Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/78

64 prayers, kneels, goes to church services with all their ceremonies, and thus asserts his conviction that there is a God, who enjoys prayers, gestures, incense and anthems, if the prayers are in certain stereotyped words, the gestures in certain prescribed forms, and the ceremonies presided over by persons in odd clothing, with robes and capes of such peculiar colors and shapes as no sensible man would ever dream of wearing. The fact that a liturgy or form of public worship once established, is observed with painful minuteness, can only be explained to a rational mind somewhat in this way: the priests learned from some good source, and acted upon this knowledge, that God not only had the vanity to insist upon praises, compliments and flattery being offered to Him as well as glorifications of His goodness, His wisdom and His greatness, but combined with this vanity was the whim that He would only accept these praises and glorifications when they were offered according to a certain formula, never to be deviated from. And the men of our age of natural science pretend to reverence these liturgies, and will not allow any one to speak of them with the contempt they deserve.

More revolting and insufferable even than the lie of Religion as acted by the individual, is the same lie of Religion as acted by the community. The individual citizen although he belongs ostensibly to some established religion, and takes part in its ceremonies, often makes no secret of his disbelief in its superstitions, and refuses to be convinced that a certain form of words, repeated in concert by the congregation will suspend or alter the laws of nature, that the devil is driven out from an infant when sprinkled with holy water, or that the chanting and speech of a man in a black or white robe beside a corpse, will open the gates of Paradise to the soul of the dead