active woman. It is natural, and to ask him to pluck his eye out for having followed his natural tendency, is the most debasing kind of philosophy.
Then comes one of the cruelest most fanatical causes of unhappiness the world has ever known. That is Christ's commandment against divorce, except for one cause, adultery. No matter how cruel a man might be to a woman, no matter how stingy and mean he would be to her and her children, no matter how sexually mismated they might be, no matter how much of a shrew she might be no matter how mean to the children, or each antagonistic to the other, no matter how much they may have grown apart, even if one had developed filthy habits, they were to stay together in unhappiness and misery, leading to crime and insanity. A sensible commandment would have been, "Live together if you can, but when life is unhappy for either of you, then separate and try to be happy with some other mate." The refusal of the Catholic Church to grant divorce and, through its political influence, to refuse to permit nations for centuries to legislate for civil divorce (not even now permitted in such backward states as priest-ridden New York), has been a great cause of unhappiness, crime, misery, insanity and murder. Christ's outburst was not based on the studies of science, medicine, psychology, and intelligence, but was a fanatical, magnified repetition of the old Jewish laws.
Next Christ commands against taking oaths. This leads to laws against swearing. Saying "By God," yes or no, seems to be no crime and a meaningless and harmless phrase to any reasonable, intelligent man. It is a childish expression, but of no importance, yet it has been magnified by the Church and severe penalties have been imposed upon those who wanted to have their right to use the kind of emphasis they desired in their speech.
Christ objects to people swearing "by the head," which seems to be an inconsequential matter and a method of speech, and a trivial matter for a great philosopher or a God to concern himself with. "For whatsoever is more than (aye or nay) these cometh of evil." No sensible person can feel that there is anything "evil" or wrong about "swearing by the head." All of it is childish.
After having or; many occasions advised the people to follow the Laws and the Prophets, which included the principle of "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," Christ reverses himself and advises a Philosophy of "resist not evil." But what can he mean by this when he had continually told his disciples to go out and preach against evil? That has been the whole doctrine of the Christian Church, to preach and work against what it called Evil. Christ threw out the evil money changers, he criticized the Scribes and Pharisees and rich men, and brought about his own death by criticizing and resisting evil, and he ordered his disciples to resist it, even to losing their lives. What kind of reversal is this?
But no sensible intelligent man would believe in such a philosophy. Evil, natural or man made, should be resisted as should oppression and wrong of any kind. The courageous fighters for right and liberty and freedom had and still have to fight against oppression. Only a coward would stand to be whipped, beaten, robbed, and humiliated without protest.
When hit on one cheek, turn the other -- is another part of the same philosophy; when a man takes a coat by law, give him the cloak. This is the philosophy of an insane fanatic and so unreasonable that it does not deserve comment except that it has been preached by the Christian Church for centuries and never followed by it or by any person.
Then Christ says we must love our enemies. But does the Church love its enemies? For centuries they burned them at the stake, and classified all those who did not believe exactly as they did as enemies, even though the non-believers wanted only the right peacefully and quietly to live their own lives. Not only do the Christians fight against non-Christians, but they fight, often to the death, among themselves, each claiming to be right according to Chri