No More Learning

Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of
reasoning and persuasion, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible.
We should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system
perfectly conformable to nature and reason: it would endure so long as
they endured; it would be a truth as indisputable as the light of the
sun, the criminality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence,
depending on our organization and relative situations, must remain
acknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. It is an
incontrovertible fact, the consideration of which ought to repress the
hasty conclusions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in maintaining
them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the
resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, the Christian
religion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed: on
so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the
human race! When will the vulgar learn humility? When will the pride of
ignorance blush at having believed before it could comprehend?

Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false: if true, it comes
from God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further
than its omnipotent author is willing to allow. Either the power or the
goodness of God is called in question, if He leaves those doctrines most
essential to the well-being of man in doubt and dispute; the only ones
which, since their promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing
cavil, the cause of irreconcilable hatred. IF GOD HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE
UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?

There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures: 'Those who obey not
God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with
everlasting destruction. ' This is the pivot upon which all religions
turn:--they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to
believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A
human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are
influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and
unconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas that compose any preposition. Belief is a
passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions,
its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.
Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion
attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which
is worthy of neither, and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar
faculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to their being.
Christianity was intended to reform the world: had an all-wise Being
planned it, nothing is more improbable than that it should have failed:
omniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme
which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have been utterly
unsuccessful.

Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer
may be considered under two points of view;--as an endeavour to change
the intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But
the former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can
occasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the
universe; and the latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the
loyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the
pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something
better than reason.

Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, prophecies,
and martyrdoms. No religion ever existed which had not its prophets, its
attested miracles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would bear
patiently the most horrible tortures to prove its authenticity. It
should appear that in no case can a discriminating mind subscribe to the
genuineness of a miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, by
a supernatural cause; by a cause acting beyond that eternal circle
within which all things are included. God breaks through the law of
nature, that He may convince mankind of the truth of that revelation
which, in spite of His precautions, has been, since its introduction,
the subject of unceasing schism and cavil.

Miracles resolve themselves into the following question (See Hume's
Essay, volume 2 page 121. ):--Whether it is more probable the laws of
nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have undergone
violation, or that a man should have told a lie? Whether it is more
probable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event, or that
we know the supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers of
nature were less known than at present, a certain set of men were
themselves deceived, or had some hidden motive for deceiving others; or
that God begat a Son, who, in His legislation, measuring merit by
belief, evidenced Himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the
human mind--of what is voluntary, and what is the contrary?

We have many instances of men telling lies;--none of an infraction of
nature's laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any
knowledge or experience. The records of all nations afford innumerable
instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or
themselves being deceived by the limitedness of their views and their
ignorance of natural causes: but where is the accredited case of God
having come upon earth, to give the lie to His own creations?