ight to quote the oath as an undeniable
example of the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all
you've said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes much beyond
this. Just think; if a public proclamation were suddenly made announcing
the repeal of all the criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would
have the courage to go home from here under the protection of religious
motives. If, in the same way, all religions were declared untrue, we
could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before,
without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures of
precaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have very
frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may say
generally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity are in
inverse ratio.

It is easy to let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of proper
behavior towards man. And so we see that in all times and in all
countries the great majority of mankind find it much easier to beg their
way to heaven by prayers than to deserve to go there by their actions.
In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies,
rites and the like, are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine
will than moral actions; the former, especially if they are bound up
with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually come to be looked upon as a
substitute for the latter. Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses,
the founding of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon
come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great crimes are
expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection to priestly authority,
confessions, pilgrimages, donations to the temples and the clergy, the
building of monasteries and the like. The consequence of all this is
that the priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of the
gods. And if matters don't go quite so far as that, where is the
religion whose adherents don't consider prayers, praise and manifold
acts of devotion, a substitute, at least in part, for moral conduct?
Look at England, where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, the
Christian Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a subject for
the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way identified with it, and takes
its name,--and this in order that the commands of Jehovah for the
Sabbath (that is, the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his six
days' labor, so that it is ess