Knowledge The Only Savior – Moses Harman, 6/5/1896

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

Within the scope of authentic history, or of history commonly accepted as more or less reliable, several nations
or aggregations of people have been conspicuous for the influence, the power, they have exerted over other
nations and tribes of people inhabiting the planet Earth. Prominent among the leading tribes, nations, or great
families of people, may be named the Arabians, the Greeks, the Latins, or Romans, and, later on, the Saxons,
or Anglo-Saxons. Arabia is a peninsula in western Asia—an arid, comparatively unproductive and uninviting
section of the earth’s surface, with a hot and enervating climate, never densely populated, like India and China;
and yet the Arabians have preserved their autonomy, their independence of outside powers, to a remarkable
degree, and have exerted an influence over the rest of mankind second to that of no other people. Not so much
by their prowess in war—although this prowess has shone conspicuous in more than one great war—as by
their psychic or psychologic force, the influence of their religious cults, have the Arabians been the leaders and
conquerors of a large part of the human race. Among the earlier Arabian chiefs, sheiks, or heads of families of
semi-historic times was Abram, or Abraham, currently believed to have been the patriarch or chief founder of
the tribe, clan, or nation called the Hebrews, more commonly called Jews (from Juda, the head of a sub-tribe);
also called Israelites, from Israel, one of the names of Jacob, the reputed grandson of Abraham. The chief
characteristics of this Arabian tribe or sub-tribe, through all the historic and semi-historic ages, have been
clannishness, exclusiveness, vaingloriousness, bigotry, intolerance, aggressiveness, and acquisitiveness
or narrow selfishness. That there have been many noble individual exceptions to this generalization is freely
conceded, but exceptions do not disprove the rule. Abraham and his tribe, or family, adopted a monotheistic
cult or form of worship, in opposition to the polytheisms then prevalent among the surrounding peoples, and,
in accord with their own leading characteristics, arrogated to themselves the title of “God’s peculiar people.”

They claimed that the creator of the universe had selected them out of all the inhabitants of the planet as his
special favorites, to whom he would directly reveal himself, and none others; but that through them “all the
families of the earth would be blessed.” If we are to believe their own account of themselves, these Hebrews
began their mission of “blessing” mankind by the most relentless and wholesale human butcheries of which
history or mythology gives any account. And later on they describe themselves as killing each other in their
own family feuds with a ferocity and vindictiveness seldom if ever equaled by any other people. And through
all, and largely as the cause of all their wars with each other and with other nations, has been conspicuous
the monotheistic cult, and the bigotry and intolerance with which they regarded and treated all polytheistic beliefs.
A prominent and necessary feature or factor in this arrogantly exclusive and intolerant cult was the monopoly
of religious knowledge, and largely of all knowledge, by a privileged class called the priesthood. In order to
hold the common people, the common masses, together and give them the strength of cohesiveness it was
seen to be necessary to keep them in awe of their leaders, and for this purpose there was and is nothing to
compare with a belief that these leaders are the special depositaries of “divine” or superhuman knowledge.
The masses of people, the laity, were therefore taught to look to the priests, and the priests to the “high priests,”
as the custodians and dispensers of all knowledge. None but the high priest was allowed to approach the
“Holy of Holies,” the sacred “Shekinah,” in the inner temple. Any attempt by others to penetrate or lift the
veil that concealed these awful treasures of knowledge meant instant death to the sacrilegious investigator,
by the hand of Jehovah himself. The name even of him who dwelt in this “Sanctum Sanctorum” was not
to be uttered by the common herd.

To guard against such profanation the sacred name was made as unpronounceable as possible—not a single
consonant sound, all vowels, viz: i-e-o-u-a-h! the nearest approach to the articulate pronunciation of which is
“Jehovah.” In process of time two conspicuous attempts have been made to reform or amend the monotheistic
cult of this old-time Arabian tribe, variously called Hebrews, Israelites and Jews. The first of these took place
nineteen hundred years ago, the reformers calling themselves “Christians,” from the surname of him they consider
the chief apostle and first martyr of the reformed mode of life or cult. So far as can be gathered from the very
contradictory and semi-mythical records regarding the life and death of “Jesus the Christ”—so called because
his followers claimed that he was the “Messiah,” the anointed one that was expected by the Jews—so far as
can be learned from these records, the man Jesus did not set himself up as the founder of a new religious sect.
He was a devout believer in the creed of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, and of Moses and other Hebrew patriarchs
and prophets, and simply desired to bring back his Jewish brethren to a more consistent practice of the old cult.
But the Jews, with few exceptions, rejected Jesus as their promised Messiah, and at their suggestion the Roman
governor executed him as a malefactor, or disturber of the peace. Using the tragic death and alleged resurrection
of their leader as the central thought or fact of their propaganda, and magnifying the deeds of beneficence attributed
to him—including healing of the sick, the lame, the blind,—similar to the facts of mesmerism and psychology
common at the present day, the followers of the dead reformer succeeded in starting what was substantially a
new religious sect; a sect that grew slowly at first, partly because of the poverty, illiteracy and obscurity of its
apostles and defenders, but chiefly because of the bigotry, intolerance and aggressiveness it had inherited
from its Jewish parent and prototype, and because of the opposition and persecution it encountered on
account of such intolerance and aggressiveness. When Christianity first appeared as a reformed Judaism
the Roman empire controlled and embraced most of the then known world.

In religious matters the Roman government had always been tolerant and hospitable. It was never the policy of pagan
Rome to interfere with the religious beliefs, rites or observances of its conquered provinces. In the Pantheon at Rome
—the Temple of All the Gods—an image or shrine was erected for the worship of the tutelary deity of every nation or
tribe that came under the political dominion of the Romans. All that was required or expected by the government in
matters religious was that each sect should treat all other sects with civility and respect. But this very reasonable
requirement was soon violated by those calling themselves Christian. Equality of rights and privileges was a principle
wholly foreign to the Christian system, as such. “No other name given under heaven by which ye can be saved but
the name of Jesus.” “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.”
Hence, denunciation of all other religions, aggressiveness, or attempts at proselyting were prominent characteristics
of Christians from the earliest period of their history, and when at length the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity
as the state religion-because none other would offer forgiveness to his murder-stained soul-then the adherents of the
new faith showed to the full extent their characteristic narrowness, their bigotry of belief, their intolerance of rival
creeds, and their determination to suppress all learning, all science and art, that they believed inimical to the universal
rule of the Christian church. And from that day to the present, monopoly of knowledge by the priesthood, denial
of the right of independent thought or investigation, persecution of freethinkers, and suppression of speech and of
press, whenever and wherever speech and press antagonized the rule of the church—such has been the uniform
and consistent policy of the reformed Judaism commonly called Christianity. And now, after a trial of some sixteen
hundred years of repression of knowledge and suppression of speech and of free investigation, by the church, and
by the civil power controlled by the church, is it not fair and right that this repressive policy and its authors should
be held to account and judged by their fruits? A tree is known by its fruits.

Has the world, the so-called Christian world, been redeemed from vice, crime, poverty and misery by the church
and by its monopoly of knowledge and by its suppression of knowledge? The answer to such questions is seen
and read of all men in the reports of the daily press, in the sad eyes, hollow cheeks and half-starved features of
thousands we meet daily on the streets. And still more emphatic is the answer seen in the congenital abortions
—mental, physical and psychic—met with on every hand. Is it not time, is it not fair and reasonable that we
now give the opposite policy a trial? Is it not time to demand that knowledge take the place of ignorance in all
things, and especially in the most important of all human relations, the relations based upon the differentiation
called sex?—since it is in and upon these relations that life and character are given to each human being. To
put the question a little more pointedly: Is it not time that a nation calling itself free should throw off the shackles
of medieval despotism known as the “inquisition,” whereby the expression of honest thought is made a crime
punishable by fine and imprisonment? Let thought and speech and press be free. Let knowledge assert itself
as man’s true savior. Truth and right have nothing to fear as long as speech and press and thought are left
free to grapple with error and wrong.