The First Parish in Bedford Unitarian Universalist 75 The Great Road, Bedford, Massachusetts 01730 On the Common 781-275-7994

The Distinguished
Spiritual Legacy of
W. Epaminondas Adastrus Blab

A Sermon by
Rev. John E. Gibbons

Delivered on Sunday, April 1, 2001

At The First Parish in Bedford

I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes at any time in any place.

I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less inspired by Him.

I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward me in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should be one.

I do not believe in special providences. I believe that the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws. If one man’s family is swept away by a pestilence and another man’s spared it is only the law working: God is not interfering in that small matter, either against the one man or in favor of the other.

I cannot see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall have proved himself incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be reasonable…

There may be a hereafter and there may not be. I am wholly indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure it will be for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder about for ages in a lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a confusion of ill-defined and contradictory rules said (but not evidenced) to be of divine institution. If annihilation is to follow death I shall not be aware of the annihilation, and therefore shall not care a straw about it.

I believe that the world’s moral laws are the outcome of the world’s experience. It needed no God to come down out of heaven to tell men that murder and theft and the other immoralities were bad, both for the individual who commits them and for society which suffers from them.

If I break all these moral laws I cannot see how I injure God by it, for He is beyond the reach of injury from me—I could as easily injure a planet by throwing mud at it. It seems to me that my misconduct could only injure me and other men. I cannot benefit God by obeying these moral laws—I could as easily benefit the planet by withholding my mud. (Let these sentences be read in the light of the fact that I believe I have received moral laws only from man—none whatever from God.) Consequently I do not see why I should be either punished or rewarded hereafter for the deeds I do here.

Sermon

His first writings were published over the distinguished but unlikely name of W. Epaminondas Adastrus Blab. Later he adopted the more pronounceable penname Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and, eventually, he achieved fame as Mark Twain.

This eminent American author, lecturer and humorist was also a social critic who had much to say about religion. His opinions, however, earned him a reputation as an infidel and he would surely be shocked to know that he would someday be the subject of a sermon and that the preacher would even portray him in a generally favorable light. Indeed, I am hesitant to preach about Twain because, first, there are at least a few people in this congregation this morning who teach Twain to English literature classes and who may well correct or refute my amateur observations, possibly while I am in mid-sentence. I am hesitant as well because Twain himself had a rather low opinion of the clergy and, indeed, advised that "every preacher, at least once during the year, should stand in the pulpit and confess ‘God did not speak to me this week’ and promptly sit down." All I can say is that Twain did speak to me this week and I want to pass along some of what he had to say.

I belong to a National Coalition Against Censorship and in a mailing I received this week I noticed that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most frequently banned books in America (and first banned in 1885, the year it was published, by none other than the Public Library of Concord, Massachusetts). Published 116 years ago, controversies continue to erupt as to whether Huck and Jim are morally fit to be on the shelves of our public libraries and school reading lists. Twain woulda loved it!

He’s a good subject for April Fools Day because Twain was the kind of prankster who exposed foolishness and, yes, he found considerable foolishness in the guise of religion. And if his life and words, humorous as they may be, seem a little abstract or removed from whatever is going on in your life, I'd say hang on, as I think there may be some things here that will resonate with things said by the great religious traditions with some implications perhaps relevant to you.

Sam Clemens grew up, of course, in Hannibal, Missouri, a not-quite frontier but not-quite civilized stewpot of conflicting religious opinions, the dominant flavor of which was hellfire and brimstone, and which Twain later described as "the embodiment of that old-fashioned cast-iron Calvinism which had proved so favorable to the life of enterprising action but which perceived the scent of the devil in any least expression of what is known as the creative impulse." But in contrast to this repressive environment, Sam’s father John described himself as a "free-thinker" in religious matters (always a dangerous sign) and his uncle John Quarles, an important early influence on Twain, was — wouldn’t you know it — a Universalist! Furthermore, Sam’s eldest brother, Orion, who printed the local newspaper and gave Sam his first job as a reporter, had the habit of printing little anecdotes with a distinctly unorthodox flavor. This one — politically incorrect though it would be today — is typical:

As I know that some of you go occasionally to the woods to hear God preach (as do I), I know that Orion’s sentiments continue to ring true to modern Unitarian Universalism — but in Hannibal they were regarded as heresy. With the support of his father, uncle and brother, young Sam rebelled against super-piety. He played hooky from Sunday School but, when forced to attend, seems to have circulated among all the town’s churches — looking for the best deal. One wonders how many of our Sunday School pupils are here looking for the best deal!

When the Civil War broke out, Sam Clemens spent between one and three weeks in a Confederate uniform prior to deciding that he had better things to do, and he went west to Nevada. The region was deep in a business panic caused by the secession crisis and Sam wrote home to Orion wondering, "What a man wants with religion in these breadless times surpasses my comprehension." Influenced further by deism, the writings of Tom Paine, and the doctrines of freemasonry, he came to believe that all organized religions are merely sects containing distorted versions of a universal Truth. Thus all religions were reduced to the same level, Christianity included. Years later he wrote, "It is not the ability to reason that makes the Presbyterian, or the Baptist, or the Methodist, or the Catholic, or the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist or the Mormon, it is the environment." And as far as God is concerned, he said, "The Being who is to me the real God, is the One who created this majestic universe and rules it… His real character is written in plain words in his real Bible, which is Nature and her history." Interesting juxtapositioning of male and female pronouns there, too.

Eventually he fell in love with his dear 'Livy Langdon, they settled down in Buffalo, New York; he became a famous writer; and 'Livy tried to make a Christian out of him. He went along, but it was an effort. He writes in his Autobiography: "Behold then Samuel L. Clemens — now become for everybody Mark Twain, the great American humorist — the rough days of his western life put behind him, settled down at number 472 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, trying hard to be respectable. Here he lives the model life of a family man, joins in morning prayer and listens as best he can to the daily reading of the Scriptures. More than that, he even makes desperate efforts to give up smoking. He has his wife at his side, his desk at his elbow, and the world at his feet. After all, what does tobacco matter? Let’s have another chapter of Deuteronomy(!)"

It was a valiant effort but in the end, Twain didn’t change - 'Livy did! Their daughters did not attend Sunday School and Susy, at age 5, told a visitor that she "had been in a church only once, and that was the day (her sister Clara) was crucified" — by which she meant christened. I suspect a few of our kids have some difficulty distinguishing christening from crucifixion.

Still, I don’t think we should get the idea that Twain was irreligious — he was contemptuous of traditional rock-ribbed religion — but ethical concerns were of the greatest importance to him. For example, clergy who paid attention to other worlds and distant lands and forgot about immediate social reality incurred Twain’s wrath. Seeing homeless people nearby, he wrote in a letter, "brought to mind the handsome sum our preacher collected in church…to obtain food and raiment for the poor, ignorant heathen in some part of the world…. Oh kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China! Come home and convert these Christians!"

He reacted to a simplistic sort of faith into which religion in any age can degenerate. In the 19^th century, there was a type of juvenile literature that specialized in describing the rewards that came to good boys and girls and the divine punishment that would befall the bad. Those who skipped Sunday School to go swimming, for example, would likely drown. In perverse response, Twain wrote stories with such titles as "The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper" and "The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Did Not Come to Grief." Tom Sawyer was an extension of this theme when he traded off his ill-gotten licorice and fishhooks for blue and yellow tickets to certify his memorization of 2000 Biblical verses and qualify him for a Bible. Tom continues to sin, has a glorious time at it, and winds up with a half share in $12,000 of buried treasure. (Sort of an early version of Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People?)

The empty spirituality of church ritual also drew his ire. In a sketch of a church service he attended in San Francisco, Twain wrote: "We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness…and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don’t shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove off, so to speak."

Lip service to ethics and religion was the worst. He could not "bear to hear people talk piously on Sunday and cheat on pork on the middle of the week." He renamed one church in town the "Church of the Holy Speculators" when John D. Rockefeller gave money to a Sunday School with the profits of Standard Oil, saying God gave him the money he extracted from his competitors. Twain responded saying, "Satan twaddling sentimental silliness to a Sunday School could be no burlesque upon John D. He can’t be burlesqued. He is himself a burlesque."

Twain also satirized the difference between the public prayers uttered in church and the private prayers we make selfishly for ourselves. One of his targets was Andrew Langdon, a Buffalo coal dealer and uncle of Twain’s wife. Twain wrote The Diary of the Recording Angel; and having heard Langdon’s private prayers, the Recording Angel gives the verdict: "1) For (cold) weather to advance hard coal (sales) 15 cents per ton. Granted. 2) For influx of laborers to reduce wages 10%. Granted. 3) For a visitation upon the man, or upon the family of the man, who has set up a competing coal-yard in Rochester. Granted as follows diphtheria, 2 (cases), 1 fatal, (the other) scarlet fever…to result in deafness and imbecility." Unfortunately, most of Langdon’s public prayers were refused on the grounds of being in conflict with the "Secret Supplications of the Heart." For example, "for weather mercifully tempered to the needs of the poor and naked" was denied because of conflict with private prayer #1 (for cold weather to advance the sale of coal). Of the 464 requests mentioned in Langdon’s public prayers, only two are granted. One asked that "the clouds may continue to perform their office," and the other asked the same for the sun. One may guess that Twain was not the favorite dinner guest at reunions with his wife’s relatives.

The constant theme of Twain’s writings about religion is that artificial piety is an abomination, that real religion ought to come from one’s own internal life experience and not from external authority. He suggested omitting the negative in the line of the Lord’s Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation" for he felt that the truly religious ought to be led into temptation and to put their principles to work and "make their moral fiber strong enough through use instead of rotten through inactivity." This surely echoes a theme reiterated through the history of Unitarian Universalism that religious or spiritual growth comes from getting our hands dirty in the real struggles of our own lives and work and families and in then real struggles of the lonely and desperate and oppressed people who are all about us and not by concentrating on some pure, undistracted, artificial, and saccharine sweet nice religion.

One minister who refused to hold a burial service for an old and, of course, amoral, actor Twain publicly branded "a crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, self-righteous reptile." Another clergyman, one Rev. T. DeWitt Talmadge of Brooklyn, closed his church to working people because of their bad smell and thereby inspired Twain’s essay "On Smells" which begins: "We have reason to believe that there will be laboring men in heaven; and also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these sorts of people in heaven; but alas! We shall lose the society of Dr. Talmadge. And what would eternal happiness be without the doctor?" Talmadge, of course, would not be able to tolerate the fishy smells emanating from the 12 disciples accustomed to life around the Sea of Galilee and would ask to be excused.

Twain scoffed at popular notions of heaven. Here’s what he said:

Now about this "all sane white people," I’m happy to once and for all settle the question of whether Twain was a racist. Of course he was. But there is a contrarian edginess to his racism: I’ve already noted his belief that all sorts of people are in heaven. In another of his stories, Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, he goes further by having Captain Stormfield notice that American Indians comprise the largest part of the population while white people are an insignificant minority in the American section. Another surprise is that heaven isn’t a republic, but rather a very authoritarian kingdom, ruled over by God. The greatest prophets in heaven are often regular people who didn’t get their just reward while living. For example, a Boston bricklayer named Jones, who was the greatest military genius ever produced, although he never had the chance to use his talent (he was a bricklayer). The Captain Stormfield story ends with Stormfield joining millions of other angels in welcoming a reformed bartender who died the very night he accepted religion. Moses and Esau were especially enthusiastic in their welcome.

Twain spent much time rewriting the Bible, which he called a book of "a thousand lies." He blamed God for not explaining to Adam and Eve the meaning of moral choice and especially the significance of death before Satan was allowed to tempt them. Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, even though God commands humans to forgive offenders. Humans believe God to be just and righteous, but in reality God didn’t concede to forgive his first two children. Twain reasons that the rules that God makes for his children are different from those he follows.

In another of his stories, Adam’s Diary, Twain recreates Adam’s diary, not cynically but rather touchingly: For example:

On to the New Testament:

Jesus’ last six hours on the cross were not, Twain thought, sufficient atonement for all that human beings had suffered through the centuries since Noah. While he thought God and Jesus did not deserve all the compliments paid to them, Twain also thought kindly of Jesus, his life, his teachings and his death. Jesus, he once remarked, may have been the only Christian. And they caught and crucified him early. Then again, Jesus may not have been Christian at all, given the way his claimants behave. Toward the end of his life, Twain ran across a saying of Darwin’s father: "Unitarianism is a feather to catch falling Christians." He liked the comment.

Twain was basically a decent man who tried to preserve, uplift and celebrate our innate intentions to do good. But he was aware that bad things do happen. In his own boyhood in Hannibal he knew of murders, epidemics, drownings, and steamboat explosions. He never forgot a drunken tramp who burned to death in the village jail. "A boy’s life is not all comedy," he said, "much of the tragic enters into it." Twain’s adult life was not all comedy either. His favorite daughter died. Touched by greed, he threw good money after bad on crackpot inventions and financial schemes and ended up bankrupt. He was a curmudgeon, but basically he held out hope for humanity, hope that we might not waste our time on what is petty or good only for the sake of appearance…hope that love might actually be our spirit, that service might be our law, that we might live together in peace and do what we can to help one another. Celebrate life, he said; laugh as much as you can — puncture the pompous; be honest; care for one another; be kind; forgive. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

That’s a message that’s been heard before. From the writings of Lao-Tsu and Buddha, from the Hebrew prophets to those of Jesus. We should listen closely to the wisdom of scripture. It’s not called scripture for nothing. And listen closely to the words of Twain. He thought before he wrote and it shows. Listen to the words of others’ experience. But, finally, take a leap of faith and listen to yourself. For the very most part, you are the one who will decide what happens to your life and what effect your life has on others.

This has been a sermon prompted by the life of Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.