The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition, Upton Sinclair [spiritual books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Upton Sinclair
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You get the shrewd little doctor who is running this establishment alone in his office, and he will smile and admit that of course it is not necessary to take all Bible phrases literally; but you know how it is—there are different levels of intelligence, and so on. Yes, I know how it is. You have an institution founded upon a certain dogma, and run by means of that dogma, and it is hard to change without smashing things. It is especially convenient when servants and nurses have a religious upbringing, and do not steal the pocket-books of the patients. People will come from all over the country, and pay high prices to stay in such a sanitarium; you can make vegetarians of them, which you think more important than teaching abstract notions about their being descended from monkeys. Also you can manufacture vegetarian foods for them, and build up an enormous business—so obtaining that Power which is the thing desired of men.
This is but one illustration of a sort of thing of which I could cite a hundred. The city in which I live is headquarters of another sect, the "Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene"; primitive Methodists, Bible-worshippers not content with the King James version, but going back to the Sinaitic MS. They have a "University", located in one of the most beautiful spots that Nature ever made; an institution with seventy-five students. A couple of years ago I happened to meet the "president," who was a preacher with grease on the [239] ample expanse of his black broadcloth waistcoat, and a speech full of the commonest grammatical errors, such as "you was" and "I seen". The past year witnessed a split, and the founding of a brand new church and "University"—because one of the preachers insisted upon preaching so much that the students got no chance to study; also because he sent home a rich man's daughter whose shirt-waists revealed too much of her fleshly nature.
And there is an even stranger phenomenon in the locality, taking you back to the Libyan desert and the time of Thais. A lady friend of mine, generously blessed with this world's goods, asks me have I seen the hermit. "Hermit?" I say, and she replies, "Didn't you know there was a hermit? He lives on a mountain, in a cave, and never has anything to do with the world. He has no books; he contemplates spiritually." I picture my friend with her large limousine, a rolling palace full of ladies, drawing up at the door of this hermit's cave. "He received you?" I ask. "Yes, he was quite polite." "And what was your impression of him?" "Oh, how he stank!" I answer that this is the odor of sanctity, and my friend thinks that I am enormously witty; I have to explain to her that I am not jesting, but that there are definite physiological phenomena incidental to the ecstatic life.
The Book of Mormon
Or let us take a trip to Salt Lake City, the headquarters of a still stranger cult.
On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., [240] an ignorant farmer-youth in a "backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had "the appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout believers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the Angel thoughtfully provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and Thummim, two magic stones with which to read the records. They proved to deal with a mystery which has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries—the fate of the "lost ten tribes of Israel", who were now revealed to have been the ancestors of the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a new religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general; so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N.Y., there was formally launched the "Church of the Latter Day Saints." Smith turned over to his followers his translation of the miraculous plates, called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously genuine, for it read precisely like the books which we already know are the revealed word of God. But, on chance that this might not be sufficient, we were offered in the preface two documents, the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", and the "Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses". The latter being the shorter, may be quoted:
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings there-on, [241] all of which has the appearance of ancient work and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
Christian Whitmer
Jacob Whitmer
Peter Whitmer, Jr.
John Whitmer
Hiram Page
Joseph Smith, Sr.
Hyrum Smith
Saml. H. Smith
The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore out the Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine origin; it was persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted, and its followers proceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, just as the divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven from place to place, they built at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful temple, according to plans revealed in a vision, exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where they have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers. The United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected to their practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as many wives as they could support; the government confiscated the church's property, and forced it to conceal the practice of polygamy, as is done by elderly church members in other parts of the country. Recently the head of the church, who bears the title of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator", was persuaded to permit an [242] examination of one of its secret plates, the "Book of Abraham", by egyptologists, who found that it was ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but containing prayers to the sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to the devout followers of Joseph—any more than it has made to devout Catholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that the Bible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and that the four gospels date from the second and third centuries after Christ.
Holy Rolling
All over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of them pathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely grotesque. Thus, for example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed himself up in scarlet and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting up, and suing one another in the law-courts.
Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jumpers", ghastly sects which cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread like a plague among the women [243] of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The "Holy Rollers", who call themselves the "Apostolic Church", have a meeting place here in Pasadena, and any Sunday evening at nine o'clock you may see the Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the worshippers, causing moans and shrieks and convulsions; you may see a woman holding her hands aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch, making chattering sounds like an ape. This is called "talking in tongues" and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come back at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation, men and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches; and maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.
You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself into these convulsions. Here is a paper called "Trust", which is "published Monthly (D.V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The Pentecostal Baptism", and tells the story of her experiences. She "camped on the Word of God," she declares.
I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the mission told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay there all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay there all night." I went down, and there was plenty of "let go" in me. I cried, and prayed all I knew, and got wonderfully loosed....
Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God told me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same in me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said to me, "That's mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord, and if You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in the sails."
That's the way I came through. One morning I was just [244] getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does not tire you.
And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: published monthly, or as often as the Lord leads." The editor quotes the Bible, "Call upon the name of the Lord," and explains that "Call means call." The word appears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal persons—it means working yourself into a frenzy of agitation; as the editor puts it, "you must lay hold of the horns of the altar." He goes on to exhort—the bold face being his:
Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more liberty in calling. In a very little while you will be dead to the room, dead to the chair, dead to everyone around you, dead to all and tremendously alive to your desperate need and emptyness; this conviction will grow as you increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it maybe you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged, it maybe
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