: The Bible of nature by Oswald Felix L Felix Leopold - Secularism

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PAGE. Introduction, 9

THE BIBLE OF NATURE; OR, THE PRINCIPLES OF SECULARISM.

INTRODUCTION.

From the dawn of authentic history to the second century of our chronological era the nations of antiquity were beguiled by the fancies of supernatural religions. For fifteen hundred years the noblest nations of the Middle Ages were tortured by the inanities of an antinatural religion. The time has come to found a Religion of Nature.

The principles of that religion are revealed in the monitions of our normal instincts, and have never been wholly effaced from the soul of man, but for long ages the consciousness of their purpose has been obscured by the mists of superstition and the systematic inculcation of baneful delusions. The first taste of alcohol revolts our normal instincts; nature protests against the incipience of a ruinous poison-vice; but the fables of the Bacchus priests for centuries encouraged that vice and deified the genius of intemperance. Vice itself blushed to mention the immoralities of the pagan gods whose temples invited the worship of the heavenly-minded. Altars were erected to a goddess of lust, to a god of wantonness, to a god of thieves.

That dynasty of scamp-gods was, at last, forced to abdicate, but only to yield their throne to a celestial Phalaris, a torture-god who cruelly punished the gratification of the most natural instincts, and foredoomed a vast plurality of his children to an eternity of horrid and hopeless torments. Every natural enjoyment was denounced as sinful. Every natural blessing was vilified as a curse in disguise. Mirth is the sunshine of the human mind, the loveliest impulse of life's truest children; yet the apostle of Antinaturalism promised his heaven to the gloomy world-despiser. "Blessed are they that mourn." "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily." "Be afflicted, and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness." "Woe unto you that laugh." "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

The love of health is as natural as the dread of pain and decrepitude. The religion of Antinaturalism revoked the health laws of the Mosaic code, and denounced the care even for the preservation of life itself. "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on." "Bodily exercise profiteth but little." "There is nothing from without a man that, entering him, can defile him."

The love of knowledge awakens with the dawn of reason; a normal child is naturally inquisitive; the wonders of the visible creation invite the study of every intelligent observer. The enemies of nature suppressed the manifestations of that instinct, and hoped to enter their paradise by the crawling trail of blind faith. "Blessed are they that do not see and yet believe." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." "He that believeth not is condemned already."

The love of freedom, the most universal of the protective instincts, was suppressed by the constant inculcation of passive resignation to the yoke of "the powers that be," of abject submission to oppression and injustice. "Resist not evil." "Of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again." "Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." "Submit yourselves to the powers that be."

The love of industry, the basis of social welfare, that manifests itself even in social insects, was denounced as unworthy of a true believer: "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? what shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the gentiles seek." "Take no thought of the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." "Ask and it shall be given you," i.e., stop working and rely on miracles and prayer.

The hope for the peace of the grave, the last solace of the wretched and weary, was undermined by the dogmas of eternal hell, and the pre?rdained damnation of all earth-loving children of nature: "He that hateth not his own life cannot be my disciple." "The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." "They shall be cast into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "They shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb." "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."

For fifteen centuries the pilot of the church lured our forefathers to a whirlpool of mental and physical degeneration, till the storms of the Protestant revolt enabled them to break the spell of the fatal eddies, and, like a swimmer saving his naked life, mankind has struggled back to the rescuing rocks of our mother earth. Lured by the twinkle of reflected stars, we have plunged into the maelstrom of Antinaturalism, and after regaining the shore, by utmost efforts, it seems now time to estimate the expenses of the adventure.

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