Annie Besant

“ Virtue is a service man owes himself; and though there were no heaven, nor any God to rule the world, it were not less the binding law of life. It is man's privilege to know the right and follow it. Betray and prosecute me, brother men! Pour out your rage on me, O malignant devils! Smile, or watch my agony with cold disdain, ye blissful gods! Earth, hell, heaven, combine your might to crush me—I will still hold fast by this inheritance! My strength is nothing—time can shake and cripple it; my youth is transient—already grief has withered up my days ”

“ All this evil flows directly from the Christian morality which teaches that all hopes, efforts, and aims should be turned towards laying up treasures in heaven, where also the heart should be. One need scarcely add a word of reprobation as to the horrible doctrine of eternal torture, although that, too, is part of the teaching of Christ. The whole conscience of civilised mankind is so turning against that shameful and cruel dogma, that it is only now believed among the illiterate and uncultured of the Christians, and soon will be too savage even for them. ”

“ Who can reckon the millions of human lives that have been spilt in obedience to them? The slaughter of the Midianites, of the people of Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, and of many another city, marking with blood each step of the people of God, who smote "all the souls that were" in each, and "let none remain"—all these are but as the first-fruits of the great harvest of human slaughter, reaped for the glory of God. ”

“ The names of those who obey God's command [pg 402] may be changed, but they all do the same accursed work, spreading religion everywhere with fire and sword; nor does the harm confine itself to Jews and Christians only, for Mahomet, the prophet of Arabia, catches up the teaching of Moses and re-echoes it, and the Moslem follows on the inspired path, and stains it once again with human blood. A God, a Bible, a priesthood—how have they ruined the world; how fair and bright might earth have been had there been no teachers of religion! ”

“ Just as the symbolism of Christianity comes from nature, and is common to many creeds, so does the morality of Christianity flow from nature, and is common to many faiths; when nations attain to a certain stage of civilisation, and inherit a certain amount of culture, they also develop a morality proportionate to the point they have reached, because morality is necessary to the stability of States, and utility formulates the code of moral laws. Christianity can no longer stand on a pinnacle as the sole possessor of a pure and high morality. ”

“ From these founts Jesus drew his morality, and spoke as Jew to Jews, out of the Jewish teachings. To point out these facts is by no means to disparage the nobler part of Christian morality. It is rather to elevate Humanity by showing that pure thoughts and gracious words are human, not divine; that the so-called "inspiration" is in all races cultivated to a certain point, and not in one alone; that morality is a fair blossom of earth, not a heaven-transplanted exotic, and grows naturally out of the rich soil of the loving human heart and the noble human brain. ”

“ And now, day by day, that progress becomes swifter; now, day by day, the opposition becomes fainter, and soon, passing over the ruins of a shattered religion, Free Thought shall plant the white banner of Liberty in the midst of the temple of Humanity; that temple which, long desecrated by priests and overshadowed by gods, shall then be consecrated for evermore to the service of its rightful owner, and shall be filled with the glory of man, the only god, and shall have its air melodious with the voice of the prayer which is work. ”

“ Throughout the New Testament what word is there of patriotism? The citizenship is in heaven. What incitement to heroism? Resist not the power. What appeal to self-reverence? In my flesh dwelleth no good thing. What cry against injustice and oppression? Honour the king, and give obedience to the froward. Christianity makes a paradise for tyrants and a hell for the oppressed. ”

“ Hence it follows that man can discern and see all the stains with which he has wilfully or involuntarily defiled his life, that man by means of his self-knowledge can decide to subdue his passions, to despise his pleasures and desires, to wage the battle of repentance, and to be just at any cost, and by the fundamental virtues of humanity, piety, and justice, to imitate the virtues of the Father.... In such perfection as is possible to all, even to women and to slaves, since no one is a slave by nature, the wise man is truly rich. ”

“ Christendom, during this century, as during the preceding one, was threatened and harassed by the inroads of Mahommedan powers, and the first gleams of returning light began to penetrate its thick darkness—light proceeding from the Arabians and the Saracens, the restorers of knowledge and of science. It is not here our duty to trace that marvellous work of the revival of thought—thought which Christianity had slain, but which, revived by Mahommedanism, was destined to issue in the new birth of heretic philosophy. ”

“ Is it not, however, true, that just as Christians urge that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are but one God, so the thinkers of old believed in one Supreme Being, while the multitudinous gods were but as the angels and saints of Christianity, his messengers, his subordinates, not his rivals? ”

“ When the Christians in the fifteenth century seized "beautiful Andalusia," they erected the Inquisition, burned the books, burned the people, banished the Jews and the Moors, and founded the miserable land known as modern Spain.
There was but little heresy during this melancholy century; people did not think enough even to think badly. The Paulicians spread through Bulgaria, and established themselves there under a patriarch of their own. ”

“ While it reigned supreme, Europe lay in chains, and even into the new world it carried the fetters of the old. Only as Christianity has grown feebler has civilization strengthened, and progress has been made more and more rapidly as a failing creed has lost the power to oppose. ”

“ True virtue does right because it is right, and therefore beneficial, and not from hope of a personal reward, or from dread of a personal punishment, hereafter. Christianity is the apotheosis of selfishness, gilded over with piety; self is the pivot on which all turns: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark viii. 36) . "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. ”

“ Such a one is priest, king, and prophet, he is no longer merely a son and scholar of the Logos, he is the companion and son of God.... God is the eternal guide and director of the world, himself requiring nothing, and giving all to his children. It is of his goodness that he does not punish as a judge, but that, as the giver of grace, he bears with all. With him all things are possible; he deals with all, even with that which is almost beyond redemption. From him all the world hopes for forgiveness of sins, the Logos, the high priest, and intercessor, and the patriarchs pray for it ”

“ At that period the day and the night are equal, and both fight for the mastery; though the night veil the sun, and he seems dead; though he has descended out of sight, below the earth, yet he rises again triumphant, and he rises in the sign of the Lamb, and is thus the Lamb of God, carrying away the darkness and death of the winter months. ”

“ Then we hear, elsewhere, of torture by roasting the feet, by pulleys, by red-hot pincers—in short, by every abominable instrument of cruelty which men, inspired by religion, could conceive. Let the student take Llorente and Dr. Rule alone, and he will learn enough of the Inquisition horrors to make him shudder at the sight of a cross—at the name of Christianity. ”

“ Martyrdom proves the sincerity, but not the truth, of the sufferer's belief; every creed has had its martyrs, and as the truth of one creed excludes the truth of every other, it follows that the vast majority have died for a delusion, and that, therefore, the number of martyrs it can reckon is no criterion of the truth of a creed, but only of the devotion it inspires. While we allow that the Christians underwent much persecution, there can be no doubt that the number of the sufferers has been grossly exaggerated. ”

“ Rome taught its citizens to reverence themselves, to love their country, to maintain freedom: the Roman would die gladly for his mother-country, and deemed his duty as a citizen the foremost of his obligations. The love of country, and the sense of service owed to the State, is the grandest and sublimest virtue of the Pagan world. ”

“ Thus womanhood has been worshipped in all ages of the world, and maternity has been deified by all creeds: from the savage who bowed before the female symbol of motherhood, to the philosophic Comtist who adores woman "in the past, the present, and the future," as mother, wife, and daughter, the worship of the female element in nature has run side by side with that of the male; the worship is one and the same in all religions, and runs in an unbroken thread from the barbarous ages to the present time. ”

“ The resemblance between the Essenes and the early Christians is on many points so strong that it is impossible to deny that the two are connected; if Jesus of Nazareth had any historical existence, he must have been one of the sect of the Essenes, who publicly preached many of their doctrines, and endeavoured to popularise them. We are thus led to conclude that the Jewish side of Christianity is simply Essenian, but that the major part of the religion is purely Pagan, and that its rise under the name of Christianity must be sought for in Alexandria rather than in Judæa. ”

“ Gross injustice is sometimes done to ancient creeds by contemplating them from a modern point of view; in those days every power of Nature was thought divine, and most divine of all was deemed the power of creation, whether worshipped in the sun, whose beams impregnated the earth, or in the male and female organs of generation, the universal creators of life in the animal world; thus we find in all ancient sculptures carvings of the phallus and the yoni, expressed both naturally and symbolically, the representations becoming more and more conventional and refined as civilisation advanced ”

“ Do wise men praise or blame them? Are they not unprofitable, and causes of sorrow?' And they replied, 'It is as the Lord has spoken.' And the Lord said, 'For this I said to you, do not believe merely because you have heard, but when of your own consciousness you know a thing to be evil, abstain from it.' And then the Lord taught of that which is good, saying, 'If any of you know of yourselves that anything is good and not evil, praised by wise men, advantageous, and productive of happiness, then act abundantly according to your belief. ”

“ Hence a miracle is utterly useless, for the credibility of a teacher rests on the morality that he teaches, and if this is good, it is accepted without a miracle to attest its goodness, so that the attesting miracle is superfluous. If it is bad, it is rejected in spite of a miracle to attest its authority, so that the attesting miracle is deceptive. The only use of a miracle might be to attest a revelation of otherwise unknowable facts, which had nothing to do with any moral teaching ”

“ The white robes of modern priests are remnants of the same old faith; the more gorgeous vestments are the ancient garb of the priests officiating in the temple of female deities; the stole is the characteristic of woman's dress; the pallium is the emblem of the yoni; the alb is the chemise; the oval or circular chasuble is again the yoni; the Christian mitre is the high cap of the Egyptian priests, and its peculiar shape is simply the open mouth of the fish, the female emblem. ”

“ And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a lake of fire and tormenting demons on the one hand, and on the other, eternal life in the presence of God. Is it possible, then, that such similarities of doctrines should not raise the most serious questions as to the relation of the beliefs about Christ to those about Osiris; as to the cause of this wonderful similarity of the doctrines of Christianism to those of Osirianism; nay, as to the possibility of the whole doctrinal system of modern orthodoxy being but a transformation of the Osiris-myth? ”

“ The struggles between the popes and the more stiff-necked princes as to their relative rights and privileges continued, and we sometimes see the curious spectacle of a pontiff on the side of the people, or rather of the barons, against the king: whenever this is so, we find that the king is struggling against Roman supremacy, and that the pope uses the power of the nation to subdue the rebellious monarch. We do not find Rome interfering to save the people from oppression when the oppressor is a faithful and obedient son of Holy Church. ”

“ To which of their histories is such external testimony given as that of Tacitus to Josephus, in spite of the contempt felt by the polished Roman towards the whole Jewish race? Nothing can be more misleading than to speak of Josephus and of the Evangelists as though their writings stood on the same level; every mark of authenticity is present in the one; every mark of authenticity is absent in the other.
We shall argue as against the miraculous accounts of the Gospels—first, that the evidence is insufficient and far below the amount of evidence brought in support of more modern miracles ”

“ We could have no reason to deny or to doubt what such an historian could have had no motive to feign or to exaggerate. The proof, even to demonstration, of these circumstances would constitute no step or advance towards the proof of the truth of the Christian religion; while the absence of a sufficient degree of evidence to render even these circumstances unquestionable must, à fortiori, be fatal to the credibility of the less credible circumstances founded upon them" ("Diegesis," p. 7) . ”