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Twain, Mark - The War Prayer.txt
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The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
written approximately 1904-05
from Europe and Elsewhere, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Mentioned in The Bible Unmasked by Joseph Lewis
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every
breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols
popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding
and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the
young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud
fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy
emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory
which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with
cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors
preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our
good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and
gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt
upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's
sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the
volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the
gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the
enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes,
welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones,
proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth
to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service
proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was
followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with
glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy
sword!
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving
and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father
of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their
patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His
mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the
foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed
upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white
hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to
ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he
ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of
his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in
fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our
land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and
took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in
which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with
a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant
your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have
explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of
men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer?
No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all
supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a
blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same
time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly
praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into
words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently
prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact
into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you
have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but
follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth
me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them!
With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the
foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover
their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns
with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a
hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us
to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in
rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in
spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who
adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy
their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded
feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful
refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High
waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Mentioned in The Bible Unmasked by Joseph Lewis
The Ten Commandments
by Mark Twain
from Fables of Man
Mark Twain Papers Series
University of California Press
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
See also The Ten Commandments by Joseph Lewis
THE TEN Commandments were made for man alone. We should think it strange if they had been
made for all the animals.
We should say "Thou shalt not kill" is too general, too sweeping. It includes the field mouse and the
butterfly. They can't kill. And it includes the tiger, which can't help it.
It is a case of Temperament and Circumstance again. You can arrange no circumstances that can
move the field mouse and the butterfly to kill; their temperaments will ill keep them unaffected by
temptations to kill, they can avoid that crime without an effort. But it isn't so with the tiger. Throw a
lamb in his way when he is hungry, and his temperament will compel him to kill it.
Butterflies and field mice are common among men; they can't kill, their temperaments make it
impossible. There are tigers among men, also. Their temperaments move them to violence, and when
Circumstance furnishes the opportunity and the powerful motive, they kill. They can't help it.
No penal law can deal out justice; it must deal out injustice in every instance. Penal laws have a high
value, in that they protect -- in a considerable measure -- the multitude of the gentle-natured from the
violent minority.
For a penal law is a Circumstance. It is a warning which intrudes and stays a would-be murderer's
hand -- sometimes. Not always, but in many and many a case. It can't stop the real man-tiger;
nothing can do that. Slade had 26 deliberate murders on his soul when he finally went to his death on
the scaffold. He would kill a man for a trifle; or for nothing. He loved to kill. It was his temperament.
He did not make his temperament, God gave it him at his birth. Gave it him and said Thou shalt not
kill. It was like saying Thou shalt not eat. Both appetites were given him at birth. He could be
obedient and starve both up to a certain point, but that was as far as he could go. Another man could
go further; but not Slade.
Holmes, the Chicago monster, inveigled some dozens of men and women into his obscure quarters
and privately butchered them. Holmes's inborn nature was such that whenever he had what seemed a
reasonably safe opportunity to kill a stranger he couldn't successfully resist the temptation to do it.
Justice was finally meted out to Slade and to Holmes. That is what the newspapers said. It is a
common phrase, and a very old one. But it probably isn't true. When a man is hanged for slaying one
man that phrase comes into service and we learn that justice was meted out to the slaver. But Holmes
slew sixty. There seems to be a discrepancy in this distribution of justice. If Holmes got justice, the
other man got 59 times more than justice.
But the phrase is wrong, anyway. The word is the wrong word. Criminal courts do not dispense
"justice" -- they can't; they only dispense protections to the community. It is all they can do. (1905
or 1906)
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
See also The Ten Commandments by Joseph Lewis
Mark Twain
Battle Hymn of the Republic
(Brought Down to Date)
(1900?)
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger's wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps --
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!"
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;*
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom -- and for others' goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich --
Our god is marching on.
* NOTE: In Manila the Government has placed a certain industry under the protection of our flag. (M.T.)
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Thoughts of God
by Mark Twain
from Fables of Man
Mark Twain Papers Series
University of California Press
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
HOW OFTEN we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the
execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application
of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of
us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an
assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the
course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this
vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least
satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding
garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was
introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.
There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he has not had a friend, there has never
been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and
extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him -- and this without a
blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have
invented the fly? On the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have been all day
with that man. Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its undeveloped morals, a
scandal which they would overlook in the Pope?
When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was
not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of
long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view;
that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen
and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we
cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the
consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.
Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is
to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads
of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and -- the majority
of them -- poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man
with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions
upon the just -- upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.
If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his
mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do
your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and
pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child,
and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the
unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while
he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and
all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch
who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers,
dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs -- feet cunningly designed and
perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning -- carry this freight to a hundred tables, among
the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death.
Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and
unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without
fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but
wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please
Me and increase My glory Who made the fly.
We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our
own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about His mercy and kindness and goodness -- in
words -- the words of His Book and of His pulpit -- and the meek multitude is content with this
evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concreted sample of it will in
time acquire fatigue. There being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any
recorded case more than mere common justices, and due -- due without thanks or compliment. To
rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace
duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either -- delegating the work but
confiscating the credit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as
He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man
follows His example and turns his indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and
plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look at the matter
rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where
man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to
Himself.
It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that
wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There
was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If
He is the Source of Morals He does -- certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit.
Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench
cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious
spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has
acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts
them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if
we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority
there.
(early 1900s)
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Bible Teaching and Religious Practice
from Europe and Elsewhere
and A Pen Warmed Up In Hell
by Mark Twain
hand-typed by Cliff Walker from "Mark Twain: Selected Writings of an American Skeptic" (Prometheus Books)
Index: Historical Writings (Twain)
Home to Positive Atheism
Religion had its share in the changes of civilization and national character, of course. What share? The
lion's. In the history of the human race this has always been the case, will always be the case, to the
end of time, no doubt; or at least until man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into
something really fine and high -- some billions of years hence, say.
The Christian Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes.
For eighteen hundred years these changes were slight -- scarcely noticeable. The practice was
allopathic -- allopathic in its rudest and crudest form. The dull and ignorant physician day and night,
and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most
repulsive drugs to be found in the store's stock; he bled him, cupped him, purged him, puked him,
salivated him, never gave his system a chance to rally, nor nature a chance to help. He kept him
religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time. The stock in
the store was made up of about equal portions of baleful and debilitating poisons, and healing and
comforting medicines; but the practice of the time confined the physician to the use of the former; by
consequence, he could only damage his patient, and that is what he did.
Not until far within our century was any considerable change in the practice introduced; and then
mainly, or in effect only, in Great Britain and the United States. In the other countries to-day, the
patient either still takes the ancient treatment or does not call the physician at all. In the English-
speaking countries the changes observable in our century were forced by that very thing just referred
to -- the revolt of the patient against the system; they were not projected by the physician. The
patient fell to doctoring himself, and the physician's practice began to fall off. He modified his method
to get back his trade. He did it gradually, reluctantly; and never yielded more at a time than the
pressure compelled. At first he relinquished the daily dose of hell and damnation, and administered it
every other day only; next he allowed another day to pass; then another and presently another; when
he had restricted it at last to Sundays, and imagined that now there would surely be a truce, the
homeopath arrived on the field and made him abandon hell and damnation altogether, and
administered Christ's love, and comfort, and charity and compassion in its stead. These had been in
the drug store all the time, gold labeled and conspicuous among the long shelfloads of repulsive
purges and vomits and poisons, and so the practice was to blame that they had remained unused, not
the pharmacy. To the ecclesiastical physician of fifty years ago, his predecessor for eighteen centuries
was a quack; to the ecclesiastical physician of to-day, his predecessor of fifty years ago was a
quack. To the every-man-his-own-ecclesiastical-doctor of -- when? -- what will the ecclesiastical
physician of to-day be? Unless evolution, which has been a truth ever since the globes, suns, and
planets of the solar system were but wandering films of meteor dust, shall reach a limit and become a
lie, there is but one fate in store for him.
The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In
all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged
her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still
held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to
God's will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God's specially appointed representative in the
earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no
mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for
her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against
human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong,
and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has
changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also
never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take the credit of the correction. As she will
presently do in this instance.
Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her
church's consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time
indifferent. England's interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry.
She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian
monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments
aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The
first regular English slave hunter -- John Hawkins, of still revered memory -- made such successful
havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming,
slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the
chivalric honor of knighthood on him -- a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in
other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and
brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John's
work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of
Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless
men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be
prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful
Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent
and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.
But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian
rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised
and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go -- and went.
The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then -- the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his
pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and
contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about,
while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify
his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of
our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by
England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.
Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and
yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of
pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one -- the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It
fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession -- at the
tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not
be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight
hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in
earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged,
and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul
blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not
know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch -- the
priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his
witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has
persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the
unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate
had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws
against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and
imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.
There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the
text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties
are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.
It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his
annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does
certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice
may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency.
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