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lieved to have been supernaturally communicated to mankind, through the incomprehensible medium of the fictitious Son of God, is cognizable, only, as a judicious and convenient compendium of the ancient Eclectic Philosophy, of which Philo, the Essen Jew, was an eminent disciple, and promulgator; and who, it may be well enough supposed, in his abundant affection for his national kindred, wrote out a copy, in his own peculiar style, and in the Jewish, allegorical manner, in the laudable hope, that it would be adopted, by his ignorant and superstitious brethren, as an invaluable substitute for the fallacies and bigotries of Judaisın.

Christianity is compounded of Theology and Ethics; wherein the fantasms of the former, are sustained by the realities of the latter.

Whilst Ethics forms the most eminent department of Natural knowledge, nor needs an adjunct to sustain itself; Theology would, long since, have arrived at a state of insupportable decrepitude, had it been deprived of Ethics to lean upon!

Theology, in consonance with its own fictitiousness, has instituted a censorship of Faith, instead of Fact, which denominates all else, mere scoria of the truth, save what has passed, unscathed, the crucible of its fanaticism: It has, grimly, scowled at natural science, as an unholy obtruder upon its sanctimony, and a subverter of its superhuman truths; and has never failed to persecute the man, while living, nor to heap up obloquy upon his name, when dead, who has ever ventured to propagate a truth, that threatened a collision with the fallacies of its creed.

The whole superstructure of modern Theology is erected upon a Socratic or Platonic fiction of the human soul, which, both, fact and reason emphatically repudiate. And, if there were, both, God and soul, they would be inexplicable to humanity, and also themselves subjected to Zeno's Fate, or that Necessity, imposed by the laws of their nature.

Whilst the falsehood has been vociferously reiterated, throughout the wide domain of Christendom, that natural science owes to Christianity, its success; a counter truth is stamped on every page of civil history: And, if doubt remains upon this plain question, you are directed to enquire of the ghosts of Roger Bacon, Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei!

LECTURE I.

THE PRIMITIVE CHARACTER OF MAN.

Friends of Free Enquiry:

It is not from the instigation of a love of notoriety, nor for the unenviable privilege of suffering persecution for a frank avowal of my peculiar heterodoxy, that I stand here this evening, as a traitor to my own popularity, as though I were insanely soliciting the honor of martyrdom; but in a self-distrustful obedience to your joint solicitation for a public disclosure of my personal views of some particular questions, in whose satisfactory solution, the world possesses a deeper interest than even the querulous obstinacy, with which they have been contested, indicates: And my first wish is, that you were in possession of a reasonable assurance, that your hope of edification is not altogether futile.

The peculiar character of the present enterprise seems to demand that this introductory lecture should consist mostly of its own preface, declarative of the sentiments by which we are actuated, and the objects

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to be attained: And while I express the following personal views, I may hope that the heart of every auditor will beat an unequivocal response.

Man is allowed to have been born with certain inalienable rights and privileges, to which Nature has given him an irrevocable title: Nor is she, whatever its seeming, justly chargeable with partiality in the distribution of her favors.

If the philosopher is delighted with the success of his investigations; he is also annoyed with contemplating the narrowness by which they are limited: And whilst he regrets the insignificancy of his best acquirements, "the fool is happy, that he knows no more.” Thus is the impartiality of Nature established, in respect of intellectual happiness. All rational political, philosophy concurs in admitting that all social privileges should be reciprocal—or that no individual shall claim a right to do, for and of himself, an act, from which any other individual, under similar circumstan ces, is prohibited.

Earth, air and water, with all their convertible products, are the common property of their human inheritors and Wisdom emphatically declares, that such a distribution and use, should be made of them, as to insure the greatest amount of innocent enjoyment. And yet they are mostly monopolized, by a very small proportion of our species; nor would the air itself be excluded from the list, were it subject to the arbitrary regulation of meets and bounds: And the poor might gasp, or bend in servitude to its owner, for the material of vital respiration.

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