The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets — John Shaqi
The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal SecretsWestbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Religion
The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets
Westbrook, Richard B. (Richard Brodhead)
Free thought
Nor have we any objection that moral teachers should be paid for their
services as other teachers are paid; but when educated men can afford to
teach without pecuniary compensation, we think it would be well for them
to do so; and when the teacher of morals adopts the example of St. Paul,
“working with his own hands” and “living in his own hired house,” we
think the world will be the better for it. Let us hope that the day will
soon dawn when clergymen will consider themselves moral teachers only,
and for ever repudiate the false pretence of special authority and
priestly sanctimoniousness, and clearly understand that mediocrity and
stupidity will not much longer be tolerated because of the so-called
sacredness of a profession.
That the estimate here made of sacerdotalists may not seem extreme and
unjustifiable, I add the testimony of one of the most honored
ecclesiastics of the Established Church of England, Canon Farrar, who in
a recent sermon on priestcraft said: “In all ages the exclusive
predominance of priests has meant the indifference of the majority and
the subjection of the few. It has meant the slavery of men who will not
act, and the indolence of men who will not think, and the timidity of
men who will not resist, and the indifference of men who do not care.”
Alas that “holy hands” should so often be laid “upon skulls that cannot
teach and will not learn”!
Let me here quote from Professor Huxley an admirable statement of the
facts in the case:
“Everywhere have they (sacerdotalists) broken the spirit of wisdom and
tried to stop human progress by quotations from their Bibles or books of
their saints. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern
physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the
incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall
number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of
Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name
blasted by the mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? Who shall count the host
of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to
harmonize impossibilities; whose life has been wasted in the attempt to
force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism,
compelled by the outcry of the same strong party? It is true that if
philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged.
Extinguished theologies lie about the cradle of every science as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that
whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has
been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not
annihilated, scotched if not slain. But orthodoxy learns not, neither
can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it
is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis
contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with
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