XV.—THE BIBLE.
We have seen Thomas Paine standing alone in the Judgment Hall of the
French Nation, pleading—even amid that sea of scowling faces—for the life
of King Louis.
We have seen him with Washington, Hamilton, Macintosh, Franklin,
and Jefferson, elected a Citizen of France. With these great men, he
hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the breaking of God's Millennium;
as the first great effort of Man to free himself from the lash and
chain, since the crucifixion of the Saviour.
But soon the dawn was overcast; soon the light of burning rafters flashed
luridly over scenes of blood; soon all that is grotesque, or terrible, or loathsome
in murder, was enacted in the streets of Paris. The lantern posts
bore their ghastly fruit; the streets flowed with crimson rivers, the life-blood
of ten thousand hearts, down even to the waters of the Seine. King
Louis was dead; but this was not all. Liberty was dead also; butchered
by her fireside.
In her place reigned an orange-faced Dandy, with shrivelled cheeks and
blood-shot eyes. La Fayette and Paine, and all the heroes were gone from
the councils of France, but in their place, aye, in the place of Poetry,
Enthusiasm and Eloquence, spoke a mighty orator — King Guillotine!
For eleven months, Thomas Paine lay sweltering in a gaol, the object of
the fierce indignation of Maximilien Robespierre. At last there came a day
when he was doomed; when his name was written in the Judgment List
of the orange-faced Dandy.
Let us go to the prison, even to the Palace Prison of the Luxemburg. It
is high noon. A band of eighty, clustered around that prison door, silently
await their fate. Here amid white-haired old men, here amid trembling
women, all watching for the coming of the death-messenger,—here, silent,
stern, composed, stands the author-hero, Thomas Paine
Soon that prison door will open; soon the death cars will roll; soon the
axe will fall, and these eighty forms, now fired with the last glow of life,
will be clay.
But look—the gaoler comes! A man of dark brow and savage look; his
arms bared to the shoulder, displaying the sinews of a giant. He comes,
trudging heavily through the crowd of his victims, the massive key of the
Palace Prison in his hand. He stands for a moment, looking gloomily over
the faces of his prisoners; he places the key in the lock. Then the gloom
vanishes from his rough face; a look of frenzied joy gleams from his eyes;
his brawny chest swells with a maniac shout.
“Go forth!” he shrieks, rushing the first through the opened gates; “go
forth, young and old; go forth all!—for Catiline Robespierre is dead!”
And forth—while the air is filled with frenzied shrieks of joy—forth from
the Palace Prison walks the freed hero, the Man of Two Revolutions,
Thomas Paine.
Now comes the darkest hour of his life. Now comes the hour when we
shall weep for Genius profaned; when we shall see the great and mighty,
fallen from the pedestal of his glory into the very sink of pollution.
Now let us follow the path of Thomas Paine, as his first step is to reclaim
the Manuscript of a work which he wrote eleven months ago, before his
entrance into prison. He grasps that package of Manuscript again; let us
look at its title: “The Age of Reason.”
Here, my friends, let us pause for a moment. Let us ask that man of
the high brow, the eloquent eye, the face stamped with a great soul—let us
ask Thomas Paine, as he goes yonder through the streets of Paris, to do a
great and holy deed?
That deed—what is it?
Let us ask him to take the Manuscript in his hand, to tear it in twain,
and hurl the fragments there, beneath the dripping axe of the Guillotine.
Yes, let the Guillotine do its last work upon this Manuscript of Falsehood;
let the last descent of the gory axe fall on its polluted pages. For while
this “Age of Reason” speaks certain great Thoughts, announcing the author's
belief in a God and Immortality—thoughts derived from the Bible—it is
still a jest book, too vile to name.
It is true, it speaks of God and Immortality; but it also heaps its vile
jests, its vulgar scorn upon Jesus, the Redeemer of Man, and Mary the
Virgin Mother.
Let me tell you at once, my friends, that I stand here to-night, a prejudiced
man. Let me at once confess, that it has ever been my study, my
love, to bend over the dim pages of the Hebrew volume—to behold the
awful form of Jehovah pending over chaos; to hear that voice of Omnipotence
resound through the depths of space, as these words break on my
soul: “Vayomer Aloheim: yehee aur vayehee aur!”—Then spake
God: let there be light and light there was!”
Or yet again, to behold that Jehovah, descended from the skies, walking
yonder with the Patriarchs, yonder where the palms arise, and the tents
whiten over the plain. Or, in the silence of night, to look there, through
the lone wilderness, where the Pillar of Fire beacons Moses the Deliverer
towards the Promised Land; or to enter the solemn temple of Jerusalem,
and behold the same Jehovah, shining in the holiest place, shining over the
Ark of the Covenant, so awfully serene, yet sublime.
Let me tell you, that I have been with the Arab, Job, as he talked face
to face with God, and in images of divine beauty, spoke forth the writhings
of his soul; as in words that your orators of Greece and Rome never spoke
or dreamed, he pictures the littleness of life, the Majesty of Omnipotence,
the sweet, dear rest of the untroubled grave. “There the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary be at rest.”
I have bent over this New Testament, and traced the path of God as he
walked the earth enshrined in human flesh. Is there no beauty here, to
warm the heart and fire the brain? Even as we read, does not the face
of Jesus start from the page—that face that painter never painted, with its
serene Divinity looking out from the clear, deep eyes. That face which
we may imagine, with its flowing hair falling gently down from the brow
where “God” is written in every outline, with the lips wreathing with such
eternal love for poor forsaken man, whether he sweats in the workshop or
grovels in the mine. Yes, I have followed that face, as it appeared above
the hill-top at even, in the golden twilight of Palestine, and approached the
Poor Man's hut, and shone in the dark window, upon the hard crust of the
slave. How the Poor rose up to welcome that face; how rude men bent
down before it and wept; how tender women knelt in its light and gazed
in those Divine eyes! Then how the voice of Jesus rung out upon the
air, speaking in dark huts great words that shall never die!
Yes, I have followed that Man of Nazareth over stony roads, by the
waves of Galilee, into the Halls of Pilate; and there—yes, up the awful
cliffs of Calvary, when Jerusalem poured through its gates by tens of thousands,
under the darkened heavens, over the groaning earth, to look upon
the face of the dying God, as the heavy air rung with that unspeakable
agony: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”
Let me at once confess, that if the Bible is a Fable, it is a Fable more
beautiful than all the classics of Greece and Rome. Paint for me your
Cicero and Demosthenes in all their glory, and I will paint you that bold
forehead and those earnest eyes of Saint Paul, as, rising from his midnight
toil, his voice echoes the words he has just written; those words that live
forever, as though each word was an Immortal Soul—
In a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, at the last trump, for the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we
shall be changed.
For this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal must
put on immortality.
Search your Poets for scenes of that quiet pathos which at once melts
and elevates the soul—search your Homer, your Shakspeare; search them
all, the venerable Seers of Ages, and I will point you to a single line that
puts them all to shame! It is in the New Testament, where Jesus the
Christ is dead and buried. It is on that serene morning, when the sunbeams
shine over the sepulchre of the Saviour. Three women, the blessed
Maries, come there to weep over the body of their Lord. Yes, all the
world has forsaken him: all save Peter the Faithless yet Lion-hearted,
John the Beloved, and these three women. They look into the sepulchre
—it is empty. The grave-clothes are there, but the Lord is gone. At
this moment, a poor, abandoned woman, whom the good Christ had lifted
up to virtue and forgave, even as she washed his feet with her tears—yes,
at this moment, sad, tearful, Mary Magdalene approaches a being whom she
mistakes for the gardener. Listen to the words of scripture. This being
speaks:
“Woman, why weepest thou?”
She, supposing him to be the gardener, said unto him,
“Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him,
and I will take him away.”
Jesus saith unto her, “Mary!”
She turned herself and said unto him, “Master!”
This is all the gospel says of the matter, but is not this one line full of
eternal beauty: “Jesus saith unto her, `Mary!”' No long explanations,
no elaborate phrase, no attempt to awe or surprise; but one simple word,
that word her name, spoken in the tones she loved to hear.
Can you not hear his voice, speaking in those well-remembered tones?
Can you not see his hand extended in a gesture of benediction, as his eye
lights up with an expression of brotherly tenderness?
That one scene by the sepulchre, where the Magdalene, an image of
beauty purified by religion, bends delighted before the serenely divine face
of the risen Jesus, while the sunbeams of that calm dawn fell gently over
the grave-clothes which no longer clasp the dead—that one scene, sublime
in its very simplicity considered as a mere composition, is worth all the
pathos of Greece and Rome.
Yes, if the Bible is a fable, it is a fable more beautiful than all the iron-hearted
sophistry of your cold-blooded Philosophers—it is a Fable that
through all time has girded up the hearts of patriots on the scaffold and the
battle-field—it is a Fable that has shone like a glory over ten thousand
dying beds. If that Bible is a Fable, then is it a Fable that bursts like a
blaze of love and beauty through the dark cloud of human guilt, and lights
a way from the dull grave up to Immortality and God.
Ah, had I been Thomas Paine—had his great brain, his great soul been
mine, then would I have taken my stand here on the Bible with Jesus.
Then from this book would I have told the host of hypocrites who like
slimy lizards, crawl up on the Altar of God and sit there in all their loathsomeness,
then would I have told these mockers of God, that here from this
Bible, even the mild spirit of Jesus is roused—to rebuke—to scorn—to speak
terror to their souls!
Because hypocrites have made merchandize of God's Book, and split his
cross into pedlar's wares, shall I therefore heap scorn upon that serenely
beautiful face, looming out from the Bible; that face of Jesus, the Redeemer
of Man? Because hypocrites and kings have taken the seamless robe of
Christ and parted it into cords, to bind men's necks and hands and hearts,
am I to deride that Christ, scorn that Jesus, who stands there forever above
the clouds of human guilt, the only Redeemer of Man, the only Messiah
of the Poor?
Here was the terrible mistake of Thomas Paine. He mistook the cloud
which marred the sun for the sun itself; he mistook the abuses of men, the
frauds of hypocrites, the lies of fabulists, which have been done and uttered
in the name of Christianity, for Christianity itself.
He lived in an age when Light and Darkness struggled together, when
the earth was convulsed from cottage to throne. He had done a great deed
when he wrote that book of “Common Sense,” which derives its strongest
arguments from the Bible, for it quotes the memorable words of the prophet
Samuel against Monarchy and King-worshippers. This book of Common
Sense, founded on the Bible, was the forerunner of the Declaration of Independence.
But now Paine fell into the deplorable error of mistaking certain wolves,
who assumed the fleece of religion, for the true sheep of the Lord Jesus.
He attacked Christianity in this ribald book, written in that style of controversial
blackguardism, which was first used by pretended followers of Christ,
who reduced their Master to an Enigma, his religion to a sophistry. This
pitiable style which makes up in filth what it wants in grandeur, and mistakes
a showy falsehood for a solid truth, was used by Paine in his Age of
Reason. It was beneath him; far beneath the genius of the man who
wrote “Common Sense.” It has left his name, as the author of this work,
but a wreck on a desert shore; while that name, when known as the author
of “Common Sense,” is cherished by the wise and good all over the
land.
The position which I have assumed in this history is a plain one. No
one but a fool can mistake it. I found the character of “Thomas Paine,
Author of Common Sense,” wronged and neglected. I took up that character,
defended it, placed it on the pedestal where Washington and Jefferson
had placed it once before. No selfish motive actuated me in this work.
Paine has no relatives living to thank me; nor—if my object was money—
has he any rich friends to pay me for the task. I think, therefore, that the
most prejudiced man will acknowledge that my motives here have been
pure, honest, above all mercenary considerations.
A fact that speaks for itself, is this: while an Atheistical paper abuses
me as a Bigot, another paper, governed by no particular morality or belief,
but supplying the place of Religion with Bigotry, calls me an—Infidel!
Does not this speak volumes? In this case extremes meet, for the
snake puts his tail in his mouth.
Without one sordid motive, without one base fear, have I called up the
records of the past, the voices of the dead, to testify the character and
genius of Thomas Paine, the Author of Common Sense.
And now, without one sordid motive, without one base fear, do I record
my sorrow that a man like this should have written so paltry a book as the
Age of Reason; my detestation of the style and principles of that work;
my pity for the individual who, in our day, could be turned from his Saviour
by arguments and sneers so puerile as are written in its pages.
For the Religion of Jesus is not a thing of an hour or a day, that it
should be undermined by a sneer or crushed by a falsehood. It is built up
in too many hearts, it brings too much hope to poor desolate man, it holds
out too glittering beacons of Immortality, ever to die. When it survived
the wounds it received from pretended friends during a course of eighteen
hundred years, shall it die of a single Voltaire or Paine? The Christianity
of the heart, which cheers us in toil, lights our homes with a gleam from
God's heaven, smoothes our pillow in sickness, and in the sad, stern hour
of death, sings hymns to our parting soul and leads it gently home to Immortality—Can
this Religion of the heart ever die?
Speak, Mother, bending over your child, as you tell him of the Jesus who
gathered the little children to his breast—can this Religion die? Speak,
Father, old man, now bending beside your daughter's corse, gazing upon
that face cold in death, with your earnest eyes, speak and tell us! Can a
Religion that comforts you in an hour like this, that assures you your child
is not dead but gone home, can this Religion die! Speak, slave of the
workshop and mine, now toiling on for a hard crust, with the sweat on
your brow, the agony in your heart—can this Religion die? This Religion
which tells you that God himself did not disdain to take the form of a man
of toil, in order to make your fate better in this world, and give you Immortality
in the next?—Speak, Bigot—even you, whom Christ pities and
forgives—even you, last object of imbecility and malice—speak and tell us!
Can a Religion that stoops so far in its mercy, as to save you, ever die?
Speak, Universal Man, and answer us! Can a Religion which binds
itself to your heart, links its eternal form with your joys and sorrows, hopes
and fears, soothes you in toil and sickness, appeals to your imagination
with its images of divine loveliness, elevates you with its Revelation of Immortality
from a mere lump of clay almost into Godhead—Can this Religion
of the heart ever die?
Here is the mournful lesson of Thomas Paine's life: A great man, when
he utters a great truth, raises himself to the dignity of an Angel: the
same great man, uttering a Lie, degrades himself below the beast.
When Thomas Paine wrote “Common Sense,” he uttered a Truth,
(founded on the Bible,) which aroused a whole Continent to its destiny.
For this we honor him.
When the same Thomas Paine wrote the `Age of Reason,' he uttered an
Error, opposed to the Bible and in direct contradiction of his former work,
Common Sense. For this we pity him.
The effect of the “Age of Reason,” has long since passed away, but the
good work of “Common Sense,” is seen in this great spectacle of Twenty-nine
Commonwealths, combined in one great Republic, extending from the
Aroostook to the Rio Grande.
Have I made myself sufficiently plain?—Has that man a well-balanced
mind who can now mistake my position? If there is such a man within
sound of my voice, I would remind him that it is my duty to supply him
with information, but a Divine Power alone can furnish with brains.
Again I repeat—had I been Thomas Paine, I would have learned this
great truth: The path of the true Reformer is not against, but ever and evermore
with Jesus.
