About one-half of the books of the Bible purport to be, to a considerable extent at least, historical. But from Genesis to Revelation there is scarcely a book which can be accepted as a reliable record of events. Nearly all of them abound with manifest absurdities, exaggerations, and contradictions. Their authors, for the most part, deal with matters concerning which the ancient profane historians take no cognizance; and this, in a measure, conceals their errors. But when they do refer to known historical events, they exhibit such an ignorance of the facts, or such a desire to pervert them, as to destroy their credibility. In this chapter will be presented some “sacred” history which reason rejects or the demonstrated facts of profane history disprove.
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“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
The Bible, it is affirmed, contains a connected [261]and reliable historical and chronological record of events from the Creation down to the universally accepted dates of profane history. And yet between the three versions of the Jewish Bible there is an utter disagreement. The creation of the world, according to these versions, was as follows:
The Talmud and Josephus, based upon the above, agree with neither, nor with each other. According to the Talmud, the Creation occurred 5344 B.C.; according to Josephus, 4658 B.C.
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“And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle. Even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt” (Ex. xii, 37, 38, 41).
“And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night.... And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground.... Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Ex. xiv, 21, 22, 30).
The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is [262]represented as having taken place in an incredibly brief space of time. It was after midnight when Moses was ordered to notify his people to depart. Before morning they were all en route from Rameses to the Red Sea, which they reached in three days and crossed in a few hours.
As there were 600,000 men, the total number of persons must have been nearly 3,000,000. Three millions is a number easily spoken and quickly written. But neither the author of this story nor those who accept it as history have the slightest conception of its meaning. They evidently think that three million people—old and young; men, women, and children; the sick and the lame, together with their flocks and herds, their household effects and provisions—could be moved with the celerity of a few hundred men. When Napoleon crossed the Nieman in 1812, it took his army of trained soldiers, inured to hardships and accustomed to rapid marches, three days and nights to cross the river in close file on three bridges. Had his army been as large as this body of Israelites, to have crossed the river on one bridge, allowing the necessary time for rest, would have taken six months. It would have required months to notify, assemble, and organize this vast population of slaves in readiness for their migration. And when the journey began, if the head of the column had left Rameses in the spring the rear of the column would not have been able to move before autumn.[263]
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“Behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession” (Deut. xxxii, 49).
In the twelfth chapter of Joshua is given a list of thirty-one kingdoms which were conquered by them. This was in the fifteenth century B.C. From this time forward they are represented as a mighty nation by Bible historians.
Rameses III. overran Canaan and conquered it between 1280 and 1260 B.C. The Egyptian records give a list of all the tribes inhabiting it. The children of Israel—the Hebrews—were not there. In the fifth century B.C., when Herodotus, the father of history, was collecting materials for his immortal work, he traversed nearly every portion of Western Asia. He describes all its principal peoples and places; but the Jews and Jerusalem are of too little consequence to merit a line from his pen. Not until 332 B.C. do the Jews appear upon the stage of history, and then only as the submissive vassals of a Grecian king.
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1. “Elhanan, the son of Jair, the Bethlehemite, slew Goliath of Gath, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam” (2 Sam. xxi, 19, H. V.).
2. “Elhanan the son of Jair slew Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver’s beam” (1 Chron. xx, 5).[264]
3. “Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam” (2 Sam. xxi, 19, A. V.).
The above are three versions of the same passage. The first is a correct translation of the passage as it appears in the Hebrew. It is a part of one of the two discordant narratives used by the compiler of Samuel. The compiler of Chronicles saw the discrepancy and interpolated the words “Lahmi the brother of.” Our translators interpolated the words “the brother of.”
Critics admit that if the killing of Goliath is a historical event, which is improbable, it was Elkanah, and not David, who slew him. The story of David and Goliath given by the other narrator in 1 Samuel is a myth. This writer says: “And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem,” evidently believing that the Israelites then occupied Jerusalem, whereas the duel between David and Goliath is said to have occurred 1062 B.C., while the conquest and occupancy of Jerusalem by the Israelites did not occur until 1047 B.C., fifteen years later.
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“And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying, ... Behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God, ... and my servants shall be with thy servants, and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants” (1 Kings v, 2, 5, 6).[265]
“And Solomon had three score and ten thousand that bare burdens, and four score thousand hewers in the mountains; beside the chief of Solomon’s officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred” (15, 16).
“So was he seven years in building it” (vi, 38)
“And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits” (2).
The main building of Solomon’s Temple, then, was about 96 feet long, 32 feet wide, and 48 feet high. One hundred and fifty thousand men engaged seven years in building a house as large as a village church or a country store! The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse!
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“And the children of Israel fled before Judah: and God delivered them into their hand. And Abijah and his people slew them with great slaughter: so there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men” (2 Chron. xiii, 16, 17).
Five hundred thousand slain in one battle! At the battle of Gettysburg, one of the greatest battles of modern times, for three long days, two mighty armies of America engaged in deadly conflict, and when it was ended, the defeated army had less than five thousand killed. And yet we are asked to believe that this puny race [266]of Hebrews, too insignificant to attract the notice of ancient historians, marshaled in battle two contending armies, the carnage of which equaled that of a hundred Gettysburgs.
Talk about oriental exaggeration! If you wish to find its choicest specimens, search not the pages of Persian and Arabian romance, but read a chapter of sacred history.
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“And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land; and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand” (2 Kings xv, 19).
The king who reigned in Assyria at this time was Iva-lush. Assyria never had a king named Pul.
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“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein” (Dan. v, 1, 2).
“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace” (5).[267]
“And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN” (25).
“In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans [Babylon] slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom” (30, 31).
As a dramatic piece of fiction Belshazzar’s Feast is good; as a chapter of ancient history it is bad. Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar; neither was he king of Babylon. Darius the Mede did not take the kingdom.
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“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)... And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child” (Luke ii, 1–5).
This cannot be accepted as historical for the following reasons:
1. Cæsar Augustus never issued a decree that all the world should be taxed, nor even one that all the Roman world should be taxed.
2. If he had issued such a decree Joseph and Mary would not have been subject to taxation, because they lived in Galilee, an independent province.
3. Had they been subject to taxation they [268]would have been enrolled in their own country and not in some distant kingdom.
4. Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria until nearly ten years after the death of Herod, and Jesus was born, it is claimed, in the days of Herod.
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“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under” (Matt. ii, 16).
The statement that Herod the Great, who was firmly established in his government, and who had full-grown male heirs to succeed him, was afraid that the babe of an obscure Nazareth carpenter would supplant him in his kingdom, is enough to cause a Covenanter to laugh on Sunday. Had Herod issued such a decree his friends, instead of executing it, would have had him confined in a madhouse. The fact that the Roman and Jewish historians of that age—one of whom, an enemy, gives a full and complete record of his life—know nothing of this awful tragedy, that an anonymous author writing nearly two centuries afterward is the only one who mentions it, is of itself sufficient to brand it as an atrocious falsehood.
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“That upon you may come all the righteous [269]blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias whom ye slew between the temple and the altar” (Matt. xxiii, 35).
The divine historian ascribes these words to Jesus. Jesus was crucified, it is claimed, about 29 A.D. Zacharias was slain in 69 A.D., forty years after the death of Jesus. Some contend that Jesus refers to the Zachariah mentioned in 2 Chronicles (xxiv, 20, 25). But this Zachariah was the son of Jehoiada. Besides, the accusation of Jesus is intended to cover all time from the first to the last offense, and to name this Zachariah would be to admit that they had shed no righteous blood for 850 years.
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“For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought.
“After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished” (Acts v, 36, 37).
According to Acts the sedition of Theudas occurred before the taxing, which was about 6 A.D. It really occurred while Fadus was procurator of Judea, about 46 A.D.—forty years after the date assigned in Acts.[270]
The Bible is largely a medley of fables, mythologies, and legends. These legends contain a modicum of truth—how much cannot be determined. The reliable historian faithfully presents the facts contained in the materials at his command. These so-called sacred historians do not. With them history is secondary to theology and made subservient to it. Every event is represented as a special act of divine Providence and is tortured to uphold and serve their theological notions. Referring to the author or compiler of Judges, Dr. Oort says: “The writer has drawn most of his narratives from trustworthy sources.... Our gratitude to him would indeed be still greater than it is, if he had given us all that he found in his authorities unmixed and unaltered. But to an Israelite historian this seems to have been a simple impossibility” (Bible for Learners, Vol. I., p. 363).[271]
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“There is a beautiful harmony between the principles of science and the teachings of the Bible.”—Dr. Cheever.
Bibliolaters, unacquainted with the principles of science, and scientists unacquainted with the teachings of the Bible, may accept this statement; those conversant with both cannot. In the Bible a thousand scientific errors may be found. The limits of this work preclude a presentation of them all. Enough will be given, however, to show that the teachings of the Bible conflict with the teachings of the ten principal sciences—Astronomy, Geology, Geography, Botany, Zoology, Ethnology, Physiology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics.
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“And God said, Let there be light, and there was light” (Gen. i, 3).
“And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (5).
“And God made two great lights; the greater [272]light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also ... and the evening and the morning were the fourth day” (16, 19).
The cause is supposed to precede the effect; but here the effect precedes the cause. Light and darkness, morning and evening, day and night exist before the sun.
The Bible teaches us that the earth is older than the sun; science teaches us that the sun is older than the earth.
In the creation of the universe God devoted five-sixths of his time to the creation of this little world of ours, while but a fragment of the remaining time was needed to create the countless worlds that exist outside of our solar system. Five brief words, “He made the stars also,” record the history of their creation.
According to the Bible, the oldest star is less than six thousand years old. What says the scientist?
“I have observed stars, of which the light, it can be proved, must take two millions of years to reach this earth.”—Sir William Herschel.
“Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.”
“So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day” (Josh. x, 12, 13).
“Behold, I [the Lord] will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So [273]the sun returned ten degrees” (Isaiah xxxviii, 8).
The Bible teaches the geocentric theory that the sun revolves around the earth; Science teaches the heliocentric theory that the earth revolves around the sun.
Luther, accepting the Bible and rejecting science, wrote:
“The fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of Astronomy. But sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.”
“Biblical astronomy,” says the celebrated Jewish commentator, Dr. Kalisch, “is derived from mere optical appearance.”
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“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. i, 1).
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit” (i, 11).
“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth” (i, 20).
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things” (i, 24).
“And God said, Let us make man in our image” (i, 26).
“In six days the Lord made heaven and earth” (Ex. xx, 11).
According to the Bible, the earth was created [274]in six days about six thousand years ago. Geology tells us that the earth was old six million years ago.
To make room for the earth’s development, theologians now contend that a vast period of time elapsed between the work recorded in the first verse and in those following. To this Bishop Colenso replies:
“We are plainly taught in the book of Genesis, according to the simple, straightforward meaning of the words, that Elohim created the heaven and the earth in the beginning of these six days—that is, taking into account the chronological data of the Bible, about six thousand years ago” (The Pentateuch, Part IV, p. 94).
Again, theologians claim that these six days were not six literal days, but six long epochs of time. The Rev. Moses Stuart, Professor of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary, one of the ablest Hebrew scholars, says:
“When the sacred writer in Genesis i says, the first day, the second day, etc., there can be no possible doubt—none.... What puts this beyond all question in philology is that the writer says specifically, the evening and the morning were the first day, the second day, etc. Now, is an evening and a morning a period of some thousands of years? Is it, in any sense, when so employed, an indefinite period? The answer is so plain and certain that I need not repeat it. If Moses has given us an erroneous account of the creation, so be it. Let it come [275]out, and let us leave the whole. But do not let us turn aside his language to get rid of difficulties that we may have in our speculations.”
The Jewish scholar, Dr. Kalisch, not only rejects this interpretation of the word day, but admits that it would not reconcile Genesis with science if allowed. He says:
“The device that the days denote epochs is not only arbitrary, but ineffective, for the six epochs of the Mosaic creation correspond in no manner with the gradual formation of cosmos.”
According to Genesis the creation of organic life occupied but three of these six days. The order of creation for these three days, or periods, is as follows: 1. (3d day) Land plants; 2. (5th day) aquatic animals, birds; 3. (6th day) Mammals, reptiles, man.
Is this confirmed by science? Passing Lyell by, let us cite our more orthodox Dana. Dr. Dana, who professed to believe that the study of Geology tended “to strengthen faith in the Book of books,” gives the several geological ages, together with the successive appearances of organic life, as follows: 1. Archæan Age—Lowest marine life, if any; 2. Silurian Age—Invertebrates, marine plants; 3. Devonian Age—Fish, earliest appearance of land plants; 4. Carboniferous Age—Luxuriant vegetation, lowest forms of reptiles; 5. Reptilian Age—Highest forms of reptiles; 6. Tertiary Age—Birds, mammals; 7. Quaternary Age—Man.
Even Dana cannot reconcile Genesis with [276]Geology. Genesis tells us that the earliest organic life was terrestrial vegetation; Geology tells us that ages of organic life passed before terrestrial plants appeared. Genesis tells us that fish and fowls were created at the same time; Geology tells us that the finny tribes existed ages before the feathered tribes appeared. Genesis tells us that mammals and reptiles were created at the same time; Geology tells us that while reptiles existed in the Carboniferous age, mammals did not appear until the close of the Reptilian age. Genesis tells us that birds appeared before reptiles; Geology tells us that reptiles existed first. Genesis tells us that life existed first upon the land; Geology tells us that the sea teemed with animal and vegetable life ages before it appeared upon the land.
The seven ages of Geology comprise twenty-five geological periods. Genesis recognizes but six periods in the creation of the entire universe; Geology recognizes twenty-five periods in the formation of earth’s crust alone. According to Bible chronology, the universe is less than six thousand years old; according to Geology, the mere existence of life upon earth’s crust, which is as but a day compared with the existence of the universe, is probably nearly fifty millions of years. Dr. Dana says:
“If time from the commencement of the Silurian included 48 millions of years, which some geologists would pronounce much too low an estimate, the Paleozoic part [Silurian, Devonian, [277]and Carboniferous], according to the above ratio, would comprise 36 millions, the Mesozoic [Reptilian] 9 millions, and the Cenozoic [Tertiary and Quaternary] 3 millions” (Text Book of Geology, p. 329).
When Geology was in its infancy scientists attempted to reconcile its teachings with the teachings of the Bible. No scientist worthy of the name attempts to reconcile them now.
Writing over thirty years ago, Carl Vogt thus records the triumph of Geology over Genesis:
“It is hardly twenty years since I learned from Agassiz: transitional strata, palæozoic formations—kingdom of fishes; there are no reptiles in this period, and cannot be any, because it would be contrary to the plan of creation; secondary formations (Trias, Jura, chalk)—kingdom of reptiles; there are no mammals and cannot be any, for the same reason; tertiary strata—kingdom of mammals; there are no men and cannot be any; present creation—kingdom of man. What is become of this plan of creation, with its exclusiveness? Reptiles in the Devonian strata, reptiles in the coal, reptiles in the Dyas. Farewell, kingdom of fish! Mammals in the Jura, mammals in Purbeck chalk, which some reckon as the lowest chalk formation; good-by, kingdom of reptiles! Men in the highest tertiary strata, men in the diluvial forms—au revoir, kingdom of mammals!”[278]
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“The world also shall be stable, that it be not moved” (1 Chron. xvi, 30).
“Who laid the foundations of the earth that it should not be removed forever” (Ps. civ, 5).
“For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them” (1 Sam. ii, 8).
“I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth” (Rev. vii, 1).
“The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world” (Matt. iv, 8).
The science of Geography describes the earth as spherical in form, with a daily revolution on its axis and an annual revolution around the sun. The Bible describes it as stable, flat, and angular.
“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
“The name of the first is Pison” [Indus or Ganges] (Gen. ii, 10, 11).
“And the name of the second river is Gihon [Nile]: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
“And the name of the third river is Hiddekel [Tigris]: ... And the fourth river is Euphrates” (ii, 13, 14).
Bible geography makes the Nile and the Euphrates both branches of the same river.[279]
“Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar” (John iv, 5).
Samaria contained no city of this name.
“These things were done in Bethany beyond Jordan” (John i, 28, New Ver.).
Bethany was a suburb of Jerusalem and not located beyond the Jordan.
“He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan” (Matt. xix, 1).
The dead sea and the Jordan formed the eastern boundary of Judea, and no coasts of Judea existed beyond the Jordan.
“Which was of Bethsaida of Galilee” (John xii, 21).
Bethsaida was not of Galilee, but of Perea.
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“And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind” (Gen. i, 12).
“And the evening and the morning were the third day” (i, 13).
“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day” (i, 16).
“And the evening and the morning were the fourth day” (i, 19).
The Bible states that the earth was covered with vegetation, that grass and herbs and trees flourished without the heat and light of the sun. Science denies it.
“Cursed is the ground for thy sake.... [280]Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Gen. iii, 17, 18).
Thorns and thistles are represented as resulting from a curse. They are no more the result of a curse than are grapes and corn.
“And again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off” (Gen. viii, 10, 11).
Hebrew commentators state that it was a fresh olive leaf. The Bible writer supposes that the earth could be submerged for nearly a year without the vegetable kingdom being destroyed. Had this deluge really occurred, all vegetation, save, perhaps, a few aquatic plants, would have died.
“He planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it” (Is. xliv, 14).
Not in Western Asia, for the tree does not grow there. Bible commentators believe that the pine is meant.
The authors of Genesis (xxx, 37) and Ezekiel (xxxi, 8) both mention the chestnut-tree. But it is admitted that the chestnut did not grow where they stated. Referring to this error, Smith’s Bible Dictionary says: “The ‘plane-tree’ ought probably to have been substituted. The context of the passages where the word occurs indicates some tree which thrives best in low and rather moist situations, whereas the chestnut-tree is a tree which prefers dry and hilly ground.”[281]
“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John xii, 24).
If it die it bringeth forth no fruit.
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“Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two [or by sevens of clean according to another account] unto Noah into the ark” (Gen. vii, 8, 9).
The animal kingdom, including insects, etc., comprises more than 1,000,000 species. According to the Bible, two or more of every species from every clime—polar animals accustomed to a temperature of fifty degrees below zero, and tropical, to one hundred degrees above—were brought together and preserved for a year in an ark. If the teachings of Natural History be true, this Bible story is false.
The Bible pronounces unclean and unfit for food the following animals:
“The camel, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof” (Lev. xi, 4).
“The coney, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof” (xi, v).
“The hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof” (xi, 6).
“The swine, though he divideth the hoof, and be cloven-footed, yet he cheweth not the cud” (xi, 7).
Every statement proclaims the writer’s ignorance of the simple facts of Zoology. The [282]camel does divide the hoof; the coney does not chew the cud; the hare does not chew the cud; the swine is not cloven-footed (bisulcate), but four-toed.
“All ruminants have the foot cleft, and they only have it.”—Cuvier.
“Every one of the four instances or illustrations brought forward by the Biblical writer is necessarily erroneous; any attempt at defending them implies an impotent struggle against Science.”—Dr. Kalisch.
Scarcely less erroneous are the following passages: “And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls: ... the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing and the bat.
“All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.
“Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;
“Even these of them may ye eat: the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you” (Lev. xi, 13–23).
“And the Lord said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt [283]thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. iii, 14).
The serpent does not eat dust, while Science shows that it crawled upon its belly before the curse just as it did afterward.
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According to the Bible, all mankind have sprung from a single pair created by God six thousand years ago. Science does not admit that man is the result of a divine creative act, that all the races have descended from a single pair, or that his existence here is confined to the brief period of sixty centuries. She is not able to tell yet, even approximately, when man’s advent upon the earth occurred, but she has long since proved the Biblical record false, and shown that instead of his having occupied the earth but six thousand years he has been here at the least from ten to fifty times six thousand years.
Referring to the Biblical origin of man, Professor Huxley says: “Five-sixths of the public are taught this Adamitic monogenism as if it were an established truth, and believe it. I do not; and I am not acquainted with any man of science, or duly instructed person, who does” (Methods and Results of Ethnology).
“There were giants in the earth in those days” (Gen. vi, 4).
The Bible, like the mythical records of other early nations, represents the earth as peopled with a race of giants. Yet the stature of man [284]is as great to-day as it was five thousand years ago.
“And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years” (Gen. v, 5).
The Bible says that for a period of two thousand years men lived for centuries, that at least seven patriarchs attained to an age of nearly 1,000 years. The Egyptian records of that period show that man’s longevity was no greater then than it is now.
Not only the size and age of men, but their numbers are exaggerated by Bible writers. The Israelites, at the time they settled in Palestine, numbered, it is claimed, two or three millions. Out of this country, to make room for them, God cast “seven nations greater and mightier than” the Israelite nation (Deut. vii, 1). Palestine must then have sustained a population as great as Spain does now with a territory thirty times as large.
The census of Israel and Judah, taken in the time of David, places the number of warriors at 1,570,000 (1 Ch. xxi, 5). This makes the whole population twice as great as that of Illinois with an area nine times as large as Palestine and a soil ten times as fertile.
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech” (Gen. xi, 1):
“Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Gen. xi, 7).
The origin of the various languages of men is [285]here attributed to a miraculous confusion of tongues. Science shows that languages had no such origin. Renan says:
“Far from placing unity at the beginning of language, it is necessary to look at such a unity as the slow and tardy result of an advanced civilization. In the beginning there were as many dialects as families.”
This Bible account of the confusion of tongues is contradicted by the preceding chapter of Genesis (x, 5, 20, 31), which, referring to the children of Japheth, Ham, and Shem, says they were divided “every one after his tongue,” “after their families, after their tongues.”
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“And the ark rested in the seventh month ... upon the mountains of Ararat” (Gen. viii, 4).
“And in the second month [of the following year] was the earth dried” (viii, 14).
Here on the top of Ararat, three miles above the surrounding country, and three thousand feet above the region of perpetual snow, for months, the respiratory organs of man and all the animals of earth performed their functions without difficulty!
“Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?” (Matt. ix, 4).
“What reason ye in your hearts?” (Luke v, 22).
Jesus recognizes the heart as the seat of reason and intelligence.[286]
“In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children” (Gen. iii, 16).
“She was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i, 18).
“Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit” (Mark v, 8).
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick” (James v, 15).
Attributing the pains of parturition to a curse, recording the generation of a child without a natural father, ascribing nervous and other disorders to demons, and healing the sick by prayer are Biblical, but not scientific.
“And all the first-born males [of Israel] ... were twenty and two thousand two hundred and three score and thirteen” (Num. iii, 43).
As the population of Israel was about 3,000,000, this would give 130 persons to each family and an average of 128 children to each mother. Faith may accept this, but physiological science rejects it.
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“And he lifted up the rod and smote the waters that were in the river, ... and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood” (Ex. vii, 20).
“Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had [287]tasted the water that was made wine,” etc. (John ii, 7–9).
“But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. xix, 26).
“And he took the [golden] calf which they had made and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it” (Ex. xxxii, 20).
Turning a river into blood, water into wine, flesh into salt, and burning and grinding gold into powder and holding it in solution, cannot be harmonized with the teachings of science.
But it is not merely to a few Biblical passages, to a few so-called miraculous changes in the elements of nature, that the science of chemistry is opposed. It is opposed to the entire Bible as a divine revelation. The central ideas of this book, a Creator, a Providence, and a Mediator, are all overthrown by this science.
Referring to this, Comte truthfully observes:
“However imperfect our chemical science is, its development has operated largely in the emancipation of the human mind. Its opposition to all theological philosophy is marked by two general facts, ... first the prevision of phenomena, and next our voluntary modification of them” (Positive Philosophy, Book IV., chap. i).
“In this way, Chemistry effectually discredits the notion of the rule of Providential will among its phenomena. But there is another way in [288]which it acts no less strongly: by abolishing the idea ... of creation in nature” (Ibid).
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“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood, to destroy all flesh” (Gen. ix, 13–15).
The Bible writer did not know that it was the refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays on the drops of water which produced the prismatic colors of the rainbow; he did not know that the phenomenon was as old as rain and sunshine, but believed it to be a postdiluvian sign thrown on the dark canvas of clouds by the Almighty.
“It seems plain,” says the Bishop of Natal, “that the writer supposes the bow to have been seen for the first time when the deluge was over.”
“The words which Moses spake unto all Israel” (Deut. i, 1).
“And Moses called all Israel and said unto them” (v, 1).
“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel” (Josh. viii, 35).
Nature’s temple must have possessed wonderful [289]acoustic properties to enable Moses and Joshua to reach the ears of a multitude of three millions.
“Let us build a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven” (Gen. xi, 4).
God himself, ignorant of pneumatics, believes the project possible, and confounds their language to prevent it.
“And the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were as a wall unto them on the right hand, and on their left” (Ex. xiv, 21, 22).
A fundamental principle of hydrostatics is the following: “When a pressure is exerted on any part of the surface of a liquid, that pressure is transmitted undiminished to all parts of the mass, and in all directions.”
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“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John v, 7).
“The incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one and one is three!”—Thomas Jefferson.
Matthew concludes his genealogy of Jesus as follows:
“So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away [290]into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations” (Matt. i, 17).
This genealogy, including both Abraham and Jesus, contains but forty-one generations. Here we have an inspired scholar performing the mathematical solution of dividing forty-one generations by three and obtaining fourteen generations for a quotient.
“The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and three score” (Ezra ii, 64).
This number, 42,360, is given as the whole number of persons belonging to the families that returned from Babylon. Adding together the numbers given in the census register, of which the above is declared to be the sum total, we find the whole number to be only 29,818—a difference and a discrepancy of 12,542.
The foregoing are but three of three hundred mathematical errors to be found in the Bible.
It is not merely in a few unimportant scientific details, but in the fundamental principles of the most important sciences—of astronomy, of geology, of geography, and of man—that the Bible errs. Its writers evince no divine knowledge of the facts of nature. Their works exhibit the crude notions of the age in which they lived. Some of their teachings are in harmony with the accepted truths of Science; but these prove no more than a human origin. The wisest of mankind do not know all; the most ignorant know something. While there are phenomena [291]too complex for the mind of a Newton or a Darwin to grasp, there are others regarding which the first impressions of a child are correct.
To assert that the Bible is in harmony with the teachings of Modern Science is to assert that no advancement has been made in Science for two thousand years, when all know that many of the most marvelous scientific discoveries are less than two hundred years old. The scientific attainments of Bible writers were not above those of the age and country in which they lived, and probably far below; for the Bible is largely the work of theologians, and theologians have ever been behind their age in scientific knowledge. The mission of theologians is not to advance, but to retard Science. They have waged a relentless but ineffective warfare against it. In the words of Huxley: “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.”
“The Hebrew Pentateuch,” says Gerald Massey, “has not only retarded the growth of science for eighteen centuries, but the ignorant believers in it as a book of revelation have tried to strangle every science at its birth. There could be and was but little or no progress in Astronomy, Geology, Biology, or Sociology until its teachings were repudiated by the more enlightened among men.”
Of the Bible and Science thus writes America’s [292]eminent scientist and author, Dr. John W. Draper:
“It is to be regretted that the Christian church has burdened itself with the defense of these books, and voluntarily made itself answerable for their manifest contradictions and errors.... Still more, it is to be deeply regretted that the Pentateuch, a production so imperfect as to be unable to stand the touch of modern criticism, should be put forth as the arbiter of science” (Conflict Between Religion and Science, p. 225).
“The world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinions of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the dreams of mystics who thought that they were inspired” (Ibid, p. 33).
“For her [Science] the volume of inspiration is the book of Nature, of which the open scroll is ever spread forth before the eyes of every man. Confronting all, it needs no societies for its dissemination. Infinite in extent, eternal in duration, human ambition and human fanaticism have never been able to tamper with it. On the earth it is illustrated by all that is magnificent and beautiful, on the heavens its letters are suns and worlds” (Ib., p. 227).[293]
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“Prophecy is a demonstration of divine knowledge; as miracles, in the restricted acceptation of the word, are a demonstration of divine power. Prophecies being true, revelation is established as a fact.”—Keith.
“The predictions respecting Christ are so clear, so detailed and circumstantial, as to constitute together one of the most important proofs of the inspiration of the Bible and of the truth of Christianity.”—Hitchcock.
A prophet, according to the orthodox and popular signification of the term, is one who predicts. A prophecy is a prediction, and the writings of the prophets are a collection of predictions regarding future events. Prophet and prophecy, as used in the Bible, have no such meaning. The prophet might make a prediction, just as any one may make a prediction, but this was not necessarily any part of his office. The functions of the prophet were those of preacher, poet, and musician. There were not merely a score of them, but thousands of them. The more talented prophets became [294]authors—composed the poems, recorded the history, and wrote the religious works of the Hebrews. Some of these prophets were moral reformers—labored earnestly to reform their people. The wicked were exhorted to forsake their sins, and threatened with divine retribution if they did not. When their countrymen were in bondage they consoled them with the promise that God would liberate them. The oppressed and the captive longed for a deliverer. The prophet gave utterance to these longings, and this gave birth to the Messianic idea.
The more important of these so-called prophecies will now be examined.
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“And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged” (Isaiah xiii, 19–22).[295]
Had this prophecy been literally fulfilled, it would not have evinced supernatural prescience on the part of the prophet. It is the fate of cities to flourish for a time and then decay. The world contains the ruins, not of Babylon alone, but of a thousand cities.
The enemies of Babylon wished for and hoped for its destruction. The prophet voiced that wish and hope. Perhaps at that very moment the victorious armies of the Persian were leveling its walls.
But this prophecy has not been literally fulfilled. Babylon was not as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah; it has been inhabited; it has been dwelt in from generation to generation; the Arabian has pitched his tent there; shepherds have made their fold there; satyrs have not danced there; dragons have not occupied her palaces; her days were prolonged. The ancient glory of Babylon has faded, but a thriving city still exists there, a standing refutation of the claim that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled.
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“For thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar [Nebuchadnezzar], king of Babylon.... With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrison shall go down to the ground. And they shall make a spoil of thy [296]riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise.... And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it” (Ezekiel xxvi, 7, 11, 12, 14).
Here is a specific prediction. But it was not fulfilled. Nebuchadnezzar did not destroy, nor even conquer, Tyre. “He reduced the whole sea coast except Tyre, which stood a thirteen years’ siege by water and by land, ending, not in subjection, but ... leaving the native sovereigns on their thrones and their wealth and power untouched” (Chambers’s Encyclopedia).
A thousand years after Ezekiel uttered his prophecy, Jerome, the foremost Christian of his age, declared it to be “the most noble and beautiful city in Phœnicia.” Twenty-four hundred years have passed, and Tyre still survives.
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“Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah xvii, 1).
This prophecy was spoken nearly twenty-seven hundred years ago, and yet during all these centuries Damascus has flourished, and is to-day the most prosperous city of Western Asia.
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“And I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene [297]even unto the borders of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years” (Ezekiel xxix, 10, 11).
This and a score of other prophecies concerning Egypt have never been fulfilled.
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“For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land” (Amos vii, 11).
Jeroboam did not not die by the sword, and Israel was not led away captive, as predicted. “And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam and all that he did, and his might, how he warred, and how he recovered Damascus and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, for Israel, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel” (2 Kings xiv, 27–29).
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“Thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim king of Judah: He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat and in the night to the frost” (Jeremiah xxxvi, 30).
This prophecy was not fulfilled. “So Jehoiakim [298]slept with his fathers: And Jehoiachin his son reigned in his stead” (2 Kings xxiv, 6).
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“And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the King of Babylon seventy years” (Jeremiah xxv, 11).
It is now conceded by all critics that the book of Jeremiah, as a whole, was not composed before the Captivity. But even if these words were uttered before the Captivity, they are fatal to the claim of Bible inerrancy; for either the prophecy was not fulfilled, or Bible history is false. According to the historical books of the Bible, the Captivity did not last seventy, but only about fifty years.
Referring to this and similar prophecies, Matthew Arnold says: “The great prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah are, critics can now see, not strictly predictions at all” (Literature and Dogma, p, 114).
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“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other” (Deut. xxviii, 64).
These words were uttered, not as a prophecy, but as a warning or threat. If they obey the Lord’s statutes a long list of blessings are promised; if they do not obey them, a hundred evils are threatened, among which is the one [299]quoted. One of the most dreaded and one of the most common calamities in that age was the conquest or dispersion of one tribe or nation by another. In an enumeration of all known evils, it would be strange if this, the one most often threatened, had been omitted.
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“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah vii, 14).
This is cited as a prophecy of Jesus Christ. The only thing in it suggestive of the story of Jesus is the word “virgin.” The word thus translated, however, does not necessarily mean virgin in the common acceptation of this term, but simply “young woman,” either married or single. Correct this error and the text reads: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive, and bear a son.” All that is suggestive of the miraculous conception vanishes. But this is not the only error. The forms of the verbs have been changed. The passage should read as follows: “Behold, a young woman is with child and beareth a son.” The woman was with child when the prophet wrote. This precludes the possibility of a reference to Jesus Christ. Not only this, the context utterly forbids it. All the events named by the prophet, including the birth of this child, occurred more than seven hundred years before Christ.
Michaelis rejects this prophecy. He says: “I [300]cannot be persuaded that the famous prophecy in Isaiah (chap. vii, 14) has the least reference to the Messiah.”
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“I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Jer. xxiii, 5, 6).
The correct rendering of this passage is as follows:
“I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby they shall call themselves: The Eternal is our righteousness.”
In order to make a Messianic prophecy of this passage and give it effect, no less than eight pieces of trickery are employed: 1. The word “branch” is made to begin with a capital letter. 2. The word “king” also begins with a capital. 3. “The name” is rendered “his name.” 4. The pronoun “they,” relating to the people of Judah and Israel, is changed to “he.” 5. The word “Eternal” is translated “Lord.” 6. “The Lord our righteousness” is printed in capitals. 7. In the table of contents at the head of the [301]chapter are the words “Christ shall rule and save them.” 8. At the top of the page are the words “Christ promised.”
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“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, ... until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Gen. xlix, 10).
The meaning of Shiloh being somewhat obscure, it was made to apply to Christ. It is now known that Shiloh was the national sanctuary before the Jews occupied Jerusalem. A correct translation of the passage reads as follows:
“The pre-eminence shall not depart from Judah so long as the people resort to Shiloh; and the nations shall obey him.”
But even if the writer meant “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah until Christ comes,” as claimed, the prediction was not fulfilled; for the sceptre departed from Judah six hundred years before Christ came.
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“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be declared Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah ix, 6).
This passage, even if genuine, is not applicable to Jesus Christ. But it is not genuine. Professor Cheyne, the highest authority on Isaiah, pronounces it a forgery.[302]
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“Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks” (Daniel viii, 25).
It is claimed that “week” here means a period of seven years, and assumed, of course, that by Messiah is meant Christ. Seven weeks and three score and two weeks are sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years, the time that was to elapse from the command to rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of Christ, if the prophecy was fulfilled.
The decree of Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple was made 536 B.C. According to the accepted chronology, Christ was born 4 B.C. From the decree of Cyrus, then, to the coming of Christ was 532 years instead of 483, a period of seven weeks, or forty-nine years, longer than that named by Daniel.
Ezra, the priest, went to Jerusalem 457 B.C. This event, however, had nothing whatever to do with the decree for rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple. It occurred 79 years after the decree was issued, and 58 years after the temple was finished. But a searcher for Messianic prophecies found that from the time of Ezra to the beginning of Christ’s ministry was about 483 years, or 69 prophetic weeks; and notwithstanding there was a deficiency of 79 years at one end of the period, and an excess of 30 years at the other, it was declared to fit exactly.[303]
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“The days shall come, in the which there shall not be left one stone [of the temple] upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles” (Luke xxi, 6, 24).
It has been shown that the books containing this so-called prophecy of Jesus were written one hundred years after the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem.
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“The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.... Verily I say unto you, That this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done” (Mark xiii, 24–26, 30).
That generation did pass, and more than eighteen centuries have followed, and yet the Son of man has not come and these things have not been done. Christ was a false prophet.
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“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet.... And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots” (Revelation xvii, 4, 5).[304]
Protestant churches have no difficulty in recognizing in this Mother of Harlots the Church of Rome, apparently forgetting that they are her daughters.
The following, relative to Bible prophecies, is from the pen of William Rathbone Greg:
“A prophecy, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, signifies a prediction of future events which could not have been foreseen by human sagacity, and the knowledge of which was supernaturally communicated to the prophet. It is clear, therefore, that in order to establish the claim of any anticipatory statement, promise, or denunciation to the rank and title of a prophecy, four points must be ascertained with precision, viz., what the event was to which the alleged prediction was intended to refer; that the prediction was uttered in specific, not vague, language before the event; that the event took place specifically, not loosely, as predicted; and that it could not have been foreseen by human sagacity.”
“It is probably not too much to affirm that we have no instance in the prophetical books of the Old Testament of a prediction in the case of which we possess, at once and combined, clear and unsuspicious proof of the date, the precise event predicted, the exact circumstances of that event, and the inability of human sagacity to foresee it. There is no case in which we can say with certainty—even where it is reasonable to suppose that the prediction was uttered before [305]the event—that the narrative has not been tampered with to suit the prediction, or the prediction modified to correspond with the event” (Creed of Christendom, pp. 128, 131.)[306]
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That curious volume of exaggerated fiction known as the Baron Munchausen stories has delighted many. Works of this character fill a legitimate place in literature. The humorists have contributed much to the health and happiness of mankind.
A charming store of wit and humor of the Munchausen variety is to be found in the Bible. Here are a thousand and one stories as marvelous and amusing as are to be found in the whole realm of modern fiction.
Unfortunately those who profess to value this book the most derive the least benefit from it. They mistake the meaning and purpose of its writers. They accept as facts its most palpable fictions. Its most laughable stories are read with the most solemn visages. This serious method of treating the ridiculous has produced an army of morose dyspeptics who mistake indigestion for religion, and intolerance for virtue.
To afford a little relaxation from the duller chapters of this work, to furnish a few grains of pepsin to aid in the digestion of a Sunday dinner, [307]a small collection of these funny tales of ancient wits—the Baron Munchausen writers of old times—is given. He who can read them without a smile must be either dull of comprehension or without appreciation of humor.
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PRACTICAL JOKE PLAYED UPON A SLEEPY MAN BY HIS FACETIOUS CREATOR.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an help meet for him.... And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man (Gen. ii, 18, 21, 22).
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A STORY CALCULATED TO PARALYZE A KENTUCKY COLONEL.
The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.... And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered (Gen. vii, 11, 12, 19, 20).
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THE DOCTRINE OF PRENATAL INFLUENCES LAUGHABLY BURLESQUED.
And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white [308]streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstreaked, speckled, and spotted (Gen. xxx, 37–39).
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MOSES TELLS, WITH A WINK, ABOUT THE STRONGEST GALE OF WIND KNOWN TO HISTORY.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left (Ex. xiv, 21, 22).
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THE MODERN BIRD HUNTER WILL SAY: “I LOVE A LIAR, BUT THIS ONE SUITS ME TOO WELL!”
And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day’s journey on this side, and as it were a day’s journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered [309]ten homers [over 100 bushels] (Num. xi, 31, 32).
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“WINE IS A MOCKER, STRONG DRINK IS RAGING.”
And the Lord said unto him [Moses], What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand (Ex. iv, 2–4).
And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.... And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived (Num. xxi, 6, 8, 9).
And Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods (Ex. vii, 10–12).[310]
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INCLUDING, AMONG OTHERS, ONE VERY LOUSY TRICK.
And he [Aaron] lifted up the rod and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of the servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood (Ex. vii, 20).
And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt (viii, 6).
Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt (viii, 17).
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“IS NOT THIS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF JASHER?”
And he [Joshua] said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day (Josh. x, 12, 13).
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AS DESCRIBED BY THE HUMORIST WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF JUDGES.
And he [Samson] found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and [311]slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men (Judges xv, 15, 16).
And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails. And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives (Judges xv, 4, 5).
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REMARKS OF A QUADRUPED THAT STOOD ON HER RECORD.
And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.... And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee that thou hast smitten me these three times? And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay (Num. xxii, 21, 27–30).[312]
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EDIFYING TALE OF A BALDHEADED MAN, SOME NAUGHTY CHILDREN, AND TWO BEARS.
And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Beth-el: 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 baldhead; go up, thou baldhead. 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 (2 Kings ii, 23, 24).
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HOW A PROPHET’S WHISKERS TICKLED A SHAMMING KID AND BROUGHT HIM OUT OF HIS TRANCE.
And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. And he went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. And he went up and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and he stretched himself upon the child: and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro, and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes (2 Kings, iv, 32–35).[313]
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THREE OF SATAN’S SUBJECT ASTONISH THE OFFICIALS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.
These men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.... And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counselors, being gathered together, saw these men upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them (Dan. iii, 19, 21, 27).
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A DIVERTING YARN, CALCULATED TO CAUSE MUCH MERRIMENT AMONG THE MARINES.
Then they said unto him [Jonah], What shall we do unto thee that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up and cast me forth in the sea.... So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her raging.... Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and nights.... And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land (Jonah i, 11–17; ii, 10).
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A TIMELY DREAM SAVES THE REPUTATION OF A YOUNG WOMAN.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this [314]wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband being a just man, and not wishing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.... Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son; and he called his name Jesus (Matt. i, 18–25).
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INTERESTING APPLICATION OF HYPNOTISM BY WHICH A MULTITUDE WERE CONVINCED THAT THEY HAD DINED.
And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass and took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled; and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men beside women and children (Matt. xiv, 15–21).[315]
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JESUS APPRISES THE BROTHER OF MARTHA THAT THE JOKE HAS BEEN CARRIED FAR ENOUGH.
When Jesus came, he found that he [Lazarus] had lain in the grave four days already.... Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days.... He [Jesus] cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth. And he that was dead came forth (John xi, 17, 38, 39, 43, 44).
These Bible stories, which Christians profess to believe, are unworthy of serious consideration. They are not historical, but fabulous. A miracle is a fable. The miraculous is impossible; the impossible untrue. If miracles were possible and necessary in that age they are possible and necessary now. This is an age of unbelief. Give us one miracle and we will believe. Let Jesus visit earth again and with his divine touch revivify the inanimate dust of Lincoln and give him back to the nation that loved him so well, and we will acknowledge his divinity and believe that the Bible is inspired. Had he restored to life the decaying corpse of Lazarus the Jews would have believed in him. The Jews did not believe in him, therefore the miracle was not performed.[316]
The divine origin of the Bible cannot be established by miracles because the possibility of a miracle itself cannot be established. In the language of Hume, “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”[317]
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The Bible, it is claimed, is the word of God—a revelation from God to man. It was written or inspired by God, and deals chiefly with God and his works.
Who and what is this God of the Bible? What is the nature and character of this divine author? Is he omnipresent, or has he a local habitation merely? Is he omnipotent, or is he limited in power? Is he omniscient, or is his knowledge circumscribed? Is he immutable, or is he a changeable being? Is he visible and comprehensible, or is he invisible and unknowable? Is he the only God, or is he one of many gods? Does he possess the form and attributes of man, or is he, as Christians affirm, without body, parts, or passions? Let God through his inspired penmen answer.
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Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord (Jer. xxiii, 24).
The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him (2 Ch. ii, 6).
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if [318]I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me (Ps. cxxxix, 8–10).
The Lord was not in the wind: ... the Lord was not in the earthquake (1 Kings xix, 11).
And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod (Gen. iv, 16).
And he said unto Balak, Stand here by thy burnt offering, while I meet the Lord yonder (Num. xxiii, 15).
Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze (Ex. xix, 21).
God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing heretofore (1 Sam. iv, 7).
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With God all things are possible (Matt. xix, 26).
I know that thou canst do everything (Job xlii, 2).
There is nothing too hard for thee (Jer. xxxii, 17).
For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth (Rev. xix, 6).
And the Lord was with Judah, and he [the Lord] drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron (Jud. i, 19).[319]
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God ... knoweth all things (1 John iii, 20).
The eyes of the Lord are in every place (Prov. xv, 3).
He knoweth the secrets of the heart (Ps. xliv, 21).
No thought can be withholden from thee (Job xlii, 2).
The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, ... to know what was in thine heart (Deut. viii, 2).
God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart (2 Ch. xxxii, 31).
The Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, 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, 20, 21).
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I am the Lord, I change not (Mal. iii, 6).
With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James i, 17).
My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips (Ps. lxxxix, 34).
He is not a man that he should repent (1 Sam. xv, 29).
I [God] am weary with repenting (Jer. xv, 6).[320]
It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth (Gen. vi, 6).
The Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel (1 Sam. xv, 35).
And God repented of the evil that he said he would do unto them; and he did it not (Jonah iii, 10).
The Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before me forever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me (1 Sam. ii, 30).
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I have seen God face to face (Gen. xxxii, 30).
And they saw the God of Israel (Ex. xxiv, 10).
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead (Rom. i, 20).
No man hath seen God at any time (John i, 18).
Whom no man hath seen, nor can see (1 Tim. vi, 16).
There shall no man see me and live (Ex. xxxiii, 20).
God is great, and we know him not (Job xxxvi, 26).
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out (Job xxxvii, 23).[321]
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There is one God; and there is none other but he (Mark xii, 32).
Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me (Is. xliii, 10).
I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God (Is. xliv, 6).
Thou shalt not revile the gods (Ex. xxii, 28).
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us (Gen. iii, 22).
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? (Ex. xv, 11).
Among the gods, there is none like unto thee, O Lord (Ps. lxxxvi, 8).
The Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods (Ps. xcv, 3).
God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods (Psalms lxxxii, 1?).
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“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions.”—Thirty-nine Articles.
Compare the above conception of Deity with the anthropomorphic character of God portrayed in the following one hundred passages:
God created man in his own image (Gen. i, 27).
The hair of his [God’s] head (Dan. vii, 9).[322]
Thou canst not see my [God’s] face (Ex. xxxiii, 20).
The eyes of the Lord run to and fro (2 Ch. xvi, 9).
And his [God’s] ears are open (1 Pet. iii, 12).
These are a smoke in my [God’s] nose (Is. lxv, 5).
There went up a smoke out of his [God’s] nostrils (2 Sam. xxii, 9).
That proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matt. iv, 4).
His [God’s] lips are full of indignation (Is. xxx, 27).
And his [God’s] tongue as a devouring fire (Ibid).
He shall dwell between his [God’s] shoulders (Deut. xxxiii, 12).
Thou [God] hast a mighty arm (Ps. lxxxix, 13).
The right hand of the Lord (Ps. cxviii, 16).
This is the finger of God (Ex. viii, 19).
I [God] will show them the back (Jer. xviii, 17).
Out of thy [God’s] bosom (Ps. lxxiv, 11).
My [God’s] heart maketh a noise in me (Jer. iv, 19).
My [God’s] bowels are troubled (Jer. xxxi, 20).
The appearance of his [God’s] loins (Ezek. i, 27).
Darkness was under his [God’s] feet (Ps. xviii, 9).
The mind of the Lord (Lev. xxiv, 12).[323]
The breath of his [God’s] nostrils (2 Sam. xxii, 16).
In the light of thy [God’s] countenance (Ps. lxxxix, 15).
Thou God seest me (Gen. xvi, 13).
My God will hear me (Micah vii, 7).
The Lord smelled a sweet savour (Gen. viii, 21).
Will I [God] eat the flesh of bulls? (Ps. 1, 13.).
Will I [God] drink the blood of goats? (Ibid.)
The hand of God hath touched me (Job xix, 21).
We have heard his [God’s] voice (Deut. v, 24).
God doth talk with man (Ibid).
The Lord shall laugh at him (Ps. xxxvii, 13).
Now will I [God] cry (Is. xlii, 14).
He [God] shall give a shout (Jer. xxv, 30).
Why sleepest thou, O Lord? (Ps. xliv, 23.)
Then the Lord awaked (Ps. lxxviii, 65).
God sitteth upon the throne (Ps. xlvii, 8).
God riseth up (Job xxxi, 14).
The Lord stood by him (Acts xxiii, 11).
I [God] will walk among you (Lev. xxvi, 12).
Thou [God] didst ride upon thine horses (Hab. iii, 8).
He [God] wrestled with him (Gen. xxxii, 25).
The Lord will work (1 Sam. xiv, 6).
I [God] am weary (Is. i, 14).
He [God] rested on the seventh day (Gen. ii, 2).
The Lord God planted a garden (Gen. ii, 8).
God is able to graft (Rom. xi, 23).
The Father is a husbandman (John xv, 1).
He [God] hath fenced up my way (Job xix, 8).
The Lord is my shepherd (Ps. xxiii, 1).[324]
The Lord build the house (Ps. cxxvii, 1).
The tables were the work of God (Ex. xxxii, 16).
Thou [God] our potter (Is. lxiv, 8).
The Lord God made coats of skin (Gen. iii, 21).
And [I God] shod thee with badger’s skin (Ezek. xvi, 10).
The Lord shave with a razor (Is. vii, 20).
I [God] will cure them (Jer. xxxiii, 6).
And he [God] buried him (Deut. xxxiv, 6).
Thy God which teacheth thee (Is. xlviii, 17).
Musical instruments of God (1 Ch. xvi, 42).
He [God] wrote upon the tables (Ex. xxxiv, 28).
Thy book which thou [God] hast written (Ex. xxxii, 32).
O Lord, I have heard thy speech (Hab. iii, 2).
The Lord is our lawgiver (Is. xxxiii, 22).
The Lord is our judge (Ibid).
For God is the king of all the earth (Ps. xlvii, 7).
He [God] is the governor (Ps. xxii, 8).
God himself is ... our captain (2 Ch. xiii, 12).
The Lord is a man of war (Ex. xv, 3).
The Lord hath opened his armory (Jer. i, 25).
The Lord shall blow the trumpet (Zech. ix, 14).
I [God] myself will fight (Jer. xxi, 5).
He [God] will whet his sword (Ps. vii, 12).
He [God] hath bent his bow (Lam. ii, 4).
God shall shoot at them (Ps. lxiv, 7).
Rocks are thrown down by him [God] (Nahum i, 6).
I [God] will kill you (Ex. xxii, 24).[325]
Thou [God] art become cruel to me (Job. xxx, 21).
I [God] sware in my wrath (Ps. xcv, 11).
I [God] have cursed them already (Mal. ii, 1).
Thy God hath blessed thee (Deut. ii, 7).
The Lord repented (Amos vii, 6).
God did tempt Abraham (Gen. xxii, 1).
O Lord thou hast deceived me (Jer. xx, 7).
He [God] hath polluted the kingdom (Lam. ii, 2).
He [God] is mighty in strength (Job ix, 4).
With him [God] is wisdom (Job xii, 13).
I [God] was a husband (Jer. xxxi, 32).
The only begotten of the Father (John i, 14).
The sons of God saw the daughters of men (Gen. vi, 2).
The love that God hath to us (1 John iv, 16).
These six things doth the Lord hate (Prov. vi, 16).
The joy of the Lord (Neh. viii, 10).
It grieved him [God] at his heart (Gen. vi, 6).
The Lord pitieth them that fear him (Ps. ciii, 13).
I [God] feared the wrath of the enemy (Deut. xxxii, 27).
The Lord ... is a jealous God (Ex. xxxiv, 14).
The fierce anger of the Lord (Num. xxv, 4).
With the Lord there is mercy (Ps. cxxx, 7)
Vengeance is mine ... saith the Lord (Rom. xii, 10).
While many of these texts are simply metaphorical allusions to a Deity, as a whole they clearly reveal the anthropomorphic conception [326]of God that prevailed among Bible writers generally. This God was represented as a being of power and glory, yet a being possessing the form, the attributes, and the limitations of man. He was a colossal despot—a king of kings.
The God of the Bible is a product of the human imagination. God did not make man in God’s image, as claimed, but man made God in man’s image. Man is not the creation of God, but God is the creation of man.
This God who was supposed to have created the universe out of nothing has himself gradually been resolved into nothingness in the minds of his votaries, and to-day, enthroned in the brain of Christendom, there reigns a mere phantom, “without body, parts, or passions”[327]
[329]
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We are asked to accept the Bible as the revealed will of an all-powerful, all-wise and all-just God. We are asked to revere it beyond all other books, to make a fetich of it. Above all, we are asked to accept it as a divine and infallible moral guide. Christians profess to accept it as such; and many who are not Christians—many who reject the authenticity of the most of it, and who doubt the credibility of much of it—parrot-like, repeat the claims of supernaturalists, dwell upon its “beautiful moral teachings,” and abet the efforts of the clergy to place it in our public schools, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it is not in any sense a moral guide.
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What is morality? Paley, by many considered the chief of modern Christian authorities, basing his conception of morality on the Bible, [330]defines it as “the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God [as revealed in the Bible], and for the sake of everlasting happiness [and to escape everlasting misery].” Supernaturalism and selfishness are thus its sole principles; supernaturalism being its source and selfishness being the motive for its observance. Here virtue does not bring its own reward, the will of God is not omnipotent, and mankind, like a spoiled child, must be bribed or frightened to obey its precepts.
This is the Christian conception of morality. But it is a false conception. Morality is not supernatural and divine, but natural and human. It is purely utilitarian. Utility, regardless of the will of God, is its all-pervading principle. Whatever is beneficial to man is right, is moral; and whatever is injurious to him is wrong, is immoral. The end and aim of moral conduct, according to Hobbes, is self-preservation and happiness; not everlasting happiness in another world, as taught by Paley, but life-lasting happiness in this. Dr. Priestley’s phrase, “The greatest happiness of the greatest number,” is pronounced by Jeremy Bentham, one of the most eminent of ethical writers, “a true standard for whatever is right or wrong, useful, useless, or mischievous in human conduct.”
More and more, as men become civilized and enlightened, the egoistic principles of religionists give way to the altruistic principle of Rationalists. “Live for others” is the sublime [331]teaching of the Positivist Comte. In obeying this noble precept we are not sacrificing, but augmenting our own happiness. “To do good is my religion,” said Thomas Paine. The rewards and punishments of this religion, which is here but another name for morality, are happily expressed by Abraham Lincoln: “When I do good I feel good, and when I do bad I feel bad.” The husband and wife who labor for each other’s happiness, regardless of their own; the father and mother who deprive themselves to make their children happy; men, like Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Hirsch, and women, like Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, who devote their time and wealth to aid in removing the poverty and alleviating the sufferings of humanity—these, by increasing the happiness of others, increase their own.
When the true principles of morality are universally understood and accepted, divine revelations will be cast aside and supernatural religions will die; the zealot’s visions of a celestial paradise will vanish, and the philanthropist’s dream of a heaven on earth will be realized.
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The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount, including the Golden Rule, in the New, are supposed to comprise the best moral teachings of the Bible. They are declared to be so far superior to all other moral codes as to preclude the idea of human origin.[332]
The Decalogue is a very imperfect moral code; not at all superior to the religious and legislative codes of other ancient peoples. The last six of these commandments, while not above criticism, are in the main just, and were recognized alike by Jew and Gentile. They are a crude attempt to formulate the crystallized experiences of mankind. The first four (first three according to Catholic and Lutheran versions) possess no moral value whatever. They are simply religious emanations from the corrupt and disordered brain of priestcraft. They only serve to obscure the principles of true morality and produce an artificial system which bears the same relation to natural morality that a measure of chaff and grain does to a measure of winnowed grain.
As a literary composition and as a partial exposition of the peculiar tenets of a heretical Jewish sect, the Sermon on the Mount is interesting; but as a moral code it is of little value. Along with some admirable precepts, it contains others, like the following, which are false and pernicious: “Blessed are the poor in spirit;” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth;” “If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out;” “If thy right hand offend thee cut it off;” “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery;” “Resist not evil;” “Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;” “If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [333]thy cloak also;” “Love your enemies;” “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth;” “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on;” “Take therefore no thought for the morrow.”
Christians claim that unbelievers have no moral standard, that they alone have such a standard—an infallible standard—the Bible. If we ask them to name the best precept in this standard they cite the Golden Rule. And yet the Golden Rule is in its very nature purely a human rule of conduct. “Whatsoever ye [men, not God] would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” This rule enjoins what Christians profess to condemn, that every person shall form his own moral standard. In this rule the so-called divine laws are totally ignored.
The Golden Rule, so far as the Bible is concerned, is a borrowed gem. Chinese, Greek, and Roman sages had preached and practiced it centuries before the Sermon on the Mount was delivered. This rule, one of the best formulated by the ancients, is not, however, a perfect rule of human conduct. It does not demand that our desires shall always be just. But it does recognize and enjoin the principle of reciprocity, and is immeasurably superior to the rule usually practised by the professed followers of Jesus: Whatsoever we would that you should do unto us, do it; and whatsoever we wish to do unto you, that will we do.[334]
The three Christian virtues, faith, hope, and charity, fairly represent this whole system of so-called Bible morals—two false or useless precepts to one good precept. Charity is a true virtue, but “faith and hope,” to quote Volney, “may be called the virtues of dupes for the benefit of knaves.” And if the knaves have admitted charity to be the greatest of these virtues, it is because they are the recipients and not the dispensers of it.
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The noblest types of manhood, like Bruno, Spinoza, Paine, and Ingersoll, have been slandered, anathematized, and slain by Christians, while the gods, the heroes, the patriarchs, the prophets, and the priests of the Bible have been presented as the highest models of moral excellence. Of these, Jehovah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Paul, and Christ are represented as the greatest and the best.
Who was Jehovah? “A being of terrific character—cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust.”—Jefferson.
Who was Abraham? An insane barbarian patriarch who married his sister, denied his wife, and seduced her handmaid; who drove one child into the desert to starve, and made preparations to butcher the other.
Who was Jacob? Another patriarch, who won God’s love by deceiving his father, cheating his uncle, robbing his brother, practicing [335]bigamy with two of his cousins, and committing fornication with two of his housemaids.
Who was Moses? A model of meekness; a man who boasted of his own humility; a man who murdered an Egyptian and hid his body in the sand; a man who exterminated whole nations to secure the spoils of war, a man who butchered in cold blood thousands of captive widows, a man who tore dimpled babes from the breasts of dying mothers and put them to a cruel death; a man who made orphans of thirty-two thousand innocent girls, and turned sixteen thousand of them over to the brutal lusts of a savage soldiery.
Who was David? “A man after God’s own heart.” A vulgar braggadocio, using language to a woman the mere quoting of which would send me to prison; a traitor, desiring to lead an enemy’s troops against his own countrymen; a thief and robber, plundering and devastating the country on every side; a liar, uttering wholesale falsehoods to screen himself from justice; a red-handed butcher, torturing and slaughtering thousands of men, women, and children, making them pass through burning brick-kilns, carving them up with saws and axes, and tearing them in pieces under harrows of iron; a polygamist, with a harem of wives and concubines; a drunken debauchee, dancing half-naked before the maids of his household; a lecherous old libertine, abducting and ravishing the wife of a faithful soldier; a murderer, having [336]this faithful soldier put to death after desolating his home; a hoary-headed fiend, foaming with vengeance on his dying bed, demanding with his latest breath the deaths of two aged men, one of whom had most contributed to make his kingdom what it was, the other a man to whom he had promised protection.
Who was Paul? A religious fanatic; a Jew and a Christian. As a Jew, in the name of Jehovah, he persecuted Christians; as a Christian, in the name of Christ, he persecuted Jews; and both as a Jew and a Christian, and in the name of both Jehovah and Christ, he practiced dissimulation and hallowed falsehood.
Who was Christ? He is called the “divine teacher.” Yes,
—Shelley.
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In the modern and stricter sense of the term, morality is scarcely taught in the Bible. Neither moral, morals, and morality, nor their equivalents, ethical and ethics, are to be found in the book. T. B. Wakeman, president of the Liberal University of Oregon, a life-long student of sociology and ethics, says:
“The word ‘moral’ does not occur in the Bible, nor even the idea. Hunting for morals in [337]the Bible is like trying to find human remains in the oldest geologic strata—in the eozoon, for instance. Morals had not then been born.”
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions nearly every vice and crime. Here is the long list of wrongs which it authorizes and defends:
“He led
The crowd, he taught them justice, truth, and peace,
In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword
He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul.”
Hebrew,
Samaritan,
Septuagint,
4004
4700
5872
B.C.
B.C.
B.C.
,,
,,
The Bible is, for the most part, the crude literature of a people who lived 2,000 years, and more, ago. Certain principles of right and wrong they recognized, but the finer principles of morality [338]were unknown to them. They were an ignorant people. An ignorant people is generally a religious people, and a religious people nearly always an immoral people. They believed that they were God’s chosen people—God’s peculiar favorites—and that because of this they had the right to rob and cheat, to murder and enslave the rest of mankind. From these two causes, chiefly, ignorance and religion, i. e., superstition, emanated the immoral deeds and opinions which found expression in the writings of their priests and prophets.
The passages in the Bible which deal with vice and crime may be divided into three classes:
1. There are passages which condemn vice and crime. These I indorse.
2. There are many passages in which the crimes and vices of the people are narrated merely as historical facts without either sanctioning or condemning them. The book merits no censure because of these.
3. There are numerous passages which sanction vice and crime. These, and these alone, in the chapters which follow, I shall adduce to prove the charges that I make against the Bible as a moral guide.[339]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions lying and deception.
“And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these, thy prophets” (1 Kings xxii, 20–23).
“If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet” (Ezek. xiv, 9).
“O Lord, thou hast deceived me” (Jer. xx, 7).
“Wilt thou [God] be altogether unto me as a liar?” (Jer. xv, 18.)[340]
“God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie” (2 Thess. ii, 11).
Respecting the forbidden fruit God said: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. ii, 17). But the serpent said, “Ye shall not surely die” (iii, 4). Satan’s declaration proved true, God’s declaration proved untrue. Thus, according to the Bible, the first truth told to man was told by the devil; the first lie told to man was told by God.
In regard to the promised land God says: “Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein, ... and ye shall know my breach of promise” (Num. xiv, 30–34).
God commands Moses to deceive Pharaoh (Ex. iii, 18), he rewards the midwives for their deception (Ex. i, 15–20), and instructs Samuel to deceive Saul (1 Sam. xvi, 2).
“And the Lord said unto Samuel, ... fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take a heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.”
Would an omnipotent and a just God use falsehood and deceit? If there be such a God we must believe that he is an honest and a truthful Being. But this God of the Bible violates nearly every pledge he makes, and instructs his children to lie and deceive.[341]
The patriarchs all follow his example and instructions. Abraham tries to deceive Pharaoh and Abimelech (Gen. xii, 13–19; xx, 2); Sarah tries to deceive the Lord himself (Gen. xviii, 13–15). Abraham becomes the parent of a liar. Isaac said of Rebecca, his wife, “She is my sister” (Gen. xxvi, 7). Rebecca in turn deceives her husband (Gen. xxvii, 6–17). Jacob sustains the reputation of the family for lying.
“And he came unto his father, and said, My father; and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau, thy first-born.... And he discerned him not, so he blessed him. And he said, Art thou my very son, Esau? And he said, I am” (Gen. xxvii, 18–24).
Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, both used deceit. The former deceived her husband (Gen. xxix, 25); the latter deceived her father (Gen. xxxi, 34, 35). His twelve sons were all addicted to the same vice (Gen. xxxvii; xlii, 7), and these became the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people.
David, Elisha, and Jeremiah, three of God’s holiest men, were liars (1 Sam. xxvii, 8–11; 2 Kings, viii, 7–15; Jer. xxxviii, 24–27).
Speaking of the Hebrews and Bible writers prior to the Exile and the introduction of Persian ethics, Dr. Briggs says:
“They seem to know nothing of the sin of speaking lies as such. What is the evidence from this silence? They were altogether unconscious [342]of its sinfulness. The holiest men did not hesitate to lie, whenever they had a good object in view, and they showed no consciousness of sin in it. And the writers who tell of their lies are as innocent as they.”
The Decalogue itself does not forbid lying. It forbids perjury; but mere lying is not forbidden.
Christ taught in parables that he might deceive the people.
“And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark iv, 11, 12).
Paul used deception and boasted of it. He says:
“Being crafty, I caught you with guile” (2 Cor. xii, 16).
“Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews” (1 Cor. ix, 20).
“I am made all things to all men” (1 Cor. ix, 22).
“For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?” (Rom. iii, 7.)
The primitive Christians, accepting the Bible as infallible authority, naturally regarded lying for God’s glory not a vice but a virtue. Mosheim in his “Ecclesiastical History” says:[343]
“It was an established maxim with many Christians, that it was pardonable in an advocate for religion to avail himself of fraud and deception, if it were likely they might conduce toward the attainment of any considerable good.”
Dean Milman, in his “History of Christianity,” says: “It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.”
Dr. Lardner says: “Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud.”
Bishop Fell writes: “In the first ages of the church, so extensive was the license of forging, so credulous were the people in believing that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured.”
M. Daillé, one of the most distinguished of French Protestants, says: “For a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books.”
Dr. Gieseler says they “quieted their conscience respecting the forgery with the idea of their good intention.”
Dr. Priestley says they “thought it innocent and commendable to lie for the sake of truth.”
Scaliger says: “They distrusted the success of Christ’s kingdom without the aid of lying.”
That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted by all Christians. They characterize as forgeries, or unworthy of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.[344]
The thirty-second chapter of the Twelfth Book of Eusebius’s “Evangelical Preparation” bears this significant title: “How far it may be proper to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who require to be deceived.”
Bishop Heliodorus affirms that a “falsehood is a good thing when it aids the speaker and does no harm to the hearers.”
Synesius, another early Christian bishop, writes: “The people are desirous of being deceived; we cannot act otherwise with them.”
That is what most modern theologians think. With Dr. Thomas Burnett, they believe that “Too much light is hurtful to weak eyes.”
That the methods employed in establishing the church are still used in perpetuating its power, a glance at the so-called Christian literature of the day will suffice to show. Read the works of our sectarian publishers, examine the volumes that compose our Sunday-school libraries, peruse our religious papers and periodicals, and you will see that age has but confirmed this habit formed in infancy.
Every church dogma is a lie; and based upon lies, the church depends upon fraud for its support. The work of its ministers is not to discover and promulgate truths, but to invent and disseminate falsehoods. In the words of Isaiah, they well might say: “We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”
The church offers a premium on falsehood [345]and imposes a punishment for truthfulness. With a bribe in one hand and a club in the other, she has sought to prolong her sway. The allurements of the one and the fear of the other have filled the world with hypocrisy. In our halls of Congress, in the editorial sanctum, in the professor’s chair, behind the counter, in the workshop, at the fireside, everywhere, we find men professing to believe what they know to be false, or wearing the seal of silence on their lips, while rank imposture stalks abroad and truth is trampled in the mire before them.
Every truth seeker is taunted and ridiculed; every truth teller persecuted and defamed; the scientist and philosopher are discouraged and opposed; the heretic and Infidel calumniated and maligned. In proof of this, witness the abuse heaped upon the Darwins and Huxleys, see the countless calumnies circulated against the Paines and Ingersolls.
It is said that Paulus Jovius kept a bank of lies. To those who paid him liberally he gave noble pedigrees and reputations; those who did not he slandered and maligned. Paulus is dead, but the church, guided by Bible morality, continues his business.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide, because it sanctions cheating and the use of dishonorable methods in obtaining wealth and power.[346]
“And Jacob sod [boiled] pottage; and Esau came from the fields, and he was faint; and Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint.... And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die; and what profit shall this birthright do me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him; and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and rose up and went away” (Gen. xxv, 29–34).
This transaction, one of the basest recorded, receives the sanction of the Bible. Jacob, with God’s assistance, by using striped rods, cheated Laban out of his cattle:
“And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.
“When the cattle were feeble, he put them not in; so the feebler were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle” (Gen. xxx, 41–43).
“If he [Laban] said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the cattle bare speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstreaked shall be thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstreaked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given them to me” (Gen. xxxi, 8, 9).
Thus, by defrauding his uncle, his famishing brother, and his blind and aged father, this God-beloved[347]
patriarch stands forth the prince of cheats—the patron saint of rogues.
The Israelites obtain the Egyptians’ property by false pretenses.
“And I [God] will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall come to pass that when ye go, ye shall not go empty; but every woman shall borrow of her neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil [rob] the Egyptians” (Ex. iii, 21, 22).
“And the Lord said unto Moses, ... Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold” (Ex xi, 1, 2).
“And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment; and the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required; and they spoiled the Egyptians” (Ex. xii, 35, 36).
Here obtaining goods under false pretenses and embezzlement are commended by God himself. It may be claimed that the Egyptians had wronged the Israelites. Suppose they had; could God secure justice for them only by treachery and fraud? Suppose your son worked for a farmer, and that farmer defrauded [348]him of his wages; would you advise your son to borrow a horse of his employer and decamp with it in order to obtain redress, especially when you had the power to obtain redress by lawful means? Instead of encouraging these slaves in an act that would eventually lead them to become a race of thieves and robbers, an honest God would have taken their masters by the collar and said, “You have received the labor of these men and women; pay them for it!”
In the Mosaic law we find the following beautiful statute:
“Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien” (Deut. xiv, 21).
“Anything that dieth of itself” is diseased. Diseased flesh is poisonous. To authorize its use, even if those receiving it are not deceived, is immoral.
Out West, a family, good Christians, had a hog to die of some disease. What did they do with it? Eat it? No, their Bible told them this would be wrong. They dressed it nicely, took it into an adjoining neighborhood, and sold it to strangers. Was this right? The Bible says it was.
With the widespread influence of a book inculcating such lessons in dishonesty, what must be the inevitable result? Men distrust their fellow men; along our business thoroughfares [349]Fraud drives with brazen front; in almost every article of merchandise we buy we find a lie enshrined; at every corner sits some Jacob slyly whittling spotted sticks to win his neighbor’s flocks.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions theft and robbery.
Its pages teem with accounts of robberies, and in many instances God is said to have planned them and shared in the spoils. He instructs Moses to send a marauding expedition against the Midianites. They put the inhabitants to the sword, and return with 800,000 cattle. Of this booty God exacts 800 head for himself and 8,000 head for his priests. The remainder he causes to be divided between the soldiers and citizens. So elated are the Israelites with their success, so grateful to God for his assistance, that they make him a gift of 16,000 shekels of stolen gold (Num. xxxi).
When Joshua took Jericho, “they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein; only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron they put into the treasury of the Lord” (Josh, vi, 19–24).
When he captured Ai, “the cattle and the spoils of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua” (Josh, viii, 27).
Jehovah gets the spoils of Jericho, and Israel those of Ai.[350]
David, a modest shepherd lad, is placed under the tutelage of Jehovah only to become the cruelest robber of his time. On one occasion, purely for plunder, he despoiled three nations and “saved neither man nor woman alive to bring tidings to Gath, saying, Lest they should tell on us” (1 Sam. xxvii, 8–12).
It is said that the Italian bandit never plans a robbery without invoking a divine blessing upon his undertaking, doubtless believing that the God of David, of Moses, and of Joshua still reigns.
Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, were both thieves. Leah appropriated the property of her son; Rachel stole her father’s jewels. Neither act was condemned.
“When thou comest into thy neighbor’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure, but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel.
“When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor’s standing corn” (Deut. xxiii, 24, 25).
“Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry” (Prov. vi, 30).
Grand larceny is condemned, but petty larceny is commended.
Christ enjoined submission to robbery: “Of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again” (Luke vi, 30).[351]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions murder.
It is true the Sixth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill;” but this law is practically annulled by innumerable commands from the same source, like the following, to kill:
“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 neighbor” (Ex. xxxii, 27).
“Spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling” (1 Sam. xv, 3).
“Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children” (Ezek. ix, 6)
“Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood” (Jer. xlviii, 10).
For the leader and legislator of his chosen people, God selects a murderer. The first recorded act of Moses was premeditated murder. [352]“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” (Ex. ii 12).
For committing a murder, Phinehas is rewarded by Jehovah with “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood” (Num. xxv, 6–13).
Samuel “hewed Agag,” a captive king, “in pieces before the Lord” (1 Sam. xv, 32, 33).
Jehu murders all the house of Ahab, and God rewards him for it:
“And Joram turned his hands and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah. And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his arms, and the arrow went out at his heart and he sunk down in his chariot.
“But when Ahaziah, the king of Judah, saw this, he fled by the way of the garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also in the chariot. And they did so.
“And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window. And as Jehu entered in at the gate she said, Had Zimri peace who slew his master? And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? Who? And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs. And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses; and he trode her under foot. And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and [353]said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her; for she is a king’s daughter. And they went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.”
The dogs had devoured her.
“And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters and sent to Samaria.... And it came to pass when the letter came to them, that they took the king’s sons, and slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel.”
“So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining.”
“And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel” (2 Kings ix, 23, 24, 27, 30–35; x, 1, 7, 11, 30).
The assassination of Eglon by Ehud was characterized by the basest treachery and brutality. Eglon was king of Moab. Ehud carried a present to him, and after he had delivered the present he told the king that he had a private message for him. Eglon ordered his attendants to retire, and when alone Ehud drew a large dagger from beneath his cloak and thrust it through the body of the king. And [354]the Bible tells us that God raised up Ehud expressly for this work (Jud. iii, 15–23).
The warmest eulogy in the Bible is bestowed upon a murderess. Sisera is a fugitive from battle. He reaches in safety the tent of Heber, his friend. Heber is absent, but Jael, his wife, receives the fugitive, and bids him welcome. She gives him food, spreads a soft couch for him, and covers him with her mantle. Wearied with his retreat, and unconscious of impending danger, Sisera soon sinks into a profound slumber. With a tent nail in one hand and a hammer in the other, Jael approaches the bedside of her sleeping guest. She bends over him, listens to assure herself that he is asleep, then places the nail against his temple, and with a blow drives it through his head. A struggle, and Sisera is dead, a victim of one of the most damnable deeds ever committed.
In honor of this assassination, God’s favorite prophetess, Deborah, sings:
“Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be; blessed shall she be above women in the tent. He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish. She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead. [355]The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?” (Jud. v, 24–28.)
We wish to place before our children, for their emulation, good and noble characters. We have been taught that in the Bible such characters may be found. You desire a model woman to place before your daughter. What one will you select? Here is a woman whom the Bible pronounces “blessed above women.” This must be a suitable model, then. Blessed for what? For committing one of the most infamous of murders.
We had a Kansas girl who followed in the footsteps of this “blessed woman.” Years ago, across the prairies of southern Kansas stretched a lonely road. By its side, far from other habitations, stood an unpretentious dwelling, inhabited by four persons—father, mother, son, and daughter. But the daughter was the ruling spirit there. Their only volume, we are told, was a Bible, and this the daughter read. The house contains two rooms besides the cellar. The rooms are separated simply by a curtain. In the front room is kept a small stock of groceries. Here, too, with its back against the curtain, and fastened to the floor, stands a chair. Above the door is a sign with this inviting word, “Provisions.” A traveler enters and makes some purchases, displaying a well-filled purse. He is treated hospitably, and invited to [356]remain awhile and rest. Wearied, he drops into the chair, his head pressing against the curtain. Armed with a hammer, this follower of Jael now approaches from the rear. One well-directed blow, and the tired traveler sinks into eternal rest. His pockets are rifled, and his body thrown into the cellar, to be taken out at night and buried in the little garden behind the dwelling. Time rolls on; the traveler does not return. Day after day his wife at home, with anxious heart, peers through the window and sighs, “Why don’t he come?” At length suspicion rests upon this den of infamy. A search is instituted, and the garden is found to be a cemetery, filled with the bodies of murdered travelers—one a little child. In the mean time this female monster with her kin has fled. Detectives are still searching for her. They’ll never find her. Where is she? In heaven with Jael. Now let some modern Deborah sing, “Blessed above maidens shall Kate Bender be!”
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions wars of conquest and extermination.
“Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight” (Ps. cxliv, 1).
The Old Testament is largely a record of wars and massacres. God is represented as “a [357]man of war.” At his command whole nations are exterminated.
“Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, ... and ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein” (Num. xxxiii, 52, 53).
“And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them” (Deut. vii, 16).
“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” (Deut. xx, 16, 17).
“And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.... 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” (Num. xxxi, 7–10).
Moses is angry because the women and children have been saved, and from this fiendish conqueror comes the mandate: “Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man.”
The mourning remnants of twenty thousand families are thus to be destroyed. The fathers, far away, lie still in death beside the smouldering [358]ruins of their once fair homes; and now their wives and little ones are doomed to die. The signal is sounded, and the massacre begins. The mothers, on bended knees, with tearful eyes and pleading lips, are ruthlessly cut down. Their prattling babes, in unsuspecting innocence, smile on the uplifted sword as if it were a glittering toy, and the next moment feel it speeding through their little frames. The daughters only are spared—spared to be the wretched slaves of those whose hands are red with the life-blood of their dear ones.
And this is but a prelude to the sanguinary scenes that are to follow.
“Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon; behold I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle. This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.”
“And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city, we left none to remain” (Deut. ii, 24, 25, 34).
“The Lord our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people, and we smote him until none was left to him remaining. And we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took not [359]from them, threescore cities.... And we utterly destroyed them as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city” (Deut. iii, 3–6).
Moses dies, and Joshua next leads Jehovah’s troops.
“And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho.... And they utterly destroyed all that was in that city, both man and woman, young and old” (Josh. vi, 2, 21).
“And the Lord said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand.... And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand.... And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it a heap forever” (Josh. viii, 18, 25, 28).
“And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, unto Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it. And the Lord delivered Lachish into the hands of Israel, which took it on the second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein” (Josh. x, 31, 32).
“And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it. And they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day” (Josh. x, 34, 35).
Thus city after city falls, and nation after nation [360]is vanquished, until thirty-one kingdoms have been destroyed. And still there “remaineth much land to be possessed,” and many millions more of unoffending people to be slain to please this God of War.
Christ came, heralded as the “Prince of Peace.” But he “came not to send peace but a sword”—a sword his own arm was too weak to wield, but which his followers have used with dire effect. Expunge from the history of Christendom the record of its thousand wars and little will remain. From the time that Constantine inscribed the emblem of the cross upon his banner to the present hour, the church of Christ has been upheld by the sword. Five million troops maintain its political supremacy in Europe to-day. To “express our national acknowledgment of Almighty God as the source of all authority in civil government; of the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler of nations, and of his revealed will as of supreme authority;” in short, to make this a “Christian nation,” as Bible moralists demand, means a standing army in this country of five hundred thousand men.
The Bible has inspired more wars in Christendom than all else combined. It is a fountain of blood, and the crimson rivers that have flowed from it would float the navies of the world.[361]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions human sacrifices.
“No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death” (Lev. xxvii, 28, 29).
God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son:
“Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering” (Gen. xxii, 2).
The order was countermanded, but the perusal of this text has driven thousands to insanity and murder.
That a famine may cease, David sacrifices the sons of Saul:[362]
“Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?... And they answered the king, The man that consumed us and devised against us.... Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord.... And the king said, I will give them. And he delivered them unto the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest” (2 Sam. xxi).
The sacrifice, we are told, was accepted, and the famine ceased.
Five of these innocent victims, if the Bible be true, were the sons of Michal, David’s own wife. Two were the sons of Rizpah. Throughout that long summer—from April till October—in the heat and glare of the day and the chill and darkness of the night, Rizpah, broken-hearted, tenderly watches and protects the decaying bodies of her dead sons and relatives.
“And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.”
When I dwell on this dark tragedy, and contrast the love and devotion of this agonized and despairing Hebrew mother with the malignant [363]hatred and heartless cruelty of this Bible God and his despicable agent, humanity rises to the highest heaven and divinity sinks to the lowest hell.
The pathetic story of Jephthah’s daughter is familiar to all. Jephthah is a warrior, and makes a vow that if he is permitted to conquer the children of Ammon, upon his return the first that meets him at the door will be offered up for a burnt offering unto the Lord. He is successful; the Lord permits him to defeat the children of Ammon. Upon his return the first to meet him is his daughter, an only child. He tells her of his vow. She prays for two brief months to live. Her prayer is granted, and at the expiration of this time, the Bible tells us that Jephthah “did with her according to the vow which he had vowed” (Jud. xi, 26–40).
Describing the fulfilment of this terrible vow, Dr. Oort says:
“This victim, crowned with flowers, was led round the altar with music and song in honor of Yahweh. She met her cruel fate without shrinking. But who shall say how sick at heart her father was when he struck that fatal blow with his own hand and saw the blood of his darling child poured out upon the sacred stone, while her body was burned upon the altar?” (Bible for Learners, Vol. I., p. 408.)
“In that frightful sacrifice that he performed—breaking the holiest domestic ties—we do but [364]see the disastrous results of a mistaken faith” (Ibid., p. 411).
The celebrated Jewish commentator, Dr. Kalisch, while endeavoring to palliate as far as possible the crimes of his people, admits that human sacrifices were not uncommon among them:
“The fact stands indisputable that human sacrifices offered to Jehovah were possible among the Hebrews long after the time of Moses, without meeting a check or censure from the teachers and leaders of the nation” (Leviticus, Part I., p. 385).
“One instance like that of Jephthah not only justifies, but necessitates, the influence of a general custom. Pious men slaughtered human victims, not to Moloch, nor to any other foreign deity, but to the national God, Jehovah” (Ibid., p. 390).
Jules Soury says: “Nothing is better established than the existence of human sacrifices among the Hebrews in honor of Iahveh, and that down to the time of Josiah, perhaps even until the return from the Babylonish captivity” (Religion of Israel, p. 46).
The Church, having received the benefits of a sacrificed God, deems human sacrifices no longer necessary. But what can be said of the Church as a whole cannot be said of all its individual members. Scarcely a year passes without the sacrifice of human beings by those who believe the Bible to be inspired, and who believe that [365]what was right three thousand years ago is right to-day.
The sacrifice of little Ben Smith at Los Angeles, in 1882, is still remembered by some. His father was converted at a Methodist revival. He became very religious. The press dispatches stated that “for several months he devoted his time to the study of the Bible until he not only convinced himself that he ought to make a human sacrifice, but brought his wife and their only child, a boy of thirteen, to acquiesce, in his views.” I quote from the mother’s testimony:
“When he talked to me and persuaded me that a good wife ought to think as her husband did, I got so as to take whatever he said as the truth. He made us fast, and when Ben asked him if God had ordered us to starve he said yes. When he announced that the boy must be killed we both remonstrated, but finally thought it was all right. On the day appointed for the ceremony he called Ben out of the house and told him he had to die for our savior. The little fellow knelt down and I got on my knees by his side; John raised the knife, looked hard into the boy’s face, and then drove the knife into his breast.”
Here the mother was overcome with grief. Regaining her composure, she continued: “I am always thinking of Ben; I am always hearing him in the night asking to be brought in and laid on his bed, and begging for a little water before he died.”[366]
Let me recall another half-forgotten scene. In a quiet village of New England live a pair whom nature meant for good, kind citizens. But they have become infatuated with the Bible. They believe it to be infallible. Day after day they pore over its pages. They dwell with especial interest upon the story of Abraham and Isaac, until at last they become impressed with the belief that they, too, are called upon to offer up their child. The fatal hour arrives. Nerved for the cruel deed, they approach the bedside of their child, a sweet-faced, curly-haired girl of four. How placidly she rests! Folded upon her breast are dimpled hands, white as the winter snow; curtained in slumber are eyes as mild as the summer sky. How beautiful! How pure! We would risk our lives to save that pretty thing from harm. How dear, then, must she be to that father and that mother! She is their idol. But that idol is about to be sacrificed upon the altar of superstition. There they stand—the mother with a lamp in her hand, the father with a knife. They gaze for a moment upon their sleeping victim. Then the father lifts his arm and plunges the knife into the heart of his child! A quiver—the blue eyes open, and cast a reproachful look upon the parent. The little lips exclaim, “O papa!” and the sacrifice is made!
You may say these people were insane. Aye, but what made them insane? And what, more than almost any other cause, is filling our asylums [367]with these unfortunate people? The vain attempt to reconcile with reason the irreconcilable teachings of the Bible.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it teaches the horrible custom of cannibalism.
“The fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers” (Ezek. v, 10).
“And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat” (Lev. xxvi, 29).
“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend” (Jer. xix, 9).
“And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters.... So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he will not give to any of them the flesh of his children whom he shall eat.... The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, [368]... for she shall eat them” (Deut. xxviii, 53–57).
“The hands of the pitiful women have sodden [boiled] their own children” (Lam. iv, 10).
“And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son” (2 Kings vi, 28, 29).
You will say that these were punishments inflicted upon these people for their sins. And you will have us believe that these punishments were just. Strange justice! a merciful God compelling a starving mother to kill and devour her own child!
“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John vi, 53).
The church perpetuates the idea, if not the practice, of cannibalism. The Christian takes a piece of bread, and tries to make himself and the world believe that he is eating the body of Christ; he takes a sup of wine, and says, “This is Christ’s blood.” Your sacramental feast points to the time when savage priests gathered around the festal board and supped on human flesh and blood.
Primitive Christians, many of them, were guilty of cannibalism. In their Agapæ they [369]were accustomed to kill and eat an infant. Dr. Cave in his “Primitive Christianity” (Part III., ch. i) says:
“Epiphanius reports that the Gnostics (a sect of primitive Christians) at their meetings were wont to take an infant begotten in their promiscuous mixtures, and, beating it in a mortar, to season it with honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to make it palatable, and then like swine or dogs to devour it, and then to conclude all with prayer.”
Meredith, in “The Prophet of Nazareth,” says:
“So well known were those horrid vices to be carried on by Christians in their nocturnal and secret assemblies, and so certain it was thought that every one who was a Christian participated in them, that for a person to be known to be a Christian was thought a strong presumptive proof that he was guilty of these offenses.... It would appear, however, that, owing to the extreme measures taken against them by the Romans, both in Italy and in all the provinces, the Christians, by degrees, were forced to abandon entirely in their Agapæ infant murders, together with every species of obscenity, retaining, nevertheless, some of them, such as the kiss of charity, and the bread and wine, which they contended was transubstantiated into real flesh and blood.”
In the remote districts of Christian Russia, where the rays of our civilization have not yet [370]penetrated the darkness of theology, where Bible morals are still supreme, we are told that even at the present time a more terribly real form attaches to this eucharistic ceremony. From Harper’s Weekly I quote the following:
“We hear of horrid sects at present in Russia, practicing cannibal and human sacrifices with rites almost more devilish than any recorded in history. ‘The communism of the flesh of the Lamb’ and ‘the communism of the blood of the Lamb’ really seem to have been invented by the lowest demons of the bottomless pit. The subject is too revolting to be pursued in detail; it is enough to say that an infant seven days old is bandaged over the eyes, stretched over a dish, and a silver spoon thrust into the side so as to pierce the heart. The elect suck the child’s blood—that is ‘the blood of the Lamb!’ The body is left to dry up in another dish full of sage, then crushed into powder and eaten—that is ‘the flesh of the Lamb!’”
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it recognizes as a verity the delusion of witchcraft and punishes with death its victims.
The God that inspired the account of Saul’s interview with the witch of Endor was as thorough a believer in witchcraft as the most superstitious crone of the Middle Ages.
Manasseh “used enchantments, and used [371]witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards” (2 Chron. xxxiii, 6).
Isaiah speaks of “wizards that peep and mutter” (Isa. viii, 19).
Samuel (1 Sam, xv, 23) and Micah (v, 12) and Nahum (iii, 4) and Paul (Gal. v, 20) all admit the reality of witchcraft.
The decline in the belief of wizards and witches denotes a decline of faith in the Bible. Until a very recent period, those who professed to believe in the divinity of the Bible also professed to believe in the reality of witchcraft. “Giving up witchcraft,” says John Wesley, “is, in effect, giving up the Bible” (Journal, 1768).
Sir William Blackstone says: “To deny the possibility—nay, actual existence—of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testaments.”
Sir Matthew Hale says: “The Bible leaves no doubt as to the reality of witchcraft and the duty of putting its subjects to death.”
“I should have no compassion on these witches.” said Luther; “I would burn them all” (Table Talk).
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. xxii, 18).
“A man also or a woman that hath a familial spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death” (Lev. xx, 27).
Oh, that I could bring to view the suffering and death these texts have caused! Millions have [372]died because of them. One thousand were burned at Como in one year; 800 were burned at Würzburg in one year; 500 perished at Geneva in three months; 80 were burned in a single village of Savoy; nine women were burned in a single fire at Leith; sixty were hanged at Suffolk; 3,000 were legally executed during one session of Parliament, while thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian judge, executed 800; 600 were burned by one bishop at Bamburg; Boguet burned 600 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 4,000 in Scotland; 50,000 were sentenced to death during the reign of Francis I.; 7,000 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 shall not suffer a witch to live,” was the torch that kindled them.
Four hundred were burned at Toulouse in one day. Think of it! Four hundred women—guilty of no crime, save that which exists in the diseased imaginations of their accusers—four hundred mothers, wives, and daughters, taken out upon the public square, chained to posts, the fagots piled around them, and burned to [373]death! See them writhing in the flames—listen to their piteous shrieks—four hundred voices raised in one wild chorus of agony! And all because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
Only a few years ago, in the province of Novgorod, Russia, a woman was burnt for witchcraft. Agrafena was a soldier’s widow, and possessed of more than ordinary gifts of mind. But ignorance and superstition prevailed around her. Every strange occurrence, every disease that could not be accounted for, was the result of witchcraft. One day a farmer’s daughter was seized with some violent disease, and in her paroxysms of pain she chanced to breathe the name of Agrafena. That was enough; Agrafena was a witch. A mob was raised and led to the widow’s dwelling. They called her to the door, parleyed with her a moment, then thrust her back into the house, fastened its doors, and set it on fire. And while it was burning, this mob, led by Christian priests, stood around it, singing praises to God—their strains blended with the shrieks of this dying woman—dying because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
And in our own America the blighting influence of this delusion and this brutal statute has been felt. With the soil of our Republic is mingled the dust of murdered women—murdered because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”[374]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions the infamous crime of human slavery.
“Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you; of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever” (Lev. xx. v, 44–46).
In certain cases they were even permitted to enslave the members of their own race.
“If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master [375]have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out by himself” (Ex. xxi, 2–4).
If he desires his liberty he must desert his wife and little ones. To become a freeman he must become an exile.
“And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post; and his master shall bore his ears through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever” (5, 6).
“And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
“And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
“God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant” (Gen. ix, 25–27).
Nor is it the Jewish Scriptures alone which sanction slavery. The Christian Scriptures are not less emphatic in their indorsement of it.
“Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor” (1 Tim. vi, 1).
“Exhort servants to be obedient unto their masters” (Titus ii, 9).
“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling” (Eph. vi, 5).[376]
“Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward” (1 Pet. ii, 18).
It may be urged that the term “servant” here refers to a hired servant. Not so; wherever the word “servant” occurs in the New Testament, it means slave in its worst sense.
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.
Referring to this act of Paul, the Rev. Dr. Stringfellow of Virginia wrote:
“Oh, how immeasurably different Paul’s conduct to this slave and master, from the conduct of our abolition brethren! This is sufficient to teach any man that slavery is not, in the sight of God, what it is in the sight of the abolitionists” (Scriptural View of Slavery).
The Rev. Moses Stuart of Massachusetts wrote:
“What, now, have we here? Paul sending back a Christian servant, who had run away from his Christian master.... Paul’s conscience sent back the fugitive slave. Paul’s conscience, then, like his doctrines, was very different from that of the abolitionists.”
It was no easy task to convince the Bible moralist that slavery was wrong. When the French Revolutionists rejected the Bible, they abolished slavery in the colonies. When the [377]church regained control of the government, the Bible came back, and with it slavery. When Clarkson’s bill for the abolition of slavery was before Parliament, Lord Chancellor Thurlow characterized it as a “miserable and contemptible bill,” and “contrary to the Word of God.”
Charles Bradlaugh, in the North American Review, writing of his own Christian England, says:
“George III., a most Christian king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and the Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting freedom to the slave. When Christian missionaries, some sixty years ago, preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges, holding commission from Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of England, signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as 1824.”
The most zealous defenders of slavery in this country were Bible moralists. 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.”
The Rev. E. D. Simms, professor in Randolph-Macon College, wrote: “These extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves.”
The Rev. R. Furman, D. D., Baptist, of South Carolina, said: “The right of holding slaves is [378]clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.”
Rev. Thomas Witherspoon, Presbyterian, of Alabama, said: “I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to hold the slave in bondage.”
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.”
You say that this is the testimony of interested parties, that the South was interested in perpetuating slavery. True, but where did your Northern theologians stand?
Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, President of Wesleyan University, thus wrote: “The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority.”
The Rev. Dr. Nathan Lord, President of Dartmouth College, wrote: “Slavery was incorporated into the civil institutions of Moses; it was recognized accordingly by Christ and his apostles. They regulated it by the just and benevolent principles of the New Testament. They condemned all intermeddlers with it.”
Professor Hodge, of Princeton, said: “The Savior found it around him, the Apostles met with it in Asia, Greece, and Italy. How did they treat it? Not by denunciation of slave-holding as necessarily sinful.”
Said the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Principal of the Theological Department of Yale College: “I have [379]no doubt that if Jesus Christ were now on earth, he would, under certain circumstances, become a slaveholder.”
It is now half-forgotten that the North as well as the South once practiced slavery—that New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all held slaves. Christian New England, which made the Bible both its legal and moral code, for more than one hundred years, held Negroes and Indians in slavery, and even sold Quaker children into bondage. “Parish ministers all over New England,” says the Rev. William Goodell, “owned slaves” (American Slave Code, p. 106).
Clerical slaveholders in the South trampled under foot the relations of wife and mother; and clerical slaveholders in the North did the same. Mr. Goodell says:
“Even in Puritan New England, seventy years ago, female slaves, in ministers’ and magistrates’ families, bore children, black or yellow, without marriage. No one inquired who their fathers were, and nothing more was thought of it than of the breeding of sheep or swine” (Ibid., p. 111).
“A Congregational minister at Hampton, Conn. (Rev. Mr. Mosely), separated by sale a husband and wife who were both of them members of his own church, and who had been, by his own officiating act as a minister, united in marriage” (Ibid., p. 114).
Let me cite one of the laws of the Bible relative to the treatment of slaves—a law which [380]demons would blush to indorse, but which a merciful (?) God enacted for the guidance of his children:
“If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money” (Ex. xxi, 20, 21).
Here a master may brutally beat his slave, and if that slave linger in the agonies of death a day or two before dying, he shall not be punished, because the slave “is his money.”
Goodell’s “American Slave Code,” a work written by a Christian clergyman, and which I have already quoted, contains four hundred pages of outrages, like the following, committed by men who accepted the Bible as their moral guide:
“A minister in South Carolina, a native of the North, had a stated Sabbath appointment to preach, about eight miles from his residence. He was in the habit of riding thither in his gig. Behind him ran his negro slave on foot, who was required to be at the place of appointment as soon as his master, to take care of his horse. Sometimes he fell behind, and kept his master waiting for him a few minutes, for which he always received a reprimand, and was sometimes punished. On one occasion of this kind, after sermon, the master told the slave that he would take care to have him keep up with him, going home. So he tied him by the wrists, with [381]a halter, to his gig behind, and drove rapidly home. The result was that, about two or three miles from home, the poor fellow’s feet and legs failed him, and he was dragged on the ground all the rest of the way by the wrists! On alighting and looking round, the master exclaimed, ‘Well; I thought you would keep up with me this time!’ So saying, he coolly walked into the house. The servants came out and took up the poor sufferer for dead. After a time he revived a little, lingered for a day or two, and died!”
Was this brutal minister punished? He was not. “If he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.” Was he silenced from preaching? was he even reprimanded by the church? No. Without punishment, without censure, he continued to preach Bible morals and abuse his slaves.
Frederick Douglass, the greatest of his race and a slave, says: “My master found religious sanctity for his cruelty.... I have seen him tie up a lame young woman and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture: ‘He that knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.’”
Slavery flourished on this continent because the Bible taught that it was lawful and just. To oppose slavery was to oppose the plainest teachings of this book. The Abolition movement was [382]an Infidel movement. The Emancipation Proclamation was a nullification of “God’s law.” The great Rebellion was a contest between Bible morality and natural morality. The latter triumphed, but the conflict filled half a million graves, brought grief to many million hearts, and covered the land with desolation.
And this advocate of slavery is the idol Protestants worship; this is the book they wish to become the law of our land; this is the moral guide they wish to place in our public schools! In the name of those who died for the freedom of their fellow-men; in the name of those made childless, fatherless, and companionless by this cruel strife; in the name of those whose backs still bear the scars of the master’s lash; in the name of human liberty, I protest against this retrogressive movement!
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions that other twin relic of barbarism, polygamy.
The Mosaic law provides that “if a man have two wives, one beloved and another hated,” he shall not ignore the legal rights of the hated wife’s children (Deut. xxi, 15–17). This statute recognizes both the existence and the validity of the institution.
Another statute (Deut. xxv, 5) provides that if a man die, his surviving brother shall become the husband of his widow, and this regardless as to whether the brother be married or single.[383]
The first eighteen verses of the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus are devoted to what is termed “unlawful marriages.” Here polygamy is recognized and regulated to the extent of prohibiting a man from marrying the sister of a living wife.
But there is one statute which places the validity of this institution, so far as the Bible is concerned, beyond all controversy. Deuteronomy (xxiii, 2) declares that no illegitimate child shall enter into the congregation of the Lord, even up to the tenth generation. Now, polygamy was either lawful or unlawful. If unlawful, then the children of polygamists were illegitimate children, and disqualified for the sanctuary. But the children of polygamists were not thus disqualified. The founders of the twelve tribes of Israel were all children of a polygamist.
The most renowned Bible characters were polygamists. Abraham had two wives, and when he died the Lord said, “Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (Gen. xxvi, 6).
Jacob was a polygamist, and after he had secured four wives and concubines, God blessed him and said, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. xxxv, 11).
Gideon had “many wives” (Jud. viii, 30), and it was to him an angel came and said, “The Lord is with thee” (Jud. vi, 12).
David had a score of wives and concubines, [384]and “David was a man after God’s own heart;” “David did right in the eyes of the Lord.” God himself said to David, “I delivered thee out of the hands of Saul; and I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives” (2 Sam. xii, 7, 8).
“And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart”—sufficient to hold a thousand wives and concubines.
Many years ago the Mormon, Orson Pratt, wrote a defense of polygamy, based upon the Bible. A noted lawyer of New York sent a copy of it to the Rev. Dr. W. B. Sprague with the interrogation, “Can you answer this?” Back came the frank reply, “No; can you?”
It is claimed that the New Testament is opposed to polygamy. It is not. William Ellery Channing says:
“There is no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament. It is an indisputable fact that although Christianity was first preached in Asia, which had been from the earliest ages the seat of polygamy, the Apostles never denounced it as a crime, and never required their converts to put away all wives but one.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton says: “It was at a Jewish polygamous wedding that Jesus performed his first miracle, and polygamy was practiced by Christians for centuries.”
It is true that many primitive Christians did not practice polygamy. And why? Because Pagan Greece and Rome had taught them better. [385]It was to them, and not to their Scriptures, that they were indebted for the monogamic system of marriage. The Roman Catholic church did not generally sustain polygamy; but it did sustain a system of concubinage which was certainly as bad. For centuries the keeping of concubines was almost universal among the Catholic clergy, one abbot keeping no less than seventy.
The founders of the Protestant church, however, accepting the Bible as their guide, attaching to it a degree of authority which had never been attached to it before, were candid and consistent enough to admit the validity of the institution. Referring to this subject, Sir William Hamilton, a Christian and a Protestant, says:
“As to polygamy in particular, which not only Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, the three leaders of the German Reformation, speculatively adopted, but to which above a dozen distinguished divines among the Reformers stood formally committed” (Discussions on Philosophy and Literature).
Speaking of Luther and Melanchthon, Hamilton says:
“They had both promulgated opinions in favor of polygamy, to the extent of vindicating to the spiritual minister a right of private dispensation, and to the temporal magistrate the right of establishing the practice if he chose by public law” (Ibid).
In accordance with these views, John of [386]Leydon, a zealous Protestant, established polygamy at Munster, and murdered or drove from their homes all who dared to oppose the odious custom. Other Protestants followed his example.
On the 19th of December, 1539, at Wittenberg, Luther and Melanchthon drew up the famous “Consilium,” authorizing the landgrave, Philip of Hesse, to have a plurality of wives. This instrument bears the signatures of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, Antony Corvinus, Adam Kraft, Justus Winther, and Balthasar Raida, nine of the leading Protestant divines of Germany.
It is a well-known fact that Luther advised Henry VIII. to adopt polygamy in his case, but by divorcing two wives, and murdering two more, the founder of the English church avoided it.
The advocacy of polygamy by the chief Reformers prevented Ferdinand I. from declaring for the Reformation. The German princes, too, generally opposed it; and this opposition, coupled with the fact that the most licentious sects espoused it, finally caused a reaction in favor of monogamy.
Protestants, it ill became you to point the finger of scorn at the Mormons of Utah. Yet with characteristic consistency you were demanding the suppression of polygamy in the territories, while at the same time you were endeavoring [387]to have the whole country accept as infallible authority a book which sanctions the pernicious custom. Make the Bible the fundamental law of the land, as you demand, and polygamy will become, in theory at least, a national instead of a local institution.[388]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions adultery and prostitution.
Adultery is made prominent by the recital of the numerous adulteries of Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Judah, Samson, David, and other Bible saints, and sanctified by the approved adulteries of Abraham and Jacob.
Both Abraham and Isaac were willing to sell the virtue of their wives to save themselves from harm.
Two instances are recorded of fathers having offered their own daughters to gratify the lust of a sensual mob, and these abominable acts are represented as especially meritorious. Read the nineteenth chapter of Genesis and the nineteenth chapter of Judges; dwell upon the eighth verse of the former and the twenty-fourth verse of the latter; and then, if you can indorse the spirit of these narratives, you are unfit to be the parent of a daughter.
The Mosaic law authorizes a father to sell his daughter for a concubine or mistress (euphemistically [389]translated “maid servant”). God’s instructions respecting the thirty-two thousand captive Midianite maidens impliedly sanction concubinage and prostitution.
These Bible teachings have been the cause of countless outrages against the chastity of woman. John Wesley says:
“Almost all the soldiers in the Christian world ... have claimed, more especially in time of war, another kind of liberty: that of borrowing the wives and daughters of the men that fell into their hands” (Wesley’s Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III., p. 117).
Luther, drawing his morality from the Bible, gave concubinage his indorsement:
“There is nothing unusual in princes keeping concubines; and although the lower orders may not perceive the excuses of the thing, the more intelligent know how to make allowance” (Consilium).
Luther might with equal truthfulness have said, “There is nothing unusual in priests and preachers keeping concubines,” and he might have helped to confirm it by a few leaves from his own private history. In a letter to his confidential friend, Spalatin, he confessed to numerous adulteries.
God instructs his prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. He subsequently commands him to love and hire an adulteress (Hosea i, 2, 3; iii, 1, 2).
Christ forgave the woman taken in adultery, [390]while his favorite female companion was a reformed (?) prostitute. Referring to his female ancestors, Dr. Alexander Walker, a Christian, says:
“It is remarkable that in the genealogy of Christ only four women have been named: Tamar, who seduced the father of her late husband; Rachab, a common prostitute; Ruth, who, instead of marrying one of her cousins, went to bed with another of them, and Bathsheba, an adultress, who espoused David, the murderer of her husband” (Woman, p. 330).
The early Christians were notorious for their adulteries. Dr. Cave, in his “Primitive Christianity” (Part II., ch. v), says it was commonly charged “that the Christians knew one another by certain privy marks and signs, and were wont to be in love almost before they knew one another; that they exercised lust and filthiness under a pretense of religion, promiscuously calling themselves brothers and sisters, that by the help of so sacred a name their common adulteries might become incestuous.”
Of the Carpocratians, who Dr. Lardner says “are not accused of rejecting any part of the New Testament,” Dr. Cave says: “Both men and women used to meet at supper (which was called their love-feast), when after they had loaded themselves with a plentiful meal, to prevent all shame, if they had any remaining, they put out the lights, and then promiscuously mixed in filthiness with one another” (Ibid).[391]
In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul says: “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the gentiles” (1 Cor. v, 1).
It is an indisputable fact that the most notorious adulterers are those whose profession makes them most familiar with the teachings of the Bible, and compels them to accept its teachings as divine.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide, and protest against its being placed in the hands of the young, because its pages are defiled with obscenity.
Aside from thousands of coarse and vulgar expressions contained in it, there are at least a hundred passages so obscene that their appearance in any other book would exclude that book from the mails and send its publisher to prison. The United States courts have declared parts of the Bible to be obscene. There are entire chapters, such as the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis, that reek with obscenity from beginning to end.
In proof of the charge of obscenity, I refer you to the following: Isaiah xxxvi, 12; Ezek. iv, 12–15; Gen. xix, 30–36; xxx, 1–16; xxxviii; 2 Kings xviii, 27; Lev. xv, 16–33; Job xl, 16, 17; 1 Kings xiv, 10; Isaiah iii, 17.
That portions of the Bible are obscene and unfit to be read, is admitted even by Christians. [392]Noah Webster, a Protestant, edited an expurgated edition of the Bible. In vindication of his work, he says:
“Many passages are expressed in language which decency forbids to be repeated in families and in the pulpit.”
The Rev. Dr. Embree, Methodist, of Kansas, in a speech before the Topeka School Board advocating the reading of Bible selections in the public schools of that city, recently said:
“I would not want the Bible read indiscriminately. I think some of it unfit to be read by any one.”
The Rev. Father Maguire, Catholic, in his debate with the Rev. Mr. Greg, at Dublin, gave utterance to the following:
“I beg of you not to continue such a practice; it is disreputable. I will ask Mr. Greg a question (and I beg of you, my brethren of the Protestant church, to bear this in mind), I will ask him if he dare to take up the Bible and read from the book of Genesis the fact of Onan—I ask him will he read that? Will he read the fact relative to Lot and his two daughters? Will he read these and many other passages which I could point out to him in the Holy Bible, which I would not take one thousand guineas, nay, all the money in the world, and read them here to-day?”
Richard Lalor Shiel, M. P., and Privy Counselor to the Queen, thus wrote:
“Part of the Holy Writings consist of history, [393]and the narration of facts of a kind that cannot be mentioned in the presence of a virtuous woman without exciting horror. Shall a woman be permitted to read in her chamber what she would tremble to hear at her domestic board? Shall she con over and revolve what she would rather die than utter?”
And if unfit for the perusal of a matured woman, shall innocent childhood be polluted by these vile, indecent tales?[394]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it fosters the evil of intemperance.
While the sacred books of Buddhists and Mohammedans, by forbidding the use of intoxicating drinks, have contributed to make drunkenness among these people disreputable and rare, the Bible, by encouraging their use, has made intemperance in Christian countries frightfully prevalent and almost respectable.
“Thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink” (Deut. xiv, 26).
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more” (Prov. xxxi, 6,7).
“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” (1 Tim. v, 23).
“Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God now accepteth thy works” (Eccles. ix, 7).[395]
“Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids” (Zech. ix, 17).
“They shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof” (Amos ix, 14).
“Wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Ps. civ, 15).
“Wine which cheereth God and man” (Jud. ix, 13).
“In the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to be poured unto the Lord for a drink offering” (Num. xxviii, 7).
Will that wing of the Prohibition army which accepts the Bible as its guide inscribe these texts upon its banner?
As a reward for the Jews keeping the judgments of the Lord he was to bless their wine (Deut. vii, 13).
Liberal giving to the Lord was to be rewarded with an abundance of wine.
“Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase: so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine” (Prov. iii, 9, 10).
One of the most direful calamities was a wine famine.
“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.... The drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord’s ministers, mourn.... Gird yourselves and lament, ye priests [396]howl, ye ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God; for ... the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God” (Joel i, 5, 9, 13).
God’s especial favorites had a weakness for wine. When he drowned the world’s inhabitants he saved Noah, knowing that as soon as the waters subsided he would plant a vineyard, make wine, and become intoxicated. When Sodom was destroyed the only righteous man he found was that foul drunkard, Lot. When David made his celebrated feast in honor of the Lord he gave to every man and woman a flagon of wine. He kept some for himself and so merry did his heart become that he “danced before the Lord with all his might.”
Thus joyously sings Solomon: “I have drunk my wine with my milk [milk punch]; eat, O friends! drink, yea, drink abundantly.” In the morning he sings another song: “Open to me ... my love ... for my head is filled with dew.” How many a wayward fellow like Solomon has risen from the gutter, sorrowfully wended his way home, and serenaded his sleeping spouse with that same melody!
When Solomon erected his temple to God he gave to his laborers “twenty thousand baths [nearly 175,000 gallons] of wine” (2 Chron. ii, 10).
The Nazarite, it is claimed, was commanded to abstain from wine. Yes, but only during the period of his separation. “After that the Nazarite may drink wine” (Num. vi, 20).[397]
God commanded Jeremiah to tempt with wine those who abstained from its use:
“Go unto the house of the Rechabites and speak with them, and bring them into the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink” (Jer. xxxv, 2).
Christ spoke as follows:
“John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine.... The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber” (Luke, vii, 33, 34).
This censure was evidently not unmerited. The first act in Christ’s ministerial career was to manufacture three barrels of wine for a wedding feast; his last recorded act was a benediction upon the wine cup.
Theology being no longer in demand, the Protestant clergy, contrary to the teachings of the Bible, and the traditions of the church, now find it popular and profitable to espouse the cause of temperance. But in championing one rational virtue they employ two Christian vices, hypocrisy and intolerance. The most inconsistent, the most uncharitable opponents of the liquor traffic to-day are these fresh converts who profess to be doing their master’s will and who claim that his Word is the advocate of total abstinence and prohibitory laws. With fierce invective they declaim against the old God Bacchus, yet every anathema they hurl at [398]him will apply with equal justice to their God and Christ.
One of the most unscrupulous arguments ever adduced in support of any cause is that now advanced by some Christian temperance advocates to the effect that the wine sanctioned in the Bible was not intoxicating. With the same ease that they declare that in the Bible “black” means “white,” that “hate” means “love,” and “day” means “age,” they declare that Bible wine does not mean wine, but unfermented grape juice.
The Rev. Dr. W. M. Thompson, Rev. William Wright, Rev. S. H. Calhoun, Rev. C. V. A. Van Dyke, and other able Hebrew and Sanscrit scholars of Western Asia, who have made the history and customs of its people both ancient and modern a life study, affirm that such a thing as non-intoxicating wine was unknown, that the unfermented juice of the grape was never recognized as wine. Dr. Philip Schaff, the foremost Bible scholar of this country, affirms the same:
“The wine of the Bible was no doubt pure and unadulterated.... It was genuine and real wine, and, like all wine in use in grape-growing countries, exhilarating. To lay down the principle that the use of intoxicating drink as a beverage is a sin—per se—is to condemn the greater part of Christendom, to contradict the Bible, and to impeach Christ himself, who drank wine and made wine by miracle to supply the marriage guests.”[399]
At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church held at Belfast, Ireland, in 1870, an exhaustive examination and discussion was given this subject. The result was the adoption by an almost unanimous vote of the following resolution offered by the Rev. Robert Wales, Professor of Dialectic Theology, Belfast:
“As the wine used in the oblations of the Old Testament time at the Passover and by our Lord Jesus Christ himself in the institution of the supper was the ordinary wine of the country, that is, the fermented juice of the grape, we cannot sanction the use of the unfermented juice of the grape as a symbol in the ordinance.”
That the sacramental wine used by the early Christians was intoxicating, and that they were addicted to using it to excess at the Lord’s Supper, is admitted by Paul (1 Cor. xi, 20–34).
Referring to this subject, the Christian Register says: “We deplore intemperance, and welcome every truthful argument against it, but the argument founded on the non-intoxicating character of Bible wine is a weak and diluted fallacy.”
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it encourages poverty and vagrancy.
Jesus Christ was the panegyrist of poverty and the promoter of vagrancy:
“Blessed be ye poor” (Luke vi, 20).[400]
“But woe unto you that are rich” (Luke vi, 24).
“A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. xix, 23).
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mark x, 25).
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth” (Matt. vi, 19).
When the judicious use of wealth is promotive of human happiness, and when poverty is the source of so much misery and crime, such teachings are not only false, but pernicious.
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on.... Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.... And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.... Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?... The morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. vi, 25–34).
To-day our land is infested with an army of tramps. Their skirmishers are deployed along every highway; their points of attack are the kitchen and the haymow; their text-book on military science is the Sermon on the Mount. “They sow not, neither do they reap;” “They [401]toil not, neither do they spin.” They beg and steal. These are Christ’s followers—the truest followers he has on earth to-day.
In the streets of our cities we see men clad in rags, idle, and drunken, and penniless. We see them arrested for vagrancy, thrust into prison, or made to labor for their bread. These are Christ’s martyrs.
Poor tramp and vagrant! How you are “persecuted for righteousness’ sake!” Men despise you; the farmer drives you from his door; the social economist racks his brain to devise a plan for your suppression; state governments legislate against you; everywhere you are treated as an outcast—and all because, taking the Bible for your guide, you endeavor faithfully to conform to its teachings.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it condemns the use of reason and the acquisition of knowledge.
“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it” (Gen. ii, 17).
“She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened” (iii, 6, 7).
“Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden” (23).
“He that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark xvi, 16).[402]
For partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, our parents were banished from Paradise; for obeying the dictates of reason, we are consigned to hell.
Education, physical, moral, and intellectual, is discouraged.
Bodily exercise profiteth little.—Paul.
Be not righteous overmuch.—Solomon.
Neither make thyself over wise.—Solomon.
Choice mottoes, the above, to hang up on the walls of the school-room!
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy” (Col. ii, 8).
“Knowledge puffeth up” (1 Cor. viii, 1).
“Thy wisdom and thy knowledge it hath perverted thee” (Isa. xlvii, 10).
“I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly; I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecles. i, 17, 18).
“If any man be ignorant let him be ignorant” (1 Cor. xiv, 38).
“The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Cor. iii, 19).
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. i, 7).
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of ignorance. This fear has kept the world in intellectual bondage. It is a flaming sword that priestcraft has placed in every highway of learning to frighten back the timid searchers after truth.[403]
“The clergy, with a few honorable exceptions,” says Buckle, “have in all modern countries been the avowed enemies of the diffusion of knowledge, the danger of which to their own profession they, by a certain instinct, seem always to have perceived.”
The Bible, and the religion emanating from it, are the fruitful parents of ignorance and idiocy. They demand a sacrifice of the very attribute which exalts the man of sense above the idiot; they bid him pluck out the eyes of Reason, and in their place insert the sightless balls of Faith.
“Reason should be destroyed in all Christians,” says Luther (L. Ungedr. Pred. Bru., p. 106).
“One destitute of reason,” is a phrase employed by Webster to define the word “fool.”
“We are fools for Christ’s sake,” exclaims Paul (1 Cor. iv, 10).[404]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it has degraded woman.
The holy offices of wife and mother it covers with reproach. Its teachings carried out, as they were during the centuries of Christian rule, leave woman but two paths in which to tread—the one leading into slavery, the other into exile. Servitude in the house of a husband, or self-banishment into a convent—these are the sad alternatives presented for her choice.
“Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee” (Gen. iii, 16).
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands” (Col. iii, 18).
“As the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Eph. v, 24).
“Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under [405]obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Cor. xiv, 34, 35).
“Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.... For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Peter iii, 1–6).
“Let woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim. ii, 11–14).
Oh! the unspeakable outrage that woman has suffered because of that old Jewish fable!
The teachings of the Bible respecting marriage are an insult to every married woman. Christ discouraged marriage (Matt. xix, 10–12), while a more despicable dissertation on marriage than Paul gives in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians was never penned.
In contracting matrimonial alliances, woman’s rights and choice are not consulted. The father does his daughter’s courting, and sells or gives her to whom he pleases. A father is even allowed to sell his daughter for a slave (Ex. xxi, 7). In the Decalogue the wife is classed with slaves and cattle as a mere chattel.[406]
Kidnapping is commanded for the purpose of obtaining wives.
“Therefore they [God’s priests] commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.... And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives according to their number of them that danced whom they caught” (Jud. xxi, 20–23).
The Levitical law makes motherhood a sin that can be expiated only by offering a sin offering at the birth of every child. The degree of sinfulness depends upon the sex of the child; giving birth to a daughter being esteemed a greater sin than giving birth to a son (Lev. xii).
The laws of the Bible in regard to divorce are most unjust. A husband is permitted to divorce his wife if she displease him, while a wife is not allowed to obtain a divorce for any cause whatever.
“When a man hath taken a wife, and marries her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, ... then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house” (Deut. xxiv, 1).
“When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered [407]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 wouldst have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thine house.... And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will” (Deut. xxi, 10–14).
Wives were compelled to suffer outrage for the sins of their husbands.
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun” (2 Sam. xii, 11).
“Their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished” (Is. xiii, 16).
“I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished” (Zech. xiv, 2).
“Let their wives be bereaved of their children and be widows” (Jer. xviii, 21).
The teachings of the Bible have been used by the church to keep woman in a subordinate position.
“There is not a more cruel chapter in history,” says Dr. Moncure D. Conway, “than that which records the arrest by Christianity of the natural growth of European civilization regarding woman. In Germany it found woman participating [408]in the legislative assembly, and sharing the interests and counsels of man, and drove her out and away.... Even more fatal was the overthrow of woman’s position in Rome. Read the terrible facts as stated by Gibbon, by Milman, and Sir Henry Maine; read and ponder them, and you will see the tremendous wrong that Christianity did to woman.”
Even the priceless virtue of chastity, in the name of law and in the name of the Bible, was trampled under foot. Mrs. Gage, in “Woman, Church, and State,” says:
“Women were taught by the church and state alike that the feudal lord, or seigneur, had a right to them, not only against themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The law known as Marchetta, or Marquette, compelled newly-married women to a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the feudal lord from one to three days after their marriage.... France, Germany, Prussia, England, Scotland, and all Christian countries where feudalism existed, held to the enforcement of Marquette.”
Respecting this law, Michelet writes: “The lords spiritual had this right no less than the lords temporal. The parson, being a lord, expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride” (La Sorcerie, page 62).
In this country, while the most illiterate and depraved man is clothed with the rights of a [409]sovereign, the noblest woman is held in a subordinate position; and from the Bible, priests and politicians have procured the chains that hold her in subjection.
Referring to the Bible, America’s greatest woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, says: “I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman” (Eighty Years and More).
Brave Helen Gardener says: “Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian country has been ‘authorized by the Bible’ and riveted and perpetuated by the pulpit” (Men, Women, and Gods, page 14).
“Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commandments. That she does not crouch to-day where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God” (Ibid, page 30).
George W. Foote of England says it will yet be the proud boast of woman that she never contributed a line to the Bible.
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because its teachings respecting the treatment of children are cruel and unjust.[410]
It advocates the use of corporal punishment for children.
“Thou shalt beat him with the rod” (Prov. xxiii, 14).
“Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die” (Ibid xxiii, 13).
“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Ibid xxii, 15).
“The rod and reproof give wisdom” (Ibid xxix, 15).
It advocates capital punishment for children:
“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place.... And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones that he die” (Deut. xxi, 18, 19, 21).
It advocates the indiscriminate and merciless slaughter of little children:
“Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes” (Isa. xiii, 16).
“Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces” (Hosea xiii, 16).
“As he [Elisha] was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, [411]and mocked him.... 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” (2 Kings ii, 23, 24).
It advocates the punishment of children for the misdeeds of their parents.
“I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children” (Ex. xx, 5).
“I will stir up the Medes against them, ... their eye shall not spare children” (Isa. xiii, 17, 18).
“I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children” (Lev. xxvi, 22).
David prays that the children of his adversaries may become vagabonds and beggars; and Jeremiah, that the children of his enemies may perish by famine.
God kills Bath-sheba’s child:
“And the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore unto David, and it was very sick.... And it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died” (2 Sam. xii, 15–18).
Poor babe! tortured and murdered for its parents’ crime!
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions and enjoins unkindness and cruelty to animals.[412]
Portions of the Old Testament, and particularly those relating to sacrifices, are calculated to foster a spirit of brutality, and a total disregard for animal life. God revels in the blood of the innocent. The offering of fruits made by Cain is rejected by him; the bloody sacrifice of Abel is accepted.
Nearly the entire book of Leviticus is devoted to such laws as these:
“If he offer a lamb for his offering, then shall he offer it before the Lord. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it before the tabernacle of the congregation; and Aaron’s sons shall sprinkle the blood thereof round about upon the altar” (Lev. iii, 7, 8).
“And if the burnt sacrifice for his offering to the Lord be of fowls, then he shall bring his offering of turtle-doves, or of young pigeons. And the priest shall bring it unto the altar, and wring off his head, and burn it on the altar; and the blood thereof shall be wrung out at the side of the altar” (Lev. i, 14, 15).
The minutest directions for conducting these bloody sacrifices come from the lips of Jehovah himself, and are too brutal and disgusting to repeat.
The number of animals sacrificed was incredible. At times whole herds were killed. On one occasion Asa sacrificed 700 oxen and 7,000 sheep. David made an offering of 1,000 bullocks and 2,000 sheep. At the dedication of the [413]temple, 142,000 domestic beasts were sacrificed by Solomon.
And this wholesale slaughter of innocent animals, we are told, was highly pleasing to the Lord. But
—Byron.
A God of mercy, it would seem, ought to protect the weaker orders of his creation; but the God of the Bible manifests an utter disregard for them. When the being created in his own image proved too true a copy, and he wished to destroy it, he sent a deluge, “and all flesh died that moved upon the earth.” To wreak his vengeance upon Pharaoh, he visited with disease and death his unoffending cattle. In times of war, he ordered his followers to “slay both man and beast.” Saul’s great transgression, the chief cause of his dethronement and death, was that he saved alive some sheep and oxen instead of killing them as God desired. David and Joshua, God’s favorite warriors, houghed the horses of their enemies, and thus disabled turned them loose to die.
We teach a child that it is wrong to rob the nests of birds. It opens the Bible and reads:
“If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether [414]they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young; but thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee” (Deut. xxii, 6, 7).
Throughout Christendom “man’s inhumanity to man” is only equaled by his cruelty to the inferior animals. The Buddhist, who has not the Bible for his guide, considers it a sin to harm the meanest creature. Even the savage kills only what he needs for food, or such as threaten him with danger. But the Christian, whose Bible gives him dominion over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, maims and murders in pure wantonness, and after years of patient service, even turns his beast of burden out to die of hunger and neglect.
For the sake of these dumb creatures, would that our world had less theology, and more humanity; had fewer Moodys, and more Henry Berghs![415]
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it enjoins submission to tyrants.
“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, ... whether it be to the king as supreme; or unto governors” (1 Pet. ii, 13).
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (Rom. xiii, 1, 2).
And these sentiments were uttered when a Nero sat upon the throne—when Palestine was being crushed beneath the iron heel of despotism—when brave and patriotic men were struggling for freedom.
The Bible has ever been the bulwark of tyranny. When the oppressed millions of France were endeavoring to throw off their yoke—when the Washingtons, the Franklins, the Paines, and the Jeffersons were contending for American liberty—craven priests stood up in the pulpit, [416]opened this book, and gravely read: “The powers that be are ordained of God; they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.”
In the American Revolution every Tory was a Christian, and nearly every orthodox Christian was a Tory. Writing in 1777, John Wesley says:
“I have just received two letters from New York.... They inform me that all the Methodists there were firm for the government, and on that account persecuted by the rebels” (Wesley’s Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III., page 410).
Referring to our Revolutionary fathers, Robert Dale Owen says:
“I know not what the private opinions of those sturdy patriots were, who, in the old Philadelphia State House, appended their signatures to the immortal document. But this I do know, that when they did so, it was in defiance of the Bible; it was in direct violation of the law of the New Testament.
“If a Being who cannot lie penned the Bible, then George Washington and every soldier who drew sword in the Republic’s armies for liberty expiate, at this moment, in hell-fire, the punishment of their ungodly strife! There, too, John Hancock and every patriot whose name stands to America’s Title Deed, have taken their places with the devil and his angels! All resisted the power; all, unless God lie, have received to themselves damnation” (Bacheler-Owen Debate, Vol. II., page 230).[417]
From the first century to the twentieth—from Paul to Leo—these Bible teachings have dominated the Christian world. Of the early Christian Fathers, Lecky writes:
“The teaching of the early Fathers on the subject is perfectly unanimous and unequivocal. Without a single exception, all who touched upon the subject pronounced active resistance to the established authorities to be under all circumstances sinful” (Rationalism in Europe, Vol. II., page 136).
Jeremy Taylor, one of the greatest of modern divines, speaking not for himself alone, but for all Christians, says:
“The matter of Scripture being so plain that it needs no interpretation, the practice and doctrine of the church, which is usually the best commentary, is now but of little use in a case so plain; yet this also is as plain in itself, and without any variety, dissent, or interruption universally agreed upon, universally practiced and taught, that, let the powers set over us be what they will, we must suffer it and never right ourselves” (Ductor Dubitantium, Book III., chapter iii).
This has been the chief cause of Christian triumph and Christian supremacy. It has secured for the church the adherence and support of every tyrant in Christendom. Thomas Jefferson truly says:
“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance [418]with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
Writing of his country and his country’s church, Macaulay says:
“The Church of England continued to be for more than 150 years the servile handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine right of kings and the duty of passively obeying all their commands were her favorite tenets. She held these tenets firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness, while law was trampled down, while judgment was perverted, while the people were eaten as though they were bread” (Essays, Vol. I., page 60).
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I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because its teachings have filled the world with intolerance and persecution.
“If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers: namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you [that is, accept another religion] ... thou shalt not consent unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him; neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him; but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, [419]and afterwards the hand of all the people” (Deut. xiii, 6–9).
Kill your friend, kill your brother, kill your wife, kill your child, for accepting another religious belief!
Did a merciful God inspire this prayer?
“Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children” (Ps. cix, 8–12).
“In the literature of the world there is nothing more heartless, more infamous, than the 109th Psalm.”—Ingersoll.
Let me quote from the New Testament:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark xvi, 16).
“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. xxv, 41).
“These shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matt. xxv, 46).
“Cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched” (Mark ix, 45).
These passages ought to consign to everlasting abhorrence the being who uttered them, the book containing them, and the [420]church indorsing them. This dogma of endless punishment is the dogma of fiends, the most infamous dogma that human lips have ever breathed! What needless terror it has inspired! What misery it has caused! Think of the millions of innocent children whose young lives it has filled with gloom! This horrible nightmare of hell has strewn the pathway of childhood with thorns where flowers should have been made to bloom; it has filled the minds of children with fear and made them wretched when their hearts should have been filled with joy; it has robbed home of wife and mother, it has driven thousands of pure and loving women to madness and despair. I had rather trace my descent to the tiger or hyena than to the creation of a God who dooms his creatures to eternal pain; and the time will come when the remembrance of the theologians who have taught this hideous lie will provoke more shame and pity than the ancestral apes do now.
“If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house” (2 John i, 10).
Amid the storms of a winter night, a traveler, perishing with cold and hunger, knocks at your door and begs for food and shelter. You interrogate him as to his religious belief, and finding that he is not a member of your church you forbid him to enter. In the morning when you discover his lifeless body by the roadside, how [421]impressed you will be with the transcendent beauty of Bible morals!
Paul preached a sermon on charity, and then wrote to the Galatians as follows:
“If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. i, 9).
From the same pen, too, came this sneaking, infamous hint:
“I would they were even cut off which trouble you” (Gal. v, 12).
What ghastly fruits these teachings have produced! We see earth covered with the yellow bones of murdered heretics and scholars; we see the persecutions and butcheries of Constantine, of Theodosius, of Clovis, of Justinian, and of Charlemagne; we see the Crusades, in which nearly twenty millions perish; we see the followers of Godfrey in Jerusalem—see the indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children—see the mosques piled seven deep with murdered Saracens—the Jews burnt in their synagogues; we see Cœur de Lion slaughter in cold blood thousands of captive Saracens; we see the Franks in Constantinople, plundering, ravishing, murdering; we see the Moors expelled from Spain; we see the murder of the Huguenots and Waldenses—the slaughter of German peasants—the desolation of Ireland—Holland covered with blood; we witness Smithfield and Bartholomew; we see the Inquisition with its countless instruments of fiendish cruelty; [422]we see the Auto-da-fé, where heretics, clad in mockery, are led to torture and to death; we see men stretched upon the rack, disjointed, and torn limb from limb; we see them flayed alive—their bleeding bodies seared with red-hot irons; we see them covered with pitch and oil and set on fire; we see them hurled headlong from towers to the stony streets below; we see them buried alive; we see them hanged and quartered; we see their eyes bored out with heated augers—their tongues torn out—their bones broken with hammers—their bodies pierced with a thousand needles; we see aged women tied to the heels of fiery steeds—see their mangled and bleeding bodies dragged with lightning speed over the frozen earth; we see new-born babes flung into the flames to perish with their mothers, or with their mothers sewed in sacks and sunk into the sea; in short, on every hand, as a result of this book’s teachings, we see hate, torture, death!
But, thanks to the brave Infidels who have gone before, you, Bible moralists, can use these instruments of cruelty to silence heretics to Christianity no more.
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Twenty crimes and vices—lying, cheating, stealing, murder, wars of conquest, human sacrifices, cannibalism, witchcraft, slavery, polygamy, adultery, obscenity, intemperance, vagrancy ignorance, injustice to woman, unkindness to children, cruelty to animals, tyranny, persecution—are, we have seen, sanctioned by the Bible. Scattering this book broadcast over the land, making it the chief text-book of the Sunday-school and, above all, placing it in our public schools and compelling our youth to accept it as infallible authority, is a monstrous wrong; and you who advocate it are the enemies of virtue and the promoters of vice. James Anthony Froude says: “Considering all the heresies, the enormous crimes, the wickedness, the astounding follies, which the Bible has been made to justify, and which its indiscriminate reading has suggested; considering that it has been, indeed, the sword which our Lord said he was sending, and that not the devil himself could have invented an implement more potent to fill the hated world with lies and blood and fury, I [424]think certainly that to send hawkers over the world loaded with copies of this book, scattering it in all places, among all persons, ... is the most culpable folly of which it is possible for man to be guilty.”
There are within the lids of this Bible a hundred chapters sanctioning the bloodiest deeds in all the annals of crime; and this is the book you wish to place in the hands of our sons! There are within the lids of this Bible a hundred chapters which no modest woman can read without her cheek becoming tinged with the blush of shame; and this is the book you wish to place in the hands of our daughters! If you delight to feast upon such carrion you have the right to do so, but you have no right to thrust it down the throats of your neighbors. As a Liberal, I concede to the Christian cuckoo the right to propagate her species; but I protest against her laying her eggs in the secular nest and having them hatched by the state.
I contend that the Bible does not present an infallible moral standard, and I have given many valid reasons why it does not. I expect the defenders of this book to complete the task that I have here essayed. They will claim that the Bible is opposed to crime. They will, no doubt, cite numerous passages in confirmation of this claim. Let them do this. Then place the results of our labors side by side. This will show that the Bible abounds with teachings [425]that conflict. This fact established, the dogma of its divinity must fall. And this is what I am endeavoring to do—to tear this dogma from the human brain. Not until this is done can we have a pure morality. So long as men’s minds are confused and corrupted by these conflicting and demoralizing teachings, so long will immorality prevail. You cannot make men moral while they accept as their moral guide a book which sanctions every crime and presents as the best models of human excellence the most notorious villains. You cannot make them moral by teaching them that a lie is better for being called inspired, that a vice becomes a virtue with age, that a dead rogue should be canonized and a live one killed.
Not until this dogma is destroyed can you appreciate what is meritorious in the Bible. There are in it some noble precepts. It contains along with the false much that is true; along with the bad much that is good; but while you are compelled to accept all—the true and the false, the good and the bad, as alike infallible, as alike divine—it can be of no value to you.
You may contend that I mistake the meaning of what I have quoted from this book. But the language is too plain to be mistaken. Do not tell me that it states one thing and means another. This is, you affirm, the word of your God. Is your God wanting in candor?
So far as the Bible is concerned, the criminal has as much to support the justness of his [426]crime as the Christian has to sustain the truthfulness of his creed. The various doctrines of the church are not upheld by stronger Scripture proofs than have been cited in justification of the crimes that I have named.
Bible apologists tell us that it is only in this book that wrongdoers confess and record their sins, and that this is evidence of its divinity. Were this true we might say that the Bible is the only book whose authors are so devoid of shame as to parade their sins. But this claim is not true. It was not the sinners who wrote these accounts of their sins any more than it is the criminals to-day who write and publish the accounts of their crimes.
Bible lands, we are told, are more moral than other lands. This is false. The morality of Pagan China and Japan, without the Bible, is not inferior to that of Christian Europe with it. Modern Europe with its partial rejection of the Bible is superior in morality to medieval Europe with its full acceptance of it. The morals of the people have improved in about the same ratio that their faith in the book has declined. A further declension of faith will bring a further improvement in morals. In Christian countries those who have discarded its teachings are morally superior to those who still accept them. It is the ignorant who are the most devout believers in this book, and it is the ignorant who are the most immoral. The intelligence and morality to be found in Christian lands are not [427]the results of Bible teachings, but exist in spite of them.
That some great and good men have commended the Bible as a moral guide is true. These commendations are given wide publicity. But the testimonials of these men are, for the most part, not the result of careful reading and study. They have been inspired by the teachings of childhood, by the sentiment that prevails around them, or by a perusal of only the choicest portions of the book. These testimonials, too, are mostly from men who, while expressing admiration for many of its teachings, do not believe and do not profess to believe in its divinity. Many of these testimonials are forgeries.
“If you discard the Bible, what,” asks the Christian, “will you give us as a moral guide?” Enter a public library blindfolded; take from its shelves a volume at random, and you will scarcely select a worse one. The book you select may not pertain to morals. It may not even contain the word “moral.” But neither does the Bible. Must we go to the ignorant past for our morality? Does human experience count for nothing? Have the most marvelous advances been made in every other department of human knowledge during the past two thousand years and none in ethical science? Read Bentham, Mill, and Spencer. Let your children study Count Volney’s “Law of Nature,” and Miss Wixon’s “Right Living.” These books are not infallible and divine, they are fallible and human; [428]but they are immeasurably superior to any books that supernaturalists can offer. Not in Moses nor Jesus, not in the Decalogue nor Sermon on the Mount, is there to be found a statement of moral duties so just and so comprehensive as the following from Volney:
“What do you conclude from all this? I conclude from it that all the social virtues are only the habitude of actions useful to society and to the individual who practices them; that they all refer to the physical object of man’s preservation; that nature having implanted in us the want of that preservation, has made a law to us of all its consequences, and a crime of everything that deviates from it; that we carry in us the seed of every virtue, and of every perfection; that it only requires to be developed that we are only happy inasmuch as we observe the rules established by nature for the end of our preservation; and that all wisdom, all perfection, all law, all virtue, all philosophy, consist in the practice of these axioms founded on our own organization:—Preserve thyself; Instruct thyself; Moderate thyself; live for thy fellow-men, that they may live for thee.”
The Bible moralist would have us believe that from this book all morality has been derived; that God is the author and the Bible the revelation and sole repository of moral laws. But it is not from Gods and Bibles that these laws have come. In the words of Tyndall, “Not in the way assumed by our dogmatic teachers has the [429]morality of human nature been propped up. The power that has molded us thus far has worked with stern tools upon a rigid stuff.... That power did not work with delusions, nor will it stay its hands when such are removed. Facts, rather than dogmas, have been its ministers—hunger, shame, pride, love, hate, terror, awe—such were the forces, the interaction and adjustment of which during the immeasurable ages of his development wove the triplex web of man’s physical, intellectual, and moral nature, and such are the forces that will be effectual to the end.”
Accepting the Bible—not for what it is claimed to be, the word of God, but for what it is, the work of man—I can excuse, in a degree, the crude ideas of right and wrong and the laxity of morals that prevailed among the people whose history it purports to record. The age in which they lived, the circumstances that surrounded them, must palliate, to some extent, their deeds and theories. But it is humiliating to think that in these better times, illuminated by the light of a glorious civilization, there are those who spurn the robes of virtue that Reason in the loom of grave Experience has woven, and who from the dark and musty closets of the past drag forth for use the soiled and blood-stained garments that barbarians wore.
With this chapter our review of the Bible ends. We have examined successively the authenticity [430]of its books, the credibility of its statements, and the morality of its teachings. The authenticity of the Bible must be abandoned. It will be abandoned, and abandoned soon. Its credibility, impaired by a knowledge of its lack of authenticity and the exposure of its numberless errors, will be contended for awhile longer. But this, in turn, will go. When its credibility has been destroyed, and it is acknowledged to be mostly a volume of fables and legends, priestcraft continuing to survive, the clergy, as a dernier resort, will descant upon the divine lessons of morality taught by these fables and legends. But the relentless iconoclasts of criticism will break this image also, and the Bible as a moral guide and religious authority will be laid away forever.[431][433]
“Where are the hands which once for this foul creed,
’Mid flame and torture, made an Atheist bleed?
Gone—like the powers your fathers used so well
To send souls heavenward through the flames of hell.
And you, poor palsied creatures! you, ere long,
With them thrice cursed shall swell Gehenna’s throng.
Your God is dead; your heaven a hope bewrayed;
Your hell a by-word, and your creed a trade;
Your vengeance—what? A mere polluting touch—
cripple striking with a broken crutch!”
“What was his high pleasure in
The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood,
To the pain of the bleating mothers, which
Still yearned for their dead offspring? or the pangs
Of the sad ignorant victim underneath
The pious knife?”