Mark Twain on Bible Teaching and Religious Practice
The War Prayer by Mark Twain
Posted on September 6, 2005
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
***** 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.
More at:
http://christianaggression.com/item_display.php?type=ARTICLES&id=1126053404
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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