God and My Neighbour
by Robert Blatchford · English · Gutenberg #6172 · 389,112 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: God and My Neighbour
Author: Robert Blatchford
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6172]
Most recently updated: March 30, 2009
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6172
Credits: Produced by The Freethought Archives, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR ***
Produced by The Freethought Archives
GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR
By Robert Blatchford
("Nunquam")
To My Son
ROBERT CORRI BLATCHFORD
This book is dedicated
PREFACE
INFIDEL!
I put the word in capitals, because it is my new name, and I want to get
used to it.
INFIDEL!
The name has been bestowed on me by several Christian gentlemen as a
reproach, but to my ears it has a quaint and not unpleasing sound.
Infidel! "The notorious infidel editor of the _Clarion_" is the form
used by one True Believer. The words recurred to my mind suddenly, while
I was taking my favourite black pipe for a walk along "the pleasant
Strand," and I felt a smile glimmer within as I repeated them.
Which is worse, to be a Demagogue or an Infidel? I am both. For while
many professed Christians contrive to serve both God and Mammon, the
depravity of my nature seems to forbid my serving either.
It was a mild day in mid-August, not cold for the time of year. I had
been laid up for a few days, and my back was unpropitious, and I was
tired. But I felt very happy, for so bad a man, since the sunshine was
clear and genial, and my pipe went as easily as a dream.
Besides, one's fellow-creatures are so amusing: especially in the
Strand. I had seen a proud and gorgeously upholstered lady lolling
languidly in a motor car, and looking extremely pleased with
herself--not without reason; and I had met two successful men of great
presence, who reminded me somehow of "Porkin and Snob"; and I had
noticed a droll little bundle of a baby, in a fawn-coloured woollen
suit, with a belt slipped almost to her knees, and sweet round eyes as
purple as pansies, who was hunting a rolling apple amongst "the
wild mob's million feet"; and I had seen a worried-looking matron,
frantically waving her umbrella to the driver of an omnibus, endanger
the silk hat of Porkin and disturb the complacency of Snob; and I felt
glad.
It was at that moment that there popped into my head the full style and
title I had earned. "Notorious Infidel Editor of the _Clarion_!" These
be brave words, indeed. For a moment they almost flattered me into the
belief that I had become a member of the higher criminal classes: a bold
bad man, like Guy Fawkes, or Kruger, or R. B. Cuninghame Graham.
"You ought," I said to myself, "to dress the part. You ought to have an
S.D.P. sombrero, a slow wise Fabian smile, and the mysterious trousers
of a Soho conspirator."
But at the instant I caught a sight of my counterfeit presentment in a
shop window, and veiled my haughty crest. _That_ a notorious Infidel!
Behold a dumpy, comfortable British _paterfamilias_ in a light flannel
suit and a faded sun hat. No; it will not do. Not a bit like Mephisto:
much more like the Miller of the Dee.
Indeed, I am not an irreligious man, really; I am rather a religious
man; and this is not an irreligious, but rather a religious, book.
Such thoughts should make men humble. After all, may not even John Burns
be human; may not Mr. Chamberlain himself have a heart that can feel for
another?
Gentle reader, that was a wise as well as a charitable man who taught us
there is honour among thieves; although, having never been a member of
Parliament himself, he must have spoken from hearsay.
"For all that, Robert, you're a notorious Infidel." I paused--just
opposite the Tivoli--and gazed moodily up and down the Strand.
As I have remarked elsewhere, I like the Strand. It is a very human
place. But I own that the Strand lacks dignity and beauty, and that
amongst its varied odours the odour of sanctity is scarce perceptible.
There are no trees in the Strand. The thoroughfare should be wider.
The architecture is, for the most part, banal. For a chief street in a
Christian capital, the Strand is not eloquent of high national ideals.
There are derelict churches in the Strand, and dingy blatant taverns,
and strident signs and hoardings; and there are slums hard by.
There are thieves in the Strand, and prowling vagrants, and gaunt
hawkers, and touts, and gamblers, and loitering failures, with tragic
eyes and wilted garments; and prostitutes plying for hire.
And east and west, and north and south of the Strand, there is London.
Is there a man amongst all London's millions brave enough to tell the
naked truth about the vice and crime, the misery and meanness, the
hypocrisies and shames of the great, rich, heathen city? Were such a man
to arise amongst us and voice the awful truth, what would his reception
be? How would he fare at the hands of the Press, and the Public--and the
Church?
As London is, so is England. This is a Christian country. What would
Christ think of Park Lane, and the slums, and the hooligans? What would
He think of the Stock Exchange, and the music hall, and the racecourse?
What would he think of our national ideals? What would He think of the
House of Peers, and the Bench of Bishops, and the Yellow Press?
Pausing again, over against Exeter Hall, I mentally apostrophise the
Christian British people. "Ladies and Gentlemen," I say, "you are
Christian in name, but I discern little of Christ in your ideals, your
institutions, or your daily lives. You are a mercenary, self-indulgent,
frivolous, boastful, blood-guilty mob of heathen. I like you very much,
but that is what you are. And it is you--_you_ who call men 'Infidels.'
You ridiculous creatures, what do you mean by it?"
If to praise Christ in words, and deny Him in deeds, be Christianity,
then London is a Christian city, and England is a Christian nation. For
it is very evident that our common English ideals are anti-Christian,
and that our commercial, foreign and social affairs are run on
anti-Christian lines.
Renan says, in his _Life of Jesus_, that "were Jesus to return amongst
us He would recognise as His disciples, not those who imagine they can
compress Him into a few catechismal phrases, but those who labour to
carry on His work."
My Christian friends, I am a Socialist, and as such believe in, and work
for, universal freedom, and universal brotherhood, and universal peace.
And you are Christians, and I am an "Infidel."
Well, be it even so. I am an "Infidel," and I now ask leave to tell you
why.
FOREWORDS
It is impossible for me to present the whole of my case in the space at
my command; I can only give an outline. Neither can I do it as well as
it ought to be done, but only as well as I am able.
To make up for my shortcomings, and to fortify my case with fuller
evidence, I must refer the reader to books written by men better
equipped for the work than I.
To do justice to so vast a theme would need a large book where I can
only spare a short chapter, and each large book should be written by a
specialist.
For the reader's own satisfaction, then, and for the sake of justice to
my cause, I shall venture to suggest a list of books whose contents will
atone for all my failures and omissions. And I am justified, I think, in
saying that no reader who has not read the books I recommend, or others
of like scope and value, can fairly claim to sit on the jury to try this
case.
And of these books I shall, first of all, heartily recommend the series
of cheap sixpenny reprints now published by the Rationalist Press
Association, Johnson's Court, London, E.C.
R.P.A. REPRINTS
Huxley's _Lectures and Essays._
Tyndall's _Lectures and Essays._
Laing's _Human Origins._
Laing's _Modern Science and Modern Thought._
Clodd's _Pioneers of Evolution._
Matthew Arnold's _Literature and Dogma._
Haeckel's _Riddle of the Universe._
Grant Allen's _Evolution of the Idea of God._
Cotter Morrison's _Service of Man._
Herbert Spencer's _Education._
Some Apologists have, I am sorry to say, attempted to disparage those
excellent books by alluding to them as "Sixpenny Science" and "Cheap
Science." The same method of attack will not be available against most
of the books in my next list:
_The Golden Bough_, Frazer. Macmillan, 36s.
_The Legend of Perseus_, Hartland. D. Nutt, 25s.
_Christianity and Mythology_, Robertson. Watts, 8s.
_Pagan Christs_, Robertson. Watts, 8s.
_Supernatural Religion_, Cassels. Watts, 6s.
_The Martyrdom of Man_, Winwood Reade. Kegan Paul, 6s.
_Mutual Aid_, Kropotkin. Heinemann, 7s. 6d.
_The Story of Creation_, Clodd. Longmans, 3s. 6d.
_Buddha and Buddhism_, Lillie. Clark, 3s. 6d.
_Shall We Understand the Bible?_ Williams. Black, 1s.
_What is Religion?_ Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d.
_What I Believe_, Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d.
_The Life of Christ_, Renan. Scott, 1s. 6d.
I also recommend Herbert Spencer's _Principles of Sociology_ and Lecky's
_History of European Morals_. Of pamphlets there are hundreds. Readers
will get full information from Watts & Co., 17 Johnson's Court, London,
E.C.
I can warmly recommend _The Miracles of Christian Belief_ and _The
Claims of Christianity_, by Charles Watts, and _Christianity and
Progress_, a penny pamphlet, by G. W. Foote (The Freethought Publishing
Company).
I should also like to mention _An Easy Outline of Evolution_, by Dennis
Hird (Watts & Co., 2s. 6d.). This book will be of great help to those
who want to scrape acquaintance with the theory of evolution.
Finally, let me ask the general reader to put aside all prejudice, and
give both sides a fair hearing. Most of the books I have mentioned above
are of more actual value to the public of to-day than many standard
works which hold world-wide reputations.
No man should regard the subject of religion as decided for him until
he has read _The Golden Bough_. _The Golden Bough_ is one of those books
that _unmake_ history.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
FOREWORDS
THE SIN OF UNBELIEF
ONE REASON
WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE
THE OLD TESTAMENT--
Is the Bible the Word of God?
The Evolution of the Bible
The Universe
Jehovah
Bible Heroes
The Book of Books
Our Heavenly Father
Prayer and Praise
THE NEW TESTAMENT--
The Resurrection
Gospel Witnesses
The Time Spirit
Have the Documents been Tampered with?
Christianity Before Christ
Other Evidences
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION--
What is Christianity?
DETERMINISM--
Can Man Sin against God?
CHRISTIAN APOLOGIES--
Christian Apologies
Christianity and Civilisation
Christianity and Ethics
The Success of Christianity
The Prophecies
The Universality of Religious Belief
Is Christianity the Only Hope?
Spiritual Discernment
Some Other Apologies
Counsels of Despair
CONCLUSION--
The Parting of the Ways
GOD AND MY NEIGHBOUR
THE SIN OF UNBELIEF
Huxley quotes with satirical gusto Dr. Wace's declaration as to the
word "Infidel." Said Dr. Wace: "The word infidel, perhaps, carries an
unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, and
it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say plainly
that he does not believe in Jesus Christ."
Be it pleasant or unpleasant to be an unbeliever, one thing is quite
clear: religious people intend the word Infidel to carry "an unpleasant
significance" when they apply to it one. It is in their minds a term of
reproach. Because they think it is _wicked_ to deny what they believe.
To call a man an Infidel, then, is tacitly to accuse him of a kind of
moral turpitude.
But a little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. But
a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a
little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to
the penalty of death.
Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism or
public contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect an
arbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and to put
a protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of science and
free thought.
The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the popular religion--a
wickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all represented
to have been guilty--thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are the
actual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures is to
deny and to affront God.
But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannot
believe the Scriptures to be the actual words of God.
The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying God's
commands: he is denying the words and disobeying the commands of _men_.
No man who _knew_ that there was a good and wise God would be so foolish
as to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God if he knew
that God spoke those words.
But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon the
authority of the Church; and the difference between the Infidel and
the Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts the
authority of the Church.
Belief and unbelief are not matters of moral excellence or depravity:
they are questions of evidence.
The Christian believes the Scriptures because they are the words of God.
But he believes they are the words of God because some other man has
told him so.
Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find that
his authority is human, and not, as he supposes, divine.
For you, my Christian friend, have never _seen_ God. You have never
heard God's voice. You have received from God no message in spoken
or written words. You have no direct divine warrant for the divine
authorship of the Scriptures. The authority on which your belief in the
divine revelation rests consists entirely of the Scriptures themselves
and the statements of the Church. But the Church is composed solely of
human beings, and the Scriptures were written and translated and printed
solely by human beings.
You believe that the Ten Commandments were dictated to Moses by God. But
God has not told _you_ so. You only believe the statement of the unknown
author of the Pentateuch that God told _him_ so. You do not _know_ who
Moses was. You do not _know_ who wrote the Pentateuch. You do not _know_
who edited and translated the Scriptures.
Clearly, then, you accept the Scriptures upon the authority of unknown
men, and upon no other demonstrable authority whatever.
Clearly, then, to doubt the doctrine of the divine revelation of the
Scriptures is not to doubt the word of God, but to doubt the words of
men.
But the Christian seems to suspect the Infidel of rejecting the
Christian religion out of sheer wantonness, or from some base or
sinister motive.
The fact being that the Infidel can only believe those things which his
own reason tells him are true. He opposes the popular religion because
his reason tells him it is not true, and because his reason tells him
insistently that a religion that is not true is not good, but bad. In
thus obeying the dictates of his own reason, and in thus advocating what
to him seems good and true, the Infidel is acting honourably, and is as
well within his right as any Pope or Prelate.
That base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of the
Infidel seems to me as absurd as that base or mercenary motives should
be laid to the charge of the Socialist. The answer to such libels
stares us in the face. Socialism and Infidelity are not popular, nor
profitable, nor respectable.
If you wish to lose caste, to miss preferment, to endanger your chances
of gaining money and repute, turn Infidel and turn Socialist.
Briefly, Infidelity does not pay. It is "not a pleasant thing to be an
Infidel."
The Christian thinks it his duty to "make it an unpleasant thing" to
deny the "true faith." He thinks it his duty to protect God, and to
revenge His outraged name upon the Infidel and the Heretic. The Jews
thought the same. The Mohammedan thinks the same. How many cruel
and sanguinary wars has that presumptuous belief inspired? How many
persecutions, outrages, martyrdoms, and massacres have been perpetrated
by fanatics who have been "jealous for the Lord?"
As I write these lines Christians are murdering Jews in Russia, and
Mohammedans are murdering Christians in Macedonia to the glory of God.
Is God so weak that He needs foolish men's defence? Is He so feeble that
He cannot judge nor avenge?
My Christian friend, so jealous for the Lord, did you ever regard your
hatred of "Heretics" and "Infidels" in the light of history?
The history of civilisation is the history of successions of brave
"Heretics" and "Infidels," who have denied false dogmas or brought new
truths to light.
The righteous men, the "True Believers" of the day, have cursed these
heroes and reviled them, have tortured, scourged, or murdered them. And
the children of the "True Believers" have adopted the heresies as true,
and have glorified the dead Heretics, and then turned round to curse or
murder the new Heretic who fain would lead them a little further toward
the light.
Copernicus, who first solved the mystery of the Solar System, was
excommunicated for heresy. But Christians acknowledge now that the earth
goes round the sun, and the name of Copernicus is honoured.
Bruno, who first declared the stars to be suns, and "led forth Arcturus
and his host," was burnt at the stake for heresy.
Galileo, the father of telescopic astronomy, was threatened with death
for denying the errors of the Church, was put in prison and tortured as
a heretic. Christians acknowledge now that Galileo spoke the truth, and
his name is honoured.
As it has been demonstrated in those cases, it has been demonstrated
in thousands of other cases, that the Heretics have been right, and the
True Believers have been wrong.
Step by step the Church has retreated. Time after time the Church
has come to accept the truths, for telling which she persecuted, or
murdered, her teachers. But still the True Believers hate the Heretic
and regard it as a righteous act to make it "unpleasant" to be an
"Infidel."
After taking a hundred steps away from old dogmas and towards the truth,
the True Believer shudders at the request to take one more. After two
thousand years of foolish and wicked persecution of good men, the True
Believer remains faithful to the tradition that it "ought to be an
unpleasant thing" to expose the errors of the Church.
The Christians used to declare that all the millions of men and women
outside the Christian Church would "burn for ever in burning Hell." They
do not like to be reminded of that folly now.
They used to declare that every unbaptised baby would go to Hell and
burn for ever in fire and brimstone. They do not like to be reminded of
that folly now.
They used to believe in witchcraft, and they burned millions--yes,
millions--of innocent women as witches. They do not like to hear about
witchcraft now.
They used to believe the legends of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. They
call them allegories now.
They used to believe that the world was made in six days. Now they talk
mildly about "geological periods."
They used to denounce Darwinism as impious and absurd. They have since
"cheerfully accepted" the theory of evolution.
They used to believe that the sun revolved round the earth, and that
he who thought otherwise was an Infidel, and would be damned in the
"bottomless pit." But now--! Now they declare that Christ was God, and
His mother a virgin; that three persons are one person; that those who
trust in Jesus shall go to Heaven, and those who do not trust in Jesus
will be "lost." And if anyone denies these statements, they call him
Infidel.
Are you not aware, friend Christian, that what was Infidelity is now
orthodoxy? It is even so. Heresies for which men used to be burned alive
are now openly accepted by the Church. There is not a divine living
who would not have been burned at the stake three centuries ago for
expressing the beliefs he now holds. Yet you call a man Infidel for
being a century in advance of you. History has taught you nothing. It
has not occurred to you that as the "infidelity" of yesterday has become
the enlightened religion of to-day, it is possible that the "infidelity"
of to-day may become the enlightened religion of to-morrow.
Civilisation is built up of the "heresies" of men who thought freely and
spoke bravely. Those men were called "Infidels" when they were alive.
But now they are called the benefactors of the world.
Infidel! The name has been borne, good Christian, by some of the noblest
of our race. I take it from you with a smile. I am an easiful old pagan,
and I am not angry with you at all--you funny, little champion of the
Most High.
ONE REASON
I have been asked why I have opposed Christianity. I have several
reasons, which shall appear in due course. At present I offer one.
I oppose Christianity because _it is not true_.
No honest man will ask for any other reason.
But it may be asked why I say that Christianity is not true; and that is
a very proper question, which I shall do my best to answer.
WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE
I hope it will not be supposed that I have any personal animus against
Christians or Christian ministers, although I am hostile to the Church.
Many ministers and many Christian laymen I have known are admirable men.
Some I know personally are as able and as good as any men I have met;
but I speak of the Churches, not of individuals.
I have known Catholic priests and sisters who were worthy and charming,
and there are many such; but I do not like the Catholic Church. I
have known Tories and Liberals who were real good fellows, and clever
fellows, and there are many such; but I do not like the Liberal and Tory
parties. I have known clergymen of the Church of England who were real
live men, and real English gentlemen, and there are many such; but I do
not like the Church.
I was not always an Agnostic, or a Rationalist, or an "Infidel," or
whatever Christians may choose to call me.
I was not perverted by an Infidel book. I had not read one when I
wavered first in my allegiance to the orthodoxies. I was set doubting by
a religious book written to prove the "Verity of Christ's Resurrection
from the Dead." But as a child I was thoughtful, and asked myself
questions, as many children do, which the Churches would find it hard to
answer to-day.
I have not ceased to believe what I was taught as a child because I have
grown wicked. I have ceased to believe it because, after twenty years'
hard thinking, I _cannot_ believe it.
I cannot believe, then, that the Christian religion is true.
I cannot believe that the Bible is the word of God. For the word of God
would be above criticism and beyond disproof, and the Bible is not above
criticism nor beyond disproof.
I cannot believe that any religion has been revealed to Man by God.
Because a revealed religion would be perfect, but no known religion
is perfect; and because history and science show us that the known
religions have not been revealed, but have been evolved from other
religions. There is no important feature of the Christian religion
which can be called original. All the rites, mysteries, and doctrines of
Christianity have been borrowed from older faiths.
I cannot believe that Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is the Creator of
the known universe. The Bible God, Jehovah, is a man-made God, evolved
from the idol of an obscure and savage tribe. The Bible shows us this
quite plainly.
I cannot believe that the Bible and the Testament are historically true.
I regard most of the events they record as fables, and most of their
characters as myths.
I cannot believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, nor Buddha, nor
Moses. I believe that these are ideal characters constructed from still
more ancient legends and traditions.
I cannot believe that the Bible version of the relations of man and God
is correct. For that version, and all other religious versions known
to me, represents man as sinning against or forsaking God, and God as
punishing or pardoning man.
But if God made man, then God is responsible for all man's acts and
thoughts, and therefore man cannot sin against God.
And if man could not sin against God, but could only act as God ordained
that he should act, then it is against reason to suppose that God could
be angry with man, or could punish man, or see any offence for which to
pardon man.
I cannot believe that man has ever forsaken God. Because history shows
that man has from the earliest times been eagerly and pitifully seeking
God, and has served and raised and sacrificed to God with a zeal akin to
madness. But God has made no sign.
I cannot believe that man was at the first created "perfect," and
that he "fell." (How could the perfect fall?) I believe the theory of
evolution, which shows not a fall but a gradual rise.
I cannot believe that God is a loving "Heavenly Father," taking a tender
interest in mankind. Because He has never interfered to prevent the
horrible cruelties and injustices of man to man, and because He has
permitted evil to rule the world. I cannot reconcile the idea of
a tender Heavenly Father with the known horrors of war, slavery,
pestilence, and insanity. I cannot discern the hand of a loving Father
in the slums, in the earthquake, in the cyclone. I cannot understand the
indifference of a loving Father to the law of prey, nor to the terrors
and tortures of leprosy, cancer, cholera, and consumption.
I cannot believe that God is a personal God, who intervenes in human
affairs. I cannot see in science, nor in experience, nor in history any
signs of such a God, nor of such intervention.
I cannot believe that God hears and answers prayer, because the universe
is governed by laws, and there is no reason to suppose that those laws
are ever interfered with. Besides, an all-wise God knows what to do
better than man can tell Him, and a just God would act justly without
requiring to be reminded of His duty by one of His creatures.
I cannot believe that miracles ever could or ever did happen. Because
the universe is governed by laws, and there is no credible instance on
record of those laws being suspended.
I cannot believe that God "created" man, as man now is, by word of mouth
and in a moment. I accept the theory of evolution, which teaches that
man was slowly evolved by natural process from lower forms of life, and
that this evolution took millions of years.
I cannot believe that Jesus Christ was God, nor that He was the Son of
God. There is no solid evidence for the miracle of the Incarnation, and
I see no reason for the Incarnation.
I cannot believe that Christ died to save man from Hell, nor that He
died to save man from sin. Because I do not believe God would condemn
the human race to eternal torment for being no better than He had made
them, and because I do not see that the death of Christ has saved man
from sin.
I cannot believe that God would think it necessary to come on earth as
a man, and die on the Cross. Because if that was to atone for man's
sin, it was needless, as God could have forgiven man without Himself
suffering.
I cannot believe that God would send His son to die on the Cross.
Because He could have forgiven man without subjecting His son to pain.
I cannot accept any doctrine of atonement. Because to forgive the guilty
because the innocent had suffered would be unjust and unreasonable, and
to forgive the guilty because a third person begged for his pardon would
be unjust.
I cannot believe that a good God would allow sin to enter the world.
Because He would hate sin and would have power to destroy or to forbid
it.
I cannot believe that a good God would create or tolerate a Devil, nor
that he would allow the Devil to tempt man.
I cannot believe the story of the virgin birth of Christ. Because for a
man to be born of a virgin would be a miracle, and I cannot believe in
miracles.
I cannot believe the story of Christ's resurrection from the dead.
Because that would be a miracle, and because there is no solid evidence
that it occurred.
I cannot believe that faith in the Godhood of Christ is necessary to
virtue or to happiness. Because I know that some holding such faith are
neither happy nor virtuous, and that some are happy and virtuous who do
not hold that faith.
The differences between the religious and the scientific theories, or,
as I should put it, between superstition and rationalism, are clearly
marked and irreconcilable.
The supernaturalist stands by "creation"; the rationalist stands by
"evolution." It is impossible to reduce these opposite ideas to a common
denominator.
The creation theory alleges that the earth, and the sun, and the moon,
and man, and the animals were "created" by God, instantaneously, by word
of mouth, out of nothing.
The evolution theory alleges that they were evolved, slowly, by natural
processes out of previously existing matter.
The supernaturalist alleges that religion was revealed to man by God,
and that the form of this revelation is a sacred book.
The rationalist alleges that religion was evolved by slow degrees and
by human minds, and that all existing forms of religion and all existing
"sacred books," instead of being "revelations," are evolutions from
religious ideas and forms and legends of prehistoric times. It is
impossible to reduce these opposite theories to a common denominator.
The Christians, the Hindoos, the Parsees, the Buddhists, and the
Mohammedans have each their "Holy Bible" or "sacred book." Each religion
claims that its own Bible is the direct revelation of God, and is the
only true Bible teaching the only true faith. Each religion regards all
the other religions as spurious.
The supernaturalists believe in miracles, and each sect claims that the
miracles related in its own inspired sacred book prove the truth of that
book and of the faith taught therein.
No religion accepts the truth of any other religion's miracles. The
Hindoo, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Parsee, the Christian each
believes that his miracles are the only real miracles.
The Protestant denies the miracles of the Roman Catholic.
The rationalist denies all miracles alike. "Miracles never happen."
The Christian Bible is full of miracles. The Christian Religion is
founded on miracles.
No rationalist believes in miracles. Therefore no rationalist can accept
the Christian Religion.
If you discard "Creation" and accept evolution; if you discard
"revelation" and accept evolution; if you discard miracles and accept
natural law, there is nothing left of the Christian Religion but the
life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
And when one sees that all religions and all ethics, even the oldest
known, have, like all language and all science and all philosophy and
all existing species of animals and plants, been slowly evolved from
lower and ruder forms; and when one learns that there have been many
Christs, and that the evidence of the life of Jesus is very slight,
and that all the acts and words of Jesus had been anticipated by other
teachers long before the Christian era, then it is borne in upon one's
mind that the historic basis of Christianity is very frail. And when one
realises that the Christian theology, besides being borrowed from
older religions, is manifestly opposed to reason and to facts, then one
reaches a state of mind which entitles the orthodox Christian to call
one an "Infidel," and to make it "unpleasant" for one to the glory of
God.
That is the position in which I stand at present, and it is partly to
vindicate that position, and to protest against those who feel as I feel
being subjected to various kinds of "unpleasantness," that I undertake
this Apology.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD?
The question of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is one of great
importance.
If the Bible is a divine revelation, if it contains the actual word
of God, and nothing but the word of God, then it is folly to doubt any
statement it contains.
If the Bible is merely the work of men, if it contains only the words
of men, then, like all other human work, the Bible is fallible, and must
submit to criticism and examination, as all fallible human work must.
The Christian Religion stands or falls by the truth of the Bible.
If the Bible is the word of God the Bible must be true, and the
Christian Religion must be true.
But, as I said before, the claim for the divine origin of the Bible has
not been made by God, but by men.
We have therefore no means of testing the Bible's title to divine
revelation other than by criticism and examination of the Bible itself.
If the Bible is the word of God--the all-wise and perfect God--the Bible
will be perfect. If the Bible is not perfect it cannot be the word of a
God who is perfect.
The Bible is not perfect. Historically, scientifically, and ethically
the Bible is imperfect.
If the Bible is the word of God it will present to us the perfect God as
He is, and every act of His it records will be perfection. But the Bible
does not show us a perfect God, but a very imperfect God, and such of
His acts as the Bible records are imperfect.
I say, then, with strong conviction, that I do not believe the Bible to
be the word of God; that I do not believe it to be inspired of God; that
I do not believe it to contain any divine revelation of God to man. Why?
Let us consider the claim that the Bible is the word of God. Let us,
first of all, consider it from the common-sense point of view, as
ordinary men of the world, trying to get at the truth and the reason of
a thing.
What would one naturally expect in a revelation by God to man?
1. We should expect God to reveal truths of which mankind were ignorant.
2. We should expect God to make no errors of fact in His revelation.
3. We should expect God to make His revelation so clear and so definite
that it could be neither misunderstood nor misrepresented.
4. We should expect God to ensure that His revelation should reach _all_
men; and should reach all men directly and quickly.
5. We should expect God's revelation of the relations existing between
Himself and man to be true.
6. We should expect the ethical code in God's revelation to be complete,
and final, and perfect. The divine ethics should at least be above
human criticism and beyond human amendment.
To what extent does the Bible revelation fulfil the above natural
expectations?
1. Does the Bible reveal any new moral truths?
I cannot speak very positively, but I think there is very little moral
truth in the Bible which has not been, or will not be traced back to
more ancient times and religions.
2. Does the Bible revelation contain no errors of fact?
I claim that it contains many errors of fact, and the Higher Criticism
supports the claim; as we shall see.
3. Is the Bible revelation so clear and explicit that no difference of
opinion as to its meaning is possible?
No. It is not. No one living can claim anything of the kind.
4. Has God's revelation, as given in the Bible, reached all men?
No. After thousands of years it is not yet known to one-half the human
race.
5. Is God's revelation of the relations between man and God true?
I claim that it is not true. For the word of God makes it appear that
man was created by God in His own image, and that man sinned against
God. Whereas man, being only what God made him, and having only the
powers God gave him, _could_ not sin against God any more than a
steam-engine can sin against the engineer who designed and built it.
6. Is the ethical code of the Bible complete, and final, and perfect?
No. The ethical code of the Bible gradually develops and improves. Had
it been divine it would have been perfect from the first. It is because
it is human that it develops. As the prophets and the poets of the Jews
grew wiser, and gentler, and more enlightened, so the revelation of
God grew wiser and gentler with them. Now, God would know from the
beginning; but men would have to learn. Therefore the Bible writings
would appear to be human, and not divine.
Let us look over these points again, and make the matter still clearer
and more simple.
If the children of an earthly father had wandered away and forgotten
him, and were, for lack of guidance, living evil lives; and if the
earthly father wished his children to know that they were his children,
wished them to know what he had done for them, what they owed to him,
what penalty they might fear, or reward they might ask from him; if he
wished them to live cleanly and justly, and to love him, and at last
come home to him--what would that earthly father do?
He would send his message to _all_ his children, instead of sending it
to one, and trusting him to repeat it correctly to the others. He would
try to so word his message as that all his children might understand it.
He would send his children the very best rules of life he knew. He would
take great pains to avoid error in matters of fact.
If, after the message was sent, his children quarrelled and fought about
its meaning, their earthly father would not sit silent and allow them to
hate and slay each other because of a misconception, but would send at
once and make his meaning plain to all.
And if an earthly father would act thus wisely and thus kindly, "how
much more your Father which is in Heaven?"
But the Bible revelation was not given to all the people of the earth.
It was given to a handful of Jews. It was not so explicit as to make
disagreement impossible. It is thousands of years since the revelation
of God began, and yet to-day it is not known to hundreds of millions
of human beings, and amongst those whom it has reached there is endless
bitter disagreement as to its meaning.
Now, what is the use of a revelation which does not reveal more than is
known, which does not reveal truth only, which does not reach half those
who need it, which cannot be understood by those it does reach?
But you will regard me as a prejudiced witness. I shall therefore, in my
effort to prove the Bible fallible, quote almost wholly from Christian
critics.
And I take the opportunity to here recommend very strongly _Shall We
Understand the Bible?_ by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. Adam and Charles
Black; 1s net.
There are two chief theories as to the inspiration of the Bible. One is
the old theory that the Bible is the actual word of God, and nothing but
the word of God, directly revealed by God to Moses and the prophets. The
other is the new theory: that the Bible is the work of many men whom God
had inspired to speak or write the truth.
The old theory is well described by Dr. Washington Gladden in the
following passage:
They imagine that the Bible must have originated in a manner
purely miraculous; and, though they know very little about its
origin, they conceive of it as a book that was written in heaven
in the English tongue, divided there into chapters and verses,
with headlines and reference marks, printed in small pica,
bound in calf, and sent down by angels in its present form.
The newer idea of the inspiration of the Bible is also well expressed by
Dr. Gladden; thus:
Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is not the dictation
by God of words to men that they may be written down in books:
it is rather the disclosure of the truth and love of God to men
in the processes of history, in the development of the moral
order of the world. It is the light that lighteth every man,
shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. There
is a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the record
of that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; its
most impressive disclosures are in the field of action. "Thus
_did_ the Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formula
of revelation than "Thus saith the Lord." It is in that great
historical movement of which the Bible is the record that we find
the revelation of God to men.
The old theory of Bible inspiration was, as I have said, the theory that
the Bible was the actual and pure word of God, and was true in every
circumstance and detail.
Now, if an almighty and all-wise God had spoken or written every word
of the Bible, then that book would, of course, be wholly and unshakably
true in its every statement.
But if the Bible was written by men, some of them more or less inspired,
then it would not, in all probability be wholly perfect.
The more inspiration its writers had from God, the more perfect it would
be. The less inspiration its writers had from God, the less perfect it
would be.
Wholly perfect, it might be attributed to a perfect being. Partly
perfect, it might be the work of less perfect beings. Less perfect, it
would have to be put down to less perfect beings.
Containing any fault or error, it could not be the actual word of God,
and the more errors and faults it contained, the less inspiration of God
would be granted to its authors.
I will quote again from Dr. Gladden:
What I desire to show is, that the work of putting the Bible
into its present form was not done in heaven, but on earth; that
it was not done by angels, but by men; that it was not done all at
once, but a little at a time, the work of preparing and perfecting
it extending over several centuries, and employing the labours of
many men in different lands and long-divided generations.
I now turn to Dr. Aked. On page 25 of his book, _Changing Creeds_, he
says:
Ignorance has claimed the Bible for its own. Bigotry has made
the Bible its battleground. Its phrases have become the
shibboleth of pietistic sectarians. Its authority has been
evoked in support of the foulest crimes committed by the vilest
men; and its very existence has been made a pretext for theories
which shut out God from His own world. In our day Bible worship
has become, with many very good but very unthoughtful people, a
disease.
So much for the attitude of the various schools of religious thought
towards the Bible.
Now, in the opinion of these Christian teachers, is the Bible perfect
or imperfect? Dr. Aked gives his opinion with characteristic candour and
energy:
For observe the position: men are told that the Bible is the
infallible revelation of God to man, and that its statements
concerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted as
statements made upon the authority of God. They turn to its
pages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes,
scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific),
inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is far
worse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed by
men who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeeds
the imperturbable "God said." The heart and conscience of man
indignantly rebel against the representations of the Most High
given in some parts of the Bible. What happens? Why, such
men declare--are now declaring, and will in constantly
increasing numbers, and with constantly increasing force and
boldness declare--that they can have nothing to do with a book
whose errors a child can discover, and whose revelation of God
partakes at times of blasphemy against man.
I need hardly say that I agree with every word of the above. If anyone
asked me what evidence exists in support of the claims that the Bible is
the word of God, or that it was in any real sense of the words "divinely
inspired," I should answer, without the least hesitation, that there
does not exist a scrap of evidence of any kind in support of such a
claim.
Let us give a little consideration to the origin of the Bible. The first
five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, were said to be written
by Moses. Moses was not, and could not have been, the author of those
books. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence to prove that Moses ever
existed. Whether he was a fictitious hero, or a solar myth, or what he
was, no man knows.
Neither does there appear to be any certainty that the biblical books
attributed to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest were
really written by those kings or prophets, or even in their age.
And after these books, or many of them, had been written, they were
entirely lost, and are said to have been reproduced by Ezra.
Add to these facts that the original Hebrew had no vowels, that many of
the sacred books were written without vowels, and that the vowels were
added long after; and remember that, as Dr. Aked says, the oldest Hebrew
Bible in existence belongs to the tenth century after Christ, and
it will begin to appear that the claim for biblical infallibility is
utterly absurd.
But I must not offer these statements on my own authority. Let us
return to Dr. Gladden. On page 11 of _Who Wrote the Bible?_ I find the
following:
The first of these holy books of the Jews was, then, The Law,
contained in the first five books of our Bible, known among us
as the Pentateuch, and called by the Jews sometimes simply
"The Law," and sometimes "The Law of Moses." This was supposed
to be the oldest portion of their Scriptures, and was by them
regarded as much more sacred and authoritative than any other
portion. To Moses, they said, God spake face to face; to the
other holy men much less distinctly. Consequently, their appeal
is most often to the Law of Moses.
The sacredness of the five books of "The Law," then, rests upon the
belief that they were written by Moses, who had spoken face to face with
God.
So that if Moses did not write those books, their sacredness is a myth.
Now, on page 42, Dr. Gladden says:
1. The Pentateuch could never have been written by any one
man, inspired or otherwise.
2. It is a composite work, in which many hands have been
engaged. The production of it extends over many centuries.
3. It contains writings which are as old as the time of Moses,
and some that are much older. It is impossible to tell how
much of it came from the hand of Moses; but there are
considerable portions of it which, although they may have
been somewhat modified by later editors, are substantially
as he left them.
On page 45 Dr. Gladden, again speaking of the Pentateuch, says:
But the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. The
last event related in that book occurred four hundred years
before Moses was born; it was as distant from him as the
discovery of America by Columbus is from us; and other portions
of the narrative, such as the stories of the Flood and the
Creation, stretch back into the shadows of the age which
precedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in his
day could have given us these reports from his own knowledge.
Whoever wrote this must have obtained his materials in one of
three ways:
1. They might have been given to him by divine revelation
from God.
2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, from
stories, folklore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, and
so preserved from generation to generation.
3. He might have found them in written documents existing at
the time of his writing.
As many of the laws and incidents in the books of Moses were known to
the Chaldeans, the "direct revelation of God" theory is not plausible.
On this point Dr. Gladden's opinion supports mine. He says, on page 61:
That such is the fact with respect to the structure of these
ancient writings is now beyond question. And our theory of
inspiration must be adjusted to this fact. Evidently neither
the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary
inspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful study
of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are
not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word.
The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they
were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a
composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this
claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained
results of criticism, would compel us to take such positions
as the following: the original authors of each one of the
writings which enter into the composite structure were infallibly
inspired; every one who made any changes in any one of these
fundamental writings was infallibly inspired; every compiler
who put together two or more of these writings was infallibly
inspired, both as to his selections and omissions, and as to any
connecting or explanatory words which he might himself write;
every redactor was infallibly inspired to correct and supplement,
and omit that which was the product of previous infallible
inspirations. Or, perhaps, it might seem more convenient to attach
the claim of a plenary inspiration to the last redactor of all;
but then we should probably have selected of all others the one
least able to bear the weight of such a claim. Think of making
the claim for a plenary inspiration of the Pentateuch in its
present form on the ground of the infallibility of that one of
the scribes who gave it its last touches some time subsequent to
the death of Ezra."
Remember that Dr. Gladden declares, on page 5, that he shall state no
conclusions as to the history of the sacred writings which will not be
accepted by conservative critics.
On page 54 Dr. Gladden quotes the following from Dr. Perowne:
The first _composition_ of the Pentateuch as a whole could not
have taken place till after the Israelites entered Canaan.
The whole work did not finally assume its present shape till
its revision was undertaken by Ezra after the return from the
Babylonish captivity.
On page 25 Dr. Gladden himself speaks as follows:
The common argument by which Christ is made a witness to the
authenticity and infallible authority of the Old Testament
runs as follows:
Christ quotes Moses as the author of this legislation; therefore
Moses must have written the whole Pentateuch. Moses was an
inspired prophet; therefore all the teaching of the Pentateuch
must be infallible.
The facts are that Jesus nowhere testifies that Moses wrote the
whole of the Pentateuch; and that he nowhere guarantees the
infallibility either of Moses or of the book. On the contrary,
he set aside as inadequate or morally defective, certain laws
which in this book are ascribed to Moses.
So much for the authorship and the inspiration of the first five books
of the Bible.
As to the authorship of other books of the Bible, Dr. Gladden says of
Judges and Samuel that we do not know the authors nor the dates.
Of Kings he says: "The name of the author is concealed from us." The
origin and correctness of the Prophecies and Psalms, he tells us, are
problematical.
Of the Books of Esther and Daniel, Dr. Gladden says: "That they are
founded on fact I do not doubt; but it is, perhaps, safer to regard them
both rather as historical fictions than as veritable histories."
Of Daniel, Dean Farrar wrote:
The immense majority of scholars of name and acknowledged
competence in England and Europe have now been led to form
an irresistible conclusion that the Book of Daniel was not
written, and could not have been written, in its present form,
by the prophet Daniel, B.C. 534, but that it can only have been
written, as we now have it, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes,
about B.C. 164, and that the object of the pious and patriotic
author as to inspirit his desponding countrymen by splendid
specimens of that lofty moral fiction which was always common
amongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah."
So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willingly
suffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink to
the ground under the weight of their own inadequacy.
(_The Bible and the Child_.)
I return now to Dr. Aked, from whose book I quote the following:
Dr. Clifford has declared that there is not a man who has
given a day's attention to the question who holds the complete
freedom of the Bible from inaccuracy. He has added that "it
is become more and more impossible to affirm the inerrancy
of the Bible." Dr. Lyman Abbott says that "an infallible book
is an impossible conception, and to-day no one really believes
that our present Bible is such a book."
Compare those opinions with the following extract from the first article
in _The Bible and the Child_:
The change of view respecting the Bible, which has marked the
advancing knowledge and more earnest studies of this generation
is only the culmination of the discovery that there were
different documents in the Book of Genesis--a discovery first
published by the physician, Jean Astruc, in 1753. There are
_three_ widely divergent ways of dealing with these results of
profound study, each of which is almost equally dangerous to
the faith of the rising generation.
1. Parents and teachers may go on inculcating dogmas about the
Bible and methods of dealing with it which have long become
impossible to those who have really tried to follow the manifold
discoveries of modern inquiry with perfectly open and unbiased
minds. There are a certain number of persons who, when their
minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply
_incapable_ of grasping new truths. They become obstructives,
and not infrequently bigoted obstructives. As convinced as the
Pope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards
those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an
attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the
_odium theologicum_. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew
and the rack of mediaeval Inquisitors, and would, in the last
resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake.
Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by custom and
advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal
with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational
examination of the truths which they impugn. They think that
they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the
lifelong inquiries of the ablest students, while they have not
given a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancy
that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called "orthodox,"
are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful,
and often incomparably more able, than themselves. Off-hand
dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional
religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars,
however profound and however pious, if only they shout "Infidel"
with sufficient loudness.
Those are not the words of an "Infidel." They are the words of the late
Dean Farrar.
To quote again from Dr. Gladden:
Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the
theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts
which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before
us. _These writings are not inspired in the sense which we
have commonly given to that word._ The verbal theory of
inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be
the work of a single author. _To such a composite literature
no such theory will apply._
The Bible is not inspired. The fact is that _no_ "sacred" book is
inspired. _All_ "sacred" books are the work of human minds. All ideas of
God are human ideas. All religions are made by man.
When the old-fashioned Christian said the Bible was an inspired book, he
meant that God put the words and the facts directly into the mind of
the prophet. That meant that God told Moses about the creation, Adam and
Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments.
Many modern Christians, amongst whom I place the Rev. Ambrose Pope, of
Bakewell, believe that God gave Moses (and all the other prophets) a
special genius and a special desire to convey religious information to
other men.
And Mr. Pope suggests that man was so ignorant, so childlike, or so
weak in those days that it was necessary to disguise plain facts in
misleading symbols.
But the man, Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man
of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to
him: "I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea
to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to
develop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man out from the
brutes; and the time was six hundred millions of years"--if God had said
that to Moses, do you think Moses would not have understood?
Now, let me show you what the Christian asks us to believe. He asks us
to believe that the God who was the first cause of creation, and knew
everything, inspired man, in the childhood of the world, with a fabulous
and inaccurate theory of the origin of man and the earth, and that since
that day the same God has gradually changed or added to the inspiration,
until He inspired Laplace, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Darwin to
contradict the teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks
us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series
of revelations cloaked in fable and allegory; that He allowed them to
stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these "revelations"; that He
allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account
of divergent readings of his "revelations" for ages and ages; and that
He is still looking on while a number of bewildered and antagonistic
religions fight each other to achieve the survival of the fittest. Is
that a reasonable theory? Is it the kind of theory a reasonable man can
accept? Is it consonant with common sense?
Contrast that with our theory. We say that early man, having no
knowledge of science, and more imagination than reason, would be alarmed
and puzzled by the phenomena of Nature. He would be afraid of the dark,
he would be afraid of the thunder, he would wonder at the moon, at the
stars, at fire, at the ocean. He would fear what he did not understand,
and he would bow down and pay homage to what he feared.
Then, by degrees, he would personify the stars, and the sun, and the
thunder, and the fire. He would make gods of these things. He would make
gods of the dead. He would make gods of heroes. He would do what all
savage races do, what all children do: he would make legends, or fables,
or fairy tales out of his hopes, his fears, and his guesses.
Does not that sound reasonable? Does not history teach us that it is
true? Do we not know that religion was so born and nursed?
There is no such thing known to men as an original religion. All
religions are made up of the fables and the imaginations of tribes long
since extinct. Religion is an evolution, not a revelation. It has been
invented, altered, and built up, and pulled down, and reconstructed time
after time. It is a conglomeration and an adaptation, as language is.
And the Christian religion is no more an original religion than English
is an original tongue. We have Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, French, Saxon,
Norman words in our language; and we have Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian,
Roman, Greek, and all manner of ancient foreign fables, myths, and rites
in our Christian religion.
We say that Genesis was a poetic presentation of a fabulous story pieced
together from many traditions of many tribes, and recording with great
literary power the ideas of a people whose scientific knowledge was very
incomplete.
Now, I ask you which of these theories is the most reasonable; which
is the most scientific; which agrees most closely with the facts of
philology and history of which we are in possession?
Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was the
work of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched and
unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easy
and just as reasonable to take the _Morte d'Arthur_ and try to prove
that it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations to man.
And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelation
of the Holy Bible. Is God all-powerful or is he not? If he is
all-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not have
created him at once a wise and good creature? Even when man was ignorant
and savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some means of
revealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really wished to reveal
Himself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to one or two obscure
tribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness?
Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of terror, full of
wonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshipped the sun and the
moon; they worshipped ghosts and demons; they worshipped tyrants, and
pretenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if God
had come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had said,
"Behold, I am the only God," these savages would not have left all
baser gods and worshipped Him? Why, these men, and all the thousands
of generations of their children, have been looking for God since first
they learned to look at sea and sky. They are looking for Him now. They
have fought countless bloody wars and have committed countless horrible
atrocities in their zeal for Him. And you ask us to believe that His
grand revelation of Himself is bound up in a volume of fables and errors
collected thousands of years ago by superstitious priests and prophets
of Palestine, and Egypt, and Assyria.
We cannot believe such a statement. No man can believe it who tests it
by his reason in the same way in which he would test any modern problem.
If the leaders of religion brought the same vigour and subtlety of mind
to bear upon religion which they bring to bear upon any criticism of
religion, if they weighed the Bible as they have weighed astronomy and
evolution, the Christian religion would not last a year.
If my reader has not studied this matter, let him read the books I have
recommended, and then sit down and consider the Bible revelation and
story with the same fearless honesty and clear common sense with which
he would consider the Bibles of the Mohammedan, or Buddhist, or Hindoo,
and then ask himself the question: "Is the Bible a holy and inspired
book, and the word of God to man, or is it an incongruous and
contradictory collection of tribal traditions and ancient fables,
written by men of genius and imagination?"
THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE
We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claim
that no religion known to man can be truly said to be original. All
religions, the Christian religion included, are adaptations or variants
of older religions. Religions are not _revealed_: they are _evolved_.
If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in
whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its
revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been
a religion which fulfils those conditions.
According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years
ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which
was at least fifty thousand years before the Christian era.
Here I recommend the study of Laing's _Human Origins_, Parson's _Our
Sun God_, Sayce's _Ancient Empires of the East_, and Frazer's _Golden
Bough_.
In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of
Manchester spoke as follows:
Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall
we assign that Accadian civilisation and literature which so long
preceded Sargo I. and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best
answer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel:
"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern
Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C.
in possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture
adopted by them--a culture, moreover, which appears to have
sprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far,
far older still, and have existed in its _completed_ form in the
fifth thousand B.C., an age to which I unhesitatingly ascribe the
South Babylonian incantations."... Who does not see that such
facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past?
A culture which was _complete_ one thousand years before Adam must have
needed many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guess
that Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years.
Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error
of time, and has no bearing on the alleged evolution of the Bible. Well,
an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in
a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it _has_ a bearing on
evolution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilisation
lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends.
Here I quote from _Our Sun God_, by Mr. J. D. Parsons:
To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with
the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations that
the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge,
and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the
Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus
under Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the
observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by
the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or
even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created,
is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in
an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these
pregnant words:
"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel
our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that
the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three
thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed
in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the
Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."
The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the
legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the
Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.
Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires_ of the East,
speaks as follows:
With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new
departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period
of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called _saros_.
Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the
waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their
sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch
it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every
species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and
lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove
and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the
raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark.
He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain
of Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadians
believed the heavens to rest--where, too, they placed the
habitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race.
Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south
of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself.
On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine
by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared in
the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be
destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his
wife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of
the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made
their way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the books
buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and
re-established themselves in their old country under the government
first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile,
other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here,
under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by the
Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a
tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win
for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros... But
the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel
frustrated their purpose by confounding their language and
scattering them on the mound.
These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously
borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.
Professor Sayce, in his _Ancient Empires of the East_, speaking of the
Accadian king, Sargon I., says:
Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian
Solomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law,
the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how his
father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had
fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses,
to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how
he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought him
up as his own son, until the time came when, under the protection
of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on
the throne of his forefathers.
From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the
Flood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and
very likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendary
Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient
mythical figure?
Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth," from
_Christianity and Mythology_, by J. M. Robertson:
NOTES ON THE MOSES MYTH.
I have been challenged for saying that the story of Moses and
the floating basket is a variant of the myth of Horos and the
floating island (_Herod_ ii. 156). But this seems sufficiently
proved by the fact that in the reign of Rameses II., according
to the monuments, there was a place in Middle Egypt which
bore the name I-en-Moshe, "_the island of Moses_." That is the
primary meaning. Brugsch, who proclaims the fact (_Egypt
Under the Pharaohs_, ii. 117), suggests that it can also mean "the
river bank of Moses." It is very obvious, however, that the
Egyptians would not have named a place by a real incident in
the life of a successful enemy, as Moses is represented in Exodus.
Name and story are alike mythological and pre-Hebraic, though
possibly Semitic. The Assyrian myth of Sargon, which is,
indeed, very close to the Hebrew, may be the oldest form of all;
but the very fact that the Hebrews located their story in Egypt
shows that they knew it to have a home there in some fashion.
The name Moses, whether it mean "the water-child" (so Deutsch)
or "the hero" (Sayce, _Hib. Lect._ p. 46), was in all likelihood
an epithet of Horos. The basket, in the latter form, was
doubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-born
God-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus
(i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos _dead_ "on the water,"
and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue
to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other
Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians
had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did
Hermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, where he gave
laws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, this
myth probably means that the Sun God, who has in the other
story escaped the "massacre of the innocents" (the morning
stars), now plays the slayer on his own account, since the slaying
of many-eyed Argus probably means the extinction of the stars
by the morning sun (cp. Emeric-David, _Introduction_, end).
Another "Hermes" was the son of Nilus, and his name was sacred
(Cicero, _De Nat. Deor._ iii. 22, Cp. 16). The story of the
floating child, finally, becomes part of the lore of Greece.
In the myth of Apollo, the Babe-God and his sister Artemis are
secured in float-islands.
It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without some
knowledge of ancient history and comparative mythology. It would be
impossible for me to go deeply into these matters in this small book,
but I will quote a few significant passages just to show the value of
such historical evidence. Here to begin with, are some passages from Mr.
Grant Allen's _Evolution of the Idea of God_.
THE ORIGIN OF GODS.
Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his _Principles
of Sociology_, the progress of development from the Ghost to
the God that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much
more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which,
however, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at
the same time to the conception of three successive stages in
human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the
preceding argument.
In the earlier stage of all--the stage where the actual bodies
of the dead are preserved--gods, as such, are for the most part
unknown: it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are
worshipped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the
corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting
posture under a protecting shed; "a small altar was erected
before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were
daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to
attend the body." (This point about the priest is of essential
importance.) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes,
performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial
heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship
the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little
higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of
Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of
greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever
the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship
and offerings are paid to them.
Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body,
but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshipped.
Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru: "The dead
are buried in the forest on some secluded spot, marked by a
_merang_, or grave pole, over which at certain intervals the
relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings.
When the body is decomposed the son or nearest relative
disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places
it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little
hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative
of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest
respect."
Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account,
as giving us an anticipatory hint of two further accessories
whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake,
which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; and second,
the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave,
which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or
praying-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the
skull in cloth and its oracular functions.
Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution
this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the
chief known object of worship survives undiluted; and ancestor-
worship remains to this day the principal religion of the Chinese
and of several other peoples. Gods, as such, are practically
unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many
other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements
of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece
and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic
ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up
in time between various classes of ghosts or dead persons, some
ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others;
and out of these last it is that gods as a rule are finally
developed. A god, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an
exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost--a ghost able to help,
and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected.
Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do
with the growth of a higher conception of godhead; a dead king
of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time
as a god of considerable importance. We shall trace out this
idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the
present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the
gods in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to
the increased power of kings or emperors.
When we pass from the first plane of corpse preservation and
mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual,
it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship
of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be
possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear
lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living.
Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the
desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly
contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that
even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship
them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great
stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead
from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices
are offered to the spirit.
Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble of
ancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources and
remote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in many
instances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it is
folly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols as
the literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of the
origin of man, and the genesis of religion.
The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, perhaps, than
sun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In _The Real Origin of
Religion_ occurs the following:
Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to
prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with
the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much
round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their
holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more
modest and refined than our civilised contemporaries, for almost
all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make
human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or
pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his
crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery,
if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to
believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion
as well as modern thought.
And again:
Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender
passion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent
monuments and libraries of theology.
This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no new
theory, and is doubtless quite true, for all gods have been made by
man, and all theologies have been evolved by man, and the odour and the
colour of his human passions cling to them always, even after they are
discarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal gods and eternal heavens
lies man's passion for the eternal feminine. But on these subjects
"Moses" spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all.
Mr. Robertson, in _Christianity and Mythology_, says of the Bible:
It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable--early,
that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together
two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates
several sets of mythic personages--as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain
and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain,
making that finally the curse of Canaan; it tells the same
offensive story twice of one patriarch and again of another;
it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death,
life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the "Two Brothers,"
or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use
of various God-names, pretending that they always stood for
the same deity; it repeats traditions concerning mythic
founders of races--if all this be not "a medley of early fable,"
what is it?
I quote next from _The Bible and the Child_, in which Dean Farrar says:
Some of the books of Scripture are separated from others by the
interspace of a thousand years. They represent the fragmentary
survival of Hebrew literature. They stand on very different
levels of value, and even of morality. Read for centuries in
an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superstitious manner, they
have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire
systems of interpretation--which were believed in for generations,
and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion--
are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Colossal
usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built,
like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex of a single
misinterpreted text.
Compare those utterances of the freethinker and the divine, and then
read the following words of Dean Farrar:
The manner in which the Higher Criticism has slowly and surely
made its victorious progress, in spite of the most determined
and exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its favour.
It is exactly analogous to the way in which the truths of
astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal
opposition. They were once anathematised as "infidel"; they
are now accepted as axiomatic. I cannot name a single student
or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not
accept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions
of the German school of critics.
This being the case, I ask, as a mere layman, what right has the Bible
to usurp the title of "the word of God"? What evidence can be sharked up
to show that it is any more a holy or an inspired book than any book of
Thomas Carlyle's, or John Ruskin's, or William Morris'? What evidence
is forthcoming that the Bible is true?
THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO ANCIENT RELIGION AND MODERN SCIENCE
The theory of the early Christian Church was that the Earth was flat,
like a plate, and the sky was a solid dome above it, like an inverted
blue basin.
The Sun revolved round the Earth to give light by day, the Moon revolved
round the Earth to give light by night. The stars were auxiliary lights,
and had all been specially, and at the same time, created for the good
of man.
God created the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Earth in six days. He created them
by word, and He created them out of nothing.
The centre of the Universe was the Earth. The Sun was made to give light
to the Earth by day, and the Moon to give light to Earth by night.
Any man who denied that theory in those days was in danger of being
murdered as an Infidel.
To-day our ideas are very different. Hardly any educated man or woman
in the world believes that the world is flat, or that the Sun revolves
round the Earth, or that what we call the sky is a solid substance, like
a domed ceiling.
Advanced thinkers, even amongst the Christians, believe that the world
is round, that it is one of a series of planets revolving round the Sun,
that the Sun is only one of many millions of other suns, that these
suns were not created simultaneously, but at different periods, probably
separated by millions or billions of years.
We have all, Christians and Infidels alike, been obliged to acknowledge
that the Earth is not the centre of the whole Universe, but only a minor
planet revolving around, and dependent upon, one of myriads of suns.
God, called by Christians "Our Heavenly Father," created all things. He
created not only the world, but the whole universe. He is all-wise,
He is all-powerful, He is all-loving, and He is revealed to us in the
Scriptures.
Let us see. Let us try to imagine what kind of a God the creator of
this Universe would be, and let us compare him with the God, or Gods,
revealed to us in the Bible, and in the teachings of the Church.
We have seen the account of the Universe and its creation, as given in
the revealed Scriptures. Let us now take a hasty view of the Universe
and its creation as revealed to us by science.
What is the Universe like, as far as our limited knowledge goes?
Our Sun is only one sun amongst many millions. Our planet is only one of
eight which revolve around him.
Our Sun, with his planets and comets, comprises what is known as the
solar system.
There is no reason to suppose that his is the only Solar System: there
may be many millions of solar systems. For aught we know, there may be
millions of systems, each containing millions of solar systems.
Let us deal first with the solar system of which we are a part.
The Sun is a globe of 866,200 miles diameter. His diameter is more than
108 times that of the Earth. His volume is 1,305,000 times the volume
of the Earth. All the eight planets added together only make
one-seven-hundredth part of his weight. His circumference is more than
two and a-half millions of miles. He revolves upon his axis in 25 1/4
days, or at a speed of nearly 4,000 miles an hour.
This immense and magnificent globe diffuses heat and light to all the
other planets.
Without the light and heat of the Sun no life would now be, or in the
past have been, possible on this Earth, or any other planet of the solar
system.
The eight planets of the solar system are divided into four inferior and
four superior.
The inferior planets are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars. The
superior are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
The diameters of the smaller planets are as follow: Mercury, 3,008
miles; Mars, 5,000 miles; Venus, 7,480 miles; the Earth, 7,926 miles.
The diameters of the large planets are: Jupiter, 88,439 miles; Saturn,
75,036 miles; Neptune, 37,205 miles; Uranus, 30,875 miles.
The volume of Jupiter is 1,389 times, of Saturn 848 times, of Neptune
103 times, and of Uranus 59 times the volume of the Earth.
The mean distances from the Sun are: Mercury, 36 million miles; Venus,
67 million miles; the Earth, 93 million miles; Mars, 141 million miles;
Jupiter, 483 million miles; Saturn, 886 million miles; Uranus, 1,782
million miles; Neptune, 2,792 million miles.
To give an idea of the meaning of these distances, I may say that a
train travelling night and day at 60 miles an hour would take quite 176
years to come from the Sun to the Earth.
The same train, at the same speed, would be 5,280 years in travelling
from the Sun to Neptune.
Reckoning that Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system, that
system would have a diameter of 5,584 millions of miles.
If we made a chart of the solar system on a scale of 1 inch to a million
miles, we should need a sheet of paper 465 feet 4 inches wide. On this
sheet the Sun would have a diameter of less than 1 inch, and the Earth
would be about the size of a pin-prick.
If an express train, going at 60 miles an hour, had to travel round the
Earth's orbit, it would be more than 1,000 years on the journey. If the
Earth moved no faster, our winter would last more than 250 years. But
in the solar system the speeds are as wonderful as the sizes. The Earth
turns upon its axis at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour, and travels in
its orbit round the Sun at the rate of more than 1,000 miles a minute,
or 66,000 miles an hour.
So much for the size of the solar system. It consists of a Sun and eight
planets, and the outer planet's orbit is one of 5,584 millions of miles
in diameter, which it would take an express train, at 60 miles an hour,
10,560 years to cross.
But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distances
of the other stars from our Sun.
The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than
20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses the
diameter of the solar system in 10,560 years, would take, if it went 60
miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach the nearest
fixed star from the Sun.
And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on a
scale of 1 inch to the million miles, we should find that whereas
a sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet of the solar
system, a sheet to take in the nearest fixed star would have to be about
620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to Inverness, the
Sun would be represented by a dot three-quarters of an inch in diameter,
and the Earth by a pin-prick.
But these immense distances only relate to the _nearest_ stars. Now, the
nearest stars are about four "light years" distant from us. That is to
say, that light, travelling at a rate of about 182,000 miles in _one
second_, takes four years to come from the nearest fixed star to the
Earth.
But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in Orion
given as _a thousand light years_, or 250 times the distance of the
fixed star above alluded to.
To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would have to
travel for 35 millions of years multiplied by 250--that is to say, for
8,750 million years.
And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greater
than the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion.
How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve estimates
the number of those visible to the great telescopes at 20 millions.
Twenty millions of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir Robert
Ball says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-known
astronomer, writing in the _English Mechanic_ about a week ago, remarks
that Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuze) has probably 700 times the light of our
Sun.
Looking through my telescope, which is only 3-inch aperture, I have seen
star clusters of wonderful beauty in the Pleiades and in Cancer. There
is, in the latter constellation, a dim star which, when viewed through
my glass, becomes a constellation larger, more brilliant, and more
beautiful than Orion or the Great Bear. I have looked at these jewelled
sun-clusters many a time, and wondered over them. But I have never
once thought of believing that they were specially created to be lesser
lights to the Earth.
And now let me quote from that grand book of Richard A. Proctor's, _The
Expanse of Heaven_, a fine passage descriptive of some of the wonders of
the "Milky Way":
There are stars in all orders of brightness, from those which
(seen with the telescope) resemble in lustre the leading glories
of the firmament, down to tiny points of light only caught by
momentary twinklings. Every variety of arrangement is seen.
Here the stars are scattered as over the skies at night; there
they cluster in groups, as though drawn together by some irresistible
power; in one region they seem to form sprays of stars like
diamonds sprinkled over fern leaves; elsewhere they lie in
streams and rows, in coronets and loops and festoons, resembling
the star festoon which, in the constellation Perseus, garlands
the black robe of night. Nor are varieties of colour wanting
to render the display more wonderful and more beautiful. Many
of the stars which crowd upon the view are red, orange, and yellow
Among them are groups of two and three and four (multiple stars
as they are called), amongst which blue and green and lilac and
purple stars appear, forming the most charming contrast to the
ruddy and yellow orbs near which they are commonly seen.
Millions and millions--countless millions of suns. Innumerable galaxies
and systems of suns, separated by black gulfs of space so wide that no
man can realise the meaning of the figures which denote their stretch.
Suns of fire and light, whirling through vast oceans of space like
swarms of golden bees. And round them planets whirling at thousands of
miles a minute.
And on Earth there are forms of life so minute that millions of them
exist in a drop of water. There are microscopic creatures more beautiful
and more highly finished than any gem, and more complex and effective
than the costliest machine of human contrivance. In _The Story of
Creation_ Mr. Ed. Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stone
contains 41 thousand million vegetable skeletons of diatoms.
I cut the following from a London morning paper:
It was discovered some few years ago that a peculiar bacillus
was present in all persons suffering from typhoid, and in all
foods and drinks which spread the disease. Experiments were
carried out, and it was assumed, not without good reason, that
the bacillus was the primary cause of the malady, and it was
accordingly labelled the typhoid bacillus.
But the bacteriologists further discovered that the typhoid
bacillus was present in water which was not infectious, and in
persons who were not ill, or had never been ill, with typhoid.
So now a theory is propounded that a healthy typhoid bacillus
does not cause typhoid, but that it is only when the bacillus
is itself sick of a fever, or, in other words, is itself the
prey of some infinitely minuter organisms, which feed on it
alone, that it works harm to mortal men.
The bacillus is so small that one requires a powerful microscope to see
him, and his blood may be infested with bacilli as small to him as he is
to us.
And there are millions, and more likely billions, of suns!
Talk about Aladdin's palace, Sinbad's valley of diamonds, Macbeth's
witches, or the Irish fairies! How petty are their exploits, how tawdry
are their splendours, how paltry are their riches, when we compare them
to the romance of science.
When did a poet conceive an idea so vast and so astounding as the
theory of evolution? What are a few paltry, lumps of crystallised carbon
compared to a galaxy of a million million suns? Did any Eastern inventor
of marvels ever suggest such a human feat as that accomplished by
the men who have, during the last handful of centuries, spelt out the
mystery of the universe? These scientists have worked miracles before
which those of the ancient priests and magicians are mere tricks of
hanky-panky.
Look at the romance of geology; at the romance of astronomy; at
the romance of chemistry; at the romance of the telescope, and the
microscope, and the prism. More wonderful than all, consider the story
of how flying atoms in space became suns, how suns made planets, how
planets changed from spheres of flame and raging fiery storm to worlds
of land and water. How in the water specks of jelly became fishes,
fishes reptiles, reptiles mammals, mammals monkeys; monkeys men;
until, from the fanged and taloned cannibal, roosting in a forest, have
developed art and music, religion and science; and the children of the
jellyfish can weigh the suns, measure the stellar spaces, ride on
the ocean or in the air, and speak to each other from continent to
continent.
Talk about fairy tales! what is this? You may look through a telescope,
and see the nebula that is to make a sun floating, like a luminous mist,
three hundred million miles away. You may look again, and see another
sun in process of formation. You may look again, and see others almost
completed. You may look again and again, and see millions of suns and
systems spread out across the heavens like rivers of living gems.
You will say that all this speaks of a Creator. I shall not contradict
you. But what kind of Creator must He be who has created such a universe
as this?
Do you think He is the kind of Creator to make blunders and commit
crimes? Can you, after once thinking of the Milky Way, with its rivers
of suns, and the drop of water teeming with spangled dragons, and the
awful abysses of dark space, through which comets shoot at a speed
a thousand times as fast as an express train--can you, after seeing
Saturn's rings, and Jupiter's moons, and the clustered gems of Hercules,
consent for a moment to the allegation that the creator of all this
power and glory got angry with men, and threatened them with scabs
and sores, and plagues of lice and frogs? Can you suppose that such a
creator would, after thousands of years of effort, have failed even now
to make His repeated revelations comprehensible? Do you believe that
He would be driven across the unimaginable gulfs of space, but of the
transcendent glory of His myriad resplendent suns, to die on a cross,
in order to win back to Him the love of the puny creatures on one puny
planet in the marvellous universe His power had made?
Do you believe that the God who imagined and created such a universe
could be petty, base, cruel, revengeful, and capable of error? I do not
believe it.
And now let us examine the character and conduct of this God as depicted
for us in the Bible--the book which is alleged to have been directly
revealed by God Himself.
JEHOVAH THE ADOPTED HEAVENLY FATHER OF CHRISTIANITY
In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was to
suggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur must
be a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity.
Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe--not the
universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the
universe revealed by science; the universe of twenty millions of suns.
And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God
omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this
great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to
us in the Bible.
Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for ourselves whether the
God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God than the
universe therein revealed is like the universe since discovered by man
without the aid of divine inspiration.
As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show
from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful,
nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the
contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive,
barbarous, and cruel.
Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact,
He was a tribal god, an idol, made by man; and, as the idol of a savage
and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster.
First then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I
shall begin by quoting from _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ by the Rev.
T. Rhondda Williams:
The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary,
though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very
much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost
as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii. 4,
and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of
chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here
Jahweh _moulds_ dust into human form, and _breathes_ into it;
_plants_ a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the
man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman,
and so skilfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under
the operation. Jahweh _walks_ in the garden like a man in the
cool of the day. He even _makes coats_ for Adam and Eve.
Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh _repents_
that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only
one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new
altar, Jahweh _smells_ a sweet savour, just as a hungry man
smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel,
Jahweh _comes down_ to see it--he cannot see it from where he
is. In Genesis xviii. the Jahwist tells a story of three men
coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash
their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them,
and "they did eat"; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice
time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one
of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story
of Jacob _wrestling_ with some mysterious person, who, by inference,
is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv. 24, that
when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request,
Jahweh met him at a lodging-place, and sought to kill him. In
Exodus xiv. 15 it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots
of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements
were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they
were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist
would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The
story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this
same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says: "I will go
down now, and see whether they have done altogether according
to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know"
(Gen. xviii. 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had
never occurred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and
see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation
in the fact that he can move about without difficulty--he can
come down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though
Jahweh cannot _be_ everywhere, he can go to almost any place.
All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas,
can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he
can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man,
he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God represents
the childhood stage of the national life.
Later, Mr. Williams writes:
All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many gods;
other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves believed,
for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites
as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giving territory
to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory
(Judges xi. 24).
Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of
Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he
is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is
favourable. And we have seen that there was a time when the
Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh
for himself. You find the same thing everywhere. The old
Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur.
Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought
fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of
Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organised
a Jahweh party. David worshipped Jahweh only, though he
regards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance
into that of other gods (1 Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not
exclusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship
for other deities as well.
In the chapter on "Different Conceptions of Providence in the Bible,"
Mr. Williams says:
I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31.
The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy,
by deceit, and killing him--an act followed by a great slaughter
of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play
the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the
eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women," in the
so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only
concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any
cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence
is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals,
except as the individual serves or opposes Israel.
In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of
God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change. In
fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early Bible
conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.
With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation
this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are
ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because
mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honourable to
tolerate Jehovah.
And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its
followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or
excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It
is astounding.
But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered
sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, _The Evolution
of the Idea of God_, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen
clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of
Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or
ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:
But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for
the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch--which seem
likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through
their strenuous Jehovistic editing--he was carried from Shiloh
in his ark to the front during the great battle with the
Philistines at Ebenezer; and the Philistines were afraid, for
they said, "A god is come into the camp." But when the Philistines
captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in
pieces--so Hebrew legend declared--before the face of Jahweh.
After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for
a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem
from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from
thence the ark of the god; and as it went, on a new cart, they
"played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments," and David
himself "danced before Jahweh."... The children of Israel in
early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose
presence in their midst was intimately connected with a certain
ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest
was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case
of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the
ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh
their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt."...
I do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious
inference that Jahweh the god of the Hebrews, who later became
sublimated and etherealised into the God of Christianity, was,
in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred
stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps,
in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of
some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain.
It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book _Creed and
Life_, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his
box on to the Christian religion as the All-Father, and Creator of the
Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent
to save the tribe who worshipped him.
But let us look further into the accounts of this original God of
the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our
examples under separate heads; thus:
Jehovah's Anger
Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh made
a man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on his
hands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands of
years. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a natural
thing for a God of Love to do.
Jahweh who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry about
man's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the people
on the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drown
nearly all the innocent animals as well.
When the children of Israel, who had eaten nothing but manna for forty
years, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again,
and sent amongst them "fiery serpents," so that "much people of Israel
died." But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews wept
for meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows:
... The Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall
not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days
nor twenty days: but even a whole month, until it come out of
your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you; because that ye
have despised the Lord, which is among you, and have wept
before Him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?
Then Jahweh sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, and
the anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote them
with "a very great plague."
One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we are
told that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of the
Philistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This made
Jahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fifty
thousand of them.
The Injustice of Jehovah
I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam
for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a
selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel
we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation
because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the
hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by
their father.
In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some
gold, was ordered to be burnt; and how Joshua and the Israelites took
"Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses,
and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to
death, and "burnt them with fire."
In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a
census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in blind wrath and injustice,
for he sent a pestilence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for
David's fault. _But David he allowed to live._ In Samuel we learn how
Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years
before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites,
"man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And
Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord
deprived him of the crown and made David king in his stead.
The Immorality Of Jehovah
In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel,
killed by putting lies into the mouths of the prophets:
And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that
he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake, saying
after this manner, and another saying after that manner.
Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and
said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?
And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth
of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him,
and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so.
In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to conduct in war:
When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the
Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou
hast taken them captive.
And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a
desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife;
Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall
shave her head, and pare her nails;
And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her,
and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her
mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her,
and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.
And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall
let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all
for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou
hast humbled her.
The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the
Midianites, "slew all the males." But Moses was wrath, because they had
spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and
to take the single women "for themselves." The Lord allowed this
brutal act--which included the murder of all the male children--to be
consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are
told that "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two."
The Cruelty Of Jehovah
I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and
barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for.
In Deuteronomy, the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to
resist the Jews, and then "utterly destroyed the men, women, and little
ones of every city."
In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform
he will "walk contrary to them in fury, _and they shall eat the flesh of
their own sons and daughters_."
In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was utterly destroyed, men,
women, and children being slain.
In the same book occur the following passages:
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither
thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before
thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites,
and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and
the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee;
thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt
make no covenant with them, or show mercy unto them.
That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. there are further instructions
of a like horrible kind:
Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off
from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.
But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth
give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing
that breatheth:
But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and
the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites,
and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, and
his faculty for cursing:
The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he
have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to
possess it.
The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a
fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning,
and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and
they shall pursue thee until thou perish.
And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the
earth that is under thee shall be iron.
The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust:
from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be
destroyed.
The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies:
thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways
before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of
the earth.
And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and
unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.
The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with
the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou
canst not be healed.
The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and
astonishment of heart:...
And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high
and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout
all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates
throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of
thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath
given thee, in the siege, and in the straightness wherewith
thine enemies shall distress thee:
So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate,
his eyes shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife
of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he
shall leave....
For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the
lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase,
and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows
upon them.
They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning
heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth
of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of
grey hairs.
I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish God
Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof,
for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible
with atrocities.
Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love?
Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage
tribe?
Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of
his gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know the
shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed
man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake
of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We
tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other, hate
each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of
our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing planet
through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like golden
bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night," what
are the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on the
ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman,
and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us, touch
us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us.
Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the
lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box?
Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but
his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is
the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the
resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?
Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God
who inspired Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and
Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in
rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and
polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities,
and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter--we
may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable
personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a
murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal
so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our
cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and nauseates.
We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, this
red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews.
And yet: in the inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creature
is still enshrined as "God the Father Almighty." It is marvellous. It
is beyond the comprehension of any man not blinded by superstition, not
warped by prejudice and old-time convention. _This_ the God of Heaven?
_This_ the Father of Christ? This the Creator of the Milky Way? No.
He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is not
clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare: a bad dream born in savage
minds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for blood.
But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father, if
He is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and its
claims to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE
Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The heroes of the
Bible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is because
the Bible is a compilation from the literature of savage and immoral
tribes.
Had the Bible been the word of God we should have found in it a
lofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it open
approval--divine approval--of such unspeakable savages as Moses, David,
Solomon, Jacob, and Lot.
Let us consider the lives of a few of the Bible heroes. We will begin
with Moses.
We used to be taught in school that Moses was the meekest man the world
has known: and we used to marvel.
It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus:
And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that
he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens:
and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.
And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that
there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
And when he went out the second day, behold two men of the
Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the
wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who
made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill
me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said,
Surely this thing is known.
The meekest of men slays an Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. It
may be pleaded that the Egyptian was doing wrong; but the remarks of the
Hebrew suggest that even the countrymen of Moses looked upon his act of
violence with disfavour.
But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws attributed
to him, in which the death penalty is almost as common as it was in
England in the Middle Ages.
Also, in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we have the following
story. The Lord commands Moses to "avenge the children of Israel of the
Midianites," after which Moses is to die. Moses sends out an army:
And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded
Moses; and they slew all the males.
And they slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of them
that were slain; namely Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur,
and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor
they slew with the sword.
And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian
captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all
their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.
And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all
their goodly castles, with fire.
And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men
and of beasts....
And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the
captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which
came from the battle.
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
Behold, these called the children of Israel, through the counsel
of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of
Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill
every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children that have not known a man by lying
with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest man. But suppose any
pagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a Christian city as Moses
behaved to the people of Midian, what should we say of him? But God was
_pleased_ with him.
Further, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses the
Meek treated Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebelling against himself and
Aaron; how the earth opened and swallowed these men and their families
and friends, at a hint from Moses; and how the Lord slew with fire from
heaven two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense, and how
afterwards there came a pestilence by which some fourteen thousand
persons died.
Moses was a politician; his brother was a priest. I shall express no
opinion of the pair; but I quote from the Book of Exodus, as follows:
And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out
of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto
Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go
before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up
out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings,
which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of
your daughters, and bring them unto me.
And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were
in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a
graving tool after he had made it a molten calf: and they said,
These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the
land of Egypt.
And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron
made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord.
And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings,
and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and
to drink, and rose up to play.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people
which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted
themselves.
Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done this thing, tells a lie:
And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that
thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot; thou
knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us:
for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break
it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into the fire,
and there came out this calf.
And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had
made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on
the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of
Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put
every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate
to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother,
and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses;
and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
So much for this meek father of the Jews.
And now let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of the
Bible kings, and the ancestors of Jesus Christ.
Judging King David by the Bible record, I should conclude that he was a
cruel, treacherous, and licentious savage. He lived for some time as
a bandit, robbing the subjects of the King of Gath, who had given him
shelter. When asked about this by the king, David lied. As to the nature
of his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt by the story of
Nabal. David demanded blackmail of Nabal, and, on its being refused, set
out with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every male on his
estate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who came out
to meet David with fine presents and fine words. _Ten days later Nabal
died, and David married his widow._ See twenty-fifth chapter First Book
of Samuel.
David had seven wives, and many children. One of his favourite wives was
Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah.
While Uriah was at "the front," fighting for David, that king seduced
his wife, Bathsheba. To avoid discovery, David recalled Uriah from the
war, and bade him go home to his wife. Uriah said it would dishonour
him to seek ease and pleasure at home while other soldiers were enduring
hardship at the front. The king then made the soldier drunk, but even so
could not prevail.
Therefore David sent word to the general to place Uriah in the front of
the battle, where the fight was hardest. And Uriah was killed, and David
married Bathsheba, who became the mother of Solomon.
So much for David's honour. Now for a sample of his humanity. I quote
from the twelfth chapter of the Second Book of Samuel:
And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought
against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters.
Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and
encamp against the city, and take it: lest I take the city,
and it be called after my name.
And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah,
and fought against it, and took it.
And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight
whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it
was set on David's head. And he brought forth the spoil of the
city in great abundance.
And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them
under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron,
and made them pass through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto
all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the
people returned unto Jerusalem.
But nothing in David's life became him so little as his leaving of it. I
quote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings. David, on his
deathbed, is speaking to Solomon, his son:
Moreover thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me,
and what he did to the two captains of the host of Israel, unto
Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he
slew, and shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war
upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that
were on his feet.
Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head
go down to the grave in peace.
But show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and
let them be of those that eat at thy table; for so they came to
me when I fled because of Absalom thy brother.
And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a
Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in
the day when I went to Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me
at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not
put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not
guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest
to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave
with blood.
These seem to have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab was
his best general, and had many times saved David's throne.
Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother, the true heir.
Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and exiles a
priest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father. Later
he murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei to
the grave with blood.
After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a temple, and marries many
wives.
Much glamour has been cast upon the names of Solomon and David by their
alleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, if
any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the
Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may be his.
It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and Solomon should
be glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry VIII. and
Richard III. as monsters.
My pet aversion amongst the Bible heroes is Jacob; but Abraham and Lot
were pitiful creatures.
Jacob cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied about
God, and lied to his father to accomplish his end. He robbed his
brother of his birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from his
brother's wrath, and went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncle
out of his cattle and his wealth, and at last came away with his two
cousins as his wives, one of whom had stolen her own father's gods.
Abraham was the father of Ishmael by the servant-maid Hagar. At his
wife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to be driven into the desert
to die. And here is another pretty story of Abraham. He and his family
are driven forth by a famine:
And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt,
that he said unto Sarai, his wife, Behold now, I know that thou
art a fair woman to look upon:
Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see
thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill
me, but they will save thee alive.
Say, I pray thee, thou are my sister; that it may be well with
me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt the
Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before
Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep,
and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and
she-asses, and camels.
And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues
because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast
done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her
to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go
thy way.
And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him
away, and his wife, and all that he had.
But Abraham was so little ashamed of himself that he did the same thing
again, many years afterwards, and Abimelech King of Gerar, behaved to
him as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the former occasion.
The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what are we to think
of his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his subsequent conduct?
And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursed the whole of his sons'
descendants for ever, because Ham had seen him in his shame?
Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable character,
and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of their
liberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned. Jacob
robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger; Joseph
robbed a whole people in the same way.
Samson was a dissolute ruffian and murderer, who in these days would be
hanged as a brigand.
Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of treachery and
massacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and hypocrisy.
Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he captured a city
he murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls. Here is one
example from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua:
And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and
fought against it:
And he took it, and the king thereof; and all the cities
thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword,
and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he
left none remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did
to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to
Libnah, and to her king.
So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south,
and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he
left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed,
as the Lord God of Israel commanded.
And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and
all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon.
Elijah the prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he had
mocked the god Baal, and had triumphed over him by miracle, he said to
the Israelites:
"Take the prophets of Baal. _Let not one of them escape._"
And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook
Kishon, and slew them there.
Now, there were 450 of the priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah the
prophet had killed in cold blood.
And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the Jews. I
quote from the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings.
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up
by the way, there came forth little children out of the city,
and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up,
thou bald head.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the
name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
After this, Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste and
slaughter the Moabites, who had refused to pay tribute. You may read the
horrible story for yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Book
of Kings. There was the usual massacre, but this time the trees were cut
down and the wells choked up.
Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But his
servant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and some
garments under false pretences. When Elisha hears of this crime, he
strikes the servant with leprosy, _and all his seed for ever_.
Now, it is not necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men of
God: what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages
have been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models.
Even to-day the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his proper
name in an average Christian household would be regarded as a wicked
blasphemer.
And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of an "Infidel" who
committed half the crimes and outrages of any one of those Bible heroes?
Do you know what the Christians call Tom Paine? To this day the
respectable Christian Church or chapel goer shudders at the name of the
"infidel," Tom Paine. But in point of honour, of virtue, of humanity,
and general good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have mentioned
was worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes.
Now, it states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau
was a _man_, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act.
But God _hated_ Esau.
And it states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire to
heaven.
And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man after God's
own heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talking
with Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson, and
David.
My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that, in a book
alleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes.
I have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous
kings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with
disrespect to the memory of Nero.
I have been accused of having an animus against Moses, and David, and
all the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I presume to
censure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these favourites
of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Bible
cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any of
these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with
a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the
Giant that Jack slew.
But I should be astonished to hear that Bluebeard had been promoted to
the position of a holy patriarch, and a model of all the virtues for the
emulation of innocent children in a modern Sunday school. And I think it
is time the Church considered itself, and told the truth about Jehovah,
and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson.
If you fail to agree with me I can only accept your decision with
respectful astonishment.
THE BOOK OF BOOKS
Floods of sincere, but unmerited, adulation have been lavished on the
Hebrew Bible. The world has many books of higher moral and literary
value. It would be easy to compile, from the words of Heretics and
Infidels, a purer and more elevated moral guide than this "Book of
Books."
The ethical code of the Old Testament is no longer suitable as the rule
of life. The moral and intellectual advance of the human race has left
it behind.
The historical books of the Old Testament are largely pernicious, and
often obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy,
slavery, concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, wars
of plunder, wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, massacre of
women and of children, cruelty to animals; and such immoral, dishonest,
shameful, or dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, Abraham, Jacob,
and Lot.
The ethical code of the Old Testament does not teach the sacredness
of truth, does not teach religious tolerance, nor humanity, nor human
brotherhood, nor peace.
Its morality is crude. Much that is noblest in modern thought has no
place in the "Book of Books." For example, take these words of Herbert
Spencer's:
Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way
that pain shall not be inflicted.
There is nothing so comprehensive, nothing so deep as that in the Bible.
That covers all the moralities of the Ten Commandments, and all the
Ethics of the Law and the Prophets, in one short sentence, and leaves a
handsome surplus over.
Note next this, from Kant:
What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They
are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.
I do not know a Bible sentence so purely moral as that. And in what part
of the Bible shall we find a parallel to the following sentence, from an
Agnostic newspaper:
Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action are
helps to the children of men in their search for wisdom.
Tom Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote:
The world is my country: to do good my religion.
Robert Ingersoll, another "Infidel," surpassed Solomon when he said:
The object of life is to be happy, the place to be happy is
here, the time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is by
making others happy.
Which simple sentence contains more wisdom than all the pessimism of
the King of kings. And again, Ingersoll went beyond the sociological
conception of the Prophets when he wrote:
And let us do away for ever with the idea that the care of the
sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity: it
is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It
is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets,
no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers. It
is all for the purpose of protecting society, and civilising
ourselves.
I will now put together a few sayings of Pagans and Unbelievers as an
example of non-biblical morality:
Truth is the pole-star of morality, by it alone can we steer.
Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent
man not speaking the truth? Abhor dissimulation. To know the
truth and fear to speak it: that is cowardice. One thing here
is worth a good deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice,
with a benevolent disposition, even to liars and unjust men.
He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, for he makes
himself bad. The practice of religion involves as a first
principle a loving compassionate heart for all creatures.
Religion means self-sacrifice. A loving heart is the great
requirement: not to oppress, not to destroy, not to exalt
oneself by treading down others; but to comfort and befriend
those in suffering. Like as a mother at the risk of her life
watches over her only child, so also let every one cultivate
towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind.
Man's great business is to improve his mind. What is it to
you whether another is guilty or guiltless? Come, friend,
atone for your own guilt.
Virtue consists in contempt for death. Why should we cling
to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only
thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures.
Treat others as you wish them to treat you. Do not return
evil for evil. Our deeds, whether good or evil, follow us
like shadows.
Never will man attain full moral stature until woman is free.
Cherish and reverence little children. Let the slave cease,
and the master of slaves cease.
To conquer your enemy by force increases his resentment.
Conquer him by love and you will have no after-grief.
Victory breeds hatred.
I look for no recompense--not even to be born in heaven--
but seek the benefit of men, to bring back those who have
gone astray, to enlighten those living in dismal error, to
put away all sources of sorrow and pain in the world.
I cannot have pleasure while another grieves and I have
power to help him.
Those who regard the Bible as the "Book of Books," and believe it to be
invaluable and indispensable to the world, must have allowed their early
associations or religious sentiment to mislead them.
Carlyle is more moral than Jeremiah, Ruskin is superior to Isaiah;
Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man than
Moses; Plato and Marcus Aurelius are wiser than Solomon; Sir Thomas
More, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worth
more to us than all the Prophets.
I hold a high opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the Old
Testament; but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteen
books would be a distinct gain to the world. For the rest, there is
considerable literary and some ethical value in Job (which is not
Jewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of Solomon (which
is an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to Henry
George's _Progress and Poverty_, or William Morris' _News from Nowhere_.
Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only tell
us what they knew.
The Ten Commandments have been effusively praised. There is nothing
in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, the
jerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine,
the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, the
religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, the
fox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and cattle.
There is nothing about "cultivating towards all beings a bounteous
friendly mind," nothing about liberty of speech and conscience, nothing
about the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing happiness;
nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favour of mercy and
forgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as defences
of the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner. As a
moral code the Commandments amount to very little.
Moreover, the Bible teaches erroneous theories of history, theology, and
science.
It relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts.
It presents a low idea of God.
It gives an erroneous account of the relations between God and man.
It fosters international hatred.
It fosters religious pride and fanaticism.
Its penal code is horrible.
Its texts have been used for nearly two thousand years in defence of
war, slavery, religious persecution, and the slaughter of "witches" and
of "sorcerers."
In a hundred wars the Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre and
outrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips.
In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women
to a painful death.
And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities of human
slavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy Bible.
Renan says:
In all ancient Christian literature there is not one word that
tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master to liberate
the slave, or even that touches the problem of public right
which arises out of slavery.
Mr. Remsburg, in his book, _The Bible_, shows that in America slavery
was defended by the churches on the authority of the sacred Scriptures.
He says:
The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers,
derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had
established a precedent by returning a fugitive slave to
his master.
Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the sermons and speeches of Christian
ministers to show the influence of the Bible in upholding slavery. Here
are some of his many examples:
The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: "There is not one verse in
the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is
not, then, we conclude, immoral."
Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia: "Slavery is
not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible,
but it was positively instituted by God Himself."
I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman
institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches
was to the Bible.
As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one century
a hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany. Mr.
Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence. He says:
One thousand were burned at Como in one year; eight hundred
were burned at Wurzburg in one year; five hundred perished
at Geneva in three months; eighty were burned in a single
village of Savoy; nine women were burned in a single fire
at Leith; sixty were hanged in Suffolk; three thousand were
legally executed during one session of Parliament, while
thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian
judge, executed eight hundred; six hundred were burned by
one bishop at Bamburg; Bogult burned six hundred at St. Cloud;
thousands were put to death by the Lutherans of Norway and
Sweden; Catholic Spain butchered thousands; Presbyterians
were responsible for the death of four thousand in Scotland;
fifty thousand were sentenced to death during the reign of
Francis I.; seven thousand died at Treves; the number killed
in Paris in a few months is declared to have been "almost
infinite." Dr. Sprenger places the total number of executions
for witchcraft in Europe at _nine millions_. For centuries
witch fires burned in nearly every town of Europe, and this
Bible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the
torch that kindled them.
Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the world,
add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for religion's
sake; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders; remember what
slavery has been; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of Books
deserves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it.
I believe that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, and
all the finer motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit of
reading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of God.
I do not think the Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to place
in the hands of children, and it certainly is not a fit book to send out
for the "salvation" of savage and ignorant people.
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER
The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, in _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ shows
very clearly the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jews
from a lower to a higher conception.
Having dealt with the lower conception, let us now consider the higher.
The highest conception of God is supposed to be the Christian conception
of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being
with supernal tenderness and mercy--"God is Love." That is a very
lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal
objection--it is not true.
For this Heavenly Father, whose nature is Love, is also the All-knowing
and All-powerful Creator of the world.
Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always power,
to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would not
choose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a place.
But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the world.
Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world? Being
All-Powerful and All-knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being good,
He would hate evil. Being a God of Love He would wish to exclude evil.
Why, then, did He permit evil to enter?
The world is full of sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strife
and war. All life is a perpetual deadly struggle for existence. The law
of nature is the law of prey.
If God is a tender, loving, All-knowing, and All-powerful Heavenly
Father, why did He build a world on cruel lines? Why does He permit evil
and pain to continue? Why does He not give the world peace, and health,
and happiness, and virtue?
In the New Testament Christ compares God, as Heavenly Father to Man, to
an earthly father, representing God as more benevolent and tender: "How
much more your Father which is in heaven?"
We may, then, on the authority of the Founder of Christianity, compare
the Christian Heavenly Father with the human father. And in doing so
we shall find that Christ was not justified in claiming that God is a
better father to Man than Man is to his own children. We shall find that
the poetical and pleasing theory of a Heavenly Father, and God of Love
is a delusion.
"Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give him a stone?" None
amongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and Russia, God allows
millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread.
He leaves them to die. Is it not so?
God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills, blue
seas; music, laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds,
the "sweet-briar wind"; the nightingale and the rose.
But God made the earthquake, the volcano, the cyclone; the shark,
the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry; and the deadly
loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the
black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has
permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and
human sacrifice. He has for millions of years looked down upon the
ignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once the
author and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn and
far-stretched tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so?
For thousands of years--perhaps for millions of years--the generations
of men prayed to God for help, for comfort, for guidance. God was deaf,
and dumb, and blind.
Men of science strove to read the riddle of life; to guide and to
succour their fellow creatures. The priests and followers of God
persecuted and slew these men of science. God made no sign. Is it not
so?
To-day men of science are trying to conquer the horrors of cancer and
smallpox, and rabies and consumption. But not from Burning Bush nor Holy
Hill, nor by the mouth of priest or prophet does our Heavenly Father
utter a word of counsel or encouragement.
Millions of innocent dumb animals have been subjected to the horrible
tortures of vivisection in the frantic endeavours of men to find a
way of escape from the fell destroyers of the human race; and God has
allowed the piteous brutes to suffer anguish, when He could have saved
them by revealing to Man the secret for which he so cruelly sought. Is
it not so?
"Nature is red in beak and claw." On land and in sea the animal creation
chase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on
the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying-fish,
like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of
the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the
ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the
caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's
blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar
alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush
creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back
broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant
pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully
of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human
beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into
eruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants
are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love,
has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so?
Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dreadful blight
upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither
guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man
_tries_ to save.
Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, our
Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and
die.
God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a false
charge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knew
that the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His
"revelation" to man. He could have saved the women; He could have
enlightened their persecutors; He could have blown away the terror, the
cruelty, and the ignorance of His priests and worshippers with a breath.
And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be tortured
and murdered in His name. Is it not so?
Will you, then, compare the Heavenly Father with a father among men? Is
there any earthly father who would allow his children to suffer as God
allows Man to suffer? If a man had knowledge and power to prevent or
to abolish war and ignorance and hunger and disease; if a man had the
knowledge and the power to abolish human error and human suffering and
human wrong and did not do it, we should call him an inhuman monster, a
cruel fiend. Is it not so?
But God has knowledge and power, and we are asked to regard Him as a
Heavenly Father, and a God of infinite wisdom, and infinite mercy, and
infinite love.
The Christians used to tell us, and some still tell us, that this
Heavenly Father of infinite love and mercy would doom the creatures He
had made to Hell--for their _sins_. That, having created us imperfect,
He would punish our imperfections with everlasting torture in a lake
of everlasting fire. They used to tell us that this good God allowed a
Devil to come on earth and tempt man to his ruin. They used to say this
Devil would win more souls than Christ could win: that there should be
"more goats than sheep."
To escape from these horrible theories, the Christians (some of them)
have thrown over the doctrines of Hell and the Devil.
But without a Devil how can we maintain a belief in a God of love and
kindness? With a good God, and a bad God (or Devil), one might get
along; for then the good might be ascribed to God, and the evil to the
Devil. And that is what the old Persians did in their doctrine of Ormuzd
and Ahrimann. But with no Devil the belief in a merciful and loving
Heavenly Father becomes impossible.
If God blesses, who curses? If God saves, who damns? If God helps, who
harms?
This belief in a "Heavenly Father," like the belief in the perfection of
the Bible, drives its votaries into weird and wonderful positions. For
example, a Christian wrote to me about an animal called the aye-aye. He
said:
There is a little animal called an aye-aye. This animal has
two hands. Each hand has five fingers. The peculiar thing
about these hands is that the middle finger is elongated a great
deal--it is about twice as long as the others. This is to enable
it to scoop a special sort of insect out of special cracks in
the special trees it frequents. Now, how did the finger begin
to elongate? A little lengthening would be absolutely no good,
as the cracks in the trees are 2 inches or 3 inches deep. It
must have varied from the ordinary length to one twice as long
at once. There is no other way. Where does natural selection
come in? In this, as in scores of other instances, it shows
the infinite goodness of God.
Now, how does the creation of this long finger show the "infinite
goodness of God"? The infinite goodness of God to whom? To the animal
whose special finger enables him to catch the insect? Then what about
the insect? Where does he come in? Does not the long finger of the
animal show the infinite badness of God to the insect?
What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the cholera microbe to
feed on man? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the grub
of the ichneumon-fly to eat up the cabbage caterpillar alive?
I see no infinite goodness here, but only the infinite foolishness of
sentimental superstition.
If a man fell into the sea, and saw a shark coming, I cannot fancy him
praising the infinite goodness of God in giving the shark so large a
mouth. The greyhound's speed is a great boon to the greyhound; but it is
no boon to the hare.
But this theory of a merciful, and loving Heavenly Father is vital to
the Christian religion.
Destroy the idea of the Heavenly Father, who is Love, and Christianity
is a heap of ruins. For there is no longer a benevolent God to build our
hopes upon; and Jesus Christ, whose glory is a newer revelation of God,
has not revealed Him truly, as He is, but only as Man fain would believe
Him to be.
And I claim that this Heavenly Father is a myth: that in face of a
knowledge of life and the world we cannot reasonably believe in Him.
There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His children. He
is the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream.
PRAYER AND PRAISE
As to prayer and praise.
Christians believe that God is just, that He is all-wise and
all-knowing.
If God is just, will He not do justice without being entreated of men?
If God is all wise, and knows all that happens, will He not know what is
for man's good better than man can tell Him?
If He knows better than Man knows what is best for man, and if He is a
just God and a loving Father, will He not do right without any advice or
reminder from Man?
If He is a just God, will He give us less than justice unless we pray to
Him; or will He give us more than justice because we importune Him?
To ask God for His love, or for His grace, or for any worldly benefit
seems to me unreasonable.
If God knows we need His grace, or if He knows we need some help or
benefit, He will give it to us if we deserve it. If we do not deserve
it, or do not need what we ask for, it would not be just nor wise of Him
to grant our prayer.
To pray to God is to insult Him. What would a man think if his children
knelt and begged for his love or for their daily bread? He would think
his children showed a very low conception of their father's sense of
duty and affection.
Then Christians think God answers prayer. How can they think that?
In the many massacres, and famines, and pestilences has God answered
prayer? As we learn more and more of the laws of Nature we put less and
less reliance on the effect of prayer.
When fever broke out, men used to run to the priest: now they run to
the doctor. In old times when plague struck a city, the priests marched
through the streets bearing the Host, and the people knelt to pray;
now the authorities serve out soap and medicine and look sharply to the
drains.
And yet there still remains a superstitious belief in prayer, and most
surprising are some of its manifestations.
For instance, I went recently to see Wilson Barrett in _The Silver
King_. Wilfred Denver, a drunken gambler, follows a rival to kill him.
He does not kill him, but he thinks he has killed him. He flies from
justice.
Now this man Denver leaves London by a fast train for Liverpool. Between
London and Rugby he jumps out of the train, and, after limping many
miles, goes to an inn, orders dinner and a private room, and asks for
the evening paper.
While he waits for the paper he kneels down and prays to God, for the
sake of wife and children, to allow him to escape.
And, directly after, in comes a girl with a paper, and Denver reads
how the train he rode in caught fire, and how all the passengers in the
first three coaches were burnt to cinders.
Down goes Denver on his knees, _and thanks God for listening to his
prayer_.
And not a soul in the audience laughed. God, to allow a murderer to
escape from the law, has burnt to death a lot of innocent passengers,
and Wilfred Denver is piously grateful. And nobody laughed!
But Christians tell us they _know_ that prayer is efficacious. And to
them it may be so in some measure. Perhaps, if a man pray for strength
to resist temptation, or for guidance in time of perplexity, and if he
have _faith_, his prayer shall avail him something.
Why? Not because God will hear, or answer, but for two natural reasons.
First, the act of prayer is emotional, and so calms the man who prays,
for much of his excitement is worked off. It is so when a sick man
groans: it eases his pain. It is so when a woman weeps: it relieves her
overcharged heart.
Secondly, the act of prayer gives courage or confidence, in proportion
to the faith of him that prays. If a man has to cross a deep ravine by
a narrow plank, and if his heart fail him, and he prays for God's
help, believing that he will get it, he will walk his plank with more
confidence. If he prays for help against a temptation, he is really
appealing to his own better nature; he is rousing up his dormant faculty
of resistance and desire for righteousness, and so rises from his knees
in a sweeter and calmer frame of mind.
For myself, I never pray, and never feel the need of prayer. And though
I admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet I
am inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of a
decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be
always asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that
such a habit must tend to weaken character.
"He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." It
is better to work for the general good, to help our weak or friendless
fellow-creatures, than to pray for our own grace, or benefit, or pardon.
Work is nobler than prayer, and far more dignified.
And as to praise, I cannot imagine the Creator of the Universe wanting
men's praise. Does a wise man prize the praise of fools? Does a strong
man value the praise of the weak? Does any man of wisdom and power care
for the applause of his inferiors? We make God into a puny man, a man
full of vanity and "love of approbation," when we confer on Him the
impertinence of our prayers and our adoration.
While there is so much grief and misery and unmerited and avoidable
suffering in the world, it is pitiful to see the Christian millions
squander such a wealth of time and energy and money on praise and
prayer.
If you were a human father, would you rather your children praised you
and neglected each other, or that brother should stand by brother and
sister cherish sister? Then "how much more your Father which is in
Heaven?"
Twelve millions of our British people on the brink of starvation! In
Christian England hundreds of thousands of thieves, knaves, idlers,
drunkards, cowards, and harlots; and fortunes spent on churches and the
praise of God.
If the Bible had not habituated us to the idea of a barbarous God who
was always ravenous for praise and sacrifice, we could not tolerate the
mockery of "Divine Service" by well-fed and respectable Christians in
the midst of untaught ignorance, unchecked roguery, unbridled vice,
and the degradation and defilement and ruin of weak women and little
children. Seven thousand pounds to repair a chapel to the praise and
glory of God, and under its very walls you may buy a woman's soul for a
few pieces of silver.
I cannot imagine a God who would countenance such a religion. I cannot
understand why Christians are not ashamed of it. To me the national
affectation of piety and holiness resembles a white shirt put on over a
dirty skin.
THE NEW TESTAMENT THE RESURRECTION
VALUE OF THE EVIDENCE IN LAW
Christianity as a religion must, I am told, stand or fall with the
claims that Christ was divine, and that He rose from the dead and
ascended into Heaven. Archdeacon Wilson, in a sermon at Rochdale,
described the divinity and Resurrection of Christ as "the central
doctrines of Christianity." The question we have to consider here is the
question of whether these central doctrines are true.
Christians are fond of saying that the Resurrection is one of the best
attested facts in history. I hold that the evidence for the Resurrection
would not be listened to in a court of law, and is quite inadmissible in
a court of cool and impartial reason.
First of all, then, what is the fact which this evidence is supposed to
prove? The fact alleged is a most marvellous miracle, and one upon which
a religion professed by some hundreds of millions of human beings is
founded. The fact alleged is that nearly two thousand years ago God came
into the world as a man, that He was known as Jesus of Nazareth, that He
was crucified, died upon the cross, was laid in a tomb, and on the third
day came to life again, left His tomb, and subsequently ascended into
Heaven.
The fact alleged, then, is miraculous and important, and the evidence in
proof of such a fact should be overwhelmingly strong.
We should demand stronger evidence in support of a thing alleged to have
happened a thousand years ago than we should demand in support of a fact
alleged to have happened yesterday.
The Resurrection is alleged to have happened eighteen centuries ago.
We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact which
was outside human experience than we should demand in support of a fact
common to human experience.
The incarnation of a God in human form, the resurrection of a man or a
God from the dead, are facts outside human experience.
We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when
the establishment of that fact was of great importance to millions of
men and women, than we should demand when the truth or falsity of the
alleged fact mattered very little to anybody.
The alleged fact of the Resurrection is of immense importance to
hundreds of millions of people.
We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when
many persons were known to have strong political, sentimental, or
mercenary motives for proving the fact alleged, than we should demand
when no serious interest would be affected by a decision for or against
the fact alleged.
There are millions of men and women known to have strong
motives--sentimental, political, or mercenary--for proving the verity of
the Resurrection.
On all these counts we are justified in demanding the strongest of
evidence for the alleged fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead.
The more abnormal or unusual the occurrence, the weightier should be the
evidence of its truth.
If a man told a mixed company that Captain Webb swam the English
Channel, he would have a good chance of belief.
The incident happened but a few years ago; it was reported in all the
newspapers of the day. It is not in itself an impossible thing for a man
to do.
But if the same man told the same audience that five hundred years ago
an Irish sailor had swum from Holyhead to New York, his statement would
be received with less confidence.
Because five centuries is a long time, there is no credible record of
the feat, and we _cannot believe_ any man capable of swimming about four
thousand miles.
Let us look once more at the statement made by the believers in the
Resurrection.
We are asked to believe that the all-powerful eternal God, the God
who created twenty millions of suns, came down to earth, was born of a
woman, was crucified, was dead, was laid in a tomb for three days, and
then came to life again, and ascended into Heaven.
What is the nature of the evidence produced in support of this
tremendous miracle?
Is there any man or woman alive who has seen God? No. Is there any man
or woman alive who has seen Christ? No.
There is no human being alive who can say that God exists or that Christ
exists. The most they can say is that they _believe_ that God and Christ
exist.
No historian claims that any God has been seen on earth for nearly
nineteen centuries.
The Christians deny the assertions of all other religions as to divine
visits; and all the other religions deny their assertions about God and
Christ.
There is no reason why God should have come down to earth, to be born
of a woman, and die on the cross. He could have convinced and won over
mankind without any such act. He has _not_ convinced or won over mankind
by that act. Not one-third of mankind are professing Christians to-day,
and of those not one in ten is a true Christian and a true believer.
The Resurrection, therefore, seems to have been unreasonable,
unnecessary, and futile. It is also contrary to science and to human
experience.
What is the nature of the evidence?
The common idea of the man in the street is the idea that the Gospels
were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; that Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John were contemporaries of Christ; and that the Gospels were
written and circulated during the lives of the authors.
There is no evidence to support these beliefs. There is no evidence,
outside the New Testament, that any of the Apostles ever existed. We
know nothing about Paul, Peter, John, Mark, Luke, or Matthew, except
what is told in the New Testament.
Outside the Testament there is not a word of historical evidence of
the divinity of Christ, of the Virgin Birth, of the Resurrection or
Ascension.
Therefore it is obvious that, before we can be expected to believe the
tremendous story of the Resurrection, we must be shown overwhelming
evidence of the authenticity of the Scriptures.
Before you can prove your miracle you have to prove your book.
Suppose the case to come before a judge. Let us try to imagine what
would happen:
COUNSEL: M'lud, may it please your ludship. It is stated by Paul of
Tarsus that he and others worked miracles--
THE JUDGE: Do you intend to call Paul of Tarsus?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is dead.
JUDGE: Did he make a proper sworn deposition?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud. But some of his letters are extant, and I propose to
put them in.
JUDGE: Are these letters affidavits? Are they witnessed and attested?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud.
JUDGE: Are they signed?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud.
JUDGE: Are they in the handwriting of this Paul of Tarsus?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud. They are copies; the originals are lost.
JUDGE: Who was Paul of Tarsus?
COUNSEL: M'lud, he was the apostle to the Gentiles.
JUDGE: You intend to call some of these Gentiles?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud. There are none living.
JUDGE: But you don't mean to, say--how long has this shadowy witness,
Paul of Tarsus, been dead?
COUNSEL: Not two thousand years, m'lud.
JUDGE: Thousand years dead? Can you bring evidence to prove that he was
ever alive?
COUNSEL: Circumstantial, m'lud.
JUDGE: I cannot allow you to read the alleged statements of a
hypothetical witness who is acknowledged to have been dead for nearly
two thousand years. I cannot admit the alleged letters of Paul as
evidence.
COUNSEL: I shall show that the act of resurrection was witnessed by one
Mary Magdalene, by a Roman soldier--
JUDGE: What is the soldier's name?
COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud.
JUDGE: Call him.
COUNSEL: He is dead, m'lud.
JUDGE: Deposition?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud.
JUDGE: Strike out his evidence. Call Mary Magdalene.
COUNSEL: She is dead, m'lud. But I shall show that she told the
disciples--
JUDGE: What she told the disciples is not evidence.
COUNSEL: Well, m'lud, I shall give the statements of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. Matthew states very plainly that--
JUDGE: Of course, you intend to call Matthew?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud. He is--he is dead.
JUDGE: It seems to me, that to prove this resurrection you will have to
perform a great many more. Are Mark and John dead, also?
COUNSEL: Yes, m'lud.
JUDGE: Who were they?
COUNSEL: I--I don't know, m'lud.
JUDGE: These statements of theirs, to which you allude: are they in
their own handwriting?
COUNSEL: May it please your ludship, they did not write them. The
statements are not given as their own statements, but only as statements
"according to them." The statements are really copies of translations
of copies of translations of statements supposed to be based upon what
someone told Matthew, and--
JUDGE: Who copied and translated, and re-copied and re-translated, this
hearsay evidence?
COUNSEL: I do not know, m'lud.
JUDGE: Were the copies seen and revised by the authors? Did they correct
the proofs?
COUNSEL: I don't know, m'lud.
JUDGE: Don't know? Why?
COUNSEL: There is no evidence that the documents had ever been heard of
until long after the authors were dead.
JUDGE: I never heard of such a case. I cannot allow you to quote these
papers. They are not evidence. Have you _any_ witnesses?
COUNSEL: No, m'lud.
That fancy dialogue about expresses the legal value of the evidence for
this important miracle.
But, legal value not being the only value, let us now consider the
evidence as mere laymen.
THE GOSPEL WITNESSES
As men of the world, with some experience in sifting and weighing
evidence, what can we say about the evidence for the Resurrection?
In the first place, there is no acceptable evidence outside the New
Testament, and the New Testament is the authority of the Christian
Church.
In the second place, there is nothing to show that the Gospels were
written by eye-witnesses of the alleged fact.
In the third place, the Apostle Paul was not an eye-witness of the
alleged fact.
In the fourth place, although there is some evidence that some Gospels
were known in the first century, there is no evidence that the Gospels
as we know them were then in existence.
In the fifth place, even supposing that the existing Gospels and the
Epistles of Paul were originally composed by men who knew Christ, and
that these men were entirely honest and capable witnesses, there is no
certainty that what they wrote has come down to us unaltered.
The only serious evidence of the Resurrection being in the books of the
New Testament, we are bound to scrutinise those books closely, as on
their testimony the case for Christianity entirely depends.
Who, then, are the witnesses? They are the authors of the Gospels, the
Acts, and the Epistles of Peter and of Paul.
Who were these authors? Matthew and John are "supposed" to have been
disciples of Christ; but were they? I should say Matthew certainly
was not contemporary with Jesus, for in the last chapter of the Gospel
according to Matthew we read as follows:
Now while they were going behold some of the guard came into
the city, and told unto the chief priests all the things that
were come to pass. And when they were assembled with the elders,
and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers,
saying, Say yet his disciples came by night and stole him away
while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears, we
will persuade him, and rid you of care. So they took the money,
and did as they were taught: and this saying was spread abroad
among the Jews, and continueth until this day.
Matthew tells us that the saying "continueth until this day." Which day?
The day on which Matthew is writing or speaking. Now, a man does not say
of a report or belief that it "continueth until this day" unless that
report or belief originated a long time ago, and the use of such a
phrase suggests that Matthew told or repeated the story after a lapse of
many years.
That apart, there is no genuine historical evidence, outside the New
Testament, that such men as Paul, Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
ever existed.
Neither can it be claimed that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually
wrote the Gospels which bear their names. These Gospels are called
the Gospel "according to Matthew," the Gospel "according to Mark," the
Gospel "according to Luke," and the Gospel "according to John." They
were, then, Gospels condensed, paraphrased, or copied from some older
Gospels, or they were Gospels taken down from dictation, or composed
from the verbal statements of the men to whom they were attributed.
Thus it appears that the Gospels are merely reports or copies of some
verbal or written statements made by four men of whom there is no
historic record whatever. How are we to know that these men ever lived?
How are we to know that they were correctly reported, if they ever spoke
or wrote? How can we rely upon such evidence after nineteen hundred
years, and upon a statement of facts so important and so marvellous?
The same objection applies to the evidence of Peter and of Paul. Many
critics and scholars deny the existence of Peter and Paul. There is no
trustworthy evidence to oppose to that conclusion.
That by the way. Let us now examine the evidence given in these men's
names. The earliest witness is Paul. Paul does not corroborate the
Gospel writers' statements as to the life or the teachings of Christ;
but he does vehemently assert that Christ rose from the dead.
What is Paul's evidence worth? He did not see Christ crucified. He did
not see His dead body. He did not see Him quit the tomb. He did not see
Him in the flesh after He had quitted the tomb. He was not present when
He ascended into Heaven. Therefore Paul is not an eye-witness of the
acts of Christ, nor of the death of Christ, nor of the Resurrection of
Christ, nor of the Ascension of Christ.
If Paul ever lived, which none can prove and many deny, his evidence for
the Resurrection was only hearsay evidence.
Paul, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, says that after His
Resurrection Christ was "seen of about five hundred persons; of whom the
great part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep."
But none of the Gospels mentions this five hundred, nor does Paul give
the name of any one of them, nor is the testimony of any one of them
preserved, in the Testament or elsewhere.
Now, let us remember how difficult it was to disprove the statements of
the claimant in the Tichborne Case, although the trial took place in the
lifetime of the claimant, and although most of the witnesses knew
the real Roger Tichborne well; and let us also bear in mind that many
critics and scholars dispute the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, as
to which strong contemporary evidence is forthcoming, and then let
us ask ourselves whether we shall be justified in believing such a
marvellous story as this of the Resurrection upon the evidence of men
whose existence cannot be proved, and in support of whose statements
there is not a scrap of historical evidence of any kind.
Nor is this all. The stories of the Resurrection as told in the
Gospels are full of discrepancies, and are rendered incredible by the
interpolation of miraculous incidents.
Let us begin with Matthew. Did Matthew see Christ crucified? Did Matthew
see Christ's dead body? Did Matthew see Christ quit the tomb? Did
Matthew see Christ in the flesh and alive after His Resurrection? Did
Matthew see Christ ascend into Heaven? Matthew nowhere says so. Nor is
it stated by any other writer in the Testament that Matthew saw any of
these things. No: Matthew nowhere gives evidence in his own name. Only,
in the Gospel "according to Matthew" it is stated that such things did
happen.
Matthew's account of the Resurrection and the incidents connected
therewith differs from the accounts in the other Gospels.
The story quoted above from Matthew as to the bribing of Roman soldiers
by the priests to circulate the falsehood about the stealing of Christ's
body by His disciples is not alluded to by Mark, Luke, or John.
Matthew, in his account of the fact of the Resurrection, says that there
was an earthquake when the angel rolled away the stone. In the other
Gospels there is no word of this earthquake.
But not in any of the Gospels is it asserted that any man or woman saw
Jesus leave the tomb.
The story of His actual rising from the dead was first told by some
woman, or women, who said they had seen an angel, or angels, who had
declared that Jesus was risen.
There is not an atom of evidence that these young men who told the story
were angels. There is not an atom of evidence that they were not men,
nor that they had not helped to revive or to remove the swooned or dead
Jesus.
Stress has been laid upon the presence of the Roman guard. The presence
of such a guard is improbable. But if the guard was really there, it
might have been as easily bribed to allow the body to be removed, as
Matthew suggests that it was easily bribed to say that the body had been
stolen.
Matthew says that after the Resurrection the disciples were ordered to
go to Galilee. Mark says the same. Luke says they were commanded not to
leave Jerusalem. John says they did go to Galilee.
So, again, with regard to the Ascension. Luke and Mark say that Christ
went up to Heaven. Matthew and John do not so much as mention the
Ascension. And it is curious, as Mr. Foote points out, that the two
apostles who were supposed to have been disciples of Christ and might
be supposed to have seen the Ascension, if it took place, do not mention
it. The story of the Ascension comes to us from Luke and Mark, who were
not present.
Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Yet Luke makes Him say to the
thief on the cross: "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with
me in Paradise." Matthew, Mark, and John do not repeat this blunder.
There are many other differences and contradictions in the Gospel
versions of the Resurrection and Ascension; but as I do not regard those
differences as important, I shall pass them by.
Whether or not the evidence of these witnesses be contradictory, the
facts remain that no one of them states that he knows anything about the
matter of his own knowledge; that no one of them claims to have himself
heard the story of the woman, or the women, or the angels; that no one
of them states that the women saw, or said they saw, Christ leave the
tomb.
As for the alleged appearances of Christ to the disciples, those
appearances may be explained in several ways. We may say that Christ
really had risen from the dead, and was miraculously present; we may say
that the accounts of His miraculous appearance are legends; or we may
say that His reappearance was not miraculous at all, for He had never
died, but only swooned.
As Huxley remarked, when we are asked to consider an alleged case of
resurrection, the first essential fact to make sure of is the fact of
death. Before we argue as to whether a dead man came to life, let us
have evidence that he _was_ dead.
Considering the story of the crucifixion as historical, it cannot be
said that the evidence of Christ's death is conclusive.
Death by crucifixion was generally a slow death. Men often lingered on
the cross for days before they died. Now, Christ was only on the cross
for a few hours; and Pilate is reported as expressing surprise when told
that he was dead.
To make sure that the other prisoners were dead, the soldiers broke
their legs. But they did not break Christ's legs.
To be sure, the Apostle John reports that a soldier pierced Christ's
side with a spear. But the authors of the three synoptic Gospels do
not mention this wounding with the spear. Neither do they allude to
the other story told by John, as to the scepticism of Thomas, and his
putting his hand into the wound made by the spear. It is curious that
John is the only one to tell both stories: so curious that both stories
look like interpellations.
But even if we accept the story of the spear thrust, it affords no
proof of death, for John adds that there issued from the wound blood and
water: and blood does not flow from wounds inflicted after death.
Then, when the body of Christ was taken down from the cross, it was not
examined by any doctor, but was taken away by friends, and laid in a
cool sepulchre.
What evidence is forthcoming that Christ did not recover from a swoon,
and that His friends did not take Him away in the night? Remember, we
are dealing with probabilities in the absence of any exact knowledge of
the facts, and consider which is more probable--that a man had swooned
and recovered; or that a man, after lying for three days dead, should
come to life again, and walk away?
Apologists will say that the probabilities in the case of a man do not
hold in the case of a God. But there is no evidence at all that
Christ was God. Prove that Christ was God, and therefore that He was
omnipotent, and there is nothing impossible in the Resurrection, however
improbable His death may seem.
Even assuming that the Gospels are historical documents, the evidence
for Christ's death is unsatisfactory, and that for His Resurrection
quite inadequate. But is there any reason to regard the Gospel stories
of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension on of Christ as historical?
I say that we have no surety that these stories have come down to us as
they were originally compiled, and we have strong reasons for concluding
that these stories are mythical.
Some two or three years ago the Rev. R. Horton said: "Either Christ
was the Son of God, and one with God, or He was a bad man, or a madman.
There is no fourth alternative possible." That is a strange statement
to make, but it is an example of the shifts to which apologists are
frequently reduced. No fourth alternative possible! Indeed there is; and
a fifth!
If a man came forward to-day, and said he was the Son of God, and one
with God, we should conclude that he was an impostor or a lunatic.
But if a man told us that another man had said he was a god, we should
have what Mr. Horton calls a "fourth alternative" open to us. For
we might say that the person who reported his speech to us had
misunderstood him, which would be a "fourth alternative"; or that
the person had wilfully misrepresented him, which would be a fifth
alternative.
So in the Gospels. Nowhere have we a single word of Christ's own
writing. His sayings come to us through several hands, and through more
than one translation. It is folly, then, to assert that Christ was God,
or that He was mad, or an impostor.
So in the case of the Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, the
Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. Many worthy people may suppose
that in denying the facts stated in the Gospels we are accusing St.
Matthew and St. John of falsehood.
But there is no certainty who St. Matthew and the others were. There is
no certainty that they wrote these stories. Even if they did write them,
they probably accepted them at second or third hand. With the best faith
in the world, they may not have been competent judges of evidence. And
after they had done their best their testimony may have been added to or
perverted by editors and translators.
Looking at the Gospels, then, as we should look at any other ancient
documents, what internal evidence do they afford in support of the
suspicion that they are mythical?
In the first place, the whole Gospel story teems with miracles. Now, as
Matthew Arnold said, miracles never happen. Science has made the belief
in miracles impossible. When we speak of the antagonism between religion
and science, it is this fact which we have in our mind: that science has
killed the belief in miracles, and, as all religions are built up upon
the miraculous, science and religion cannot be made to harmonise.
As Huxley said:
The magistrate who listens with devout attention to the precept,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," on Sunday, on Monday
dismisses, as intrinsically absurd, a charge of bewitching a
cow brought against some old woman; the superintendent of a
lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational modes of
treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even parish
clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the
wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends men,
not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers for
the success of our arms, and _Te Deums_ for victory, our real
faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in
knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and
discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we
act on the aphorism, _Laborare est orare_; we admit that
intelligent work is the only acceptable worship, and that,
whether there be a Supernature or not, our business is with Nature.
We have ceased to believe in miracles. When we come upon a miracle in
any historical document we feel not only that the miracle is untrue, but
also that its presence reduces the value of the document in which it is
contained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in _Literature and Dogma_, after saying
that we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or later," to
extend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the considerations
which apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely discover, with
even greater force in the case of Bible miracles," goes on to declare
that "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for a
person or document one greatly values than to make them independent of
miracles."
Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make the accounts
of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ "independent
of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make the
Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the Resurrection,
which is a miracle or nothing.
We must believe in miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and
"miracles never happen."
We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve them, we
shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to the
element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact that
the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels to
serious consideration as historic evidence.
Take, for example, the account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel
according to Matthew. While Christ is on the cross "from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour," and when He
dies, "behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to
the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the rocks were rent; and the
tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep
were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after His Resurrection,
they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits the
darkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from the
tombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing about
any of these things.
What conclusion can we come to, then, as to the story in the first
Gospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead saints, who quit
their graves and enter the city, and three out of the four Gospel
writers do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from Matthew
on the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen of
many," and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints, and
what effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens
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