Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/77

Rh with a man whose importance is due to the fact that he supplies God with new saints, and can guarantee to men celestial privileges and blessings, and liberate sinners from the torments of being burned after death; they conclude diplomatic treaties with him and set forth in laws and decrees that the Pope has great influence with God, and consequently that a person standing in such intimate intercourse with the Supreme Being, and sharing his infallibility to such an extent, should receive reverence and homage beyond that which any other man on earth is entitled to. And yet, these same Governments send out expeditions to the, and laugh at the pretensions of the black Prophet there, who forbids their emissaries to enter into his domain, and declares that he will strike them, if they disobey him, with the anger of the Supreme Fetish, whose prophet and favorite he is. Who can point out to me the difference between that poor negro and the Pope at Rome? Each claims to be the high priest of God, whose thunder and lightning he can control, with the privilege of recommending certain people to God's favor or vengeance, who acts upon their suggestions. Where is the logic of the cultivated European who looks upon one as an absurd pretender, and the other as an imposing figure worthy of all reverence?

Every separate act of a religious ceremony becomes a fraud and a criminal satire when performed by a cultivated man of this Nineteenth Century.

He sprinkles himself with holy water, and expresses by the act his conviction that the priest who said certain words over it, accompanied by certain gestures, had conferred some mysterious virtues upon it, changing its nature in some way, although a chemical analysis of it would show that it differs in no respect from any other water, except in being a little more dirty. He repeats