Human
history in all ages is red
with blood, and bitter with
hate, and stained with cruelties;
but not since Biblical times
have these features been without
a limit of some kind. Even
the Church, which is credited
with having spilt more innocent
blood, since the beginning
of its supremacy, than all
the political wars put together
have spilt, has observed a
limit. A sort of limit. But
you notice that when the Lord
God of Heaven and Earth, adored
Father of Man, goes to war,
there is no limit. He is totally
without mercy -- he, who is
called the Fountain of Mercy.
He slays, slays, slays! All
the men, all the beasts, all
the boys, all the babies; also
all the women and all the girls,
except those that have not
been deflowered.
He
makes no distinction between
innocent and guilty. The babies
were innocent, the beasts were
innocent, many of the men,
many of the women, many of
the boys, many of the girls
were innocent, yet they had
to suffer with the guilty.
What the insane Father required
was blood and misery; he was
indifferent as to who furnished
it.
The
heaviest punishment of all
was meted out to persons who
could not by any possibility
have deserved so horrible a
fate -- the 32,000 virgins.
Their naked privacies were
probed, to make sure that they
still possessed the hymen unruptured;
after this humiliation they
were sent away from the land
that had been their home, to
be sold into slavery; the worst
of slaveries and the shamefulest,
the slavery of prostitution;
bed-slavery, to excite lust,
and satisfy it with their bodies;
slavery to any buyer, be he
gentleman or be he a coarse
and filthy ruffian.
It
was the Father that inflicted
this ferocious and undeserved
punishment upon those bereaved
and friendless virgins, whose
parents and kindred he had
slaughtered before their eyes.
And were they praying to him
for pity and rescue, meantime?
Without a doubt of it.
These
virgins were "spoil" plunder,
booty. He claimed his share
and got it. What use had he for
virgins? Examine his later
history and you will know.
His
priests got a share of the
virgins, too. What use could
priests make of virgins? The
private history of the Roman
Catholic confessional can answer
that question for you. The
confessional's chief amusement
has been seduction -- in all
the ages of the Church. P�re
Hyacinth testifies that of
a hundred priests confessed
by him, ninety-nine had used
the confessional effectively
for the seduction of married
women and young girls. One
priest confessed that of nine
hundred girls and women whom
he had served as father and
confessor in his time, none
had escaped his lecherous embrace
but he elderly and the homely.
The official list of questions
which the priest is required
to ask will overmasteringly
excite any woman who is not
a paralytic.
There
is nothing in either savage
or civilized history that is
more utterly complete, more
remorselessly sweeping than
the Father of Mercy's campaign
among the Midianites. The official
report does not furnish the
incidents, episodes, and minor
details, it deals only in information
in masses: all the virgins, all the
men, all the babies, all "creatures that
breathe," all houses, all cities;
it gives you just one vast
picture, spread abroad here
and there and yonder, as far
as eye can reach, of charred
ruin and storm-swept desolation;
your imagination adds a brooding
stillness, an awful hush --
the hush of death. But of course
there were incidents. Where
shall we get them?
Out
of history of yesterday's date.
Out of history made by the
red Indian of America. He has
duplicated God's work, and
done it in the very spirit
of God. In 1862 the Indians
in Minnesota, having been deeply
wronged and treacherously treated
by the government of the United
States, rose against the white
settlers and massacred them;
massacred all they could lay
their hands upon, sparing neither
age nor sex. Consider this
incident:
Twelve
Indians broke into a farmhouse
at daybreak and captured the
family. It consisted of the
farmer and his wife and four
daughters, the youngest aged
fourteen and the eldest eighteen.
They crucified the parents;
that is to say, they stood
them stark naked against the
wall of the living room and
nailed their hands to the wall.
Then they stripped the daughters
bare, stretched them upon the
floor in front of their parents,
and repeatedly ravished them.
Finally they crucified the
girls against the wall opposite
this parents, and cut off their
noses and their breasts. They
also -- but I will not go into
that. There is a limit. There
are indignities so atrocious
that the pen cannot write them.
One member of that poor crucified
family -- the father -- was
still alive when help came
two days later.
Now
you have one incident of the
Minnesota massacre. I could
give you fifty. They would
cover all the different kinds
of cruelty the brutal human
talent has ever invented.
And
now you know, by these sure
indications, what happened
under the personal direction
of the Father of Mercies in
his Midianite campaign. The
Minnesota campaign was merely
a duplicate of the Midianite
raid. Nothing happened in the
one that didn't happen in the
other.
No,
that is not strictly true.
The Indian was more merciful
than was the Father of Mercies.
He sold no virgins into slavery
to minister to the lusts of
the murderers of their kindred
while their sad lives might
last; he raped them, then charitably
made their subsequent sufferings
brief, ending them with the
precious gift of death. He
burned some of the houses,
but not all of them. He carried
out innocent dumb brutes, but
he took the lives of none.
Would
you expect this same conscienceless
God, this moral bankrupt, to
become a teacher of morals;
of gentleness; of meekness;
of righteousness; of purity?
It looks impossible, extravagant;
but listen to him. These are
his own words:
Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they
shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all
manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
The
mouth that uttered these immense
sarcasms, these giant hypocrisies,
is the very same that ordered
the wholesale massacre of the
Midianitish men and babies
and cattle; the wholesale destruction
of house and city; the wholesale
banishment of the virgins into
a filthy and unspeakable slavery.
This is the same person who
brought upon the Midianites
the fiendish cruelties which
were repeated by the red Indians,
detail by detail, in Minnesota
eighteen centuries later. The
Midianite episode filled him
with joy. So did the Minnesota
one, or he would have prevented
it.
The
Beatitudes and the quoted chapters
from Numbers and Deuteronomy
ought always to be read from
the pulpit together; then the
congregation would get an all-round
view of Our Father in Heaven.
Yet not in a single instance
have I ever known a clergyman
to do this. |