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I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows
upon them.
They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with
burning
heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the
teeth
of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the
dust.
The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both
the
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of
grey hairs.
I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the
Jewish God
Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on
proof,
for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are
horrible
with atrocities.
Now, consider, is the God of whom we have
been reading a God of love?
Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the
savage idol of a savage
tribe?
Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy
it is. Man has never seen one of
his gods, never heard the voice of one of
his gods, does not know the
shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods.
Yet man has cursed
man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered
man, for the sake
of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or
desire. We
tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera; we sting each other,
hate
each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods
of
our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spinning, glowing
planet
through the unfathomable spaces, where myriads of suns, like
golden
bees, gleam through the awful mystery of "the vast void night,"
what
are the phantom gods to us? They are no more than the waterspouts on
the
ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the
woman,
and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes; these know us,
touch
us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us.
Shall we kill
these, or revile them, or desert them, for the sake of the
lurid ghost in the
cloud, or the fetish in his box?
Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive
Jahweh, who prized nothing but
his own aggrandisement, and slew or cursed all
who offended him, is
the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the
Pleiades, and the
resplendent mystery of the Milky Way?
Is this
unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ? Is he the God
who inspired
Buddha, and Shakespeare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and
Darwin, and Plato,
and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in
rapine and in rape, in
black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and
polygamy, and the debasement
of women; and in the pomps, vanities,
and greeds of royalty, of clericalism,
and of usury and barter--we
may easily discern the influence of his ferocious
and abominable
personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare
fetish of a
murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no
criminal
so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch
our
cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him defiles and
nauseates.
We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil,
this
red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews.
And yet: in the
inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creature
is still enshrined as
"God the Father Almighty." It is marvellous. It
is beyond the comprehension
of any man not blinded by superstition, not
warped by prejudice and old-time
convention. _This_ the God of Heaven?
_This_ the Father of Christ? This the
Creator of the Milky Way? No.
He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not
good enough. He is not
clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare: a bad dream
born in savage
minds of terror and ignorance and a tigerish lust for
blood.
But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father,
if
He is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and
its
claims to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE
BIBLE
Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The
heroes of the
Bible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is
because
the Bible is a compilation from the literature of savage and
immoral
tribes.
Had the Bible been the word of God we should have
found in it a
lofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it
open
approval--divine approval--of such unspeakable savages as Moses,
David,
Solomon, Jacob, and Lot.
Let us consider the lives of a few of
the Bible heroes. We will begin
with Moses.
We used to be taught in
school that Moses was the meekest man the world
has known: and we used to
marvel.
It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus:
And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that
he went
out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens:
and he spied an
Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.
And he looked this
way and that way, and when he saw that
there was no man, he slew the
Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
And when he went out the second
day, behold two men of the
Hebrews strove together: and he said to him
that did the
wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said,
Who
made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to
kill
me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and
said,
Surely this thing is known.
The meekest of men slays an
Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. It
may be pleaded that the Egyptian
was doing wrong; but the remarks of the
Hebrew suggest that even the
countrymen of Moses looked upon his act of
violence with
disfavour.
But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws
attributed
to him, in which the death penalty is almost as common as it was
in
England in the Middle Ages.
Also, in the thirty-first chapter of
Numbers we have the following
story. The Lord commands Moses to "avenge the
children of Israel of the
Midianites," after which Moses is to die. Moses
sends out an army:
And they warred against the Midianites, as the
Lord commanded
Moses; and they slew all the males.
And they
slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of them
that were slain;
namely Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur,
and Reba, five kings of Midian:
Balaam also the son of Beor
they slew with the sword.
And
the children of Israel took all the women of Midian
captives, and their
little ones, and took the spoil of all
their cattle, and all their
flocks, and all their goods.
And they burnt all their cities wherein
they dwelt, and all
their goodly castles, with fire.
And
they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men
and of
beasts....
And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with
the
captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which
came from the battle.
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all
the women alive?
Behold, these called the children of Israel,
through the counsel
of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in
the matter of
Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the
Lord.
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and
kill
every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But
all the women children that have not known a man by lying
with him, keep
alive for yourselves.
Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest
man. But suppose any
pagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a
Christian city as Moses
behaved to the people of Midian, what should we say
of him? But God was
_pleased_ with him.
Further, in the sixteenth
chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses the
Meek treated Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram for rebelling against himself and
Aaron; how the earth opened and
swallowed these men and their families
and friends, at a hint from Moses; and
how the Lord slew with fire from
heaven two hundred and fifty men who were
offering incense, and how
afterwards there came a pestilence by which some
fourteen thousand
persons died.
Moses was a politician; his brother
was a priest. I shall express no
opinion of the pair; but I quote from the
Book of Exodus, as follows:
And when the people saw that Moses
delayed to come down out
of the mount, the people gathered themselves
together unto
Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall
go
before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up
out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
And
Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings,
which are in the
ears of your wives, of your sons, and of
your daughters, and bring them
unto me.
And all the people brake off the golden earrings which
were
in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
And he
received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a
graving tool after
he had made it a molten calf: and they said,
These be thy gods, O
Israel, which brought thee up out of the
land of Egypt.
And
when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron
made
proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord.
And they
rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings,
and brought
peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and
to drink, and rose
up to play.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy
people
which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have
corrupted
themselves.
Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done
this thing, tells a lie:
And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this
people unto thee, that
thou hast brought so great a sin upon
them?
And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot;
thou
knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
For
they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us:
for as for
this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot
not what is become of him.
And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any
gold, let them break
it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into
the fire,
and there came out this calf.
And when Moses saw
that the people were naked; (for Aaron had
made them naked unto their
shame among their enemies:)
Then Moses stood in the gate of the
camp, and said, Who is on
the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And
all the sons of
Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put
every man
his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate
to gate throughout
the camp, and slay every man his brother,
and every man his companion,
and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according
to the word of Moses;
and there fell of the people that day about three
thousand men.
So much for this meek father of the Jews.
And now
let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of the
Bible kings,
and the ancestors of Jesus Christ.
Judging King David by the Bible
record, I should conclude that he was a
cruel, treacherous, and licentious
savage. He lived for some time as
a bandit, robbing the subjects of the King
of Gath, who had given him
shelter. When asked about this by the king, David
lied. As to the nature
of his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt
by the story of
Nabal. David demanded blackmail of Nabal, and, on its being
refused, set
out with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every
male on his
estate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who
came out
to meet David with fine presents and fine words. _Ten days later
Nabal
died, and David married his widow._ See twenty-fifth chapter First
Book
of Samuel.
David had seven wives, and many children. One of his
favourite wives was
Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah.
While Uriah was at
"the front," fighting for David, that king seduced
his wife, Bathsheba. To
avoid discovery, David recalled Uriah from the
war, and bade him go home to
his wife. Uriah said it would dishonour
him to seek ease and pleasure at home
while other soldiers were enduring
hardship at the front. The king then made
the soldier drunk, but even so
could not prevail.
Therefore David sent
word to the general to place Uriah in the front of
the battle, where the
fight was hardest. And Uriah was killed, and David
married Bathsheba, who
became the mother of Solomon.
So much for David's honour. Now for a
sample of his humanity. I quote
from the twelfth chapter of the Second Book
of Samuel:
And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have
fought
against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters.
Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and
encamp against
the city, and take it: lest I take the city,
and it be called after my
name.
And David gathered all the people together, and went to
Rabbah,
and fought against it, and took it.
And he took
their king's crown from off his head, the weight
whereof was a talent of
gold with the precious stones: and it
was set on David's head. And he
brought forth the spoil of the
city in great abundance.
And
he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them
under saws,
and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron,
and made them pass
through the brick kiln: and thus did he unto
all the cities of the
children of Ammon. So David and all the
people returned unto
Jerusalem.
But nothing in David's life became him so little as his
leaving of it. I
quote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings.
David, on his
deathbed, is speaking to Solomon, his son:
Moreover
thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me,
and what he
did to the two captains of the host of Israel, unto
Abner the son of
Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he
slew, and shed the blood
of war in peace, and put the blood of war
upon his girdle that was about
his loins, and in his shoes that
were on his feet.
Do
therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head
go down to
the grave in peace.
But show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai,
the Gileadite, and
let them be of those that eat at thy table; for so
they came to
me when I fled because of Absalom thy brother.
And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a
Benjamite of
Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in
the day when I went to
Mahanaim: but he came down to meet me
at Jordan, and I sware to him by
the Lord, saying, I will not
put thee to death with the sword. Now
therefore hold him not
guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest
what thou oughtest
to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to
the grave
with blood.
These seem to have been the last words
spoken by King David. Joab was
his best general, and had many times saved
David's throne.
Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother,
the true heir.
Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and
exiles a
priest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father.
Later
he murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei
to
the grave with blood.
After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a
temple, and marries many
wives.
Much glamour has been cast upon the
names of Solomon and David by their
alleged writings. But it is now
acknowledged that David wrote few, if
any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon
wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the
Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs
may be his.
It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and
Solomon should
be glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry
VIII. and
Richard III. as monsters.
My pet aversion amongst the Bible
heroes is Jacob; but Abraham and Lot
were pitiful creatures.
Jacob
cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied about
God, and
lied to his father to accomplish his end. He robbed his
brother of his
birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from his
brother's wrath, and
went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncle
out of his cattle and his
wealth, and at last came away with his two
cousins as his wives, one of whom
had stolen her own father's gods.
Abraham was the father of Ishmael by
the servant-maid Hagar. At his
wife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to
be driven into the desert
to die. And here is another pretty story of
Abraham. He and his family
are driven forth by a famine:
And it
came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt,
that he said
unto Sarai, his wife, Behold now, I know that thou
art a fair woman to
look upon:
Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall
see
thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will
kill
me, but they will save thee alive.
Say, I pray thee,
thou are my sister; that it may be well with
me for thy sake; and my
soul shall live because of thee.
And it came to pass, that, when
Abram was come into Egypt the
Egyptians beheld the woman that she was
very fair.
The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her
before
Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's
house.
And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had
sheep,
and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants,
and
she-asses, and camels.
And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and
his house with great plagues
because of Sarai, Abram's wife.
And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast
done
unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
Why
saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her
to me to wife:
now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go
thy way.
And
Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him
away, and
his wife, and all that he had.
But Abraham was so little ashamed of
himself that he did the same thing
again, many years afterwards, and
Abimelech King of Gerar, behaved to
him as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the
former occasion.
The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what
are we to think
of his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his
subsequent conduct?
And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursed the
whole of his sons'
descendants for ever, because Ham had seen him in his
shame?
Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable
character,
and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of
their
liberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned.
Jacob
robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger;
Joseph
robbed a whole people in the same way.
Samson was a dissolute
ruffian and murderer, who in these days would be
hanged as a
brigand.
Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of
treachery and
massacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and
hypocrisy.
Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he
captured a city
he murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls.
Here is one
example from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua:
And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and
fought
against it:
And he took it, and the king thereof; and all the
cities
thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword,
and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he
left none
remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did
to Debir, and to the king
thereof; as he had done also to
Libnah, and to her king.
So
Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south,
and of the
vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he
left none remaining,
but utterly destroyed all that breathed,
as the Lord God of Israel
commanded.
And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza,
and
all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon.
Elijah the
prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he had
mocked the god
Baal, and had triumphed over him by miracle, he said to
the
Israelites:
"Take the prophets of Baal. _Let not one of them
escape._"
And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the
brook
Kishon, and slew them there.
Now, there were 450 of the
priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah the
prophet had killed in cold
blood.
And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the
Jews. I
quote from the second chapter of the Second Book of
Kings.
And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going
up
by the way, there came forth little children out of the city,
and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up,
thou
bald head.
And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them
in the
name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out
of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
After this,
Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste and
slaughter the
Moabites, who had refused to pay tribute. You may read the
horrible story for
yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Book
of Kings. There was the
usual massacre, but this time the trees were cut
down and the wells choked
up.
Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But
his
servant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and
some
garments under false pretences. When Elisha hears of this crime,
he
strikes the servant with leprosy, _and all his seed for ever_.
Now,
it is not necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men of
God: what
I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages
have been
saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models.
Even to-day
the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his proper
name in an
average Christian household would be regarded as a
wicked
blasphemer.
And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of
an "Infidel" who
committed half the crimes and outrages of any one of those
Bible heroes?
Do you know what the Christians call Tom Paine? To this day
the
respectable Christian Church or chapel goer shudders at the name of
the
"infidel," Tom Paine. But in point of honour, of virtue, of
humanity,
and general good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have
mentioned
was worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes.
Now, it states in the
Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau
was a _man_, and against him
the Bible does not chronicle one bad act.
But God _hated_ Esau.
And it
states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire
to
heaven.
And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of
Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a "man
after God's
own heart"; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear
talking
with Christ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Samuel, Jephtha, Samson,
and
David.
My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that,
in a book
alleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes.
I
have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous
kings and
priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with
disrespect to the
memory of Nero.
I have been accused of having an animus against Moses,
and David, and
all the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I
presume to
censure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these
favourites
of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the
Bible
cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus: I do not believe any
of
these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry
with
a myth? I should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or
the
Giant that Jack slew.
But I should be astonished to hear that
Bluebeard had been promoted to
the position of a holy patriarch, and a model
of all the virtues for the
emulation of innocent children in a modern Sunday
school. And I think it
is time the Church considered itself, and told the
truth about Jehovah,
and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson.
If you fail to
agree with me I can only accept your decision with
respectful
astonishment.
THE BOOK OF BOOKS
Floods of sincere,
but unmerited, adulation have been lavished on the
Hebrew Bible. The world
has many books of higher moral and literary
value. It would be easy to
compile, from the words of Heretics and
Infidels, a purer and more elevated
moral guide than this "Book of
Books."
The ethical code of the Old
Testament is no longer suitable as the rule
of life. The moral and
intellectual advance of the human race has left
it behind.
The
historical books of the Old Testament are largely pernicious, and
often
obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy,
slavery,
concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, wars
of plunder,
wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, massacre of
women and of
children, cruelty to animals; and such immoral, dishonest,
shameful, or
dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, Abraham, Jacob,
and
Lot.
The ethical code of the Old Testament does not teach the
sacredness
of truth, does not teach religious tolerance, nor humanity, nor
human
brotherhood, nor peace.
Its morality is crude. Much that is
noblest in modern thought has no
place in the "Book of Books." For example,
take these words of Herbert
Spencer's:
Absolute morality is the
regulation of conduct in such way
that pain shall not be
inflicted.
There is nothing so comprehensive, nothing so deep as that in
the Bible.
That covers all the moralities of the Ten Commandments, and all
the
Ethics of the Law and the Prophets, in one short sentence, and leaves
a
handsome surplus over.
Note next this, from Kant:
What
are the aims which are at the same time duties? They
are the perfecting
of ourselves, and the happiness of others.
I do not know a Bible sentence
so purely moral as that. And in what part
of the Bible shall we find a
parallel to the following sentence, from an
Agnostic newspaper:
Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action are
helps to
the children of men in their search for wisdom.
Tom Paine left Moses and
Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote:
The world is my country: to
do good my religion.
Robert Ingersoll, another "Infidel," surpassed
Solomon when he said:
The object of life is to be happy, the place
to be happy is
here, the time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is
by
making others happy.
Which simple sentence contains more
wisdom than all the pessimism of
the King of kings. And again, Ingersoll went
beyond the sociological
conception of the Prophets when he wrote:
And let us do away for ever with the idea that the care of the
sick, of
the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity: it
is a duty. It is
something to be done for our own sakes. It
is no more a charity than it
is to pave or light the streets,
no more a charity than it is to have a
system of sewers. It
is all for the purpose of protecting society, and
civilising
ourselves.
I will now put together a few sayings of
Pagans and Unbelievers as an
example of non-biblical morality:
Truth is the pole-star of morality, by it alone can we steer.
Can there
be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent
man not speaking
the truth? Abhor dissimulation. To know the
truth and fear to speak
it: that is cowardice. One thing here
is worth a good deal, to pass thy
life in truth and justice,
with a benevolent disposition, even to liars
and unjust men.
He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, for
he makes
himself bad. The practice of religion involves as a
first
principle a loving compassionate heart for all creatures.
Religion means self-sacrifice. A loving heart is the great
requirement:
not to oppress, not to destroy, not to exalt
oneself by treading down
others; but to comfort and befriend
those in suffering. Like as a
mother at the risk of her life
watches over her only child, so also let
every one cultivate
towards all beings a bounteous friendly
mind.
Man's great business is to improve his mind. What is it
to
you whether another is guilty or guiltless? Come, friend,
atone for your own guilt.
Virtue consists in contempt for
death. Why should we cling
to this perishable body? In the eye of the
wise the only
thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow
creatures.
Treat others as you wish them to treat you. Do not
return
evil for evil. Our deeds, whether good or evil, follow
us
like shadows.
Never will man attain full moral stature
until woman is free.
Cherish and reverence little children. Let the
slave cease,
and the master of slaves cease.
To conquer your
enemy by force increases his resentment.
Conquer him by love and you
will have no after-grief.
Victory breeds hatred.
I look for
no recompense--not even to be born in heaven--
but seek the benefit of
men, to bring back those who have
gone astray, to enlighten those living
in dismal error, to
put away all sources of sorrow and pain in the
world.
I cannot have pleasure while another grieves and I
have
power to help him.
Those who regard the Bible as the "Book
of Books," and believe it to be
invaluable and indispensable to the world,
must have allowed their early
associations or religious sentiment to mislead
them.
Carlyle is more moral than Jeremiah, Ruskin is superior to
Isaiah;
Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man
than
Moses; Plato and Marcus Aurelius are wiser than Solomon; Sir
Thomas
More, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are
worth
more to us than all the Prophets.
I hold a high opinion of the
literary quality of some parts of the Old
Testament; but I seriously think
that the loss of the first fourteen
books would be a distinct gain to the
world. For the rest, there is
considerable literary and some ethical value in
Job (which is not
Jewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of
Solomon (which
is an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs,
Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to
Henry
George's _Progress and Poverty_, or William Morris' _News from
Nowhere_.
Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only
tell
us what they knew.
The Ten Commandments have been effusively
praised. There is nothing
in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the
rack-renter, the
jerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the
libertine,
the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner,
the
religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings,
the
fox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and
cattle.
There is nothing about "cultivating towards all beings a
bounteous
friendly mind," nothing about liberty of speech and conscience,
nothing
about the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing
happiness;
nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favour of mercy
and
forgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as
defences
of the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner.
As a
moral code the Commandments amount to very little.
Moreover, the
Bible teaches erroneous theories of history, theology, and
science.
It
relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts.
It presents a
low idea of God.
It gives an erroneous account of the relations between
God and man.
It fosters international hatred.
It fosters religious
pride and fanaticism.
Its penal code is horrible.
Its texts have
been used for nearly two thousand years in defence of
war, slavery, religious
persecution, and the slaughter of "witches" and
of "sorcerers."
In a
hundred wars the Christian soldiery have perpetrated massacre and
outrage
with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips.
In a
thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women
to a
painful death.
And always when an apology or a defence of the barbarities
of human
slavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy
Bible.
Renan says:
In all ancient Christian literature there
is not one word that
tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master
to liberate
the slave, or even that touches the problem of public
right
which arises out of slavery.
Mr. Remsburg, in his book,
_The Bible_, shows that in America slavery
was defended by the churches on
the authority of the sacred Scriptures.
He says:
The Fugitive
Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnappers,
derived its authority
from the New Testament. Paul had
established a precedent by returning a
fugitive slave to
his master.
Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the
sermons and speeches of Christian
ministers to show the influence of the
Bible in upholding slavery. Here
are some of his many examples:
The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote: "There is not one verse in
the Bible
inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is
not, then, we
conclude, immoral."
Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of
Virginia: "Slavery is
not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by
the Bible,
but it was positively instituted by God Himself."
I
shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman
institution was
defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches
was to the
Bible.
As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one
century
a hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany.
Mr.
Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence. He says:
One
thousand were burned at Como in one year; eight hundred
were burned at
Wurzburg in one year; five hundred perished
at Geneva in three months;
eighty were burned in a single
village of Savoy; nine women were burned
in a single fire
at Leith; sixty were hanged in Suffolk; three thousand
were
legally executed during one session of Parliament, while
thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian
judge,
executed eight hundred; six hundred were burned by
one bishop at
Bamburg; Bogult burned six hundred at St. Cloud;
thousands were put to
death by the Lutherans of Norway and
Sweden; Catholic Spain butchered
thousands; Presbyterians
were responsible for the death of four thousand
in Scotland;
fifty thousand were sentenced to death during the reign
of
Francis I.; seven thousand died at Treves; the number killed
in Paris in a few months is declared to have been "almost
infinite." Dr. Sprenger places the total number of executions
for
witchcraft in Europe at _nine millions_. For centuries
witch fires
burned in nearly every town of Europe, and this
Bible text, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live," was the
torch that kindled
them.
Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the
world,
add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for
religion's
sake; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders; remember
what
slavery has been; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of
Books
deserves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it.
I believe
that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, and
all the finer
motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit of
reading those
savage old books of the Jews as the word of God.
I do not think the
Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to place
in the hands of children,
and it certainly is not a fit book to send out
for the "salvation" of savage
and ignorant people.
OUR HEAVENLY FATHER
The Rev.
T. Rhondda Williams, in _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ shows
very clearly
the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jews
from a lower to a
higher conception.
Having dealt with the lower conception, let us now
consider the higher.
The highest conception of God is supposed to be the
Christian conception
of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the
Supreme Being
with supernal tenderness and mercy--"God is Love." That is a
very
lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one
fatal
objection--it is not true.
For this Heavenly Father, whose
nature is Love, is also the All-knowing
and All-powerful Creator of the
world.
Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always
power,
to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would
not
choose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a
place.
But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the
world.
Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world?
Being
All-Powerful and All-knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being
good,
He would hate evil. Being a God of Love He would wish to exclude
evil.
Why, then, did He permit evil to enter?
The world is full of
sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strife
and war. All life is a
perpetual deadly struggle for existence. The law
of nature is the law of
prey.
If God is a tender, loving, All-knowing, and All-powerful
Heavenly
Father, why did He build a world on cruel lines? Why does He permit
evil
and pain to continue? Why does He not give the world peace, and
health,
and happiness, and virtue?
In the New Testament Christ
compares God, as Heavenly Father to Man, to
an earthly father, representing
God as more benevolent and tender: "How
much more your Father which is in
heaven?"
We may, then, on the authority of the Founder of Christianity,
compare
the Christian Heavenly Father with the human father. And in doing
so
we shall find that Christ was not justified in claiming that God is
a
better father to Man than Man is to his own children. We shall find
that
the poetical and pleasing theory of a Heavenly Father, and God of
Love
is a delusion.
"Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give
him a stone?" None
amongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and
Russia, God allows
millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to
Him for bread.
He leaves them to die. Is it not so?
God made the
sunshine, sweet children, gracious women; green hills, blue
seas; music,
laughter, love, humour; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds,
the "sweet-briar
wind"; the nightingale and the rose.
But God made the earthquake, the
volcano, the cyclone; the shark,
the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the
poison berry; and the deadly
loathsome germs of cholera, consumption,
typhoid, smallpox, and the
black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence,
and war. He has
permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre,
torture, and
human sacrifice. He has for millions of years looked down upon
the
ignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once the author
and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn and far-stretched
tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so? |
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