Note 2 — Chapter I

Let those remarks by no means be understood as reflecting censure upon the sincere worship of God, as taught and practised by the meek and lowly Jesus. All honor, and praise, and glory to such religion. But a system of pretence at present usurps dominion over the human soul. In the place of true piety sits a monster not less hideous than damnable: this is the thousand faced giant, Hypocrisy. There is a market for all religion now-a-days—and men preach and pray, with the love of God on their lips and the love of Mammon in their hearts. The pulpit has become an engine for increasing in riches. How long is it since the sainted and gifted Pierpont was thrust from the Hollis Street Church, in Boston, for opposing the devilish traffic of the bloated rum-seller? Pouring honied phrases into the ears of heartless capitalists, at the rate of $4000 a year, has grown into a trade! Raising a breeze to extort enormous sums of money from the credulous, to be lavished on the construction of immense piles of stone, each surmounted by a bell and weathercock, is but another mode of swindling. Not less than twelve hundred millions of dollars have been filched from the earnings of the poor, to rear the churches now standing in the United States. Were this amount expended in the amelioration of plundered humanity, how much joy and peace would reign where now are hideous want, dark crime, and hopeless death!

The church establishment is at this time the bulwark of Slavery in the United States.

Oh, not for the organization of such a wicked machinery came our Savior into the world! Not so did he teach by example! By the sea-shore he made disciples, among the rude fishermen; by the water fount he taught the maiden to draw from the well of immortality; out on the hill-top he proclaimed his mission of love and salvation. But now the money-changers are again in the temple. Civilisation has practically set at naught the maxims of Christ, and made the house of God a “den of thieves.” The modern church is the mother of more of the privations daily experienced by the poor and destitute (from which is born the Mystery of Iniquity) than any other extorting invention of Mammon. Privations, did we say? No. “Privation” (in the language of Sue) “poorly expresses that continuous and terrible destitution—the want of every thing which is necessary to clothe that life which God has given, with common comfort. Mortification would more suitably express the total absence of that security which society, equitably organized, owes—yes, actually owes—to every honest laborer, inasmuch as poverty, through civilization, has deprived these of any right to that soil which God made a free legacy to all. The savage does not enjoy the benefits of civilization—but he has at least the beasts of the forest, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, whereon to feed—and the great woods to warm and shelter him. The civilized poor man, whom civilization has disinherited of these gifts of God, has a right to demand, in return for the hard labor by which he enriches the world, a remuneration which will procure the permanent comforts of life.”