>While rereading Thomas Paine's _Age of Reason_, I came across the
>following passages I could swear Twain paraphrased almost word for
>word. Can anyone readily point me to specific passages that sound
>like:
>
>
> Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented,
> there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more
> aunedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more
> contradictory initself, than this thing called
> Christianity . . . The Bible represents God to be a
> changeable, passionate, vindictive Being, making a
> world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of
> what he had done, and promising not to do so again.
> Setting one nation to cut the throats of another,
> and stopping the course of the sun, till the
> butchery should be done (197).
>
>Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. Ed., Moncure Daniel Conway.
>New York: Putnam, 1924.
Dear Mr. Britton,
This is just an intuitional response, but could you be thinking of the
following passage, from the last pages of _The Mysterious Stranger_?:
...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to
make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made
a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut
it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his
other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed
his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who
mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths
Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and
invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who
frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without
invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon
man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and
finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave
to worship him!... (365).
Twain, Mark. _Great Short Works of Mark Twain_. Justin Kaplan, ed. New
York: Harper & Row, 1967.
While the target of the criticism differs in the two passages (one being
Christianity, the other God), I'm sure you can see the similarities.
_The Mysterious Stranger_ is one of my favorite Twain writings, I just wish
Mr. Twain had released an edition of it himself, because, as it exists now,
it is a bittersweet experience to read it--sweet because it's a great
story, bitter because it contains a lot of ideas that Twain might not have
felt comfortable sharing with the public. Still, if the story exists as he
would have preferred, he certainly avoided having to hear the inevitable
negative criticism that writing of this kind attracts. He got the last
word.
Anyway, is the passage any help? I know that it is not the most obscure
comparison, but it's what I immediately thought of.
Best Regards,
John W. Young
============================================
John W. Young
8739 Central Way
Spring Valley, CA 91977
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Home Page: http://www.adnc.com/web/jwyoung
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come
to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
--Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
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