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Through a thousand different cha

As agitators, Jesus and his modern continuators shall be exclusively considered in these pages. However, it must be distinctly understood that the spiritual and temporal in all cosmogonies, are so intricately interwoven, that it is almost impossible to completely divorce them. Like the Siamese twins, Gods and Governments are inextricably bound together; so much so indeed, that if you kill one, the other ca

Whatever their primitive purity (or impurity), all operative creedal philosophies are essentially civil and military codes, police regulations. ‘Religion is a power, a political engine, and if there was no God, I would have to invent one,’ said the great Napoleon. In letter and in spirit, Christianity is above all things a political theory, and a theory that often takes the form of raging hysterics.

Religions are the matrix in which public institutions are generally molded. This has ever been well understood by the dominant leaders of mankind, from Numa to Brigham Young, from Solon to Loyola, from Constantine to the lowest Levite hireling, who gets paid in dimes and cents for his unctuous mock — dithyrambs.

‘All ye are brethren.’

Are all men really brethren? — Negro and Indian, Blackfellow, Kalmuck, and Coolie — the well-born, and the base-bred,[2] — beer-soaked loafer, and hero-hearted patriot — belted chieftain and ignoble mechanic-slave, — pot of iron and pot of clay?

What proof is there that the brotherhood-of-man hypothesis is in accordance with nature? On what trustworthy biologic, historic or other evidence does it rest? If it is natural, then rivalry, competition, and strife are u

Christ might well and truthfully have said unto his followers ‘Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will bind you in unbreakable bonds, and load you down like an ass between two burdens.’

The ‘poor and ignorant’ were his first followers — the vagrants, the disinherited shiftless classes: and to this very day, the poorer and more ignorant men and women are, the more eager are they to follow his religious ideals, or the political mille

‘If we only lived as Christ lived, what a beautiful world this would be,’ saith all thoughtless ones. If we lived as Christ lived, there would be none of us left to live. He begat no children; he labored not for his bread; he possessed neither house nor home; he merely talked. Consequently he must have existed on charity, or have stolen bread. ‘If we all lived like Christ,’ would there have been anyone left to labor, to be begged from, to be stolen from? ‘If we all lived like Christ’ is thus a self-evident absurdity.

No wonder that it is recorded: ‘Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God chose the foolish things of the world, and God chose the weak things of the world, and the things that are despised.’ Nothing else would have anything to do with him. Christ was indeed, the prophet of the credulous rabble during three years of active agitation, and it abandoned him in his hour of need (what always happens under similar circumstances) for the rabble is ever cowardly, ungenerous, suspicious, unfathomably base. It has never yet had a leader of commanding ability (either in peace or in war) that it did not ultimately desert or betray, i.e. if he did not take the precaution to make himself its master.

After permitting Christ to be butchered, the mob thereupon set him up as their Divinity, and erected altars to his renown. Slaves, women, madmen, lepers, magdalenes, were the earliest Christians, and to this hour, women, children, slaves and lunatics are the raw material of the Christian Church.

Primitive Christianity cu

Both ancient and modern Christianism and all that has its root therein, is the negation of everything grand, noble, generous, heroic, and the glorification of everything feeble, atrocious, dishonorable, dastardly. The cross is now, and ever has been, an escutcheon of shame. It represents a gallows, and a Semite slave swinging thereon. For two thousand years it has absolutely overturned human reason, overthrown common sense, infected the world with madness, submissiveness, degeneracy.

Truly, there is a way which seemeth right unto a people, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.

Is the Golden Rule a rational rule? — Is it not rather a menial rule — a coward rule — a best-policy rule? Why is it ‘right’ for one man to do unto others as he would have others do to him and, what is right? If ‘others’ are unable to injure him or ‘do good’ to him, why should he consider them at all? Why should he take any more notice of them than of so many worms? If they are endeavoring to injure him, and able to do it, why should he refrain from returning the compliment? Should he not combat them, does not that give them carte-blanche to injure and destroy him? May it not be ‘doing good’ to others, to war against them, to a

Is it reasonable to ask preying animals, to do unto others as they would be done by? — If they acted accordingly would they, could they survive? If some only accepted the Golden Rule as their guiding moral maxim, would they not become a prey to those who refused to abide thereby?

Upon what reasonable and abiding sanction does this ‘Rule’ rest? — Has it ever been in actual operation among men? — Can it ever be successfully practiced on earth — or anywhere else? — Did Jesus Christ practice it himself upon all occasions? — Did His apostles, his ‘sons of thunder’ practice it? — Did Peter the boaster do so, when he ‘denied Him’ for fear of arrest at the camp-fire? — Did Judas the financier, when he sold him for net cash? Also, how many of his modern lip-servants actually practice it in their daily business intercourse with each other? How Many?

2

These terms are used in the strict Darwinian sense.