatural
creed is still glaringly evident in the prevailing notions of natural
justice and the precedence of social duties. The modern Crœsus who
deems it incumbent on his duties as a citizen and a Christian to
contribute an ample subvention to the support of an orthodox seminary,
has no hesitation in swelling his already bloated income by reducing
the wages of a hundred starving factory children and taking every
sordid advantage in coining gain from the loss of helpless tenants and
dependants. The pious Sabbatarians who doom their poor neighbors to an
earthly Gehenna and premature death by depriving them of every chance
for healthful recreation, lavish their luxuries and their endearments
on the caged cutthroat who edifies his jailer by renouncing the
vanities of this worldly sphere and ranting about the bliss of the New
Jerusalem. The bank cashier who would never be pardoned for kicking the
hind-parts of a mendicant missionary is readily absolved from the sin
of such secular indiscretions as embezzling the savings of a few
hundred widows and orphans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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