The lantern of Diogenes

Front matter

I

m

Class _£xll Book

Introduction

I have no apology to make for writing this book. It is the result of many years' study, and the offspring of the best thought of my life. If its readers do not like it, they are welcome to say what they please about it.

Criticism is invited and abuse will not ruffle the temper of its author.

Several scholars have read it, but no one has criticised it, and only one has abused it. Bishop Strange did himself poor service in his misapprehension of its intent and meaning. His letter and my answer follow.

Elder P. D. Gold read it and said: "I have enjoyed reading your book, which is peculiar. I have been puzzled at times to know where you are and what you believe."

Unlike Bishop Strange, he could not place me on one side or the other. He comprehended the intent of the book — that of presenting both sides of every question discussed, and leaving the verdict to the reader.

It is easy to see from the Bishop's letter where the "peep behind the curtain" stuck him deepest. Poverty of resource has ever placed the church in a false light, and never has there been a time when it ran so severe a gantlet. The reader will do well to make no decision until he has read every line and digested the whole. Let him do as the Bishop started to do, when he balked. Let him stick a pin at the first rut — the first jolt he finds in the road, and not wait until he gets to his journey's end and then say, the road is had.

If the good Bishop will spend another three days, or, boiler, three weeks, on that stumpy road where he found so many obstructions, and point out that particular stump where "There is no right and no wrong in the world," I will dynamite thai x Introduction.

stump and fill up the hole. And if he will point out any passage in Ingersoll's writings where he inveighed against the "words and character" of Jesus, I will confess that I am a careless reader.

Book I shows that I am not an admirer of Ingersoll, but I believe in "giving the devil his due"; for —

"Bad as he is, the devil may be abused, Falsely charged and causelessly accused ; When men, unwilling to be blamed alone, Shift off the crimes on him which are their own."

A prominent lawyer of Richmond, Ky., writes : "To me, your book has been a source of inspiration along certain lines. I feel more than repaid by a hasty and, to me, unsatisfactory reading. I recall the fact that your style has the happy amalgam of Miltonic sonorous English and the incisiveness of a chancery brief.

"I notice you ask for my criticism. Am I an Edinburgh Review, and are you to be the George Gordon Byron? No, no, 'excuse me' — do not excruciate me upon this crux of the Krino."

Relative to Book I or Part I of the Lantern, he writes : "It seems to me that this part of the book might, with propriety, to say the least, be expunged. I fail to realize in ideas its logical connection with either the 'Jew' or the subsequent career of the school-teacher."

Singular as it is, the more a man knows, the more difficult it becomes to present a subject in language that can be easily comprehended; yet it seems strange that careful and scholarly readers can make such egregious mistakes in the interpretation of what seems to be a very simple matter. One places me on the side of the agnostic, because the arguments on that side appeal more strongly to him, while the other objects to Book I or Part I of the Lantern, because he cannot see the connection between that and the second part of the book.

Introduction. xi

The Schoolmaster, a deist, contends with two antagonists — Ingersoll, an atheist, and the "Jew," who is a Christian. Atheism is combated in his argument with Ingersoll; Christianity in that with the "Wanderer."

Book I shows Mr. Eliot's belief in God; Book II, his unbelief in the Christian religion; and the whole book shows that he was a Unitarian.

If some deductions from scriptural texts jar upon the timid, pious mind, or certain conclusions drawn from the admissions cf the adversaries of Orthodoxy vex the wiseacre, let the reader remember that simple fairness demands that he reach his verdict only after careful consideration of all the arguments based upon the evidence. If he endorse the witness, he must not repudiate the testimony, and as Q. K. Philander Doesticks implies in his "apology" for writing Pluri-bus-tah , "Si stulti pactum facias, stulti stipendium tibi accipiendum sit."

Take the case and say how it is.

1ST. B. Herrixg.

BISHOP STRANGE'S LETTER.

Bishop's House, Wilmington, N. C, September 5, 1906.

My deae Dr. Herring: — I send you your book by express to-day. I have been reading it steadily and carefully for the past three days. I started with pencil and paper, taking notes, to commend, to criticise, and even to answer some of the positions of the Schoolmaster. Then, I concluded to read the book straight through and get its impression as a whole. I have done that, my dear Doctor ; and the impression is so sad and terrible that I will attempt no particular criticism nor reply.

In the early part of your book you say that conscience is no guide at all in treading the labyrinth of life; and, later on, you even urge that conscience is the cause of sin. You discredit Faith, telling men that it is just as likely to lead them to superstition and misery as to truth and happiness. The main part of the book is a strong argument for the doctrine of absolute Necessity in all creation and a denial of human responsibility. There is no right and no wrong in the world ; the murderer and ravisher are not to be blamed or punished ; and the man is not to be praised who gives his life to relieve human suffering and to make this earth a sweeter, brighter, better place. They had to do what they did ; and so there is no blame nor praise.

You make Holy Scripture a magic book, penned by the hand of omniscient God, with every "t" crossed and every "i" dotted by Him ; and, then, you sneer at the position in mind and morals which such an interpretation of the Inspiration of Scripture places us. You make the great drama of Job a jest, and you excuse the treachery of Judas.

Your chapter on the teachings of Jesus is the bitterest and most unfair arraignment of the words and character of the noblest man in human history that I have read in literature, with the possible exception of Ingersoll. How can you define Jesus as a man who "deserts his best friends and forsakes those who are in sympathy with him to grovel with the ciiii'iillc" ; whose teaching is "the inculcation of selfishness," and whose advice is "to disregard the duties of this present world"?

xiv Bishop Strange 's Letter.

You finish your book with a horrible sermon, as if it were the best sermon that Christianity can give, which unreservedly declares that all the heathen are tortured forever in hell ; which declares that the distinguishing difference between Christianity and Materialism is, in regard to the end of man, that the one consigns most men to the everlasting tortures of hell, and the other consigns all men to worse tortures in a deeper hell. Ah, yes, Doctor, as I read your book, I see the ONE, Almighty, self-existent, all-wise Being creating this world with a purpose, forcing all men through life necessarily to this purpose; and that the end and meaning of this purpose is HELL — hell, flaming, torturing hell for all men, but — but — an infinitesimal few who, despite their reason and their moral sense, simply declare that they believe in Jesus and feel that they are converted by the Cross.

It is not a sufficient answer, Doctor, to say that you have stated only one side and that you have tried to find answers for the other side. I do not think, as a matter of fact, that any man can answer his own real arguments. Here it is so evident which is your side ; it is argued out so much more clearly and fully that men follow you in the argument, unless they, as few do, have the intellect and learning to argue for themselves. There is much fine, original matter in the book; many true, beautiful, and wise things; but you can give them to the world in another setting. Pardon me, if I have been too frank, Doctor; but we have been so in all our talk; and I agreed to be that when I took the book.

With good wishes for you and Mrs. Herring,

Sincerely yours,

Robert Strange.

REPLY TO BISHOP STRANGE

My dear Bishop : — The book came safely by express, your letter following next day.

I am disappointed in your letter. You have not done yourself justice.

Queasiness is no substitute for argument, and hypercriticism never yet bettered an evil.

I asked for bread, and you have given me what I already had — a stone. Or, rather, I asked for a fish, and you gave me a serpent. The stone I easily picked up as I journeyed through the Sacred Volume; but the serpent — oh, the serpent! When will he cease to crawl on his belly and eat dust?

You assume more than the arguments justify. If the evidence is stronger on the materialistic side than it is on the other, why should you assume that I am more on the one than the other?

I did my best on both sides, and nothing but poverty of evidence kept me from answering the Schoolmaster satisfactorily to you. I called on the brightest scholars and greatest theologians of this age; and I am proud to say that I have been treated with the utmost courtesy, and given all the aid at their command. I stopped writing the book a whole year because I could not answer some of the Schoolmaster's questions, nor find a man equal to the task. In wayoff Boston I, at last, found a doughty champion of the Cross who, with a boldness made of knowledge, and a finesse to adorn Machiavel, came to my rescue and bridged the gap.

Borden P. Bowne's letter is incorporated in the book, word for word and letter for letter. It is a masterpiece of strategy, steganography, and scholarship — a genuine sesqtt&pedaHa verba. He calls it Transcendental Empiricism. Whatever that means, it is an answer, and enabled me to go on with the hook.

To Bishop Candler I sent the chapters "Job" and "Judas," asking for a reply. lie did his best, and was exceedingly courteous in his manner and style. It is in the chapter headed, "The Lesson." and breathes the spirit of tine Christian humility. If "weak," as you intimated when we read the Chapters together, it is in BtTOng

ii xvi Reply to Bishop Strange.

contrast with yours where you complain that I "make the great drama of Job a jest, and excuse the treachery of Judas."

If the argument against conscience as a guide be fallacious, you ought to have shown the fallacy. Your criticism of my book is the same that Bruno, Servetus, and Savanarola underwent. When the Church had civic power the inquisition was the evidence, and the fagot and torture-chamber the argument; it is the "bitterest and most unfair arraignment."

If the bible is not the word of God with every "t" crossed and every "i" dotted by Him, it is only a human document, and should be treated as other human documents. In a recent defense of the bible and the Christian religion the writer says : "No man is fit to speak about religion who reviles the word of God. // he knew it to be false, he who reviles a book that the best people in the world revere is a bad man, with the instincts of a blackguard."

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," is Scripture. It is neither "magic" nor legerdemain, but a command of Almighty God — the father of Jesus Christ. It is just as much His word as "Thou shalt do no murder." Yet it has been abrogated by human legislation — yea, been reviled and repudiated by the Christian Church.

Science and philosophy are both failures in accounting for the universe. Human reason balks at the unknowable. Revelation as portrayed in the Old, and elucidated in the New Testament, explains everything. A Sovereign* "God determines upon His own acts, foreseeing what the results will be in the free acts of His creatures, and so He determines those results."

*"From eternity God foresaw all the events of the universe as fixed and certain."

Orthodox Christianity as taught by the Roman Catholic Church, and many schismatic sects since the days of the Apostles, is summarized in the "Lantern of Diogenes" and this summary gives you a feature of the "scheme of Salvation," stripped of its draperies, its gildings, and its canonicals. It is the same portrait painted by Tertullian and later on by Calvin. They were artists drawing from nature.

Horrible, my dear Bishop, as this picture appears to yon, it accounts for the universe and everything in it. It goes beyond the

♦Strong's Theology

Reply to Bishop Strange. xvii

limitations of science, and leads where philosophy has lost its path. It tells you why idiots are born to intelligent parents. It accounts for the pains of parturition ; it tells why people come into the world blind, deaf, and dumb ; why monstrosities exist, and why people are sent to hell.

Orthodox Christianity — that is, bible or true Christianity — declares that God, for the salvation of a few — and a very few at that — of riffraff Jews, hud His own son murdered; that He loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were born; that He is Sovereign, that He overlooks the sparrows, that His providence extends even over sin ; and that, "He blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of sinful men ; and sends them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie and be damned."

You will doubtless say that this is not true; that it is the "bitterest and most unfair arraignment" ; but, my dear Bishop, it is bible doctrine, and it is endorsed by Jesus Christ himself. Turn to the fourth chapter of Mark and read it, and note especially the 11th and 12th verses. Is there anything in the Old Testament more horrible than that sermon, coming from the loving lips of Jesus?

"Wicked men are called the rod, the staff, the ax, the saw, in his hand; and are therefore moved by him, as these instruments are by the hand of him who uses them."

Is not this sermon of Jesus, quoted by Mark, a vindication of the Old Testament Scriptures? Did he want that multitude saved? Did he treat the only true friend (John the Baptist) he ever had as the Golden Rule commands? Was Peter, his right-hand man, on whom he founded his church, a high-toned gentleman? How about the Prodigal Son and his brother? Whose conduct did he approve, the Industrious Martha's or tin- lazy Mary's? Why should he commend the unjust steward who had robbed his employer? Tell me if it is

jus/ to pay ;i laborer, for out' hour's work, as much as another tor a

whole day. Why should ho go to a flg tree, out of season tor figs, and then curse it for being bare?

( ;ii\ iiiism bas sioo.i the test from the day it was expounded by Jonathan EQdwards, and no man has yet answered It

Now, wherein is my chapter on The Teachings of Jesus "hitter and

unfair"? I have only used the evidence and drawn logical Conclusions from tie- same. On the other hand. 1 have endeavored t«»

xviii Reply to Bishop Strange.

palliate these horrible statements and excuse Omnipotence from the implication of evil. That I failed is only because the evidence is not there on which to build the argument.

You have not read the book as the Schoolmaster read the bible. If the whole of anything is faulty, its parts, or at least some of its parts, are faulty. Dissection is the only means of getting at the structure of anything. If no part of a structure can be condemned, the ivhole certainly ought not to be condemned. Instead of analyzing the book as you purposed and as I desired, you throw up your hands in holy horror and accuse me of being on one side.

Finally, as to that "horrible" sermon which is the closing chapter of the book. And before I say a word in defense of that sermon, allow me to quote two verses from what you must agree is the finest sermon ever preached on this earth :

"Go in by the small gate. Broad and spacious is the road that leads to destruction, and those that go in by it are many; for small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to Life, and those that find it are few."

In that "horrible" sermon we see science and philosophy, by their own confession, traveling at a rapid rate down the "broad and spacious road." Their inevitable goal is "destruction."

"Hell — hell, flaming, torturing hell for all men, but — but — an infinitesimal few." Now, who said that — the Schoolmaster or Jesus Christ?

The philosophy of materialism says all; the Sermon on the Mount lets off the few that "go through the small gate." No stronger argument was ever, nor ever can be, presented to the human mind for the acceptance of Christ.

That horrid nightmare, "Hell," seems to affect you as the Leniurine Phantom affected Brutus at the battle of Philippi.

Crapsey could not stand the immaculate conception, and you are horrified at the idea of hell. Thousands of men who call themselves Christians accept Darwin's theory of evolution which denies the Fall, and therefore does away with any lifting-up process. It is the same old wrangle that has existed from the earliest days of the Christian era. If this sermon is so horrible because it preaches hell, and tells you how to keep out of it. pray tell me what you think of the sermon Jesus preached to the multitude on the seashore. If you will give

Reply to Bishop Strange. xix

me one good reason for his preaching that sermon, I will agree to burn mine up and never open my mouth again on the subject of religion.

My dear Bishop, you ought to read the book again, and read it as the Schoolmaster read the bible. Had you read the preface carefully you would have seen that both the "Sermon" and the "Teachings of Jesus" are legitimate. And if you will read the bible account of Job and Judas, you will see that I have neither made a "jest" of the one nor "excused the treachery" of the other.

If an Omnipotent God orders anything done, the human instruments selected to carry out His orders are not to be charged with the acts committed. If Christ was a mortal, if he was the son of Joseph and Mary, born in the good old-fashion way, he was crucified by the Romans. If he was the Son of God, he was crucified by the direction of his Father. If you deny this, I will prove it by his own testimony :

"As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father ; and I lay down my life for the sheep. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received from the Father."

According to Matthew, Christ predicted his death, entombment, and resurrection :

"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three nights in the heart of the earth."

Christ told his disciples that he must go into Jerusalem and suffer many things and be crucified. He told Peter, James, and John not to publish the details of his transfiguration "until the Son of Man be risen from the dead." He said: 'The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men, and they shall kill him." He said that he "came not to he ministered onto, tral i<» minister, and to give his life, a ransom for many." lie fell on his face and prayed: "O my Father, if it he possible, let this cup pass from me: Nevertheless, net as I will, hut .is Thou wilt."

When one of his disciples would have resisted the capture. Jesus

said thnt he could, by praying t<» his Father, obtain for his defense "more than twelve legions of angels," and added: "I»ut how. then, shall the Scriptures he fulfilled that it must be?"

xx Reply to Bishop Strange.

Moses and Elias talked to Jesus about his "decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." He said to his disciples : "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished."

According to Luke, Christ predicted that he should be delivered to the Gentiles, mocked, spit on, scourged, and crucified. When Pontius Pilate told Jesus that he had power to crucify or release him, Jesus answered that the Roman had no power except it was given from above. Everything that was done was done in order "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled." Take this proposition from the New Testament, and the scheme of salvation is gone.

If what happened could have been prevented by the Romans or by the Jews, then the New Testament is worthless. It is too late in this day of intelligent thought to continue the arguments of the Middle Ages. Could religion have made progress along with science and literature, our sacred books would have kept pace with other changes; and instead of a bible suited to barbarians, we would have one now in accord with civilized life. Thomas Jefferson, instead of being preached into hell for selecting the good and ignoring the bad, would be counted a benefactor of the human race. Ingersoll, for condemning the bloodthirstiness of Jehovah, and preaching the moral precepts of Jesus, would never have been stigmatized as an infidel. Stephen Girard, whose philanthropic monument to the orphan children of Philadelphia is doing more real good than all the churches of that city, would be canonized instead of doomed to the Christian's deepest hell.

Yes, my clear Bishop, you will have to get rid of your witness. The testimony is too strong, the evidence too clear for the Crapseys, the Coxes, and other strong men in the Church. Set aside your witness or accept his testimony, as the Catholics do. And if God has told you to give diseased meat to strangers or sell it to aliens, do that. All the horrible commands laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are as binding to-day, and upon us, as they were then upon the Jews, for he says : "This shall be a statute forever unto them throughout their generations."

A quotation from a "Schoolmaster" of the olden time, with an answer by a great ecclesiastic, will fitly close my apology for the "bitterest and most unfair arraignment" :

Reply to Bishop Strange. xxi

ONAN.

"The race of Onan exhibits great singularities. The patriarch Judah, his father, lay with his daughter-in-law, Tamar the Phoenician, in the highroad; Jacob, the father of Judah, was at the same time married to two sisters, the daughters of an idolater; and deluded both his father and father-in-law. Lot, the granduncle of Jacob, lay with his two daughters. Saleum, one of the descendants of Jacob and Judah, espoused Rahab the Canaanite, a prostitute. Boaz, son of Saleum and Rahab, received into his bed Ruth the Midianite; and was great-grandfather of David. David took away Bathsheba from the warrior Uriah, her husband, and caused him to be slain, that he might be unrestrained in his amour. Lastly, in the two genealogies of Christ, which differ in so many points, but agree in this, we discover that he descended from this tissue of fornication, adultery, and incest.

"Nothing is more proper to confound human prudence ; to humble our limited minds, and to convince us that the ways of Providence are not like our ways. The reverend father Dom Calmet makes this reflection, in alluding to the incest of Judah with Tamar, and to the sin of Onan, spoken of in the 38th chapter of Genesis : 'Scripture,' he observes, 'gives us the details of a history which on the first perusal strikes our minds as not of a nature for edification ; but the hidden sense which is shut up in it is as elevated as that of the mere letter appears low to carnal eyes. It is not without good reasons that the Holy Spirit has allowed the histories of Tamar, of Rahab, of Ruth, and of Bathsheba to form a part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ."

This ancient "Schoolmaster" then comments as follows upon the answer of Dom Calmet :

"It might have been well if Dom Calmet had explained these sound reasons, by which we might have cleared up the doubts and appeased the scruples of all honest and timorous souls who are anxious to comprehend how the Supreme Being, the Creator of worlds, could be bom in ;i Jewish village, of a race of plunderers and prostitutes. This mystery, which is not less Inconceivable than

other mysteries. w;is assuredly worthy the explanation of so able a

commentator."

Sincerely, your friend.

N. B. IIusimnc.

BOOK I

THE

LANTERN OF DIOGENES,

PART I.

Chapter I. The Old Man In The Car

On a warm afternoon in the month of June, 1889, an old man was traveling at a high rate of speed, in a gorgeous palace car, on one of the great trunk railways of the United States. He was a good distance from home, and was returning from a tour of inspection of the schools of the North and West. He was the only passenger in the car, and, his journey being a long and tedious one, he had provided against the ennui and monotony of travel by supplying himself with some of the current literature of the day. He was sociable in his nature and habits, and preferred the society of his fellow-man to any other enjoyment, but when alone and comfortable he never failed to have at hand some book or periodical from which he received instruction, or whiled away the time between his more active engagements. His hair was short cropped and white with age. His face was wrinkled and his back bowed, but his eye was bright and his broad forehead indicated thought. His dress was plain but neat, and his spectacles pushed up on his forehead showed that he did not need them in reading. Tie had been

near-sighted in youth, and wore glasses mainly to see at a distance. Age had flattened his eyeballs, and the focus of light had come in the easy range of ordinary men in their prime. He wore glasses now more from habit than from any benefit lie derived from them. lie had been a -indent from early youth, and the acquisition of knowledge bad been the one absorbing passion of hie life. He bad bad (lie benefil of the finest educational facilities of his day, and bad been graduated «rith the highest honors from a famous university of I lie South, lie began at an early day to examine critically his own knowledge, and, finding much of it faulty, lie inquired into the methods of teaching, and to his surprise and chagrin, found them crude, inefficient, and ill adapted to the requirements of the age.

His Alma Mater, which at one time he worshiped as a tutelary goddess, became in later years a fetich of priggism where the smatterer bowed and the pedant strove for the honors of a Machiavelian sophistry. In every department of human learning which he investigated he found the same superficiality, the same gloss and tinsel. The science and art of agriculture were in the most primitive condition, and the laws which governed the growth of plants understood by few. The physician's greatest ambition was to "smell like a doctor," and his armamentarium consisted in murdered technicalities of which he knew little more than his deluded patrons. The lawyer would speak knowingly of the Lex talionis, while the preacher quoted Scripture and twisted it to suit his own church and creed. Some of the best mechanics had spent much of their time in working at perpetual motion, and the alchemist's dream still haunted the chemist, while the philosopher's stone engrossed the attention of nearly every class above the common laborer. But, of all men, the teacher was found most sadly wanting in useful information; and so deeply grounded was his prejudice, and so bent upon following the ruts of his predecessors, that the caustic lines of Boileau became a fitting animadversion upon the farcical purism of the average school-master:

"Brim full of learning, see the pedant stride! Bristling with horrid Greek, and puffed with pride, A thousand authors he in vain has read, And with their maxims stuffed his empty head ; And thinks that without Aristotle's rule Eeason is blind, and common sense a fool."