The New Gospel

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us.  The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.  Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. 

Of this band of dupes [the biographers of Jesus], and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus [leader of the chorus], and the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.  

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.  

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition … it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things … 

It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; the circumstances denied to others but indulged to us have imposed on us a duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members.

I rejoice in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience neither to kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God [in contrast to the Trinity, or more generally that Jesus is somehow part God] is reviving, and I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him [Jesus] by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being.  

I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book [the Gospels], and by arranging the matter which is evidently his [Jesus’], and which is as distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.  

I am a Materialist; he [Jesus] takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require the counterpoise of good works … It is the innocence of His character, the purity and sublimity of His moral precepts, the eloquence of His inculcations, the beauty of his apologues in which He conveys them, that I so much admire.

… a system of morals is presented to us [by Jesus] which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man.

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.  I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other. 

If [your inquiry] ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.

I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present [American] revolution.  The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the master, rather than by their extirpation.

The first difference which strikes us is that of color.  Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane, between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself, whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us.  And is this difference of no importance?  Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races?  Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? … They have less hair on the face and body.  They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor … They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome.  But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing danger till it be present … They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation … Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are the equal of whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless and anomalous … [but] The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life.

Your [Jewish] sect by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance, inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practiced by all when in power.  Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religions, as they do our civil rights by putting all on an equal footing.  But more remains to be done, for altho’ we are free by the law, we are not so in practice. … The prejudice still scowling on your section of our religion, altho’ the elder one, cannot be unfelt by yourself.  It is hoped that individual dispositions will at length mould themselves to the law and consider the moral basis on which all our religions rest, as the rallying point which unites them all in a common interest.

I repeat that you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject any thing because another person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it.  Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven. 

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.  

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind.  With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings.  To say that the human soul, angels, god are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul.  I cannot reason otherwise … without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms.  I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things that are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.