“Earth might be fair, its people glad and wise. Age after age our tragic empires rise, built while we dream and in that dreaming weep: would we but wake from out our haunted sleep.”1 Lyrics from twentieth century British poet, Clifford Bax. Lyrics adapted into Stephen Schwartz’ musical Godspell. Lyrics reminiscent of ancient Jewish wisdom literature such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes whose writers constantly describe the nature of the fool, constantly plumb the depths of human foolishness. I might put Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth in this very same category—I might call it modern day wisdom literature—except where the ancient writers hold out some hope that people shall choose the path of wisdom; where the hymn rallies its singers with the “old undaunted cry: ‘Earth shall be fair, and all its people one;’”2 Mark Twain seems to have come to a point, late in his life when he wrote Letters from the Earth, where his observations of human nature had convinced him humanity would never rally to this cry; where he despaired we human beings will continually and inevitably condemn ourselves to lives of foolishness; lives of violence, bloodshed and war. Last week, on Easter Sunday, I preached from my conviction that hope for humanity and hope for the earth are justified. Mark Twain, late in life, seemed to say no: “People are insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane.”3 So, which is it?
This question fell into my lap from the pesky, provocative and playful inner life of Fred Sawyer, who, in accordance with unofficial UUS:E tradition, purchased a sermon at last year’s goods and services auction. A few months back Fred invited me to preach in response to Mark Twain’s little-known and posthumously published Letters from the Earth. I’d grown accustomed to Fred inviting me to preach in response to rather dense books, rather complicated works of science, sociology, psychology, history and theology; and I’d grown accustomed to hearing moans and groans from the rest of you whenever I try to explain these books, let alone reflect on them. So I was a bit relieved when Fred suggested I look at Letters from the Earth. Literature—and barely 60 pages of it. How blessedly different, Fred! How wonderfully…manageable! How blissfully…readable!
How horribly wrong I was! By the way, our annual Goods and Services Auction is coming up. This is not only an important fundraiser for our congregation. It’s a very fun event. There are lots of great items up for bid, great bargains. The evening of May 2nd. Mark your calendars!
Letters from the Earth is a series of fictional letters Twain wrote near the end of his life. They feel rough and unfinished to me. They were not published until the early 1960s, more than fifty years after his death. Apparently he never expected them to be published. They present a dismal view of human nature and a searing critique of religion—Christianity specifically. His daughter, Clara Clemens, resisted publishing them when the idea was first broached in the 1930s; she felt they distorted his views. A story—which I have seen in a number of places yet which I have not been able to verify—says the Soviet Union claimed the United States government was preventing the publication of Letters because of its anti-religious views, and that Clara Clemens finally agreed to publish them because she was offended by this allegation. Whether or not this is true, there is consensus that she finally agreed to the publication because her father “belonged to the world,” and because society had become more tolerant of such views.
Here’s my best synopsis of the letters. Animals, including human beings, were created, according to the Creator, as an “experiment in Morals and Conduct.”4 Earth is the location of this experiment. Satan, an angel who is frequently punished for his sarcasms, has been banished from the divine realm and has decided to take up residence on earth to observe the experiment. The eleven letters are Satan’s communications to his colleagues, the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Each animal has a nature it cannot disobey. The tiger is ferocious. It cannot be otherwise lest it disobey the Law of Nature which is also the “Law of God.”5 The tiger is blameless in its killing. It is simply following the law. The rabbit is timid. This is also the law of Nature which is the law of God. It must obey. It cannot go counter to its nature and bravely resist its predators. “No creature,” according to the Creator, “can be honorably required to go counter to the law of his nature—the Law of God.”6
But this is exactly what human beings try to do. Human beings are unique in that they have been given varying degrees of all the moral qualities of all the animals. With all these varying degrees of moral characteristics, there is some conflict built into human nature. Because each human possesses a vast array of moral characteristics, we suffer from inner moral conflict; and we are prone to conflict with each other. But this is the point of the experiment. How will it all work itself out? Well, apparently it doesn’t work out. Satan observes that man “hasn’t a single written law, in his Bible or out of it, which has any but just one purpose and intention—to limit or defeat the law of God.”7 And as we try to limit or defeat the law of God, we become, simply, foolish.
The primary way Twain’s Satan exposes this foolishness is by tearing apart popular religious conceptions. Here’s a quote: “In man’s heaven everybody sings! The man who did not sing on earth sings there; the man who could not sing on earth is able to do it there. This universal singing is not casual, not occasional, not relieved by intervals of quiet; it goes on, all day long, and every day, during a stretch of twelve hours. And everybody stays; whereas in the earth the place would be empty in two hours. The singing is of hymns alone. Nay, it is of one hymn alone. The words are always the same, in number they are only about a dozen, there is no rhyme, there is no poetry: ‘Hosannah, hosannah, hosannah, Lord God of Saboath, ‘rah! ‘rah! ‘rah! Siss!—boom! . . . a-a-ah.’
“Meantime, every person is playing on a harp—those millions and millions!—whereas not more than twenty in the thousand of them could play an instrument in the earth, or ever wanted to.
“Consider the deafening hurricane of sound—millions and millions of voices screaming at once and millions and millions of harps, gritting their teeth at the same time! I ask you: Is it hideous, is it odious, is it horrible?”8
“Now then, in the earth these people cannot stand much church—an hour and a quarter is the limit, and they draw the line at once a week. That is to say, Sunday. One day in seven; and even then they do not look forward to it with longing. And so—consider what their heaven provides for them: ‘church’ that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end! They quickly weary of this brief hebdomadal Sabbath here, yet they long for that eternal one; they dream of it, they talk about it, they think they think they are going to enjoy it—with all their simple hearts they think they think they are going to be happy in it.”9
This is a playful and fun view of human foolishness. I believe this was the typical public persona of Mark Twain on the lecture circuit. It was easier for audiences to hear his cultural criticisms if they came from an aging, naïve-sounding country bumpkin in a rumpled white suit. But, in the end, this is not the predominant tone underlying Letters from the Earth. The playful, humorous tone gives way to bitterness towards humanity and humanity’s religions, gives way to profound anger and bottomless grief in response to human barbarity, and even more so in response to the barbarity of Humanity’s God. He writes: “Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. Even the Church, which is credited with having spilt more blood, since the beginning of its supremacy, than all the political wars put together have spilt, has observed a limit. A sort of limit. But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy—he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those who have not been deflowered.
“He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. The babies were innocent, the beasts were innocent, many of the men, many of the women, many of the boys, many of the girls were innocent, yet they had to suffer with the guilty. What the insane Father required was blood and misery.”10
The last fifteen or so years of Mark Twain’s life were painful. An economic recession, known as the Panic of ’93, had obliterated his wife’s inheritance as well as his publishing royalties. On top of that, in 1894 he was bankrupted from an investment in the Paige Compositor, a printing press that was supposed to revolutionize publishing but which was ultimately failed.11 The untimely death of his daughter, Susy, in 1896 brought extraordinary grief. 1904 brought the death of his wife, Livy. Again, extraordinary grief. Throughout all this time he lived in outrage at what he called “the damned human race” and the rise of modern imperialism”12 In 1900, in response to the US war in the Philippines he told the New York Herald, “We do not intend to free but to subjugate the people. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure to make those people free and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons in any other land.”13 It was also around this time that Twain wrote “The War Prayer,” an uncomfortable and provocative short story, also published after his death, that reminds readers how prayers for the victory of one’s own soldiers in war are simultaneously prayers for the murder, rape and oppression of one’s enemies.
Personal financial ruin, intense private grief, public outrage, exhaustion from years of touring to pay the bills—all of it together helps us understand the bitterness and cynicism that marks Letters from the Earth. I suppose if could go back in time and encounter Mark Twain during that last year of his life there are a few things I would want to say to him—perhaps the same things I would want to say to someone in our own time who holds such an outlook.
First, I would affirm his atheism. Mark Twain looked into that abyss of personal pain and suffering; he looked into the abyss of human arrogance, greed and violence; he looked into the abyss of human abuses of power, of the human will to dominate. He saw no God staring back at him. He felt no hand reaching out to him or anyone. He felt no warmth, no loving embrace. He saw popular ideas of Heaven and God that were ludicrous to him given what he was experiencing and witnessing. He saw sacred scriptures riddled with contradictions. He was no amateur atheist. The absence of God was a profound and reliable experience for him. I would affirm him in his atheism.
Second, I would thank him for his critical mind, and for his desire to speak from his heart, to speak his convictions, to speak his truth. I would thank him for his willingness to call our attention to the ridiculousness of things we take for granted, to the ludicrous things we think we think. I would thank him for his willingness to publicly express his outrage at oppression and imperialism. I would thank him for his humor.
And, because Letters from the Earth is, in the end, a work of fiction, I would ask him about the bitterness. Is that really him speaking? I would ask him, “But what of redemption for this damned human race?” “What of reconciliation for those who make war on each other?” “Is there nothing that carries us through pain and grief?” “What are the things that help us strive for wholeness in this life?” “Tell me it’s not just some failed experiment, some insanity, some sarcastic devilish fantasy.” “Shall Earth not be fair and all her people wise?” “Is there no justification for hope?”
And I imagine he would pause and consider my questions. And I imagine he would be kind, he would smile. But he would make it clear he thinks I’m just another fool, that I don’t know anything of the way life really works, of the way human beings really are. And I would respectfully disagree. Humanity had its challenges in Twain’s time. It certainly has its challenges in our time. But I refuse to relinquish the possibility of redemptive experiences. I refuse to relinquish the possibility of reconciliation. I refuse to relinquish hope.
Amen and Blessed Be.
1 Bax, Clifford, “Turn Back” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association and Beacon Press, 1993) #120.
2 Bax, Clifford, “Turn Back” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association and Beacon Press, 1993) #120.
3 Twain, Mark, in DeVoto, Bernard, ed., Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (New York: Harperperennial/Modern Classics, 2004) p. 7.
4 Ibid., p. 5.
5 Ibid., p. 4
6 Ibid., p. 6.
7 Ibid., p. 37.
8 Ibid., p. 11.
9 Ibid., p. 12.
10 Ibid., p. 53.
11 Meltzer, Milton, Mark Twain Himself (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002) p. 224.
12 Ibid., p. 254.
13 Ibid., p. 255.
