Love, Life & Work - Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning - How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the - Least Possible Harm to Others by Elbert Hubbard
page 17 of 103 (16%)
page 17 of 103 (16%)
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In Los Angeles is a preacher by the name of McIntyre, a type of the
blatant Bellarmine who exiled Galileo--a man who never doubts his own infallibility, who talks like an oracle and continually tells of perdition for all who disagree with him. Needless to say that McIntyre lacks humor. Personally, I prefer the McGregors, but in Los Angeles the McIntyres are popular. It was McIntyre who called a meeting to pray for Fay Mills, and in proposing the meeting McIntyre made the unblushing announcement that he had never met Mills nor heard him speak, nor had he read one of his books. Chapman and McIntyre represent the modern types of Phariseeism--spielers and spouters for churchianity, and such are the men who make superstition of so long life. Superstition is the one Infamy--Voltaire was right. To pretend to believe a thing at which your reason revolts--to stultify your intellect--this, if it exists at all, is the unpardonable sin. These muftis preach "the blood of Jesus," the dogma that man without a belief in miracles is eternally lost, that everlasting life depends upon acknowledging this, that or the other. Self-reliance, self-control and self-respect are the three things that make a man a man. But man has so recently taken on this ability to think, that he has not yet gotten used to handling it. The tool is cumbrous in his hands. He is afraid of it--this one characteristic that differentiates him from the lower animals--so he abdicates and turns his divine birthright over to a syndicate. This combination called a church agrees to take care of his doubts and fears and do his thinking for him, and to help matters along he is assured that he is not fit to think for himself, and to do so would be a sin. Man, in his present crude state, holds somewhat the |
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