Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/281

Rh around him, he shrinks from openly emancipating himself from their dominion, and, constrained by the force of circumstances, he becomes a hypocrite, publicly applauding what his private judgment condemns. Where a nation is making this passage, so universal do these practices become that it may be truly said hypocrisy is organized. It is possible that whole communities might be found living in this deplorable state."

And, indeed, in our own country we are witnessing an example of this very thing. Religion has led to widespread hypocrisy. Our religious influences have created a race of men mentally docile and obedient to the dictates of tyrannical ecclesiasticism. It has created a fear of truth, and our minds are still brutish and puerile in our methods of reasoning. Credulity has led to stultification, and stultification of the mind is the bitter fruit which we have been reaping for thousands of years.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of men and women in these United States that give lip-service to their creed, but deep in the recesses of their minds a small voice cries to them and shames them, for as soon as they reason, they become sceptics. How can we know the actual number of earthlings that are sceptics? It is impossible in our present state of development. Religious persecution today is just as active as it was during the Middle Ages. Surely, a man is not burned at the stake for his scepticism in this age; but is he not done to death? If the grocer, the butcher, the doctor, the lawyer, the scholar, the business man, were to boldly announce his scepticism, what would happen to him? The answer is well known to all. Immediately, each of his religious customers would take it upon himself to act as a personal inquisition. The sceptic would be shunned socially, he would be ignored, his wares would be sought after elsewhere, and he would suffer. His wife, his family,