The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
written approximately 1904-05
quoted from Albert Bigelow Paine, ed.,
Europe
and Elsewhere
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
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.
The Ten Commandments
by Mark
Twain
from Fables of Man
Mark Twain Papers Series
University of California Press
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)
Mark Twain
Battle Hymn of the Republic
(Brought Down to
Date)
(1900?)
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.)
- Return to Top
Thoughts of God
by Mark Twain
from Fables of Man
Mark Twain Papers Series
University of
California Press
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)
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"
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.
