God’s Wicked Partners.

Charles Guiteau claims that he is Lord’s partner, and that the Almighty was accessory before fact to killing of Garfield. For this Mr. Guiteau is bitterly denounced by Christians as a blasphemer and an impious wretch, and regarded with holy horror by the Lord’s anointed. These good people are inconsistent. They have addressed to the throne of grace such remarks as this: “Oh Lord! Thou hast in Thine infinite wisdom seen fit to chasten us by removing our beloved leader and taking him unto Thine own bosom. Humbly we bow before thee, and murmur, Thy will be done!” If such pulpit utterances signify anything and are not mere gospel gush, intended to flatter the Almighty by conveying the impression that the speakers would not for a moment suppose that anything could be done on earth without his knowledge or consent, they mean that the killing of Garfield was the act of God, that the murder was deliberately planned by Omnipotence for some inscrutable reason, and that it was executed in furtherance of and in accordance with some sacred scheme for the good of the World. If the Christian god is omnipotent, he could have prevented the killing, and the fact that he did not do so indicates that he desired the death of President Garfield. Guiteau, according to the Christian doctrine, merely executed the will of God. It cannot be argued reasonably that he was merely the blind instrument of God a that God simply permitted him to follow the course that has wicked passions and malignant heart dictated, leaving him responsible for the deed as for the motives that prompted it: for Guiteau had no personal motive, and has asserted repeatedly that God commanded him to kill Garfield. He was in the confidence of the Almighty from the beginning. If it was God’s will that Garfield should die, God was the instigator of the homicide, and Guiteau was his partner. If the killing was the most damnable and atrocious crime in history, then God is the most atrocious villain the world ever heard of, and Guiteau is no more responsible than the bullet which inflicted the death wound.

But God’s inconsistent apologists argue that there is no evidence of the copartnership beyond Guiteau’s own assertions, and that the Almighty would never select as his partner a man who had committed adultery, cheated landladie, and done other disreputable thing Christians abhor. It is strange that God did not select as his partner some trusted preacher of his word — some holy man who never did anything wrong in his life, and whose claim of inspiration would be accepted as true. Why did he not commission some regularly inspired preacher of the gospel, whom he had already called to serve him at a good salary, to murder Mr. Garfield? Was it because he intended to shirk the responsibility and leave his partner in the lurch, and thought he could spare Guiteau better than Beecher or Talmage or some other meck and lowly follower of the cross? Then why did he not select some professional murderer, who by law ought to be hanged anyway, some “Billy the Kid,” or some great military leader with the blood of thousands on his hands?

Guiteau is not half as bad a man, even admitting that he is sane, as some of those who figure in history and the Bible as being on familiar terms with Jehovah. The Lord has had some very wicked partners on earth. One of them led a band of outcasts and cut-throats for forty years, and, acting under direct orders from the head of the firm, occupied himself in murder, rapine, and plunder during a large portion of the time. The partnership between Moses and the Almighty is accepted as a fact upon no better evidence than the alleged statements of Moses himself and there is no proof that Moses was a more truthful man than Guiteau. Ever since the invention of religion certain men have claimed for themselves divine right to rob, murder, and oppress their fellows. They have called themselves kings, emperors, czars,— all partners of the Lord,— and, under authority of the senior member of the concern, have committed colossal crimes, kept hordes of hired murderers busy killing men, robbed millions of human beings of every natural rights, violated every principle of morality, lived most vicious lives, died pious deaths, and gone straight to eternal glory and everlasting bliss. Partners of the Lord have made bonfires of human flesh, broken living human frames upon the rack, and filled the ears of Infinite mercy with the agonized groans of suffering morality. There is no crime however hideous, no outrage however cowardly, no meanness however despicable, that has not been committed by acknowledged partners of the Lord.

No, Guiteau is not too wicked nor too depraved to be an accomplice of the Almighty, and his claim of divine complicity in his deed rests upon ground every bit as good and reliable as John Calvin’s or Moses’s or Kaiser Wilhelm’s. If there were any such thing as consistency in Christianity, it would have to either accept him at his own estimation or admit that he is a lunatic; but there is no such thing, and therefore Christian ministers approve of hanging him, while the read “collects” and pray God to forgive his own partner in crime.