y themselves have motes in their eye. But even if one does have faults, if he can improve conditions by calling other wrongs to the peoples' attention, it may be for the benefit of humanity.
Then the story of casting pearls before swine reminds us that often fake pearls are cast before real swine. But it is a meaningless, rather childish parable. Then he says "knock and it shall be opened to you, ask and ye shall receive," and similar instructions for getting what we want. But it takes more than that to achieve success and obtain what we need. If he referred to heavenly advice, it is true it may be had, even without the asking, but is of no practical benefit.
Then he warns against false prophets, as all prophets warn against all other prophets, each claiming divine authority. He promises security to those who follow his sayings and threatens with destruction those who do not follow them.
Here we have a jumble of sayings which could come from no one but a fanatic. They are contrary to reason and common sense. They have been held as the grandest sermon ever preached, as the essence of Christianity. Yet few men have taken time to read the actual words.
The Sermon on the Mount appears to be the expression of a paranoiac. The commands are childish. They preach a philosophy of morbidity as against happiness on earth. They are impractical. They present a program of despair, of inability to cope with the world and to improve it. They hinder progress. The practical result of them is that with all the power needed, neither the omnipotent God behind them nor the Son who promulgated them has proved their practicability in a trial over the last 1900 years.
The sermon is contrary to right, justice, and fairness. It is a plan of depravity; instead of making men of humanity, it seeks to make hopeless beggars of the race, indifferent to this life, waiting and praying for eternal happiness; a bunch of loafers, not willing to work for what they need.
The only good point in the whole sermon is the reference to the Golden Rule, "Do as you would be done by." But all the rest of the conflicting and confusing preachment destroys the effect of the Golden Rule.
Many persons, especially those who are ignorant unthinking, will listen to queer sayings and, especially if they do not quite understand them, will lend mystical weight to what would otherwise be discarded.
Then let a thousand priests say that a thing is good and the believing people will believe it. Let a silly custom start and it will continue without reason. There are African tribes which use dung to make their hair-dress. There it would be as out of order to criticize this style as it is here to criticize the Sermon on the Mount. All because people think that if many believe a thing, it must have merit.
Now, let us consider the matter of the "interpretations" of the Sermon on the Mount and other unreasonable religious doctrines. When a thing is not reasonable, when it is not intelligent, not approved by common sense, the religious "lawyers" get busy to make it seem what it is not. They do to the utterances of a crazy man, what a sharp lawyer does to the testimony of witnesses before a jury, trying to get his crooked client acquitted. They seek to make black appear as white, they accuse the criminal's victims of bad faith and dishonesty, confusion and inability to understand the situation. They play on the jury's sympathy, emotion, and credulity. They turn them from the main point at issue and often get murderers and the most vicious criminals freed. So it is with the Sermon on the Mount. It must be interpreted. The literal wording of it makes it appear foolish, 80 the interpreters get to work to dress it up, camouflage it and make it appear like a divine inspiration. But here again common sense should be used. When a confidence man comes to us with a contract which will ruin us, and we look it over carefully and find that he is trying to defraud us, and we call it to his attention, he also tries to interpret his contract and make us believe that what it says it does not mean, that it i