Is the Morality of Jesus Sound? / A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society

No vision of heaven, no thought of glory for himself, can tempt Othello to forget his crime. He prefers hell for himself as the only thing with which his awakened conscience can be calmed. That is the way to be converted!

The Christian doctrine of forgiveness is the doctrine of license. Jesus commands us to forgive "seventy times seven." He does not seem to realize that the more accommodating we are to the criminal, the more we sap the foundations of morality. "Judge not," says Jesus, "that ye be not judged." That is very queer advice. We are not to see wrong or crime in others lest they should find the same in us. It is the religion of a guilty conscience—which abstains from criticising lest his own faults should be exposed. "You say nothing about me and I'll agree to say nothing about you," is a conspiracy to defeat justice. "For with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged," continues Jesus. Not at all. If a man has slandered you, must you slander him? If you have been robbed, must you rob in return? Do you have to judge another with the same prejudice, bigotry and malice with which he judges you? And must you refrain from passing any righteous judgments from fear of being misjudged or misunderstood by the world? Were we to follow this false teaching, we would be giving crime a free sway,—with every tongue tied against it.

But did not Jesus say "Love one another," and is not that enough? If it were enough, the past twenty centuries would have been centuries of peace and brotherhood. Instead, they have been centuries of war and persecution. The world is in need of a Jesus who can make people love. If Jesus has this power—why is Europe still armed to the teeth? I do not deny the good intentions of Jesus. I question his power. He has not even succeeded in making his own followers, Catholics and Protestants, to love one another. Christianity has had a good, long chance to show results. A religion which is split up into an ever-increasing number of sects is not going to bring about unity and brotherhood. "He that believeth not shall be damned," and "depart from me ye cursed," takes from the rose of love both petals and perfume, and leaves only the thorns.

But Jesus also said "Love your enemies." The advice of Confucius to "love our benefactors and to be just to our enemies," is more sensible. It is neither practical nor desirable to love one's enemies. Can we love the slanderer, the oppressor, the murderer? If our "enemy" is not all this, he is not an enemy. But we can be just to the people who are mean, deceitful, spiteful or pitiless toward us. Did Jesus love his enemies? Why then was not Judas saved? And why did he say to his disciples that for the people who rejected them there awaited the awful fate of Sodom and Gomorrah?

But did not Jesus pray for his murderers on the cross? Was his prayer answered? If there is any truth in history, the Jews have suffered for their supposed participation in the tragedy of Calvary more than words can describe. I have always thought that the prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," was put in Jesus' mouth, at the last moment, for a theatrical effect. If the atonement was one of the eternal decrees of God, the people who put Jesus to death were only carrying it out. If, however, knowing that Jesus was a God, they, nevertheless, wanted to kill him, they must have been imbeciles to suppose a God could be murdered safely; but if they did not know the truth and committed the crime ignorantly, they were not forgiven for it, and the bible describes the fearful punishment prepared for them.

Another much commended saying of Jesus is the following: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me." This has been interpreted as a command to help and succor even the poorest of the poor. I admire the thought. I applaud the generosity. But would it not have been grander, if Jesus, instead of saying, "ye have done it unto me," had said, "ye have done it unto Humanity." "For my sake" is not so large and noble as "for Humanity's sake." One of my neighbor preachers said the other day that he loved the poor and the lost "because Jesus loved them." Then, it was Jesus he loved, and not his fellows. Evidently he would not love them, if Jesus did not. What would become of this preacher's interest in his fellowmen, should he ever lose his faith in Christ? That explains why people often say that without religion there can be no morality. We desire a morality that can outlive all the gods. Christ or no Christ,—can we still be kind and just and compassionate toward the weak and the unfortunate?

"If you take Jesus Christ out of the world, the world's a carcass, and man's a disaster," cries the preacher at the top of his voice. Of course. If everything is to be done for Jesus' sake, what will become of morality, civilization or humanity with Jesus dropped out? We need no better excuse for summoning all our energies to combat a religion that commits the destinies of our world to the keeping of one man,—and he, in all probability,—a myth.[4]

Let us recapitulate: Jesus taught a magical, not a scientific morality. It was by being born of "water and the Holy Ghost," whatever that might mean, and not by intellectual and moral effort, that people were to be saved. He placed the creed above the deed, and himself above humanity. "Believe in me, do good for my sake," gives to morality a sectarian stamp, or taint, which is bound to corrupt it. Morality is born of liberty. Christianity is the religion of absolutism, in which Jesus or God is everything, and man a mere puppet. Christianity denies to man the right to reason. He must only obey. There is no morality where there is no liberty. By his doctrine of an impending catastrophe, a future hell, and by his promises of fabulous wealth and glory beyond—Jesus helped to disturb and distort the judgment of the weak and the fearful, preventing thereby the cultivation of sane thoughts of life. The morality of Jesus was the morality of panic.

And what do we offer in place of supernaturalism, whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, or any other "ism"? In place of magic or miracle, we offer science; in place of "belief," we offer knowledge—the open light of day and the unhampered interchange of human love and thought. In place of Christ or God—both absent, and neither dependent upon anything we can do for him—we offer Humanity, forever at our side, and in daily need of our bravest service and most unstinted love.

THE STORY OF MY MIND
OR
HOW I BECAME A RATIONALIST

Price, Fifty Cents

¶ In this latest publication of the Independent Religious Society, M. M. Mangasarian describes his religious experience—how, starting as a Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and a pastor of the Spring Garden Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, he thought and fought his way up to

RATIONALISM

¶ The book contains a dedication to "My Children," in which the author says:

"I am going to put the story in writing, that you may have it with you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and intimate period in my career as a teacher of men."

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