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 There is none ever feared that the truth should be heard 
 But him whom the truth would indict. 
 
 Robert Burns. 
 
 Persecution! 
 
 OR 
 
 The Attempt to Suppress Freedom 
 of Speech in Chicago 
 
 A Lecture Delivered Before 
 
 The Independent Religious 
 
 Society, (Rationalist) 
 
 Chicago 
 
 By 
 M. M. MANGASARIAN
 
 Nobody fears for the safety of a mountain, 
 but a hillock of sand may be washed away. 
 Blow then, O ye priests, for the hillock is in 
 danger. 
 
 THOMAS PAINE.
 
 StacK 
 Annex 
 
 persecution! 
 
 or 
 
 attempt to Suppress freedom 
 of Speecb in dbtcago 
 
 I intend to take for my text the resolution of the man- 
 agers of the Orchestral Association to evict us from this hall, 
 in which for the past five years our Society has held its Sun- 
 day morning meetings, to present to this audience a study 
 of religious persecution in Chicago in the Twentieth Century. 
 As I do not wish to build on hearsay or mere gossip, my first 
 duty will be to "make good" my text, which I shall do by 
 reciting briefly the species facti the facts in the case. Is it 
 really true that the directors of this public hall, built by gen- 
 eral subscription, and built as a secular hall, for musical, 
 dramatic and educational purposes and not as a church or 
 a synagogue have actually passed a resolution denying its 
 further use to this Society? We have in our possession an 
 official communication from the Orchestral Association to that 
 effect. It reads : 
 
 "The trustees of the Orchestral Association have decided 
 to use Orchestra Hall for other purposes Sundays of next 
 season and I shall be unable therefore to renew the lease of 
 the Independent Religious Society." 
 
 In reply to this notice, which is signed by the manager of 
 the Orchestral Association, the Independent Religious Society 
 pleaded with the trustees to reconsider their resolution, which 
 brought from them a second communication, as follows : 
 
 "The trustees have decided not to reconsider the question." 
 
 Thus, it will be seen that on the expiration of our lease on 
 the last day of May of the present year, Orchestra Hall will 
 no longer be available for the purposes of Rationalism. 
 
 3
 
 That point being disposed of, the next question is: What 
 prompted the board of directors of the Orchestral Association 
 to take this action against the Independent Religious Society ? 
 A landlord may have many valid reasons for refusing to renew 
 a lease with a former tenant. But if the question is one of 
 more rent, the tenant who has paid his rent punctually, and 
 has been an occupant of the premises for many years, is en- 
 titled, unless there are objections to him on other grounds, to, 
 at least, an equal chance with any prospective tenant to bid 
 for the lease of the property. I doubt whether there is a 
 high class business man in any city who will close a deal with 
 a new applicant for his property over the head of an old and 
 tried tenant, without first proposing to the latter the terms 
 he is willing to accept from the former. Unless, of course, 
 as I intimated, there are ulterior reasons which make the old 
 tenant undesirable at any price. It will also be admitted that 
 there is not a merchant or a banker who, upon learning that 
 the offices or the store for which he has been paying rent 
 promptly for a number of years has been rented to some 
 one else without any notice to him whatsoever, will not char- 
 acterize such treatment as extraordinary and unbusiness-like. 
 If then, it is the prevailing custom a custom approved of by 
 the best people in the business world to respect the rights 
 of an old tenant, what shall we think of the landlords of 
 Orchestra Hall, who, after receiving rent from us for five 
 years, refuse us even the courtesy to tell us definitely why 
 this hall is no longer available for our purposes? They have 
 not asked us for more rent. We have offered to pay as much 
 as any other tenant is willing to pay. Under these circum- 
 stances, their refusal to accept our bid, and their resolution 
 to hand the hall over to our competitors can only mean one 
 thing : They are not disposed to be fair to us. 
 
 In the meantime, we were entitled to some consideration 
 from the directors of this hall. When Orchestra Hall was first 
 opened to the public, there was a great deal of adverse criti- 
 cism its managers had to contend with. The acoustics were 
 very defective; the ventilation was poor; the ascent to the 
 balconies and galleries was so steep that people preferred to 
 go away rather than accept the accommodations they offered. 
 
 4
 
 There was also a report that the hall was not adapted for 
 speaking purposes, having been built primarily for orchestral 
 music. There was still another report, I do not know to 
 what extent it can be corroborated by the facts a report that 
 Theodore Thomas was so disappointed in the hall which was 
 built for his Orchestra, that he worried himself sick over it 
 a sickness from which, unfortunately, he did not recover. The 
 Independent Religious Society took the hall by the year, when 
 the hall had neither friends nor a reputation when it was 
 still in the experimental stage, needing many repairs and 
 changes, and when its great organ was still incomplete. We 
 were the first people to use the hall for speaking purposes, 
 and it was three or four years later that the Sunday Evening 
 Club, following our example, began holding services here. 
 
 The Independent Religious Society helped the Orchestral 
 Association to overcome the popular prejudice against the hall, 
 and gave the managers an opportunity to make improvements. 
 I remember very well that the first Sunday I spoke in this 
 hall, more than one half of my audience complained that they 
 could not hear me. The acoustics were, indeed, so imperfect, 
 that we ran the risk of losing our audience by remaining in 
 Orchestra Hall. We suggested changes and made experi- 
 ments by way of bettering the conditions at Orchestra Hall, 
 and finally succeeded, with the co-operation of the manage- 
 ment, in overcoming these difficulties. Being, as I said, 
 the first to use the hall Sundays for public purposes, we were 
 instrumental in bringing, if I may use a commercial term, a 
 great deal of business to the association. Besides, we have 
 advertised the hall extensively. Every Sunday, on the 3,000 
 programs we issue, and in all our publications of lectures and 
 books, Orchestra Hall is announced. These considerations 
 entitled us to a more reasonable treatment than we have re- 
 ceived. 
 
 As it is not for more rent that we are being put out of the 
 hall, the trustees should admit frankly that it is for our 
 religious views? Why do they not? They are afraid. To 
 strike openly at one of the fundamental institutions of this 
 country, namely, the liberty of teaching, requires a boldness 
 which they lack. They realize that the spirit of the age is 
 
 5
 
 squarely against such discrimination or class legislation. They 
 feel also that they are dishonoring a great country, America, 
 born of the brain and fed from the breast of a Washington, 
 a Jefferson, a Benjamin Franklin, a Thomas Paine and its 
 more recent representative, Abraham Lincoln not one of 
 whom was a communicant or a member of any church, and 
 not one of whom but would frown upon anything that smacks 
 of persecution. The directors of the Orchestral Association 
 have preferred to be the hireling of the priest Catholic or 
 Protestant the priest of a cult imported from Asia, rather than 
 to be Americans, worthy of their great ancestors, whose names 
 I have just mentioned. The real objection to us then, is not 
 that we do not pay enough rent, but that we do not profess 
 the same faith. Religion, not money, is the reason for our 
 eviction from this hall, but they are afraid and ashamed to 
 own it. 
 
 The two or three trustees who, according to report, moved, 
 seconded and carried the motion to put us out of these pre- 
 mises have admitted that our "religious views are not satis- 
 factory to the established churches." The inference being, 
 that the established churches had made up their minds to 
 punish us for not agreeing with them theologically. These 
 same directors, later, changed their explanation, and declared 
 that it was for "business reasons" that a new tenant was 
 desired. Yet the case is quite clear. It needs no interpre- 
 tation. I am not going to base my remarks upon rumors; 
 the inner story is made manifest by the facts : We have had 
 this hall for five years; we are in possession of it now for 
 Sunday morning lectures ; we are willing to pay as much rent 
 for it as our competitors ; what are the business reasons which 
 make our eviction from this hall imperative? It appears that 
 when Orchestra Hall was being built, some of the contributors 
 demanded and secured a promise from the managers, not to 
 allow the Theodore Thomas Orchestra to give public recitals 
 on Sundays. These pious contributors, while they were in- 
 terested in music, were more interested in the Sabbath. Ac- 
 cording to this understanding, no orchestral music is per- 
 mitted in the hall on Sundays. We learn that the Associa- 
 tion's recent appeal for funds with which to wipe out its in-
 
 debtedness, gave the pious contributors an opportunity to im- 
 pose a second embargo upon the management of this hall, by de- 
 manding that in addition to the prohibition against orchestral 
 music on Sundays, the trustees shall adopt measures to sup- 
 press also the Independent Religious Society. If this is done, 
 and Orchestra Hall is redeemed from the stigma of our blas- 
 phemies, the amount needed to cancel the mortgage on the 
 building will be forthcoming. The trustees of this building, 
 having bowed down to these contributors once, bowed down 
 to them a second time, and this time much lower. They sold 
 their consciences and also the hall, to the friends of the Asiatic 
 Sabbath and the enemies of America for if America means 
 anything it means liberty. 
 
 Has this Society any grounds for legal proceedings against 
 the three or four directors who are the authors of this objec- 
 tionable piece of business? There is a difference of opinion 
 about that. But after much deliberation in my own mind, I 
 have concluded, speaking for myself alone, of course, that I 
 would rather appeal to the American people the court of pub- 
 lic opinion than go to law about it. In the cause of Rational- 
 ism, the pen is a more effective weapon than either the law or 
 the sword. I am a jealous man and I do not wish legal or phy- 
 sical measures to share with reason the credit for the progress 
 of our cause. Let not our movement be under any obligations 
 to the courts, to custom to the throne, or to violence of any 
 description. Of course, I do not believe in turning also the 
 other cheek. I am not a convert to the doctrine of non- 
 resistance. I am a soldier, and I carry a sword. But my 
 sword is the pen. Blood flows from the sword; light from the 
 pen. When a few months ago, the elevated railway author- 
 ities in Chicago covered our advertisements to please their 
 Catholic patrons, perhaps we should have gone to law about it ; 
 and perhaps again in the present instance, when three or four 
 men, to please the fanatics, who are alarmed about their creeds, 
 close a public hall against a large organization like ours, we 
 should invoke the arm of the law. But a victory gained in 
 the courts cannot help our cause, which is the cause of enlight- 
 enment, as a victory gained at the bar of public opinion. The 
 latter victory requires more time, but when it arrives, it is 
 final. 
 
 7
 
 To prevent Theodore Parker from speaking in Boston, some 
 seventy-five years ago, even the Unitarians closed their 
 churches against him. The preachers asked God in public 
 to put a hook in Parker's tongue that he might not utter 
 blasphemies. Parker did not go to law about it. A few 
 business men in Boston who believed in fair play, and who 
 were the very opposite in courage .and character to the trus- 
 tees of this hall, met in a hotel and passed the following reso- 
 lution. I want you to compare it with the resolution of the 
 Orchestral Association. The resolution of the Boston busi- 
 ness men reads: 
 
 "Resolved, that Theodore Parker shall have a chance to be 
 heard in Boston." 
 
 You may search in the Old South Church in Boston, to-day, 
 or in its magnificent library, but you will not find any where 
 a prouder document. It is one of the assets of our American 
 civilization. And to-day while the churches which slammed 
 their doors in Parker's face, and the landlords who refused 
 their halls to him, and the "holy" men of God, who cursed him 
 in their pulpits, are ashamed of themselves and their religion, 
 all the world is proud of that group of business men who de- 
 fended freedom of speech against the cohorts of fear and 
 fanaticism. That is the kind of victory that tells. 
 
 In making a diagnosis of the disease known as persecu- 
 tion, we find that the persecutor never admits that he is per- 
 secuting. Even when, as in former times, he is frying or 
 roasting his neighbor in the fire, he protests that he is only 
 loving him. That is one of the symptoms of the disease. 
 While the persecutor is engaged in the act of stretching his 
 victim on the rack, he is addressing- him in the gentlest, kindest, 
 and softest language conceivable. He is torturing his neigh- 
 bor for the love of God, and not for any "business reasons." 
 The persecutor never looks more like a saint than when he is 
 playing the devil's part. In religion this is called piety; in 
 the secular world, it goes by the name of diplomacy. When a 
 king is most active in preparation for war, he is sure to be 
 loudest in his praise of peace. Monopolists pose as public
 
 benefactors when they are most agressive in the violation of 
 the laws. In the same way, religions are never so eloquent 
 in their professions of tolerance as when they are most un- 
 relenting against the alien in faith. To illustrate this, let 
 us consider for a moment the attitude of the Catholic Church 
 toward our democratic institutions. To hear the American 
 priests speak, one would 'infer that they regarded democratic 
 institutions as almost divine. But the truth is that Rome has 
 damned democracy again and again, and if it had the power 
 to-day, it would gird with the sword another Napoleon III 
 in France, and install an American Napoleon, if one could be 
 found, in Washington. I am willing to accept the challenge 
 of any man to prove that to Roman Catholicism which claims 
 to be the mother and protectress of free institutions, liberty 
 is the forbidden fruit. But the Protestants are not behind 
 the Catholics in affecting devotion to free institutions, which, 
 I am sorry to say, is equally counterfeit. The Protestant 
 directors of Orchestra Hall no more believe in free institutions 
 than do the priests of the Catholic Church. They only profess 
 to believe in liberty. Neither Protestants nor Catholics really 
 believe in liberty. 
 
 They do not believe in liberty because they do not need it. 
 Give a Catholic religious liberty, and what will he do with it? 
 Give a Protestant liberty and what can he do with it? What 
 can a man who holds in his hand the infallible word of God 
 do with liberty? How is he going to use it? Is he going to 
 use his liberty to improve, or correct, or change, or suppress, 
 or add to, or differ from, or protest against, the infallible word 
 of his Maker? Is he going to use his liberty to produce a 
 Bible of his own? Is he going to use his liberty to investi- 
 gate the Deity? Neither Protestants nor Catholics need 
 liberty; and not needing it for themselves, they are the last 
 persons in the world to go to any trouble to secure it for you. 
 It is equally true that people who do not need liberty, do 
 not want the truth. Indeed, people who have no liberty cannot 
 have the truth. And it is as evident as a mathematical demon- 
 stration that people who do not want the truth for themselves 
 have no respect for, or sympathy with, those to whom the pur- 
 suit of truth is a great happiness. To illustrate my thought: 
 
 9
 
 Suppose we wished to know how many seats there were in 
 this hall. The only way to find out would be to count them. 
 But if we are not allowed to count the seats, the inevitable 
 inference would be that the truth about the capacity of this 
 hall is not wanted. It is impossible to wiggle out of that con- 
 clusion. If the churches desired the truth about the Bible, 
 why do they not let us discuss it freely and without fear of 
 heresy trials and excommunications? They do not want us 
 to know the truth about the Bible. A moment's reflection, as 
 you see, tears the mask from the faces of these professors of 
 freedom of thought and speech ! Reason, the great unmasker, 
 is after them, and they are alarmed. Both Catholics and 
 Protestants take the holy name of liberty in vain. 
 
 But if it is neither liberty nor truth that the supporters of 
 the creeds need or desire, what is all this commotion about? 
 Why are they so active, and why so agitated? Again I am 
 going to use an illustration: Suppose a report were in circu- 
 lation that this hall seated ten thousand people. The only 
 way to prevent people from doubting that report, and to derive 
 every possible advantage from it, would be to make it a pun- 
 ishable act for anyone to try to ascertain the actual seating 
 capacity of the hall. In the same way, to prevent people from 
 questioning the divine origin of a certain collection of anony- 
 mous writings, free thought must be denounced as treason 
 against society. It is a certain opinion about the Bible, and 
 not the truth about the Bible, that the churches are interested 
 in upholding. Their fight is not for the truth, but for the 
 creed. It might be replied that they believe the creed to be 
 the truth. Why, then, do they fear free speech? Can free 
 speech hurt the truth ? It might the creed. It has. But show 
 us one instance where a simple truth has been killed by liberty 
 of thought and expression. The churches do not enjoy our 
 prosperity here not because they think we are hurting the 
 truths of history, science and life but because we are hurting 
 the dogmas of the churches, dogmas which fear ventilation. 
 The Protestant preacher is sworn to defend the creed; the 
 Catholic is sworn to defend the church; the Rationalist is 
 bound by the everlasting law of honor to sacrifice both creed 
 and church to the truth. 
 
 10
 
 But let us continue : The severity of the persecution is al- 
 ways in proportion to the tenability of the creed. If the creed 
 is very difficult to believe in, the persecution has to be very 
 severe ; if the creed is more or less rational, little or no violence 
 would be necessary to enforce it. This is very interesting. 
 You do not have to whip a man, for instance, to make him be- 
 lieve that a day in June can be rare, or that a loving kiss 
 makes the heart leap forth ; but you have to get after him with 
 a crowbar with halter and thumbscrew fagot and fire to 
 make him believe that three Gods make one God, and one God 
 makes three Gods. The severity of the persecution is deter- 
 mined by the degree of credibility of the belief. Judaism and 
 Christianity have shed more blood than either Confucianism 
 or Buddhism, for the reason that the dogmas of the former 
 were more incredible. Tallyrand, the French statesman, says, 
 that "Spain is a country where two and two make five." And 
 the Spanish Inquisition claims the credit for that ! It takes an 
 instrument like the Holy Inquisition, with its torture chambers, 
 and its daily burnings of men and women, to work such a 
 miracle. I have always maintained that not a drop of blood 
 would ever have been shed in the name of religion had its 
 teachings been reasonable. There would have been no need for 
 a Catholic Inquisition in Spain; a Protestant Inquisition in 
 Scotland; the massacre of Huguenots in France; and Puritan 
 outrages against helpless women in America, had the creeds 
 complied with common sense. Persecution is the only argu- 
 ment that can keep an absurd opinion alive. There is the 
 story of persecution in a nutshell. It takes reasoning to con- 
 vince mankind of the rotundity of the earth, or of the law of 
 gravitation. But it takes violence force, fire, hell and devils, 
 to convince the world that the mother of Jesus was a virgin, 
 and that those who do not so believe it will be burned in sul- 
 phur and fire forever. 
 
 But there is no such persecution in America today, you 
 will hear people say. Of course not. Let us suppose that a 
 man who has been stealing a thousand dollars a week from 
 his employer when business was prosperous, is now stealing 
 only ten or twenty, because business is poor. Would that 
 prove that he is now a reformed thief? When he stole a 
 
 ii
 
 thousand dollars, he only stole as much as the business al- 
 lowed, and when he steals only ten dollars, he steals as much 
 as the business allows. In the same way, religions always 
 persecute as much as public sentiment will allow. They perse- 
 cute to the extent of their ability and opportunity. Show 
 me when Protestantism had the opportunity to persecute, and 
 did not do so. Religions today cannot take our lives, but they 
 can close a public hall against us. And the fact that they 
 have done this proves that they are still persecuting to the 
 extent of their ability. Indeed, the peasants of Southern 
 Europe, who, during the middle ages, steeped in ignorance and 
 superstition, tore the shingles off their cottages with which 
 to burn a John Huss, or a Giordano Bruno, at the stake, were 
 not greater persecutors than the Chicago clergy and business 
 men who, in the Twentieth Century after Darwin, after Vol- 
 taire, after the discovery of America, after the Declaration of 
 Independence in America, the world's asylum for the op- 
 pressed will let the Sunday Evening Club have this hall for 
 Christian preaching, but refuse it to us because we do not 
 pronounce their shibboleth ! The church could burn people in 
 the fourteenth century. She burned them. She cannot burn 
 people in the Twentieth Century, but she can evict them from 
 a public hall, and she does so. What is the difference? She 
 has the will ; she lacks only the opportunity. 
 
 But is refusing this hall to us persecution? Let us see. 
 Instead of being the Independent Religious Society, let us 
 suppose that we are an independent oil company, and that 
 we have been holding our own against the larger and con- 
 solidated oil company, with its enormous capitalization. One 
 morning we learn that the bigger concern has opened a branch 
 in the same building with us, and a short time later we are 
 ordered by the landlords to seek quarters elsewhere, as the 
 consolidated concern needs the entire building for its own 
 uses. Suppose also that the management refused to accept 
 a bid from us for the renewal of our lease, although we offered 
 to pay as much as our competitor. What would that be ? The 
 United States government is on the alert to stop the en- 
 croachments of corporations which operate in restraint of 
 trade. Is there not a United States of public opinion that will 
 
 12
 
 say to the religious trust, with more millions behind it than 
 the Standard Oil commands : "You have a thousand churches 
 and halls to sell your goods in ; you have a thousand preach- 
 ers and agents to market your product ; you have all the 
 presses of the country to print and circulate your literature; 
 you command the metropolitan newspapers ; you have the 
 bankers and dry-goods merchants enlisted in your service 
 why do you envy this independent concern its one opportunity 
 to conduct its business and to live; why do you wish to drive 
 it out of business? And why do you covet your neighbor's 
 property, which you do by seizing its location and offices?" 
 Is there not, I say, an American court of public opinion that 
 shall say to the religious monopoly: "Play fair." The gov- 
 ernment can fight the American Tobacco and Standard Oil 
 trusts ; let us fight the greater monopoly the monopoly that 
 operates in restraint of the commerce of ideas, by pinching the 
 brain and gagging the mouth of every American. Why does 
 not the nation rise against this more dangerous monopoly? 
 Because, unlike other monopolies, this is a "holy" monopoly. 
 Holy Monopoly ! "Beware of things called 'holy.' " The Holy 
 Inquisition ! The Holy Roman Empire ! The Holy Alliance ! 
 Holy Russia ! Holy Bible ! I add to this list now another 
 Holy Monopoly! 
 
 But the churches cannot afford to "fight fair." It has re- 
 quired twenty centuries of war and persecution to keep their 
 creeds alive. I am not exaggerating when I say that these 
 creeds are literally drunk with the blood they have shed. The 
 shame and the pity of it ! In fifty years of time, Charles Dar- 
 win revolutionized the thought of the whole world without 
 the shedding of a drop of blood. There is a record to envy! 
 Let the churches cover their faces with their hands. Science 
 needs only the pen. Religion sneaks behind the army, the 
 throne, the Inquisition for protection. To bolster up ortho- 
 doxy, Rationalism must be gagged, and the Independent 
 Religious Society evicted from its hall. What sensible and 
 honorable man who has ever thought of the matter, and in 
 whose veins flows the blood of the world's saviors, would not 
 prefer to be persecuted rather than to belong to a church that 
 has made history crimsoi}. 
 
 13
 
 Another symptom of the disease we are studying is that, it 
 never breaks out in a man except when he is in the majority, 
 or in power. Persecution is always directed against the weak. 
 This, in itself, is enough to give it a black eye. It is the metier, 
 or trade of a poltroon. No really fine man can take any pleas- 
 ure in it. Noblesse oblige! The University of Oxford ex- 
 pelled a young man whose name was Shelley, at the age of 
 nineteen, on a charge of heresy. A great university against 
 a mere lad! Noblesse oblige. The Pope of Rome, about 
 three hundred years ago, dragged a poor prisoner, emaciated 
 by long confinement in the dungeons of the church, to the 
 Catnpo di Fiori and burned him alive. An infallible pope 
 against an unfortunate student! Noblesse oblige. The power- 
 ful John Calvin, master of Switzerland and pope of Geneva, 
 pounced upon a stranger in one of the pews of his cathedral 
 church, and made kindling wood out of him for his parish- 
 ioners to warm their hands against. Noblesse oblige! Ah, if 
 the gods had only inspired their children with that sentiment! 
 If the Orchestra Hall directors wish to persecute anybody, 
 there is the Sunday Evening Club of churches powerful, in- 
 fluential, rich, and able to strike back. Or let them persecute 
 the Roman Catholics. Deny the use of the hall to them ! When 
 the Catholics were weak they were persecuted in all the 
 Protestant countries, but today, who would dare to discrimi- 
 nate against them? If I were an archbishop I would be let 
 alone. 
 
 But even against the weak, the church never fights fair! 
 If the Christian people of Chicago, for instance, wished to ar- 
 rest the progress of Rationalism, their challenge to it must be 
 open and above board. They must not try to strike it from 
 under cover, or from behind screens. They must down its 
 arguments with arguments, and not with money or prestige 
 or strategy. And they must not seek to tie its hands before 
 they condescend to measure their strength against it. Suppose 
 I were to be challenged to a duel in which I had to accept such 
 terms and conditions as my antagonist offered without giving 
 me any voice in the matter at all. That would not be a duel ; 
 that would be murder. Fight fair! Unfortunately, however, 
 the church has never, never fought fair. Did the churches 
 
 14
 
 believe that they could win by fighting fair, they would never 
 have resorted to persecution. 
 
 It might be asked that if the churches, which are in control 
 of the situation, do not believe in liberty of thought, how did 
 we come to have any liberty at all? In a sense, it is true that 
 we owe what liberty we have to the churches. If the churches 
 agreed among themselves and pulled together, Rationalism 
 would not have the ghost of a chance for free expression. To- 
 day the Protestants call the Catholics idolators, for worship- 
 ing the host; and the Catholics call the Protestants blasphem- 
 ers for not worshiping the host. In the Episcopal litany one 
 of the prayers asked for protection against the Turk and the 
 pop e. From a selfish point of view, I am glad these two 
 powerful religious corporations are "at daggers' point." It is 
 our only safety. Goodness! If they were to cease fighting 
 with one another and turned their guns upon us, what would 
 happen to us ? What would happen to the twentieth century ? 
 We are indebted for what religious liberty there is in Amer- 
 ica today to the sectarian divisions among Protestants and 
 the incurable breach between Rome and Protestantism. If I 
 prayed at all, my morning and evening petition would be : 
 "Good Lord, do not let the churches unite." The Sunday 
 Evening Club is powerful today Because, in a sense, it rep- 
 resents that very union which I dread. They could not take 
 the hall from us as Presbyterians, nor as Baptists, nor as 
 Episcopalians, nor as Methodists ; but they are able to do 
 together what they were afraid to do separately. Some people 
 predict that eventually, in self-preservation, the various 
 Protestant denominations, and, perhaps, even the formidable 
 Catholic church, will all be united in one body. I hope when 
 that day comes, the state will be too strong and too independ- 
 ent to hand over the reins of government to the church. 
 
 What helps the cause of the churches today more than 
 anything else, more even than persecution, is the inability 
 of the average churchman to think straight. He has a mind, 
 but he has not been trained to use it properly. If the people 
 could only think logically, the fabric of Catholicism, as 
 well as of Protestantism, would come down like a house of 
 cards. Let me illustrate what I mean by straight thinking. 
 
 15
 
 A Men's League is being organized by The Sunday Evening 
 Club, and I hold in my hand one of its circulars. It contains 
 the following important announcement : 
 
 "This proposed organization is suggested as abso- 
 lutely non-sectarian." 
 
 The word "absolutely" is in large, black capitals. Ah ! 
 Are the churches really growing more liberal? We rub 
 our eyes and look at the circular again, and we find that 
 the real object of the organization is: 
 
 "To increase the influence of Christian citizenship." 
 Now we understand what they mean by "absolutely non- 
 sectarian." Liberty, bg enough to tramscend the limits 
 of Christianity even, is beyond them. They are incapable 
 of seeing that Christianity is a sect too, and that there are 
 in Chicago hundreds of thousands of people who are not 
 Christians in any sense of the word, but who are as much 
 interested in good citizenship as anybody else. But the 
 churches cannot see that point because they have not been 
 taught to think straight. The anns of the church are not 
 long enough to embrace the whole community. The big 
 word with them is Christianity, not humanity ; God, not 
 man ; in other words, it is not citizenship that the Sunday 
 Evening Club is seeking to promote, but Christian citizen- 
 ship that is to say, sectarian citizenship with its Puritan 
 Sabbath, and bible in the Public Schools. And this they 
 call liberty. 
 
 I quoted to you some months ago from the catalogue of 
 an American college, which reads: 
 
 "The college believes in perfect freedom of con- 
 science for all men." 
 
 We have scarcely finished applauding this magnificent 
 declaration when we read in the next line that : 
 
 "In accordance with this principle, all students are 
 required to attend morning prayers and the morning and 
 evening religious services and the Bible classes."* 
 The church education actually ruins a man's reason. It 
 incapacitates him for clear thinking. There are thousands 
 of men and women whom the Sunday School and the pulpits 
 
 *Robert College Catalogue, 1908, page 17. 
 16
 
 have made intellectual cripples. But it is defective or 
 crooked thinking that protects the church. The framers of 
 the above catalogue are, no doubt, honest men. I have no 
 fault to find with their hearts, but what about their heads? 
 How do they propose to reconcile perfect freedom of con- 
 science, with compulsory attendance at bible classes? They 
 do not see any difficulty in that at all. They are satisfied 
 to use a popular phrase "perfect freedom of conscience" 
 if they can do so without jeopardizing the interests of their 
 creeds. The promoters of "The Men's League of The Sun- 
 day Evening Club," no more than the framers of this college 
 catalogue realize that to call an organization "absolutely 
 non-sectarian," and then to limit its scope to making people 
 Christians, or to offer "perfect freedom of conscience" to 
 students and then to drive them into your churches and 
 bible classes, is a contradiction in terms an absurdity. I 
 repeat that the worst curse of orthodoxy is that it destroys 
 the soundness of our minds. It twists reason out of shape. 
 To shout in the ear of the dead is not more unprofitable than 
 to try to get a churchman to think straight. Most of the 
 evil in the world is not done by wicked men, but by people 
 who, though honest, are incapable of straight thinking. 
 
 Let me give you another illustration of crooked thinking 
 which has been, alas, a greater evil than anything else that 
 the world has suffered from. Thomas Aquinas, the great 
 Catholic theologian and philosopher defended persecution 
 by arguing that : 
 
 "False coiners are put to death; then why not men 
 
 who tamper with immortal souls."* 
 
 And that argument is quoted with approval by all believ- 
 ers in religious persecution : We would close a gambling 
 den because it ruins men financially. How much more 
 should we close a hall in which a man ruins souls eternally? 
 If a man who kills the body is punished, why should we 
 spare the blasphemer who kills the immortal part of man? 
 That. I repeat, is the kind of reasoning upon which is based 
 the argument for violence against freedom of conscience 
 in matters of faith. But a moment's reflection will again 
 
 *C. S. P. Haynes. Religious Persecution, page 34.
 
 bring out the incapacity of even the ablest Christian who 
 has at all passed through the mills of the church, to think 
 right. A false coiner knows that he is robbing his neighbor. 
 The heretic, on the other hand, believes honestly, although 
 he may be mistaken, that he is helping his neigh- 
 bor. The counterfeiter knows his money is false; the 
 heretic believes his ideas are true. So you see there is a 
 tremendous moral difference between a counterfeiter and 
 a heretic. The latter may be honest ; the former is always 
 a cheat. You can punish the one, but you must enlighten 
 the other. Before a man can be punished for his beliefs, it 
 has to be shown that he is dishonest in his beliefs ; that he is 
 knowingly trying to damn the souls of his neighbors. And 
 the churchman begs the question when he compares a coun- 
 terfeiter to a Socrates or a Jesus Christ both of whom 
 were heretics in their day. Yet this one bit of crooked 
 reasoning came very near making our earth a hell. 
 
 Let me now call your attention to a more recent example 
 of clerical incapacity to think straight. A prominent minis- 
 ter of one of the established churches of Chicago, in a signed 
 communication, defends the action of the directors of Or- 
 chestra Hall against the Independent Religious Society. 
 Let me -quote his exact words : 
 
 "I believe most thoroughly in the action of the trus- 
 tees in not allowing a man to revile everything which is 
 religious and moral in any hall which they control." 
 
 Another instance of perverse thinking ! Not to agree with 
 this Reverend in religious matters is equivalent, from his 
 point of view, to blasphemy. He does not even stop to 
 consider that in accusing me of "reviling everything which 
 is religious and moral," he is bearing false witness against 
 his neighbor. He is making a statement he cannot square 
 with the facts. But he is not interested in telling the truth. 
 He is interested only in defending his creed. When he was 
 ordained, he took an oath to defend not the truth but the 
 creed. He is living up to his oath. I do <not "revile" any- 
 thing, much less religion or morality. I have investigated, 
 examined, criticized, but I have "reviled" nothing. I have 
 not criticized Christianity for saying "love one another" ; 
 I have criticized it for saying: "He that believeth not shall 
 
 18
 
 be damned." I have not disagreed with the bible for rec- 
 ommending purity of heart. I have denounced the bible for 
 saying: "He that hateth not his father mother, wife, child 
 is not worthy of me." It is the bible as a fetish, and not 
 as literature that we object to. But if the clergyman were 
 to be good enough to make these fine and important dis- 
 tinctions, he would be thinking straight, for which he has 
 neither the taste nor the ability. 
 
 Nor does this preacher stop to consider that, if my views 
 offend him, his views might offend me. If I am under 
 obligations to respect his feelings, shall he have no regard for 
 mine? If my science is blasphemy to him, his superstition 
 is blasphemy to me. If my freedom irritates him, his bond- 
 age to a book, provokes me. Am I not also a brother and a 
 man? Are not my feelings worth considering, too? Sup- 
 pose we demanded the eviction of all the preachers from 
 churches that do not pay taxes but live on the charity of the 
 public, for not thinking and believing as Rationalists do! 
 How would the clergy like that? And why should they do 
 to us what they do not wish us to do to them if we had the 
 
 When my Human Prayer appeared in print, one of the 
 Christian clergymen a Lutheran pastor called it, "The 
 Devil's Prayer." No one in the church ever thought of pro- 
 testing against his language. But suppose I had called any 
 clergyman's prayer "The Devil's Prayer," how awfully that 
 would have shocked and wounded the feelings of the Christ- 
 ian world! A Christian can do anything he pleases with my 
 feelings, but I am a blasphemer and should be deprived of 
 my rights of free speech, if I should hurt his feelings. What 
 better proof do we need of the incapacity of the theologically 
 trained mind to see straight ? 
 
 It has reached my ears from more than one source that 
 my recent Human Prayer, printed side by side with the 
 Lord's Prayer, and each signed by the name of its author, 
 was one of the reasons which influenced the Orchestra Hall 
 trustees to refuse us their hall for another year. Let me give 
 the prayer as it appeared on our Sunday program : 
 
 19
 
 THE HUMAN PRAYER. 
 
 Our Humanity which art everywhere, Beloved be thy 
 name. 
 
 Thy reign of Reason come, Thy gentle Will be done 
 in this, and in all other lands. 
 
 We give unto thee this day our daily service. 
 
 We do not pray for forgiveness, but invoke thine 
 impartial justice. 
 
 Lead us in the ways of honor, and deliver us from 
 meanness. 
 
 The welfare of Humanity be our reward, and the 
 consciousness of having deserved its gratitude, our glory, 
 forever. Amen. 
 
 What is there in the above prayer to make it "the devil's 
 prayer," or to provoke persecution against us? Mrs. Eddy, 
 in one of her writings, quotes from the New Testament 
 on one page, signed /. C., meaning, I suppose, Jesus Christ; 
 and on the opposite page she quotes from "Science and 
 Health," and signs it Mary Baker G. Eddy. J. C. and Mary 
 Baker G. Eddy! But Mrs. Eddy burns incense upon 
 the church altars, and I do not, and that makes all the dif- 
 ference. But I tried to improve on the Lord's prayer to 
 make it broader, sweeter, and nearer the heart's desire, and 
 that is an unpardonable crime. I tried to see further than 
 Jesus, and I should be stricken with blindness for it. I tried 
 to speak in a more human accent than Jesus, and the 
 trustees of Orchestra Hall passed a resolution to gag me 
 for it. so far as their jurisdiction would permit. Well, if 
 the trustees of the Orchestral Association feel that they 
 must protect the Lord's prayer against the prayer of a mere 
 layman, they must think that it cannot stand without their 
 support. The people who resort to force to maintain a re- 
 ligion never stop to think that thereby they are only ad- 
 vertising their unbelief in it. Instead of fearing competition, 
 a divine religion ought to invite it. Nor do the persecutors 
 realize that no God who has any independence at all would 
 care to be worshiped by an unwilling person. 
 
 It has also come to me that our extensive advertising 
 of the lecture Is the Morality of Jesus Sound? gave great 
 offense to the Christian public of Chicago. The resolution 
 of the trustees to stop our meetings in Orchestra 
 
 30
 
 Hall followed almost immediately the appearance of 
 this lecture. Evidently, the church people think Jesus 
 is beyond criticism or comment, which, again proves our 
 statement that the believer has no use for liberty. But our 
 libraries are full of books in every language containing 
 most radical statements about Jesus and his teaching. Why 
 are not these books destroyed? If the churches had their 
 way a big bonfire would be made out of all books not en- 
 dorsed by the Protestant or Catholic bishop. The truth 
 is that the church will never feel safe until it commands 
 both pen and tongue. 
 
 But does persecution help the cause of truth? There is 
 an impression that the best way to spread a truth is to 
 persecute it. I doubt whether history will verify this state- 
 ment altogether. The death of Socrates by poison, some 
 have argued, destroyed the liberty of Greece. It compelled 
 his great disciple, Plato, to conform, more or less, to the 
 superstitions of the populace. It scared the lesser philoso- 
 phers into silence. 
 
 Persecution certainly hurts the cause of progress. If 
 evolution means anything, it is this : There is no progress 
 where the environment is not favorable to variations from 
 a given type. In other words, if we all believed alike, and 
 were not at liberty to differ from one another mentally, 
 there would be an end to progress. The object of the forces 
 of nature is to promote variations from a given type. The 
 object of the church is to prevent such variations. Hetero- 
 geniety is what nature seeks. Homogeniety, or sameness, 
 is what the churches are righting for. Death is uniform ; 
 life is diverse. The creed is death ; truth is life. 
 
 But the persecution also hurts the persecutors. If the 
 Protestants and Catholics should succeed in suppressing 
 our movement altogether, they would be the greater losers. 
 From a selfish point of view even, the Christians should 
 be our best friends. We help to keep them awake. We 
 keep them on the alert. We help to ventilate religion. We 
 give it air, which it has never had, and without which it 
 cannot live. We remove the walls and tear down the doors 
 of the closet in which the churches have been penned up 
 for long- centuries. But for the opposition of science and 
 
 21
 
 Rationalism, the grass would grow in the church aisles, 
 and the creeds would become mildewed with neglect. Op- 
 position provokes orthodoxy into action, and action is sal- 
 vation. We sting the creeds into a livelier pace. It was 
 to counteract our influence in this hall that the Sunday 
 Evening Religious Club was organized. It is to fight Ra- 
 tionalism that revivalists are brought over from abroad, 
 and new activities are launched. It is opposition that chal- 
 lenges our better natures. The churches need us to sharpen 
 their wits upon and keep the blood tingling in their veins. 
 Even as in politics insurgency helps to check corruption 
 in the party in power, so in religion opposition by rubbing 
 mind against mind evokes the spark of truth. 
 
 In conclusion, I have heard some of our hesitating 
 friends remark that if I had been a little cautious we might 
 have remained in Orchestra Hall indefinitely. But to be 
 "a little cautious" is a vague phrase. How much cau- 
 tion would satisfy the clergy, for instance? And how much 
 the business men who manage this public hall? Besides, 
 I may just as well argue that if the clergy had been a lit- 
 tle more cautious in their preaching, we might never have 
 left the churches. But the preacher must be true to his 
 convictions, and the lecturer to his. If any caution is nec- 
 essary, it is the caution to tell the whole truth about re- 
 ligion. To keep some of it back would be the worst in- 
 caution. In fact, it is our extreme caution to be consist- 
 ent, to make no slips and never to be caught napping, that 
 orthodoxy does not like. The Unitarians, the New Theo- 
 logians and the insurgent professors in the universities are 
 tolerated because these men, now and then, throw a pinch 
 of incense on the altar of the supernatural. We do not 
 even tip our hats to the gods. 
 
 After all, it is difficult to change nature. Christianity 
 is Asiatic, and a residence of two thousand years in Eu- 
 rope and America has had little effect upon it. Renan 
 writes that he searched in vain for any laws of religious 
 persecution in the Roman Empire, prior to the introduction 
 of Christianity into Europe. We have dressed up this Asi- 
 atic institution in Western attire ; we have taught it one 
 or two polite manners ; we have smoothed its rugged fea- 
 
 22
 
 tures, and covered its paws in soft gloves. But we have 
 not changed its nature. Let a man inadvertently, even, 
 step upon its toes, and all its barbarian proclivities will 
 rush to the surface. Only the other day, in Spain, a man 
 by the name of Ferrer poked it with a stick and he got his 
 heart filled with lead for it. As long as we have an infallible 
 religion there will be persecution. 
 
 The directors of this hall by trying to suppress the lib- 
 erties of a portion of the community of this cosmopolitan 
 city of the great West, have injured its good name. They 
 have also dishonored the free institutions of America, the 
 latest born of time, to whose pleasant and peaceful shores the 
 oppressed of every land look with longing. They have for- 
 feited the friendship and gratitude of all who look upon liberty 
 as the jewel of their souls. We shall not change our religion, 
 or join the churches, to escape eviction from this building. 
 We give up the hall, and keep our liberty. 
 
 And to you, my friends, you who have maintained this 
 platform for many years; you who have championed an un- 
 popular cause a cause which is now being driven from this 
 great hall by the authority of laymen acting as the agents of 
 the clergy I say : As long as you shall continue to think 
 and speak your best thoughts freely and without fear as 
 long as you live up to your highest ideals, and hold up 
 your heads erect, bowing neither to priest, king, nor God 
 "bigotry shall have fingers to grasp with, but no thumb." 
 If I were on my death-bed, my last word to you would be: 
 "Suffer not bigotry to grow a thumb." 
 
 NOTICE! 
 
 The only hall available for the uses of the 
 Independent Religious Society next year, is the 
 Studebaker Theatre, Michigan Ave., seating 
 capacity 133O. This Is about one half the size of 
 the hall we now occupy. By compelling us to go 
 to a smaller hall, the churches deprive us of 
 nearly one half our audience. 
 
 23
 
 THE STORY OF MY MIND 
 
 HOW I BECAMEA RATIONALIST 
 
 Price, Fifty Cents 
 
 fl In this latest publication of the Independent Religious 
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 how, starting as a Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theolog- 
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 RATIONALISM 
 
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 which the author says : 
 
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 you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for which 
 I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and intimate 
 period in my career as a teacher of men." 
 
 ORDER THROUGH 
 
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 A New Catechism. Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, 
 
 with Portrait of Author. Price $1.00 
 
 The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth? A new book of 
 
 295 pages. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00; Paper $0.50 
 
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