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From
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Bible Teaching and
Religious Practice
from Europe and Elsewhere
and A Pen Warmed Up In Hell
by Mark Twain
hand-typed by Cliff Walker from
"Mark Twain: Selected Writings of an American Skeptic"
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Religion had its share in the changes of civilization and national character, of
course.
What share? The lion's. In the history of the human race this has always been the
case, will always be the case, to the end of time, no doubt; or at least until man by
the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high --
some billions of years hence, say.
The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical
practice changes. For eighteen hundred years these changes were slight -- scarcely
noticeable. The practice was allopathic -- allopathic in its rudest and crudest form.
The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights,
drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be
found in the store's stock; he bled him, cupped him, purged him, puked him,
salivated him, never gave his system a chance to rally, nor nature a chance to help.
He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day
during all that time. The stock in the store was made up of about equal portions of
baleful and debilitating poisons, and healing and comforting medicines; but the
practice of the time confined the physician to the use of the former; by consequence,
he could only damage his patient, and that is what he did.
Not until far within our century was any considerable change in the practice
introduced; and then mainly, or in effect only, in Great Britain and the United States.
In the other countries to- day, the patient either still takes the ancient treatment or
does not call the physician at all. In the English-speaking countries the changes
observable in our century were forced by that very thing just referred to -- the revolt
of the patient against the system; they were not projected by the physician. The
patient fell to doctoring himself, and the physician's practice began to fall off. He
modified his method to get back his trade. He did it gradually, reluctantly; and never
yielded more at a time than the pressure compelled. At first he relinquished the daily
dose of hell and damnation, and administered it every other day only; next he allowed
another day to pass; then another and presently another; when he had restricted it at
last to Sundays, and imagined that now there would surely be a truce, the
homeopath arrived on the field and made him abandon hell and damnation
altogether, and administered Christ's love, and comfort, and charity and compassion
in its stead. These had been in the drug store all the time, gold labeled and
conspicuous among the long shelfloads of repulsive purges and vomits and poisons,
and so the practice was to blame that they had remained unused, not the pharmacy.
To the ecclesiastical physician of fifty years ago, his predecessor for eighteen
centuries was a quack; to the ecclesiastical physician of to-day, his predecessor of
fifty years ago was a quack. To the every-man-his-own-ecclesiastical-doctor of --
when? -- what will the ecclesiastical physician of to-day be? Unless evolution, which
has been a truth ever since the globes, suns, and planets of the solar system were
but wandering films of meteor dust, shall reach a limit and become a lie, there is but
one fate in store for him.
The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is
very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and
sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after
some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any
could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God's will
and desire, surely it was she, since she was God's specially appointed representative
in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the
texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this
thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position
that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at
last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see
him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice
that
has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never
corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take
the
credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.
Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty
years, and her church's consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an
active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England's interest in the business may
be
called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its
revival
after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to
say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided
the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching
companies. The first regular English slave hunter -- John Hawkins, of still revered
memory -- made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of
surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling
their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor
of knighthood on him -- a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in
other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic
English
frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave,
kneeling and in chains. Sir John's work was the invention of Christians, was to
remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a
millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and
women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might
be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the
meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of
his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called
The Jesus.
But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious
that
when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate
Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle,
but in the end the slave trade had to go -- and went. The Biblical authorization
remained, but the practice changed.
Then -- the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began
straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was
unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so
many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England
still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify
his
wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had
tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been
obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to
him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.
Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft,
here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not
find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one --
the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight,
and
then did what it always does, joined the procession -- at the tail end. Slavery fell.
The
slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that
they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a
lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews,
and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night
and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole
hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul
blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been.
One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no
such thing as a witch -- the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At
Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it
in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The
parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated
laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the
magistrate
had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep
the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came
imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.
There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell
fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains.
More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts
that authorized them remain.
It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has
driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a
good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the
direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some
semblance of human decency.
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
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