The Age of Reason | Page 6

it. At any rate it appears to me certain that
the part of "The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy, was
written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.
Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian phraseology, was a
birthright. It appears clear from several allusions in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers
that in his early life, or before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called
were substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements concerning
them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of
the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up
in the last century, and the narrative says:
"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya' were sown by a
foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching
was that in the soul of man dwells God himself, and that He himself guides man by His
inner word. God lives in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to
an historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance ... Christ was
God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of God.' The purpose of
Christ's sufferings was no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. The
Quakers who, in 1818, visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these
religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus Christ (that
he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New Testaments,' they say, 'we
take only what is useful,' mostly the moral teaching. ... The moral ideas of the
Dukhobortsy are the following: -- All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions,
whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts
have directed further, against the State authority. ... Amongst themselves they hold
subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be contrary to their ideas."
Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the birth of Elias Hicks,
who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused burial among them.
Although Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious;
it was based on a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This
faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by a "Chosen
People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an Aristocracy. Paine's
"Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's "inner light"; and the greater impression,
as compared with previous republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man"
and "Age of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the apostolic
fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.
Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive. That he should
have waited until his fifty-seventh year before publishing his religious convictions was
due to a desire to work out some positive and practicable system to take the place of that
which he believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in
making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: "My

employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic
theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself." But five years later
Paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself,
without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to
the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart;
and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful
tribute of every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's Writings,
ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox confuting the doctor in America
who "denied the light and Spirit of God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in
the Indians. Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when he
lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that reproved him for it?'
He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did so reprove him; and he was ashamed
when he had done wrong, or spoken wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the
governor and the people." (Journal of George Fox, September 1672.)
Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity (The Crisis, vii., 1778), did but
logically defend it in "The Age of Reason," by denying