than they will for an animal if his Reason is still fettered. The emigrant from Russia, or Italy, or Ireland, may join all the guilds and frequent all the night schools, and still remain a mental slave. But he can not take a course in Rationalism, and continue to cling to his chains. Of course, to make men free and enlightened is not enough. They must also be helped to develop the humanities which are the salt of life, but we must first wake him up, for he can not be saved in his sleep.

CHAPTER VII.

RATIONALISM AND THE WORLD'S GREAT
RELIGIONS.

Rationalism does not attack the religions of the world, it tries to explain them. But religions do not wish to be explained, and consequently they denounce the investigator as an enemy of morals as well as of religion. Reason, the theologians contend, is incapable of understanding the divine mysteries, and forgets, of course, that faith alone can discover the hidden things of God. But they do not stop to think that they are reasoning even when they are giving reasons why we should not reason.

Beginning with the belief in God, which is the basic belief in nearly all religions, Rationalisin endeavors to show the unreasonableness of all the dogmas which deal with the supernatural. It is impossible to talk about an infinite person without making one's self utterly unintelligible, not to say, absurd. There is not a single statement made about a god, which can be harmonized with sense. It is because the beliefs about the supernatural cannot be reconciled with reason,-it is because of the apparent absurdity of the dogmas

of religion, that the clergy have had to resort to fire and blood,-the scourge, the dungeon, the rack, the gallows, and hell-fire to force people to believe in them.

There is no reliable record of God ever being seen by man. His voice has never been heard. His form and expression or whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. We have nothing but guesses as to the kind of worship he prefers, or why he should be praised. And yet, entire countries have been plundered, pillaged, and laid waste for no other reason than that they held different views from ours on the form or nature of a God whom no man has ever seen, heard or comprehended. Such is the extraordinary folly of man!

All religions are absolutely human in origin. There is not, and there has never been, and in the nature of things there never can be a divine or superhuman religion-that is to say, a religion invented by a god.

Let us imagine for the sake of argument, however, that a god wished to reveal himself to us. What would be the probable course he would pursue? Would he reveal himself to us as he is, or only as much of himself as we needed to know or could comprehend? To reveal himself to us as he is in all the fulness of his nature would be a moral impossibility, for the reason that only a god could fully comprehend a god.

But if he revealed to men only as much of himself as they could grasp, then their knowledge of him must necessarily be imperfect. We are revealing ourselves to the animals, for instance, every day of our life, but still the animals, owing to their limitations, can never know us as we are, but only as they think we are. Likewise our knowledge of supernatural beings must be as incomplete as is the knowledge of animals concerning man. We see objects as the structure of our eyes permits us to see them, or as our minds grasp them. The reflection of the sky in a drop of dew is limited to the capacity of the dew. Owing to this adaptation of objects to the powers of the observer before they can be observed at all, it may be said that objects are seen not as they really are but as they appear to the observer. Since, then, a divine revelation cannot overcome the limitations of the finite mind, God could be no more to us than what we think he is, or in other words, what we make him to be.

Another proof that man is the maker of his own gods is that his gods are neither better nor worse than he is himself. The barbarian can never conceive of a civilized diety; on the contrary, the Great Spirit he worships is a projection of his own passions and aspirations-his own vices and virtues. As he advances in refinement and humanity, his God advances too. If he sinks into deeper ignorance and brutality, he drags his

God down with him. The God of the Quaker is peaceful; that of the Hebrew was a "man of war." The God of the Negro, who has never seen white folks, is necessarily black. The God of children is a child-god; and in a society where man, not woman, is the ruler, God is a “he.” Not only is man the maker of his gods, but he also keeps them in repair-constantly remodeling or retouching them in order to preserve some sort of correspondence between himself and his gods.

And why is the god of the Negro black? Because he not only is ignorant of any other color, but because black is for him the color of preference or aristocracy. When he becomes acquainted with white people he associates their color with everything that he fears and despises. He therefore, as a later evolution, makes his devils white. The idea I wish to present is that just as man determines the color of his gods and devils he determines also their characters. He can only invest them with such virtues and vices as he is acquainted with. He can not attribute to them powers which he does not covet for himself. In short he is the maker of the gods he worships and the devils he fears.

The pathetic part of all this, however, is that though man makes his own gods, he imagines that the gods have made him. He manufactures an image or an idol, invests it with certain attributes and powers, and then, like a slave, falls

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