Blue Grass Blade

THE INTELLIGENT MARCH OF PROGRESS.

So far as the religious temperament of the American mind is concerned, we may safely presume, from all the surrounding facts and circumstances, that it is in a period of probation.

The greater intellect is to be found outside the church. The lesser still occupies the pews. Although the majority of church members and church attendants are women, this statement must be accepted as true. Nor does this mean that in many instances the greater intellect is not to be found among women. Considering only the general average, occasioned by greater and wider opportunities extending over a long period, there is more intelligence among men than among women.

Too long were women compelled to depend upon their husbands for knowledge, and it is only within a comparatively few years that education, co-equal, has been extended to women. On the other hand, a large number of women abstain from church; in many instances women oppose the church and all that it teaches in matters of religion and so-called morality, while some men attend church and pretend to accept its dicta. It would follow then that the most intelligent women are not in the church, some of the most ignorant of men are in the church, which leaves the highest and greatest intelligence of both sexes in opposition to the church and its methods.

We can readily understand that many women find a diversion in attending church which they are unable to obtain in other channels. Men have their lodge rooms, their clubs and social institutions galore, and for the men the latter have actually taken the place of the church. Following the rule that men must first learn to doubt before they can learn to tolerate, the time will inevitably come when both men and women will have learned to estimate each other by their personal character and their acts, not by their religious pretensions or beliefs. When this stage of thought has been reached, whatever religious opinions yet remain will be formed from purely transcendental processes, of which in every age of the world glimpses have been granted to a few gifted minds.

To the observing mind it has long been apparent that
There is a general drift today of women from the church.

That this is the direction in which things are now hastening must be clear to every one who studies the progress of modern civilization.

Women are no longer submissive chattels. The church dare not teach such a doctrine again.

Passing from one epoch to another, the church has been gradually forced to relinquish its cherished pretensions, until it stands today as the most colossal beggar on the face of the earth. It has not only been compelled to abandon its long-claimed and long-established supremacy, but it has evacuated its strongholds, wherein it muffled free opinion, and from which, in the face of advancing knowledge, it has vainly attempted to secure a safe retreat.

The greatest triumph of humanity over the church came with the establishment and acknowledgement of the authority of private judgment as forming a tribunal, for opinion, from which no one had the power of appeal.

This was the first great blow at the power of all theological institutions. It would follow then, that if the ultimate test of truth is individual judgment, man must have some positive basis, some final standard, by which and upon which that judgment may be formed. This basis is only to be found in physical science. From this we must infer that there can be no decisive criterion for what is called religious truth, save that which can be drawn from science.

Because of these developments theological interests have ceased to be looked upon as the supreme concern of man.

Realizing that the inevitable must befall them, the clergy are striving, with different motives, to check the rapid rise of the great wave of skepticism that threatens to engulf them, and into which many of their own class are drifting through the exercise of that right of private judgment which once they so bitterly denounced.

Freethought, together with the principles it advocates, must inevitably become recognized as the leading and prompting feature of the human mind. Realizing this, it becomes the duty of every Freethinker, no matter his or her inclination, to do everything within their power to encourage that which, however painful to some, is salutary to all, because by Freethought alone can religious bigotry be destroyed. True, a nation deprived of physical liberty, may win it; a nation divided, may reunite, but any people denied the right of private judgment become mental serfs, the penalty of which is poverty, suffering and decay.

To longer permit the arbitrary authority of the church over the human mind brings us to the verge of national decline and national shame. It is not necessary that the Earth pilgrim should struggle through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of Death before he can reach the glorious condition of mental independence, but, while the process may induce a mental distress to some, there is an exhilaration to the bold and intrepid marcher as he climbs the steeps of liberty's golden heights.